Brian Hull, who was so good on our Saturday Cartoon Voices Panel, has made a little trip diary of his visit to Comic-Con last week…
And here's a look at some of the amazing cosplay around the convention. It may be my imagination but it seems to me we're seeing fewer and fewer cosplays trying to look like zombies or bloody corpses and more and more posing as heroic figures…
It's hard to believe that a week ago at this moment, I was down in San Diego interviewing Phil LaMarr on a spotlight panel. It seems like ten minutes ago but it also seems like ten years ago. I'm not sure I've fully recovered from the convention.
Oh — this is probably worth mentioning: Yesterday, I had a Next Day Laboratory RT-PCR Test — that's the expensive, thorough one — and I just received the results…negative. So I guess it's safe to say I attended Comic-Con and didn't catch you-know-what. I've heard of a few folks who did but it doesn't appear there was any significant outbreak. So there's some good news.
We're hearing the word "recession" a lot lately and we're going to hear more and more of it as the next election draws near. Kevin Drum has an explanation of what it means and how it's determined. It's not just whenever your party is not in power, we're automatically in a recession.
I'm getting lots of messages about the songs written (or not) by the late Sid Jacobson. He's listed in some sources as having been the writer (or one of the writers) of "Put a Ring On Her Finger" as recorded by Les Paul but this may be an error…or it may be a confusion involving two songs with the same name. Among other songs I could/should have listed for him were…
It all makes for an impressive list. I sure wish one of the songs I'd written had been recorded by Clarence "Bad Boy" Palmer and The Jive Bombers. Hell, Stephen Sondheim probably wished one of his songs had been recorded by Clarence "Bad Boy" Palmer and The Jive Bombers. I'd like to thank Roger Green and Mike Kazaleh for info and also Devin Thompson.
In 1972 when Apollo 16 landed on that Moon of ours, the call sign for one of the lunar modules was named for Casper, that friendliest of ghosts. Devin tells me that Sid wrote this to mark the occasion…
That's almost as impressive as having a song you wrote recorded by Clarence "Bad Boy" Palmer and The Jive Bombers.
Three things you should know about cartoonist Paul Coker Jr., who died July 23rd at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico…
1. He was an important figure in the history of greeting cards. Born in Kansas in 1929, he studied art at the University of Kansas, served in the military, worked as a graphics designer at a local TV station and eventually (around 1955) landed a job at Hallmark Cards. His work there was very popular and his distinctive style was much-imitated, not just by others at Hallmark but at darn near every greeting card company in the world. Go by a display and even today, you'll see a lot of Paul Coker wannabes.
2. He was an important figure in MAD magazine. Around 1960, Coker moved to New York to seek other, better-paying work — though he continued to work for Hallmark by mail for many years. Also looking for work in New York was Phil Hahn, a close friend of Paul's who'd written cards for Hallmark. When Phil tried submitting material to MAD, he had Paul sketch out a few of his ideas and the folks at MAD decided they wanted both men in their magazine. Coker's first work for MAD was in #60 (January of '61) and he and Hahn became regular contributors, together and apart. (Together, they did "Horrifying Clichés." Coker was the fifth most prolific contributor to MAD, drawing some 372 pieces for them.)
3. He was an important figure in animation, especially for the Rankin-Bass Studio. Coker was the principal designer of, among other specials, Cricket on the Hearth (1967), Frosty the Snowman (1969), Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970), Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), Rudolph's Shiny New Year and Frosty's Winter Wonderland (both 1976), Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey and The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town (both 1977), Jack Frost (1979), Pinocchio's Christmas (1980), The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold (1981) and Santa, Baby! (2001).
And since I started writing this, I thought of a fourth thing you oughta know about Paul Coker: His fellow MAD-man Sergio Aragonés called me while I was composing the above and we got to talking about what an all-around nice, friendly man Paul was. Sergio has particularly wonderful memories of rooming with Paul on some of the famous MAD trips and he said Paul often knew more about where they were and what was around than the official guides did. Great guy…great artist.
I recently bought a new laptop computer for travel. Got it from Costco on June 13 and it worked fine until the first time I traveled, which was to the Comic-Con in San Diego. The morning of July 22 when I tried to open it, the right hinge broke — or something — and parts seemed to suddenly be welded to other parts. I had to force it open, whereupon the entire housing around the screen came loose. Only later did I read the customer reviews on the Costco website and found among them comments like these three…
Computer worked fine and then one day i tried to open it and the inside of the screen started to break. It seemed like it was stuck to the keyboard and may have overheated.
The electronics work fine, but the cheap plastic bezel broke several days ago. Never dropped it or mistreated it in any way. Opened up the top and left rear hinge cracked. Tried to fix it and the bezel started coming off of the screen. Not good.
Bought this laptop in December, by March- just past 90 days developed the same hinge issue as others described, like it was melting.
