Sunday, August 20, 2006

Woodwork Made Simple

For years, comic book artists have handed around faded Xeroxes of a page called "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work." This was said to be a cheat sheet that the late, great artist Wally Wood had compiled for himself and his legion of assistants. Also known as "Wood's Lazy Layouts," it was said to be his repertoire of tricks to use in composing comic book panels, especially when the artist found himself stuck with long, talky scenes.

Turns out that, though Wood himself designed the components of this page, it was actually assembled by one of his assistants, Larry Hama, after Wood's death. This story is told on this page by Joel Johnson who — lucky man — is now in possession of the original paste-up of Wood roughs. But he's also a generous man because he shares some good scans of the material with us. Artists who have copied and recopied their bad stats for years can now rejoice in a fresh, first-generation copy of the page.

Whether it's a good idea for a comic artist to resort to these tricks is, of course, arguable. Wally Wood could get away with repeating compositions but few artists are Wally Wood. It would be interesting to see — here's a homework assignment for someone — if one could find panels in Wood's work (especially the stories that were largely unassisted) to correspond to each panel in the Lazy Layouts chart. And it would also be interesting to see if you could do it with the work of artists like Alex Toth, Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert, who've been famously praised for not repeating panel compositions.

• Posted at 6:22 PM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

Ed Alexander, who's been quoted before in this weblog, sends the following...

Y'know, I'm not sure that the penalties Mel Gibson will be undergoing aren't more onerous than you make them out to be. No matter what amount the judge might have fined him, there'd be no hardship meeting it, so the penalty couldn't really be financially commensurate with other folks who'd been found guilty of the same thing. As odd as it sounds, I have a feeling that the loss of regard and esteem with which a large percentage of the public held him in is more of a penalty than any fiduciary penalty that he judge might have placed on him.

That said, I wouldn't have minded if probation, loss of license and amount of actual community service he had to perform weren't greater (making an anti-DUI PSA doesn't really take much energy since someone else will write it for him and the crew will film it) but I'm not sure that jail time would be any more appropriate in this case than it would be for anyone else who was stopped and caught during a first offense. Since prisons have essentially become rape factories, I think that a victimless crime should be punished through other venues if there's a damn good chance that would result in there being no repeat offense. I tend to think that the real reason I'm offended by his behavior that evening was more for the offensively intolerant behavior than for the DUI, and I think that the court of public perception is a more appropriate venue for meting out punishment than a court of law. Hopefully that sentence will be appropriate to the offense.

Ed, I'm going to disagree with almost every sentence of the above. First off, I don't think drunk driving is a "victimless crime" — or to the extent it is, it's victimless out of dumb luck, not because of anything the drunk driver did. If someone goes out on his porch and starts firing live ammo around indiscriminately, he might not kill anyone. His actions might be victimless. That guy still oughta be locked up, even if there's zero chance of him doing it again.

Secondly, I'm not qualified to judge whether there could be a repeat offense of Mr. Gibson's inebritated actions...but this was not the first time the man's been pulled over for driving under the influence.

I'll agree with the part about the court of public opinion but only with regard to the reported anti-Semetic remarks. There are laws against getting behind the wheel while plastered and they ought to be enforced with more severity, if only as an example to the next guy who's inclined to break them.

There's a tendency among people who are rich, powerful, famous or some combination of those attributes to think that the law doesn't apply to them in quite the same way it applies to the poor, the powerless, the unknown. They assume many in authority will look the other way and if someone doesn't, a well-coiffed, high-fee lawyer can always put things right. I don't know if Mel Gibson is in this category but the fact that he will get away with no serious impairment to his life will surely heighten others' sense that if they get caught with a bit too much alcohol in their veins, the punishment won't be too severe.

It would be interesting for some reporter to dig into records and find similar cases where a driver with Gibson's history has been pulled over for a similar infraction. Have miscreants without his clout or cash received comparable sentences? If not, something is wrong. If so, something is still wrong but it's a different something.

