Yearly Archives: 2013

What's going on with Korea and how much should we be worrying? Fred Kaplan explains it all.

Carmine Infantino has died at the age of 87 and there is much to say…

In his day, Infantino was one of the great artists of comic books. Brooklyn born, he broke into comics while still in high school, mainly by assisting in the shop run by Harry Chesler. His initial ventures in actually creating pages were done in tandem with his boyhood friend, Frank Giacoia. At first, Giacoia drew the pages in pencil and Infantino inked, starting with the Jack Frost story in USA Comics #3 (Jan. 1942). Eventually, they switched roles and went their separate ways. Giacoia became one of the most respected inkers. Infantino became one of the top guys with a pencil. Carmine worked for DC, Timely, Hillman, Prize and other companies but from around 1955 on, almost all his work was done for DC and he became more and more important to the firm.

He drew dozens of features for the company but is probably best remembered as the artist who in 1956 designed and depicted the new, Barry Allen version of The Flash, launching a new wave of super-hero comics some would call The Silver Age. He also drew among many other strips, Adam Strange, Detective Chimp, Space Museum, The Elongated Man and in 1964 was the key artist for an update of Batman (the "New Look") which modernized the character for the sixties. He drew sleek, graceful figures and was topped by no one when it came to designing a panel that would convey movement. He was even better at designing covers.

In the sixties, he won most of the major awards for cover design and was able to parlay that into a job as DC's Art Director in charge of covers. At DC, the premise was that the cover sold the comic and it was not uncommon to design an exciting cover and then write the insides to go with it. By designing the covers, Infantino gained power and influence over the contents and before long, he was Art Director of the entire company. And he didn't stop there.

When DC was acquired by Kinney National Services (a corporation that eventually turned into Time-Warner), the old Editorial Director, Irwin Donenfeld, was ousted. Infantino was chosen to take his place and charged with the task of reinventing the entire line, which was then plagued by falling sales. During his first year in power, Infantino turned DC into a brand-new company, ousting many long-time staffers and freelancers and bringing in new ones, canceling old titles, starting new comics and totally revamping all the ongoing books. It is difficult to impress upon people how much DC changed in a short space of time.

Many wonderful comics and characters emerged: Bat Lash, Anthro, The Creeper, a whole new Wonder Woman, the acclaimed Green Lantern-Green Arrow series, Jack Kirby's Fourth World titles, the resurrection of Captain Marvel (Shazam!), a new series of Tarzan comics, Swamp Thing, The Phantom Stranger, Mike Grell's Warlord, Prez, etc. It's a very long list because, alas, most of these comics did not last long and were replaced by others — and then the others were replaced by others. Some comics were cancelled when the first sales figures trickled in; others, even before that. A few managed respectable runs but they were the exceptions.

Last weekend at WonderCon, I fell again into the ongoing debate that some of us have as to what went wrong during this period. My take, for what it's worth, is that as fine as Infantino was at designing covers and positioning creative folks to do good work, he lacked certain business skills that were essential to his job description. At the time, DC was plagued by an atrophying system of distribution and the management at Independent News — the sister company that disseminated DC's product to the masses — lost confidence in Infantino and to some extent in the whole idea of selling comic books. When your salesmen don't believe they can sell what you make, you probably can't. I believe DC was too swift to give up on some books that could have found an audience…but Infantino may not always have had much choice.

He was promoted to Publisher when the post came open but fired in January of 1976 and for years after, he searched for some sort of executive position. He never found one and eventually, he returned to drawing comic books. At first it was for Warren, then for Marvel — where he drew many comics but particularly soared (artistically and in sales) on their Star Wars comic. In 1981, he reluctantly began drawing for DC again — including a return to The Flash — though I don't believe he ever set foot in the DC offices after his dismissal as Publisher. Physical problems, mostly back trouble, eventually brought an end to his drawing days.

Infantino and I had a couple of unpleasant encounters over the years, as did some others who worked with him while he was running DC. I don't feel it's appropriate to go into them at length at this time. Maybe later, maybe not. I'll just say I admired his artwork and much of what he tried to do in an editorial capacity at DC, especially his first few years in that capacity. I thought that as Editorial Director and Publisher though, he was installed in a job at which no one could have succeeded and then he did some things, both creatively and in how he dealt with talent, that warranted serious criticism. Even then, he was a man of tremendous gifts and it was impossible to look at the last few decades of his life and not feel your heart break a little. When he was good, he was better than just about anybody.

Roger Ebert on the passing of Roger Ebert.

The one time I met Roger Ebert, he was holding court…and I sure got the feeling that he was the kind of guy who didn't talk to anyone, even himself, without holding court.  But you can do that when you're Roger Ebert because he was a smart man who always had something to say.

The topic was Oliver Stone's film JFK and Ebert asked — rhetorically, because he really wasn't interested in getting a dialogue going with strangers — if we could name a single credible person who believed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in Dallas on 11/22/63. A bunch of us called out "Walter Cronkite" and he didn't like that much.

