Friday, April 21, 2006

Dick Rockwell, R.I.P.

Comic book/strip artist Richard Waring Rockwell passed away last Tuesday at the age of 85. Dick was a charming gentleman who lived too much of his life in the shadows of others. His name was rarely mentioned without noting that he was (a) the nephew of the great illustrator, Norman Rockwell, and (b) Milton Caniff's uncredited ghost artist on the Steve Canyon newspaper strip for some 35 years.

Dick began his comic book career in 1948 working for Stan Lee at what was then called Timely Comics. He also worked for Lev Gleason, Dell and several other publishers before (and occasionally, after) connecting in 1952 with Caniff. The way the story is told, Rockwell applied for membership in the National Cartoonists Society, which involved submitting a sample of his work. Caniff, who was then in charge of looking over applications, saw Rockwell's and immediately called him to say he qualified for membership and to ask if he was available for work. Rockwell was...and he was soon drawing a lot more of Caniff's strip than Caniff was. For much of the next 3.5 decades, Milton would write the strip, Rockwell would pencil it and ink in everything but the main characters, and then the art would go to Caniff who would finish things off and retouch wherever he deemed necessary.

After Caniff passed away in 1988, Rockwell brought the strip to a proper close and then turned his attention to his other projects. All the time he'd been working on Steve Canyon, he'd also been drawing editorial cartoons, illustrating books and working intermittently as a courtroom sketch artist. This article from 2003 discusses his work in this field. Dick also taught art for over thirty years at New York University and the Parsons School of Design, and had recently been teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

I was privileged to work with Dick on a few projects, including a Blackhawk story of mine that he illustrated. He was a dedicated professional who deserved more time in the spotlight than he received.

• Posted at 6:38 PM · LINK

Paste-Up Job

Some of you may be wondering about Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy. These are two newspaper strips which may or may not be in your local newspaper, both from the same syndicate. Monday's Get Fuzzy (which you can see here) featured a phone conversation. Someone named Alex called a gent who I guess is supposed to be Darby Conley, who draws Get Fuzzy. And I guess Alex is supposed to be someone who works at the syndicate. Alex tells Darby, "I think the FedEx you got last week accidentally had some unpublished Pearls Before Swine in it. Go ahead and destroy those." Darby, who's been busy playing a videogame, is late with his strips for the week...so he gets a fiendish idea.

The rest of this week, every Get Fuzzy strip has been the same day's Pearls Before Swine strip but with the Get Fuzzy characters badly pasted-in over the Pearls Before Swine characters. As an example, here's Tuesday's Pearls Before Swine and here's Tuesday's Get Fuzzy. Furthermore, in Wednesday's Get Fuzzy, we have Stephen Pastis, who draws Pearls Before Swine, making a guest appearance to call Conley and inquire about the duplications.

This is a very funny idea, especially with the bad, obvious pasteovers. Or at least, it's funny if you're reading a newspaper that carries both strips. As Len Wein and I were just discussing on the phone, if your local paper carries only Get Fuzzy — and there are at least a couple that do — you've got to be going, "Whaaa--?" I think I admire the guts that Conley is exhibiting not only to risk alienating a chunk of his readership for the sake of a good joke, but the courage to keep it going all week. Wonder if there's a further pay-off ahead.

• Posted at 12:31 PM · LINK

Update

NBC is running the last two episodes of Celebrity Cooking Showdown back to back on Saturday evening. If you care.

• Posted at 9:32 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

You're bored...you're frustrated...your approval rating is down to 33% even in the Fox poll...what do you do? Why not bomb Iran? Here's a video about it. (If you can't understand all the lyrics, they're posted here.)

• Posted at 9:05 AM · LINK

Recipe for Disaster

NBC has abruptly terminated its (supposed-to-be) week-long event, Celebrity Cooking Showdown. A press release says that the episodes scheduled for last night and tonight can be viewed at nbc.com. Here's a link in case you want to do this.

Jeez. I've done shows that were did poorly in the ratings...shows that were cancelled...but I never did anything they felt they had to yank off the schedule with less than 24 hours notice. And certainly nothing that ever got relocated from a major network to a website. (They couldn't even move it to MSNBC or CNBC?)

In case you're interested, the first night got a 5.7 rating. That's poor but it looks worse when you realize that the show before (Deal or No Deal) got a 9.2 and the show after (The Medium) got a 6.9. Tuesday night, Celebrity Cooking Showdown dropped to a 2.4...so more than half the people who watched the first night didn't bother with the second. Wednesday night, the show got a 3.5. Those are pretty bad numbers.

I didn't see Celebrity Cooking Showdown but I have the feeling someone made a mistake in dropping it this way. Okay, so the ratings may have been dreadful...but it was promised, it oughta be delivered. Not that long ago, NBC did the same thing with the third competition of Last Comic Standing, suddenly deciding to not run the final episode. That caused some ill feelings and this new termination will, as well. Somewhere, there are going to be viewers who will not bother with the next NBC special event series because it's frustrating to get wrapped up in a game and not get to see the ending. It's like reading a mystery novel and as you near the final pages, someone grabs them out of your hand, sets them on fire and just tells you whodunnit. Very unsatisfying.

There have been a couple of times in the comic book industry where I believe publishers have alienated their readerships with hasty cancellations. Something wasn't selling, the publisher panicked and no thought was given to what a fast termination would do to the folks who were buying the product. I can think of at least two distinct periods in the history of DC Comics where, I believe, consumers didn't want to try the new books because new books seemed to get axed so rapidly. It was like, "Why bother?" NBC could easily find themselves with the same problem...especially when they launch their upcoming, fourth edition of Last Comic Standing. And no, I can't explain why they're doing another one when the last round did so poorly they didn't broadcast the final part.

Tonight at 8 PM, where they would have been airing the grand finale of Celebrity Cooking Showdown, NBC will air an episode of Deal or No Deal. According to another press release, it's a rerun of the one from April 12 with the black guy who works as a professional clown. If you've never seen Deal or No Deal and have been thinking of giving it a try, this wouldn't be a bad choice...although they didn't have the usual 26 lovely models opening the briefcases. They had 26 Miss U.S.A. contestants doing the honors. You have to wonder though how much better it could possibly do than the grand finale of Celebrity Cooking Showdown that has been advertised. Not only will Deal or No Deal be a recent rerun but most potential viewers won't even know it's on.

• Posted at 1:35 AM · LINK

April 22, 2006 • Current • April 20, 2006