Category Archives: To Be Filed

Another worthy contender for the title of Oldest Comic Book Artist was Fred Kida, who drew the Airboy comic books beginning around 1940 and who worked in comics (books and strips) until around 1987. Mr. Kida was born December 12, 1920, making him only a few months younger than Ken Bald. Sad to say, Mr. Kida died last week on April 3. He remains a nominee for the Hall of Fame in this year's Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.

Airboy was published by Hillman and he also worked on their other titles, including romance and crime comics until around 1948. He spent a few years working for Lev Gleason Publications, mostly on crime and romance books, then around '52 began working for the company we now know as Marvel. He was a good, dependable artist who drew beautiful women, handsome heroes and some of the ugliest villains in comics. He also intermittently assisted Will Eisner on The Spirit.

Mr. Kida worked as an assistant/ghost on a number of syndicated newspaper strips, including Flash Gordon, for which he eventually got credit. He left Marvel around 1956 when the company downsized and ceased having work for most of their freelancers. In the seventies, Kida returned there and worked on any number of their best comics, including a stint drawing the newspaper strip of The Amazing Spider-Man. More information on his life is available in this newspaper obit notice. It's sad to lose a fine artist like that.

Most folks who care about typefaces hate the font known as Comic Sans. Back in the early days of computers, that was someone's idea of what lettering in comic books looks like…but no professional comic book company would hire a letterer who lettered like that. Some of us cringe when we see it, especially in a context that's supposed to represent comics.  Recently, a gent named Craig Rozynski designed a variant which he calls Comic Neue and which he has released into the public domain. You can download it here and install it on your computer. I wish I could say I like it more than I do.

It's especially lacking to me when it's used for ALL CAPS, which is how almost all comic book and strip lettering is done and it's the way Comic Sans has usually been used.  The "C" and the "O" look rather anemic to me and, as with Comic Sans, we still have those ugly serifs on a capital "I."  Professional comic book fonts always give you the option of a serifed "I" when you type the letter as a standalone and a non-serifed "I" when you're in the middle of a word.  I also think the slanted crossbar on the "A" and "H" don't go with the non-slanted look of other letters.

I like it better for upper-and-lower case lettering because that eliminates much of the serif problem with the "I" but the interline spacing gets a bit dicey.  I tried leaving more space between the lines but it seemed erratic.  I appreciate Mr. Rozynski's generous efforts and he did improve on Comic Sans.  But I think it still looks like lettering done by someone who isn't a professional cartoonist.

Our pal Kliph Nesteroff did a fine job interviewing Mel Brooks last Friday night at the Cinefamily event. I expect he'll do an equally-fine job on April 22 when Cinefamily salutes the prolific TV producer George Schlatter. George will be there and they'll show video of some of the odder things he's produced, some of which are previewed in this new video with narration by Gary Owens. Tickets are available here and I will be among those in the audience. Should be another great evening…

A number of folks have written to me to suggest one name which has Mickey Rooney beaten in terms of screen longevity. Carla Laemmle was born October 20, 1909 and is still with us. The niece of Universal Pictures studio founder Carl Laemmle, she played a bit part in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera and she has recently, at age 104, made some small cameos in movies that have yet to come out. She doesn't have anywhere near the volume of credits as Mickey Rooney but you could count her if you wanted to.

Someone asked about Milton Berle. Berle was born in 1908 and claimed to have made his screen debut in shorts made in 1914 as well as the feature Tillie's Punctured Romance with Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. He said he played the newsboy in that film and I believe most historians have concluded he didn't…but no one is sure he didn't play another, smaller role in the movie or appear in other films that year. His last appearance in a movie is a little hard to peg. He died in 2002 amidst a flurry of cameos and appearances in documentaries…and it's hard to say which, if any, qualify as movies as opposed to television.

Assuming he was in some movie in 1914 and some movie in 2002, that would give him a screen career of 88 years. Assuming Mickey Rooney's first role was in 1926 and his last is this year in the Night at the Museum sequel, that would give him 88 years. If all of Ms. Laemmle's recently-filmed cameos come out this year and she never appears again on screen, she's still got Miltie and Mickey beat by a year.

While we're at it, I'm getting nominations of other folks who qualify as the Oldest Living Comic Book Artist. Morris Weiss, who drew the Joe Palooka comic strip and tons of comics for Stan Lee, was born August 11, 1915. That makes him older than Irwin Hasen or the man Guinness says is the oldest, Ken Bald. D.D. Degg, a longtime reader of this site, suggests that Bill Crooks, who used to draw the Captain Easy newspaper strip, may be older. I don't know Mr. Crooks' age but I don't think he ever worked in comic books.

