Monthly Archives: June 2007

Why is my Maxtor One-Touch external hard disk like George W. Bush? Answer: Neither one will read.

Doesn't it always happen this way when you're under the gun? The hard disk went kablooey…and while most things on it are properly backed up, it would make my life so much easier to fix it. At the very least, I'd like to copy off the files that weren't backed up. So I study various facts on the Seagate website. (Seagate acquired Maxtor.) This gets me nowhere so I call tech support…and don't think that's easy. The premise, I guess, is that the more difficult it is to find the phone number, the more likely you are to read the tech stuff on the website, fix the problem yourself and not force them to hire more tech support people.

But I find the number and I call…and again, they don't make it easy. I am on hold for fourteen minutes.

When someone answers, he sounds like a guy on Saturday Night Live doing a clumsy impression of a tech support guy in India. Via a bad phone connection that forces me to repeat everything three times, he takes down vital info, including the fact that I received diagnostic error code DCC56749. He stows me back on hold for five minutes, then comes back on the line to inform me that my hard disk has crashed.

And that, apparently, is all this person knows. When I ask him what I do next, he doesn't know. I am evidently the first person who has ever had this problem.

I think I'm more annoyed by the phone call than I am by the failed hard disk. When I asked the guy on the phone how I might go about getting my data off the failed hard disk, he said, "Uh, go to someone who does data recovery." That advice sounds even dumber when you realize that he didn't suggest his own company's data recovery department. For a not-small amount of cash, they'll try to get back that which you have lost by trusting their product…but I won't be availing myself of this service. Later today, the Maxtor's going over to a friend who specializes in this kind of thing and we'll see what he can do. If he's successful, the recovered data will not be stored on a Maxtor. For reasons that should be obvious.

We are pleased to announce the following…

Fox, Gladir to Receive Third Annual Bill Finger Award

Gardner Fox and George Gladir have been selected to receive the 2007 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The choice was made unanimously by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer and historian Mark Evanier.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted in 2005 under the supervision of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. The awards committee is charged each year with selecting two recipients, one living and one deceased.

"Each year, we ask ourselves who, among all the fine writers who've contributed to comics has a body of work out there deserving of greater recognition," Evanier notes. "Gladir and Fox not only have that but both men laid down important groundwork on which other writers could and did build . . . just like Bill Finger did."

Gardner Fox received a law degree in 1935 but instead opted for comics, writing his first stories in 1938 for the pre-Batman Detective Comics. He was also the first writer after Bill Finger to contribute to Batman's adventures and was responsible for several components of the character's mythology. Perhaps more notably, he created or co-created a bevy of important characters in comics' so-called "Golden Age," including The Flash, Hawkman, The Sandman, Starman, and Doctor Fate, and he launched what some call the first-ever superhero team, The Justice Society of America. In the late fifties and sixties, he worked on the revivals of most of those features, including the Justice League of America, and also co-created new characters such as Adam Strange. In his amazing career, he wrote an estimated 4,000 comic book scripts and also found time to author more than 100 novels, many of them under other names. Fox passed away in 1986.

George Gladir has been a full-time comic book writer since 1959, when he got his first assignment from Archie Comics. At first he wrote mainly one-page gags for Archie's Joke Book, but he quickly went on to write stories for the many Archie titles, including Archie's Madhouse, the book in which he created "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," drawn by the legendary Dan DeCarlo. In the early 1960s, he simultaneously started writing for Cracked Magazine, MAD's most successful competitor. He became Cracked's head writer, and over the next 30 years wrote some 2,000 pages for the magazine, many of them illustrated by Hall of Famer John Severin. In addition to still writing for Archie, George recently co-created (with Stan Goldberg) Cindy and Her Obasan, a fantasy adventure about an American 10-year-old and her Japanese fairy godmother.

The Bill Finger Award remembers William Finger (1914-1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that character but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, this year's blue-ribbon selection committee included writer/historian Jim Amash, comics and animation writer Paul Dini, writer Tony Isabella, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The 2007 awards are being underwritten by DC Comics (the major sponsor), along with supporting sponsors Comics Buyer's Guide (CBG) and Heritage Auctions.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con on Friday, July 27.

