Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Wendie Jo Sperber, R.I.P.

Sorry to hear that actress Wendie Jo Sperber has lost her battle with cancer at age 47. Here's an obit which mentions a lot of the things she did. There was a period there when she was appearing in one movie or TV show after another, and turning down five offers for every one she squeezed into her schedule. She was very good in every one of them.

Unmentioned in most obits is a musical play/revue called A-5-6-7-8, which is where I first saw and met Wendie Jo. It ran for a year or two at the Zephyr Theater on Melrose in West Hollywood around 1977. Almost plotless, its slim storyline was an excuse for about a dozen talented performers to sing and dance showtunes and novelty songs. Since I knew one of the talented ladies in it, I wound up seeing it a half-dozen times and hanging out with the cast after many a performance. Wendie Jo, who was barely out of her teens, was among the players and she managed to stop the show almost every night with an intense, emotional rendition of "Pachalafaka," a funny tune you may remember from when Soupy Sales used to perform it. She also stole the spotlight in a bump-and-grind version of "Welcome to Holiday Inn" (from the Broadway show, Seesaw) performed by the female cast members.

The thing I remember most about Wendie Jo is that everyone who came to the Zephyr then knew they were seeing the dawning of a great career. The revue was unabashedly intended to showcase its performers, and every casting director in town dropped by to case the talent. Every one of them immediately wanted to put Wendie Jo in something and there was one night when she actually seemed stressed, trying to decide among several offers for her screen debut. She thought they were all bad roles that didn't suit her and, while she knew every actress does some of those, she was hoping to start with something "a little special." Few actors who've never been hired to appear before a camera will turn down a chance to change that...but Wendie Jo decided it was a bad omen to go in and do something that you knew was wrong. So she passed on those offers and a week or so later, she got one of the leads in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a role that couldn't have been better suited to her. No one who knew her then was surprised at all the work she got after that. No one who knew her ever is unaffected by the news today.

• Posted at 10:35 PM · LINK

Stamp Out Superman

My old buddy Roger Freedman was the first of (so far) twenty people to remind me that Superman was on a U.S. postage stamp once before — in 1998 as part of the "Celebrate the Century" promotion.

Above, the stamp on the left is the 1995 Canadian stamp I just mentioned. I believe the image is a composite of two drawings, both by Joe Shuster. I haven't made a side-by-side comparison but the train seems to be off the cover of Superman #3 and the Superman drawing is from an interior panel in one of the early issues. (Anyone want to identify which one for me so I don't have to dig around?)

At right above is the 1998 U.S. stamp which uses a drawing from the cover of Superman #2. It was most certainly pencilled by Joe Shuster and was inked either by him or by Paul Cassidy, who was his assistant for a brief time.

• Posted at 9:23 PM · LINK

Super Heroes Go Postal!

The release date doesn't seem to be firm but some time next year, the U.S. Postal Service will be issuing a sheet of stamps of heroes from DC Comics. Above are ten of the 20 stamps on the sheet. The other ten are comic book covers and you can see the entire lot by clicking here. Most likely, I'm told, they'll come out to coincide with the Comic-Con International in San Diego and there'll be some sort of ceremony there involving First Day Issues and some of the folks whose artwork adorns the stamps.

The drawings are all from old covers and panels. The Superman and Supergirl drawings were done by Curt Swan. The Wonder Woman drawing is by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. I don't recognize the Batman drawing but the Flash is by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson, the Plastic Man is (I think) a drawing Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez did for the DC style guide in the eighties, the Aquaman is by Jim Aparo, and the Hawkman is by Murphy Anderson. My first thought on seeing them was that some of the creators had been slighted but many of them are represented by the covers on the other twelve stamps. The Batman cover is by Bob Kane with assistance from Jerry Robinson, for instance. I don't think the Superman cover chosen, which is from Superman #11, was by Joe Shuster, though. I believe it's by Fred Ray.

