Saturday, March 27, 2010

Owl Be Seeing You...

I won't embed the video link again because it does odd things to this page...but we're presently keeping about half an eye on Molly the Owl, who has hatched a couple of owl babes and may have hatched one or two more by the time you read this. It's a fascinating show and don't click over there and start watching unless you're prepared to get hooked and spend hours staring at this lovely owl in her habitat sitting (live!) on eggs.

At this moment, 8726 people are tuned in. That includes my computer and the one on the other side of my office that Carolyn is watching. This is about twice the viewership that Jimmy Kimmel has...which is no surprise because Molly's funnier.

• Posted at 11:20 PM · LINK

Forum Correction

I misspoke/mistyped (whatever the correct verb is) while writing about "The Echo Song" in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. My pal Bob Claster sends the following quote from Mr. Sondheim...

"Echo Song" was cut in New Haven during the tryout because the whole show wasn't working properly and this number (among many others) didn't make enough impact on the audience. It was replaced by "That'll Show Him," which was transferred from Act I to Act II. Burt Shevelove and I decided to resuscitate "Echo Song" for the 1971 revival, where once again it didn't work. It did seem, however, to be more effective than "That'll Show Him" if for no other reason than that it offered some funny staging opportunities.

As I recall the staging from the '71 production, they had Hero up on the balcony of the House of Senex and he was doing a kind of Harold Lloyd number, dangling from it and an overhang — actually more scary than funny — as he sang his part. For what it's worth, I think that song is more appropriate for the storyline but "That'll Show Him" is funnier.

• Posted at 10:42 PM · LINK

Dick

Obviously, shortly after I posted that I didn't have sufficient confirmation of Dick Giordano's passing, I received it. A friend wrote to ask why the hesitation: "You knew he was in the hospital and not expected to leave. Why did it seem so impossible to you that he'd died?" Not impossible. It's just that you want to reach a certain level of sourcing on these things before you treat them as fact. It has been my experience, over the many years I've been doing this, that when someone is known to be terminal, that's a particular time for caution. It's very easy for someone to accidentally make the jump from "Dick is in the hospital and likely to die any day now" to "Dick has died." So we err, if we err, in the direction of waiting better information. For what it's worth, since I started this blog, I've been told at least three dozen times — often by someone you'd think would know — that So-and-So had expired when So-and-So was quite alive. Someday, I will make the mistake of passing one of those on but I'm in no hurry to do so.

The comic industry is mourning Dick...and if you surf about, you may notice that they're all talking about the same guy: Friendly, courageous, willing to give New Talent a break, etc. It's expected that when someone who was that important leaves us, people will say nice things. I'm just impressed, though not surprised, that everyone who knew Dick is saying pretty much the same nice things.

Several folks have written to ask me if I have an address for condolences. I do not but will attempt to come up with one. I will also add that Dick was on the Board of Directors of The Hero Initiative, a charity that aids comic book creators who are in need. If you're the kind of person who likes to send flowers or something of the sort, I would think a donation there would be utterly appropriate.

• Posted at 10:03 PM · LINK

Dick Giordano, R.I.P.

Sad to report the passing of longtime editor-artist Dick Giordano.

Dick was born July 20, 1932 in New York and launched his career in comics in 1952, drawing for Charlton Comics. He was not only a very good artist — one they quickly assigned to handle many of their covers — but an industrious one, as well. He quickly got a reputation as a guy who never said no to any assignment; who'd work day and night to get anything and everything done. So not only did he do all his own work but he was constantly helping other artists, pitching in on their work. Even when he rose to the post of editor-in-chief at Charlton (which occurred in '65), his art appeared in the books of other companies. There were several artists whose reputations were built at least in part on the quality and efficiency of artwork that was actually ghosted by Giordano.

When he took over as editor at Charlton, Dick was charged with revamping the line to try and compete with the Marvel boom of the sixties. Aided by the presence of Steve Ditko in his freelance pool, Dick launched a line of "action heroes" (Blue Beetle, a revival of Captain Atom, etc.) that won great critical acclaim but, apparently, insufficient sales. He replaced them with a line of ghost-oriented comics that were much more successful and continued long after Dick left Charlton for an editorial post at DC Comics in 1967. It has usually been reported that DC hired him and he brought over Ditko as well as a number of new folks (like Jim Aparo and Steve Skeates) he'd "discovered" at Charlton. Actually, Ditko preceded Giordano to DC. In fact, it was partly through a recommendation from Ditko that ~~Carmine Infantino~~ Irwin Donenfeld at DC hired Dick. [Correction.]

As was the case at Charlton, Giordano proved to be an exceptional editor. He was good at finding talent, good at leaving it alone to do what it did best, good at stepping in when necessary. Writers and artists generally liked working with Dick. Most found him honest, helpful and willing to gamble on new things. Alas, his first stint at DC did not last long. He was assigned a slate of comics that were either brand-new or failing at a time when just about everything that was brand-new or failing there failed. He openly clashed with Infantino on company policies and in 1971, chose to go elsewhere.

