Sunday, February 17, 2008

Wedding Daze

You may remember a few years ago, a big deal was made in the Blondie newspaper strip about Mr. and Mrs. Bumstead celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary, complete with guest stars from other strips.

That was all well and good...but over in an Internet newsgroup, historian D.D. Degg has pointed out that today is actually their 75th anniversary. Blondie and Dagwood were married in the strip that ran on February 17, 1933. Here's a link to the original art for that historic strip so you can see for yourself.

• Posted at 11:15 PM · LINK

Today's Political Comment

Charles Barkley, who's an Obama supporter, is making the rounds of the political talk shows. I keep seeing him making statements like this one...

Well, I think, you know, people keep saying, well, he doesn't have enough experience on national security and things like that. First of all, whoever the president is, he's going to have tons of advisers. It ain't like the president gets to make every decision on his own. You have great advisers around you.

That's all true but I think it's a lame thing to say about your guy. If Obama is the Democratic nominee — which is looking a bit more likely these days — I'll vote for him, probably with more enthusiasm than I generally have in the voting booth. But I don't buy this idea that it's not a negative for an elected official to not have experience in so vital an area since he can surround himself with people who do. Hey, I don't know how to perform an angioplasty but I could probably hire someone who does to advise me. Want to let me work on your arteries?

I thought that was a dumb argument eight years ago when Bush supporters were telling us how it was okay that he had no experience in foreign affairs...or even much knowledge about what was going on in other countries. It's still a dumb argument. Given the choice of two people, we might weigh all the pros and cons and decide that the candidate lacking in some area was still the better choice. But let's not pretend it doesn't matter.

• Posted at 1:38 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here we have a pleasant little commercial for the Kellogg's cereals, showing us that the characters on their boxes get up every morning and eat the cereals that they appear upon. The legendary Thurl Ravenscroft provides the voice of Tony the Tiger (as always) and that's him doing the voiceover in the middle, presumably as Tony.

• Posted at 11:00 AM · LINK

Next Weekend

We're less than a week from Wondercon, an always-fun comic/media convention held annually in San Francisco. I'll be packing an umbrella because it looks like I'll need it but otherwise, a good time should be had by all, especially if they attend any of the panels I'll be hosting. Click here for a full list of them...and you should be able to find the full schedule over at the convention website, along with details on where the con is, how to get yourself in, etc.

Hey, someone reading this can do me a favor. On Sunday afternoon, I'm moderating a panel called The Art of the Cover, which we've done before with different people and which is always interesting. What we do on it is to bring in a number of artists who've created great covers for comic books and then we project some of those covers on a big screen and everyone discusses what's so great about them. The last couple times we've done it, attendees have called it one of the most educational panels they've ever seen for folks who care about drawing and about how comics come to be.

This year, we have Jim Lee, Tim Sale, Darwyn Cooke and Terry Dodson on the dais, and I need to pick out seven great covers by each and find good-sized JPEGs of them. If you are a fan of one of these fine artists, how about sending me a couple? You can just send the issue numbers but if you really want to help, send one or more clear JPEGs (at least 500 pixels high) to this special address: (That's an encoded address. If it doesn't work in your browser, just send to covers "at sign" newsfromme.com.) You'll save me the task of searching and you probably have better taste than I do, anyway.

I'll be around the con all three days, sometimes doing panels, sometimes signing my new book on Jack Kirby in the autograph area or at the booth for a fine retailer, Comic Relief, and I think they have me at the Dark Horse booth for an hour or two at some point. Say hello if you see me. I'm not nearly as busy as I try to pretend I am.

• Posted at 10:55 AM · LINK

What's Up, Doc?

My pal Anthony Tollin reminds me that today is the 75th "birthday" of Doc Savage, it being that many years since the publication of the character's first issue. It was on February 17, 1933 that the great pulp hero debuted, the creation of writer Lester Dent. Hiding under the pen name of Kenneth Robeson, Dent wrote most of the 181 Doc Savage novels that appeared in the original run.

I recognize the importance of the character in the development of the "super hero" (some call him the first) and I also note that a lot of my friends love to read and re-read Doc Savage novels. That's a nice way of easing into the fact that I somehow never managed to warm to the Good Doctor. I tried...lord, how I tried. I read a Doc Savage novel and didn't like it, and when I told a friend who loved the books, he told me, "You picked the wrong one. That's the one nobody likes" and he recommended another of the books.

I got that one, read it, didn't like it either...and when I told another friend who was a Doc Savage fan, he said, "Oh, I wish you'd asked me. You picked the rotten one." He designated another of the books as the one I should read and...well, I guess you see where this is going. I think I read five or six of the books and each one was the wrong one. (Don't bother writing to tell me which one I should read. It's like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown by now. I have too many non-Doc Savage books that I might like and haven't the time to read.)

All that said, I will recommend Anthony's reprint series of Doc Savage and Shadow pulps. They're handsomely assembled with the perfect art direction and historical material...and so many people love this work, there's a good chance you will, too. Click here for more info.

• Posted at 1:38 AM · LINK