Friday, March 24 — 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 213AB
HOW TO WRITE FOR ANIMATION
Did you ever dream of writing cartoon shows? Well, here's your chance to find out how to do it from three guys who have written hundreds and hundreds of them. The secrets of animation writing will be divulged by WonderCon special guests Tom Ruegger (Pinky and the Brain, Disney's The 7D), Paul Rugg (Animaniacs, Freakazoid!), and moderator Mark Evanier (The Garfield Show, Dungeons & Dragons).
Saturday, March 25 — Noon to 1:00 PM in Room 207
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
Like we do at almost every convention, we remember the man some called The King of the Comics — the man who created or co-created many of the most popular characters ever in the medium. Discussing Jack Kirby are Marv Wolfman (writer/editor), John Morrow (publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector), Paul S. Levine (lawyers for the Kirby Trust), and moderator Mark Evanier (former assistant to Jack Kirby).
Saturday, March 25 — 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 207
CARTOON VOICES
It's another one of Evanier's popular panels where he gathers a bunch of top animation voice actors to demonstrate their craft, tell how they got into the business, and destroy the script for a beloved fairy tale. Appearing this time are Joe Ochman (current voice of Jiminy Cricket), Kaitlyn Robrock (current voice of Minnie Mouse), Neil Ross (Transformers, G.I. Joe), Cynthia McWilliams (What If?), and Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania). Mark Evanier (of course) is your host.
As always, times, rooms, panelists and just about everything is subject to change so check your Program Guide and this site to make sure. And as always, I refuse to sit behind a table at a convention for very long so I'll be wandering the hall. If you see me, say howdy. The entire programming schedule can be found online here and remember to consult the COVID policy here.
WonderCon 2023 starts two weeks from today so it's time for this…
Friday, March 24 — 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 213AB
HOW TO WRITE FOR ANIMATION
Did you ever dream of writing cartoon shows? Well, here's your chance to find out how to do it from three guys who have written hundreds and hundreds of them. The secrets of animation writing will be divulged by WonderCon special guests Tom Ruegger (Pinky and the Brain, Disney's The 7D), Paul Rugg (Animaniacs, Freakazoid!), and moderator Mark Evanier (The Garfield Show, Dungeons & Dragons).
Saturday, March 25 — Noon to 1:00 PM in Room 207
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
Like we do at almost every convention, we remember the man some called The King of the Comics — the man who created or co-created many of the most popular characters ever in the medium. Discussing Jack Kirby are Marv Wolfman (writer/editor), John Morrow (publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector), Paul S. Levine (lawyers for the Kirby Trust), and moderator Mark Evanier (former assistant to Jack Kirby).
Saturday, March 25 — 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 207
CARTOON VOICES
It's another one of Evanier's popular panels where he gathers a bunch of top animation voice actors to demonstrate their craft, tell how they got into the business, and destroy the script for a beloved fairy tale. Appearing this time are Joe Ochman (current voice of Jiminy Cricket), Kaitlyn Robrock (current voice of Minnie Mouse), Neil Ross (Transformers, G.I. Joe), Cynthia McWilliams (What If?), and Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania). Mark Evanier (of course) is your host.
As always, times, rooms, panelists and just about everything is subject to change so check your Program Guide and this site to make sure. And as always, I refuse to sit behind a table at a convention for very long so I'll be wandering the hall. If you see me, say howdy. The entire programming schedule can be found online here and remember to consult the COVID policy here.
On the Garfield and Friends cartoon show, there were these three annoying bears who popped up every so often. Joshua33 wrote to ask about them…
I loved watching the Garfield and Friends cartoon show you wrote and I still play the DVDs for my kids. My favorite thing on there may have been The Buddy Bears. I understand that you created them in response to network mandates that whenever you had a group on a show for kids, the group always had to agree on everything and the member of the group who didn't was always in the wrong. Was there a specific incident that caused you to strike back like that?
