Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The Marvel Age of Huge Breasts

Over at IGN, Fred Hembeck is ripping the lid off one of the best-kept secrets of The Marvel Age of Comics. While he was publishing the vintage Lee-Kirby Fantastic Four and other comic book masterworks, the firm's owner, Martin Goodman, was also putting out a line of ultra-cheap men's magazines. For some of them, he had the comic division whip up a low-budget strip not unlike Playboy's Little Annie Fanny. Various installments were written by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Ernie Hart, and drawn by Wally Wood, Al Hartley, Jim Mooney and Bill Ward. All but Mr. Ward were concurrently doing work for the comics. The strip was timid in execution (Pussycat kept most of her clothes on) and kind of satirical in an Al Capp sorta way, and Hembeck will tell you all about this curio, and he'll probably inspire some writer to bring her back and put her in The Avengers.

• Posted at 4:32 PM · LINK

Vocal Stylings

Over at The Onion, Billy West talks about cartoon voice work — an area at which he excels. Billy complains, and rightly so, that a lot of producers would rather pay zillions of dollars to a "celebrity" voice who'll give a mediocre performance than to hire a reasonably-priced specialist who might not have the reputation but has a lot more talent. He's absolutely right. And the maddening thing about that is that many of those producers will tell you, off the record, "Yeah, the no-name voice actor would have done a much better job but the celebrity adds a note of importance to the project."

Billy notes one of the unethical practices in this area. Some less-than-scrupulous producers will bring in a guy like him or Maurice LaMarche or Rob Paulsen — any good voice actor — to audition. And then they won't hire them but they'll take that audition tape, play it for the star they do hire and say, "Try to read the copy like this guy did." This is a slight variation on a scam that a couple of studios were working years ago, when having voice tracks recorded in Canada was even more financially advantageous than it is now. They'd audition for a new TV show in Hollywood, calling actors back again and again, just as if they intended to hire some of them to work on the series. And then, once they'd selected the proper voices from all those created by the L.A.-based actors, they would not hire those people. Instead, they'd take the audition tapes up to a studio in Vancouver or Toronto, bring in Canadian actors and say, "We need you to match these voices." What a lovely practice.

• Posted at 3:09 PM · LINK

Blanc Verse

In addition to voicing an astonishing percentage of the funniest cartoons ever made, Mel Blanc was also an accomplished recording artist. He did funny records for kids, many of them based on his cartoon roles. He also did silly songs for adults and while I have a pretty good-sized collection of them on 78 and 45, I welcome the forthcoming CD from Collectors' Choice Music. Here's a link to the page on which you can order The Best of Mel Blanc, and I sure hope this is Volume One, because as good as the selections are, there's more where that came from. And while you're over there, Collectors' Choice also has The Golden Age of Comedy: Mel Blanc, which offers cuts from Mel's radio work.

And Mel isn't on it, but I have to recommend Ready or Not, which is the CD release of one of Godfrey Cambridge's best comedy albums. Mr. Cambridge is way too forgotten these days, remembered (when he's remembered at all) for that dreadful movie, Watermelon Man. But he really sparkled as a stand-up, and I recall him as one of the first black comics to get mainstream exposure and to make audiences of all colors laugh at race-themed material. This one is worth picking up, too...and to tell you how sincere I am, these aren't even click-through affiliate links. I don't make a nickel when you order from Collectors' Choice.

• Posted at 11:19 AM · LINK

June 16, 2005 • Current • June 14, 2005