Milt Larsen did a great many things in his long, magical life — writer, performer, producer, etc. — but he will always be known as "The Man Who Built the Magic Castle." And he didn't just build it by co-founding the place with his brother Bill. Milt was also good at the kind of "building" that involves carpentry, another of his many skills.
In case you dunno: The Magic Castle is a private club for magicians that's located in the hills above Hollywood, a block or so from the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater. Inside, it is a place of wonderment and history and good food and I've been a member there for about 43 years. In fact, I had lunch there last Friday and I said hello to Milt. Everyone there said hello to Milt. He was quite beloved.
You can learn more about Milt in this obit and if you Google his name, I'm sure you can find out a lot more. The Castle will live on but it won't be the same without Milt. No, not the same at all.
John Cleese is adapting The Life of Brian as a non-musical stage play. I love the Pythons so much that I'm willing to give them a pass on the endless recycling of their old material. It feels like we've had eighty repackagings of the TV show sketches for home video, each striving to look more definitive than the one before. That stuff is priceless and if the men who made it can make more gelt from it, fine.
And I did really enjoy Spamalot. My first reaction when I heard about it was the same as when a local theatrical group was putting on a show of old Monty Python material: Who wants to see performers who are not John Cleese, Eric Idle, et al, doing those routines? But Spamalot was a great show. I've seen three different productions of it and loved 'em all. I gather though that Mr. Cleese is not planning on changing The Life of Brian for his stage production as much as Mr. Idle changed Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which was a lot, incorporating all sorts of other Python bits.
For instance, Cleese is now denying rumors that he's cutting the "Loretta" scene — the one about the man who wants to be a woman — because it might offend people. Given the attention lately about "trans" people and the inhumane attempts to marginalize or persecute them, it could now be viewed in a different light. To me, the relevant question is not "Will it offend audiences?" It's "Is it still funny?"
And a key word in this discussion is "might." Comedy is not unaffected by changes in our society. For instance, I think jokes about drunks (Foster Brooks, for example) and potheads (Cheech & Chong) are not as laugh-provoking to most folks today as they were in the sixties and seventies. That may or may not be regrettable but the world does change and some humor turns out to have a short shelf life. Nixon jokes aren't as hysterical as they were in 1970 either.
Cleese should feel free to leave it in to see how it fares before audiences. Not that my opinion matters but I think they'll love it.
But he should also feel free to cut it, not because it "might" offend someone but if it turns out it just plain doesn't work or is too expendable. Cutting something because it definitely offends people is not always the right move anyway…and cutting something because it "might" is even more foolish. In rehearsals and outta-town tryouts, a lot of material was cut from Spamalot because it didn't make the audience laugh and/or was making the evening too long. Some of that was probably hilarious when the Pythons themselves performed it decades earlier.
And in case I need to make this clear: I think the way to deal with folks who wish to swap genders is to leave them alone to do whatever they want. Let them be what their hearts tell them they were meant to be. Let them use the public restroom of their choice. And especially stop trying to score cheap political points at their expense. If you honestly feel threatened by their very existence, I think you need to transition from whatever the hell it is you are into a human being.
As I have said several times on the blog, there are many different ways to write a comic book…and here I'm talking about page format and the way a writer conveys what he or she wants the artist to draw. Let me repeat that and put it in boldface for emphasis: THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT WAYS TO WRITE A COMIC BOOK. It has been my experience in 50+ years of working in this industry that most writers and editors know a grand total of two, if that many.
In this article, I'm going to tell you about one method but first, an anecdote: One day in the eighties, I was at a comic book convention and I happened to have a copy of a script that Carl Barks (i.e., The Great Carl Barks) had written for Gold Key's Junior Woodchucks comic book. I showed it to Julius Schwartz, who most of you know was a longtime editor of comic books for DC. It was in the format that I'm about to describe.
Mr. Schwartz looked at it and said, "Hey, that's an unusual way to write a comic book!" I said, "No, it isn't. Thousands of published comic book stories have been written this way, especially funny comics, especially of the 'funny animal' variety." Julie looked at me like I'd just told him I was from the planet Twylo and was here to enslave mankind with walnuts. He said, in an incredulous tone, "Really?"
This is Julius Schwartz, who then had been editing comic books since the original lungfish crawled onto dry land. And he had no idea a lot of comic books were ever written that way.
Most everyone in or around the field knows of The Full Script Method in which the writer types out a script which specifies how many panels go on each page and then describes what is to be drawn in each panel and he or she supplies the captions, word balloons and sound effects. Within this format, there are many variations of how this information is arranged on a page but it's basically one method. Zillions of great comics have been done this way along, of course, with some not-so-great.
