I keep thinking back on all the discussions I've had in the past year or three with folks about how likely/unlikely Trump was to get a second term. A select few were in the category where a Trump-backer who considered himself my friend wanted to say "Trump will win in a landslide" because he (a) wanted to believe that and (b) wanted to see the expression on my face.
Those kind of folks always remind me of a "friend" (air-quotes) who would always e-mail to tell me of a bad review my work had received somewhere on the Internet. "Just thought you oughta see this," he'd type with a certain amount of glee/hope that he was causing me a bit of pain. There's a quiet sadism that exists in some people, living as they do for the schadenfreude. Fortunately, there are people who are on the Trump side of the aisle that I can get along with. We don't dislike each other. We just disagree on some things. Mostly, it's that they simply prefer Republican control of government to Democratic and at the moment, Trump seems like the only route to that.
My suspicion is that some prominent Republican — don't ask me who — will soon start a Dump Trump movement, saying he will bring the party down to defeat in so many places and races and so to save the G.O.P., they must repudiate D.J.T. It probably won't rid us of him but it might take his poll numbers down another few pegs.
Anyway, as I think back over those old discussions about Trump getting re-elected, I'm reminded they weren't about the global pandemic and Trump saying sunshine would make it go away after maybe a dozen people died. They weren't about his reticence to alienate the white supremacist vote at a time when a record number of Americans want black folks to be treated better. They weren't about compromising the Justice System to free his convicted (or should-be-convicted) cronies. They weren't about this latest allegation about Putin putting a bounty on U.S. soldiers and Trump doing nothing about it. They weren't about so many of the "best people" he once bragged about hiring turning on him.
They were about Hunter Biden. Somehow, we aren't talking a whole lot about him these days.
Some of you have read about this. Some of you have written to ask for my views on it…
The Simpsons will no longer use White actors to voice non-White characters, according to the show's producers. "Moving forward, The Simpsons will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters," Fox spokesman Les Eisner said in a statement Friday.
My view? That's fine. I think it's a small step but small steps are better than no steps, assuming they're in the right direction. What is the possible objection to this? Is someone saying they prefer to have cartoon black guys voiced by white guys?
What I would hope is that it doesn't lead to fewer non-white characters on cartoon shows for budgetary reasons. I'm talking here about minor characters, not major ones. Back in the early Hanna-Barbera days, when Bill Hanna went around the studio turning off lights to save money, the non-primetime shows had almost no female characters in them. The Yogi Bear cartoons had Daws Butler doing the voice of Yogi, Don Messick doing Boo Boo and the Ranger, and both of those Caucasian gentlemen taking turns doing all the incidental roles.
Cindy Bear and other female characters rarely turned up in those cartoons because Mr. Hanna didn't like the idea of paying three voice actors. Once in a while, they would spring for it but for the most part, the writers were told to avoid writing female characters. (And once in a while, when a lady had a line or two, they would have Messick do it.)
The Simpsons, of course, can afford anything, it being the most profitable entertainment franchise in the history of mankind. I just hope shows with shallower pockets don't skimp on minor non-white characters because someone says, "That character only has two lines. I don't want to pay an additional actor to come in for two lines. Make that character white so one of our white actors can do the part." I've known animation producers who were cheap enough to think that way.
Of course, ideally most shows would have a multi-racial cast and there'd be folks of all colors among the regulars. I also wouldn't mind seeing them hire older actors more. On The Garfield Show, I hired many actors who were in their seventies and eighties, and even a few in their nineties. We had Stan Freberg, June Foray, Marvin Kaplan, Rose Marie, Jack Riley and a number of others on the program.
But I think the new policy on The Simpsons is fine. I just hope they don't feel they have to take Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, et al, and spray-paint them yellow.
As you wander the Internet, you have perhaps happened upon videos of the infamous 11-foot-8-inch bridge in Durham, North Carolina. That's a bit lower than most bridges and as a result, there's a crash there every few weeks. An awful lot of truck drivers who don't pay attention to warning signs wind up shearing the tops of their trucks off as they innocently try to pass beneath it. Whole trucks have been destroyed.
A gent named Jürgen Henn who works in the area saw so many trucks decapitated there that he set up a couple of cameras to record each accident. He posts videos of 'em to YouTube and on a website he runs that's devoted to the bridge. In this post a few years ago, I linked to a short documentary on the bridge and you can see several dozen of the crashes in the video below…
Well now. Late last year, someone finally did something about this problem. As you'll see in the videos below, engineers managed to jack the bridge up, build up its structure, regrade the railroad tracks…and the result is that the 11'8" bridge is now 12'4". This is the same process they used in the Rambo movies to raise Sylvester Stallone.
