Search Results for: Garfield

This is a tough one for me. Actor-writer-director-producer and all-around great guy Frank Buxton died this morning at 11:45, surrounded by family and friends.

Frank was born February 13, 1930 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He was a self-described "child of the Golden Age of Radio" and quite the expert on the period. In fact, he authored the definitive book on old radio, Big Broadcast, 1920-1950. It's currently out of print but well worth tracking down if the subject interests you in the slightest. Here's a quick clip from a 1969 episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on which Frank appeared to promote the book. Earlier in the program, they'd done a re-creation of a script from the Superman radio show and you can see Bud Collyer, who played the title role on that series, sitting on the couch…

Frank was all over TV in the fifties and sixties, hosting this and that, including a game show or two. I still can't quite wrap my brain around the fact that I am friends with the guy who presided over the TV show Discovery when I was ten. Discovery, which aired in the late afternoon Monday through Friday on ABC, was one of the few truly entertaining "educational" programs ever done — like another from many years later called Hot Dog. Frank was also responsible for Hot Dog, which won a Peabody Award in 1970. He was also heard as a voice on many cartoon shows, most notably Batfink on which he played…Batfink.

Frank was also an actor on stage and screen. He used to tell me stories about how at the age of 19, he appeared in a production of Three Men on a Horse with Buster Keaton and later spent a year touring Australia playing the Dick Van Dyke role in Bye Bye Birdie. He had a great many other credits but the one you may know best is that he was one of the perpetrators, led by his friend Woody Allen, of the movie, What's Up, Tiger Lily? Here he is a few years later interviewing Woody in the trailer for the film, Bananas…

Frank continued to act in regional theater but his main occupation became writer, director and producer of situation comedies including Love, American Style, The Odd Couple, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy. That's right: He directed Robin Williams, which he described as both a joy and a helluva challenge. When Mr. Williams passed, Frank wrote me a note about that experience.

For years, I assumed that the Frank Buxton who worked on all those sitcoms was a different Frank Buxton from the guy I enjoyed watching on Discovery. It simply didn't occur to me that one man could be so diverse and so talented. I soon learned they were one and the same and that he was one of the nicest, cleverest people I would ever meet. We became good buddies and whenever we were recording Garfield cartoons and Frank was visiting Los Angeles from his home up north in Washington, I would drag him in to join our voice cast. It made the show better and I got to spend more time with Frank.

Frank's close friend John Ellis just wrote to tell me…

He'd been struggling with heart issues for some time but had gotten stronger with a lot of work and support from his wonderful family and community. Things had been pretty damn good until very recently. He even got back on stage with The Edge in November, and a week before his final trip to the hospital, he was singing up a storm at a workshop.

His exit line was perfectly Frank! We sang some songs Christmas Eve and at the end of the last song, he closed his eyes, dropped his hand from his chest, opened his hand and whispered, "Rosebud." We all laughed (including Frank) and we left his room, but as far as we know that was his exit line.

The Edge is an improv troupe on Bainbridge Island in Washington. It was founded by John and Frank in 1993 and was among the many joys of Frank's life and, I'm sure, John's as well. Frank was always doing something — always writing something, always acting in something, always surrounding himself with wonderful, talented people. I want to go like he did…and I think I'll even steal his exit line. He was truly one of my heroes and it was an honor to know him.

It's not a shock to hear that the great performer Rose Marie has died at the age of 94. She'd been in and out of hospitals constantly the last few years and friends kept telling me, "She may not last the week." I started writing an obit for her three or four years ago and never finished it. I'm writing this one from scratch because I decided what I wanted to say about her and it wasn't what I set out to write back then.

But before I get to it, two points…one being that I don't think she was 94. I think she was 96. A number of her friends think that, too. Rose started out as a child star — a very big, stellar child star with a singing voice that was amazing for her age. A lot of us think that age was fudged by a year or two back then to make her seem younger and therefore more remarkable. We had a little birthday dinner for her four years ago and during it, she said some things that led me to conclude she was two years older than the public record showed.

Secondly: As all the obits are saying or will say, she probably had the longest performing career in the history of show business…and you know what her last paying job was? I hired her to voice a witch on The Garfield Show in 2012.

Like a lot of you, I first became aware of Rose from her appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was great on that program…and while no one thought this way at the time, that was an important role in the history of on-screen females. She wasn't there to play somebody's wife or somebody's mother or somebody's girl friend. She was a full-fledged working woman with a career and an income and a job that was equivalent to a man's. I mean, you just know Sally Rogers got the same money as Buddy Sorrell. Name me another character on TV before her who got equal pay as a guy…or as many good lines. She scored with every one of them.

I could fill this blog listing all the jobs this woman had…playing Vegas for Bugsy Siegel, playing Broadway with Phil Silvers, Hollywood Squares, The Doris Day Show and so many more. For a few decades there, if a show needed a comedienne who could hold her own on stage against a Milton Berle or Danny Thomas, she was at the top of a very short list.

The last decade or two though, she didn't work much. As she once said, "I think I outlived my career." Some of that was health-related. She'd put on weight and was confined to a wheel chair, plus there were all those hospital stays. Another person might have retired but all Rose did her whole life was work. I don't think she knew how not to work and it drove her crazy that she wasn't able to perform.

A few years ago, Rose told us (her friends) that a filmmaker named Jason Wise was making a documentary about her life. That was good news if only because of how it energized her and gave her hope that the ol' career still had some applause left in it. In the months that followed though, it started to feel like it might turn into bad news. The film seemed to be taking a long time and some of us had a very real, understandable fear that she would not live to see it completed.