About once a year, things in my life converge in such a way that I have no choice but to put up the can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. What this means: I'm so swamped with deadlines and commitments that posting here will be light for a while. E-mail responses will be sluggish if not totally non-existent. You will hear or see little of me until more deadlines are met. But in the words of General Douglas MacArthur and all the cockroaches I just had exterminated, I shall return.

It's been a while since I linked to one of these Private Snafu cartoons. These were made during World War II by the Warner Brothers cartoon department and this one — A Lesson in Camouflage — was directed by Chuck Jones. If you want to know more about this series, click here. If you want to watch the cartoon, click below.

And Mark is back from San Jose after a hard day of Super-Conning at the aforementioned Super-Con up there. I saw almost none of the city but I saw a pretty good little convention and a lot of good people. Among those I talked with were — forgive me, anyone I leave out — Mark Waid, Paul Smith, Steve Leialoha, John Heebink, Chris Marrinan, Russ Heath, Ray Lago, Bill Morrison, Brent Anderson, Don Rosa, Kathy Garver, Larry "Soup Nazi" Thomas, Paul Power, Tony DeZuniga, Ernie Chan, Alex Nino, Danny Bulanadi, Doug Sneyd, Jim Silke, Philip Tan, Tom Yeates, Dean Yeagle, Chase Masterson, Jane Wiedlin (from the Go-Go's) and Daniel Cooney. People were snatching up Daniel's Valentine graphic novels and there seemed to be a lot of disappointment that he's going on hiatus from his character. If you haven't gotten all he's done to date, check 'em out here. Good stuff.

I hosted a panel this afternoon with Mssrs. Chan, Tan, Nino, DeZuniga and Bulanadi all about the Filipino comic artist community. Ernie told an amazing story of how when he lived in The Philippines, he was making the equivalent of $1.25 American for pencilling and inking one comic book page and had to do four a day in order to earn a basic living. In the early seventies, when a deal was brokered for artists over there to do work for American publishers, the rate went up to around $20.00 a page. The pages done for the American market were a bit more elaborate and filled with drawing than what they'd been doing for their home country but still, it was quite a change of life style for a time there.

I have to go unpack and go back to work. If I think of anything else, I'll post it here later. But it was a good con and you would have enjoyed it and I think I'll post a video link and tackle some deadlines.

And Mark is off for another day of Super-Conning at the Super-Con here in San Jose. I am about to check out of a very nice room at a very nice Marriott, check my luggage and then hike over to the convention hall, which is about a block away. There, I will sit behind a table, probably next to Mark Waid, where we will debate which of us stayed up later last night to work on scripts that we should have been home working on instead of attending the convention that we both promised to attend back when we foolishly thought we wouldn't have deadlines this weekend. I am going to take along this here laptop of mine and work at the table there, just to make Waid feel guilty. See you later.

This is kind of a "Secrets Behind the Comics." A fellow named Jeff Sharpe sent me the following e-mail with the above illo attached. In case you can't tell what it is, it's a piece of original art from a Marvel comic…except that instead of just drawing a page of comics on the paper, the artist turned it sideways and drew two pages at, of course, a smaller size. Here's what Jeff wrote to me…

I'm in the process of purchasing the above artwork from Marvel Two-In-One and wanted to ask if you had any insight as to why it was drawn this way? Was the entire comic drawn this way, or, just these two pages? If just the two pages, who decided on which pages? I had assumed it would be the center spread, but, that is not the case here. Also, the art is signed by Frank Giacoia, but the comic credits Mike Esposito with the inks. Any info that you could provide would be greatly appreciated!

Here is all the info you need: Around 1974, someone at Marvel came up with one of those ideas that we see so often throughout comic book history — a money-saving idea that doesn't really save any money but at least it inconveniences the creative people and harms the product. It's amazing how often "money-saving ideas" do that.

Budgets were then getting a bit tight. A Marvel comic then had, I think, eighteen pages of story. When the bookkeepers said to look for a way to cut the cost of producing an issue, a plan was devised to pay the artists for drawing seventeen pages but to get eighteen pages of material out of them. The creative folks were instructed that in each issue, they would turn a piece of art board sideways and draw two pages on it…but be paid for one. Usually, it was a double-page spead but sometimes, if story-telling space was too tight to allow for such a spread, it consisted of panels such as the above.