Conan O'Brien has decided to compete with me when it comes to interviewing people at Comic-Con. It's been announced that he will be bringing his TBS talk show to San Diego…in 2015. Not this year. 2015.

His show is renting out the Spreckles Theater in downtown San Diego and he'll be doing a week of shows there July 8-12, 2015. Those dates are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday so either he's going to adjust his broadcast week or pre-record them to run starting the following Monday. This would seem to suggest the dates for Comic-Con that year which have not, as far as I know, been officially announced.

In case anyone's wondering: Conan recently extended his contract with TBS through November of 2015. I don't think he's even remotely a contender for Letterman's job but if he was, that would probably take him out of consideration. CBS has to be looking to get Dave's successor in position a lot sooner than that.

A few of the news stories that have already announced this have said that 2015 is the last year of Comic-Con's current contract with the San Diego Convention Center. Not so. It was extended until 2016. In any case, we will soon have the usual flurry of stories about how maybe Comic-Con is moving to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Oshkosh…and then they'll negotiate a deal to stay in San Diego through 2020.

If you need a hotel room for this year's Comic-Con International down in San Diego, Tuesday could be your day. That's the day the convention's reservations system opens and this page will tell you all about it. I am told there are more rooms available this year than ever before so it might be an entire hour before they're all filled.

As usual, do not complain to me if something goes wrong and/or you can't get what you want and wind up in a Tijuana Y.M.C.A., sharing a cot with a person who looks like Phil Spector. Good luck.

I have a whole bunch of things to plug the next few days, starting with this. It's a Kickstarter for a documentary about people who make comics. I was interviewed for this a few years ago and so were a lot of people of genuine interest.

The video below will tell you a lot more than I can. Unfortunately, their Kickstarter campaign hasn't received much notice yet and I'm kinda skeptical they're going to make their goal this time around. But remember that if they don't, your credit card doesn't get charged so there's no reason not to go over there and encourage some fine filmmakers to try it again and get this one finished. I'd sure like to see it. If you would, here's a link to their Kickstarter page and here's the video…

Anthony Culotta writes to ask…

A quick question re: Mickey Rooney: I pointed out to some friends a couple of years ago his IMDB entry, and the fact that his movies span 1926-(now) 2014. Do you know of any other actor with a career in film that matches (or exceeds) this? Quite remarkable, in any event!

Hmm. Not offhand. (By the way, I confirmed it: Rooney did shoot a scene recently for a new film in the Night at the Museum series. The film is slated for release this Christmas…so assuming his scene stays in, his career will span to 2014. That's 88 years.)

How about it? Can anyone come up with an actor who managed to be on movie screens for more than 88 years? It would have to be someone who started as a child performer in silent films.

And speaking of long careers: The Guinness people have certified Ken Bald as the Oldest Comic Book Artist and they've run this interview with him. Mr. Bald was reportedly born on August 1, 1920.

No disrespect to Mr. Bald's achievements but I have to point this out: Irwin Hasen, who drew an awful lot of comic books in his day, is still alive and he was born July 8, 1918.

Also, Mr. Bald started in comics in 1942 and retired in 1984. There are a number of artists who even if they aren't older, have had longer careers. Sam Glanzman, for instance, drew his first comic books in 1939 and he drew a story for publication as recently as 2012. Mr. Glanzman was born in 1924 and is still, happily, with us. Al Jaffee also has Bald beat in that category.

I don't know what to write about Mickey Rooney. The man obviously had an impressive body of work at various ages…and of course, we lament the passing of another cast member — the last of the really major players — from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The few times I spoke with him, he was unpleasant and not very coherent. Remember the impression that Dana Carvey used to do of him rambling on and on, talking about himself as "The Number One Box Office Star in the World"? Well, he was that but he was also just what the impression said he was.

He was at one point much-loved by his contemporaries but eventually, most of his contemporaries left us and the ones who remained tended to either humor his eccentric jabbering or, more often, avoid him as much as possible. You can forgive a certain amount of that from an aged screen legend and even be amused by some of it. But at some point, it just makes you cringe. He made me cringe a number of times, especially when he started lecturing younger performers about how to run their lives and careers. If ever there was a person unqualified to give such advice…

I was not a fan of his Andy Hardy movies or of those Mickey-and-Judy musicals he made for M.G.M., though you had to admire how hard he worked in them. I did think he was great in Boys Town and some of his later serious roles, like the TV drama, The Comedian. Too often, he was the poster boy for the old adage about how actors need to learn they're allowed to turn things down. It's also not necessary to marry every single woman you meet.

