Friday, January 7, 2005

Soupy's Star

I couldn't get up to Hollywood Boulevard today to see Soupy Sales receive his star in the cement but my friend Mark Kausler (only one of the great animators working today) made the soggy trek. He sent this e-mail and gave me his okay to post it here for all...

Because of your website, I did something today I've never done before, attended a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony. Of course, it was the one for Soupy Sales. Only love could get me across town in the pouring rain to see anybody, but for Soupy I made an exception. He definitely does not look well. He's wheelchair bound, and had an eerie sort of fixed smile on his face. When he tried to thank everyone for coming, he could barely talk above a whisper. The only sentence fragment I could hear clearly was: "I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for coming...", he repeated this phrase several times. He did muster up enough strength to push a partial pie into Johnny Grant's face, which I couldn't see very well for the solid wall of backs between me and the scene, but I'm sure that'll be on the news. Marc Summers, who hosts Unwrapped on Food Network was there, and Peter Marshall made an appearance. Summers actually mentioned Clyde Adler and Frank Nastasi, which shows that he knows his stuff. He did a pretty fair White Fang and Black Tooth, as well. Anyway, who knows if I'll ever see Soupy again? I'm glad I made the pilgrimage at least once. The fan club goes on.

And in a subsequent e-mail, Mark mentions that the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to Soupy, who turns 79 tomorrow. I understand that later in the afternoon, Soupy dedicated an exhibit of his props and memorabilia at The Hollywood History Museum. (For those who don't know: Johnny Grant, the gent with his puss covered in shaving cream above, is — this is his actual title — "the Ceremonial Mayor of Hollywood and Chairman of the Walk of Fame Selection Committee." He's a local personality and fixture of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and he hosts the star dedications.)

Sorry to hear that Soupy seems to be no healthier than the last time I saw him. He's never quite recovered from a bad fall he took at the 1995 Local Emmy Awards in New York, and I'm not sure what else is the matter with him. I'm glad to hear that Mark could barely see because of the "solid wall of backs," because that means there were a lot of people there. Soupy deserved a big crowd, and I hope it gave him a sense of how loved he is.

• Posted at 6:57 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

The Bush administration has apparently decided that a good use of your tax dollars is to make cash awards to subsidize right-wing talk radio and TV. So far, this report in USA Today has gone undenied and has even been more or less confirmed...

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Had this been done by a Democratic administration, especially one headed by a guy named Clinton, Republicans would be incensed, shouting about bribery and misuse of government funds and attempts to manipulate Free Speech. But Democrats don't know how to work Outrage to their advantage and Republicans look the other way when their boys do this kind of thing. No one will probably make much of Armstrong Williams's low ethics in the matter, either. Not unless other alleged journalists are upset that they didn't get the same deal.

Congrats to USA Today, for which Armstrong sometimes writes, for breaking this story. Even if they only did it to get out in front of the pack, they deserve some credit. CNN has still never mentioned Robert Novak's family ties to the publisher of a number of right-wing books he's touted on their channel.

• Posted at 12:53 PM · LINK

A Brush with Comic Book History

Above left is the cover of Fantasy Masterpieces #4, a reprint title that Marvel put out back in 1966. At the time, it was reprinting the original Captain America stories by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, in part because the publisher was then anticipating legal action from Simon and somehow thought it would help to reprint and re-copyright the old stories without credits. Unlike Simon, Kirby was working for Marvel at the time and he drew new covers for these issues...until he learned they were being printed with the names of Simon and Kirby removed. Jack objected, on his behalf but also on Joe's, and he was basically told to just shut up about it. It became another in a long list of reasons that he chose to leave Marvel a few years later.

He was told that if he wanted to continue with the firm, he would have to sign a contract he found noxious in many ways, including a clause that would have given the company the absolute right to credit or not credit him for anything he had done or would ever do for them. Based on how Joe Simon had ceased to exist, Kirby was certain they would eventually do it to him, and he likened it — admittedly, an overwrought comparison — to how the Russians had erased the name of Nikita Khrushchev from their history books after his ouster. (Simon did sue, eventually settled and his name was eventually mentioned again in Marvel history and allowed to remain on reprints. More recently, he sued again, settled, and now I'm told this credit is contractually guaranteed.)

The cover to Fantasy Masterpieces #4 is interesting because it was one of the very few things Jack inked during this period of his career. He generally did not like taking the time to ink what he'd already drawn in pencil, and employers preferred to get as many pages out of him as possible. But what happened here was that Jack did the cover for #3 (which contained the first Simon-Kirby reprints) and Frank Giacoia inked it. After it was completed, someone remarked that it looked like the modern Captain America, not the Golden Age Captain America, and they wondered if Jack could make the covers look more like the 1941 version. Jack said, in effect, "Not in the pencilling. That has to be done in the inking." So to prove it, Jack inked the cover to #4. You can get a better look at the drawing by clicking here, which will show you an enlargement of it that I cribbed from Fred Hembeck's site. It may have been the last time Jack ever inked anything for conventional comic books. Thereafter, Giacoia returned to inking the covers until Jack refused to do them any longer.

The drawing is reprinted as an illustration in the current, highly-recommended issue of The Jack Kirby Collector. Unfortunately, it is erroneously captioned as a Kirby/Giacoia effort, which circumvents the nice bit of history that it represents. We can forgive TJKC editor this error since he makes so few in his fine publication and since he's had his mind on more important matters, lately. Last Monday, he and spouse Pam welcomed a new Morrow, Hannah Rose, into the world. I'll even forgive that the wrongly-credited illo adorned my column in that issue, so people who think I made the mistake are writing me messages that say, approximately, "Evanier, you dip! You should know that cover was inked by Kirby." The things I do not know are many, and include an awful lot of things more important than who inked the cover to Fantasy Masterpieces #4...but I do know that.

• Posted at 10:35 AM · LINK