Category Archives: Uncategorized

I don't think the Iowa caucuses matter anywhere near as much as the reporters covering them want us to think they matter. But this article in Slate is fascinating, nonetheless. It explains how the process works…and why it really doesn't.

If you're interested in the (sad) fate of the Disney animation studio in Florida, hustle over to Jim Hill Media. There are several good articles that have been posted in the last few days about what's going on down there.

Naturally, I am dismayed almost any time any studio decides to pare down its animation department…and I note that it often turns out to be one of those short-term, "we shouldn't have done that" decisions. Someone thinks it'll make the balance sheets look better for a few quarters but eventually, they realize they've gutted a major long-term profit center, so they wipe out whatever they saved (and then some) starting the division up again. Assuming it's even possible.

Animation — even old-fashioned, drawn-by-hand animation — is still enormously profitable when done with the slightest business acumen. Someone else said, and I think I agree, that the only way to lose money on an animated feature is to be really, really disorganized in the production budget. And it's true that there are studios that have been amazingly adept at spending $60 million to make a $20 million animated feature. Still, you'd think someone in those executive offices would have the confidence that they can minimize those kinds of errors. You can of course argue that Disney should adhere to Disney traditions and keep on making films roughly the way Walt did…but I think an even stronger argument can be made that it's just good business. In the long-run, anyway.

If you're thinking of attending the Comic-Con International in San Diego this year, now would be a good time to reserve a room. They will sell out, and they'll probably sell out soon.

Also, since it's been posted at the Comic-Con website, I guess I can reveal the identity of the guest I mentioned here last December. I said it was someone who was a veritable gusher of information on DC comic book history, and Jack Adler is definitely that. He was a fixture of their coloring and production departments beginning around 1951 and some people say that Jack practically reinvented both the art and science of comic book coloring. We'll be looking at examples of Jack's handiwork and also at many rare photos that he took around the office. Should be quite a panel…maybe two panels.

By the way: Some comic book experts will be shocked to hear that Jack will be at the convention since some comic book experts have been laboring under the impression he had passed away years ago. Obviously, this is not so. I suspect it has to do with the fact that a dealer on eBay has been selling off pieces from Jack's collection for years now and the ad copy always makes reference to "the Jack Adler estate." Bad phrasing.

Gregg Easterbrook says that Bush's plan for renewed space exploration will cost a lot more than he claims and take a lot longer. In fact, Easterbrook thinks both current estimates are absurd to the point of dishonesty.

Also: Sean Penn is writing articles about what he observed on his recent trip to Iraq. Here's Part One and here's Part Two. I would never assume that anyone should put any special stock in an actor's views just because he's famous, but his report is interesting just as the view of someone who's been there.

I linked to Joshua Micah Marshall an item or two ago. Here's an item he just posted on his site…a cute little tale of meeting Arthur Schlesinger at a luncheon. It made me smile.

A friend of mine is attempting to locate Phyllis Coates, the actress who (among many other roles) first played Lois Lane on the Superman TV show. This is to invite her to be part of something that she'll probably want to be a part of. I'm betting someone who reads this site knows how to reach her and can send me the contact information to pass on.

Matt Drudge is claiming to have uncovered a transcript of General Wesley Clark making the case for the Iraq War before Congress. Over on his weblog, Joshua Micah Marshall points out that Drudge's quote is an outta-context excerpt from a much longer speech that went in other directions.

I'm not sure why it's such a big deal to accuse politicians of changing positions. Everyone does…or should. You have to have a high degree of stubborn stupidity not to occasionally modify your view of some things, especially in light of new developments and new evidence. Is there anyone on any side of the Iraq matter who is not going to have to claim to have been misled at some point by faulty intelligence reports?

I don't get that Clark really changed his view but even if he did, I wouldn't assume that made it insincere or opportunistic or whatever. The guy changed his view, just as Bush seems to now be completely on the side of the Nation Building he once abhorred. I guess I'm more suspicious of the opposite, which is when a politician decides he's right and that's that, and no change in the events or facts is going to budge him from his position.

