Monday, October 16, 2006

Welcome Matte

The story of the lady who won the Stephen Colbert Green Screen Challenge...and your opportunity to download the winning video. It all happens right here, courtesy of Quick Stop Entertainment.

• Posted at 7:57 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This runs less than a minute and a half. It's the footage Winsor McCay produced in 1921 for a sequel to Gertie the Dinosaur, the film featured yesterday in this space. Nice stuff. Shame he never got around to finishing it.

• Posted at 10:01 AM · LINK

Happy Joe Sinnott Day!

Any list of "The Nicest People in Comics" would have to include Joe Sinnott in the top three or so. Joe is a gentleman in every sense of that oft-misapplied noun and to everyone who admires his work — a very large group of human beings — enormously generous with his time and talents.

And should you make up a list of "The Best Inkers Ever in Comics," you can start with Joe and go on from there. Inking is a peculiar institution that in the early days of comics was often the job description for those of lesser talent. You have some good artists and some not-so-good artists and what you did to maximize production was to have the good artists draw the comic in pencil and then have the not-so-good ones inscribe those pencil lines in ink. It may have harmed the work of the good artists but, hey, it got more pages out of them each month. Quantity over quality: That's how the publishers thought. It was only the devotion and pride of some artists that made any comics better than they absolutely had to be.

That was the original idea behind having one guy pencil and another guy ink...and it must be admitted that even before Sinnott, there were some inkers who were turning their job description into a true craft, elevating and truly embellishing others' pencil art so that the sum of the parts was greater than individual efforts might have been. Still, when Joe Sinnott moved from complete art to inking in the late fifties and early sixties, he took the job to a whole new level. All across the business, others gasped and said, "Oh, that's how it should be done." Good artists had inked others before but they usually either turned off their drawing skills and just traced or they kept thinking like pencillers and submerged what the first guy had done. Joe did a little of that before he figured out inking like no one before him. He got into what the penciller was attempting, understood it and then enhanced and finished the pencil art instead of either redrawing it or just making it reproduceable.

If the distinction I'm trying to make here is a bit fuzzy, try this example: Wally Wood was a great artist, one of the best ever in comics. When he inked Jack Kirby in the fifties, excellent art resulted but a lot of that was a matter of him overpowering what Jack drew, even to the point of losing some elements of the pencil art where it would have been better to have more Kirby and less Wood. A few years later, when Sinnott began inking Jack's work, he retained just about everything Jack did well and enriched it. Joe in particular had a way of separating the planes of a composition, inking the foreground layers with bolder strokes so they "popped" and the backgrounds with thinner lines that caused them to recede. You got a sensation of 3-D without having to wear those stupid glasses and get a headache. The art had more depth in many ways, for Joe also captured every expression Jack had intended. Plus, he trued up the perspective when Kirby cheated a bit for effect and he never once, not for one panel, took the quick and easy way out. If Jack drew thirty figures in a panel, Joe inked thirty figures, plus he put nice patterns and textures on their outfits.

And like I said, all across the industry, every other inker said, "Oh, that's how it should be done." Even Wally Wood said it. At the 1970 New York Comic Convention, I interviewed him and he said — this is an approximate quote — "Someone showed me what Joe Sinnott was doing and I realized that's it. That's how Kirby should be inked. It was so much better than what I'd done." (Joe was at that convention. I went up to him later and said, "Congratulations. Earlier today, you received the biggest compliment a guy in your line of work can receive.")

If all this sounds gushy, I'm sorry but Joe Sinnott is one of the great treasures in the field of comic art, both personally and professionally. He's eighty years old today and I sure hope that means he's middle-aged now. Because we need at least another eighty years of this man. Happy birthday, Joe. And it just dawns on me I should tell you this directly, so as soon as I post this, your phone will be a'ringing.

• Posted at 9:17 AM · LINK

Star Struck

I took along my camera but somehow never got around to taking any pictures yesterday afternoon at the Hollywood Collectors Show in Burbank. This, for those of you who are naïve and ignorant of the important things in life, is a quarterly event where all sorts of stars sit around and sell autographs and autographed photos and autographed books and autographed anything. And by "stars," I mean people who are stars or were stars or — in some wonderful cases — are stars to some of us who know and love(d) their work, There are old-timers, new-timers and a lot of folks you just always wanted to meet. It's enormous fun. Here, in no particular order, is a partial rundown of folks I talked to...

I bought Marni Nixon's new autobiography, had her sign it and spent a delightful time talking with one of the great singers of our day. Ms. Nixon, of course, is famous for dubbing the singing voices of many non-singing actresses who for some screwy reason were cast in musicals...like Audrey Hepburn in the movie of My Fair Lady or Deborah Kerr in The King and I. She's performing next weekend here in Los Angeles (details here) and though my schedule is booked, I may make time to go.

I also apologized to her for what occurred a few years ago when I attended a production of Follies with her in the cast at a theater in the Broadway district of New York. At a perfectly awful time for it to happen — not that there's ever a good time for this — my cell phone went off. I'd turned it off before the show but somehow, it turned itself back on. After that, until I got a newer phone that couldn't be turned on with an accidental bump, I adopted the following policy when I was at a show of any kind: I didn't just turn the phone off. I removed the danged battery. Anyway, Ms. Nixon graciously accepted my apology even though she wasn't on stage at the moment it happened. (She said something about hearing it backstage and figuring it was probably me.) There were 28 people in that cast and I apologized to Betty Garrett a few weeks ago so I now only have 26 more to go.

Eddie Carroll was there and I hectored him about not doing his superb Jack Benny Tribute Show in a venue closer to Los Angeles. That is, I wish he would so I would. His schedule is available on his website and if he's going to be in your neck of the woods, go see him. As I've mentioned here, I'm not usually a fan of impersonator shows but Eddie is almost channeling J.B., he's so good. About ten minutes in, you forget and it might as well be Benny. We also talked about Eddie's work as an animation voice (he currently plays Jiminy Cricket for Disney) and his days as a writer at Hanna-Barbera. His partner then was Jamie Farr — and yes, it's the guy from M*A*S*H.

My longtime pal Jewel Shepard was present, signing copies of one of her books, as well as photos from the classic horror film, Return of the Living Dead. I was very lucky Jewel was in town for reasons I'll explain in a post later today, assuming I get the time to write it.

I wanted to purchase Noel Neill's new book (a substantial upgrade on her old one) but every time I went by the table, the lady who played Lois Lane on the Superman TV series was mobbed with admirers. Finally spotting her without customers mobbed about, I rushed over and whipped out my wallet only to find...she'd sold out of the book. That'll teach me to wait. Next time, I'm just going to barge up and shove everyone smaller than me aside.

I spoke with voice actor Wally Wingert, who was so good on one of our panels at the last Comic-Con International in San Diego. Wally helped assemble the forthcoming DVD release of the old Filmation cartoon series, The Groovy Goolies, and it looks outstanding. You can order a copy here.

Also spoke with Billy Mumy, who I've known since he was on Lost in Space and coming to me for news of the comic book industry. And with the lovely model Lynda Wiesmeier. And with Marla Gibbs, who's only one of the classiest ladies in Hollywood. And with the great animator Ray Harryhausen. And with superagent Fred Wostbrock. And with Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island who looked pretty darned terrific for a lady who was shipwrecked forty years ago. And with all sorts of other people I'm forgetting at the moment.

These shows are a lot of fun and not just because of the celebs who are announced to appear. I encounter people just as interesting in the aisles, walking around the room. The next Hollywood Collectors Show is February 16 and 17. I'll try and remind you as we get closer to the date.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK