Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here is an old article about Hanna-Barbera…

Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera old M.G.M. cartoonists have made five T.V. cartoon shows. Which have all hit the ratings. It started with HUCKLEBERRY HOUND show with HUCK, JINKS AND "THE MEECES" AND YOGI BEAR AND BOO BOO. Later QUICK DRAW McGRAW with Baba Looey, Snooper and Blabber, and Augie and Daddy Doggie. Yogi Bear got his own show then with 2 old characters, SNAGGLEPUSS and IDDY BIDDY BUDDY (NOW CALLED YAKKY DOODLE DUCK) Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-Ling COPIED AND REPLACED YOGI. Jinks and Pixie & Dixie copied M.G.M.'S Tom and Jerry (they look alike). Then the world's first adult cartoon show, FLINTSTONES (NOW IN THE MAKING, TOP CAT, ANOTHER ADULT CARTOON SHOW) El Kabong (QUICK DRAW McGRAW AS ZORRO BUT HE USES A GUITAR INSTEAD OF A SWORD.) Snooper and Blabber was the first detective cartoons. Augie Doggie was a copy of "Wendy and Breezy" (WALTER LANTZ) It is said that WALT DISNEY is jealous.

Hey, that's not a bad little article. The phrasing is awkward in places but the author knows his cartoons.

So…who wrote this article? I did. Why are some of the sentences so odd? Maybe because I was nine years old at the time.

It's amazing. Here it is, 47 years later and I still write articles about Hanna-Barbera and my writing hasn't improved that much. (I still use too many parenthetical phrases.) (Yes, I do.) (I really do.)

Here's what may be the first commercial for Quisp and Quake, two cereals that the Quaker Oats Company introduced in 1965 via a marketing campaign done in tandem with Jay Ward.

What I always thought was interesting about these cereals was that — at least for the initial campaign — they never told you what the cereals actually were. They told you they were sweet and vitamin-charged and that they tasted great and were packed with energy…but they didn't tell you if each contained corn or rice or oats or wheat or styrofoam or what it was about them that might tickle your tastebuds. Apple Jacks tasted like apples (they claimed) and Cocoa Krispies were a chocolate-flavored rice cereal and Trix were fruit-flavored something…but they really didn't tell you anything about what you'd be eating if you bought Quisp or Quake. You were supposed to try a box or two just because they had neat characters on the packaging and in their commercials, and those neat characters were feuding so you had to take sides.

I guess it worked…at least for a while. Reportedly, both sold decently for a few years but even though the two cereals were (I'm told) almost identical, their sales were not. Quisp's eventually went up and Quake's went down — just like the characters, themselves. Quake was discontinued and so was Quisp for a while, but in 1999, they began making it again, pushing it as the first "Internet Cereal." They still make it but it receives limited distribution and is promoted largely on the Quisp website. I am amused that nowhere on that site, from what I can tell, do they tell you what the cereal actually is. If you hunt around the Quaker Oats site, you can find out that it's a "saucer-shaped, crunchy corn cereal…but that's about it. They're still selling the mascot and not the product.

Here's the ad. Daws Butler was the voice of Quisp, William Conrad was the voice of Quake, and Paul Frees was the voice of the host in this spot, which was probably written and directed by Bill Scott.

Scott Dunbier, who used to be in charge of Wildstorm Comics, tells a funny story about working with comics legend Gil Kane. Everyone in the world who edits or publishes comics has had this kind of thing happen to them and it's not funny at the time but it's part of the process.

Animation expert Jerry Beck will be a guest this afternoon on Stu's Show, the oft-plugged (on this site) signature program of Shokus Internet Radio. I'll be tuning in at 4 PM Pacific Time and you can figure out where to tune in where you are. It's live, he'll be taking questions and I'm going to call in and try to ask one that I know he can't answer. Just to be mean.

And tomorrow, the Time Travel radio show will be having as its guest, The Great Sidekick, himself. That's right…hosts Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle will be interviewing Ed McMahon, commencing at 3 PM Eastern Time — and since I've been Grooing much of the night, I'm way too stupid to figure out when that is where I am. Listen live or download the show later from their website which, I must caution you, plays loud music when you go anywhere near it.

Everyone is saying that our new Attorney General designate, Michael Mukasey, will have to prove his independence and integrity once he is confirmed. Which is as it should be.

And hey, I can even think of a great way he could do this. He could prosecute the guy he's replacing!

The Oscar given to Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. Expected auction selling price: A million bucks, give or take $200,000. Too bad William Randolph Hearst isn't around to bid.

An article about the 25th anniversary of the comic book series I've been up most of the night writing.

In 1958, actor Dean Fredericks had the title role in an NBC TV series, Steve Canyon, based on the comic strip by Milton Caniff. It was, like the syndicated feature on which it was based, a fun and fast-moving effort with some fine guest appearances by character actors of the day who later became famous. (Jerry Paris, later of The Dick Van Dyke Show, had a recurring role. And for that matter, Mary Tyler Moore turned up in an episode playing, of all things, a Hispanic lady.)

For years, it was a "lost" series that went largely unsyndicated. It's still not airing anywhere on TV but the Milton Caniff Estate, which seems to own the series, is trying to change that. The problem is that they don't have a full set of airable prints and the shows need to be undergo costly restoration work. You can help finance this and sample the programs. They're restored the first four and are selling a DVD of them, and whatever they make off that will go into resurrecting the other thirty episodes. (You can also help financially by purchasing a neat-looking Steve Canyon cap they're selling and/or by just making a donation.)

All the info is over here, along with facts and a clip or two from the show. We wish them well.

From a 1962 Bell Telephone Hour broadcast comes this salute to that year's Broadway season. Robert Goulet and Barbara Cook star…and boy, do they have some good songs to sing. But where did those alternate lyrics for "I'm Lovely" (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum come from?) It's nine minutes but well worth your time even though it goes in and out of sync.

Eleven minutes after I posted the previous item, someone named Orat Perman changed the image on Marie Severin's Wikipedia page and substituted the cover I suggested. Nice work, Orat, whoever you are.

Hey, since Marie Severin is hospitalized with a stroke, let's do something nice for her. Someone go over to Wikipedia and correct the sample cover they have posted there on her listing. The cover of Sub-Mariner #9 was drawn by Herb Trimpe and Dan Adkins, not Marie. If you want to, you could substitute the cover for Not Brand Echh #10, which is actually and totally by the lovely Ms. Severin. I don't know how to edit those pages or I'd do it.

Is this the start of a new trend? The DVD of the latest Die Hard movie will include a copy of the movie that can be transferred to and played on a computer and some portable video players. As the article explains, you'll have to go through an installation process that should discourage most people from passing around copies to their friends — but it does strike me as the industry recognizing that people are transferring movies this way anyway…so they might as well market it as a special feature.

I don't know if this will catch on but I'll bet some company will use it as a way of getting me to buy another copy of Goldfinger. That's really all home video is about.

The Writers Guild of America continues to meet with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in negotiations that, everyone hopes, will result in a new contract and no WGA strike. Latest word from within the bargaining sessions is that the Producers have withdrawn their demand that writers give up the long-standing custom/right of residuals. This is not a major concession by the AMPTP since everyone knew that was just a bluff for bargaining purposes. Still, I think some are surprised they pulled it off the table now instead of later in the month.

For more on the situation, I recommend this piece by my pal Bob Elisberg. The one thing I would add is something that happens to the ranks of the WGA when strike talk is in the air…and this may be unique to our guild. It's the constant — and in many ways, pointless — division of our ranks into Working Writers and Non-Working Writers.

Most folks who are actively trying to write TV or movies fall into one of those two categories — those who have all the work they can handle and those who are actively (in some cases, desperately) seeking employment. Obviously, there are writers who have some work but could use a little more…but no one really thinks of themselves in that middle ground. They identify with one extreme or the other.