Ben Varkentine just e-mailed me about a review he posted of the new book, Against the Grain: Mad Artist Wallace Wood. This reminded me that I'd forgotten to finish a series of recommendations of new books about great comic artists. This is just such a book. In all my days of being around comic fans and readers, I've heard almost every conceivable or even inconceivable opinion but I can't recall anyone ever not loving the work of the late Wally Wood. He was one of those guys who could do it all: Horror, s-f, war, fantasy, funny. I think his work for MAD is shamelessly underrated and when I bought some originals in one of those MAD auctions, I could see one reason why. MAD's printing in those days (before about three years ago) was pretty poor.

The art was so good that it still glistened on the newsprint, but you were only getting maybe 50% of what a guy like Wood put onto his pages. Being humor, the work is easy for some to dismiss but I honestly prefer it to all that Wood did, for example, in the EC science-fiction stories. His work in the fifties was good but cluttered. His work in the seventies was good but often a bit too simple, in part due to failing health and assistants of varying ability. (An exception would be when he did something like his "World of the Wizard King" series, where you could see he really had his heart in the work.)

As is no secret, Wood was a troubled individual. The first time I met him, we sat and talked at the 1970 New York Comic Convention and we were interrupted by a stream of autograph-seekers, most of whom wanted old EC books signed. Wood would lift up the cover just enough to expose the bottom of page one, where he'd scribble "Wallace Wood" for the person. He did not open the cover all the way. He didn't want to look at the story, lest it remind him of certain bad times. This meant that he signed the first story, even if the first story was by someone else. After the second or third time he signed an Al Williamson story this way, he explained to me that when he did look at his old work, he was simultaneously struck by two things. One was that there were certain things he could do then that he felt he could no longer do; that some parts of his drawing ability had deteriorated over the years. The other was an annoyance at how much needless work he'd put into most of those stories. He said, and this is an approximate quote, "All of these jobs were better an hour or two before I finished. I got them right and then I kept adding crap and detail and more crap." Elsewhere, Wood was sometimes quoted as telling people that he put so much into some stories hewing to a philosophy of, "If you can't draw well, draw a lot."

He also told me that day (and repeated one of the other times we spoke) that though EC then paid higher rates than he got anywhere else, he could have made a better living working for a lower-paying publisher. At EC, he said, they paid you 10% more and expected you to spend three times as long on a page…and he sometimes did. Oddly enough, when I asked Al Williamson about this, he said it did not apply to him. Apart from the occasional quickie rush job (like some westerns he and Angelo Torres knocked out over a weekend for Charlton), Williamson did the best job he could on every assignment, regardless of rate. In both cases, they were working for EC and putting so much into their art more for pride of craft than money, but Wood obviously was more conflicted by that choice, taking the darker viewpoint.

This new book, edited by his longtime associate Bhob Stewart, is an anthology of essays and remembrances, mostly by folks who knew Wood and worked with him. It is not at all a criticism of the book to say that it is far from exhaustive. Many parts of his career, such as his work for Marvel and most of his MAD period, do not get much attention…but Wood is too big a subject to be served by one book, or even two or three like this. What you do get though is a penetrating and revealing look at an important artist, and if you have the slightest interest in the man, this volume belongs on your shelf.

Though not really an art book, it contains some wonderful illustrations. TwoMorrows Publishing is rather conservative about what it prints, so a number of Wood's racier drawings did not make it in. One interesting omission can be seen on the web. A recurring practical joke among comic artists is to try and sneak something naughty by their editors, just to see what they'll do. The way it's usually done is to draw the scene correctly then to do a pasteover with the randy version, so that it can be peeled off later. In one EC story, Wood stuck a completely out-of-context nude woman into a scene. After he got his laugh, he removed the pasteover and the clothed version was underneath, which was what was published. Stewart has restored the pasteover and posted it here.

