Amanda Marcotte on why, after all the Trump crimes and moral transgressions his base has excused or denied, they're in high dudgeon about this Epstein thing.
I also think this conspiracy theory is different from many of the others because this one has an actual dead body attached. Of all the ones these same people believed about Hillary Clinton, the ones that had the widest fan base were the ones that led to the mysterious death of White House Counsel Vince Foster.
Someone killed Jeffrey Epstein and the circumstances — and the fact that a video that was released was apparently edited — makes it quite easy to believe that Someone was not Jeffrey Epstein…especially when Trump's White House seems to be saying there was no evidence against him. And of course, Trump is looking more and more panicked with his denials, practically ordering them to forget about the whole thing.
I have no idea where there is going and you don't either. But it does seem to be a possible answer to the question that all those Internet "reporters" trying to make like Jordan Klepper keep asking people in MAGA hats: "Is there anything Donald Trump could do that would cause you to break with him?"
We've been talking here about short comedies made by Columbia Pictures in the thirties through the fifties. Here's a Three Stooges short from 1944, Crash Goes the Hash. This one features two of the Most Valuable Supporting Players in the Columbia stock company…Vernon Dent (playing Fuller Bull) and Bud Jamison (as Lord Flint). In fact, it was Jamison's last of many, many appearances in the Stooges' films.
This was the Stooges' 77th film for Columbia. Stooge experts — there are such people — cite this short as one of the first in which you can see Curly Howard's declining health. Two years later while filming Half-Wits Holiday, he had the stroke that ended his performing career. He's still pretty funny in this one even if he was slowing down a little…
I've been staring at the animatronic version of Walt Disney, thinking that he looks familiar but not because he looks like Walt. And it finally hit me who he reminds me of. He looks like Mike Lindell.
We're now getting a First Look at a new Disneyland attraction — "Walt Disney – A Magical Life." I'm sure the museum parts of the exhibit are wonderful but all anyone's going to talk about is the audio-animatronic figure of Mr. Disney. It took the tech guys a long time to build this and it probably would have been a lot cheaper to find a few good actors who looked enough like Walt that a make-up team could make them look more like him. But the technology is the star here.
It's an amazing creature they made but based on what's been released so far, I'm surprised it doesn't look or even sound more like Walt. That's supposedly Walt's own voice but it doesn't sound that much like him to me.
What a creation like this makes me think about is all the TV shows, movies and comic books I've experienced in which someone turned out to be a robot and no one knew that until the robot busted or caught fire or something. If the Disney experts spending years and oodles of Disney dough couldn't make a robot that could pass for human even for a few seconds, maybe we're a lot farther from that day than anybody thought. And they weren't even trying to build one that could walk around and interact with humans.
Folks in the political media are still arguing over how many Americans will lose their health insurance over the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill which is looking too big and not beautiful enough. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett recently made some assertions which are debunked by Politifact and FactCheck.org.
Donald Trump has always had this inexplicable revulsion against windmills and wind farms. Recently, he said: "I have a great relationship with President Xi but I asked him, how many wind farms do you have? He makes (wind energy components), but they don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you, very, very few. And wind is tremendously expensive and is very ugly." I have no idea how wind could be "ugly" but as Politifact notes, China accounts for more than 44% of the world's wind energy capacity.
And as the Associated Press notes, almost everything Trump says about wind power is just plain wrong.
The folks cheering what ICE is doing seem to be under the impression that everyone (or almost everyone) getting detained, deported or just scared outta their minds is a vicious criminal and we're all better off without them in our midst. But as the Associated Press notes, ICE is going after a lot of people who can in no way be described as criminals.
And Steve Benen thinks that Trump's threats to revoke the citizenship of Rosie O'Donnell and others should be taken more seriously; not that he'd necessarily do that but that he really seems to think he can do anything.
Boop! The Musical played its final performance yesterday afternoon. You can see a cellphone video of the final bows over on this site.
At least, this is the final performance of its debut stand on Broadway. Rumors abound that there's an afterlife ahead and one person involved with the production wrote me to say they're waiting to hear…but this person, who asked not to be quoted directly, said they aren't sure just what they're waiting to hear.