There's also The Marvel Method, which most of you know about. In this method, the comic starts with a plot which may be very detailed or fairly loose or it could even be one sentence like "[Name of Hero] fights [Name of Villain]." It may even be verbal.
This "plot" may have come from the writer, it may have come from the artist or in some cases, it may have come from a third, perhaps uncredited person or a committee meeting. The penciler draws the comic before dialogue and captions are written and may, depending on how detailed the plot is, make up a little or some or most or even all of the story. The writer composes the words later to fit what the penciler has drawn. Again, this system has yielded countless great comics along with the not-great.
But in all my years of writing about comic books or discussing them with others, I've seen precious little mention of what I am calling here The Sketch Method. That's the name I've given it because, like I said, very few people ever discuss this method and so I've never heard of a commonly-used name for it. It is most easily explained by showing you an example. Here is the script for a page from a Bugs Bunny comic book. It's on the left and next to it is the printed page that was drawn from that script. If you click on the image below, it will get much larger on your computer screen…
Click above to enlarge.
Let me get some credits out of the way here. The finished page was penciled by Tom McKimson, who I wrote about in this message. I'm not sure who inked it but there's a good chance it was a gent named Joe Prince. The editor markings on the script were done by Chase Craig, who was the Senior Editor for many years at Western's Los Angeles office and most of the time I wrote for them, he was my boss. The lettering was by Bill Spicer, who was the main letterer for that office for a long time.
The script on the left was by John Brady…and I'm afraid I don't know much about Mr. Brady other than that he was a cartoonist, he sometimes drew comics instead of just writing them and he was amazingly productive. I can't back this up with any hard numbers but it wouldn't surprise me if he belongs in a list of The Ten Most Prolific Comic Book Writers of All Time.
He sketched his scripts out like you see…on 8-and-a-half by 11" typing paper and he often partially colored them with colored pencils. This puzzled me when I first saw his scripts in the Western Publishing office since those scripts were never seen by the mysterious people who colored Gold Key Comics. (I'll tell you about them one of these days. Wanna know their names? So did I but even Chase didn't know.)
I asked Chase why Brady's scripts were colored like that and he said, "John enjoys doing them that way." That, he assured me, was the only reason.
Anyway, as you've no doubt figured out by now: In what I call The Sketch Method, the writer just draws out the comic page in rough form. An awful lot of the writers who wrote Dell and Gold Key comics for Western Publishing worked this way. It was more common on the "funny animal" comics but it was done on adventure titles, too. There were issues of Magnus, Robot Fighter done this way. It was used a lot at Archie and Harvey…and even sometimes at DC, though apparently not often enough for Julius Schwartz to notice.
With The Sketch Method, the artist who pencils the page for publication is free to follow the writer's staging or ignore it. My observation, seeing pages go through the Western office, is that most artists would use some of the writer's staging but not all.
McKimson, for example, decided to draw Bugs in a walking pose in the first panel, which I think was a good change. It suggests the idea that Bugs and Porky have just arrived and that we are not coming in on the middle of a conversation. On other pages, he may have deviated a little or a lot.
Tom McKimson also drew Bugs Bunny stories that I wrote. When I was selling scripts to Western, most of them were typed, though in a format I've never seen used elsewhere. In some future post, I'll show you that format. I did do a few Sketch Method and sometimes, I'd type a script but also sketch out what I saw in my head for a certain panel or sequence. Looking just at the published comics, I do not think it would be possible for anyone to discern which stories were drawn from which method of script-writing.
This method, like the two described above, has its good points and bad points, and they have a lot to do with the skills of the writer and artist involved. Of course, one big consideration is whether the writer can draw or whether they can type. If the writer can do both, then you have to ask how good is that writer's staging? Can the artist improve on it? There's also the matter of time…
When I did scripts via The Sketch Method, it took me twice as long (or longer) to finish one as opposed to typing it out. Don R. Christensen, who wrote in both formats for Western Publishing, told me that sketching was usually faster for him than typing. And Roger Armstrong, who drew scripts for Western by both Don and myself said that he preferred working off typed scripts. He said that once he saw a writer's staging of a scene, it inhibited his ability to "tell" the story his way.
Roger's view reminded me of certain actors who like their scripts to not tell them how a certain line should be read, or of some directors who like minimal description from the writer. Some in both job descriptions like to know everything the writer had in mind and some like to feel free to react to the material however they react.
