As I think I may have predicted here, Jon Stewart has been invited to host the Academy Awards next year for what will be his second time. A few webloggers are asking why, noting that the ratings for the year he hosted were not huge. I suspect the answer is that the folks behind the Oscars don't see a lot of connection between the host and the ratings. Much more relevant to the numbers is how much viewers of a given telecast care about who wins and/or anticipate dramatic, memorable moments. In a very real sense, faulting the host when the Oscars don't get a huge rating is like blaming the sportcaster when he has to call a dull game that no one cares about.
I still think Stewart isn't a great choice but only because he isn't a movie star, and the Oscars oughta be hosted by a movie star. If one doesn't care about that, he's probably the best pick they could have made. Actually, based on his performance at that Mort Sahl Tribute, I'm convinced that Jay Leno would amaze everyone with how well he could handle the job. But Leno has reportedly turned down the gig several times and they probably don't even bother asking him anymore.
On the way home from my appearance on Shokus Internet Radio, I stopped off at a supermarket for a few items and I was shocked at what I saw there. It's bad enough that they're selling Dry Cat...but they're even selling Canned Cat. In fact, they had a whole aisle for it. This is just barbaric. I suppose the mini-marts are selling small packages of Kitten.
Hey, take a look at what time it is right now. If it's between 4 PM and 6 PM Pacific Time (7 PM and 9 PM Eastern), then I'm live on Shokus Internet Radio right this minute, talking animation with my fellow cartoon buff Earl Kress and our cheery host, Stu Shostak. You can hear us if you tune in to Stu's Show, which you can do by going to this page and selecting an audio browser. Log in, listen...you can even call in and ask a question. Don't miss this golden opportunity. I may not be back on the radio for quite some time if I wind up going on my killing spree.
Over on Marvel's website, editor Tom Brevoort (Hi, Tom!) picks a whole batch of his favorite Jack Kirby covers. I would have picked some of those and wouldn't have picked others but, hey, it's Tom's list and he has pretty good taste in comics.
Then over in his column, Steven Grant (Hi, Steven!) takes off from Tom's list and discusses Jack's approach to covers. I think it's a perceptive discussion. Grant's right that Jack could be repetitive with designs like that, and that the overriding concern was sales. Back when comics were sold on newsstands, as opposed to the current-day comic shops, a "grabber" cover was much more important than it is today. In fact, there were those in the biz who thought the cover was just about all that mattered; that if you got a good one, the insides were of little importance. Grant's piece is well worth your attention if this kind of thing interests you.
I should also clarify something. Steven writes...
I'd heard on several occasions that Joe Maneely, who drew many '50s Atlas Comics titles (for those who came in late, Atlas is the after-the-fact collective name for Marvel publisher Martin Goodman's publications of the 1950s), was Stan Lee's favorite artist, so I've occasionally wondered what would have happened if Maneely had lived (he died in a freak subway accident in the late '50s) to see the dawn of the Marvel age. Would Stan have recruited him instead of Jack to draw Fantastic Four? (Or however it happened.) I've always though it a good bet but my friend and Kirby acolyte (and that's not hyperbole either) Mark Evanier has pointed out that what kept Atlas from bellying up before they could even get to the Marvel age was Kirby's return to the company and the subsequent upswing of sales of Atlas comics, particularly the "monster" books (like Tales of Suspense and Journey Into Mystery sporting Kirby covers. For Mark, this suggests that Goodman, ever cognizant of sales, would have insisted Stan go with Kirby for the fairly experimental (for Goodman) F.F. book, even if Maneely were available. Certainly Maneely's more restrained and obsessive style would have had trouble drawing in anywhere near the number of readers Kirby's in your face, balls to the wall style did.
Me again. There's a limit to how productive these "What If?" exercises can be but I'll take this one this far...
First off, if Maneely had lived, Atlas/Marvel would have been a very different company. Actually, between him and Kirby and Ditko (Stan's other favorite artist), there would have been little room for anyone else to draw for the firm. It's apparently true that rising sales on Kirby-drawn comics — the ones Steven mentions but especially the western, Rawhide Kid — encouraged Goodman to keep publishing comics at a time when he was considering the abandonment of that marketplace. As I wrote in a recent Jack Kirby Collector, "Would it [Rawhide Kid] have gained readers if Stan had put Maneely on the book? Who knows? Sometimes, it's not a matter of having a good artist but of having the right good artist and the right chemistry."
But then, you get to the moment when Goodman reportedly said to Stan something like, "Hey, DC's getting some good numbers on this Justice League of America thing. I want to try a book like that...a bunch of super-heroes." And at that point, a lot of different things could have happened if Stan had done the illogical thing of trying to develop such a book with Maneely. (It was illogical because Maneely had almost no track record for super-heroes, whereas Kirby was an acknowledged master of the genre.) What I can't imagine them doing is coming up with Fantastic Four without Jack. It's a lot like asking what you'd be like if your mother had married someone else. The first difference is that you would have been a completely different person.
The Lee-Maneely team would have come up with a completely different comic. Would it have sold as well and spawned a new Renaissance in super-hero funnybooks? Again, who knows? Maybe it would have bombed, Goodman would have shut down his comic line, Stan would have gone into politics and by 1968, been in a position to be elected President of the United States...while Jack decided to become a doctor, got his medical license in six months and then found a cure for The Common Cold. I wouldn't have been surprised by any of this.
Three weeks ago here — in this item — I linked to this op-ed article in The New York Times. In it, seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers who were serving in Iraq said that from their vantage point, the war was going poorly, was being mismanaged and was making things worse for Iraq instead of better.
While this op-ed was being prepared, one of the seven soldiers was shot in the head. He is expected to survive but not without lasting damage. On Monday, two more of the seven were killed in a vehicle accident.
Here, from one of the Cartoon Voice Panels at this year's Comic-Con International, is vocal magician Maurice La Marche doing many of his roles...though not his most famous. We wanted to save his Orson Welles simulation — which he used for The Brain on Pinky and The Brain — for later. But he did a whole bunch of others and demonstrated why he's one of the top guys in the biz. The voice you'll hear at the beginning asking him to save it is me. The others are all him.
I forgot to mention it here before but our pal Floyd Norman is about to be designated as an official Disney Legend. This is an award that the Disney outfit bestows on a select number of folks who've made great contributions to the company that Walt guy started. This is a great honor and the best part is that Floyd will be inducted at a ceremony along with Michael Eisner, subject of at least a thousand unflattering Floyd Norman gag cartoons. Can't wait to see the photo of the two of them being enshrined together.
September 13, 2007