So does that mean no more crashes? Well, so far, no big ones. But on November 26, which was 22 days after the new height was open for business, this happened and there have been a few more like it since then…
It's so strange seeing people tap dance around the obvious connection between cities "opening up" and a spike in their formerly-declining cases of COVID-19. European nations have managed to bring the number of cases way, way down but America ain't so good at this "sacrifice" stuff. I suspect there's a way to have both — to open things up a bit and have some businesses up and functioning — while still flattening that curve but it would involve everyone admitting that the threat is real and that it isn't all about, as Tucker Carlson insists, Democratic leaders trying to take away all our freedoms. It feels like some of us are going to be in our fortresses of solitude for a long time.
The latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll says that 58% of Americans disapprove of Trump's job while in office. This includes 49% of Americans overall who say they strongly disapprove. That last number is probably more interesting. Those who disapprove might be cajoled into approving but those who "strongly" disapprove are probably ungettable. And more interesting are the numbers in the so-called "swing" states. Nate Silver thinks Pennsylvania may be out of Trump's reach now and it would be hard for Donald to win without that state.
Lastly, here's Ezra Klein with his explanation of why Trump is doing so poorly. It has to do with not understanding that his job is to actually make things better instead of just acting like he's done that.
If Trump backers want to know why his approval numbers will soon be lower than COVID-19's, they should consider the timing of actions that lead to headlines like "Trump Asks Supreme Court to Take Away Tens of Millions of Americans' Health Coverage."
Trump doesn't seem to be running against Joe Biden anymore. He seems to be running against the wearing of masks. Expect him to brag, "I could infect someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes!"
If you were in a crowd of folks who worked in the comic book industry and announced, "Joe Sinnott was the best inker who ever worked in comics," you wouldn't get a lot of argument. If you said, "Joe Sinnott was the nicest guy who ever worked in comics," you'd get even less.
He was not only a great inker, he was the guy who elevated that craft to an art; the guy who taught everyone else how it should be done. Almost every one of his peers studied what he did. Almost every one of his peers was told by some editor, at one time or another, "Try to do it more like Sinnott."
I met Joe via correspondence before I met him in person at the 1970 New York Comic Con. He couldn't have been nicer. A little later, I was sitting with Wally Wood, another fine artist whose work was much-admired and studied. Joe walked by and Wally asked me who that was. I told him it was Joe Sinnott. Wood, who'd done a lot of inking of Jack Kirby's art in his day, said, "That's the guy who inked Jack the way Jack should be inked. If I ever get another chance to, I want to do it like he does."
Joe was such a good inker, you forgot how good he was as an artist, doing it all himself. His photo-realistic style shouldn't have blended so well with such a wide range of pencil artists but it did. He always understood what they were trying to achieve on the page and what he should do to try and help them get there.
Joe Sinnott was born October 16, 1926 in Saugerties, New York, a city that would be his "home town" for his entire life. He grew up in a boarding house that catered primarily to teachers, several of whom saw talent in the young man's attempts to draw and encouraged him in that direction. He studied art in high school and also while in the Navy where he served in Okinawa during World War II. When he was discharged in 1946, he worked in a rock quarry for a few years before deciding it was time to resurrect his ambitions towards drawing.
Thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was able to attend the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (later known as the School of Visual Arts) in New York, where his work caught the eye of the school's co-founder, Burne Hogarth, and one of its main instructors, Tom Gill. Gill was drawing westerns and movie adaptations for Dell Comics and Sinnott spent nine months assisting him before deciding he was ready to solo.
His first job on his own was for St. John Comics but he soon broke in at Atlas (now Marvel) drawing war, western and horror comics for editor Stan Lee. Lee liked Sinnott's crisp style and the fact that the work was always well-researched and in on time. Joe later worked for other publishers including Treasure Chest, Charlton and Archie, but his main work was for Marvel, especially after Stan discovered how well Joe could ink the work of other artists.
Joe really got noticed as an inker for the pencil art of Jack Kirby. He inked several early, pre-superhero stories by Kirby and when the "Marvel Age" began, handled several key tales, including the first Thor story in Journey Into Mystery and the debut of Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four #5. Joe also drew the Thor strip for a time. Stan wanted Joe to ink as much as possible for Marvel but at the time, the company's low rates forced Joe to turn him down. Finally though, the pay was raised and Joe abandoned his Archie inking to work full-time for Marvel.
Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. Joe's on the right.
Some would call him Kirby's best inker. Even though he didn't meet Jack until years after their major collaborations, he understood the way Kirby drew and knew how to separate the planes of a drawing and make Kirby's special brand of forced perspective work to maximum effect.
Joe inked almost every major Marvel artist at one time or another and kept Fantastic Four consistent through a succession of different pencilers after Kirby. At times, he made their best artists like John Buscema and Gene Colan look great. Editors also knew that Sinnott could raise the quality of weak penciling (or finish sparsely-penciled art) and assigned him to those jobs.
