Category Archives: To Be Filed

Former Republican state party official Michael Stafford on why he can no longer be a member of that party.

This is not the next chapter of the Ray Bradbury/Julius Schwartz/Al Feldstein story. That'll be along later tonight…or maybe some time tomorrow, the rate I'm going. But a lot of people have written in either to ask who all those folks are in the photo I posted with the second installment or to tell me. So let's go over them, shall we?

We'll start with the back row. The woman on the left is apparently (there's some question) Myrtle R. Douglas, described by Forrest J Ackerman as his "significant other" of the time. She was a science-fiction fan Forry had met while studying Esperanto and she made the futuristic costume he wore to portions of the event where this photo was taken — the first World Science-Fiction Convention.

Next over is Julius Schwartz, who was one of the organizers of the convention and at the time, a partner in the Solar Sales Service Literary Agency — the only agency to specialize in science-fiction stories. He would later become an editor for DC Comics for around four decades and a lot of great comics.

To the right of Julie is Otto Binder, then an up-and-coming writer for the s-f pulps who had just begun writing for comic books. He would soon become the main writer for the original Captain Marvel and (later) one of the main Superman writers.

Next over is Mort Weisinger, who had been Julie Schwartz's partner in founding the Solar Sales Service agency…and before that, in publishing the first s-f fanzine. By the time of this photo, I believe Weisinger had turned the agency over to Schwartz and become an editor for Standard Magazines, publishers of several of the top pulp magazines. Like his partner, Weisinger would later become a longtime editor for DC Comics, primarily on the Superman titles.

On the far right is Jack Darrow, an active contributor to s-f fanzines.

Second row, first position we have Forrest J Ackerman, who's probably best known today as the founder-editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Forry was a rabid collector of s-f and horror movie material, an expert on those topics and to many, an avuncular figure at conventions and throughout fandom.

Next over is Ross Rocklynne, a popular science-fiction author of the day and a Guest of Honor at the convention.

Then we have Charles D. Hornig, who was the publisher of Fantasy Fan, one of the earliest s-f fanzines.

…and then we have Ray Bradbury. No further identification needed.

Thanks to Buddy Lortie, Anthony LeBlanc, Steve Thompson and I think someone else who sent in info on these folks. There's a lot of history there for one photo.

Here's a press release that went out today.  I think we done good…

Frank Doyle, Steve Skeates to Receive Bill Finger Award

SAN DIEGO – Frank Doyle and Steve Skeates have been selected to receive the 2012 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The choice, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. Each year, the awards committee selects two recipients, one living and one deceased.

"There have been way too many writers in this industry who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition," Evanier explains. "The idea Jerry had was that this award could at least supply a little of that recognition for folks who have, like the man for which it is named, an impressive body of work. Frank Doyle, with his thousands of uncredited scripts for Archie is a perfect example. So is Steve Skeates, who wrote some of the brightest, cleverest scripts in comics in the late sixties and early seventies."

Frank Doyle started in comics as an artist, drawing for Fiction House and other companies before deciding that his true calling was as a writer. He began writing for Archie Comics in 1951 and soon became their most prolific writer, handling not only Archie, Betty and Veronica, Jughead, and other Riverdale titles but also the She's Josie comic, "That Wilkin Boy," and just about every other funny strip the company published. Archie editor Victor Gorelick recalls, "Frank wrote a story every day and on Monday, he'd usually hand in a two-parter he wrote over the weekend." An exact tally is impossible, but everyone familiar with Doyle's output agrees he authored more than 10,000 stories for the firm before his passing in 1996.

Steve Skeates began his comic book career as an assistant to Stan Lee (his replacement when he left was Roy Thomas) and then wrote westerns for Marvel, numerous scripts for Tower's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Undersea Agent. For Charlton he worked on, among others, The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves, Thane of Bagarth, Kid Montana, Abbott and Costello, and Sarge Steel. At DC, he handled Aquaman, The Hawk and the Dove, and numerous stories for House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Supergirl, and Plop, among others. He also worked for Warren, Gold Key, Atlas, and Red Circle Comics.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist-historian Jim Amash, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The 2012 awards are being underwritten by DC Comics (the major sponsor), along with supporting sponsors Maggie Thompson and Heritage Auctions.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con on Friday, July 13.