It harmed the quality of the art because two pages didn't have the usual reduction. They were drawn almost printed-size and were therefore less detailed and a bit fuzzy. It also cost money because of added production costs. So that the lettering would be the same size as the rest of the book, the letterer had to letter on another piece of art board and then that lettering had to be statted down to the size of the art and pasted into place. There was also an ethical failing in the whole process. Comic book companies had always taken the position that even if the artist had to draw part of a page on a separate sheet as an overlay, they would count that as one page insofar as pay was concerned because it was one page in the printed comic. Now, the reverse was true…but they still paid for one page. Eventually, after six or eight months, someone realized the whole money-saving move wasn't saving any money and they stopped it.

During the time it was going on, I spent a week hanging around the Marvel offices and I saw how much grief it caused the production people to deal with these sideways pages. At the same time in the Marvel men's room, a sign was posted asking everyone not to waste bathroom supplies. I couldn't resist. I added a little sign that instructed everyone to turn one piece of toilet paper sideways and pretend it was two pieces.

As for the inking credits: During this period, Mike Esposito and Frank Giacoia were running a kind of tag-team inking squadron. They had a number of beginning artists assisting them and they'd ink a whole issue of something in a day or three with everyone pitching in and passing pages around. Some of the jobs were credited to Mike, some to Frank and some to both. When the original art was returned, they just split the inker share without much attention as to who'd inked what. The page looks to me like several folks had a hand in its inking, including both Frank and Mike.

George Will can be something of a ninny on some topics, especially when it comes to understanding "the other side" of the political spectrum. But when it comes to assessing his own side, he's usually pretty perceptive. In this piece, he explains why Rudy Giuliani's "pro-choice" position on abortion may not be that big an impediment to the Republican nomination. Sounds about right to me.

Here's a nice little promo for The Bob Newhart Show. No further explanation needed…

Salon is now running Berkeley Breathed's Opus comic strip as a weekly (Sunday) feature. Here we have the first installment. And here we have an interview with Mr. Breathed.

Hello from Super-Con in San Jose, where I spent the day Super-Conning, which mostly meant sitting next to Mark Waid in the exhibit hall and signing whatever comics he didn't write. There were one or two of them. Mark and I did a panel together and I also moderated a panel of Playboy cartoonists that consisted of Ray Lago, Russ Heath, Doug Sneyd and Dean Yeagle.

Nice to be at a comic book convention that's almost wholly devoted to comic books. There's nothing wrong with all the multimedia content that one now generally finds at something that is ostensibly a "comic book convention" but I'm happy the old-fashioned kind still exists.

This is my first time ever in San Jose and as with too many cities where I've attended conventions, I will go home having seen almost none of the town. When people ask me if I've ever been to, say, Houston, I'm not sure what to say. I was physically in Houston once for a convention…but all I saw of the place was the airport, a Marriott, a few restaurants near the Marriott and the freeways between the airport and the Marriott. Is that being in Houston? I guess so but if I say that, the next question is always either, "How'd you like it?" or they tick off a list of great places to visit that I didn't visit and ask me which ones I went to. (Answer: None.) This is true of perhaps a dozen other locales. I should try to stay an extra day or three in these cities and at least walk around but it never quite works with my schedule.

Years ago, there was some convention that kept inviting me and the dates never worked out. But once when I was considering making them work, I told the con organizer that I might want to stay an extra day or two and see some of the area. He said, "We were hoping you would. The day after the con, we're taking all our guests white-water rafting." If anyone ever asks you what activity you're least likely to catch Evanier doing, white-water rafting would be right up there between hang-gliding off Kilimanjaro and modern interpretative dance. I didn't even want to explain to the others why I wouldn't be joining them for the white-water rafting so I passed on that convention.

Some time later, one of the fellows who worked on that con was telling me it was great, that everyone had a good time, etc., and that I should have come and gone white-water rafting with them after the event. I said, "I notice you didn't take your guests white-water rafting before the convention," and he said, "Of course not. After the con, it's not as big a deal if someone gets hurt."

Dave Mackey, who probably qualifies as the world's ranking expert on Hal Seeger cartoons, if only by default, writes…

If you think the merchandising for The Milton The Monster Show was paltry, consider this: only one licensed item ever appeared for Batfink during his heyday — a Halloween costume.