Well, she did.

Last August, Amber and I went to the big premiere of it out in Santa Monica. I had two strong reactions that night. One was how good it was. All the time they spent to make it was evident on the screen with every second presented in loving precision. The other reaction was how happy Rose was. I'll bet it was one of the three best nights of her life…and how amazing to have one of those when you're her age.

Rose always had great timing and I think this proves it. The film is out now. It's called Wait For Your Laugh and I highly recommend that you seek it out and watch it. It will tell you more about this woman than I or anyone could tell you and you'll certainly understand why it was an honor to know her.

A week or so ago, the Motion Picture Academy announced which documentaries will be considered for Academy Awards for 2017. They do this each year, whittling down all the submissions to a list of fifteen finalists from which the winner will be selected. Wait For Your Laugh did not make the cut. If it had, I suspect Rose would have stuck around until the ceremony next year on March 4th and then left us. In a very long, successful life, she never missed a chance to be where she was born to be: On stage.

Bob Givens got out of high school in 1936. In 1937, he went to work for the Walt Disney Studio, mostly as animation checker on Donald Duck cartoons and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In 1940, he moved over to the Warner Brothers cartoon studio where one of his first jobs was doing the redesign of a rabbit character who would henceforth be known as Bugs Bunny.

In 1942, he was drafted into the army and spent most of his tour of duty working on military training films with animation director Rudolph Ising. After the war, he returned to Warner Brothers working for all their directors but mainly as a layout artist for Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones. He also began moonlighting for Western Publishing, drawing for their childrens books and comic book line.

In the decades that followed, he worked on and off for Warners but could occasionally be found at the U.P.A. studio, Jack Kinney's studio, Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Filmation, Film Roman and maybe a few other places. He more or less retired from working in animation around the start of the twenty-first century but taught well into his nineties. As you can see, he had what may well be the most impressive résumé in the history of the cartoon business.

Robert Givens died yesterday less than three months before he would have celebrated his hundredth birthday. We lost not only an important figure in the world of animation but a much-loved, unanimously-respected man who was always willing to talk to anyone about his work and to encourage others.

I was honored to talk with him now and then when he worked on Garfield and Friends, and to be invited to participate in a gang interview of him on the Disney lot last April. He was an amazing man.

This made me smile.  It's a real short chat with my pal, the late Lorenzo Music — writer, producer and the voice of  Carlton, Your Doorman and Garfield, Your Cat.  This is from when Lorenzo had just started supplying the voice of the lasagna-loving loafer and before he decided to not let his face be seen anywhere, which was mainly an attention-getting device. I miss the guy so I was glad to see and hear him again…

I've been collecting comedy records as long as I can remember. There was a time when if you went to the Comedy section in any record store — this is back when there was such a thing as a record store — you found albums by Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Nichols and May, Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg, maybe Lord Buckley…and Shelley Berman. This would be a record store in a mostly-white neighborhood. In mostly-black areas, you also found a lot of "party records" and a ton of Redd Foxx.

Freberg was my favorite but he was singing and doing musical numbers.  For just funny talking, I loved Shelley Berman, especially that first record of his, Inside Shelley Berman. Here, on a TV show of the sixties, he performs one of the best cuts from that album…

This is so good…every word, every inflection is just perfect. It's all the more impressive though when you consider that when Shelley first began doing this routine on stages, there was almost no one else doing acts like this. Performers had done this kind of thing, though not as well, in vaudeville. Shelley was the guy who modernized it and introduced it into his generation. Others, most notably Newhart, picked up on it…and yeah, there was some bitterness there. Newhart had greater success and Shelley was always rankled when someone would mention the two of them in the same paragraph without noting who'd imitated who.

Shelley was a sweet man but a nervous, paranoid man. There's a joke about two psychiatrists passing each other in a hall. One says, "Good morning" and the other thinks to himself, "Hmm…I wonder what he meant by that." Shelley always made me think of that joke. You could tell him how good you thought he was and absolutely mean it (as I did) and you could almost read the comic book thought balloon form over his head. It said, "Does he really mean that or does he want something from me?"

I got to know him through a comedians' social group I'm part of called Yarmy's Army, and also because I had him in once to do a voice on a Garfield cartoon. Yarmy's Army sometimes does shows for charity and they learned to put Shelley on stage last. There were two reasons for this. One was that he was so funny, no one could follow him. The other was that if the show ran long (or even if it didn't), Shelley would get pissed-off at having to wait so long to go on…and he was even funnier when he was pissed-off.

His peers — to the extent he had peers — worshipped him. Whereas he sometimes accused others — Newhart, especially — of stealing from him, no one ever accused Shelley of stealing from anyone. He was an absolute original with an act that clearly built out of his own worries and frustrations and angers and inability to understand why some people do some things he thought were so insane.

The New York Times obit on him is quite good and I'm going to quote a few paragraphs from it…

In 1963, at the height of his success, Mr. Berman was the subject of an NBC-TV documentary, "Comedian Backstage," which portrayed him as excitable and demanding and captured him losing his temper after a telephone rang backstage during his "Father and Son" monologue. The reviews were mostly favorable (although Jack Gould of The Times called the documentary a "portrait of disagreeableness"), but Mr. Berman nonetheless said that the unflattering picture painted by "Comedian Backstage" made him a "pariah" in the industry, and that his comedy career never fully recovered.