Additional information on the Finger Award can be found at http://comic-con.org/cci/cci_finger.php

Ken Levine is the man who's actually had more careers than Larry King has had wives. Ken was a disc jockey. Ken was and I guess still is a top, Emmy-getting TV comedy writer and showrunner, plus somewhere in there he became a director and also a screenwriter. He did all these things so well that he also became a sportscaster and now he's branching out into writing books. All of this, of course, yields mere pocket change compared to his lucrative, Romney-like income as a top blogger.

Why the desperate overachieving? All part of a sad, obvious plan to stay so busy that he can't have lunch with me again…and he's wasting his time and energy because right now, I'm too busy to have lunch with him. But I wasn't too busy to order his new book called, as you can see above, The Me Generation…by Me.  It's all about growing up in the sixties not far from where I grew up in the sixties…to the extent either of us grew up at all.  If you're familiar with Ken's essays from his blog — a truly funny blog in the web-desert of folks trying way too hard to write truly funny blogs — no further sales pitch is necessary. Darn near everything he writes makes you want to "pull a Berle" and claim it as your own.

Order a copy here. And then listen in as Ken guests later today (Wednesday) on Stu's Show, the Internet's foremost place for folks in television to talk about themselves. Your chummy host Stu Shostak will be interviewing Ken for two hours (and maybe more) starting at 4 PM Pacific Time which is 7 PM Eastern Time and other times in other zones. The point is the show is live, meaning you can listen in as they do it, which I suggest. It's more fun that way and it's also free. After the show "airs" ("bytes?"), you can download it from the Stu's Show website for a buck…or the bargain price of four different Stu's Shows for three bucks. Go to www.stussshow.com to do any of this. If they do call-ins, someone ask Ken to tell the story of the times he had writing auditions (separate) with Allan Carr and Traci Lords, and also find out if they were dressed the same.

The opening number for last Sunday night's Tony Awards…

Dick Cavett writes about how it feels to write a joke for someone else to tell…which of course means that (a) the other guy gets the laugh and (b) most people assume he came up with that witty, funny thing to say. I was always fine with that. I mean, it was kinda part of the job description.

My brows did a Groucho though when I came across Mr. Cavett saying this: "…surprising as it may seem, I never knew a staff comedy writer who yearned to be the Star." Maybe because I got into comedy writing a decade or more after he did, my experience was different. In a six-person comedy writing staff, I'd say half not only yearned to be the Star but were sure they were just as good 'n' entitled, if not better and more entitled, than the person who was. It got worse as you had people like Chevy Chase, Al Franken, Chris Elliott and others who were initially hired as writers, segued to performing on their shows and eventually went on to bigger, better things.

I think I owe you a story I promised a while back about how I wound up (briefly) not only performing but — God help us — dancing once on a TV show I wrote. After I finish the Bradbury/Feldstein/Schwartz epic, I'll try to get to it.

Bruce Bartlett cites stats that show what great shape we'd be in financially if we hadn't done all those things that George W. Bush swore would help the economy…and didn't. Frighteningly, a lot of them are things that Mitt Romney is now swearing will help the economy.

Number two hundred and fifty-six in a series…

There's a thriving but reprehensible industry out there preying on folks (kids, mostly) who have dreams of stardom. There are variations but at the core, it works like this: Someone who has little if any ability to promote your career or get you work convinces you that they are wizards at both of these things.

It's bad enough when they convince you that you should hire them as your manager and pay them 15% or more of everything you make for the next X years. It's worse when as sometimes happens, it's not X years but forever. And it's even worse when they build in some clause that they will be Executive Producer of anything for which you're hired. Sign one of those and you might just as well forget about show business forever and get a job injecting the cream filling into cannolis.

That guy won't help you one bit and if by other means you somehow luck into work, he will show up and demand that he get whatever he thinks he deserves or he'll scotch the whole deal. But you know what's even worse than that? When they expect you to pay them money up front to do all that stuff to you.

Here's a recent example of some of that happening. This is more common than you might believe. A lot of vultures get away with this because the victims are embarrassed to admit, even to themselves, that they've been victimized.

To read Part 1 of this tale, click here.

Ray Bradbury's first literary agent was a man named Julius Schwartz. At the time — we're talking 1939 here — Schwartz was probably the leading agent specializing in science-fiction, largely because he was the only agent specializing in science-fiction. Though he sold Bradbury's first story and many other works by important names of the genre, agenting s-f was not a lucrative endeavor. A few years later, Schwartz happily gave it up and became a comic book editor for the rest of his life. He worked for DC until his retirement in 1986 and for several years after.