Who wrote their catchy little song? Who did their voices? I know they were always sped up like Chipmunks but someone had to speak and sing for them. Is there anything else you can tell us about them?
Well, let's see: I wrote the lyrics to the song and Ed Bogas, who did all the music for that show, wrote the melody. The core voice actors on Garfield and Friends were Lorenzo Music (as Garfield), Gregg Berger (Odie and many other characters) and Thom Huge (Jon and many other characters). Thom did all the singing for them — that's Thom singing with Thom singing with Thom, all sped — and their speaking voices were Lorenzo, Gregg and Thom. Oddly enough, we had trouble speeding up Lorenzo's voice. We tried it and he still sounded like Lorenzo Music but the engineer fiddled around and finally made him not sound like Lorenzo Music.
For those of you unfamiliar with their song, it went like this…
The Buddy Bears appeared in one episode of U.S. Acres, a series that appeared within the Garfield and Friends show. In that cartoon, their speaking voices were Gregg, Thom and Howard Morris.
Before I answer the first part of your question, let me quote a comment I noticed recently on YouTube. This was posted by someone signed BNSF1995 in response to a Buddy Bears episode…
The Buddy Bears were Mark Evanier's personal attack against cartoons he wrote for before Garfield such as The Get-Along Gang and The Smurfs that preached pro-social values until they spewed out your ears and all over the sidewalk. In fact, CBS Standards & Practices got pissed at him for this particular segment.
That's mostly wrong. First off, I never worked on The Get-Along Gang or The Smurfs, though I did have problems with messages that various folks wanted to insert into Dungeons & Dragons, Richie Rich, a couple of ABC Weekend Specials and maybe a few others. But I crossed swords — this being Saturday morning kidvid, they were toy light-sabres — with Standards and Practices in any number of ways and I argued a lot with one particular lady at ABC.
No one incident prompted The Buddy Bears. Sometimes when you're a writer and you have strong feelings about something, you just find yourself writing about it.
CBS Broadcast Standards and Practices was in no way pissed about them. In fact, during my run on that series — eight years of producing seven seasons of cartoons — I did not have one real argument with them. I think the biggest "note" I ever got from BS&P was something like, "On page 4 of the script, you have Garfield making a reference to Tabasco Sauce. Tabasco Sauce is a brand name. Could you change that to Hot Sauce or anything else that isn't a brand name?"
Actually, we did have a few problems because of one or two (i.e., very few) of the Storyboard Artists who worked on the show. When production began on Garfield and Friends, I had a series of phone calls with the gent in Standards and Practices who'd been assigned to our series. We essentially said to each other, "I won't make problems for you if you don't make problems for me." He gave me a list of six or seven "don'ts" that I agreed were reasonable and in no way harmful to the show.
I can't find my copy of the list right now but I remember a few: Don't choke anyone by the neck. Don't show someone in a car who doesn't have a seat belt on. Don't show someone getting electrocuted by a light socket or electrical outlet. There were others but most were a matter of not depicting harmful actions that youngsters might copy. It was fine to drop a piano or a sixteen-ton safe on a character but not to play with matches. I agreed to these "rules" because none of them would ever stop me from doing anything we wanted to do.
The Storyboard Artists on the show were really good — good at storyboarding and good at following the meager rules. Alas, there were a couple who either didn't get the memo, didn't read the memo…or in the case of one, wished to actively violate the memo. I didn't hear him say this but our producer quoted this one guy as insisting, "Anytime a cartoonist is told not to do something, he has a duty to the Art Form to do exactly what he's told not to do." I told the producer to tell him we had a rule against jumping off the roof of the studio.
But even the problems he caused, we handled. Some people approach this kind of thing like it's a Holy War and the entire future of the show (and maybe Mankind) hinges on them being able to get a fart joke on the air. I think it's wiser to save your ammo for the battles that really matter.
Lastly: This may be a microscopic point but I have no problem with the basic concept of "prosocial values." Where would we all be without prosocial values? I'm thinking about prosocial values like, you know…"Murder is wrong," "Stealing is wrong," "Hatred is wrong," "Cole Slaw is wrong"…
Okay, scratch the cole slaw one. The point is that many things that are called "prosocial" really do correspond to the dictionary definition of "prosocial," which is "relating to or denoting behavior which is positive, helpful, and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship." Is anyone really against that?
The term "prosocial" is getting a bad rap because some people are using it in a pejorative sense and because some things that are being sold as prosocial are anything but. They're often just someone's personal prejudices masquerading as a teachable moment. The moral of the Buddy Bears stories was "Don't do something just because your friends do it. Have a mind of your own." I would call damn good advice even if some people would scoff that it was prosocial.
We had a wonderful voice cast on The Garfield Show and one of our players was the great actor (and great guy) Jason Marsden. He, like the other performers, made my job easy and I miss those recording sessions.
Jason occasionally shot video while we were working and recently, he edited some of it into a little video. Here it is…
Joshua Rosenkranz recently sent me a question I get often in my e-mail. I usually give those who so inquire a brief, probably insufficient reply but I've now decided to write a long answer to which I can link when others ask. Here's Joshua…
I am writing once again so I could find out more about Arlene's absence from the Garfield and Friends cartoon. I read once that there was alleged information that during the production of Garfield and Friends, Arlene was omitted because the character had a specific portrayal envisioned by Jim Davis himself, and since the criteria wasn't met, she was never used and replaced with an original character named Penelope.
If possible, is there a way I could find out why Arlene was not present/denied usage for the Garfield and Friends cartoon?
I am willing to receive an answer anytime, since I asked about Arlene in my last writing along with the cut characters from U.S. Acres, Cody and Blue, and never got an answer specifically about Garfield's pink-furred love interest.
It's kinda true that Jim Davis had some other plans for Arlene but the main reason she only appeared fleetingly in the Garfield and Friends show is that I didn't come up with any ideas I really liked that involved her.
Much of the time when you create a TV series with a whole buncha characters, you find out along the way that you don't need all of them. When Happy Days started, Ron Howard's character had an older brother who was later quietly discarded by the producers. They didn't know what to do with him.
Shows change. When Larry Gelbart wrote the pilot for the TV series of M*A*S*H, he intended Hawkeye to be much more of a womanizer…and some have suggested that was Larry projecting a certain amount of himself into the character. I have a mimeographed, ready-to-shoot copy of a script that would have been Show #2 or #3 before it was decided (reportedly demanded by Alan Alda) to temper that aspect of the character and that script was tossed.
As a result, there were a couple of nurse characters who had been planned as recurring — Nurse Dish and Nurse Cutler, I believe — who didn't appear on the show as often as had been expected and were soon dropped altogether. Nurse Cutler was played by Marcia Strassman and when I worked with her on Welcome Back, Kotter, she was often complaining she'd been led to believe she'd have a much bigger role on M*A*S*H. That was when she wasn't complaining that she'd been led to believe she'd have a much bigger role on Welcome Back, Kotter.
That happens with cartoon shows, too. When I was writing a lot of 'em for Saturday morning, I was sometimes called in to rewrite the development (the pilot script and the "bible" overview) of a proposed series. Much of the time, I decided that one problem was that the writers before me had included a lot of extra characters that were unnecessary. I cut several out of the format for Dungeons & Dragons on CBS that had been developed before I was hired. On one series I worked on for another studio — one of several shows from which I removed my name — I threw out a dozen characters. (And, as the studio head later admonished me, "…killed a dozen potential toy deals!")
It's just a thing writers often do. You look at the script you're working on and ask of each character, "Is this character necessary?" Once in a while, you decide one isn't.