If not for my still-healing left foot, I'd have grabbed Amber, jumped on a plane and gone back to see it. At least a dozen friends of mine went and all but one said it was one of those great "feel good" experiences. The one who was disappointed was only a little disappointed, mainly by the book. If you hear any news before I do, lemme know. (The foot is well enough to go to Comic-Con, not quite up to all the walking necessary for a New York experience.)
I'm kinda fascinated by the output of the division of Columbia Pictures that made short two-reel comedies from 1933 to 1959. They starred a wide array of comedians, some of whom were on their way up and some who were on their way down. In the latter category were folks like Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon and Charley Chase — comics who'd made films for bigger studios on bigger budgets for bigger paychecks. Their marketability had changed, in some cases because movies had learned to talk. The dominant act there was, of course, the Three Stooges who made shorts for Columbia from 1934 until the division closed down
Columbia's shorts department could make short comedies cheaper than anyone else and often, a film would be a "remake" of an earlier Columbia short. I put "remake" in quotes because they didn't reshoot the entire film — just enough footage to integrate into the old one so they could pass it off as new. Yesterday's video link here was the 1946 short Mr. Noisy, starring Shemp Howard. It was a "remake" of the 1939 short, The Heckler, starring Charley Chase. Here it is with, as you can see, an awful lot of the same footage. It was pretty much the same film with a different lead comic…
You've covered Li'l Abner, Al Capp, and a lot of Hanna-Barbera stuff over the years on your blog, but I've never seen this mentioned.
As a kid, I remember a short lived series featuring The Shmoo from the Li'l Abner comic strip, called The New Shmoo, and after that he also appeared on a show where Fred and Barney were cops and had him as an assistant. They sort of reinvented him as a shape-shifting blob and had Frank Welker do the voice.
I was wondering, do you know anything about how Hanna-Barbera got the rights to this character? It seems a bit strange that they got the rights to just that character and not the Li'l Abner strip, though I also know Shmoo merchandising was a big thing in the 1950s, so I could see a separate licensing deal.
And why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I don't believe the character was ever shown in animation before.
You've come to the right place, John. I can answer everything except that last part. I was working at Hanna-Barbera at the time and though I only had one teensy-weeny thing to do with that program, I heard a lot about it. I can answer all your questions except one in two words. Those words are "Fred" and "Silverman."
Mr. Silverman was then the Programming Chief at NBC and because of his background programming Saturday morns elsewhere, he took a special interest in that daypart at NBC. One of his aides told me Fred would have been a happier man if all he had to worry about each day was his network's Saturday morning schedule.
He was, among his other contributions to that job description, the person behind the belief that the network should not trust the cartoon studio too much creatively. The argument for this was as follows: If Hanna-Barbera was producing shows for your network and also for another network — and they were always producing shows for another network — they might assign their best people to the other network's programs. Based on my observations, that was not an unreasonable concern. So you had to have someone who worked for your network supervise everything, approve scripts and storyboards and voices, etc. In other words, become the real Producer of the show no matter who was credited in that position.
Joe Barbera and others at H-B complained mightily about the networks tampering with their shows…and they were right to complain because sometimes, the network person in charge was a real boob. If the studio had only been concerned with selling shows to one network, that might not have happened. But only selling to one network was not going to happen because the firm that owned Hanna-Barbera — it was no longer Bill and Joe — loved the idea of selling as many shows as possible, preferably squeezing all the competition outta the way and outta the business.
When Bill 'n' Joe sold out, they stayed on to run the company that bore their names. The folks who took control loved it when at any given time slot on Saturday morning, there was a Hanna-Barbera show on CBS, a Hanna-Barbera show on NBC and a Hanna-Barbera show on ABC. Thus Joe Barbera's marching orders were pretty simple: Sell as many shows as you can.
So one day, Joe was over at NBC trying to sell them as many shows as he could…and Joe was a terrific salesperson. You might not like everything he sold. Joe certainly didn't like everything he sold. But he was there trying to sell, sell, sell — and Silverman had an idea. He remembered how popular The Shmoo was in the old Li'l Abner newspaper strip. People loved those little creatures and there was a brief merchandising boom for them. Fred suggested building a show around The Shmoo.
Reportedly, Joe said — this is what he later said he said — "You want to do Li'l Abner?" and Silverman (also reportedly) said, "No, kids today won't care about those hillbillies. Just get The Shmoo. If you do, I'll buy it." Following through on that was Joe Barbera's job.
