Friday, July 10, 2009

Where I'll Be

For those of you in Southern California: July 29, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica will host a screening of a new documentary, The Legends Behind the Comic Books, directed by Chip Cronkite. As the press release states, "This documentary film captures for posterity the living artists and writers from The Golden Age of Comic Books (1938-1951) and The Silver Age of Comic Books (1956-1973). Insightful comments are provided by the creative geniuses who were there at the beginning, including Stan Lee (Spider-Man, The Hulk, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, Daredevil and The Fantastic Four), Jerry Robinson (The Joker and Robin the Boy Wonder), Joe Simon (Captain America, Sandman, Manhunter) Joe Kubert (Hawkman, Sgt. Rock, Tarzan), Murphy Anderson (Buck Rogers, The Spectre, Dr. Fate, Hourman, Starman and Black Canary) and many more."

After it, they'll be screening the animated feature, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm but in-between, there'll be a panel discussion on stage at the Aero with producer Michael Uslan and novelist-historian Michael Mallory, the author of Marvel: The Expanding Universe Wall Chart and X-Men: The Characters and Their Universe. Oh, yeah...and me. I'll be up there talking about whatever we'll be talking about. I may start by arguing the above dates for the Golden and Silver Ages.

The documentary screens at 7:30. Before that, commencing at 6 PM, the panelists (plus artist Glen Orbik) will be across the street, signing books at Every Picture Tells a Story, a lovely bookstore/gallery that is well worth your patronage.

The Aero Theater is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for the screening and panel discussion can be purchased at this link. Hope to see you there.

• Posted at 10:44 PM · LINK

Friday in San Diego

Ye Olde Comic-Con International has posted their programming schedule for Friday. Again, you might want to take a look and see what events you'll attend when you're not at one of my panels. My whole list should be up over the weekend.

• Posted at 2:06 PM · LINK

Last Thought for the Day

Still working way too late...

• Posted at 5:11 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Back in the late eighties, I was an enormous fan of a musical group called Big Daddy, not to be confused with several other acts with similar names. This Big Daddy recorded for Rhino Records and they had a wonderful gimmick. What they did was to take current rock songs and then rearrange them to sound like fifties music. They were enormously skillful at this and in many cases, their versions of contemporary hits sounded better than the originals.

I dragged friends to their live performances and became pals with a couple of members. I even cast one of the members (Tom Lee, the guy with the great bass voice) for a couple of cartoon voice jobs. Alas, some time in the nineties — I'm not sure when — the group drifted apart and insofar as I can tell, all their albums and CDs are now outta print...though not hard to find on eBay or as used items on Amazon.

Here's a little music video that someone threw together using one of their records — their version of Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs." Don't you like it better their way?

• Posted at 12:00 AM · LINK

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