Wanna see what Las Vegas looked like on New Year's Eve? There's a video over on this page that may give you some idea. It's a great place to be that night if you like fireworks.
According to Fred Kaplan, Condoleezza Rice is being much nicer to Egypt these days. She'd better. The way things are going, she needs every friend she can get.
For several days now, the rumor has spread through comic book forums on the 'net that Joe Gill, one of the most prolific writers in the history of the medium, passed away last December. I've received many an e-mail asking me if it was true and why I hadn't posted something about it. Easy answer: I didn't know if it was true...and the people I knew who knew Joe Gill didn't seem to know if it was true, either. Mr. Gill had little or no family so there didn't seem to be a simple way to check and find out. Finally, sadly, I think I have sufficient confirmation.
Gill was born in 1919. His earliest known work in comics was for Timely (now Marvel) in the early forties and he was among the many writers who wrote Captain America after the departure of Simon and Kirby. In the late forties when the company switched over to teen comics and westerns, he was one of their busiest writers but he eventually fell into disfavor with the editor there, Stan Lee, and work began to become sporadic. By the early fifties, he was doing most of his writing for a company called Funnies, Inc., which supplied publishers with stories and artwork.
One of those publishers was John Santangelo of Charlton Comics. The comic book business was entering a rocky period with many companies going under and Santangelo decided he wanted to build a stable of writers and artists who'd work primarily in the firm's plant in Derby, Connecticut. For many, this meant relocating to that area but the deal included a certain stability along with very low rates. Someone once described the terms as "We'll pay you a third of what the other houses pay but we'll give you three times as much work." Santangelo was familiar with Gill's work (and legendary speed) via Funnies, Inc., and offered Joe a contract. Joe accepted and for the next three decades — until Charlton shut its doors — he was their star scripter, producing thousands of scripts for every kind of comic they published. In a business where some writers were pressed to write a book a week, Gill often produced a finished manuscript in a day.
His work included westerns (Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok), war comics (Marine War Heroes, Fightin' Army), romance comics (Love Diary, Teen Confessions), crime comics (Crime and Justice, Vengeance Squad), science-fiction comics (Space Adventures, Doomsday Plus 1), comics based on movies (Konga, 1776), comics based on books (Jungle Tales of Tarzan), comics based on newspaper strips (The Phantom, Popeye), comics based on cartoon shows (Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw), comics based on live-action TV shows (The Bionic Woman, Emergency), comics about martial arts (Yang, House of Yang), ghost comics (Ghostly Tales, Haunted), comics about car racing (Hot Rod Racers, Grand Prix), comics about surfing (Surf Kings) and anything else Charlton put out. He handled (and in some cases, co-created) a number of recurring characters and super-heroes, including Captain Atom, The Blue Beetle, Hercules, Peacemaker, The Fightin' Five, Sarge Steel, Son of Vulcan and Judomaster. In addition to all this, he worked often as a writer and/or editor on Charlton's many non-comic magazines, many of which featured pulp-style romance or crime fiction.
Charlton kept Gill so busy that he rarely had time to work for other publishers. He scripted a number of books for Dell in the sixties...for not much better money than he was receiving from Charlton. In 1968 when former Charlton editor Dick Giordano began working at DC, he brought Gill along and gave him work — at DC rates, which seemed astronomical to Joe at the time — on The Secret Six, Hot Wheels and a few other titles...but Gill's association with DC did not survive Giordano's ouster and it was back to the lousy money in Connecticut. He professed not to mind very much. Charlton's editors accepted whatever he did and rarely, if ever, asked for revisions. After the company shut down in 1986, Gill largely retired. In the company's waning days, he sold a few more scripts to DC for their ghost comics but when Charlton ceased publishing, Joe largely retired...and I'm afraid that's all I know about his later period.
There are a number of debates in the comic book community as to who stands as the most prolific writer in the history of the medium. The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized the late Paul S. Newman for that distinction...and he may well be, although he got in there in part because he was smart enough to submit himself as such. Others have argued for Stan Lee, Robert Kanigher or my personal nominee, Vic Lockman — but if anyone could ever properly calculate the numbers, it sure wouldn't surprise me if the winner turned out to be Joe Gill.
That crazed Liberal, William F. Buckley, comes out against increased U.S. forces in Iraq. But he seems to be saying that a loss of lives by U.S. soldiers is acceptable, whereas a loss of wealth by "corporate" forces is not. And if that's what he's saying, I don't think that idea is acceptable at all.
Okay, let's play a game. Let's say you're the guy who has to select the entertainment for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Every year, they bring in some comedian to perform and for the event scheduled for this April 21, you have to pick someone.