It even happens with newspaper strips. When Jim Davis launched Garfield on the funnies page, Odie the dog was owned by a friend of Jon's named Lyman. As Jim produced the script day after day, he came to the feeling that Lyman was extraneous…so Lyman went away and Odie became Jon's dog. (Lyman popped up every so often as a kind of in-joke. In one of the Garfield video games, you — as Garfield — eventually come upon Lyman locked up in a dungeon, which is where he'd been all those years. On The Garfield Show, I wrote an episode where we learned a different fate that took poor Lyman away.)
Anyway, when I started writing the Garfield and Friends TV show, we were doing cartoons that averaged about 6.5 minutes in length. That ain't a lot of room. In most, we saw a good deal of Garfield, Jon and Odie…and unless the main plot needed a certain character, I was better off not trying to also service that certain character. I just didn't have many ideas that would have needed Arlene.
But it is true that Jim had some plans for her so we decided I wouldn't try to put her into any episode and when I did need a female friend for Garfield, I created one for the occasion. One named Penelope, voiced by friend Victoria Jackson, wound up appearing in seven episodes.
Later, I decided the series had been a bit too male and when we did a new series called The Garfield Show, I told Jim I wanted to have Arlene appear and by then, whatever project he'd wanted to save her for had come and gone or perhaps never happened. Neither of us remembered what it was. So we made a special effort to get her into the new show…and that's really all there was to it.
The same thing happened back when we started doing the U.S. Acres segments for Garfield and Friends. I was adapting a newspaper strip that had about a dozen characters in it and I decided that was too many for a 6.5 minute cartoon, at least at first. I decided to focus on Orson, Wade, Roy, Bo, Booker, Sheldon and Lanolin…and then we'd add in the others when we had a place for them. And I just plain forgot about Blue and Cody and a few others. There just never seemed to be a need for them especially after the strip was discontinued.
I'm sorry I don't have a spicy, full-of-secrets explanation for these decisions. Sometimes, it's like how I decided to have roast chicken for lunch today. I just decided and there's no interesting story behind that decision.
Pat Carroll was a very funny woman. She was a very funny woman on stage and on screen and also in person. She was also, unlike a lot of funny people, a good audience with a great laugh and no qualms about laughing at what someone else said or did. I talked with her…oh, maybe a half dozen times, once when she was in doing voice work on a Garfield special. She was a wonderful voice actress as proven when she spoke for Ursula, the villainess of the Disney film, The Little Mermaid. That someone that nice could play someone that evil was amazing.
The 2022 Comic-Con International in San Diego opens tonight at 6 PM. I can tell because the end of the line to get in is somewhere near my house 132 miles away. As you can see below, I begin appearing on panels on Friday.
A lot of folks won't be there because of that COVID thing and I did consider missing my first of these conventions ever. I'm not sure I can explain my decision to chance it but I shall, like any human being with a brain in his head, take precautions and mask as appropriate. To some extent, I think we are all somewhat dependent on the sanity of others in this life.
I'll be seeing the upper middle part of some of your faces there. In the meantime, here's this again…
Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.
Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.
Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.
Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Saturday, July 23 — 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.
Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.
Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!
Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much.
If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM. But if you see me and want to say hello, please do. I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac. At other times, I am approachable and easy to find. I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.
Hi, Mark. Could I ask you about a line in one of the Garfield cartoons? I can't find the episode because there doesn't appear to be one that has dinosaur in the title, so I am just going to describe it for you.
Basically, it was a Barney parody. The dinosaur wanted to use a kiddie show in order to force all the people and their kids to obey him. In the end, Garfield foiled his evil plan and ended up convincing him to try his luck in show business with Garfield as his agent. However, the dinosaur became so successful, he fired him as his agent. Garfield then exclaimed, "The nerve of him. I taft-hartlied him on his first acting gig. And he couldn't even read a script."
What does it mean to "taft-hartly?" For a Bulgarian man, I am pretty in tune with American pop culture over the years but I have no clue what that means.
Well, first of all it means that you stumbled onto one of those jokes I occasionally put in something I write, knowing full well that about ten people will understand it. Don't feel bad that you are not one of those ten.