He and artist Neal Adams founded Continuity Associates, a firm which supplied artwork to many publishers, DC included, and commercial enterprises. An amazing number of artists who would later become prominent in comics got either their first jobs or their first breaks by working at Continuity, including Terry Austin, Joe Rubenstein and Al Milgrom. A major part of the Giordano legacy is the number of artists and writers who broke into the field because of him, either at Continuity or at Charlton or his two tours-of-duty at DC.

His second DC period began in 1980, several years after Infantino's departure. Eventually, it led to Dick becoming Vice President/Executive Editor, a post he held until 1993. I worked with him a number of times and though we had our differences, he was usually a joy. He could manage without micro-managing and he was often capable of saying, as some in that kind of job are not, that the company was wrong and the freelancer was right. That was not always the case but it was true often enough that most of us were willing to forgive him when he didn't act like...well, didn't act like Dick Giordano.

That was the main point I want to make here about Dick. I got into comics around 1970 and so was witness to a major sea change in how the industry treated its talent. I saw publishers gain a new, hitherto-denied respect for the men and women who fill the pages and a diminution of the "plantation" mentality that existed for too long. It was not just that pay scales got better and they began doing things like returning original art and standardizing credit policies. It was that they talked to you like partners, not pieceworkers, and recognized the unique contribution that each person could make. Dick was by no means the only reason that change came about but he was an important one.

When he retired from his executive position at DC, he returned to his first love, the drawing of comics. He was very good at it. He was also a very fine inker of other artists' work and many asked for him to be assigned to their projects. In 2003, he collaborated with author Michael Eury on an autobiography, Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day at a Time, which is a good overview not only of his career but of the changes in the industry during that period.

On a personal note: I really liked Dick. I liked reading comics he worked on. I liked working with him, liked seeing how much of a difference he made in so many lives. It was generally a positive one. He was a devout fan of comics in the best possible way and one time when he and I had a very brutal argument over a certain DC policy, we followed it with an utterly-friendly discussion of comic artists we both admired. It was that passion for the field and that enthusiasm for the talents of others than made him a very fine editor and a very fine gentleman. Comics already miss him...a lot.

• Posted at 11:16 AM · LINK

Saturday Morning

Multiple sources are reporting the passing of longtime editor-artist Dick Giordano...and it's true that Dick has been hospitalized and in failing condition for the last few weeks. I'm getting a deluge of messages asking me to confirm his death and, well, I don't think I have sufficient sourcing. Let's hold out hope that it isn't so.

• Posted at 10:50 AM · LINK

Something Aesthetic, Something Balletic...

This is probably too late to do any of you much good but Carolyn and I went last night to see the Reprise! presentation of my favorite musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum up at UCLA. It closes tomorrow but if you're in L.A. and there's any way you can get up there to see it, you'll enjoy it a lot. Everyone in the house last night certainly did. The cast is outstanding and they sure looked like they were having a good time up there, dashing madly on and off stage and singing those spiffy Sondheim tunes.

Lee Wilkof, who's been a treasure of the theater for some time, stars as Pseudolus, the slave who yearns to claim his freedom by arranging an assignation between his young master and a courtesan from the House of Lycus. I saw Mr. Wilkof in the original version of the musical, Little Shop of Horrors, and have caught him in many a show since, including the recent New York revival of Kiss Me Kate. Always wonderful. I've probably seen at least thirty different productions of Forum so I could only marvel as he got laughs in places where I'd never seen a Pseudolus — not even Phil Silvers — get laughs.

The rest of the cast is good, too. Ron Orbach wrung every possible chuckle out of the role of Senex. Michael Kostroff was a perfect Lycus. Ruth Williamson, who seems to be in about half the plays I see, scored big as Domina, wife of Senex. I also liked Erich Bergen as a charmingly naive Hero, Annie Abrams as an even more naive Philia and Larry Raben as a properly hysterical Hysterium. The courtesans were lovely. The Proteans were funny. The fellow playing Miles Gloriosus (Stuart Ambrose) was properly villainous/hilarious. And Alan Mandell, playing Erronious, got a laugh with every single thing he said or did. Director David Lee did a great job casting and staging this production.

Forum connoisseurs will be interested to know that they included the song, "Farewell," which Sondheim wrote to give Nancy Walker a larger role in the '71 revival. Also for that production, S.S. wrote a tune called "The Echo Song" which replaced "That'll Show Him" in the second act and Reprise! opted to make that substitution here. I like the other tune better but it was nice to hear "The Echo Song" again. "Pretty Little Picture," which is sometimes omitted, was omitted — perhaps because it slows the action or perhaps because it's maybe the most difficult-to-sing song that Sondheim ever wrote. When I interviewed Phil Silvers, he was recovering from a stroke and he said, "Doing that song every night, I was harder to understand than I am now." They had to excise the number from the show and a lot of other productions have done so, as well.

Carolyn and I had a great time so go see this new incarnation if you're local and possibly can. Today's 2 PM matinee will be preceded at Noon by a free one-hour lecture by me on the history of the show. I will be the least funny person on that stage today.

• Posted at 9:09 AM · LINK

March 28, 2010 • Current • March 26, 2010