No matter what they threw his way, Joe made it look good and always got it in on time. Always. No editor ever had a problem with Joe Sinnott. No editor didn't wish he had a lot more Joe Sinnotts at his disposal.
The Thing and Joe Sinnott. Joe's on the right.
I've met darn near every major writer and artist who worked in comics from the sixties through the eighties. I never met a nicer man than Joe Sinnott, and few who were as inarguably good at what they did. Joe was a gentleman in every sense of the word. I could cite dozens of examples but this one will do…
In 1975 at a comic convention in New York, we made plans to meet for lunch. Just before we were about to leave the con and head across the street, a fan asked Joe for an autograph. Then another asked and another. The requests escalated into quick sketches and soon, Joe was mobbed by folks who loved his work and simply had to have a little Thor or Thing drawing from the great Joe Sinnott. After several dozen of these had delayed our lunch departure by close to an hour, I waded into the throng to play Bad Guy, stop the sketching and drag Joe off to eat.
He declined. He didn't want to disappoint all the people who were swarming around him, some of whom had been waiting for that entire hour. At his behest, my friends and I went to lunch without him. I brought him back a burger and found him in the same place, still sketching for fans. Three hours later, he was still at it and the hamburger was stone cold and untouched. If the convention hadn't kicked everyone out and closed that room, he'd probably still be there.
That was the Joe Sinnott I knew. Like I said, I never knew anyone nicer. I miss all these great artists who are, way too often, the subject of obits on this page but I'm really going to miss Joe. He died peacefully this morning at 8:40am at the age of 93, beloved by all who knew the man and his work.
Jon Stewart is making the rounds plugging his new movie and here are two of his many appearances. First, here he is going on a British TV show to talk about the film and not saying much about it. But he says some interesting things about what's going on in this country…
And here he is, phoning it in from the same room on Pod Save America…
When my buddy Frank Ferrante isn't transforming himself into You-Know-Who, he often morphs into a gentleman who's a little hard to describe. Any time you're in the same room with Caesar, you're at a party. What kind of party is it? That's also a little hard to describe but he always makes you feel like you're the Guest of Honor but all the attention should be on him.
Caesar has just started his own web series. Here's Episode One of All Hail Caesar: An American Love Story…
Something weird happened with the online voting for this year's Eisner Awards. I don't exactly understand if it was Russian hacking or something having to do with Hillary's e-mails but erring on the safe side, the administrators have decided to do as follows: They've tossed out ballots that might be in question and they're sending new invites to vote to all who cast those in-question ballots. You may be receiving one and if you do, your deadline to vote anew is June 30, 2020 at 11:59 PM Pacific time.
Keep that deadline in mind and also remember that Walt Kelly's Pogo, Vol. 6: Clean as a Weasel is nominated in the category of Best Archival Collection/Project — Strips. In fact, don't just remember that. Do something with that information.
A recurring topic on this blog is the foolishness of those who argue against rules with folks who have no power to change or override them…what I call "Dead-End Complaining." You may or may not be right that the law or rule you're expected to follow is stupid but you're wasting your time, breath and indignity to argue the point here and now.
This morning on my way home from an insignificant doctor visit, I stopped off at a market for a few edible necessities. My way into said market was blocked by an argument — a lady was screeching at a store employee, insisting she couldn't legally be denied entrance even though she wasn't wearing a mask and never would. The employee was adamant that she could.
By now, I've lost track if this is a state law or a city law or just this chain's law. It may be all three but it's still No Shoes, No Shirt, No Mask, No Entrance…and in this case, No Groceries. Me, I think it's a wise law but even if it isn't, she was arguing with someone whose job was to enforce that rule, not make exceptions. The man even had a little plastic envelope of single-use disposable masks and was quite willing to provide her with one…
…but no. That would not do. "I'm not going to be on one of those sheeple," she kept saying…and I don't know about you but I've never seen that insult hurled by anyone who wasn't a sheeple (by their own definition) listening to a different shepherd. I listened to a little of the argument then politely asked if they could move it to one side so some of us masked lambs could get in before the rotisserie chickens were all gone.
She whirled towards me and said, "Don't you feel stupid wearing that mask?" I said, "No, because of it, I'm way less likely than you to get the coronavirus and way more likely to get a half-dozen russet potatoes and some parmigiano reggiano. All you're going to do is get yourself on YouTube for all eternity screaming like a maniac."
I pointed to some other shoppers who had their cell phones out shooting her and one of them said, "Smile for the camera, lady!" Then I went in and did my shopping and when I came out, she was gone.
Let me know if you see her on YouTube. She was about 5'2" with hair that looked like Professor Irwin Corey's and eyes that were so closely set together, there was ample room for a third eye on her face. Oh — and she was wearing a Trump 2020 t-shirt but you probably guessed that.
