WonderCon Events

The full programming schedule for this year's WonderCon is up on this page. However, you're only going to attend the panels I'm moderating, which are all listed on this page.

100 Candles

Photo by Stuart Shostak

Well, I'm not sure how many were actually on the cake, but that's how many veteran character actor Charles Lane should have blown out at his party earlier this evening. Lane, who turned 100 last Wednesday, was toasted by friends and other Hollywood professionals in what my friend Stu Shostak reports was a very big event. Here's some of what he wrote to me…

Mr. Lane is one of the nicest, most gracious people I have ever met. I was expecting a carbon copy of the characters he's played over the years, but he's just like Gale Gordon — very much the opposite, and with an incredible memory, to boot! He didn't miss a beat all day long and was very entertaining, too. I didn't get to spend all that much time talking with him, but after I told him who I was, he thanked me for all the films I gave the party committee to use for the clip reels, and he's looking forward to seeing the shows in their entirety…if he can figure out how to work his DVD player. I asked him if his VCR still flashes "12:00, 12:00, 12:00", and he joked back that he didn't know how to get it to do that!

I'm sorry I wasn't there. Stuart sent other photos that included shots of guests Shirley Mitchell, Cara Williams, Johnny Grant, Peggy Rea, Jay Sandrich, Bill Asher, Jimmy Garrett and Candy Moore (who played Lucille Ball's kids on The Lucy Show, which featured Charles Lane), William Schallert and others. Here's a shot of Mr. Lane thanking the attendees at the end…

Photo by Stuart Shostak

Stu supplied film clips out of his massive collection of vintage television shows, many of which can be ordered from his company, Shokus Video. I have been ordering from him since the days when everything he sold was on Beta, so that should give you some idea of his reliability. A glance through his catalog will show you that he has a lot of great old TV programs that you'll want to purchase. His reels of old commercials are special treasures and if you order anything at all from him, do yourself a favor and add a couple of them to your shopping cart. Thanks, Stuart, for the report and pics.

The Kirby Side

As you all know, Stan Lee recently won (though Marvel is appealing) a lawsuit that says he is entitled to millions of bucks for the motion pictures being made of Marvel characters. In this article, the nephew and daughter of Jack Kirby note that neither Kirby nor his estate have ever received any sort of real money from characters he co-created with Stan. I'll write more about this in a day or so.

Phil De Guere, R.I.P.

It doesn't seem to have made the press reports yet but writer-director-producer Phil De Guere passed away last week from cancer. He was best known for his work on the shows Simon and Simon, Max Headroom, and the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone. In fact, he can be heard on the commentary track of the recently-released Twilight Zone DVDs. Comic fans will also recall that he wrote and directed the 1978 TV-Movie of Dr. Strange.

I did not know Phil well, but I could see he was well-liked and respected by the folks he worked with. Let's hope we've gotten the deaths of all the real good, talented people who are going to die this year out of the way in January.

Dave Barry

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Dave Barry (no relation to the humor columnist of the same name) was one of the great stand-up comedians and also a terrific cartoon voice actor. Among many other roles, he's the guy who did Humphrey Bogart so well in the Bugs Bunny cartoons that people always try to tell me it really was Bogey. No, it wasn't.

For a guy who did The Ed Sullivan Show and other top programs so many times, Dave Barry is amazingly forgotten. His Internet Movie Database listing has a tiny fraction of his on-camera and voiceover credits, frustrating many folks (including cartoon voice buffs) who are interested in him. I was privileged to meet Mr. Barry on two occasions, and to see what was probably his last Vegas engagement, which was at the old Mint Hotel, just before it closed in 1988…so I get occasional questions about him. I also get a lot of hits on this page where I posted an obit for him back in 2001. Jerry Beck, over at Cartoon Brew, recently responded to a reader inquiry by digging up these old photos of the man. Art Binninger recently discovered that Barry played himself (a nightclub comedian) in a fourth season episode of the Barbara Eden sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie, and I clicked off the above screen grab. That's Dave, sporting one of the toupees that he used to admit to and joke about in his act.

It's Episode #111 entitled "Jeannie-Go-Round."  If you watch I Dream of Jeannie reruns, keep your eye out for it.  Because I can't think of anywhere else you can see Barry at work these days. He was a pretty funny fellow and deserves a little remembrance.