His retirement came shortly after Jean, his wife of 34 years, passed away. He filled both voids in his life to some extent with fandom — going to conventions, working on his memoirs, getting himself interviewed, etc. Mostly though, it was the conventions. It was oddly appropriate that Julie "lived" for the conventions as he was one of the founders of science-fiction fandom. S-F fandom later branched off into comic book fandom so he could claim some parentage of that whole institution, as well. He went to every con that would have him and even a few that wouldn't. Attending the annual monster in San Diego was, of course, the high point of his year.

For a time, he came out on the DC Comics dime, all expenses paid by his longtime employer. In the nineties though, they could no longer find it in the budget to fly him out and put him up. The con made him a Guest of Honor and paid his way out once or twice and I think Julie paid his own way once or twice…but it was an expense he could not justify on an annual basis. If he'd been a veteran artist instead of an editor, he could probably have made money there selling artwork. But he just wanted to be there to be there and he couldn't really afford it. So what did he do? He called folks he thought might have some clout to persuade the convention to bring him out…and he called us a lot. I'm pretty sure I got the highest number of these calls. One year, Harlan Ellison phoned me and we compared Schwartz Calls as of late. I was the clear victor, having received ten in the last two weeks whereas Harlan had only received seven.

"Make a deal with you," he said. "We'll split the cost of flying him out and the cost of the hotel…anything to stop these pain-in-the-ass calls." I agreed but it never came to that. I and maybe some others beseeched by Julie nudged the convention into covering the cost of Schwartz that year. I believe this was 2001.

The following year, Julie didn't need us. He had an idea…and an ingenious one it was. Instead of placing umpteen calls to folks like Harlan and me, he put in but one…to his friend and one-time client, Ray Bradbury. As I mentioned here before, Ray was one of the first Guests of Honor at the Comic-Con International, dating back to well before it was called the Comic-Con International. He would come down for one day — usually Saturday — and give a talk and work the dealers' room. The convention and its attendees were of course very glad to have him there. In 2002 to help Julie, Ray decreed that his appearance in San Diego would be a joint speech/panel with Julius "Can you get the con to fly me out?" Schwartz. Informed this was what Ray wanted, the con had little choice but to fork up the bucks to bring Julie out. It was not a huge burden.

Score one for Schwartz: A clever notion on his part. I liked it because it would create an interesting program event, quite different from Ray's usual presentations, not that there was anything wrong with them. But I really liked it because it meant I didn't get all those calls from Julie nagging me to talk to the con about bringing him out, nor did I get all those calls from Harlan telling me Julie was nagging him to talk to the con about bringing him out.

A win for all, even the convention. Julie did phone me about the con but it was to ask me to be the moderator of this panel. I, of course, declined. I said, "You and Bradbury on stage? You don't need me up there. Every second I speak will be a second neither of you is talking. Save me a seat in the front row."

I said that. So how did I wind up hosting this panel? Beats the heck outta me. But I did and it led to me being traffic cop for one of the three-or-so most memorable moments I have ever witnessed in a two-thirds-lifetime of going to comic book conventions. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Click here to jump to the next chapter of this story.

For those who missed the Tony Awards — or didn't stick it out 'til the end — here's Neil Patrick Harris's closing number…

One interesting aspect of the Tonys is how they act as a two (plus) hour infomercial for Broadway. Shows that get to present a number on the telecast carefully consider what moments from their show might drive folks to the ticket windows…and some marginal shows stay open in the hope of a post-Tony bump. As a result, a number of shows usually close right after the Tony Awards and that might happen this year since a lot of shows are limping along playing to 60%-70% of capacity. That's worse than it sounds. A show playing at near 100% of capacity like The Book of Mormon or (still) The Lion King is not selling very many (if any) tickets via discounters or at the TKTS booth, whereas a show playing at 62% is probably selling most of its seats at half-price or thereabouts.

So far, the only impact the awards seems to have had on what's closing is that Clybourne Park, which won for Best Play, is not. It's extending its limited engagement, which was supposed to end August 12, to September 2. We'll see if anything closes. Maybe not since a number of the nominees this year, like the revivals of Follies and Death of a Salesman, had already closed.