It was an episode of Garfield and Friends called "The Beast From Beyond" and it was kind of a spoof on Barney the Dinosaur, who was then big on TV in this country. The character was named Sidney and it might interest someone to know that Sidney's voice was supplied by Stan Freberg doing pretty much the same voice he'd once supplied for Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany. Another "inside" joke.
The Taft-Hartley Act was a packet of laws passed in this country in 1947. It changed some rules for labor unions, weakening them in many ways. But when we say we "Taft-Hartleyed" someone, that's shorthand for saying we invoked one particular provision of the Act. It means you gave them a job in some field even though they were not (yet) a member of the labor union to which one belongs to work in that field. It generally applies to their first job. If they continue to work in that field, they are expected to join the appropriate union. (There are ways around this but most people don't want to use them.)
So let's say you're a new voice actor and I give you your first job doing a voice on my cartoon show. Since there's a possibility this may be your only such job ever, you don't have to join the union and fill out all those forms and pay that hefty initiation fee. I gave several people their first voice jobs so they were "Taft-Hartleyed" and then, if and when they got a second job, they joined the union. Basically, it means to hire someone who is not (yet) in the union. When we did this cartoon, I think I had just done that with one of several folks who got their first professional job on the show and went on to long and very real careers.
Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.
Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.
Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.
Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Saturday, July 23 — 4:o0 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.
Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.
Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!
Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much.
If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM. But if you see me and want to say hello, please do. I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac. At other times, I am approachable and easy to find. I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.
He made it to 99…and worked well into that decade of his life. The last time I saw Larry Storch in person was 2014…when he, at age 91, performed on the stage of The Comedy Store. I have seen comics seventy years younger not be as funny or as fresh as he was that evening.
That was the last time I saw him. The first time was when he came in to do guest voice work on Garfield and Friends. I told that story here and you might want to stop reading this and go read that.
In-between, I saw him at a few conventions and parties. There was one New York convention where he was sitting there in some replica of the cap he wore as Agarn on the show F Troop and he was signing/selling autographs. The end of the line for them seemed to be somewhere in New Jersey. He remembered me from Garfield — or at least he said he did — and he had me sit with him, ostensibly so we could chat while he signed. But he also was engaging in friendly banter with every single person in that line. They all wanted to tell him how much they loved him as Agarn, loved him in The Great Race, loved him on Car 54, Where Are You?, loved hearing him on Tennessee Tuxedo, etc.
I enjoyed watching this man be loved as he was but when he apologized to me for the distraction, I said, "It's okay. I'll come back when the line disappears." And for the rest of the convention, the line did not disappear.
I wish I'd had more time to tell him how amazing I thought it was that he was capable of being funny in absolutely everything he was ever in. But all those folks in that line — and I'm sure in many lines at many autograph shows and conventions — told him that for me. Being consistently hilarious is not easy but doing it for something like seventy years? Amazing.
Paul Carpente sent me a paragraph from the IMDB listing for director Gordon Hunt. I saw many fine plays and musicals Gordon staged and he was also a fine director of the voice tracks for Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He directed hundreds of shows there, some of them written by me. An awful lot of what I know about voice directing, I learned watching Gordon.
Anyway, Paul sent me this from Gordon's IMDB page and asked me if it was true…
While working on Yogi's Treasure Hunt (1985), Gordon Hunt was looking over a storyboard, and, what seemed to be a new character, caught his eye. He asked writers Mark Evanier and Earl Kress, who this "new character" was. They both told him it was Yogi's friend, "Boo Boo", and was not a new character.
The answer to Paul's question is: No, that is not true. Not only have I no memory of such a thing but well before Yogi's Treasure Hunt, Gordon had directed a number of Yogi Bear projects for Hanna-Barbera with Boo Boo in them, including a prime-time Yogi special that I wrote in 1982. Gordon was not a seasoned expert in Hanna-Barbera history — there were few of those in the building apart from Earl, myself and Scott Shaw! — but he certainly knew stuff like that.
Would someone who knows how to tell IMDB that they're wrong please tell IMDB that they're wrong?
