Monthly Archives: April 2003

As noted here, a developer has proposed some plans for the old Hanna-Barbera building at 3400 Cahuenga, some of which involve tearing the thing down. Some groups are trying to drum up support to save the structure as a landmark and as a tribute to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.

I worked in that building for years, and still have a tremendous affection for the early cartoons that were produced there — though more so for the ones H-B did before that, out of a studio down on La Brea. Still, I find it hard to see how any of us will be that much worse off if there's a big Ross Dress-for-Less shop on the property instead. Yes, it might be nice if that bit of history is preserved but to the extent that's true then the folks at Time-Warner — which owns Hanna-Barbera and is phasing out that brand name in favor of that of Cartoon Network — ought to just come up with the bucks to do this. I've lost track of whether they still have custody of 3400 Cahuenga or if they sold it to Universal, which I believe was reported some time ago to be acquiring it. Curiously, the article I'm linking to doesn't tell who does currently hold the deed. But if Time-Warner doesn't own it, they could — and they could put an actual, working cartoon studio or other Hollywood-themed business in there. I don't see why it should be up to anyone else to save the place. And if they won't do it, it probably isn't worth saving.

This is kinda interesting. The 1927 classic movie, Metropolis, has been broken down into a "walkthrough" such as they do with branching role-playing and videogames. Click here to see it. And thank Buzz Dixon for the tip.

Well, they were in the forties and fifties. And during most of that time, their publisher was a woman named Helen Meyer. She reportedly had very little to do with the content of the books, above and beyond saying things like, "Let's do more issues of that Uncle Scrooge comic," but that was important. And she and the other folks at Dell Publishing did a great job of marketing and distribution. Anyway, she has just passed away at age 95 and here's the New York Times obituary.

You are perhaps curious/baffled about the relationship between her company, Dell Publishing, and Western Printing and Lithography, which was the firm that created the contents of those comics and printed them. Here's an explanation.

The other day, The Comics Journal daily weblog, ¡Journalista!, noted that a Reuters report on the current Marvel/Sony lawsuit had made reference to "artist Stan Lee." (Actually, it made reference to "San Lee," but that isn't the kind of mistake that gets anyone — not even Stan — upset…)

In this case, the "artist" reference is a bit unsettling since the artist who did co-create Spider-Man, Steve Ditko, has gone spectacularly unmentioned in all the publicity about the movies. So not only is he not getting credited (let alone, paid) but folks are acting like the non-drawing Mr. Lee created the much-merchandised visual and drew the early comics, as well. Reporters are enormously sloppy about things like this even though it's very easy to check.

This is more than a matter of folks being denied their due. Money — and therefore, financial security — are often linked not only to what you do but whether you get your name on it. Moreover, a lot of relationships between collaborators have been harmed and even terminated because one guy seemed to be getting more than his share of credit. It is important to note that, while sometimes one participant does things to screw the other(s) out of recognition, it also sometimes happens due to bad reporting.

Stan Lee, of course, is not an artist and has never claimed to be one. But I just did a Google search for "artist Stan Lee" and got 117 hits. A few are cases where the word "artist" just happened to come before his name and was not intended as a descriptor. Still, there are at least 100 instances where someone thought Stan was the artist, and some of them are from pretty important sources. This kind of mistake does more damage than you'd think.

For twenty-some-odd years, my amigo-partner Sergio Aragonés has drawn his silly pictures in a studio that is a glorious clutter of art, toys, pinball machines, dead bodies and outright miscellany. He will soon be closing it down as part of a plan to move into new facilities. Recently, a fine photographer-friend, David Baker, photographed Sergio in his soon-to-be-vacated natural surroundings. Dave is a true artist of the camera, as you can see if you visit his website. He has taken many of the photos he shot of Sergio in that studio and made them into a photo "mosaic" of Sergio's face.

Only 200 copies have been produced of this limited edition print, signed by the both of them, and one is presently up for auction on eBay. Sergio will also be selling a few of them at his convention appearances — like this coming weekend at Wondercon in San Francisco.

If the link to eBay has expired, you can click here to get a good look at this splendid pic, which is made up of a lot of little pics of Sergio in his studio. This would be a great poster to put up outside your house, if for no other reason that no one can deface it by drawing a mustache on it. A vandal would have to go out, buy some Liquid Paper and paint the mustache out in order to deface it.

Charlie Douglass, inventor of the main device used to inject canned laughter into TV shows, has died. Here's a link to an obit, and I think we can all imagine the Saturday Night Live sketch: Someone delivering a sombre, tearful eulogy for Charlie while a guy at a machine "sweetens" it and lays in the guffaws. And I think we can count on a Leno monologue joke: Jay, in a serious tone, announces something along the lines of, "The inventor of the laugh track died today," and then they dub in some huge audience reaction.

People always say they hate it when a show has obvious canned laughter. I think it's worse when it isn't obvious — like when it's done on a live show, just in case the studio audience isn't yukking it up. Bob "Can you believe I'm this old?" Hope reportedly insisted, when he hosted the Oscars, that Charlie and his mysterious box be engaged and at the ready to augment the response. There's also a difference of honesty between sweetening a film show — like M*A*S*H or Get Smart — which a reasonably-intelligent person knows does not have a live audience, and hyping up the track for a show that pretends you're hearing actual human beings. (In a perverse way, I liked the occasional attempts, as on some early broadcasts of The Flintstones and Rocky and His Friends, to apply canned laughter to animation. Who did they think we'd think was watching the performance and laughing at it? Other cartoon characters?)

