Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Oops!

I haven't seen the new Looney Tunes DVD yet but a reader named "Booksteve" informs me that the documentary narrated by Stan Freberg and included on the DVD has an error in it. There's a photo of voice actress Bea Benaderet, he says, that is identified as June Foray.

Booksteve writes, "Stan should be incensed!" He's right. A few years ago, the Rhino Records people put out a boxed set of comedy CDs that included one of the records that Stan did with his sometimes-sidekick, Daws Butler. In the accompanying booklet, there was a photo of Daws identified as Stan. Mr. Freberg says he called Rhino and told them about it and the response was, "Are you sure?"

• Posted at 5:52 PM · LINK

Bogus Beagle?

For my various websites, I often cobble up little graphics using existing artwork, tweaking the drawings and adding lettering and such. My first site was called www.evanier.com and for a time, its front page looked like this and included the little Peanuts picture seen above at left. I don't recall where I found the Snoopy drawing but I slapped the text on it and used it for a few months. During that time, my site rose to near the top of the mighty Google and Yahoo search engines. If you went to either then and searched for "Peanuts," that drawing was often the first thing to pop up...and it's still somewhere in their databases.

Even since www.evanier.com turned into www.POVonline.com (which is still up and running and well worth a visit), my old Peanuts graphic remains findable on the 'net. And of course, you also may be able to find whatever Schulz drawing I found a couple years ago when I made it.

Recently, the drawing at above right was auctioned on eBay, advertised as an authentic Schulz sketch. In this thread over on the Comics Journal message board, questions were raised as to its authenticity. Most of the experts there not only decided it was phony but that it had been traced from the same Schulz drawing, possibly even from the graphic I had on my site. The eBay vendor, who popped into the thread to defend his honor, says he bought it at a show in Texas but doesn't say when. And it does appear to be a fake...though I must admit that late in life, Mr. Schulz did a couple of sketches that at first glance, I might have thought were forgeries.

What he didn't do was to draw in such simple but rigid linework or to trace himself and replicate an earlier drawing so closely. If asked for an "official" opinion, such as in a court of law, I'd want to examine the original first. But from this distance, it sure looks like it wasn't by Schulz...though it's closer than some that have been sold by galleries and on eBay. At any given point over the last few years, eBay has had a couple of alleged Schulz sketches that a graduate of Braille Institute could tell were not by him, to say nothing of fake art by others. "Caveat emptor" doesn't begin to describe it.

• Posted at 4:30 PM · LINK

Fire Watch

A lot of folks on message boards seem to be confused or concerned about where all the big fires in Southern California are located. This map may be of help.

• Posted at 10:20 AM · LINK

Animated Animals

Over at the L.A. Times site, Charles Solomon has an article and an online video all about the way the relationship between humans and wildlife gets portrayed in animation. Just click on this link.

• Posted at 10:08 AM · LINK

Just To Clarify...

There already was a U.S. postage stamp with Snoopy on it, and there have been a lot of different ones in other countries. What I meant was that there could be a stamp that more or less celebrated the life of Charles Schulz without actually depicting him. There could be a whole series of Peanuts stamps and there probably will be. Also, back in 1995, there was a run of stamps devoted to great newspaper comic strips. It included The Yellow Kid, The Katzenjammer Kids, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Bringing Up Father, Krazy Kat, Rube Goldberg's inventions, Toonerville Folks, Gasoline Alley, Barney Google, Little Orphan Annie, Popeye, Blondie, Dick Tracy, Alley Oop, Nancy, Flash Gordon, Li'l Abner, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant and Brenda Starr.

• Posted at 2:23 AM · LINK

Plug Your Friends (an ongoing series)

Michael Reaves has two new projects out. He was an editor of Shadows Over Baker Street, an anthology of original stories by various authors, including Neil Gaiman. This is the book that asks the musical question: What would happen if Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos crossed paths?

Michael also wrote the screenplay for the new new direct-to-DVD animated movie, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. I haven't seen it yet but Michael's a good writer and the folks at WB Animation do fine work.

• Posted at 12:44 AM · LINK

Additional Info

I mistyped when I wrote, "Rumor has it that we will see a Charles Schulz stamp before long." Yes, I know you can't be on a stamp until you've been dead for ten years — U.S. presidents, excepted. What I should have written was, "Rumor has it that we will see a Charles Schulz stamp as soon as enough time has passed." In this case, that would be in the year 2010. As my pal Tom Galloway noted in an e-mail, there could be a Charlie Brown or Snoopy stamp before that time, just as there have been Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck stamps. But such a stamp couldn't have a likeness of Schulz on it.

And someone who signs his name simply "Brian" reminds me that the Andy Warhol stamp was an Andy Warhol self-portrait.

Another pal, Larry Steller, suggests I make it clear to you that there are two new Looney Tunes DVDs out — a four-disc set and a two-disc set. All of the cartoons on the two-disc set are on the four-disc set. So you don't want to buy the two-disc set. You want to buy the four-disc set, which you can do by clicking here.

• Posted at 12:16 AM · LINK

October 29, 2003 • Current • October 27, 2003