Another very prolific writer for Western was Vic Lockman, who certainly belongs on that imaginary list I mentioned of The Ten Most Prolific Comic Book Writers of All Time. Lockman might be in the Top Three. He wrote his scripts via The Sketch Method and often complained when the artist changed his staging. But Chase told me that sometimes, Vic would write a script and then be assigned to pencil the story also…and he'd change the staging the writer (that is to say, Vic Lockman) dictated.
Watching all of this at the various companies for which I've worked led me to a conclusion which I'd kind of like to sell to anyone who works in comics or is interested in how best to create them. It's not only that there are many ways to write a comic book — including ways unmentioned in this post — but that the method should be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of the creative personnel.
Even if the writer can't draw or can't type, there are many variations within what they can do. John Brady and Vic Lockman and all the other folks who worked via The Sketch Method did it the same way, no matter what the assignment was or who was going to draw it. In those cases, they had absolutely no contact with the artist (unless they were the artist) and I think that may not have been the ideal way to make good comics.
I've worked for 40+ years with a brilliant artist named Sergio Aragonés who possesses a flair for visual humor that, to put it bluntly, most other comic book artists do not have. It would be such a waste of that talent to handcuff him into working via a method that did not take advantage of that or his great facility with plots and storylines.
For a few years of my life, I was simultaneously working on Groo with Sergio, a book called The DNAgents with Will Meugniot (and later, other artists) and also on Blackhawk — and later, Crossfire — with Dan Spiegle. Sergio, Will and Dan had a few things in common. They were all excellent artists. They were all friends of mine so we talked a lot and had lunch together when we could. Day or night, they could get me on the phone and ask, "What the hell is this thing I'm supposed to draw on page 8?"
They were all guys who turned in work that never disappointed me in any way…but they were all different people with different skills.
Sergio came up with (and still comes up with) almost all the storylines for Groo. Will contributed lots of storylines and ideas for characters in the comics we did together and would sometimes take a sequence I'd figured out and then figure it out a different, better way to handle it.
Dan would have told you he contributed absolutely nothing to the plots of the comics on which we collaborated. He kind of took the "it's not my job, man" attitude about that and put all his attention into drawing what I wrote as well as he could. When Marvel called and tried to get him to draw for them, they usually wanted him to pencil (only) from a loose plot and that was not the way to use him best. He had to have a full, complete script and he had to ink the comic himself. That's if you wanted to get the best work out of him.
The method I worked with each of these three artists — and also many more including Scott Shaw!, Gene Colan, Erik Larsen, Jack Manning, Roman Arambula, Pete Alvarado, Doug Wildey and dozens of others — varied to suit the artist and, of course, the material. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that great or even good comics were always the result because I don't think that way and I also don't want to sound like one of those YouTube Chefs who insists that everything they cook is The Most Delicious Thing Ever. But I will tell you that I think better comics resulted from custom-fitting the way I worked with each of those creative partners.
In some future piece here, I'll talk about still other ways writers and artists have collaborated and how I think it impacted the end product. Mostly, I'd like to encourage other writers and artists to come forth with ways they discovered to work as a team…or even ways they wished they'd been able to work as a team. It has always bugged me that when people write books or essays about how to write comics, they so often talk about the only way they've done it, the only way they know. That might be fine if every story had the same creative elements and every artist had the exact same skill set.
There's a saying that when all you have is a hammer, every job you have to do looks like a nail. I think better comics might result if some people had a larger toolbox. It doesn't have to be huge but it should have more in it than just one hammer.
The video link I posted last night of that Stephen Sondheim interview was not complete. I have replaced it with a link to a longer version. Don't thank me. Thank Steve Bacher who told me about it.
David Peattie has a comics related question that he's hoping I can answer even though it has nothing to do with Jack Kirby…
I have a comics related question I'm hoping you can answer even though it has nothing to do with Jack Kirby.
In the Golden Age Plastic Man stories I've seen by Jack Cole that featured sidekick Woozy Winks, initially Woozy had been given "protection by Mother Nature" so that whatever trouble he blundered into, nothing bad would happen to him because Nature would intervene. Somewhere along the way, that disappeared. I was wondering if you know anything about that…why it happened and what the thinking behind it was. I'd love to see this addressed in your blog.
Yes, amazingly I think I can answer this. At the 2002 Comic-Con International in San Diego, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing William Woolfolk, one of my favorite writers…of comic books and also television. He wrote some issues of Plastic Man and we got to talking of how the rubbery hero and his world were modified for a Saturday morning cartoon show on which I was a writer. (I did not do the modifications. They were done by the producer of the show, Joe Ruby, and another of my favorite writers of comic books and TV, Norman Maurer.)