So he went back to the office and told one of his business guys to buy the rights to make a cartoon show about The Shmoo. The business guy said, "Do you have any idea who I contact?" and J.B. thought for a second and he called in his secretary and said, "Call Mark Evanier and see if he knows who the hell owns The Shmoo." She called me in my office down the hall and I gave her the phone number of Al Capp's brother.
I had a telephone friendship with Capp's brother because of a couple of projects with which I was almost involved, most of them potential revivals which never happened of the Li'l Abner Broadway show. But as I'm writing this now, I'm not sure if the brother spelled his first name Elliot or Elliott, or if his last name was spelled Kaplan or Caplin. I've seen every possible permutation. But I did know his number and that he handled business dealing for the Capp Estate. I also knew that if he didn't control the rights to The Shmoo, he'd know who did.
And the next thing I knew, H-B was developing a cartoon show of The Shmoo. They turned it into one of their many knock-offs of Scooby Doo but I neither worked on nor ever watched the series. Supplying that one phone number is all I had to do with it. But hey, since I never saw it and you probably never saw it, let's watch the opening title together…
Okay. That was…well, interesting. I don't have any desire to watch an episode but if by some chance you do, someone has uploaded all of them to this page on the Internet Archive. My main reaction to the opening is to wonder howcome a character who can shape-shift into any form doesn't think to maybe grow himself a pair of arms?
As for how it wound up being connected with The Flintstones: Fred Silverman was a firm believer in the concept of programming "blocks." This is the theory that if you're putting on a half-hour Scooby-Doo show and a half-hour Dynomutt show, both will do better if you splice them into The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour…and it doesn't really matter if the two shows have anything in common or connect in any way.
He did this kind of thing often and because Fred was considered an expert at programming Saturday morning, others followed his lead. One problem with it for those of us who care about credits is that when they put two shows together in an hour like that, they merge the end credits and if/when the shows are later separated, the credits usually aren't.
(Which reminds me: If you watch the credits on The New Shmoo — I'll admit I peeked at them — you'll see the names of three great comic book artists — Mike Sekowsky, Dave Stevens and Jack Kirby. The way H-B did credits, all that means is that at the time the credits were made up, there was some paperwork somewhere that said those two gents had done some drawings that were intended for this show. I suspect Sekowsky did a fair amount, Stevens did a little and Kirby did almost nothing. At the time, Jack was under contract to the Ruby-Spears animation studio, which was literally across the street and owned by the same corporation that owned H-B. During times when Ruby-Spears didn't sell much to the networks — because, for example, Joe Barbera had done his job extra-well that season — Kirby's contract allowed Ruby-Spears to loan his services to Hanna-Barbera so he had stuff to draw to earn his salary. That's why Jack's credit was on a number of Hanna-Barbera shows, even some he only worked on for a day or two.)
Okay, this next part gets tricky…
In February of 1979, a new version of The Flintstones debuted on NBC's Saturday morning schedule and it was called The New Fred and Barney Show. Around the same time is when Mr. Silverman ordered Mr. Barbera to get the rights to the Shmoo and they also worked out a deal for a new cartoon show of The Thing, using the character from Marvel's Fantastic Four property but in a whole different concept. He became a teenager who turned into The Thing and there's a whole messy and convoluted story that I don't fully understand about how that deal was brokered. At the time, Silverman had canceled the Fantastic Four cartoon series that DePatie-Freleng — a rival cartoon studio which Marvel was in the process of acquiring — had produced for NBC.
Please don't ASK me to explain that. All you need to know here is that H-B was producing more episodes of The Fred and Barney Show to run as part of NBC's Fall 1979 schedule. They were also producing the new shows of the teen version of The Thing and what would be called The New Shmoo. At some some point, Silverman decided to marry two of those three shows together and they debuted in September as an hour series called Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.
The storylines of the two shows did not crossover. The characters only "met" in some short interstitial animated segments which had Fred and Barney dancing with The Thing. These were designed by my buddy Scott Shaw! who had the unenviable assignment of deciding how tall The Thing would be in relation to those guys from Bedrock and vice-versa.