That's kinda what happened to mine. I only had it for 40 days and I'd be surprised if I used it more than 12 hours, mostly to load my software and the files I'd need on the road. Fortunately, just before I went to San Diego, I backed the whole thing up to an external drive. A new laptop of a different brand arrived yesterday but it may be a while before I have the time to set it up and restore from the busted computer's backup.
Morals of the story: Always backup. Read the reviews. And buy from Costco. I bought the faulty laptop via mail order but took it back to my nearest Costco warehouse. There was a bit of delay while the man waiting on me waited for a manager who could come by and authorize the refund but there was no hesitation about taking it back. They didn't care that I didn't have the box or a few pieces of paper that came with it.
And before someone asks: Yes, I did irrevocably delete all my data from the computer before I took it back. Wiped it clean. And while I was at Costco, I blew part of the refund on english muffins, bacon, a huge bag of croutons and Rao's Marinara Sauce.
The first cartoon show that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera produced out of their then-new studio in 1957 was The Ruff and Reddy Show. It was on NBC Saturday mornings starting in December of that year…and I'm pretty sure that five-year-old me was watching that debut episode and all that followed. It had clever stories, good voice work and animation that was a few notches below the quality of the animation in this cereal commercial. Ruff was the cat with a voice by Don Messick. Reddy was the dog with almost the same voice Daws Butler used for the star of Hanna-Barbera's second series, Huckleberry Hound…
Most people who visit Comic-Con take home to-be-treasured-forever memories, autographs, photos, merchandise and souvenirs. I always take home some of those plus an enormous feeling of accomplishment. I did all the stuff I was supposed to do…or almost all. There were friends there I didn't get to see and others I did see but didn't spend nearly enough time with. Since the con, I have had phone conversations with a couple of them — conversations that should have occurred in person — and I have a few more such conversations to have.
I mentioned a lot of trouble checking into the hotel — parking, getting our stuff up to the room, etc. — then dealing with a flurry of mysterious charges to my credit card. I should have also mentioned that check-out was just the opposite. It went like a cool breeze, including the proper resolution of all those credit card puzzles. At least, I think they all were resolved. The drive home was easy and stress-free. I've never liked driving but if it was always like that, I could possibly learn to enjoy it.
I was with my longtime friend, the lovely actress Brinke Stevens, and we stopped off to eat, stretch our legs, use our respective restrooms and gas-up in San Juan Capistrano. That is a lovely…I was going to type "city" but "village" might be more appropriate. We did the eating and restrooms at a lovely Italian restaurant called Ciao Pasta which was just opening for the day when we stumbled in so we had the outdoor patio mostly to ourselves. The contrast to Comic-Con could not have been starker and I found myself wishing the restaurant wasn't 68 miles from my home. And by the way: They make a really fine Tagliatelle Bolognese there.
Why is Jon Stewart so angry?
Jon Stewart joined an impassioned press conference on Thursday, calling out Republican Senators who are blocking passage of the PACT Act in the Senate. The bill will expand healthcare and benefits for the more than three million veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins during their military service. The Senate originally passed the legislation in June with extraordinary bipartisan support. The House passed it shortly thereafter, and it arrived back to the Senate on Wednesday for final passage. But a group of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Pat Toomey, decided to block the measure for purely political reasons, costing sick veterans time they do not have.
Here's what Mr. Stewart had to say this morning…
My pal Marc Wielage dug up this list of records of songs written or co-written by Sid Jacobson…
They all seem to be on YouTube if you want to look them up. Here's the first one on the list…
When I travel, I often forget that X days outta town is not just X days outta my life. You have to factor in the days getting ready to go and the days recovering and unpacking. It's one of the reasons I turn down most conventions. A three-day con can take up six days of my life. You probably understand this or maybe you've learned how to make travel not so disruptive…but I'm writing here to remind myself that I can't.
I'm still winding down after Comic-Con, still catching up on sleep. Oh — and I home-tested again and I'm still negative insofar as COVID is concerned. A few of you wrote in to suggest that my fatigue could be a sign of it…and while I appreciate the concern for my well-being, I'm pretty sure it's just sleep-deprivation and that I'm catching up. As my sleep normalizes, so shall this blog.
Sid Jacobson died last Saturday at the age of 92 in a hospice in Redwood City, California. He had a long, fascinating career as a writer and editor of comic books and, for a time, writing popular songs. Songs that Sid wrote were recorded by, among others, Frankie Avalon, Johnny Mathis and Dion and the Belmonts.
Sid was born in Brooklyn and attended Abraham Lincoln High School, followed by New York University. A brief career in journalism led to a wide array of writing jobs and he connected with Harvey Comics in the early fifties. Several online sources say he wrote Casper the Friendly Ghost, Little Lotta and Little Dot in 1950 but Harvey didn't begin publishing Casper until 1952 and Little Lotta until 1953. However and whenever he started there, Sid quickly moved into the job of assistant editor and then editor, working — sometimes on a part-time basis — for Harvey until the company ceased publication in 1982.
