Graeme Burk sent me this question and I don't think he's going to like my answer…
My Ask ME question! I was surprised to find you listed among the contributors in Maurice Horn's The World Encyclopedia of Comics, which was a much loved book when I was a kid (it seemed like every bookstore had a copy of it in the late '70s and early '80s, along with Crown's reprint books for Superman and Batman). I don't remember you contributing to it (Joe Brancatelli did most of the comic book related things). Do you remember what you contributed and what it was like working with Maurice Horn, the editor? I have tremendous sentimental regard for this book and would love to know more!
I don't remember much about what I contributed to it but all the listings I wrote were signed with my name or initials or something. I haven't opened my copy of it in a couple of decades. What I do recall is that my friend Joe Brancatelli had dumped upon him a long, long list of entries they needed him to write in a short, short amount of time for not-very-good money. He then enlisted me to help out and do a dozen or so of them, maybe less. At first, I dealt with Joe, who was and still is smart, a very nice guy and someone committed to high standards of journalism. Then I dealt with Maurice.
I had nothing to do with the book beyond those few entries I wrote but when I received a copy, I found an awful lot of misinformation. I even found errors had been added to some of the listings I wrote.
Today, I could mount a slight (very slight) defense of the book. At the time, very little had been written about the history of comic books and it was in some ways, a starting point. Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "History has to be written wrong before it can be written right?" Something like that? Well, if there isn't, there should be.
A lot of erroneous "facts" came from folks who'd created the comic books and strips that were being chronicled. In one of the few "going to the source" interviews conducted for the book, Joe talked with Bob Kane and Bob claimed to have been born in 1929. This, of course, caused Joe to then ask, "So you were twelve when Batman was created?"
Kane insisted that date was right but Joe knew better so that was one untruth that didn't make it in the book. Others did though, some from bad sources like Bob, some from articles that were not as accurate as they might have been. Today, there's been a lot more comic book history excavated and peer-reviewed and there's more skepticism applied to what sometimes comes from inflated egos, diminished memories…or even publishers who for legal/business reasons don't want the history to be accurate.
I spoke to Joe before I wrote this blog post to jog my memory and he pointed out a foundational problem with the book. Mr. Horn and his closest associates were vastly more interested in comic strips (like in newspapers) than comics books and more interested in comics around the world, not so much the ones in this country. They kind of looked down on American comic books and didn't know a whole lot about them, which is why they needed contributors like Joe and me. If they'd interviewed Bob Kane, they would probably have printed that he was born in 1929.
Joe and I both disavowed the book. I think some of the other contributors did as well. At one point, I wrote Mr. Horn and asked — politely, I thought — that my name be removed from any future editions or updates. I don't think I have his reply letter any longer but I recall that it didn't address my request. Instead, he said that I was fat and stupid…which I thought that was kind of a reasonable response.
One of the last times I even thought about the book was in the late eighties when I wrote a special for NBC that, in a segment that never made it to air for reasons of length, mentioned a whole bunch of cartoon characters. NBC had a policy then that every script had to be submitted to a research firm — there were several in town and I assume there still are — that would do a light "fact check" on the contents. If you made reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the report would say something like, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States." Just in case you'd mentioned him without knowing that.
More importantly, if you named a character "Jeremiah Nostrilhair," they would report, "We can find no reference anywhere for a Jeremiah Nostrilhair so the name can be presumed fictitious." This allegedly gave the network some sort of legal protection if after the show aired, some person named Jeremiah Nostrilhair came forward and threatened to sue. It demonstrated that the network had done its due diligence and at least made an effort to make sure they were not thoughtlessly besmirching the good name of Nostrilhair. I guess.
So this script I wrote for NBC was submitted for "research" and back came a report identifying all the references I'd made to that whole bunch of cartoon characters and the "research" was full of mistakes. I don't know why but I felt the need to call the research company and tell them so. A semi-nice lady assured me that they were super-competent researchers and with the self-assuredness of anyone now working in the Trump Administration, she told me that they never, ever, How Dare You Suggest Otherwise? got anything wrong.
I asked for her source and she told me that they always on such matters consulted The World Encyclopedia of Comics from Chelsea House Publishers, "widely-accepted as the definitive authority on the subject." That was her description of it, not mine. I told her it was not widely-accepted as that and when she argued that it was, I called her attention to my name listed as one of its contributors. Did you ever hear the blood drain out of someone's face over the phone?
Ms. Nostrilhair (or whatever her name was) replied in a mutter, "I'll look into it" and hung up. That might be the last time I thought about the book until I received Graeme Burk's e-mail the other day asking me about it. But I'm glad to set the record a bit straighter and it gave me an excuse to call my friend Joe and catch up with him.
Joe told me something else about the book that I don't think I knew before. On the spine on the dust jacket, the name of the book is of course printed in big letters and as you can see, they have a little drawing of Pogo Possum running to add a missing "C" to the world "encyclopedia." Here — take a look…
See it there? Joe says that was not someone's creative idea because they thought it would be cute or funny. According to him, the dust jackets for the book were printed and then someone noticed that the word "encyclopedia" was spelled wrong. A letter "c" was missing. This is not a good thing to do when you want people to put trust in the accuracy of your reference book. The spine is the first thing they see when the book is on the shelf in some library.
They didn't want to throw them all out and redo them so they grabbed the Pogo drawing from I-don't-know-where, cloned a "c" from elsewhere in the name and ran the dust jackets through the press another time to add Pogo and the missing "c."
I wish I'd known that back when I was talking to the lady at the research company. It would have been fun to point that out to her and she might even have called me fat and stupid…which I would have thought was kind of a reasonable response.