But still, he was Mickey Rooney. He started in films when he was six or seven (historians argue the actual date) and he was on stage before that. He just died at the age of 93 and I believe he'd recently completed a cameo in the currently-filming sequel to the sequel to Night at the Museum. Gotta respect the longevity…and Turner Classic Movies should have no trouble assembling an evening of really good movies he was in. Maybe that's the nicest way to remember the man.

Emily Nussbaum writes about Norman Lear and a man he unleashed on America…a man named Archie Bunker. I remember how electric All in the Family was when it first debuted. Later on, as others caught up and perhaps surpassed it, it became just another well-written situation comedy of its time and a lot that seemed controversial then became boring in syndicated reruns. But it was a real important show.

Friday night, a packed house at the Silent Movie Theater saw a (mostly) non-silent movie — the 1973 compilation Ten From Your Show of Shows, which was shown in tribute to Sid Caesar. It was preceded by an interview. Our pal Kliph Nesteroff did a splendid job conversing with Mel Brooks, who spoke for almost an hour, much of it about his friend and one-time employer, Sid. It was a pretty funny conversation and I was wrong: He did not tell the story about Sid and the cab driver. He did, however, make fun of Kliph's pants.

Mel began by telling the audience, "I wish it was a pleasure to be here," then he sure proceeded to act like it was, telling how he met Sid, heaping praise on the man. He told a story he told when he was on with Conan O'Brien recently — one I'd never heard before and I've heard about a hundred Mel Brooks interviews, several of them long and in person. During the run of either Your Show of Shows or Caesar's Hour, Mel spent some time in Hollywood working on screenplays at Columbia. He has no known screen credits from that period but apparently he was out here for a while.

In this anecdote, he suggests to an exec that Sid Caesar, instead of making TV shows that are aired once and never seen again, should be making movies…written by Mel Brooks. Sid, at this point, is making about $5000 a week in television. The exec agrees that Mr. Caesar would make a terrific movie star and tells Mel the studio will meet or beat what Sid makes in TV. Mel rushes back to New York and tells Sid, pointing out how disposable it is to work in live television. Guys like Harold Lloyd and Danny Kaye will never be forgotten, he says, because their work is being preserved on film.

Sid is interested and for a brief time, it looks like he's going to forsake television for movies…but then the network offers to quadruple or quintuple his salary and in television, he stays. A great missed opportunity, thinks Mel.

It was a perfect story to tell in that setting Friday night. Mel didn't make this point but it's why he's there to introduce a bunch of grainy kinescopes of selected moments from Your Show of Shows instead of a great Sid Caesar movie from the fifties. I have the feeling there's more to the story than that but it's still a good story.

And it led into a great bunch of grainy kinescopes of selected moments from Your Show of Shows. The audience laughed a lot — less so at the closing take-off on This Is Your Life than at some of the less-familiar moments. All we could all think of was: Boy, those people — the writers and other cast members in addition to Sid — were sure good. And isn't it a shame there's no one today doing sketch comedy in quite that tradition?

The presentation was by the Cinefamily group that runs that venerated theater. There are some other great programs coming up, including another Kliph is hosting. I'll tell you about it shortly.

A week ago if you'd asked me, "What's the best TV show that isn't available in a complete DVD set?", I'd have had an easy answer: "The one that went under the titles, You'll Never Get Rich, The Phil Silvers Show and — most commonly — Sgt. Bilko. Phil Silvers was brilliant as Master Sergeant (and Master Conman) Ernie Bilko. Add in a great supporting cast and the superb writing and producing of Nat Hiken and you had one of the best TV programs ever done. And unlike some shows of its day, it still holds up. It's real funny.

Okay, so it's Good News/Bad News time. The Good News is it's finally coming out in a boxed set of 20 discs. The Bad News? It's being released in Great Britain and those 20 discs are Region 2, not playable on most U.S. players.

I have heard nada about a U.S. release. Back in 2006, Paramount brought out a 3-disc sampler with eighteen episodes and a lot of special features. Then in 2010, they brought out a 5-disc set collecting Season 1. Four years later, there is no trace of Seasons 2-4, leading one to suspect that Season 1 didn't sell well.

And you have to wonder — I do, anyway — if some of that could be because folks who love that show saw Season 1 on sale and thought, "Great! But I'll wait until four seasons are out and they're in one boxed set I can buy." As we've noted here many times, it is not uncommon for the collectors of old TV shows to feel burned. They buy individual seasons and then the boxed set comes out with special features or episodes that are only available in the complete set…so they have to buy that, meaning that they buy episodes they already have. We wrote about this here recently with regard to The Bob Newhart Show.