Paul also asks why, if I worked on Yogi's Treasure Hunt, my name is nowhere on it. Because I quit, that's why. I was the first writer on it and Joe Barbera asked me to do it and told me he trusted me to make it work. I thought that's what I was doing but around about the second or third script, Mr. Barbera suddenly decided to take an interest in the show and started coming up with all sorts of different ideas to change this or change that.
It was a low budget series for syndication and because of my love of the characters — and the fact that Daws Butler would be voicing the ones he'd voiced in my childhood — I took a considerable cut in pay to do it. That might have made me a little less good-natured about rewriting scripts to please Mr. Barbera, who I felt was reneging a bit on his promise not to micro-manage. I respected the hell out of that man and as such, I had a little trouble disagreeing with him and arguing with him, even though such arguments were always cordial and friendly.
Some of the disagreements were actually funny and much talked-about in the halls of the studio. The premise of the show (not my idea) was that in each episode, Yogi and his friends would go on some treasure hunt. In one episode, I had them seeking a rare jewel which had the power to enable its bearer to become a beloved singing star and to sell out huge stadiums. I called it The Neil Diamond.
J.B. laughed at that but said, "At this studio, we don't like doing puns on the names of celebrities" and I said, "You mean like Yogi Bear?" He gave me one of those looks — anyone who worked for him can do one for you — and insisted it be changed anyway. A week or two later, after a few more such disagreements, I decided it was time for me to stop working for Hanna-Barbera and did, though I remained on good terms with J.B., lunched with him a few more times and turned down a few offers to return. I believe it was Tom Ruegger who took over my position and took Yogi's Treasure Hunt more in the direction the boss wanted. Earl Kress wrote some of them.
Lastly, Paul asks, "On your IMDB, it states 11 years has passed between your work on Superman and The Garfield Show. Why did you take such a long break from cartoons?" I didn't really. I was hired for a few projects that didn't get made and for a few that did but I removed my name from them or never put it on in the first place.
Also, in-between Superman and The Garfield Show, I wrote on and voice-directed Channel Umptee-3, and I started on The Garfield Show a year or so before the dates they list for it. There can often be a wide gap between the time you start writing a cartoon show and when finished episodes are broadcast. But yeah, there have been periods when I've been so occupied with non-cartoon projects that I didn't do as many cartoons.
I mention all this to point out that while IMDB is a good resource, it's far from exact. They have me down as writing about a third of the episodes of The Garfield Show that I actually wrote. They have me writing three episodes of Channel Umptee-3. My pay stubs say eight. They have me doing 10 episodes of the Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon show but I did 13, and I did five episodes of CBS Storybreak, not four…and so on. I am way overcredited on Thundarr the Barbarian.
Please: Don't anyone take it as a personal crusade to try and correct all this stuff. They'll never get it right and I don't care that much. But do fix the thing about Gordon Hunt. He was a much smarter guy than that anecdote makes him out to be.
Bryan Wong (and about nine of you) read this piece here and then wrote to ask…
You said that when you worked on Garfield and Friends, the CBS censor only had about five requests in all the years it was on and you found them reasonable and easy to comply with. Do you remember what any of them were?
Yeah. One of them was to not choke anyone by the neck. Another was not to electrocute anyone, especially by having someone stick something like a screwdriver or wire into an electric outlet. There were a couple of those where they had some reason to believe that kids might either imitate such actions and be hurt or they might do it on their own and then the cartoon would be blamed.
There were one or two others in this category and I don't recall clearly if these things had happened or if there was some good reason to think they might. On the other hand, it was fine to drop a sixteen-ton safe on someone because impressionable children were not likely to do that. I thought these were reasonable requests.
Another was to make sure that when the characters were driving somewhere, they wore their seat belts. Okay, fine.
More than once, I wrote a joke that mentioned Tabasco Sauce and at least one wasn't noticed before the Standards and Practices guy called and said, "That's a brand name. Would you mind switching it to hot sauce?" I decided that was better for the joke because (probably) more kids today know the term "hot sauce."
