Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Another Con Job

As many of you race to secure rooms for the Comic-Con International in July, let us remember that there's another great California comic convention in February, and it's even operated by the same folks. This year's WonderCon occurs in San Francisco the weekend of 2/18 to 2/20 and as you can see at the convention website, I am among the guests.

I'll be taking it relatively easy and only moderating seven panels at WonderCon. One will be a tribute to the late, great Will Eisner. Another will be our festive "Quick Draw!" game, and there will be a Sergio/Mark panel and a Golden/Silver Age panel. The latter will feature Russ Heath, Creig Flessel and Arnold Drake.

One of the things that's getting me to San Francisco this year, apart from the fact that WonderCon is always a great convention, is that Arnold will be present. Long before I met him, he was one of my favorite writers. (Not that this is likely but if DC Comics ever launches a reprint series, where the idea is to present great stories regardless of the "commercial appeal" of the characters or creators, they could do no better than to tap the five Showcase issues of Tommy Tomorrow published in 1962-1963. They appeared, as did too many comics of those days, without writer credits so it was years before I knew they'd been written by the co-creator and/or writer of the Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many of my favorite DC Comics of the sixties. Later, I met Arnold and found him to be among the most articulate, interesting comic book creators I've ever known.

Arnold will sit for a one-on-one interview by me, and will also be on a panel on Kids' Comics I'm hosting with, we're hoping, Gail Simone, Amanda Conner, Scott Shaw! and Bill Morrison. There will also be a panel on the fine art of drawing comic book covers with, tentatively, Neal Adams, Alex Ross, William Stout, John Cassaday and Adam Hughes. I'll post a full schedule as we get closer to that weekend.

• Posted at 5:04 PM · LINK

Daws in Wonderland

A P.S. on my earlier item about how Mary Poppins was the only Disney movie for which Daws Butler recorded a voice. This is probably true, though I should have mentioned he was up for one other job there.

For about about a half century, comedy legend Stan Freberg told folks that when Mr. Disney was casting voices for his version of Alice in Wonderland, he'd been personally cast by Walt to play the Jabberwocky, but the role was cut. This was doubted by some. While a lot of unrealized or abandoned Disney movie sequences still exist, at least in rough sketches, there was then no evidence of any "Jabberwocky" scene in the movie.

Well, of course, it turned out Stan was right. Years later, historians unearthed an internal studio memo that summarized the sequence and even listed Walt's casting ideas: Freberg with Daws Butler and The Rhythmaires, which was a singing group headed by Jud Conlon. The memo is reproduced among the extras on the current Alice in Wonderland DVD.

The Rhythmaires are heard in the final movie, and Freberg is apparently heard in a few tiny parts...but it does not appear Daws ever recorded anything for the film. At least, he never mentioned it to any of us. He did do some voices in the 1966 TV version of Alice in Wonderland that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, subtitled "What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?" That's the one that had Sammy Davis Jr. as the Cheshire Cat, Zsa Zsa Gabor as the Queen of Hearts, and Bill "Jose Jiminez" Dana as the White Knight. It also had pretty good songs by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse (same guys who wrote the score for Bye Bye Birdie and other hits) and I'm surprised it's never been released on home video. Here's a web page about it.

Getting back to the Disney Alice: It's interesting that Disney would have thought of casting the Freberg-Butler duo at the time, which would have been around 1949. (The movie was released in '51) Both men were doing cartoon voices but had yet to really establish their reputations, either individually or collectively. Stan didn't even make his first comedy record until '51. They were first teamed on the Time for Beany puppet show, which went on the air in February of '49...so that must have been what caused Walt to think of them, not only as worthy performers but as a duo. Shows you, I guess, that Walt really did have a knack for spotting talent.

There's a new book out about Daws entitled Daws Butler, Characters Actor, and I hear it's good. But I haven't received my copy yet.

• Posted at 11:43 AM · LINK

Comic-Con Housing!

Online hotel reservations for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego opened this morning. If you're even contemplating attendance of this fine convention, get over to the site and book a room immediately. Tomorrow may be too late.

And if you don't do this, don't whine to me in June that you're paying $400 a night to share a cot at a Motel 6 with three guys in Klingon suits, none of whom have bathed since DeForest Kelly died.

• Posted at 10:21 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

The search for Saddam Hussein's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction has been quietly abandoned, the Washington Post reports. [Registration maybe necessary] Here are a couple of excerpts from the article, and I want to discuss the third paragraph I'm quoting...

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

[...snip...]

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

[...snip...]

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Okay, question: Is Bush disappointed for any other reason than that it means he and his men were spectacularly wrong about a key reason (some would say "main reason") we are now immersed in a war that is costing us a lot more American lives and dollars than anyone anticipated? I mean, isn't it good news in a way that it showed it isn't always necessary to go to war to disarm a tyrant? Sanctions and inspections, which were previously mocked as wimpy, ineffective tactics obviously worked a lot better than some had thought. Isn't that preferable to the conclusion that they couldn't possibly stop someone like ol' Saddam from getting nukes and passing around biological timebombs?

Isn't "he never had them" better news for us than "he had them but he smuggled them out to those al Qaeda affiliates"?

• Posted at 8:29 AM · LINK