I guess Seeger was too busy making cartoons to care about the licensing and such items that appeared for Milton were at the behest of ABC, who wanted to make their toy-maker sponsors happy with tie-in products.

Batfink was always a syndicated property. It was initially distributed by Screen Gems, though no "S-from-hell" (as the logo fanboys call it) ever appeared on the film prints.

I never met Hal Seeger, nor do I know a lot about him and his operation. However, I suspect he desperately wanted to generate merchandising of his characters and couldn't. You don't spend the bucks to make walk-around costumes of your characters unless you're trying hard to tell the toy industry, "Hey, how about us?" Matter of fact, at the Licensing Show in New York each year, it's almost a joke how these companies with properties that no one's ever heard of will parade around people dressed as their characters to try and drum up some interest.

Will Harris has a more important point to make about Milton the Monster…

All this talk of Milton the Monster and no Amazon link to the Shout! Factory set of the show that was released earlier this year.? Surely the massaging of people's memories would result in a few sales.and, therefore, a few cents here and there for newsfromme!

Gasp! What a horrible omission! Here's just such a link…and while you're at it, you can also pre-order the forthcoming Batfink DVD via this link. Thanks, Will. Can't imagine how I made such a foolish error.

Actually, this one's recommended only if you have a greater-than-normal interest in the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of that Kennedy guy in '63. Ron Rosenbaum rambles a lot and discusses his own personal reasons for deciding, as I did, that all the conspiracy theorists were full of Bandini. But in there, I think he says some good things about why some people believe what they believe.

This week when Earl Kress and I were on Stu's Show (as discussed here), one of the many animation-related subjects that was touched upon was Hal Seeger. Mr. Seeger was a producer of TV cartoons from the late sixties through the early seventies, though he didn't produce a lot. On Stu's Show, we said that one of Seeger's shows, Batfink, was on NBC. This was probably wrong. It may have aired on some NBC stations but it was actually a syndicated show.

Hal Seeger Productions had but one network series. It was called Milton the Monster and it debuted on ABC in October of 1965. At the time, The Addams Family and The Munsters were hot shows in prime time and so was Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. So someone, perhaps Mr. Seeger himself, got the idea to do a show about a big, lovable Frankenstein-type monster who talked a lot like Gomer. Bob McFadden supplied the voice and the cast also included Dayton Allen and Larry Best. It was a fairly clever show, with scripts by Jack Mercer, Kin Platt and Woody Kling.

Each half hour of Milton the Monster featured adventures of Milton and his monstrous supporting players, plus various other series that appeared in rotation. The two main ones were Fearless Fly, an insect super-hero, and a character named Stuffy Derma, who was a hobo who'd inherited millions of dollars. As a kid, I could never quite make much sense of Stuffy Derma, starting with his name. (A Stuffed Derma is a rare delicatessen specialty — roasted chicken intestines stuffed with matzo meal and something like chicken fat. But I didn't know that then and I'd be surprised if most of you ever knew that. Or would ever eat one.)

We have two clips here. One is the opening of The Milton the Monster Show. Watch it and then I'll meet you on the other side to introduce the second clip…

Hello on the other side. This next clip is apparently a home movie from Hal Seeger's collection. This is Hal (I think that's him) taking two people to the New York Toy Fair…two people dressed in walkaround costumes as Milton the Monster and Fearless Fly. This was presumably something he invested in to try and drum up some licensing interest in his characters; to perhaps get toy manufacturers to buy the rights to put out Milton the Monster dolls and Fearless Fly action figures…or something. I don't know of enough Milton merchandise to think that this campaign was too successful. There was a Milton board game from (appropriately) Milton-Bradley, a plastic frame-tray puzzle, one issue of a Gold Key comic book…and not a whole lot more.

The title card on this clip, which runs two and a half minutes, says it's from 1968 but I doubt that. Milton the Monster was out of production and off ABC by then, and pretty much dead as a viable property. All the merchandise I mentioned above came out in 1966 and this footage is probably from early that year. Here it is…

Over on his weblog, Alex Ness asks a bunch of people (I'm one of them) about the legacy of Jack Kirby.