Category Archives: To Be Filed

More photos from the con.  These are in no particular order…

This is from a panel I was on but I did not moderate.  The moderator was Gary Sassaman and he's the one in the back.  He set up this panel as an extension of his video series, installments of which I often feature here.  It's called Tales From My Spinner Rack and it consists of Gary recalling comics he loved as a kid, particularly in the sixties.  This time out, he brought in John Morrow (of TwoMorrows Books and The Jack Kirby Collector) to discuss and assess the covers Mr. Kirby drew for his original run on the Fantastic Four comic books.  That's John in the Hawaiian shirt and if I look tired in this photo, I don't know why.  This was only my second panel of this convention.

This was my seventh.  My pal Mark Waid and I do this panel called "Two Marks Explain Everything" which operates on the premise that if you have a question about anything pertaining to the comic book field and neither of us can answer it, nobody can.  So for an hour, folks threw questions at us and we did our best to answer 'em.  In one or two cases, the answer as to why some company had done something was "Because the guy in charge was stupid" but that's an answer…and in many cases, a correct one.

On Friday afternoon at the con, I hosted five panels back-to-back in Room 10 and the "Two Marks Explain Everything" one was followed directly by me interviewing my friend-of-many-years Don Glut in the same place.  Later that evening at the Eisner Awards Ceremony, I would present Don with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, but first I got to interview Don about his long career working for among other houses, Warren Publishing, Gold Key Comics and Marvel.  The award is for a writer who has been responsible for a strong body of work that has not received sufficient attention and that perfectly describes Don's output.  You can read more about him here.

More photos from the con to follow.  I have a lot of 'em this year.

In 1973, there was an all-star benefit celebrating the work of Stephen Sondheim, a recording of which was released as a double record album. This is a video about that event. It's undergone some A.I. processing so a few of the faces look a little odd but it's a wonderful piece of history and I'm glad it's been preserved…

DC Comics is about to issue a hardcover collection of material drawn years ago for them by the late Alex Toth. This is a noble idea as Toth was one of the ten-or-so (maybe five-or-so) best artists to ever draw for the company but there's a problem. They've released a pic of the cover and it's a Super Friends cover drawing that Alex drew in 1975 when their Production Department was on a kick of retouching the work of freelance artists so they could say, "The artist screwed up and we fixed it!" In this case, they lopped off the head of Superman that Alex had drawn and replaced it with a stat of a Superman head by Curt Swan.

The Toth interpretation of The Man of Steel was appearing on millions of TV sets every Saturday morning on the Super Friends show but it was somehow not good enough to appear on the cover of a magazine with a circulation of (probably) under 150,000. I wrote about this awkward transplant years ago in this article.

In that piece, I congratulate DC for sort of "undoing" the redraw many years later when they issued a poster of the same piece of Toth art. They cloned a Toth-drawn Superman head from the back cover of the same comic and installed it where the Swan-drawn head had once been pasted. I hope before this new hardcover goes to press, someone at DC thinks to do the same thing. If they need a clean, hi-rez copy of that back cover art, they should contact me. I still have the original art to it and I'll scan it for them if they promise me a free copy of the new book. Hell, I'll even scan it if I have to buy a copy…just so long as they restore what Alex drew.

Over on this page of Time magazine — and yes, like you, I'm surprised Time is still around and doing anything more than crown someone Person of the Year every year — Judy Berman posits that Stephen Colbert is practically daring CBS to throw him off the air before the remaining ten months of his series are up.  She writes in part…

…whether you think his response to The Late Show's cancellation is brave or foolish, you can't deny that he's playing his cards perfectly against Paramount and CBS. If the powers that be pull him off the air before May 2026, he'll have all but proven that their decision to dump him was about more than the cost of making his show. And if they resign themselves to letting him say whatever he wants for the next 10 months? Well then, he'll get to say whatever he wants for the next 10 months. I can't imagine either option making his bosses jump for joy.

Interesting theory…and I should mention that now that his employers have gotten what they wanted — the approval of that merger — and Colbert's ratings are up, it is also being theorized Out There that maybe they'll rescind the cancellation notice. Or that he'll wind up at ABC. A friend of mine in the teevee biz wrote me to say, again in part…

It's no secret that Jimmy Kimmel wants to get out of his late night duties on ABC. He's barely even doing his show anymore and I think he and Colbert still have the same agent, James "Baby Doll" Dixon. Could Dixon work a deal where one of his clients replaces the other?

I dunno…but I don't think Disney, which owns ABC, is going to be involved in a merger deal with some big right-wing corporation. And Kimmel has been pretty outspoken in his support of Colbert, as witness this billboard which is turning up around the city…

Plus, you also have the speculations that Colbert may run for elected office…say, against Lindsey Graham for his seat in the Senate. But this all strikes me as people speculating on the plans of people they don't know who probably haven't made any real plans yet. All I'll predict is that Donald Trump is not succeeding, as he's crowing he is, about vanquishing Stephen Colbert.

Comic-Con was great but prepping for it, attending it, unpacking from it and catching up on sleep have all put me behind on a lot of things. I have tons of e-mails that are unanswered and there are blog posts that need to be up here soon. Please forgive me. All will normalize before long.