The New Shmoo debuted as a standalone half-hour but after a few weeks, Fred decided it might do better as part of one of his "blocks." So there was soon a 90-minute show called Fred and Barney Meet The Shmoo. It featured a half-hour of Fred 'n' Barney, a half-hour of The Shmoo and a half-hour of The Thing, even though The Thing didn't get mentioned in the show's title. To make the 90-minute show even more disjointed, at one point they interpolated a special H-B had produced — The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White — cut into four segments aired over four weeks. Here's a promotional drawing of Fred and The Shmoo…and have you ever seen two cartoon characters who looked less like they belonged in the same drawing?
In his series, The Shmoo was much shorter than the teenage kids with whom he solved mysteries. In the promotional drawings, he was the same height as Fred Flintstone. This is the kind of thing that would have really bothered me if I'd been ten years old and watching all this. And even when I was ten, I don't think I'd have been watching all this. Or any of this.
So I think that answers all of John's questions except for "Why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I dunno. Because it rhymed? Because Silverman thought it made the show sound more exciting? Because the people doing this thought they were reinventing Al Capp's character? A lot of TV shows have names that don't make sense. Jimmy Kimmel Live! is not live, The Daily Show is not daily and there were no laughs on any program ever called The So-and-So Comedy Hour. It's a strange business, it is.
And finally, here's my schedule for Sunday — two weeks from today! — at Comic-Con International in San Diego. If for some bizarre reason, you might want to attend a panel that doesn't involve me, the entire Sunday schedule you can be found here. And I should mention that what's left of the National Weather Service is predicting 75° and Sunny for the entirety of Comic-Con…
• SUNDAY •
Sunday, July 27 – 10 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It's a Comic-Con tradition to honor the man they call The King of the Comics, creator or co-creator of a staggering number of comic book characters, universes, and trends. If you don't know who he was and what he did, just look around the exhibit hall and you'll see his influence everywhere. Talking about Jack this year are Paul Levitz (former president of DC Comics), "Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity" curator Patrick A. Reed, attorney Paul S. Levine, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, and Tracy Kirby and Jeremy Kirby from the Kirby family. Your host, as always, is former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 27 – 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Yesterday's Cartoon Voices panel was such a hit that we're doing another one with more people who speak for some of your favorite cartoon characters. On the dais for this one are Michael Scott Action (The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse), Vincent Martella (Phineas and Ferb), Abby Trott (Demon Slayer), Gabe Kunda (Barbie: A Touch of Magic), Maurice LaMarche (Futurama), and at least one surprise guest. Your moderator is, of course, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 27 – 2 PM to 3 PM in Room 7AB
COVER STORY
Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover, but no book was ever harmed by having a great cover. So, what makes a great cover? Does the idea precede the interiors, or is it the other way around? And why have covers become more varied and artistic in the modern age of comics? These and other related topics will be discussed by a group of artists who've drawn some acclaimed covers in the last few years, including Jim Lee, Rick Hoberg, Michael Cho, and Dan Jurgens. And it's all moderated by Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 27 – 3 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
Are you considering (or maybe even actively pursuing) a career providing voices for animated cartoons, video games, and other related fields? You can find many people who will teach you — for a price. But how do you know who’s any good? And how does the business work? And what are the odds against you? In the interest of preventing wanna-be voice actors from being exploited, overcharged, or otherwise ripped off, this annual panel answers these and any other questions you may have for free. No one is going to try to sell you anything at this panel, which features voice actors Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore, as well as agent Julie Thompson of the prestigious agency, Sutton, Barth, and Vennari. The panel is moderated by Comic-Con mainstay (and professional voice director) Mark Evanier.
Did you ever wonder what a Three Stooges short would be like without Moe or Larry? Probably not but if by some chance you did, here's a possible answer. This is the 1946 comedy short, Mr. Noisy. Its star, Shemp Howard, was making comedy shorts for the same studio — Columbia — with a lot of the same people who worked on Stooges comedies. Shemp, as you may know, was an original member of the Stooges troupe back when they worked with Ted Healy. Shemp quit the act and was replaced by Curly…and I'm assuming everyone knows that Moe, Shemp and Curly were all brothers? Right.
In 1946, ill health forced Curly to quit the act so Shemp rejoined it. He made three more solo shorts after Mr. Noisy and was thereafter a Stooge until his death in 1955. As I've said before here, I think he was underrated. If the Stooges films with him weren't as good as the ones with Curly, that wasn't Shemp's fault. He's the best thing in them and he's pretty funny in Mr. Noisy…
I had something set up to tell me when we passed the 33,000 mark in the number of posts on this blog but it didn't work. In case anyone's interested, as of this post, we have 33,310 posts on this blog, of which 266 are "encore" reruns.
