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Monday, May 19, 2003UpdateHere's a link to the final part of Bob Rozakis's history of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Thank you, Michael Kilgore. • Posted at 9:48 PM · LINKFailure is ImpossibleIn 1978, the then-new management of DC Comics decided to embark on an expansion plan they called "The DC Explosion." New books were created, new back-up features were written and drawn, production was hastily increased...and then suddenly, it all fell apart. In what some (inevitably) dubbed "The DC Implosion," the new projects were cancelled and a lot of completed material was "written off," meaning that they decided never to publish it. But they did publish some of it in two very-limited editions reproduced by Xerox. The two issues of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade contained little in the way of wonderful material but were so rare as to evoke mega-prices and great curiosity. That's the short version of the story. A longer explanation has been written by my pal Bob Rozakis, who was working for DC at the time. Here's Part One of a series of columns he wrote detailing the history of one of comics' scarcest publications. And since there don't seem to be any links on that site to take you from one installment of Bob's column to the next, here are links to Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, and Part Eight. I think there are other parts beyond those but these are all I could locate. If you'd like to see these "lost" comics, there are bootleg copies sold from time to time at conventions. Scans also seem to turn up from time to time on the Internet. At the moment, this website is displaying many of the stories, at least until some DC lawyer suggests that ain't a good idea. A few of the stories are pretty good, and the worst are no worse than lots of stuff that made it into print at the time. Interestingly, the comic from that period that seems to hold up better than any others for me is Joe Simon's Prez. The book was quite controversial at the time, inexplicably hated by a number of comic fans who didn't like that DC was wandering into the domain of humor comics. In hindsight, it may have been the cleverest, freshest thing the company published for years. The fifth issue never made it to real publication but was included in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade and demonstrates why Prez is on my list of comics that were considered flops but which I think the publisher just gave up on too soon. • Posted at 8:18 PM · LINKAmazing...I didn't think it was possible but William F. Buckley Jr. actually makes me feel sorry for Bill Bennett. I think Buckley is wrong, by the way, about Bennett's public career being through. If all those guys caught lying and covering-up in the first Bush administration can come back in this one, Bennett can come back. He can certainly get more books published and purchased. I also think Buckley and all the pundits are wrong to even talk about which invasions of privacy are off-limits in politics. Nothing is, these days. It's nice to say that some areas should not be subjected to public scrutiny but that's no longer how it works in the real world. In the age of Drudge and various anti-Drudges, if you have dirt on a political opponent, you make sure it gets out. You may throw it yourself or you may arrange for it to be leaked in a manner that will keep your hands clean. But there is no such thing in politics as someone saying, "Yes, I know this information will wound my opponent but out of respect for his right to privacy, I'm going to withhold it." It should happen but it just doesn't. • Posted at 7:40 PM · LINKMoose and SquirrelNo online seller seems to be taking advance orders for it yet, but we are told that Columbia-TriStar will on August 12 release Rocky & Bullwinkle: The Complete First Season on DVD. It's a three-disc set for $39.95 and I have no idea what episodes are in it, or even what they define as the first season, since the first bled rather seamlessly into the second. I'm guessing they're including the other cartoons in addition to the Rocky-Bullwinkle segments. By the way, the first Rocky-Bullwinkle storyline, which was all about a jet fuel formula and a Mooseberry Bush, was nowhere near as wonderful as what was to follow. The show originally debuted on ABC on November 29, 1959 as Rocky and His Friends. In 1961, it moved to NBC as The Bullwinkle Show and later was marketed under both those names and as The Rocky Show or Rocky & Bullwinkle. In total, there were 326 Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons which formed 28 separate serials. There were also 91 Fractured Fairy Tales, 91 Mr. Peabody cartoons, 39 Aesop and Son, 39 Dudley Do-Right and a whole mess of interstitial shorts (39 of Bullwinkle's Corner, 50 of Mr. Know-It-All, and 10 sessions of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Fan Club). Crunching numbers, I'm figuring that to put all of this out on video would take at least 42 hours of media. I may be wildly off on my math since, after all, I grew up watching cartoons instead of studying. Anyway, the fact that it's coming out is the good news. The bad news is how much this will eventually cost us but, hey, we all spend money on stuff that isn't half this good. And there may be some bad news in the announcement that the first release will include a booklet and a Bullwinkle hand puppet. This sounds like another of those ungainly packages that won't fit neatly on my DVD shelves. • Posted at 3:31 PM · LINKCon JobsA couple of "pro-family" groups are currently trying to gin up a crusade against comic book and science-fiction conventions as hotbeds of "pornography." I put those two terms in quotes since those are their terms, and I don't consider them accurate. "Pro-family" is one of those labels you adopt to put a noble, responsible face on what is generally a reactionary, restrictive view of what families are or should be. An awful lot of soft bigotry is marketed under the brand name of "pro-family," much of it doing more damage to the concept of family than good. At the same time, most of those groups have a definition of "pornography" that is hysterical, utterly out of touch with mainstream America, and often indicative of a pretty ugly attitude towards sex. The American Family Association is one such crusading organization, and their current campaign against comic conventions (exemplified by this report on a recent con in Pittsburgh) is pretty silly. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Playboy magazine and some of the women who've appeared in it can be seen at cons. You wonder if these people have been out in public lately. Playboy is pretty mild, given some of the forms of titillation that their kids can't help but see in stores, airports, on commercial TV, etc. Recently on some website, I saw someone say — and I'll bet this is true — that in spite of products that claim to restrict access, any kid who's smart enough to navigate the Internet is smart enough to locate hardcore porn and to hide that from their folks. One gets the feeling that the current attention paid to comic conventions and the Playmates therein is merely a matter of someone looking for an easy target. Like Harold Hill getting the people of River City needlessly worried about the presence of a pool table in their community, the con-man needs his alarmist cause. Certainly, groups like the A.F.A. need to constantly broadcast alerts to keep their name in the newspapers and the donations rolling in. (One of my big complaints about anti-porn crusaders is that they favor the defenseless, easy target. They'll go after the corner newsstand for selling one magazine but not after Time-Warner for distributing it. And when was the last time you saw an anti-violence crusader mention the name of Rupert Murdoch?) One also gets the feeling that the campaign against comic conventions will not amount to much. If any parents are prompted to keep their kids away from them as a result, the drop in attendance will more than be offset by those who will show up in the hope that the cons are as decadent as advertised. I am reminded of back in the late sixties and the science-fiction convention scene in Southern California. The cons were at hotels where the pool would occasionally be the scene of some very brief skinny-dipping by people you really didn't want to see naked. Nevertheless, reporters sometimes mentioned it so at every con, you could spot a few attendees who'd showed up just to be around when and if that happened. The one way in which campaigns like the one the A.F.A. is mounting might hurt comic conventions is if they manage to intimidate facilities into not renting to the cons. This will probably not occur with conventions held in private hotels. I mean, the Marriott chain makes a lot of bucks off the hardcore "X" movies people watch in their rooms, so they're not about to go kicking cons out just because there's a Playmate on the premises. But a lot of conventions are held in "civic" or city-owned convention centers. Unless the convention is extremely lucrative for local businesses, as the big one in San Diego is, it's possible that pressure can successfully be brought on such venues to oust the comic conventions — or, more likely, get them to become stricter about what can and cannot be displayed. It would not be the dumbest thing in the world for convention organizers to become a little more sensitized to this issue. Buried somewhere beneath the hysteria and myopia of the A.F.A., there's probably a legitimate parental concern. Sometimes, the X-rated magazines and starlets at conventions are uncomfortably close to where they're selling the Archie Comics. There are comic book shops that want to have it both ways: To be the family-friendly place where parents feel it's safe to let the kids browse for Scooby Doo funnybooks, but also to have porn stars in to sign their wares. It would not be censorship if these conventions and stores remembered that some patrons might not want to see, or want their children to see the lady with her breasts sticking out of her Vampirella costume. Respecting such feelings might just be a matter of courtesy, but it could also be good business. And a way of not inviting needless trouble. • Posted at 1:19 PM · LINKLong RunsLes Miserables closed last night on Broadway after an amazing 6,680 performances. That number is even more impressive when you consider how few shows get over the 4,000 mark — let alone all the way to six thousand and change. Les Miz lasted more than twice as long as the original Fiddler on the Roof, which at one time held the record. Here's how the top ten currently breaks down in terms of number of performances...
Some might argue that some of those shows lasted as long as they did because of clever promotional deals — and perhaps they did, but that's part of how the game is played. The revival of Oh! Calcutta! was around for 13 years, at least in part, because they staged it in a small theater, got the running costs down to where they could make a profit when half-full, and offered packages to tour groups that wanted to see something naughty without braving New York's famed porn palaces. (I once heard a lady who was in the show say that it probably also set some sort of record for walk-outs, as well as for playing to charter busloads of Japanese tourists.) In any case, there are theater buffs who argue that it shouldn't be eligible for lists like this. If it isn't, the next in line would be a non-musical — Life With Father — that hung in there for 3224 outings. Filling out the Top 20 would be Tobacco Road, Rent, Hello Dolly, My Fair Lady, the current revival of Chicago, Annie, the original Man of La Mancha, Abie's Irish Rose, and The Lion King. Three of those are still running but I don't think anyone thinks that any of the above shows but Phantom has a chance of beating out Cats for the top slot. The Lion King, for instance, would have to run another twelve years and three months to achieve that. One other thing I noticed as I just looked at a whole list of Broadway shows and how long they ran: I think the funniest musical ever done was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and I think the funniest non-musical was The Odd Couple. And I just noticed that the original productions of these two shows each ran exactly the same number of performances: 964. I'm sure that doesn't prove anything but isn't it kinda interesting? No? Okay, I'm going to bed. Good night. • Posted at 2:12 AM · LINKComic Artist Website of the DayOnce upon a time, Kyle Baker did things like inking super-hero comics for Marvel. What a waste. Oh, he did them okay but when we saw him start to write and draw all by his lonesome, we saw one of the most creative cartooning talents to emerge in many a moon. You can just begin to scratch the surface over at his website. But check out the portfolio there and you'll see what I mean. • Posted at 1:36 AM · LINKReal George |
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May 18, 2003
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