Oh — and I could use more help identifying all the cartoon voice actors I asked you to help me identify in this post. I have a number of messages but not enough. What'samatter? Aren't you all eager to enter a contest with no prizes whatsoever? To encourage more participation I hereby double the prize. Instead of getting nothing, you can get twice nothing. Don't miss this opportunity!

Hey, how about some photos from the Quick Draw! game we played at Comic-Con a week ago yesterday?  Each year, we have three fast 'n' funny cartoonists competing.  This year, it was Scott Shaw!, Tom Richmond and Emma Steinkellner.  Here's a photo of Scott Shaw!, Tom Richmond and Emma Steinkellner…

During Quick Draw!, I bring various folks up to play a game in which they try to guess what the heck the cartoonists are drawing. Here, trying to guess what the heck the cartoonists are drawing is one of my favorite comedians, Dana Gould. As you can see, he didn't have any idea at the moment Bruce took this picture and neither did I…

During the game, I sometimes bring up three more cartoonists to collaborate with the three we already have in stage. Here are two of the tag-teamers from last Saturday…

The gent on the left is Lalo Alcaraz, who is responsible for the popular newspaper strip, La Cucharacha. The gent on the right is Greg Evans, who is responsible for the popular newspaper strip, Luann.

And here's the third bonus cartoonist, Steve Leialoha, whose work should be familiar to everyone who's read comic books in the last few decades, especially Howard the Duck. He's talking with Scott about I-have-no-idea-what before (or maybe after) they briefly swapped places to draw. If you've never seen us do Quick Draw!, it's always a lot of fun. And very, very difficult to get a seat for even though the room has an awful lot of seats in it.

I'll link to just about anything with Buster Keaton in it.  In the late fifties, he made a whole bunch of commercials for Alka-Seltzer with Dick Beals supplying the voice of Speedy, the Alka-Seltzer mascot.  Buster was the perfect choice for these ads because he always looked like a guy who needed an Alka-Seltzer — or something…

Here are two more photos from the Cartoon Voices panel from last Saturday at Comic-Con. First up is a shot of our honored guest, Mari Shimizu, who I'm told was absolutely thrilled with her reception…

And then here's a shot of Candi Milo, one of the American voices of Astro Boy, meeting the lady who originally voiced the character in Japan. Candi was moved to tears and she wasn't the only one in the house who was…

I've received a number of questions as to how Mari's appearance was arranged. The man we have to thank for that is Craig Miller, a writer-producer I've only known since about 1967. Craig was, in fact, a founding member of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club, an organization which I've written about on many occasions.

Craig contacted me about six weeks ago to tell me Mari would be at Comic-Con as part of a delegation of folks from Japan involved in the field of animation. I believe it was his idea to have her make an appearance on the Cartoon Voices panel and, of course, I said, "Absolutely!" When I called Candi and asked her if she'd be at the con, she said there was no force in this world powerful enough to keep her away from meeting Mari. After that, it was just a matter of a lot of e-mails, text messages and figuring out the choreography. If you run into Craig Miller someday, thank him for helping make possible one of the most memorable moments on any of the eighty zillion panels I've hosted.

As you are utterly aware, we took a historic photo at Comic-Con last Saturday with thirty-five cartoon voice actors. Well, thirty-four and me plus a couple we can't see well enough…but it was still historic. The occasion was to welcome Japanese Voice Icon Mari Shimizu, to Comic-Con and America.

A lot of folks are asking who's who in the pic so let's try to identify them all. I think (emphasis on my uncertainty) I can get about two-thirds of them but I could be wrong about a few.

Some of you are sending me educated guesses so we'll make this a contest with absolutely no prize. If you click on this link, your screen (hopefully on a big monitor, not your phone) will fill with a big version of the photo with everyone numbered. I'm #1, Mari is #26 and you can send in your guesses for the rest of us to this e-mail address. I'll play detective and compare the lists and arrive at what I think are the correct identifications — which I'll post here along with names of whoever got the most right.

That person will win absolutely nothing. In the event of a tie, all the winners will receive absolutely nothing. So go to it, voice actor fans!

Glenn Kessler, the Fact-Checker for the Washington Post, is throwing in the towel and retiring, at least from that position. In his last column, he assesses the state of fact-checking in American journalism and comes to the conclusion that an awful lot of people really don't care if what a politician says is true or not. Guess who brought Kessler to that conclusion.

There are many, many stories to tell about last week's gathering in San Diego but I thought I'd get started with a few photos…

The first of the nineteen panels I hosted or appeared on at Comic-Con was an easy one: Just me and my longtime pal Leonard Maltin sitting there, telling stories from our lives.  He told about meeting Buster Keaton.  I told about meeting Leonard Maltin.  We both told about meeting Groucho Marx and other famous/funny folks.  If we'd been splitting a pizza as we talked, it would have been just like any of the first three dozen times Leonard and I got together.

