Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Hard Times

As you may recall, the New York Times is now charging half a c-note per year for special web access that incudes their opinion columnists. As you may also recall, I was curious to see how "available" they'd be to folks who hadn't subscribed, and I was using Frank Rich's weekend column as a test case.

A couple of weblogs posted it, and I assume the Times will let them know they shouldn't do that. It was also posted to a few newsgroups. The Times will have a hard time stopping that but it's also not a reliable source. To find a "real" website that makes the Frank Rich column available for free, one has to go all the way to Taiwan.

So I don't know what to do about my trial subscription. If these columns had been wholly unavailable, the choice would be easy. If a number of reliable, established sites had posted them, the choice would also be easy and in the other direction. Instead, it's somewhere in-between. I have until 10/4 to decide.

• Posted at 7:44 PM · LINK

Smart Drawing

Here, as sorta promised, is the Get Smart promo poster drawn by Jack Davis. This is the only decent likeness of Don Adams I can ever recall seeing anyone drawing. For a couple years there, NBC would put out a set each year with four promotional posters of shows from their schedule. The 1965 set, which included this one, is very hard to find, in part because one of the other posters is of Bonanza and it was painted by the great James Bama.

• Posted at 7:27 PM · LINK

Smart Comix

The passing of Don Adams brings questions about the Get Smart comic book. Here is everything I know about it: It was published by Dell Comics from June of 1966 (cover date) to September of 1967. There were eight issues, although #8 was an exact replica of #1, except that the price had gone up from 12 cents to fifteen by then.

We do not know who wrote the books. During this period, which was after Dell had severed ties with Western Publishing, they employed a number of writers with experience and credits at other companies but a number that never wrote a comic book for anyone else. So it may have been someone we never heard of, or it may have been one of the "known" Dell writers like Don Segall, Paul S. Newman or Don Arneson. The artwork for one or two of the later issues was handled by Jose Delbo but most were assigned to Sal Trapani. Often, when one hears that Sal Trapani was the artist of some comic, that would mean one would have no idea who'd pencilled it. Mr. Trapani was a fine inker and he was credited with pencilling a lot of comic books during his career...but his modus operandi was to farm that part of each job out to someone else. Among those who did his work for him at different times were Jack Abel, Dick Giordano, Steve Ditko, Chic Stone, Bill Molno, John Giunta and Charles Nicholas. In the case of Get Smart, most of the drawing was obviously done by Mr. Ditko.

(A mystery some comic historians might like to ponder: Trapani liked to hire others to pencil his jobs and then he'd do the inking. But what of those assignments where he was hired to pencil only, like his run on DC's Metamorpho around the same time as these Get Smart comics? I asked Dick Giordano, who was Sal's brother-in-law and frequent ghost penciller, and he said he's pretty certain someone else must have drawn those issues for Sal. He even added, "I may even have done some work on them, although I don't remember for certain." I keep meaning to haul out my copies and see if I can figure out whodunnit, but I probably won't get around to it for a while. So if anyone else would like to take a whack at it, be my guest and let me know what you think.)

Ditko and Trapani did a nice job on the art in their issues of Get Smart, though Don Adams was apparently quite difficult to caricature. Everyone in the world could do his voice but no one could do his face. Mort Drucker and Jack Davis both did promo posters for NBC and — basic rule of thumb — if Drucker can't draw you, you can't be drawn. Davis did an okay job and I'll see if I can find a decent copy of it to post. Anyway, the above piece of unfinished art is by Ditko and Trapani and it's been floating around the original art market for years without explanation. It's apparently some sort of "audition" piece they did but which Trapani never completed. It'll give you an idea of what the insides looked like.

• Posted at 4:04 PM · LINK

Giving Where It Counts

Operation USA is the preferred charity of this website. This is in part because I've met some of the folks who run it and seen that they do not use your donations to buy themselves big homes and cars under the guise of "administrative costs." They really put the money to good use. The other reason I like them is because, from tracking news reports, I can see that they do it well.

Today in the L.A. Times, its president, Richard Walden, has an article suggesting that giving to the Red Cross is not as good as giving to organizations like his. It's obviously a self-serving message but I think it's also correct. Or to put it another way: I can't imagine anyone else doing more with donation money than Operation USA does. [Thanks to Vince Waldron for calling my attention to the article.]

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Hollywood Labor News

Members of the Screen Actors Guild have elected a more "militant" slate of officers and so have the members of the Writers Guild. The new WGA officials have begun by dismissing John McLean, who has functioned as the Guild's Executive Director since 1999. The news reports may not tell you this but Mr. McLean was perceived by many in the Guild leadership as being too reticent to confront Management, too eager to accept mediocre contracts rather than go to war. His ouster is definitely a sign than the new board wants to take a harder line, even at the risk of striking.

We have some time before either SAG or the WGA has to negotiate a new contract. But I'll bet we start to hear the low rumblings of a couple of separate but similar major confrontations...and maybe before that, some small skirmishes over the interpretation and enforcement of the current contracts.

• Posted at 9:22 AM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

Sony Pictures has refused to release a new feature by Albert Brooks so it's going elsewhere. Patrick Goldstein has all the details.

• Posted at 9:05 AM · LINK

Con Game

A few folks have sent me additional thoughts about the Comic-Con International. My pal Earl Kress recently penned this article for the newsletter of the Animation Union and I believe it speaks for a lot of folks. I'll post a few more over the next few days.

• Posted at 12:14 AM · LINK

September 28, 2005 • Current • September 26, 2005