This blog started on December 18, 2000 so on December 18 of this year, we will celebrate — if that's the correct word — twenty-five years of doing this.
So…what are you doing two weeks from today? Here's what I'm doing two weeks from today. And here's where you can see the entire schedule for Saturday…
• SATURDAY •
Saturday, July 26 – 11:45 AM to 1 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
It's the battle you wait for every year, as three speedy cartoonists cross Sharpies to prove who's the fastest and the funniest. They create cartoons right before your very ideas, based on suggestions and challenges they've never heard before — suggestions and challenges that come from you in the audience and from your Quick Draw! quizmaster, Mark Evanier. Competing are Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog), Tom Richmond (MAD magazine), Emma Steinkellner (Nell of Gumbling), and several surprise cartoonists. No Sergio this year, but he may try to phone something in. See why this is one of the most popular events in all of Comic-Con!
Saturday, July 26 – 1 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Once again, your host Mark Evanier has assembled a panel of some of the hardest-working folks in the colorful profession of speaking for animated characters. They'll show you what they do, tell you how they do it, and probably massacre a beloved fairy tale in the process. On the panel this year are Gregg Berger (Transformers), Audrey Wasilewski (Monster High), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk), Jim Meskimen (Thundercats), Benni Latham (Transformers: Earthspark), and Dana Gould (The Simpsons).
Saturday, July 26 – 3 PM to 4 PM in Room 6DE
SPOTLIGHT ON FRANK MILLER
Comic-Con special guest and legend Frank Miller, one of the most important creators of the last half century, returns to San Diego for a career-spanning conversation with Mark Evanier. From Ronin Rising to Sin City, from Pandora to The Dark Knight Returns, this panel will give attendees insight into Miller's storied collaborations, the resonance of his work, and the highly anticipated projects to come.
Saturday, July 26 – 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE ESSENTIAL PEANUTS BY CHARLES M. SCHULZ
A distinguished panel of contributors to The Essential Peanuts (Abrams ComicArts, October 2025) offer a heartfelt and insightful conversation about the legacy of Charles M. Schulz. Panelists include Mark Evanier (author of The Essential Peanuts), Chip Kidd (graphic designer), Paige Braddock (creative director emeritus at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates), and Alexis E. Fajardo (editorial director, publishing & experiences at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates). Moderated by Charles Kochman (editor-in-chief, Abrams ComicArts), the discussion will explore Schulz's artistic genius, the enduring cultural impact of Peanuts, and how this landmark volume frames the iconic strip with fresh historical and cultural context.
Saturday, July 26 – 7 PM to 8 PM in the Marriott Marquis Grand 10 & 11
PETER DAVID: A CELEBRATION OF HIS LIFE, WORK AND LEGACY
The comic book and science fiction communities recently lost a true titan when Peter David passed away. While Peter's works will be celebrated for decades to come, panelists invite you to join them for a lively celebration of Peter, the longtime convention presence, and amazing “Writer of Stuff.” Panelists will include comic legends, friends, and collaborators, including Paul Levitz, George Takei, Mark Evanier, Chris Ryall, and J. K. Woodward. Moderated by Peter's longtime Comics Buyer's Guide friend, Maggie Thompson.
On one of the Walt Kelly panels at Comic-Con a few years ago, you started to tell a story about how Milton Caniff was assisted by a letterer and I think another artist on his strip but you got sidetracked and never told it. Could you tell it on your blog?
Certainly. Here is how Milton Caniff "drew" the Steve Canyon newspaper strip for at least the last decade or two of its existence. Caniff would write it, lightly sketched, on ordinary typing paper. I don't know of him getting help with the writing but that's not impossible.
He would then send the script to the letterer, who for a long, long time was a gent named Frank Engli. Engli would have a supply of the art paper on which the strip was drawn and he'd cut the paper to size, rule off the image area, letter in the balloons that Caniff had written and then send the lettered (but otherwise blank) strips and Caniff's script on to the ghost artist. For much of that time, it was Dick Rockwell.