I always found his writing intriguing, earnest and well-written. I didn't always agree with it but it was always worth the trip. Movies had no better friend and they're going to miss him. As will we all.

Interview with Louis C.K. He's a funny man. It took me a bit to warm up to him because too many people were telling me he was the most brilliant comedian in the history of mankind so of course, everything I saw of him was a little disappointing. How could it not be? But once I got the unrealistic expectations out of my head, I started to appreciate the guy.

Our pal Jerry Beck remembers the prime-time (briefly) cartoon series, Calvin and the Colonel. Folks who write about this show usually attribute its short evening run to either a public dislike of shows about talking animals or a racial sensitivity to bringing back Amos & Andy, albeit in furry form. I think it failed because it wasn't that great a show. Jazzy theme song, though.

As Ezra Klein notes, the Republican plan to "replace Obamacare" is not an alternative method of making sure more people have affordable health insurance. It's a way of making sure fewer people have affordable health insurance.

Hitler's food taster.

George Gladir died last night. Obits will note him as one of the most prolific comic book writers of all time and quote staggering, hard-to-fathom estimates of how many pages he wrote just for the Archie line. I don't know what number they'll say but it'll probably be true…or too low. George wrote an awful lot of Archie. They will also note that he was the co-creator of Sabrina the Teen-Aged Witch — also true — and a major contributor to Cracked magazine over the years. True as well.

Here's what else I can tell you about him: He was born in 1925. He got into cartooning as a teenager and worked in 1943 for the Eisner-Iger Studio with Will Eisner, mainly as a letterer and errand boy. He graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts and set his focus on gag cartooning — single-panel drawings for magazines. He did it with much success through the fifties when, as he put it, "the market simply went away on me." By then though, it was a sideline.

Just when he started writing for Archie is hard to nail down. The way he told it, he was given the opportunity to submit cover gags for the Archie line of comics, did that, then segued to writing the insides and never left. He was probably still writing stories for them earlier this week. When did he commence? Historians have spotted what appear to be Gladir scripts as early as 1944. If it wasn't then, it was a year or two after…and then the flow only stopped once for a brief time. He did manage to dash off the occasional script while serving overseas in the Korean War but even George couldn't dash off a Jughead adventure during the time he was a Prisoner-of-War. When he was freed though, he resumed.

Even when they had no credits, you could generally spot a George Gladir script. They were a little wackier, a little sillier, a little more human in their humor. And oh, yes — they were usually fresher than the ones crafted by younger writers. George never got around to getting stale on the job. For his amazing, too-often-uncredited work, we presented him in 2007 with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. It was one of those picks that made everyone nod in agreement.

George was a delightful man. The longest time I got to spend with him was one year when he was signing comics (Sabrina, mostly) at the L.A. Times Book Festival up at U.C.L.A. It was about a million degrees — Fahrenheit — but George kept a cheery manner, sounding nothing like a man his age. You could talk with him about Archie comics but he had witty, incisive things to say about every subject and I liked him a lot. So did his friend Batton Lash, who has written this lovely remembrance of the man. I agree with every word of it, especially the parts about missing George.

Mark Cohen is the author of this forthcoming book on the late, great Allan Sherman. I haven't seen it yet but everything I've heard about it makes it sound very interesting and very definitive. Order a copy and while you wait, here's Mark to share with us an Allan Sherman song that you probably haven't heard…

To my friends who link to articles here, especially to plug them on Facebook…

I appreciate that more than you can know but let me tell you the proper way to do this. Each post on this blog has a unique link to it. The link is embedded in the subject of the post. For instance, the link to this post is above in the word "Happy Blogkeeping." In the case of this message, the link is http://www.newsfromme.com/2013/04/03/happy-blogkeeping-2.

That's the link you want to paste into some other webpage or Facebook posting or Tweet in order to link your readers to it. There are two ways to get this link…

1. Right-click on the subject and depending on your system or browser, you should be given some sort of option to copy the link into your clipboard. For instance, in Mozilla Firefox, you want to "Copy Link Location."  You can then paste it wherever you want it to go.
2. Click on the subject. That will take you to a page that contains only that post and it will have the link in the URL window of your browser. You can then copy that URL and paste is wherever it belongs.

If you just link to http://www.newsfromme.com, the link will take people to this page and they'll start with whatever is the most recent post at that moment. By then, that may not be the one you wish them to read.

If you're doing a Facebook link, you'll usually be given the choice of a thumbnail illustration snatched from this page. It may or may not be one that corresponds to the article in question so scroll through them and pick or select "none."

As I said, I appreciate the links. Keep doing it. Just try doing it this way.

Here's a link to Bill Carter's article about the Leno/Fallon transition. It's Mr. Carter's station in life to accept and pass on whatever the main players in the Late Night world tell him (at least until he writes a book) so he makes the whole thing sound like a big love affair with everyone getting what they wanted. I think it's safe to assume Jay Leno is not happy with any part of this except maybe that he doesn't look quite as "fired" as he did last time they tried this.