On the other hand, there can be a downside to real laughter. There are shows that have been done in front of an audience where, it seemed to me, the performers/writers were stooping to the kind of material that delights the in-studio watchers and leaves us at home out of the loop. The most obvious offenders in this regard are when Leno or Letterman will come out and lead-off with a line that plays back on something that was said in the pre-show warm-up. Big laugh from all those present but a big "?" to us. I suspect that some programs — M*A*S*H would be the best example — would not have been as good had the authors had to constantly think of evoking that audible response from a studio audience.

Maybe the best thing would be if we could learn to laugh at comedies on an individual basis. Anyway, let's note a moment of hysterics for Charlie Douglass…

Bob Edwards is the host of Morning Edition on National Public Radio. He has some interesting thoughts on the press today, particularly with the slanting of news to further the business interests of the company that owns the reporting venue. You'll find it here.

As mentioned back on the old news from me, DC Comics is bringing out the first of two paperback volumes reprinting Jack Kirby's brief but highly memorable tenure on Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. It was an odd stint — not quite a DC comic, not quite a Marvel, with art that was not quite Jack's, and stories that no one could quite describe. As I recount in the foreword of the book, Jack never much liked handling other folks' characters. On the other hand, he was newly-arrived at DC, having fled a situation he deemed intolerable at Marvel. He was eager to cooperate with his new employer and eager to become its most important creator.

To this end, he accepted the notion not only that he should do something in the Superman area but that he should also revamp the Man of Steel, whose sales were dropping and whose long-time editor had just been shown the door. That character's pal's comic, which was then without a steady writer or artist, looked like a dandy place to begin to do some of that.

As others have found over the years with a classic icon, it's one thing for the copyright holder to say they want it updated and retooled, and quite another for them (anyone, not just DC then) to actually alter a property with a lucrative merchandising franchise. I am reminded of a time when a writer I know described a new assignment as, "Make it new, make it fresh, make it different, but for God's sake, don't change anything!"

What Jack did with Jimmy Olsen came to rest somewhere in the middle of that directive: Different enough from the DC norm to horrify several of the company's longtime staffers (including the nominal editor of the comic, Murray Boltinoff) but so much like a DC Comic that Jack felt distanced from the work and generally handicapped. Nothing that he did was without interest, and some of what you'll see in this collection — and the subsequent second volume, which will reprint the balance of his Olsen material — is quite wonderful. This is a 192 page paperback that comes out on July 23. Yes, it's in color. No, the retouches that were done at the time on Jack's drawings of Jimmy Olsen and Superman have not been undone. The cover is Steve Rude's reinterpretation of an unused cover drawing Jack did. You can see a small version of it above left and a larger one by clicking here. I think. I'm still learning how to embed pictures in this new software, so don't be surprised if you click that link and wind up at some porn site.

You can read an interview with Harry Shearer here at The Onion. Or you can listen to an interview with Harry Shearer here on National Public Radio. Or you can do neither.

Just fixed a configuration glitch that was letting about half of you get to this page and sending the other half of you scurrying back to my other site, no matter how hard you tried to get here. My apologies to that half of you, but now you have a wonderful metaphor for life.

Here's a link to Senator Rick Santorum's recent comments on homosexuality. Frightening.

Jason Alexander and Martin Short are not only going to star in The Producers in Los Angeles, they've already stepped into the roles of Bialystock and Bloom for the current San Francisco engagement. Meanwhile, cast members are being rotated between that company, the Broadway engagement, and some new productions. Here's an article that will tell you who's where and who's going to be where.

Well. This new page seems to be working okay…from my end, anyway. No doubt I'll awake tomorrow to an e-mail from some old friend saying that he's viewing the Internet on a steam-fitted Etch-a-Sketch and that my new website doesn't read properly on his screen. Bear with me a few days and I'll get the software cleaned up.

As noted in the margins here, I still have POVonline up and operating. I wanted to stop hand-coding its "news" page and switch to this software, and it seemed neater to set it up at its own address with its own web directories and such. So that's why the new site. Hope you enjoy it. Not that I do this for anyone but myself…

Demon broadcaster Paul Harris has a terrific Flash movie over on his "Picture of the Day" page at www.harrisonline.com.  Here's a link to that page, and you'll want to select the Honda Accord commercial.

Actually, several of the things Paul has posted there are fun but we're recommending the Honda commercial as a special must-see.  It's two minutes, it's amazing and it's apparently all real.  Read the articles Paul has posted about how the film was made, then watch it again.  Somewhere, Rube Goldberg is smiling.

Sorry to hear of the passing of the great jazz/gospel singer Nina Simone.  Here's a link to the New York Times obit which just begins to tell her amazing, courageous story.  Of course, no article could properly summarize her music but fortunately, we have CDs for that.  I was honored to attend one of her last American concerts in July of 2001 and it was a wonderful experience.  If she hadn't finally left the stage, we'd all still be standing and cheering.