Last year, it was Stephen Colbert. The star of TV's The Colbert Report pulled few punches and really let both the assembled members of the press and George W. Bush have it. Many people found him hilarious. Others felt he bombed. Some were angry. (Here's a link to the video of what Colbert did that night, just in case you need any reminding.) A number of people complained, Bush looked unamused and there was much controversy, which is probably not what you want.
So you're in charge of picking someone to perform at this year's dinner. Who do you pick?
Make your decision and then click here to see who's been chosen to headline in April.
Among my favorite shows when I was a kid was Crusader Rabbit, which was more or less the first cartoon series produced for television. The adventures of the plucky hare and his pal, Ragland T. Tiger, were done in two batches. In 1948, Jay Ward and Alex Anderson produced 195 four minute cartoons in black-and-white. In 1957, a company called TV Spots did around 200 more cartoons in color. The photo above is from the opening of the first series and you can see what I believe is the opening episode of that run over at this link.
But let us concern ourselves with the second batch. Among the stations that carried those cartoons was the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, which is now called KNBC but was then KRCA. The channel's afternoon programming was all locally-produced and on Monday through Friday, most of it consisted of a gentleman named Tom Frandsen. His show changed formats and lengths from time to time but during the period I'm recalling, he presided over an odd array of elements that really didn't go together.
The main part of his show was an afternoon movie which would be interrupted every three minutes for commercials and so he could interview in-studio guests. Then after the movie, he'd host an old episode of the prime-time TV series, Hennesey, which was a great show...I think. I have one episode here — the only one I've seen in 40+ years — and it isn't very good, but I'm willing to assume it's an exception. It was an "adult" situation comedy, which meant only there was no laugh track and no one got dressed up in funny costumes or hit with pies, but I recall its star (Jackie Cooper) being very funny and his co-star (Abby Dalton) being very lovely.
Hennesey was on in prime-time for three years (1959-1962) but I think the period I'm describing here was around '61, before it went off the network. Frandsen was showing episodes from its first two seasons and after each, he would introduce the day's installment of Crusader Rabbit. (And as if this aggregation of programming wasn't odd enough, the Crusader Rabbit cartoon led into the afternoon newscast. So Channel 4 would segue from the bunny and Rags the Tiger trapped in a mine to a police shootout in the City of Industry.)
The cartoon was, of course, why I watched. I was home from school by that time...or if I was at a friend's house, I made them turn it on. Couldn't miss Crusader Rabbit...though once in a while, I did and it wasn't my fault. Frandsen's movie would occasionally run long because a guest got wordy or because of an interruption for breaking news coverage. When that happened, guess what would get bumped. I was quite unhappy when this occurred, even though Frandsen would promise us that we wouldn't miss an installment; that today's would be run tomorrow. I didn't see why the 5:00 News couldn't start at 5:07.
What I really couldn't miss was Crusader Rabbit on Sunday morning. Like I said, there were approximately 200 of these cartoons produced. I'm not sure of the precise math but I'm guessing there were either 195 or 208 because I do know they formed thirteen separate serialized storylines. The production company made them available in two forms and your local station could air them in either format or both. One was the way Mr. Frandsen ran them Monday through Friday — one standalone chapter per day. The other was how KRCA ran them very early (around 7 AM or 8 AM) on Sunday morning, which was with an entire storyline edited into an hour-long "movie."
Absent was all the recapping, along with the portions where the announcer would tell you to "tune in tomorrow" for another exciting chapter of Crusader Rabbit. The customary main title of Crusader riding up in shining armor on a white horse was gone...which was fine with me since it was just confusing. In the cartoons, he never rode a horse or dressed as a knight. Instead on the quasi-features, there was a new main title with full credits that made what you were about to see look kind of like a theatrical film. Along with the names, you saw still shots of Crusader and Rags posed around an animation studio, acting like they were drawing and photographing their own adventures.
I loved those Crusader Rabbit "movies." The animation looked like it was done on shirt cardboards but the stories, many of which were written by the late Chris Hayward, were very clever and engrossing, especially in that edited/tightened format...though (again) it's been a long time since I've seen them. One of the reasons for this post is to ask if anyone out there has copies or even if the "feature" versions still exist. In all my travels in and around the animation community, I've never seen one or even heard anyone besides me mention them. There have been some legit video releases and a lot of free-floating bootlegs of the serial versions of Crusader Rabbit but I've never seen the longform versions. Has anyone else?
Anyway, here at long last is today's video link. It is, appropriately, the opening of the color Crusader Rabbit series, complete with the bunny who never dressed in armor or rode a horse in the body of the cartoons dressing in armor and riding a horse. I still don't understand that or why he was dressed that way in the opening and also on the covers of the Dell comic books. Just another one of those mysteries of childhood.
January 17, 2007
