Friday, September 5, 2003

No Cartoonist At All

The current storyline in the Zippy the Pinhead newspaper strip has its cartoonist, Bill Griffith, lecturing Zippy on the art of cartooning. (Here's a link to a page where Griffith displays recent efforts and offers the originals for sale.) In the 9/4 strip, Griffith proclaims, "Any cartoonist who doesn't do th' final drawing for his or her comics is no cartoonist at all in my book." And in the 9/5 one, which may not be posted yet, he takes off after cartoonists who use assistants and don't even do their own lettering.

So according to Bill Griffith, Elzie Segar was no cartoonist at all. Neither were (or are) Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Alex Raymond, Mort Walker, Hal Foster, Floyd Gottfredson, Garry Trudeau, Dik Browne, Chester Gould, Roy Crane, Hank Ketcham, George McManus, Leonard Starr, Johnny Hart, Chic Young, Mike Peters, Harvey Kurtzman, Steve Ditko, Burne Hogarth, Neal Adams, Roy Crane and...well, you get the idea. Some of those folks did their work solo for a time, especially early on, but usually chose to employ letterers and/or assistants. Even Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés and Jack Davis have had others do their lettering, and Carl Barks sometimes had his wife inking backgrounds and doing lettering.

In one panel, Griffith asks, "Did an assistant drip the paint for Jackson Pollack?" Apparently not, but Rembrandt, Rubens and Michelangelo had help with some rather acclaimed work. I guess Rembrandt was no painter at all.

Actually, I think it's great when a cartoonist does his or her work without help if they're able. Some aren't, especially some of the folks who did daily strips back in the day when they involved a lot more labor than a strip like Griffith's does today. Some aren't very good at lettering and/or figure that the time they save by having someone else letter or ink backgrounds is time they can put into writing or the main drawing. Some simply find that they don't work well in isolation and that working with someone else spurs their creativity. Milton Caniff needed a letterer because he was left-handed and if he lettered his strip himself, he was always smudging the wet ink.

Griffith's sentiments cause me to wonder if he is aware how many great cartoonists haven't done it all alone, or if he really thinks none of those men produced good comic art. If the latter, I would be tempted to suggest that even Bill Griffith's best work doesn't convince me he's good enough to ink backgrounds for any of the above-named artists. Except maybe Rubens.

• Posted at 9:37 PM · LINK

Broadway Does Broadway

If I were in New York on Sunday, I'd probably brave the crush and attend "Broadway on Broadway," a free concert being performed in Times Square starting at 11:30 AM. Almost every musical playing on Broadway (and a few about to open) sends over a couple of performers to do a number from their show, and they're sometimes quite wonderful. Here's a list of the tentative line-up.

All of the announcements say that the concert will be taped and chopped down to an hour for broadcast on NBC4 New York on Tuesday, September 9 at 7:00 PM. This should mean that thanks to my satellite dish, I'll be able to pick it up. But so far, no one has told TiVo about this event. It still thinks Extra is airing at that time, followed by Access Hollywood. I may have to settle for watching (but not hearing) via this link to a webcam that's pointed at the stage.

• Posted at 8:35 PM · LINK

Why I Don't Ride Roller Coasters

One man was killed and ten other folks were injured this morning when something went amiss on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. It's sad, it's shocking, it's awful and you just know Disney execs are convening, even as you read this, to discuss how much it's going to cost them in lawsuits and bad p.r. The park has a pretty good track record for safety (though I believe there was one previous accident on this particular ride) and they'll probably take steps to make it even better.

Nevertheless, they ain't getting me on one of them things. I don't mind a gentle Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean but the whole concept of a roller coaster strikes me as masochism of the first order. A roller coaster, to me, is where you pay money to have them do something to you that, if it happened on a bus, you'd sue the company.

The rhetoric of roller coasters always reminded me of recreational drugs. I used to have acquaintances who'd offer me stuff and say, "Here, try this. It'll make you feel like your entire stomach is leaking out of your ears." My reply was usually along the lines of, "You know...I think I just might be able to live my entire life without experiencing that." Other friends (and even some of the same ones) would try to get me to go on roller coasters by saying, "On the way you feel like your head is inflating and on the way down, it's like someone stuck a pin in it." The descriptions always made me wonder what they'd say if they were trying to convince me it would be unpleasant.

I'm sure there's some kind of joy there for some, but I'm afraid it eludes me. I also don't understand why apparently rational human beings get pierced or tattooed or jump out of airplanes or eat squid, smoke cigarettes or go to Pauly Shore movies. Here's a link, by the way, to a site that reports on the safety of amusement and theme park rides. Here's a link to four articles that I wrote about my Disneyland experiences, including the time comic book artist Wendy Pini dragged me on the Indiana Jones ride. And if all this has got you thinking about Disneyland, here's a great website that displays postcards from what is usually the Happiest Place on Earth.

• Posted at 8:01 PM · LINK

Another Cover Gallery

The script I'm working on will be twenty minutes late because that's how long I spent this evening browsing the Esquire Magazine Cover Gallery, an online display of every cover in that publication's robust history. Of special note are the ones from the late sixties when George Lois was in charge and coming up with incredible designs and cover concepts. (The insides of the magazine were pretty good back then, too. But it was often worth buying just for what Lois put on the front of it.) The cover I picked out to display above left from October, 1969 wasn't one of the cleverer ones but it was by the wonderful Marie Severin and it adorned the issue that contained a wonderful feature on Marvel Comics, back when the whole world hadn't heard of the X-Men. My favorite was probably the one above right from May, 1968 with Nixon in make-up for that year's presidential run. But I also liked March, 1969 (fake paparazzi photos of Howard Hughes) and April, 1968 (Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian). And look around. A lot of them are wonderful.

• Posted at 12:59 AM · LINK

September 6, 2003 • Current • September 4, 2003