In 1991 when "Operation Desert Storm" was suddenly in the news, he called me and said, "We've been asked to make sure none of our childrens programming has any reference to war or combat." He explained that CBS News was occasionally cutting into programming at all hours — yes, even Saturday morning — with "Special Reports" about the conflict. Someone high up at the network was concerned that when one of those reports ended and they cut back to regular programming, there could be cartoon characters making light of war.
I suppose one could debate whether that was a silly thing to care about…and it is. But there are times when you think one of those silly things is an even sillier thing to spend time arguing about.
Garfield and Friends was in reruns at the time but I went over the scripts of the episodes that were scheduled for repeating and found one joke which could be construed as a reference to combat. I think it was Garfield and Odie pretending they were in a war movie, sneaking up on some enemy to try and capture their lasagna. Something like that. We moved that episode out of the rotation so it wasn't rebroadcast for a while…and that was that. That may have been the most the Standards and Practices department ever impacted the content of our show.
Since then, one Garfield and Friends cartoon has been pulled from the rerun packages because of what someone called an Asian stereotype. Folks are more sensitive about that kind of thing than they once were and it does no good to point out that since the series was animated in Taiwan, that alleged Asian stereotype was drawn by Asians.
I knew people who had near-coronaries over this kind of thing back when Standards and Practices was an actual division at every network and had some power. One guy at Hanna-Barbera used to refer to their requests as "pissing on the Mona Lisa," which I thought overstated what they were doing and perhaps (just perhaps) slightly overvalued what they were doing it to. What I learned was that you can't fight over everything. You're more likely to win the battles that really matter if you don't reflexively scream about every little thing. In the case of Garfield and Friends, all the little things were little things.
You noted: Standards and Practices at ABC had made up a list of racial and ethnic minorities and it was kind of like "Pick one." and "one of the other Standards/Practices rules at that moment…was that every show had to have a female character who was assertive and/or in a position of authority instead of just tagging along as the male characters drove the story forward."
I was wondering if you thought that was a good thing, a bad thing?
Surely having someone other than white people might attract non-white viewers, and help white ones to note, "Oh yeah, there are other people. And having a strong woman (not Nell, or '50s Lois Lane always imperiled) is a good thing for women (and especially men) to see.
In this world — or in my world, at least — one often finds situations that fall under the category of "Doing the right thing for the wrong reason" or maybe "Achieving the proper goal in an improper way." I don't think it's a good thing for, in this case, network functionaries to be dictating creative content because they're afraid of advertisers who are, in turn, afraid of pressure groups.
But I also don't think it's a good thing for police officers to pull you over for speeding. That should not be necessary. You shouldn't be speeding in the first place.
I'm fine with female characters who are strong and assertive. I'm fine with characters not all being white guys. I'm fine with both those things because in real life — or in my real life, at least — a lot of women are strong and assertive and a lot of people are not white guys. Those who felt animation was deficient in representing those kinds of human beings were right.
But the Standards and Practices people we dealt with in the late seventies/early eighties were sometimes very clumsy and tyrannical and creatively insensitive. I wrote one particular ABC Weekend Special where at the last minute, they demanded major (and, I thought, injurious) changes to the script because of some crazed concern of the week. And I was arguing with someone who really didn't care if the changes disfigured the story and betrayed the book being adapted for the special.
It was like if you were adapting Moby Dick (the classic novel, not the Hanna-Barbera cartoon show of that name) and they came to you and said, "We're under fire for not having enough black women in our shows!" You might say in response, "Okay, they're right. After I finish this, we'll come up with some stories featuring black women" and they said, "No, no! This can't wait! You have to make Captain Ahab a black woman! And make sure she's a good role model!"
And then they added, "And although we haven't had any complaints about this, we need to lose the stuff about Ahab only having one leg. Just in case!" Maybe the right long-term goal but the wrong time, place and method to achieve it.