That documentary — which one dared not ask Shelley about — might not have harmed him ten or twenty years later when America got more accustomed to seeing the dark side of stars. In '63, when celebrities came packaged with carefully-controlled images, it was a jolt, though not as big a one as some recalled. Folks who saw it claimed they'd seen him — with their own eyes! — rip the phone right off the wall when it rang, interfering with his performance. He did not rip it off the wall. He merely took it off the hook but people remembered what they remembered. Comedy writer Pat McCormick once told me, "Shelley was a pain-in-the-ass to club owners and other people who booked him because he was always worried about the sound and the lighting and every little thing that could go wrong on stage. His complaining got exaggerated like he was way crazier than he actually was, and then the documentary validated the exaggeration."

His focus shifted back to acting. He appeared in numerous regional and summer-stock productions and played Tevye in a 1973 touring production of "Fiddler on the Roof." In the 1960s he was in movies like "The Best Man" (1964) and "Divorce American Style" (1967); from the '70s through the '90s he was on numerous TV shows, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," "St. Elsewhere" and "L.A. Law."

Shelley was a superb actor. He also appeared in numerous productions of The Odd Couple, sometimes as Oscar, sometimes as Felix. He got rave reviews as both and you have to be a real good actor to manage that.

It is said though that the creators of The Mary Tyler Moore Show originally wanted him for the role of Lou Grant, and when they called his agent to try and arrange an audition, Shelley's own agent talked them out of it. He then guested in one of the early episodes of the series and after that week of rehearsals and filming, the producers called the agent and said, "Thank you for talking us out of making him a regular." Finally…

A few years later he began teaching a course in humor writing at the University of Southern California, which he continued to teach until 2013.

That sentence exaggerates how long he taught at U.S.C. and when he did stop doing it, the person who replaced him was me. Several students the first semester I did it had signed up for Shelley's class and quit before they completed it because, they said, he was becoming snappish and too critical when they asked what he thought was a foolish question or handed in a writing assignment that he did not understand.  Some of that was because he increasingly felt out-of-sync with the current world of entertainment.

We talked about it once and he told me, "I made a mistake.  I taught the class as the Shelley Berman who performed 'in one' [as a solo performer] all those years.  I should have taken the toupee off and taught it as the comic actor on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  That guy was more in tune with young people and their comedy today."

I don't think Shelley was ever truly out-of-sync with comedy.  He may not have known all the current references but I saw him performing many times up until Alzheimer's slowed his timing and he knew it was time to stop.  He was always funny and his work was so organic and built on common human foibles that it reached across all generations.  Just check out any record or any video of him talking to an audience.  You'll agree.

I seem to be really bad at promoting my own writing. Last week, DC Comics released the Darkseid Special I wrote for them. It's one of six specials this month — Jack's centennial month — featuring characters done by him and now interpreted by current writers and artists. The story I did was illustrated by the extremely popular (justifiably so) Scott Kolins and there's a back-up tale of Omac by Paul Levitz and Phil Hester. All six of these books also carry short articles by me about Mr. Kirby. Since it's extremely unclassy for a writer to tell you his work is good, I won't. I'll just link to two reviews — this one and this one — where others say that and I'm a little embarrassed to even find myself doing that.

Also, the second issue of the Grumpy Cat/Garfield crossover mini-series will hit stores on September 7. The second issue? Didn't you promise to tell us when the first one came out? Yes, I did. But remember: I'm really bad at promoting my own writing and besides, no one told me. I haven't seen #1 either.

Anyway, you might want to check them out if only to consider how different the two stories are. One is about a sinister presence that enslaves those around them and forces them to be subservient and to live in fear. And the other one is about Darkseid.

From Chris Pepin…

I was watching an episode of Garfield and Friends yesterday and noticed that James Earl Jones did the voice of a ghost in the episode. How did you manage to get him to work on the show?

We recorded the voice tracks for that show at a terrific little place in Hollywood called Buzzy's Recording Studio. Usually, when we were there, someone else was recording in one of the other studios there and one day it was James Earl Jones, doing narration for some sort of public service announcement. He strolled in to watch our fine actors at work and later, we had a nice conversation about all sorts of things, one being that he'd seen and liked our show.

To my surprise, he said, "I'm going to be in town a lot over the next month or so. If you come across a role that would suit me, I'd love to do a voice on your show." I said, "You know…we have a recording session in two weeks and there's a part in one of those scripts that would be perfect for you." I told him what it paid and he said, "I don't care about the money. I just want to do a voice in a Garfield cartoon."

So we set it up and then I had to write a cartoon with a part for a guy with a very deep, sinister voice…because, of course, we had nothing at all in the works when I said I had a role for him and he knew it. But he came in two weeks later and he was an absolute delight. Of course.

June Foray died this morning, just 54 days shy of what would have been her 100th birthday. This was not unexpected. I saw her just six weeks ago and she was very small and very frail and just about ready to go. Her sister had died not long before and her brother-in-law died shortly after that visit.

She was, of course, the premier female voice talent of her era. I don't know who the runner-up was but whoever it was, she was in a distant second in terms of hours logged voicing cartoons and commercials, dubbing movies, doing narration, appearing on radio shows and records…even providing the voice for talking dolls. A few years ago when Earl Kress and I assisted her with her autobiography, we foolishly thought we could whip up a near-complete list of everything she'd done. Not in this world possible. I know more of June's credits than most people and I'd be surprised if I know 10% of it.

She was Rocky the Flying Squirrel. She was Natasha Fatale. She was Nell Fenwick. She was Jokey Smurf. She was Cindy Lou Who. She was Granny, owner of Tweety. She was Witch Hazel. She was Chatty Cathy. She was thousands of others.