During all that time, he wrote for and served as editor for all kinds of comics but mainly Casper, Richie Rich, Sad Sack and other titles affiliated with those three or similar in style. He forged a close friendship with one of Harvey's best artists, Ernie Colón, and the two of them would later collaborate on a series of graphic novels, mostly based on true events in the news.
After '82, the story of Harvey Comics got especially complicated with the firm and its various assets being sold and re-sold with publication (mostly reprints) starting and stopping. Between 1984 and 1988, Sid edited and wrote for Star Comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics aimed at a younger audience that employed many of the longtime Harvey Comics artists like Warren Kremer and Howie Post. Some of the comics like Royal Roy and Wally the Wizard even looked a lot like Harvey Comics and there was at least one lawsuit which ended when Star Comics ended. Later, when the then-current owner of Harvey resumed publishing new stories, mostly of Hanna-Barbera properties, Sid returned as editor until that line collapsed.
Mostly in later years, Sid worked with Ernie Colón on the aforementioned graphic novels which included The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, After 9/11: America's War on Terror, A Graphic Biography: Che, Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography and The Torture Report. Some of these, I thought, were outstanding.
I worked with Sid a few times and found him genial and easy to get along with. Mostly, I knew him from Comic-Con where he often appeared on panels and delighted audiences with his tales of working in comics for an awful long time. I had not spoken to him in twenty-or-so years but I'm reasonably sure that as long as he was able, he was writing and trying to sell something somewhere.
I didn't run into my pal Mark Waid at Comic-Con but he's reporting he has COVID, whereas I am still testing negative. The convention did everything possible, short of calling off the whole event to keep folks healthy but with 130,000 people (give or take a cosplayer) crammed into one building, there couldn't help but be some infections. None of us, of course, spent every minute of our San Diego stays in the convention center. We were in hotels and restaurants and off-site events and at parties that weren't as diligent.
If it turns out I totally avoided The Plague, it might be because I mostly avoided the main exhibition hall. I was in there for about 90 minutes on Friday and not at all on Saturday and Sunday. What I couldn't avoid was getting so tired that once I got home to my own bed, I decided to take a brief nap, woke up seven hours later, then went back to bed for six more — and I'm a person who's usually fine with five hours a night. For me, thirteen hours is one short of a coma.
I was exhausted every minute of the convention so if you came to Quick Draw! or a Cartoon Voices Panel or any of the events I was on and you heard me slurring words or using the wrong ones, that's why. I wasn't drunk. I wasn't ill. I was just fatigued from the moment the hotel made me park my car in a lot so remote that I could hear music from Tijuana brothels and then we had to shlep our suitcases up to the room owing to a dearth of bellhops. I am not thinking of not attending Comic-Con again but I'm sure going to think of ways to make it less tiring. Fewer panels might help but having them closer together would be better.
I did enjoy the panels, especially Quick Draw! (which managed to be pretty funny despite its dearth of Sergio), the two Cartoon Voices panels and the Jack Kirby one. Here's a shot of the Saturday Cartoon Voices Panel. I'm the guy in the green shirt who looks like he's falling asleep…
The other folks in the back row are Shelby Young, Brian Hull and Townsend Coleman. In the front, left to right, we have Alicyn Packard, Phil LaMarr and Gregg Berger. Brian is a new guy in the business who's getting lots of jobs he can't talk about yet. He's the one responsible for this video which has 1.6 million hits so far…
To anyone who wonders, "Why can't he talk about what he's doing?" — as I explained on both panels, voice actors are often under NDAs…which stands for "Non-Disclosure Agreements." They've done a job for a producer or videogame company and that employer doesn't want the project or the actor's involvement in it publicized yet. So the actor has to agree not to disclose that involvement until the company announces it as per their own schedule.
Later Saturday afternoon, I got to spend an hour interviewing my pal Phil LaMarr. I enjoyed it very much even though as you can see below, I really wanted to sneak off to my room and grab a nap…
What Phil is holding is an Inkpot Award which was presented to him by Comic-Con at the beginning of our chat. Inkpot Awards have been presented by the convention since 1974. I got mine in 1975 and there was a point in the con's history where I thought they were kind of meaningless and silly…which is far from the only opinion I've had which I later decided was meaningless and silly. Many times when they've gone to the right people at the right time, they brought a lot of joy and satisfaction to their recipients. And that's neither meaningless nor silly.
I need to go resume my post-convention hibernation so I'll leave you for now. More on the con in the days to come.
Celebrating eight years since the end of Monty Python…
Whatever happened to Sandy Duncan? This profile, which focuses a lot on her time spent Peter Panning on Broadway and on tour, will tell you. I saw her in that production (with Christopher Hewett as Cap'n Hook) and I thought she was quite wonderful…