They were also, I thought, often dead wrong about their goals. As I've written elsewhere, some of the "pro-social" messaging they demanded pushed the premise that "the group" is always right; that if all your friends want to do one thing and you think that's a bad idea, you should yield to the majority. I thought that was a dangerous message — that's kind of how The Crips and The Bloods got started — and when I worked on the Garfield and Friends show, I wrote several cartoons refuting that message.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that in (roughly) the years 1977-1986 when I wrote cartoon shows, most of which were on ABC, I battled constantly with the Standards and Practices people — and one lady in particular. Sometimes, I lost. Sometimes, I won. Often, I won but the producers of the show made the requested changes anyway because they were afraid that even if ABC would let a certain joke or action in now, they might not a few years down the line and would not then buy the show for reruns.
When I started doing Garfield and Friends in 1987 (it began airing in '88), all that changed for me. No one ever suggested pro-social concepts to me. No one at the network (CBS) really suggested anything. In 121 half-hours, the Standards and Practices guy had about five requests, all of them minor and reasonable and easy to accommodate. And as noted, I even got to do episodes ridiculing what Standards and Practices had demanded at all three networks in the previous ten years.
These days, very few cartoon shows face anything like what we faced way back when. My friends working on current programs do sometimes complain about notes from someone upstairs about story elements that might lessen a character's merchandising potential. But that's another matter.
Friends often ask me, "Did you write anything today?" That's a harder question to answer than you might think because sometimes the answer is, "Yes, but it's nothing I would ever share with anyone." If I write a few paragraphs of something and decide "This isn't going anywhere" and I delete them, did I write anything? Or if I wrote in my head and never put it down on paper or my computer, did I write anything?
Sort of. It depends on your definitions.
The truth is that I write by some definition of the word every day. It may not be any good. It may not be anything I want anyone else to ever see. But I write something. At the moment, I'm writing this.
Lately, for reasons I can't explain to myself so I certainly can't explain them to you, I've been sleeping odd hours. My body at my current age seems to want somewhere between 5.5 and 6 hours of shuteye in every twenty-four hour period…but every so often, it wants one or two more or one or two less. And sometimes, it wants them all in a row and sometimes, it wants them serialized. A few nights ago, I slept for three hours, got up and wrote for a while, then went back to bed for three more.
The COVID lifestyle has had something to do with this. There are very few times lately when I have to get up and leave the house by a specific time. There are, of course, ZOOM meetings but they seem to get scheduled later in the day even when they involve people on East Coast time.
Back when I was doing The Garfield Show and it was produced in France, we occasionally had conference calls at 4 AM. That was because we needed to tie in Jim Davis in Muncie, Indiana and the producers in Paris. 4 AM where I am is 7 AM where Jim was and 1 PM in France. (I don't know if he still does but Jim used to be up by 6 AM. So I might send him a fax or e-mail at 3:30 AM and get an immediate reply.)
Anyway, since time has become less significant in my life, I sometimes find myself wide awake these days at 5 AM and sound asleep at 3 PM. This morn, I woke up at 6 AM and my brain was buzzing with trying to find something to post here that everyone else isn't saying about school shootings. I couldn't think of one so I began working on a story of Groo the Wanderer. This morning, his world makes a lot more sense than mine.
The largest face in the above montage belongs to Alicyn Packard, one of the busiest voice actresses working these days. She's on so many shows that I don't know how she finds the time to produce and host her own…but she does. It's called Alicyn's Wonderland and on it, she interviews important people in the worlds of animation and videogaming. This week though, she couldn't find anyone important so her guest is me.
You can listen to this podcast on Apple, Spotify and just about everywhere else good podcasts — and even ones with me on them — are available.
Or you can watch the video version of this podcast which debuts on YouTube this evening at 6 PM West Coast Time. I think some sort of "watch party" will be happening online then but it'll be there any time after when you want to tune in. She's a great host and you'll probably want to check out other episodes that don't have me in them.