Most of all, she was June Foray, a talented workaholic who for decades, drove into Hollywood every weekday early in the morning and went from recording session to recording session until well after dark. Everyone hired her because she was always on time, always professional and what she did was always good. It was her good friend, director Chuck Jones who said, "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc is the male June Foray."

June Foray was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on September 18, 1917. The talent she exhibited at an early age was encouraged by her parents and by age 12, she was appearing on local radio dramas playing children's parts. By 15, she was working steadily on a wide array of series and was playing roles that were often older — much older than she was.

When she finally graduated high school, her family moved to Los Angeles, California so that June could break into national radio, which she did in no time. A short list of the programs on which she was heard would include The Cavalcade of America, A Date With Judy, Sherlock Holmes (with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce), Mayor of the Town (with Lionel Barrymore), The Whistler, The Billie Burke Show, The Rudy Vallee Show, Stars Over Hollywood, The Al Pearce Show, This is My Best (with Orson Welles), Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, Baby Snooks (with Fanny Brice), Dr. Christian (with Jean Hersholt), I Deal in Crime (with Bill Gargan), Jack Haley's Sealtest Village Store, Glamour Manor (with Kenny Baker), Phone Again Finnegan (with Stu Erwin), The Charlie McCarthy Show (with Edgar Bergen), The Dick Haymes Show, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Bob Hope Show, The Penny Singleton Show, Presenting Charles Boyer, Tex Williams's All-Star Western Theater, Red Ryder, The Screen Directors' Playhouse, The Screen Guild Theatre, The Lux Radio Theater, The Great Gildersleeve, My Favorite Husband (with Lucille Ball), Richard Diamond: Private Detective (with Dick Powell), and Martin Kane, Private Eye. She was a regular on the popular comedy series, Smile Time, which introduced her longtime friend Steve Allen to much of America.

When television came along, June was there with roles on Johnny Carson's first TV series, Carson's Cellar, and dozens of other programs including Andy's Gang, where she worked with the man she'd soon marry, Hobart Donavan. They were married until his death in 1976.

Experts disagree as to when June did her first animation work. She usually cites the role of the cat Lucifer in Disney's Cinderella (1950) and she did much work for Mr. Disney, both in front of the microphone and also posing occasionally as a model to aid the animators. In 1955, she began voicing dozens of characters for Warner Brothers cartoons and then in 1959 came Rocky and His Friends, the show on which she first played Rocky the Flying Squirrel. In fact, she not only voiced the plucky squirrel but most of the female (and even a few male) voices for the many cartoon shows produced by Jay Ward.

June was in fact heard in the cartoons of every major animation producer located on the West Coast for years, including MGM, UPA, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera. She continued to work in animation well into her nineties and in 2012 won her first Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Cauldron, a witch seen around the world on The Garfield Show. Some claim that victory made her the oldest performer to ever win an Emmy. She was later awarded an honorary one.

Her voice was also heard on hundreds of live-action TV shows, including Baretta, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Green Acres and The Twilight Zone. For the latter, she was the voice of "Talky Tina" in a memorable episode that called for June to play the evil side of the popular talking doll she voiced for Mattel Toys, Chatty Cathy. She has been heard (but not seen) in dozens of motion pictures including Jaws, Bells Are Ringing, The Hospital and The Comic.

June was active in the film community, having founded the Los Angeles chapter of Association Internationale du Film d'Animation (the International Animated Film Association) and serving multiple terms on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was also a wonderful lady and someone I loved dearly. A lot of us are going to spend the rest of our lives bragging unashamedly that we got to know and/or work with June Foray.

Here are links to the schedules for programming at Comic-Con on Preview Night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday — in that order. And to make things even easier for you, here's the list of the important panels — i.e., the ones I'm hosting…

Thursday, July 20 – 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 4
SPOTLIGHT ON MIKE ROYER
As part of this year's gala Jack Kirby Centennial, here's an hour-long chat with Jack's favorite inker of his work, the man who worked with him on the Fourth World comics, Kamandi, The Demon, and many others. But Mike Royer was so much more than just Jack Kirby's inker. He worked with Russ Manning on the Tarzan comic books and newspaper strip and again with Russ on the Star Wars newspaper strip. He drew for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella and worked on the '60s Marvel superhero cartoons and for Gold Key Comics and had a multi-decade career working for Disney on things as un-Kirbylike as Winnie the Pooh. Come hear him be interviewed by his friend and colleague, Mark Evanier.

Thursday, July 20 – 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 8
THE MARK, SERGIO, STAN AND TOM SHOW
The old "Sergio and Mark Show" has a new name-but what it doesn't have is new panelists. It's still the crew who bring you the bumbling adventures of Groo the Wanderer, talking about what they do and why they do it. See the award-winning team of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier along with Stan Sakai (the creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and the hardest-working man in comics, colorist Tom Luth. They'll be discussing the latest Groo miniseries, many upcoming projects, and why Mark doesn't get paid for the work he does on their comic. Then again, he's not getting paid for writing this panel description either.

Friday, July 21 – 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM in Room 8
POGO, WALT KELLY AND CAROLYN KELLY
Some call Walt Kelly's Pogo the greatest newspaper strip of all time. This program provides a discussion on Kelly, his legacy, and his lovely daughter, who passed away in April. Topics include the future of the Eisner Award-winning Pogo reprint series from Fantagraphics Books that Carolyn had been co-editing and that will continue to reprint that wonderful feature. On the dais: comic historian Maggie Thompson (Comics Buyer's Guide), film critic Leonard Maltin, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, friend John Plunkett, Fantagraphics's Eric Reynolds (co-editor of the Complete Pogo series), and moderator Mark Evanier (co-editor of the Complete Pogo series).