This may sound trivial but I'm sorry they didn't pick a Paul Norris drawing for the Aquaman stamp. Paul designed Aquaman and drew his first stories, and is still with us. But I'm delighted to report that my old pal Jack Kirby is represented. That's sort-of a Kirby drawing on the Green Arrow stamp. Jack drew the Green Arrow feature for a year or two in the fifties and DC recently released a collected edition of all the stories he produced back then. For its cover, they had Jack's longtime inker Mike Royer trace and adjust a drawing of Bullseye, a western hero Jack did in the fifties, and turn it into Green Arrow. That's the drawing that's on the stamp. (I just phoned Mike and told him and he was amazed and, I think, happy. How often does an artist find out that he's drawn a U.S. postage stamp?) A Marvel series will follow shortly so perhaps Kirby will get on a couple more stamps.

By the way: This isn't Superman's first time on a stamp. As I noted here, the Man of Steel — as drawn by Joe Shuster — was on a Canadian stamp in 1995. Shuster didn't live to see it but his partner, Jerry Siegel, did and a first day issue, framed with a congratulatory letter from Bill Clinton, was one of Jerry's proudest trophies in life. Sorry he didn't get to see this one, too.

• Posted at 7:26 PM · LINK

Tech Stuff

In the preceding item, I encoded Scott's e-mail address, as I do with all e-mail addresses I post on this site. This is because there are evil people out there who like to compile lists of legit e-mail addresses and either bombard them with spam or sell them to those who will bombard them with spam. These evil-doers use software that scans websites and looks for text that is more or less in e-mail address formatting and when it finds someone@something.com, it adds that address to its list. Therefore, I use this free website service to turn all e-mail addresses into code that your browser should be able to read but which the spambots allegedly cannot. If you don't have Java installed or enabled, you may not be able to read it...but I'm told that should be less than 1% of you.

Also, someone asked what a "permalink" is. A permalink is a link to a specific posting on a weblog. If you see something here that excites you and you wish to share it with others, you may not want to give them a link that merely directs them to www.newsfromme.com. Well, if you want to tell them about the best damned weblog on the 'net, you do...but the text on that page is always changing and a week or two from now, the item you want them to see will be thirty or forty back and hard to locate. If you give them the permalink, that will always take them to the specific item in question. Most weblogs work like this and have some sort of permalink for each item, even if they don't always identify it by that term. Often, it's embedded in the timestamp that tells you when the item was first posted.

• Posted at 2:26 PM · LINK

Scott Free!

My longtime friend Scott Shaw! has been performing his acclaimed Oddball Comics slide show at comic conventions for many a decade. He also posts covers and commentary over on his page over at Comic Book Resources.

What's an "Oddball Comic?" It's a comic book that causes you to scratch your dandruff and wonder what, if anything, was on the minds of the folks who conceived and created it. I've posted two examples above and Scott has thousands more in his collection. Over the years, he's performed his slide show to packed halls of folks who laugh themselves sick at what he shows and what he has to say about them. It's too good a show to only be seen at comic conventions so in January and February of '06, he'll be doing it at the Acme Theater in Hollywood...but you don't have to wait 'til then.

This Sunday, December 4, Scott's doing a preview/test performance at 2 PM at Lake Balboa Studios, which is located at 7412 Balboa Blvd. in Lake Balboa, California. The theater, they tell me, is located north of Sherman Way on the east side of Balboa. Seating is limited so you should R.S.V.P. to Mr. Shaw himself at shawcartoons@earthlink.net. By the way: Scott cautions that portions of his presentation — though certainly not obscene — may be inappropriate for young kids. And he adds, "Don't worry if you can't make it; you'll have plenty of opportunities, starting in January. But this advance 'taste' is for free!"

I can't make it on Sunday but I'll be there for the Acme run...and probably more than once. It's a great show and not just for those of us who've read way too many comic books.

• Posted at 12:16 AM · LINK

December 1, 2005 • Current • November 29, 2005