They more or less changed Woozy into a character named Hula-Hula, who fulfilled the network's insistence on having at least one regular character who wasn't a white guy. Hula-Hula was, as you might guess, Hawaiian…and unlike Woozy, who had perpetual good luck, Hula-Hula had constant bad luck. No tape was rolling when he said this but Mr. Woolfolk said something like, "That was probably a good change. It's difficult to write stories when your hero can't be harmed and he triumphs just because of dumb luck."
I think he also said that's why they took away Woozy's charmed life and gave him one that could involve actual jeopardy. It's a problem that pops up in the writing of a lot of super-hero comics: How do you muster any suspense when your hero is all-powerful and maybe even invulnerable? That's why they invented Kryptonite for the Superman mythos and why most writers, given the choice, would rather write Batman.
There are a lot of YouTube Lawyers online giving people very bad legal advice about things like how you don't need a driver's license if you aren't engaged in commerce, in which case you really aren't driving, you're traveling and your car is not a motor vehicle. Stuff like that. One of the few online attorneys I trust is Devin Stone, the "Legal Eagle" who here makes an airtight case on behalf of Ariel, the Little Mermaid…
Fred Kaplan discusses Henry Kissinger's Bloody Legacy. It's not a pretty one. It explains a lot about why the United States is regarded the way it's regarded in many corners of the world.
Stephen Sondheim's not around anymore but interviews of him still turn up. This is from 2000 and it's composer Ned Rorem quizzing Mr. Sondheim at the 92nd Street Y in New York…
I continue to have problems with Customer Service phone lines or online chats offered by businesses I patronize. Everyone's real good at apologizing for my inconvenience, real bad at fixing whatever the problem is. I might settle for all these phone support people being replaced by Artificial Intelligence as long as it actually was intelligent.
When the original Star Trek was on TV, it annoyed me somewhat when friends who wanted to talk about last night's episode didn't ask, "Did you see it last night?" They just assumed that if they had, I had — and started discussing the episode. Now, it annoys me somewhat when people do this with every freakin' show that's streaming online…and there are a lot of shows streaming online.
Half the lawyers in this country seem to be writing articles posted on the web about how lousy Donald Trump's legal defense was in the E. Jean Carroll matter and how lousier it is regarding the possible/probable indictments ahead. I'm no lawyer but it seems to me that the problem is that achieving the result of their client being found Not Liable or Not Guilty is Trump's — and therefore, his attorneys' — second priority. The first seem to be whipping the MAGA crowd up to view any investigation of him as the greatest injustice in The History of Mankind for purposes of donations and protests.
There are still people who call and ask me for advice about renting an apartment in Los Angeles even though the one and only time I did that was in 1975 and there's no reason to assume I knew what I was doing then. And even if I did, I'll take a wild guess that the real estate market might have changed somehow in the last 48 years.
For me, the most interesting part of online how-to-cook videos is when what's being made is done and the chef takes a bite and tells us it's the greatest thing he or she ever tasted in their lives. I keep waiting and waiting for one of them to say, "Okay, this didn't turn out so well so maybe you'd better not listen to me." That's the one I will listen to.
When I first got into home video, I bought all my favorite movies on Beta. Then Beta became obsolete so I bought them on VHS. Then VHS went away so I bought them on LaserDisc. Then LaserDisc went bye-bye and I bought them all on DVD. Then DVD became outta-date and I bought them all on Blu-ray. Now, I'm supposed to forget about owning them at all and just pay to stream them. My current fear is that the industry will soon start a campaign that asks, "Why stream when you can own?" and they'll bring them all out on Beta and start the whole cycle over again.
I would really like to see all of this Japanese production of The Music Man instead of just these few minutes. It looks like it would be fun even though the only two English words that seem to have survived in the translation are "trombones" and "shipoopi"…
A person who asked to remain anonymous wrote to ask…
I'm a novelist who was about to sign two contracts right before the strike started. One was an option deal for the rights to my latest book; the other was a contract to help develop that book for TV. I'm wondering if it would still be OK to sign the first contract, which is just the book option/book rights. I'm hoping to be a WGA member going forward, and wanted to make sure I didn't mess that up.
I'm not going to say "Go ahead and sign that contract" because it might be a lousy contract. But I'm pretty sure that signing it will in no way impact your standing with the Writers Guild. The jurisdiction of the WGA does not extent to books…or for that matter, comic books. And yes, I wish it did extend to many other forms of writing and yes, I looked into whether it would be possible to have the WGA cover comic books and no, I don't think that will happen in our lifetimes even if I live as long as a Galápagos tortoise.
