Earlier, I posted a link to a New York Times story about the family of Jerry Siegel winning a court battle over the copyright to Superman's first appearance. Shortly after I put up that link, the Times added some illustrations to its online story, including the above.
Maybe I shouldn't be bothered by this but it has always annoyed me that so many folks have trouble with the names of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Those aren't difficult names but just Google some of the obvious misspellings and you'll find Seigel, Siegal, Segel, Schuster and other variations, along with many instances of their first names being swapped or their last names confused with Simon and Kirby or Simon and Schuster. Once upon a time, the names of Jerry and Joe appeared nowhere in conjunction with their creation and a lot of battles were fought to get them their right and proper credit. So I wince when I see one or both spelled wrong...which means I wince a lot.
During the biggest of those battles, Jerry and Joe appeared on Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell, which was then a big-time ABC prime time TV series. It may have been the only time Joe ever appeared on television...and Cosell introduced him as John Shuster.
And now, here we are with maybe the most important news story in years about them in what may be the most important newspaper in the world...and he's turned into Max Shuster. Sigh and double sigh.
Incidentally, there's a special poignancy in both those photos. Joe is posing with a copy of (but probably did not read) The Amazing World of Superman, a 1973 special edition that DC published in connection with a promotion involving Metropolis, Illinois. The book was a history of Superman...containing no mention of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
The photo of Jerry shows him with his old typewriter. A couple times in the late sixties or early seventies, when money was tight in the Siegel household, Jerry took out ads to sell that machine...the typewriter on which the first Superman story was created. I don't know what became of it but I know he was disappointed that he got no offers for significant cash.
Both those photos represent sad moments in the lives of those two men, so it's meaningful to see them juxtaposed with that article. And almost tragically comic to see them get Joe's name wrong.
A nice profile of Mad Magazine's foldable fiend, Al Jaffee.
This is the Year of Jaffee. There's a new book coming out (complete with a foreword by Stephen Colbert) collecting Al's great newspaper strip, Tall Tales. He's one of three nominees and the odds-on favorite for the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award as Cartoonist of the Year. And he's going to be a Guest of Honor at this year's Comic-Con International...the first time he's ever attended that gathering.
Frankly, I think the Comic-Con should have nominated him for a Hall of Fame Award but the nominations are out and there's no Jaffee. I guess they had to leave him (and a few other worthies in their eighties) off to make room for young whippersnappers like Len Wein and Barry Windsor-Smith.
The comic book industry has just changed a lot. This article in The New York Times will give you the basics, and here's the lede...
LOS ANGELES — Time Warner is no longer the sole proprietor of Superman.
A federal judge here on Thursday ruled that the heirs of Jerome Siegel — who 70 years ago sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130 — were entitled to reclaim their share of the U. S. copyright to the character. The ruling left intact Time Warner's international rights to the character, which it has long owned through its DC Comics unit.
And it reserved for trial questions about how much the company may owe the Siegel heirs for use of the character since 1999, when their ownership is deemed to have been restored. Also to be resolved is whether the heirs are entitled to payments directly from Time Warner's film unit, Warner Brothers, which took in $200 million at the domestic box office with its Superman Returns in 2006, or only from the DC unit's Superman profits.
If you're interested to read the entire opinion, Jeff Trexler has it over on his weblog. It's written in surprisingly clear language and you needn't have a law degree to understand most of it.
For reasons you can perhaps guess, I'm not going to be commenting on any of this. So don't ask.
Someone named Marv Wolfman who claims to have been a friend of mine for 38 years sends the following...
You and I have trudged to the Souplantation a number of times but never during Classic Creamy Tomato soup month, and that kinda soup's my favorite. So after today's column where Wayne told his soup story, I did a Google search on the nearest Souplantation (they closed down the one near me in Woodland Hills) made my way to Godforsaken Northridge or wherever it is, and had dinner. Well, the very best creamy tomato soup I ever had was at an incredibly good (and expensive) restaurant sitting on a magnificent lake in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the sun just setting out the window looking over the lake and I can tell you that soup was to die for. This wasn't as good, but
it was close. Real close. Real, real, real close. As is the restaurant, comparatively to Alabama at least, and much, much cheaper. I had two bowls. You were right again, pal-o-mine.
I'm not sure I know this Wolfman guy but if he likes the Creamy Tomato Soup at Souplantation, he sounds like my kind of person. At the very least, he gives me the chance to remind you all that there isn't much of March left and that my favorite soup won't be at Souplantation (or its twin, the Sweet Tomatoes chain) for much longer.
(Also: Can anyone identify the restaurant in Alabama that this person visited?)
It's Fred Kaplan Time again, sports fans! Today, he explains Basra to us in a way that I wish some person running for public office could explain it. I'm not sure some people running for high posts these days even know where or what Basra is.
In the fifties and sixties, the place to go for news in Southern California was not one of the network affiliates but KTLA, a local station. That was especially true when the news was of a local nature — a fire, a shootout, etc. When something happened, you tuned to Channel 5...and I can think of three reasons why that station achieved its standout position. One was that it seemed to have a bigger (and probably earlier) commitment to covering what was going on. Another was that they had the only helicopter equipped with a live video camera. When there was a big fire, other local stations — with permission and credit — would cut to the Channel 5 video feed of it. Naturally, there was no point in watching excerpts from the Channel 5 video on Channel 4 when you could turn the dial one notch and watch all of it on 5.
And the other reason was that KTLA had some fine news reporters, especially a gent named Stan Chambers, who is unmentioned in today's clip but who did remarkable work. When there was trouble anywhere in L.A., Stan Chambers would be there covering it sooner than anyone else and from some amazing vantage point. When we had the famous police shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Front, the joke was that every other reporter was covering it from outside while Chambers was in the house with the suspects.
Today's presentation here is a few minutes of openings from old KTLA nightly news broadcasts. You'll catch a brief glimpse of George Putnam, who fronted the news there for many years. Ted Knight's character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show borrowed much of his on-camera attitude from Mr. Putnam and also from another local news anchor, Jerry Dunphy. You'll also catch a brief glimpse of a very young Keith Olbermann and no glimpse of Tom Snyder, who worked for a few years on the KTLA news team.
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen were the two reporters who broke the story of the Bush administration's probably-illegal wiretapping operations. And I think I'm being charitable to put in the "probably."
Lichtblau has written a book that covers, among other thing, how they put that report together and Slate has an excerpt which should be of interest to anyone who cares about your government breaking the law...or even just about the state of journalism in the country today. On the latter count, the following paragraph leaped out at me...
The only real question now was not whether the story would run, but when. That decision was helped along by a chance conversation I had soon after our White House meeting. The administration, I was told, had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story. The tidbit was a bombshell. Few episodes in the history of the Times — or, for that matter, in all of journalism — had left as indelible a mark as the courtroom battle over the Pentagon Papers, and now we were learning that the Bush White House had dusted off a Nixon-era relic to consider coming after us again. The editors in New York had already decided they would probably print the story in the newspaper for that Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, but when word of the Pentagon Papers tip reached them, they decided they would also post it on the Internet the night before. That wasn't routinely done at that time on "exclusive" stories because we would risk losing the scoop to our competitors, but the editors felt it was worth the risk. The administration might be able to stop the presses with an injunction, but they couldn't stop the Internet.
I don't think the government could have stopped the presses either, but the ability to launch the story out into the world via the 'net probably pre-empted that battle. And has rendered so many others moot.
March 29, 2008