When we strike, each of those two groups thinks they're the ones suffering. The mindset of the "Working Writer" goes something like this…

We're the ones hurting from this. We're the ones walking off real jobs and foregoing real, not possible paychecks. The Non-Working Writers aren't losing much, if anything. They weren't working before the strike and most of them wouldn't be working if there was no strike. They have other sources of income. They have to because they aren't making any money as writers. But we are. We have pilot deals for new series that won't happen because of the strike. We have script deals for movies that will be called off because of the strike. We're the ones who are sacrificing.

And then along comes the "Non-Working Writer." His or her argument goes roughly as follows…

We're the ones hurting from this. We're the ones who really needed a job next week. The Working Writers have huge bank accounts to live off of and in most cases, they've written shows that will rerun during the strike so they'll be making residuals. A lot of them can go on vacation and write episodes and scripts that they can be fairly confident of selling after the strike. Meanwhile, a lot of us have projects that we've been trying to sell for years without making any money…projects that were close to a sale but which will probably not happen because of the strike. We're the ones who are sacrificing.

Needless to say, both are right that they're hurting, wrong that the other group isn't.

And one of the maddening things about WGA strikes is that no matter what the composition or the militancy of the strike force, the Producers — and the portions of Hollywood that have a clear anti-union orientation — will insist that the strike is wholly the will of the latter group; that Working Writers are being dragged kicking 'n' screaming from their posts by guys who really work at Radio Shack by day and pen spec scripts at night. This will be said no matter how loudly the important, show-running, "A-list" writers back the strike.

I should also add: There's actually a third kind of WGA member and they may even constitute a majority. That's a group that we might call Inactive or Barely-Active Writers. It's people who are not pursuing the writing of TV shows or movies as their main profession but have done it on occasion. A successful novelist who wrote one screenplay a few years ago might be said to be in this group. An actor who once wrote an episode of a TV show or a director who once in while gets a writing credit would, as well. Last night, I spoke to a friend of mine who considers himself a musician…and at least 97% of his income the last few years has come from that. But a few years ago, he shared a "written by" credit for a screenplay that was sold but never produced…so he's a WGA member. There are also studio execs who at some point got (or gave themselves) a credit and joined the WGA, either for the prestige or the Health Insurance.

In a few days, we'll have the results of the Strike Authorization Vote that the WGA is holding. The strike will, of course, be authorized. Even if you're a writer (Working or Non-Working) who doesn't want to strike, you don't want to not endorse a strike now; not when your negotiators are still at the bargaining table, trying to wring out the best possible deal before the current contract expires. In fact, it could be argued that to vote against the Strike Authorization now is to make a walkout more likely.

The questions are (a) What will the margin be? And (b), How many WGA members will vote at all? A lot of those who vote no or don't vote at all will be in this category I'm calling Inactive or Barely-Active Writers. They may abstain because a strike will not impact their current endeavors…or they may oppose a strike because they consider themselves mainly actors or directors or producers and they're casting their ballots with those hats in place. This is not like the Pipe-Fitters Union where everyone who votes is probably a guy who makes 95%+ of his income fitting pipe. Writers do other things, including writing other things. Some of us even write comic books.

Let's all send good thoughts in the general direction of Marie Severin, who's presently in a New York hospital recovering from what I'm told is a "minor but serious stroke." Marie, as everyone with a lick of sense knows, is a truly wonderful human with a wicked sense of humor and vast amounts of talent as a comic artist and colorist. It's a shame that no one will ever amass or publish a collection of the devastating cartoons and caricatures she drew of the Marvel staff when she worked on staff for that firm. It would outsell "The Galactus Trilogy."

DC Comics has announced that the first issue of The Spirit that is written by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly will be #14, which goes on sale January 16. Mike Ploog is doing a spectacular job with the interior art, which I happen to have before me at the moment since I'm working on my end of things tonight and taking breaks to blog. Jordi Bernet did, as you can see here, a fine cover and I think we may get him to do an issue soon, as well. I'd tell you more about the issue but I have to get back to writing it. (I'm also working on a Groo tonight. Hope I don't get the pages mixed up and have The Spirit eating cheese dip and slaying hordes of soldiers…)