Rockwell would tight-pencil the art and ink everything except the heads of the main characters. Then he'd send the strips to Caniff who would ink the heads and he'd redraw anything he felt needed redrawing. Once upon a time, he had done everything on the strip himself except for the lettering, but this is the way he chose to work in his later years.
Then Engli died and Caniff gave the lettering job to a "kid" whose name is not known…and this is kind of interesting. Caniff was a staunch political conservative and Engli was pretty liberal. They remained good friends but Caniff, when he got into a right-wing preachy mood in the strip, sometimes enjoyed that he was forcing Engli to letter dialogue which Engli found repugnant. It was a friendly jab, kind of like a prank between buddies. Engli would sometimes call Caniff and debate what he was required to letter.
The unknown "kid" who succeeded him was someone Caniff found by asking at a local art supply shop. As I understand it, this was his only brush with the field of comic strips but he could imitate Engli's style. The problem was that he was even more liberal than Engli and he simply refused to letter certain speeches. When he tried discussing politics with the goal of changing of changing Caniff's mind, Caniff called Shel Dorf. Yes, this was the same Shel Dorf who was involved in the birth of the annual event we now call Comic-Con International and is sometimes — wrongly, I'm quite sure — treated like its sole founder.
Shel had no real experience lettering but this was his big chance to get involved on a professional level with his favorite comic strip and his favorite comic strip creator. According to him — and I didn't believe everything Shel told me but I believed this — Caniff said, "You've got to help me. I'm desperate!" I suspect Caniff was banking on Shel's personal loyalty, his longtime yearning to be a part of the creative side of comics and the fact that Shel had a pretty large collection of Steve Canyon originals lettered by Engli to study.
So Dorf made a series of field trips to visit various folks he thought could teach him how to letter. He spent an afternoon at my house looking at original art and having me explain whatever I knew about the craft. One thing I taught him was how to use an Ames Guide, which was a little tool that most letterers use to rule guidelines. One of them looked like this and you can still buy one at Amazon for under six bucks…
He spent some time with Alex Toth, which must have been odd because Toth had a frequently-voiced disdain for Caniff's work. This was not about the politics. It was more along the lines of "If he can't draw as well as he did in the forties and fifties, he should do the honorable thing and retire!" That's not a quote but it's close.
I forget who else Shel "studied" with. Maybe Mike Royer and/or Bill Spicer and/or Russ Manning. I think he may have even dropped in on Jack Kirby, which probably was of little help since Jack hadn't lettered a comic in thirty years. Then Shel lettered up some samples and Caniff awarded him the exalted (to Shel) position of lettering Steve Canyon.
Thereafter, Dorf was sent Caniff's handwritten/sketched script…and Shel was one of the laziest people I've ever known. Though not being paid very well for the job, Shel actually hired his own assistant to cut the paper to size and rule off the image area, paying a different "kid" something like fifty cents a strip. Then Shel would letter in the balloons and send the strips to Rockwell, who'd do the same thing he'd done when Engli was lettering the strip.
The strips then went to Caniff for finishing. He would sometimes change his mind about something in the balloons and reletter it himself, which was difficult. They did the strip in India Ink, which does not dry instantly. When a left-handed person letters with that kind of ink, he often drags his hand across the not-yet-dry lettering as he letters and smears it. Caniff was left-handed and when he had to letter, he would write the lettering out in pencil left-to-right and then ink it right-to-left.
That obviously is not a great way to work, which is why Caniff was so desperate. Eventually, he found a brand of markers which dried instantly and he was able to letter left-to-right with them when he had to letter.
He would also still ink in the faces of the main characters and do any art corrections or redraws he felt were necessary…and that's how a strip was done until Caniff passed away in 1988. Rockwell hoped the syndicate would let him continue it and Dorf really hoped they'd let it live on and he'd somehow be in charge of it. He kept asking me if I'd ghost-write it if that happened and I kept telling him no and that whenever Caniff passed, the syndicate would end it. It was in very few papers by then and because Caniff had a guarantee of a certain minimum fee, the syndicate was losing money on it.
As it turned out, I was right: They kept it going for the rest of Caniff's lifetime out of respect for the man and his long service. But once he died, they let Rockwell finish up the storyline-in-progress and then Steve Canyon received a decent funeral. I'm not sure very many people besides Shel noticed.
