Friday, January 2, 2004

Books 2 Buy

I was a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes up until about the time everyone became a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes. That was when the strip got a little too complex for my tastes. I'm sure it was fine for what it was but I could never quite keep track of who was who...a problem I later learned I shared with several folks who wrote or drew the strip. When I was offered the chance to become one of the former, I surveyed the high volume of unread issues in my collection and realized that since Legion fans demanded tight continuity, I'd have to read and absorb every one of those comics just to write my first story. And that, dear friend, explains why I never wrote the Legion of Super-Heroes. Still, I enjoyed most of The Legion Companion, a good, new book that primarily consists of interviews with darn near everyone who ever worked on the comic and is still around to interview...plus there are some posthumous interviews, as well. If you're at all interested in the Legion, you'll want this book, end of review.

Well, I should add one thing since I suspect we'll hear more about this. One of the interviews is with the gent who drew the first Legion story, Al Plastino. Mr. Plastino was a long-time artist for the Superman comics. He was generally the second-string artist and he did a lot of swiping and emulation of whoever was then the first-string guy. When he signed on in the late forties, it was Wayne Boring but by the sixties, it was Curt Swan, and in-between, Plastino did a long, slow morph from aping one to the other. Around '71, he got out of comics and applied his flair for mimicry to newspaper strips, carrying on several by replicating the style of a departed artist. At one point, the list almost included Peanuts.

It is common knowledge that Charles Schulz never used ghosts or assistants during his (almost) half-century drawing Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Less well known is that at one point, someone at the syndicate commissioned Plastino, who was replicating other strips for them, to ghost a couple weeks of Peanuts. They never saw print in newspapers, and rumor has it that Schulz was furious that they were even done. In the interview, Plastino says they were done when Schulz had his heart bypass operation, just in case he took longer to recover than anticipated. I'm not sure this is so. Schulz had that operation in '81 and I'm pretty sure I heard about Plastino doing the pages well before then. Anyway, the Legion Companion has small reproductions of a couple of them and they look like pretty close replicas, closer than most of the Mad Magazine simulations. And as I said, we may hear more about this.

One other thing about the Legion. Neither this book nor Bill Schelly's fine book on Otto Binder (discussed here) tells the story of how that strip came to be, quite the way I heard it. I'm not saying they're wrong but in the next week or so, when I get the time, I'll write up the version that was related to me by someone in a unique position to investigate the matter. Watch this space. And in the meantime, you can order The Legion Companion and most of the other books I'm recommending these days over at the TwoMorrows website...where soon, they will be taking advance orders for my next book from them, Superheroes In My Pants. Can't wait.

• Posted at 9:18 PM · LINK

Political Thought for a New Year

One of the many things which amaze me about politics is the unerring capacity for self-delusion evident in some folks. I'm speaking now of the flurry of articles we're now seeing that suggest the next presidential election is pretty much over. They come from all sides. You have your Bush bashers who are staking out their seats at the inauguration of President Dean. You have your Bush supporters explaining how the Democrats have no chance, no how. I think all of these folks are seriously full of bovine excrement.

You'd think that after last time, when we didn't know who was going to be prez for weeks after the election, they'd be a little reticent to decide it's over before one primary vote has been cast. And in truth, I think a lot of folks know it's wide open, and they're just saying what they're saying to (a) boost their guy a little, (b) torture the other side and (c) maybe try to convince themselves.

A lot can happen between now and Election Day. Osama could be captured. There could be another terrorist attack. Someone in the Halliburton or Enron scandals could roll over and testify against someone powerful. The economy could rebound beyond anyone's dreams or plunge to unforeseen depths. We could find those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction that, as hard as Bush's guys try to pretend otherwise, are the reason much of America got behind the war. If and when Saddam Hussein goes on trial, God only knows what he's going to say. Today, the political sites seem to be buzzing with rumors that the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame scandal is going to indict Karl Rove. If that happens, who can say how that will affect the election? And we can all sit here and name another hundred maybes, any of which could change the dynamic of the election.

It's a long time 'til November. Today, a number of political sites are making that point by linking to this article which appeared much closer to the '92 election than we are now to the '04 one. It basically explains how unlikely it was that Bill Clinton could possibly beat George Bush. More to the point, I recall a Saturday Night Live sketch that appeared in November of '91. It had SNL cast members playing the various Democratic candidates debating over which of them should be the guy to lose to Bush. The skit was built on the premise that no Democrat could possibly win and, of course, one did. (The sketch was so premature, they didn't even have Clinton in it. Phil Hartman played Mario Cuomo, instead.)

Today, a Time/CNN poll says that if the election were held today, Bush would beat Dean by 5%, Lieberman by 6%, Kerry or Gephardt by 9%. That's not much of a margin, given that the poll has a 3 point margin of error, and all those Democrats could still enhance the ticket with a good choice of running mate. If you go state by state, figuring who's likely to get which electoral votes, there are an awful lot that are too close to call.

I may not pay much attention to the election for the next few months. It's going to be too much of a roller coaster ride, and I have the feeling that something is going to happen later this year which will make it a brand new ball game. But I know I'm not going to pay any attention to those who tell me that the election result is predestined, even if...make that especially if they tell me what I want to hear.

• Posted at 7:40 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Former Congressman Pete McCloskey writes about how Republican attitudes have changed towards environmental issues.

• Posted at 12:03 PM · LINK

Books 2 Buy

Among the many things I liked about this new book on Dick Giordano was its sub-title: "Changing Comics, One Day at a Time." Michael Eury, who authored the book, said a lot of perceptive things about Dick but that may have been the wisest. Since the late sixties when he ascended to the top editorial position at Charlton, Dick has been changing comics, almost always for the better and almost always without sufficient notice. Charlton was a company that paid its writers and artists abominably and then printed their works on a glorified ditto machine. That Giordano was able to elevate the quality of their wares at all was a stunning achievement. He then moved to DC where as an editor, he was uncommonly "creator-friendly." He didn't last long in that niche but he definitely had an impact, helping to redefine the editor/talent relationship, again for the better. For a while after, he worked mainly as an artist, often in a partnership with Neal Adams, and gave inspiration and first jobs to a pretty vast array of new talents. (For a time, half the artists in the business were trying to ink like Joe Sinnott and the other half were trying to ink like Dick Giordano.) Eventually, he moved back to the DC offices, at a point where the company had evolved closer to his style of editorial management. It was all for the better but it was never abrupt. Dick just did what he did and waited for the industry to catch up to him. Michael Eury does a fine job of telling that story and giving us good insight into the man, so I am pleased to recommend Dick Giordano: Changing Comics One Day at a Time, published by my friends at TwoMorrows Publishing. Go to their site to buy a copy...or wait a day or three until I finish recommending several of their new releases.

• Posted at 11:15 AM · LINK

Conversation With the Artist

Every year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I get to interview the greats and the near-greats of comic book history. It's always fun but it's never been more fun than a few years ago when I got to chat with Nick Cardy, a wonderful artist best known for Teen Titans, Bat Lash and Aquaman. Nick had never been interviewed in public and was afraid he wouldn't have enough to say, so I added three of his friends to the dais. As you can see, I didn't need 'em. I just asked Nick a question and off he went, delighting the crowd with tales of heroism in World War II and working for DC Comics. Guess which was more dangerous. Anyway, I have just posted two columns made up of highlights from that interview. Click here. You'll be teleported to Part One, and you can find your way from there.

• Posted at 12:53 AM · LINK