Cream of the Crop

As you may have heard, a couple of DVD consumers have filed a class-action lawsuit against MGM's home video division and they're inviting others to join them. The assertion is that MGM is marketing "widescreen" versions of their movies that do not really show the entire, wide frame. Instead, they claim, MGM is taking the standard non-widescreen images, chopping off the tops and bottoms, and passing this off as a widescreen presentation. What these guys are alleging struck me as unfounded but I didn't fully realize why until I read this article.

Down, Not Out

William Messner-Loebs is a very talented comic book writer-artist. I barely know him but when I read articles like this one, I simultaneously wince in sympathy and smile in admiration of his courage. Talk about having your share of bad luck and several other folks' shares, as well. The industry and the comic art community need to do something for this guy.

Busy, Busy, Busy…

I have had a sudden avalanche of e-mails, just at a time when I'm struggling to finish a script…plus, of course, I have to get ready for the big day tomorrow. So if you sent me something in the last week or so and I haven't responded, my apologies. I am not usually that rude. When things clear up, I will try to catch up.

Set the TiVo

This week on 60 Minutes Wednesday: A report on Stan Lee and his lawsuit against Marvel Comics. Hope someone fact-checks the documents.

Recommended Reading

Tom Dreesen, one of the good guys of the comedy biz, discusses what it was like to entertain troops in Iraq over Christmas.

Comix Commentary

Tom Spurgeon decides he likes comic books more than graphic novels. There's something to be said for this view.

Recommended Reading

Here's a short Q-and-A that explains what the Iraqi elections are all about.

Recommended Reading

Ron Paul is a Republican congressman with strong Libertarian tendencies. I agree with some things he says and disagree strongly with others, but always find him interesting to read. Here he is asking a bunch of relevant questions about the Iraq War.

Captain Sticky, R.I.P.

Captain Sticky and Stan Lee, Photo by Alan Light

Here's a picture of two super-heroes at the 1975 San Diego Comic Convention. The one at right is Stan Lee, and he's quite the super-hero but this posting is not about him. The gent at left is Richard Pesta, who was known to many as Captain Sticky, and I just now found out that he passed away almost a year ago.

Billing himself as the world's only real-life super-hero, Captain Sticky was a fixture of the early San Diego cons. He operated out of that city, driving around in his Stickymobile (a highly-customized Lincoln Continental), functioning as a flamboyant crusader, mostly for consumer rights. For a few years there, he often appeared on the news, battling various injustices that ranged from nursing home abuse to auto mechanic rip-offs. As I understood it, he got results largely by just showing up at the crime scene. He was one of those colorful characters that no reporter could resist. So if he pulled up outside your business, so did the TV cameras…and if you had a lick of sense, you'd just correct whatever he thought needed correction.

That he righted some wrongs is undeniable, but a lot of us were skeptical about this person, who'd named himself based on his love of peanut butter. He sometimes claimed to be independently wealthy and said his heroic exploits were his way of "giving back" to society. Maybe…but he was also constantly trying to get writers and artists to whip up pilot issues of a planned Captain Sticky comic book and blanched at the suggestion that he pony up a bit of cash. Around the time of the above photo, Marvel was interested in publishing his exploits, and a fine writer-artist named Don Rico was engaged to produce the first issue. This lasted until Don discovered that Marvel was expecting the Good Captain to underwrite the costs, while Sticky was expecting Marvel to shower all with currency. Don quit, I turned it down and so did everyone else I knew.

But as I said, the guy did some good…and he had a real flair for self-promotion. The TV series, Real People, briefly made a celebrity of him and he turned up at a lot of public functions all over California in the late seventies and early eighties. I don't recall seeing him anywhere after around 1985. This article fills in the rest of the story and tells us of his death last February.

My thanks to Alan Light for the photo (he took it) and for calling my attention to the obit. Rest in peace, Sticky.

A Few More Johnny Links

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Nick Madigan reports on how Johnny spent his retirement years.

Warren Francke examines Johnny's Nebraska roots.

Former Tonight Show writer Tom Finnigan remembers.

David Letterman will be back from vacation on Monday night and will do a show about Johnny. He has former Tonight Show producer Peter Lassally and former Tonight Show bandleader Doc Severinsen, plus clips from both Johnny's shows and Johnny's appearances on Letterman's old NBC program.