He doesn't have Internet access but I don't care: I'm going to wish a happy 92nd birthday to George Tuska, a great comic book artist who's been in the business since 1939 when he began assisting on the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip and working in the studio of the aforementioned Will Eisner. Over the years, Tuska worked for most of the major publishers with long, notable stints as the keystone artist on Crime Does Not Pay, and work at Marvel, particularly on Iron Man. A fine gentleman and a fine talent...and I just had to say it even if he'll never see it.
Most folks know the late Will Eisner for his work on The Spirit, a legendary comic strip/book soon to be a Major Motion Picture. But from 1951 'til 1972, Eisner's big project was PS Magazine, the Preventive Maintenance Monthly. It was a magazine he did for the Army that basically taught soldiers how to care for their equipment, with a special emphasis on the Motor Pool. It included a comic section and the mildest of pin-up girl drawings and is interesting primarily for Eisner's skill in using comics to educate. You can get a look at this work at a new website that has scans of many issues.
Something worth noting: This magazine represented a heckuva lot of work. Each month, Eisner had to take technical notes written by experts, distill it all down to comic and visual format, then take the layouts in for severe scrutiny. Army officials would go over every millimeter of every page and demand numerous corrections...and to hear Eisner or his successors describe the process, it sounds like every freelance artist's idea of Hell. Still, Will felt it was a better existence than doing conventional comics for DC or Marvel. That should tell you a lot about the comic book industry of the fifties and sixties.
I have one semi-correction. The website lists some of the artists who worked on PS and makes it sound like my frequent collaborator Dan Spiegle worked for Eisner on it. Not so, and it's kind of interesting what happened. PS was a government contract, back when the bureaucracy used to insist that companies bid on such projects instead of just awarding them as lucrative no-bid deals to Halliburton. Every few years, the contract was up for bids and Eisner had to compete with any other party who was interested.
In '72, Will decided to give it up and let someone else have it — Murphy Anderson, the fine artist who'd been doing a lot of the drawing for him in the previous few years. Murphy set up a whole studio to produce the magazine and did it for a time...but in the late seventies, he lost the contract to a man named Zeke Zekley. Zeke, whose obit you read on this site some time ago, was an old hand in comics — a one-time assistant to George McManus on Bringing Up Father. He had a company called Sponsored Comics that designed comics for advertising purposes, and he went after the PS contract and managed to underbid Murphy and wrest it away.
So Zeke set up an operation to produce it. To draw the bulk of the book, he sponsored the immigration of Alfredo Alcala, the gifted Filipino comic book artist. To draw the color comic sections in the center, he hired Spiegle. (He offered me the job of writing 'em but when I saw what it involved, I passed. I think Don R. Christensen wound up with the job.) Zeke and his crew did PS for several months of what he described as "doing every issue over and over a dozen times until the Army would give approval." He finally called Murphy Anderson and talked him into buying the contract from him and taking PS back.
Anyway, the point is that Spiegle didn't work for Eisner. I guess I could have just told you that but I find it fascinating that the magazine involved so much labor and so many corrections. And that for twenty years, Will Eisner managed to produce a monthly book that, no matter how well it paid, was just plain too much work for some other folks.
Matthew Head sent me this letter that I thought warranted discussion...
I recently learned from this article that Doug Manchester, the owner of San Diego's Manchester Grand Hyatt — a hotel I assume is often used by San Diego Comicon attendees — actively opposes gay marriage in California. I think that some San Diego attendees might want to know whether or not their dollars are going to this man (although I know it's supposed to be ridiculously difficult to get a hotel in San Diego around the con). I would love it if every hotel in San Diego were full for the con except for the Manchester Grand Hyatt, but I also know that's very unlikely. Still, this might be information that some of your blog readers would find useful.
Useful? I don't know. I'm a strong believer that anyone should be able to marry the consenting adult of their choice, and I also often stay at that hotel when I attend Comic-Con International. Still, I don't see the point of boycotting that hotel. There is zero chance that it won't be booked to capacity during the con...and if convention attendees don't take the rooms available to them at the convention rate, they'll just be full of people paying the higher, normal rate. Mr. Manchester would probably love that.
I actually don't see the point of most boycotts unless it's to make the boycotter feel like they're doing something. Very few boycotts have any economic impact on the target...and often when they do, they penalize the wrong people. If you could somehow cause the Manchester Grand Hyatt to be empty those days, they'd probably lay off bellmen and cleaning ladies, and those people would suffer a lot more than Mr. Manchester. More likely, as I say, the place will be full and if there's any public awareness at all, it would appear under a headline that said something like, "Hyatt Boycott Fails." It would come across as a lack of support for your cause.
The article says that Mr. Manchester has donated cash to try and get something called "The California Marriage Protection Act" on the November ballot. My suspicion is that its proponents are less interested in defining wedlock as between a man and a woman than they are in driving right-wing voters to the polls that month. John McCain isn't likely to be competitive in this state and that could lead to a lot of Republicans staying home and not voting in Congressional or state races. The infamous Rove Playbook seems to suggest that a "red meat" initiative of this kind could get out more of the G.O.P. race. I don't think it can possibly pass but it might get a few more Republicans elected. (It also may not qualify for the ballot. The deadline for signatures is Monday.)
April 27, 2008