Friday, July 21 – 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 8
JACK KIRBY: FRIENDS AND FAMILY
If Jack Kirby were as immortal as his work, he'd be 100 years old next month . . . and he's still here in spirit and impact. Today a group of his family members and closest friends will talk about the man they knew, the man whose genius revolutionized the comic book industry again and again, and they'll even tell you what he liked on his pizza. Your moderator is former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier (author, Kirby: King of Comics).

Saturday, July 22 – 11:45 AM to 1 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
It's the fastest, funniest panel in the whole convention! Once again, your Quick Draw Quizmaster Mark Evanier pits three super-speedy cartoonists against one another with dueling Sharpies as they create great cartoon art right before your very eyes. Competing this year are (as usual) Sergio Aragonés (MAD magazine, Groo the Wanderer) and Scott Shaw! (The Simpsons), joined this year by Maria Scrivan (Half Full) plus a couple of highly surprising surprises!

Saturday, July 22 – 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Each year, moderator Mark Evanier gathers a bevy of the most talented cartoon voice actors working today and invites them to explain and demonstrate their artistry. This year's lineup includes Grey Griffin (Scooby-Doo!, DC Super Hero Girls), Richard Horvitz (Invader ZIM, The Angry Beavers), Jeff Bergman (Bugs Bunny, Fred Flintstone), Mick Wingert (Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), Kaitlyn Robrock (Mr. Pickles, Golan the Insatiable), Josh Robert Thompson (Family Guy, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson), and maybe a few other members of the vocal majority.

Saturday, July 22 – 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM in Room 5AB
THAT 70'S PANEL
It was a time of change in comics, with a new generation intermingling with the old and taking command. Hear what the comics industry was like in the 1970s from Mike Grell (The Warlord; Jon Sable, Freelance), Paul Levitz (Legion of Super-Heroes, Stalker), Keith Pollard (Fantastic Four, Thor), Ron Wilson (The Thing, Super Boxers), Marv Wolfman (Tomb of Dracula, New Teen Titans), Joe Staton (E-Man, Dick Tracy), and moderator Mark Evanier (Groo the Wanderer, Blackhawk).

Sunday, July 23 – 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
Continuing the celebration of the Kirby Centennial, this is the annual panel about Comic-Con's first superstar guest, the man they call "The King of Comics," Jack Kirby. Jack left us in 1994, but his influence on comics, film, and this convention has never been greater. Discussing the man and his work this year are Jim Chadwick (editor at DC Comics), Paul Levitz (former president at DC Comics), Mike Royer (Kirby's favorite inker), attorney Paul S. Levine, and several highly surprising surprise guests. Naturally, it's moderated by former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 – 11:30 AM to 12:45 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
With the smash-hit success of yesterday's Cartoon Voices I panel, there's no choice but to do another one-with different but equally talented actors from the world of animation voicing. Once again, moderator Mark Evanier has assembled an all-star dais that will include Neil Kaplan (Transformers, Voltron), Nickie Bryar (Family Guy, American Dad!), Bob Joles (Puss in Boots, SpongeBob SquarePants), Debra Wilson (MADtv, Family Guy), Chuck McCann (Fantastic Four, DuckTales), and probably someone else.

Sunday, July 23 – 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What does it take to make a great cover for a comic book? Let's ask five of the top artists . . . all folks who've created some of the best. Come hear the "shop talk" of Arthur Adams (Longshot, Monkeyman and O'Brien), Mike Grell (Warlord; Jon Sable, Freelance), Joyce Chin (America, Deadpool the Duck), Joe Staton (E-Man, Dick Tracy), and Erica Henderson (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead). Moderated by Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 – 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
Interested in a career doing voices for animation and videogames? There are plenty of people around who'll take your money and tell you how to go about it, but here's 90 minutes of absolutely free advice from folks who work actively in the field. Hear from cartoon voice actors Gregg Berger, Julie Nathanson, and Debra Wilson, talent agent Sandie Schnarr (AVO Talent) and your moderator, voice director Mark Evanier (The Garfield Show).

I am actually on some panels I'm not moderating too so don't be surprised if you see me where you don't expect me. As always: Times, room assignments and panel participants are subject to change. Matter of fact, I'm still trying to get them to postpone the whole convention to late August because I'm not ready for it. It's not looking good for that though so the above schedule will probably happen.

I try to hold down the plugs for stuff that makes me money but I have some comic books out or coming out. The first issue of the new Groo mini-series, Groo: Play of the Gods will be released to coincide with Comic-Con. It's a four-issue series in which, you may find it hard to believe, Groo does some stupid things and causes vast amounts of destruction. Surprising, I know but we thought it would be a novel change from all those issues in which Groo causes vast amounts of destruction and does some stupid things.

I continue to write Garfield stories for the occasional Garfield specials that Boom Studios issues. And Boom has partnered with Dynamite Comics for a Garfield & Grumpy Cat crossover mini-series and I wrote that, too. That'll be out in a few months. I'll let you know when we have a precise release date.

One or two e-mails a week ask me why I so rarely mention these things here and one guy just asked if I was ashamed of them. Certainly not, guy. I just sometimes find the pushing of one's own products on the Internet a bit tacky. When I see a really egregious example of it — and it's hard not to — it make me uncomfy to be doing that myself. I probably need to get over this.

Meanwhile, DC Comics has collected in one volume, Superman Meets Bugs Bunny, a mini-series I wrote for them back in the year 2000. I didn't mention that here before it came out because I literally didn't know about it until I got a box from them filled with copies. It's a nice little series, owing largely to fine illustration work by Joe Staton, Tom Palmer and Mike DeCarlo.

