Recommended Reading
Sydney H. Schanberg discusses what George W. Bush has done for education. This is another one of those areas where Bush's supporters don't even attempt to mount a defense. They just change the subject to Saddam Hussein. […]
Author: Mark Evanier
Posts by Mark Evanier
What's the Plan?
I have no idea what kind of president General Wesley Clark might make, or even what kind of candidate he'll be. He sounds good at a distance but then most of them do until we get to know them. Since he entered the race, the thing that interests me the most is that he has […]
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A Funny Man
In the late sixties, the hottest comedy writing team in Hollywood was Phil Hahn and Jack Hanrahan, two former MAD Magazine writers who had moved on to work for shows like Get Smart and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. They had split up by the time I got into their line of work but I got […]
Smilin' Stan
Here's an interesting piece on Stan Lee. A few of the facts are slightly askew but the enthusiasm of the article is interesting. It well captures the way a lot of kids felt about Stan and Marvel back in the sixties. […]
More on Yorty
Daniel Kravetz sends in the following info… In your interesting piece on Sam Yorty, you are uncertain about how he first came to be elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1961. Yorty was a Democrat, running one year after the dramatic Kennedy presidential victory and one year before Pat Brown defeated Richard Nixon for the […]
Jews in Comics
Claims that Jews control "the media" always seemed absurd to me but at one time, we had a pretty good grasp on the comic book industry. This article by writer Arie Kaplan is the first of three parts on "How the Jews Created the Comic Book Industry." I have a few quibbles with it but […]
Sam Yorty
I mentioned Sam Yorty on my weblog and found myself engaged in e-mail discussions with others who recall the flamboyant (and largely inept) mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Yorty was mayor from 1961 to 1973 and darn near proved that L.A. could function just fine without anyone in that office. He spent most […]
Missing Masterworks
The L.A. Police Department has a section on their website for the Art Theft Detail. This is the division in charge of recovering lost paintings and drawings, and their jurisdiction extends to various collectibles. On their section of the L.A.P.D. site, they post pictures of items that have been stolen, ranging from Salvador Dali paintings […]
Riding Hoodwinked
Paul Dini says that the image I posted of Tex Avery's Riding Hood character was from Red Hot Riding Hood. Says Paul… The tell-tale signs: Red appears shorter and cartoonier in that film, with a shaded nose and three fingers and a thumb in most shots, whereas she gained some stature and a fourth finger […]
Let's Put On A Show!
Had a nice time last night at the Reprise! production of Babes in Arms. Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart wrote it in 1937 and the consensus was that it had a silly, lightweight plot but a lot of great songs. Every few decades since, someone takes a crack at rewriting the book and what they […]
If You Know What's Good For You…
Do not click on this link. […]
Oddball Alert
Our pal Scott Shaw! brings you one of the oddest of the oddball comics today over at Oddball Comics. That's right: It's another issue of The Adventures of Manuel Pacifico, Tuna Fisherman. And no, they weren't kidding. […]
From Editor and Publisher
Last week, many newspapers in the U.S. declined to run a Doonesbury strip that mentioned masturbation. According to this article, those that did run it received almost no complaints. Also: According to this piece, a great many newspapers buried or did not run the recent admission by George W. Bush that there is no evidence […]
More on Morton
Here's an obit for Jay Morton, the one-time animation and comic book writer who is said to have coined the famous "More powerful than a locomotive…" tagline for Superman. This one says he wrote "about 25" of the early Superman cartoons but there were actually only 17 Superman cartoons in that series and Morton probably […]