• Posted at 11:09 AM · LINK

Hey, Kids! Free Comics!

Marvel is working some sort of deal where reprints of old comic books will be inserted into Sunday newspaper sections around the country. I gather the idea is that the newspapers get them for free and can tout them as a selling point, and Marvel's costs are paid for by the new advertising they sell in the comics. Even if they lose a few bucks on the deal, it's probably good promotion for their characters. On the other hand, it'll probably make the regular comics, which cost $2.99 and up, seem even more overpriced.

I couldn't help but be amused by the item that ran today in the Register-Guard, a newspaper that comes out of Eugene, Oregon. Here's one paragraph...

The first in the Spider-Man collectible series, "Amazing Fantasy: Introducing Spider Man," is dated Aug. 15, 1962, and features the art of celebrated cartoonist Stan Lee. It chronicles the transformation of bookworm Peter Parker into the web-spinning wonder in the blue and red tights.

Someone please explain to these people that Stan Lee is not a cartoonist and that the comic in question was primarily drawn by Steve Ditko, not by Stan Lee. Also, it's a reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15. which was cover-dated August of '62. It's not dated "August 15, 1962."

While I'm on the topic: Can anyone supply me with copies of these reprints? They come free in the Sunday sections so if your local newspaper carries them, it oughta be easy to round up a few of 'em from the neighbors.

• Posted at 10:42 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's seven and a half minutes of one of my favorite movies, only in Spanish.

The thing I'd like to point out in this clip from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the scene with Buster Keaton and the lack of English won't matter. In the full version of the movie as it was originally released, Mr. Keaton had a somewhat larger part, including a long scene with Spencer Tracy. When the film was cut down (as explained here), that scene was tossed. That's right: Someone actually threw away the only scene ever filmed featuring America's greatest dramatic actor and America's greatest comedic actor.

Okay: One of America's greatest dramatic actors and one of America's greatest comedic actors. Fine. Should we argue?

Anyway, everything that's left of his performance in the film is all in this clip and it's very brief. Still, I submit it's evidence of why Buster Keaton was one of America's greatest comedic actors. He is given absolutely nothing to work with and somehow, he makes it funny. Every single time I've seen this movie with an audience — must be twenty times or more — Keaton has gotten huge laughs, just through his body movements.

This is possible because he is not stunt-doubled in a scene where they might have decided to substitute a double. (And it's just a coincidence, by the way, that I'm discussing this and Mr. Keaton's one-time stuntman died recently. I planned to link to this clip and to write about this before I knew that.)

Keaton was 67 or 68 years old when this was filmed — not as agile as he once was — and of course, he was Buster Keaton. Nothing puts a damper on a funny movie better than having a comedy legend killed or injured on the set. Since Keaton was not going to be far from cars that were going to be crashing into one another, someone probably said, "Hey, we'd better put a stuntman in for him," just as — and you sure can tell from the cut — they put in stuntfolks for all the other stars.

And I'm guessing the director, Stanley Kramer, said no. There is no way any stuntman was going to move like Buster Keaton...no way any stuntman was going to get any laugh, let alone a big one, running around the way Buster did. I'd wager Kramer decided to take the risk of putting Keaton close to harm's way, surely after discussing it with the man. From all accounts, Keaton — even in his last year of life — never shrank from taking a fall or smashing into a wall or anything for the good of the scene, and I'm sure he'd not only have agreed but insisted.

The rest of the clip is cars chasing around Southern California. The first scenes start with the cabs coming down to Pacific Coast Highway via a road in Santa Monica called the California Incline. It's one of the few locations in the movie that's still pretty much identifiable if you go there today. The amusement park you can briefly glimpse was a place called (at different times) The Pike or Nu Pike down in Long Beach. The scenes with Keaton were done at Channel Islands Harbor and the shots before and after are on Malibu Road and Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Anyway, enjoy it. Or better still, get the whole movie and enjoy it more in English.

• Posted at 1:19 AM · LINK