Thursday, April 1, 2004

Gold Key Klassics

Here are three more of these obscure Gold Key comic books based on popular TV shows of the day. The one-shot Barney Miller comic book was drawn by Dan Spiegle and is almost impossible to find these days due to the thriving interest in "Good Abe Vigoda art." (By the way, did you know that Abe Vigoda's brother Bill was a comic book artist? He worked mainly for the Archie books.) This issue features a book-length story in which Wojciehowicz arrests a man who turns out to be a prominent TV producer. While in the slammer, the producer "discovers" Fish and offers him a big part in an upcoming series. For a brief time, Fish has stars in his eyes but soon realizes it's a kind of bribe when the producer tells him, "Of course, if I go to jail, I won't be doing the show." The veteran cop's sense of civic duty overcomes his dreams of Hollywood, and he refuses to persuade the judge to go easy on the guy. A pretty good issue but we didn't see enough of Barney or the other squad room dwellers.

The Three's Company comic book lasted only two issues, both of which were released in 1978. A story that makes the rounds says that a third issue was prepared and sent to press but that when Suzanne Somers was abruptly dropped from the TV series, that third issue (which centered around her character of Chrissy) was hurriedly aborted. A quick check of the dates shows that this is obviously not so, since Ms. Somers' problems with the show occurred in 1980, long after the comic had ceased publication. Another spurious account says that the third issue was scrubbed because it featured the Ropers and they could not contractually appear in the comic book once they'd been spun off from Three's Company to their own series. The dates almost work out for that to be possible but given that they appeared for some time after on other Three's Company merchandise, this seems unlikely. During this period, a lot of Gold Key's TV-based books (including the impossible-to-find one issue of The Waverly Wonders) were being cancelled so it's probable that the expiration of the Three's Company comic book was due to natural causes. This is a shame since it really was a fun comic, drawn out of Western Publishing's New York office by Jack Sparling. The first issue, pictured above, has Chrissy inheriting a mansion which (at first) is cause for jubilation among the roommates because they can finally move out of the apartment and away from the constant moaning of Mr. Roper. But then it turns out that the mansion is reportedly haunted and that a clause in the will of Chrissy's late Aunt Hortense says she will forfeit her inheritance if she does not spend one full night in the place. Jack and Janet go with her to help her through a rather chilling evening...made all the more difficult by a disgruntled relative, Cousin Frank, who stands to inherit the place if Chrissy doesn't stick it out until dawn. Cousin Frank happens to be a movie special effects artist and...well, you can figure the rest out from that.

Lastly, I still have no idea what possessed Western Publishing to put out a comic book based on The Ed Sullivan Show. This was one of the first Gold Key books and one of the oddest. They seem to have been interested primarily in Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse that appeared routinely on Ed's Sunday night variety show and that is perhaps understandable. But why did they think the comic book buying public would be interested in a strip about, as the cover says, "Jew Comedian Myron Cohen"? It's six very boring pages of Mr. Cohen just standing there, telling jokes about his relatives. Even at that, it's more entertaining than the three-page story about the plate spinner, the four-page trained seal act or the attempt to re-create in comic book form, a musical number by "British pop singing star Shani Wallis." The Beatles, who are advertised on the cover, appear in only a single-page gag that is really only about Ringo. (His drum set gets lost just before showtime so he winds up playing on the stomach of a tortoise.) Each strip is "introduced" by Ed Sullivan and either the letterer kept screwing up or someone thought it would capture Ed's personality to misspell the names of the acts he's introducing. The art for the comic was produced by the studio of Alberto Giolitti, who was best known for his work on Gold Key's Star Trek comic and Turok, Son of Stone. Giolitti worked in Italy so perhaps they felt he could best capture the essence of Topo Gigio...but he makes Myron Cohen look like a pterodactyl and in the one panel where Ed introduces "sports legend Billie Jean King" in the audience, she looks like George Takei. A very weird comic, indeed.

• Posted at 11:04 AM · LINK

Doctor Winch

Hey, I just listened to a great audio interview with one of my heroes, Paul Winchell. It's about 15 minutes and you have to have RealAudio installed on your computer. You'll find it on this page.

Did I ever tell you about one of the stupidest things I ever said in my life? I was directing the voices for a cartoon show and I cast Paul in two roles in one episode. Now usually, when you have actors doubling in a script, you try to assign the parts so that their characters don't talk a lot to each other...but in this case, it wasn't possible. So I actually turned to the world's greatest ventriloquist, Paul Winchell, and said, "I've got you talking to yourself here for about a page. You think you can handle it?"

• Posted at 10:26 AM · LINK

Dave Moved

The site with those Letterman clips was overwhelmed with hits. So they're now over here.

• Posted at 12:34 AM · LINK