Speaking of Follies: When it came time for them to present a number on the telecast, they had Danny Burstein do a slightly-truncated version of "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues." I thought he and that number were terrific on stage a few weeks ago; not nearly as terrific on the Tony broadcast. I dunno if it was the lack of context or the cuts or Burstein's energy level but it was only about half as wonderful. That happens.

Number two hundred and fifty-five in a series…

Ratings for Sunday night's Tony Awards were pretty bad. Some will fault the host or the production but I think that's ridiculous. People watch or don't watch the Tonys based on how they care about the shows that are nominated and want to see the excerpts. It really isn't all that different from sports. If you have two top teams with players that are in the news a lot and those teams meet in a game that might determine who wins the pennant, that game will have more tune-in than a game between two last-place teams with unknown players. No one complains that low ratings are because the crew that covers the game — the sportscasters, the director, etc. — didn't do a good job.

In past years, the Tonys got more tune-in because people had heard about The Producers or heard about The Book of Mormon. Some probably watched last year because the Spider-Man musical was so notorious at the time and there was a number from it. Even though there was a performance from Spider-Man this time, it's old news now. And Newsies and Once may be fine shows but they just haven't generated the excitement outside Times Square of past leading contenders.

I thought the telecast was fine and the worst thing you can say about it is that Neil Patrick Harris's opening song wasn't quite as exceptional as his opening song last year. Also, some people are reportedly complaining that the "In Memoriam" segment was presented during a commercial break and not televised. I still think N.P.H. is the best awards show host I've ever seen…and yes, that includes Johnny and Bob and Billy and everyone else. Hope he does it next year and the year after and the year after…

In the early fifties, EC Comics adapted a number of Ray Bradbury's short stories into comic book form with his permission. Before that, they adapted a number of them without his permission. The way most of their science-fiction, horror and crime comics were written was that publisher William M. Gaines would come up with what they called "springboards." A springboard was a rough plot and Gaines, who was not a writer but thought he knew a good story, would come up with dozens of them.

Some were original and some came from movies he'd seen, books he'd read, radio shows he'd listened to, etc. In other words, plagiarism. But it was usually that soft kind of plagiarism in which you take some, not all of the source material and you change it a lot and by the time it's completed, it isn't that much like the material you ripped-off. Sometimes though, it was more obvious.

Several days a week, Gaines's main editor-writer Al Feldstein would have to write a story for one of the comics he produced and Gaines would "pitch" springboard after springboard to Feldstein, hoping to interest Al in one of them. Al was fussy but he usually found one he liked and he'd go off and write it and then a fine artist like Jack Davis or Wally Wood would draw it. Once, he wrote one without realizing it was stolen from not one but two of Ray Bradbury's short stories. EC took "The Rocket Man" and "Kaleidoscope" and merged them into a story for Weird Fantasy #13 that wound up being called "Home to Stay."

Not long after its publication, the burglary was noticed by Mr. Bradbury but he did not go screaming to lawyers. He noted that the adaptation was well-done and that the two stories had been rather cleverly intertwined, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak. Suing might cost a lot, he knew, and there probably wasn't much money to be collected…so he tried another approach. He wrote Gaines a letter that said, in essence, "You seem to have neglected to pay me for the adaptation of my work." Gaines sent a modest check, a brief correspondence ensued and EC wound up adapting many of Ray's stories on an official basis.

It was a mutually-beneficial relationship. Bradbury loved what they did with his work and he protected his copyrights and probably attracted some new readers to his books. EC got the prestige of his name on its covers. That seemed to boost sales a bit but it was probably more valuable that it gave EC a thin film of moral cover. The company was then under some volume of siege for the content of its comics and it helped a bit to tie their product in with Bradbury. He was, after all, a popular writer whose books were turning up in libraries and who had works in prestigious mainstream magazines. How could you dismiss EC's Tales from the Crypt as "trash" when one of its stories was being read in another form in schools? To say nothing of the fact that a lot of the non-Bradbury stories were not all that different in tone and taste from the Bradbury ones.

That didn't save EC's line from extinction, nor was it intended to. But Gaines thought it helped a little for a time.

During this period, Bradbury had little contact with Gaines and none whatsoever with Al Feldstein. When EC Comics ended in the mid-fifties, Feldstein and Bradbury had never met. They didn't meet in the sixties or the seventies or for the rest of that century.

In 2002, they finally met. It will probably take me three parts to tell this story but bear with me. It will be worth it.

Click here to jump to the next chapter of this story.