I dunno if I've mentioned this here before but there's an interesting difference for me in writing a character like Superman as opposed to a character like Bugs Bunny. This is above and beyond the fact that the latter is supposed to be funny. It's that famous cartoon characters all speak with familiar voices, whereas characters who are primarily from comic books or strips do not. We all know what Bugs Bunny sounds like. He either sounds like Mel Blanc or someone imitating Mel Blanc. But Superman has had dozens of voices and no one of them is definitive.

When I write Bugs, I hear his voice in my head and when you read a Bugs Bunny comic, you probably hear that exact same voice. We agree on what all those animated characters sound like. You might have a voice in mind for, say, Batman. You think he sounds like Adam West or Kevin Conroy or Michael Keaton or Someone Else but the writer probably doesn't have that same voice in mind. I'm not saying any of this is good or bad or anything; just that it's something I find fascinating. (And there are exceptions. I never thought the Donald Duck of the comic books sounded anything like the voice Clarence Nash did for the Donald Duck cartoons. The cartoon voice was semi-unintelligible, whereas I could understand every word the Donald of the comics uttered since it was right there in print.)

Moving on: August is the month when Jack Kirby would have been 100 years old. Here's a paragraph I swiped off this website…

DC Comics recently announced six special one-shot comic books set to release throughout August, the month of Kirby's actual 100th birthday. Each issue will tell a new story about one of Kirby's famous DC creations: Darkseid (from Mark Evanier and Scott Kolins), the Newsboy Legion (Howard Chaykin), Sandman (Dan Jurgens, Steve Orlando, John Bogdanove, and Rick Leonardi), Manhunter (Keith Giffen, Dan DiDio), Orion and the New Gods (Shane Davis and Michelle Delecki), and the Black Racer (Reginald Hudlin and Denys Cowan).

Each issue will also contain some Kirby reprints and an essay by Yours Truly. Some of the issues, by the way, have a couple of new stories and other creators are involved beyond those named above. It looks like a fun and highly appropriate project and I was pleased that they asked me to be involved.

Also, Abrams Comicart Books is issuing an updated, revised edition of Kirby: King of Comics, the book I did about Jack in 2008. It has smaller pages, softer covers, a better cover, a new chapter, some new art and I've rewritten a few hunks of it based on the realization that I could say some things clearer than I did the first time around. Copies will be available at the Abrams booth at Comic-Con next week (next week!) and maybe at other places in the hall, as well. My longer, more in-depth bio of Jack is almost finished but I'm not making any more guesses as to when it will be out.

And that concludes our personal plugging on this blog for the next month or two. Thank you for your patience and we now return you to stuff that I don't make any money off of.

The Programming Schedule is up and operating for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. If you're attending, I highly suggest that you take the time before the con to peruse the schedule, jot down the items you want to attend and jot down the second-choices you'll attend if/when your first choices prove impossible to get into.

Here are links to the schedules for programming at Comic-Con on Preview Night, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday — in that order. And to make things even easier for you, here's the list of the important panels — i.e., the ones I'm hosting…

Thursday, July 20 – 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 4
SPOTLIGHT ON MIKE ROYER
As part of this year's gala Jack Kirby Centennial, here's an hour-long chat with Jack's favorite inker of his work, the man who worked with him on the Fourth World comics, Kamandi, The Demon, and many others. But Mike Royer was so much more than just Jack Kirby's inker. He worked with Russ Manning on the Tarzan comic books and newspaper strip and again with Russ on the Star Wars newspaper strip. He drew for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella and worked on the '60s Marvel superhero cartoons and for Gold Key Comics and had a multi-decade career working for Disney on things as un-Kirbylike as Winnie the Pooh. Come hear him be interviewed by his friend and colleague, Mark Evanier.

Thursday, July 20 – 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 8
THE MARK, SERGIO, STAN AND TOM SHOW
The old "Sergio and Mark Show" has a new name-but what it doesn't have is new panelists. It's still the crew who bring you the bumbling adventures of Groo the Wanderer, talking about what they do and why they do it. See the award-winning team of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier along with Stan Sakai (the creator of Usagi Yojimbo) and the hardest-working man in comics, colorist Tom Luth. They'll be discussing the latest Groo miniseries, many upcoming projects, and why Mark doesn't get paid for the work he does on their comic. Then again, he's not getting paid for writing this panel description either.

Friday, July 21 – 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM in Room 8
POGO, WALT KELLY AND CAROLYN KELLY
Some call Walt Kelly's Pogo the greatest newspaper strip of all time. This program provides a discussion on Kelly, his legacy, and his lovely daughter, who passed away in April. Topics include the future of the Eisner Award-winning Pogo reprint series from Fantagraphics Books that Carolyn had been co-editing and that will continue to reprint that wonderful feature. On the dais: comic historian Maggie Thompson (Comics Buyer's Guide), film critic Leonard Maltin, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, friend John Plunkett, Fantagraphics's Eric Reynolds (co-editor of the Complete Pogo series), and moderator Mark Evanier (co-editor of the Complete Pogo series).

Friday, July 21 – 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 8
JACK KIRBY: FRIENDS AND FAMILY
If Jack Kirby were as immortal as his work, he'd be 100 years old next month . . . and he's still here in spirit and impact. Today a group of his family members and closest friends will talk about the man they knew, the man whose genius revolutionized the comic book industry again and again, and they'll even tell you what he liked on his pizza. Your moderator is former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier (author, Kirby: King of Comics).