Heck, I love Bilko and I didn't buy Season 1 for that reason. I'll bet I'm not alone. Here's a link if you can play Region 2 DVDs and want to order this new set…

Sgt. Bilko – The Phil Silvers Show – Complete Collection (20 disc set) [DVD]

I'll let you know if I hear anything about it coming out in this country as a Region 1 release. Or if you hear anything first, you let me know.

Here's a new video from the folks at Monty Python. This is apparently part of a new CD they're assembling in connection with their forthcoming reunion shows…

Matt Kuhns writes…

If CBS has a replacement lined up, is that something that can effectively remain secret in this day and age? I know nothing about such deals; do they only need to involve a small number of people?

Sure. When the deal was made for Conan to take over for Jay, that was kept secret for a while. It was even kept secret from Jay for a few weeks. Then once Jay was told, it was kept secret for several months. Leno and NBC would have preferred for it to be kept secret for a few years but as a condition of signing on, O'Brien's team insisted that it be announced earlier than that.

I'm getting a lot of messages from people asking, "What about Chelsea Handler?" Or "What about Jerry Seinfeld?" or other names. I suspect it won't be someone over the age of 50. (Seinfeld is 59. Stephen Colbert at 49 would just make the cut.) This is not just because they want someone who can appeal to younger viewers but because they want someone who could conceivably be there for twenty years.

I also suspect that if CBS made up a list of contenders, now or months ago, it would include a lot of people who'd never done a talk show before. Most of the speculation is centering around folks who have — Handler, O'Brien, DeGeneres, etc. — but getting someone who's proven they can do it is only one way a network approaches something like this. They can also go the other way. When they needed someone to replace Letterman on NBC at 12:35, they picked a comedy writer with almost no on-camera experience…someone no one could have predicted. And when they needed a host to replace that guy, they went with a Saturday Night Live cast member…someone few would have predicted. (When they needed someone to replace that SNL cast member, they went with another SNL cast member but by that time, that was a precedent.) Craig Ferguson came out of left field, too. So did Jimmy Kimmel in a way.

11:35 might require a little more experience than 12:35 but there's also the drawback to someone who had their own talk show before. If they're available, that show ended for a reason.

In the meantime, this whole discussion of who'll replace Letterman is starting to sound like CNN taking five minutes of actual news on that missing plane and turning it into 24/7 coverage with silly speculation. It's not going to be Ellen DeGeneres. She already has a hit talk show that reaches more people and pays her more than Dave. It's not going to be Jimmy Kimmel. He also has a good job. It's not going to be Conan. Think how stupid CBS would look if they took on a guy NBC paid $40 million to get rid of and then failed with him. It's not going to be Howard Stern. He's 60 and he's Howard Stern. It's not going to be Leno and I'd be real surprised — "shocked" would be the word — if it's Chelsea.

My prediction: If they can make a deal with Colbert, it'll be Colbert. If they can't make a deal with Colbert, it'll be someone who isn't being mentioned at all at the moment.

But hey, what about Jon Stewart? I dunno. Maybe it's because I'm so perfectly happy to have him right where he is, I don't want to think it might be him. I'm guessing that if they can't make deal with Colbert, they can't make a deal with Stewart. Jon would do a great job but that would mean dismantling his whole little empire over at Comedy Central. My sense is it would not be a step up for him. It would take him sideways and, if he succeeded at CBS in that slightly-later time slot, that would lock him in to do only that for the next ten years. He couldn't take time off to direct a movie or do much of anything else.

I'm going to stop thinking and writing about this until something actually happens. I'm starting to sound like CNN treating speculation as more newsworthy than it is…

The Comic Art Professional Society is still running one of the greatest auctions ever of comic art…and it's all to benefit cartoonist Stan Sakai and his wonderful wife, Sharon. For those who came in late: Sharon is suffering from a horrendous medical condition that has to do with a brain tumor. Though the Sakais have health insurance, the costs of the necessary 24/7 care Sharon requires far exceed what the insurance covers. Stan is a great guy who has always been there to help others. Now, others are rallying to help him and Sharon. There's a fancy must-have art book coming soon from Dark Horse featuring drawings that the world's best cartoonists and comic artists have donated to the cause. Now, you can bid on and purchase the original artwork for those drawings, as well as many others that have been donated. Go here to take a look at the latest round of offerings. It's a chance to do a real two-fer: Help out some good people and get yourself a treasure at the same time.