In the Carter piece, Jay makes it sound like he has no offers and may not go back into the arena. I've heard from several sources that he has and will be getting several offers, some perhaps quite enticing. Whether he'll grab any of them, even he doesn't probably know yet. I'm sure he could be quite happy the rest of his life doing stand-up and various guest appearances. One wonders if Letterman's show will be among them. In Carter's last book, he said that Jay was asked to guest with Dave on the night that Conan O'Brien took over The Tonight Show but that he declined the offer, feeling that it would be a slap at Conan. He certainly won't go on opposite Fallon's debut but — assuming he hasn't already announced a new competing show by then — he'll probably get an invite to drop by at some point.

NBC has just put out a press release announcing that Jay Leno will leave The Tonight Show in Spring of next year and that Jimmy Fallon will begin doing that program from New York. The most interesting paragraph in the release to me is this quote from Steve Burke, Chief Executive Officer of NBCUniversal…

We are purposefully making this change when Jay is #1, just as Jay replaced Johnny Carson when he was #1. Jimmy Fallon is a unique talent and this is his time. I'm thrilled he will become the sixth host of The Tonight Show at exactly the right moment.

No mention in there of Conan replacing Jay when he was #1…but that didn't work out so well, did it? Burke also said of Leno, "His long reign as the highest-rated late-night host is a testament to his work ethic and dedication to his viewers and to NBC." Yeah, and NBC has been so dedicated to him that they've decided to oust him three times, all when he was delivering the ratings they wanted.

Leno's contract was not up until the Fall and he reportedly had a clause that paid him a huge fee if he was yanked off the air before the contract was up. I'm assuming that all the delay and scuffling of the last few weeks have been because negotiations were being held as to how much Jay would get and at what point he'd be free to go elsewhere. Will he land at Fox or somewhere else? Hard to say. My guess is he'll increase his schedule of stand-up gigs and wait to see what's offered and — equally important — how committed those suitors are to stick with a new show. If Fox offers him 26 weeks with options, he'll say no. If they offer him a pretty solid couple of years…well, maybe. Jay's never been a guy to turn down a job if he could squeeze it in but sooner or later, he's gotta. There's a good "quit while you're ahead" argument here.

I find something very likeable about Jimmy Fallon but I find myself unable to like his show. I don't mind that he is not edgy. All the criticisms of Leno softening his act and dumbing it down for Middle America strike me as more applicable to Fallon, except that he never really had a hard-edged act to soften. Every time I tune him in, he seems to be playing Beer Pong or some game designed to cover him and/or a guest with food or beverage. I don't find that kind of thing all that entertaining — or any hipper/wittier than Jay bringing out stupid people to play Jeopardy! and get all the questions wrong.

People keep asking me how I think Dave or Conan feel about all this. I doubt either one cares that much. They have their own shows to worry about. Conan's just been extended on his TBS series but that only means he's doing about as well as George Lopez did for them there. It's steady but that's about it.

Meanwhile: Without Jay on the air, Letterman's really going to feel like a dinosaur. Friends who know him say he's only doing the show (a) because it's the only thing he does that brings him much happiness, (b) he doesn't know what else to do and (c) he wants his son to get old enough to really understand that Daddy is a TV star. It'll be interesting to see if he inherits the older viewers who don't have Leno to watch anymore — that's assuming Leno isn't over on Fox — or if Dave loses too many of the younger ones to Fallon. In any case, the narrative changes from "Dave's staying on the air because he wants to outlast Jay" to "When's Dave going to pack it in?"

There's a new batch of rumors that NBC is talking to Seth Meyers about taking over Late Night. One friend over at NBC says it's all about costs and that a 90-minute Tonight Show, in lieu of anyone following Fallon at 12:35, is not yet off the table. I like Seth Meyers but wonder if he isn't too much like Fallon to work in that slot.

And that's about it for the moment. You'll probably see a lot of articles that say this may be the dumbest move NBC has ever made…so I don't need to write why it may well be that. If this were a few years ago, I'd confidently predict that the network will regret the decision but the landscape is changing. There's a very different game emerging here — one played in part on the Internet with streaming and morning-after clips. I can somewhat understand how NBC might see Fallon as better-equpped to fit in with where they think late night TV is going. My pessimism is based on this: The 10 PM Jay Leno Show experiment was predicated on the theory that TV was changing and that NBC was leaping to pioneer in playing by the new rules. Remember the cover — was it on Time or Newsweek? — about how Leno's show might represent the future of television? Then he got on the air and someone discovered that the old rules still applied.

Fallon will certainly succeed by some measure — lowering the cost of programming, finding ways to multi-purpose, delivering younger demos, etc. Conan O'Brien also succeeded by some kinds of scorekeeping and so, pretty consistently, has Jay. It isn't that late night hosts aren't winning. It's that the network can't figure out just what the game is in which they're supposed to emerge victorious.

A golden moment from The Dick Van Dyke Show: Carl Reiner as the great author Yale Sampson…