Saturday, July 22 – 11:45 AM to 1 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
It's the fastest, funniest panel in the whole convention! Once again, your Quick Draw Quizmaster Mark Evanier pits three super-speedy cartoonists against one another with dueling Sharpies as they create great cartoon art right before your very eyes. Competing this year are (as usual) Sergio Aragonés (MAD magazine, Groo the Wanderer) and Scott Shaw! (The Simpsons), joined this year by Maria Scrivan (Half Full) plus a couple of highly surprising surprises!

Saturday, July 22 – 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Each year, moderator Mark Evanier gathers a bevy of the most talented cartoon voice actors working today and invites them to explain and demonstrate their artistry. This year's lineup includes Grey Griffin (Scooby-Doo!, DC Super Hero Girls), Richard Horvitz (Invader ZIM, The Angry Beavers), Jeff Bergman (Bugs Bunny, Fred Flintstone), Mick Wingert (Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), Kaitlyn Robrock (Mr. Pickles, Golan the Insatiable), Josh Robert Thompson (Family Guy, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson), and maybe a few other members of the vocal majority.

Saturday, July 22 – 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM in Room 5AB
THAT 70'S PANEL
It was a time of change in comics, with a new generation intermingling with the old and taking command. Hear what the comics industry was like in the 1970s from Mike Grell (The Warlord; Jon Sable, Freelance), Paul Levitz (Legion of Super-Heroes, Stalker), Keith Pollard (Fantastic Four, Thor), Ron Wilson (The Thing, Super Boxers), Marv Wolfman (Tomb of Dracula, New Teen Titans), Joe Staton (E-Man, Dick Tracy), and moderator Mark Evanier (Groo the Wanderer, Blackhawk).

Sunday, July 23 – 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
Continuing the celebration of the Kirby Centennial, this is the annual panel about Comic-Con's first superstar guest, the man they call "The King of Comics," Jack Kirby. Jack left us in 1994, but his influence on comics, film, and this convention has never been greater. Discussing the man and his work this year are Jim Chadwick (editor at DC Comics), Paul Levitz (former president at DC Comics), Mike Royer (Kirby's favorite inker), attorney Paul S. Levine, and several highly surprising surprise guests. Naturally, it's moderated by former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 – 11:30 AM to 12:45 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
With the smash-hit success of yesterday's Cartoon Voices I panel, there's no choice but to do another one-with different but equally talented actors from the world of animation voicing. Once again, moderator Mark Evanier has assembled an all-star dais that will include Neil Kaplan (Transformers, Voltron), Nickie Bryar (Family Guy, American Dad!), Bob Joles (Puss in Boots, SpongeBob SquarePants), Debra Wilson (MADtv, Family Guy), Chuck McCann (Fantastic Four, DuckTales), and probably someone else.

Sunday, July 23 – 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What does it take to make a great cover for a comic book? Let's ask five of the top artists . . . all folks who've created some of the best. Come hear the "shop talk" of Arthur Adams (Longshot, Monkeyman and O'Brien), Mike Grell (Warlord; Jon Sable, Freelance), Joyce Chin (America, Deadpool the Duck), Joe Staton (E-Man, Dick Tracy), and Erica Henderson (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead). Moderated by Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 – 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
Interested in a career doing voices for animation and videogames? There are plenty of people around who'll take your money and tell you how to go about it, but here's 90 minutes of absolutely free advice from folks who work actively in the field. Hear from cartoon voice actors Gregg Berger, Julie Nathanson, and Debra Wilson, talent agent Sandie Schnarr (AVO Talent) and your moderator, voice director Mark Evanier (The Garfield Show).

I am actually on some panels I'm not moderating too so don't be surprised if you see me where you don't expect me. As always: Times, room assignments and panel participants are subject to change. Matter of fact, I'm still trying to get them to postpone the whole convention to late August because I'm not ready for it. It's not looking good for that though so the above schedule will probably happen.

Robert Givens was born in 1918, which makes him 99 years old. He graduated high school in 1936 and two years later, went to work for Walt Disney as an artist. That was in time to work on many of the classic Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons and on a film you may have heard of called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Two years later, he moved over to Leon Schlesinger's studio to work on what we now think of as Warner Brothers cartoons. One of his first jobs there was to redesign a rabbit character they'd been fooling around with and also a hunter character for the film A Wild Hare. That cartoon is considered by many to be the first and archetype appearances of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, and most of what Mr. Givens did would survive subsequent refinements of those characters.

He worked for Schlesinger and the subsequent Warner Brothers studio for years after, not as an animator but as a layout artist and character designer, and he occasionally contributed so much to a cartoon that they gave him story credit. He left for a time to serve in World War II and to work on training films and for RKO, then left again to work for UPA for years on all of its cartoons, including Mister Magoo. Later, he worked for Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Filmation. MGM, whatever studio Chuck Jones was directing for at the time and even for Film Roman on Bobby's World and the first four seasons of Garfield and Friends.

This is a very partial rundown of the man's career. He also did hundreds of jobs for Western Publishing drawing Dell and Gold Key comic books (mainly of Disney properties) and children's books. His last professional credit was the 2001 feature, Timber Wolf, directed by Chuck Jones. About the time Chuck died the following year, Bob retired from drawing, though he did some teaching…and you may be wondering what he's doing these days.

Well, today he was out at the Disney lot in Burbank and at lunchtime, artists from all over that lot assembled in an auditorium to hear him field questions from four animation experts — or maybe it was three animation experts plus me. That's us in the photo above. Standing are the Marks: At left is Mark Kausler and at right is Yours Truly, poorly-lit. That's Bob in the center and on the left is Jerry Beck and at right is Leonard Maltin. And we were also honored by the presence in the room of Friz Freleng's daughters, Sybil and Hope, who recalled how fond their father was of Bob.