I'm not going in any sequence here. Saturday evening, there was a lovely memorial for our friend Peter David which — fittingly because this was Peter — was full of very funny stories.  The folks in the back row here, left to right, are Paul Levitz, Maggie Thompson, Tom Brevoort and Chris Ryall.  The front row is George Takei and me.  I had a much better time at this event than my face would indicate.

At Comic-Con, I host a Cartoon Voices Panel on Saturday and another one on Sunday. This is the Sunday panel from the con just past and the back row here consists of David Errigo Jr., Gabe Kunda, Michael Scott Action, Kaitlyn Robrock and Vincent Martella.  The front row is Abby Trott, Maurice LaMarche and me.  Again, I was happier than my face would suggest.  So was Maurice.  This was one of the funniest panels I've ever moderated.

There's a long story behind this one. It's from the Saturday Cartoon Voices panel and on it, I had Dana Gould, Audrey Wasilewski, Fred Tatasciore, Jim Meskimen, Benni Latham and Gregg Berger. Just those six. But after a wonderful discussion and script reading, I began to make like the announcer on The Price is Right and call other voice actors to "Come on' Down!" We had a Special Important Surprise Guest and I thought we should have a bigger welcoming committee to honor her appearance.

So I brought thirty or more actors down to the front of the stage, then I introduced that Special Important Surprise Guest. It was Mari Shimizu, one of Japan's leading voice actresses and the original voice of Astro Boy. The place went wild. I interviewed her a bit — we were tight on time — and then the place went wild again when I brought out Candi Milo, a recent voice for Astro Boy in America. Mari and Candi hugged and cried and a lot of folks in Room 6BCF cried, too. A very happy occasion! We then all went out in the hall and took the above group photo.

What's that? You say it's too small? Well, click on it and it'll get much, much bigger. Then, you'll be able to pick out Mari, three in from the right in the second row from the front.  Candi, holding an Astro Boy toy is on the right end of that row.  I'm the guy on the left with the hat and cane, and also in there I see…well, would someone like to take a stab at identifying everyone else in this photo?  We'll have more to say about this panel in the near future.  It was pretty unforgettable.

You can also copy this photo to your computer and/or post it anywhere you like or link to it here…but if you do, please explain what it is, who our Special Surprise Guest was and also credit my buddy Bruce Guthrie.  I'll have more Comic-Con photos here in a day or so but none will be as special as this one.

I am incapable of discussing White House turmoil for more than a few lines without referencing the Watergate Scandal. One of the things Nixon did wrong in handling it — and of course, there were many — was to not answer every accusation in real time. The strategy was to let his opponents amass their evidence and formulate their version of what happened…then Nixon would come forth with his version, which would knock down every point in their case. This did not work.

Regarding L'affaire Epstein, Trump is taking the opposite approach, trying to knock down every bit of evidence and every charge the minute it surfaces. The result is that he has no coherent explanation for anything; just a lot of factoids and falsehoods whipped up on the spot to answer each day's new revelations…and in so doing, he's creating the next day revelations. His answer the other day about why he and Epstein supposedly parted ways — Epstein purloined employees including sex-trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago — creates more questions. And his answers to those questions will create more and more and more…

I found (and did a little tweaking on) the above graphic online. I have no idea who made it but I thought it was a pretty good explanation of the practice of gerrymandering districts so the gerrymanderers' party gets more representation than they probably should.

Gerrymandering is, of course, an ancient tradition in any city, township, state (whatever) that elects anyone with a party affiliation. It's not new. What is new though is for the gerrymandering folks are doing to not try to pretend they're doing something other than what they unreservedly are. There are now those within the Texas G.O.P. who are practically bragging about doing it.

Gavin Newsom says if they do it there, he'll do it in California and gain even more seats for Democrats. It's fighting fire with fire…and I wish we could elect leaders in this country without fire. That wasn't the idea behind America.

Over at IGN, Roy Schwartz wrote a pretty good article about the resemblances between the character "The Thing" in Fantastic Four and the guy who designed and drew him, Jack Kirby. Almost all the heroes Jack created or co-created, including even some villains, have a certain amount of Kirby in them. Some, like Ben Grimm (aka The Thing), Nick Fury and just about any protagonist in Jack's Fourth World, are more obvious than others but there was a lot of autobiography in there. And like I'm quoted in the article saying, I often re-read a Kirby comic I've read a zillion times and suddenly spot a dose of self-reference in it I'd never spotted before.

The article contains a reproduction of a Hanukkah card that historians cite to prove that in Jack's mind, The Thing was and is Jewish.  I suspect Jack must have said that in some interview once, as well.  But some people don't know the history of the card.  They think it's something the Kirbys designed and printed up to send to all their friends. Or something Jack issued to declare the character's faith to the world.

Nope. There was only card like this and it was sent to a good friend of the Kirby family, David Folkman. What happened was that David sent a Hanukkah card to the Kirbys and they — Jack and Roz — decided to reciprocate. Roz bought a printed Hanukkah card in a store and Jack added the drawing. I don't think Jack intended it as a public declaration of Ben Grimm's religion. It was just something they sent to Dave Folkman who later shared it with the world.

Here's another great juggler — Kaito Tanioka…