You can see for yourself right here in the Strike Rules…
The Rules prohibit the performance of writing services for a struck company in connection with audiovisual or audio works intended for initial exhibition in any market covered by the MBA, including feature motion pictures, television and new media, as well as the option or sale of literary material for that purpose.
The Rules apply to all animated series covered by a WGA contract. Writers who wish to perform writing services in connection with fully animated theatrical features and television programs are advised to consult with WGA staff to determine whether such writing is prohibited before performing, or contracting to perform, any writing services. Members should assume that projects combining live action and animation are covered by the Strike Rules.
The strike also covers fiction podcasts done under WGA contracts. In fact, it covers anything normally done under a WGA contract. If you have any uncertainty or just want to put your mind at ease, call the Guild and ask. The phone numbers are on that page of Strike Rules.
This is a good place to answer another question I've received: How is the strike affecting you, Mark? Well, a couple of projects I had are in limbo until the walkout is over. But I'm still writing comics, one in the form of a graphic novel. I'm also writing a non-graphic novel and working on my book on Jack Kirby and I have some offers for animation that would not be covered by the WGA. I've even receiving the question of whether I'm breaking WGA rules by writing my blog. No, obviously, I am not.
As several of you have alerted me, Heritage Auctions is currently taking bids on the set from which Johnny Carson did his last ten years of The Tonight Show. The minute I saw this, my first thought began "If I had a spare room in my house and a spare couple hundred thousand dollars…" but then I instantly realized that (a) I don't have the spare room, (b) I don't have the spare couple hundred thousand dollars and (c) this thing belongs not in a private residence but in some museum somewhere.
And then I got to wondering things like where has this been since May 14, 2015 and who's selling it now? Parts of one of Johnny's old sets can be seen up at the Magic Castle in Hollywood but we know how those got there. The late John Shrum — he died in 1988 — was the Art Director for The Tonight Show when it moved to California in 1972 and he was also the Art Director for the Castle back then.
But who had Johnny's entire last set? The auction description says "All items (except the microphone) were acquired directly from Johnny Carson" and I did a bit of research and found out that uber-collector James Comisar is the one who acquired it from Carson…
He's now selling it along with tons of other TV memorabilia including the bar from Cheers, the Batman and Robin costumes from the Adam West era and David Letterman's set…
I'm curious where all this stuff is going to wind up and how much it will go for. I'm going to follow (but not bid on) the Johnny Carson set and the David Letterman set. You might want to keep an eye on some of these other historic goodies. And if you buy Johnny's set or Dave's or even the Cheers bar, invite me over to sit in it.
The audio and video aren't great on this clip but it's still worth watching. It's a nice little musical spot from the 1985 Emmy Awards telecast. I don't understand why John Forsythe seems so serious and why some of the people in the closing — like Howie Mandel and Emmanuel Lewis are in the closing…
I'm just getting used to Windows 11. It's different from 10, not necessarily in any way that (so far) strikes me as better. And I keep having the feeling that if I load some program not made by Microsoft, I'm going to get an angry pop-up window expressing outrage and calling me bad names. But I'll give it some time.
I will be moderating ten panels at Comic-Con International this July and I'll be a panelist on (so far) two others. I have no other conventions scheduled this year. The one after that may very well be the 2024 WonderCon in Anaheim, which will run from Friday, March 29 of 2024 through Sunday, March 31 of 2024.
A friend of mine who voted for Donald Trump last time tells me that he will not be voting for Trump in the next presidential election. He will be voting for The Republican Nominee, whoever that is, because…well, because that person will be the Republican nominee. Naturally, I had to ask him, "What if that person is Donald Trump?" His reply was that he will still vote for the Republican nominee, whoever it is. In his mind though, that's not voting for Donald Trump.
I have in the past written about a wonderful show that is staged from time to time here in Los Angeles. It's called Puppet Up! and it's a largely-improvised, often adult-in-content puppet show performed here in Hollywood on what was, once upon a time, the Chaplin Stage, as in "Charlie Chaplin." It's his old movie studio, now owned by the Henson Company, as in "Jim Henson." It's not for kids, it's very funny and they're doing it for two weekends in July, one of them the weekend that Comic-Con is taking place down in San Diego. Many good seats seem to still be available and you can order a couple of them here.
Lastly: There's no news on the Writers Guild strike…not even any word on whether the Producers, against whom we are striking, are even trying to cobble together an acceptable offer that would end our walkout. No news is not good news, nor is it bad news. It's just no news. I wouldn't read anything into that.