We screened A Wild Hare and then peppered Bob with questions for an hour or so, then we retired to a private dining room for lunch. There, Bob didn't get much to eat because we continued to fire questions at him. Even at his age, he's still sharp, he still remembers plenty…and since he worked with everyone, there was no let-up in the interrogation. I asked him a lot about his time at UPA, like what he remembered about the Dick Tracy cartoons ("Cheapest thing we ever did") and how drunk Jim Backus was in Magoo recording sessions ("Sometimes, very").

Bob's been interviewed many times before. Here's one and here's one and here's one and there are many others online. I dunno if the one we did will wind up online or if it'll disappear forever into the Disney Studio Library but a lot of new animators and artists were sure thrilled to be there and meet this man and hear what he had to say. So was I.

WonderCon commences next Friday at the newly-refurbished and enlarged Anaheim Convention Center. I hear they've made it nicer and bigger and that it has way more parking spaces. If they'd moved it far enough away from Disneyland to not share the same off-ramps, it might be the best place ever to hold a convention. The entire programming schedule is online here and the list of panels I'm doing is below…

Friday, March 31 – 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM, Room 208
THE MARK, SERGIO, STAN AND MAYBE TOM SHOW
The folks who bring you Groo the Wanderer tell you how (and maybe why) they bring you Groo the Wanderer and maybe other things, as well. They are Mark Evanier, Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai, and maybe the hardest-working man in comics, Tom Luth. Learn what it is that compels these men to, month after month and year after year, tell their tales of the stupidest character ever in comics. [NOTE: Looks like Stan Sakai will not be present at the con. Dunno yet about Tom.]

Friday, March 31 – 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM, Room 213
WRITING FOR ANIMATION
Ever think you might want to write cartoons? Well, Mark Evanier has written more than 500 half-hours of animated programming, including such programs as The Garfield Show, Garfield and Friends, Dungeons & Dragons, Scooby-Doo, Richie Rich, ABC Weekend Special, Superman Adventures, Thundarr the Barbarian, CBS Storybreak, and many more. He doesn't claim to know everything but thinks he can fill the hour telling you what he does know.

Saturday, April 1 – 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM, Room 300DE
QUICK DRAW!
It's another cartooning battle royale, a duel with sketch pads and Sharpies as three super swift scribblers attempt to make the Flash look lethargic. Competing will be (of course) Sergio Aragonés of MAD and Groo the Wanderer; The Simpsons and The Flintstones artist Scott Shaw! and the new kid on the dais, popular Internet cartoonist Lonnie Millsap. Putting them through their paces will be Mark Evanier, aided by suggestions from the audience. As always, no wagering, and may the best cartoonist win!

Saturday, April 1 – 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM, Room 300DE
CARTOON VOICES
Once more, your host Mark Evanier assembles a dais of talented folks who speak for characters in animated cartoons and video games, and they demonstrate their artistry for you! This time, Mark has Dan Gilvezan (Spider-Man, Dennis the Menace), Elle Newlands (Skylanders, Star Trek into Darkness), Bill Farmer (Goofy, The 7D), Katie Leigh (Muppet Babies, Dungeons & Dragons), Daniel Ross (Donald Duck, Transformers) and maybe a few surprises!

Sunday, April 2 – 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM, Room 207
COVER STORY
Some say the most important part of any comic book is the cover. If that's so, we need to talk more about cover designs-and talk we will with these acclaimed cover creators: Michael Cho (Civil War II, DC reprint series), Sanford Greene (Power Man and Iron Fist, Runaways), Phil Jimenez (Wonder Woman, The Invisibles), Bob Layton (Iron Man, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter), and Lissa Treiman (Slam!, Lumberjanes). Your moderator as usual is Mark Evanier.

Sunday, April 2 – 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, Room 211
JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE
2017 marks an entire century since the birth of the man many call the most important creative talent ever in comics. This year more than ever, comic fans celebrate the legacy of Jack Kirby. On hand will be former Kirby assistant Steve Sherman, Scott Dunbier from IDW Publishing, Rand Hoppe from the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, and Paul S. Levine, attorney for the Rosalind Kirby Trust. Your moderator is another former Kirby assistant, Mark Evanier.

Anything and everything can change, including times, room numbers, panelists and the bushiness of Sergio's mustache. If you see me around, say howdy.

Here's what I did on my 65th birthday. I hosted a program out at the TV Academy on the art/science of new people doing voices of classic characters.

This is a video of the whole thing minus a couple of videos that were shown and which have been edited out for, I assume, copyright purposes. There was a great opening montage you won't see and about halfway through, there was a script reading of an episode of the TV series, Wabbit. The reading is in the video below but then we ran the cartoon and that ain't in the video below. The reading made more sense when you could see how all those strange noises and shrieks the actors did fit into the finished film.

Also, I should mention: I am identified as the Writer/Producer/Director of The Garfield Show. This kind of shorthand occurs so often throughout the business that we rarely correct it…but just for the record, I am a Writer on the show, the Supervising Producer and the Voice Director. There are other writers and other producers, and the guy who gets and deserves the Director credit is a brilliant gent named Philippe Vidal. He actually directs the animation and assembles the finished episodes. I just hire and direct the voice actors for the English language version.

As you'll see, we had a great panel and we only began to talk about this topic, which could be discussed for many, many hours. Here's about 75 minutes on it…