Also in that section if you browse around, you can find a reproduction of Wood's infamous Disneyland Orgy drawing which ran in The Realist in 1967 and which became a much-bootlegged poster. At the time I first saw it, I thought it was funny but your sensibilities change. Now, my thoughts are, first of all, that it's pissing on the creative works of others for a cheap laugh. Secondly, I think about how it's another example (of way too many in comics) of something making a ton of money for someone other than the actual creator of the work. And thirdly, I think there's a certain act of self-destruction to it…a guy who was struggling to make a living deciding to do something that would close him off from a lot of lucrative commercial accounts. Even though he didn't sign it, Art Directors who dabbled in licensed characters all knew who'd done it. You can't help but wonder how Wood's life might have turned out if he'd ever been paid near what he was worth. He even managed to quit MAD (or by some accounts, get himself tossed out) just before its remaining artists were beginning to be offered movie poster jobs and Time magazine covers. While Jack Davis and Mort Drucker were getting thousands for a painting, Wood was inking Superboy.

Anyway, enough of this. Buy the book, which you can do at the TwoMorrows site. They also have a nice Wallace Wood Checklist you'll want. And you can read Ben Varkentine's review here.

Here's a good one. Thanks to Marvin Silbermintz, I have discovered the American Newspaper Repository Gallery. Do you like the illustrations one sees in old newspapers? Then you'll like this site.

Bang the horn! Blow the drum! A nagging void on the Internet has at long last been filled with the arrival of The Official Pogo Website, located freeway close over at the easy-to-remember address of www.pogopossum.com. As everyone with an I.Q. higher than their neck measurement is well aware, Walt Kelly's Pogo was one of the two or so greatest newspaper comic strips of all time. It was witty, it was insightful, it was mesmerizing and though set in the backwater environs of the Okefenokee Swamp, it was urbane as all get out. Best and most of all, it was funny and way ahead not just of its time but ours, as well. So it's about time Mr. Kelly's possum had an official web presence, and now he does. The site is operated by the folks to whom W.K. bequeathed his creations, and Full Disclosure requires that I admit I am a consultant to said folks. Matter of fact, I not only consult but I designed this great web page I'm plugging here. But don't let my obvious self-interest dissuade you from visiting early and often. There will be a weekly Pogo strip for your edification, plus facts and faqs and in the weeks to come, we'll be adding all sorts of stuff about the creation and its creator. End of plug. Go there.

I just received a very official-looking e-mail from the Citibank company saying there has been fraud on my credit card and possibly my checking account, as well. It asks that I log in immediately to verify my information.

Only problem: I don't bank with Citibank. I never have in any way.

Closer examination of the e-mail shows that while some of its links go to the Citibank site (mostly to grab logos and imagery), the main portions of the e-mail link to some other, apparently-unrelated company. In other words, masquerading as Citibank, this other firm is attempting to get me to enter and/or confirm details of my financial life…probably credit card numbers, checking account numbers, ATM passwords, etc. I don't know for sure what they want because I didn't log in. That stupid, I'm not.

But it is frightening to remember that some people are. Some people do fall for these scams. There are even sentient human beings who, upon receipt of an e-mail from someone claiming to be the heir to the throne of Nigeria will send off their banking info, thinking they're going to get a cut of the heir's sixteen million paloozas.

I forwarded the bogus Citibank e-mail to the appropriate folks at my I.S.P. who, if they handle it the way they handle technical questions, will get around to it before the decade is out. But I thought I might remind you all, just in case you get hit on the head and momentarily lose all common sense. Do not give personal data out to anyone who e-mails you. Send it to me so I can plunder your IRA.

Here's an interview with Cullen Murphy, who is the editor of the Atlantic Monthly…but we don't care about that. What we care about is that in his spare time, he writes the Prince Valiant newspaper strip, drawn by his father. (Thanks to Craig Robin for the link.)

Last year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I hosted a panel with Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman and Julius Schwartz. If you were in the room, you heard Mr. Bradbury talk about an article he had just completed for Playboy on why we must renew our commitment to manned space travel. It's in the current issue, oddly coinciding with G.W. Bush stating similar intentions. Bradbury is more eloquent on the topic but neither seems to have much of a reason. (I think space exploration, if and when we can afford it, makes a lot of sense. I think manned space travel is just showing off.)

Also in the current Playboy is an article on how detectives built the case against Robert Blake. If one assumes the facts are as stated in the piece, Blake is undeniably guilty. But I wonder if it's that cut-and-dried, especially given that we're hearing the trial could run six months or longer. I also wonder about the propriety of giving a reporter so much access, and allowing him to lay out the evidence as he does, at a stage when Blake is still entitled to some presumption of innocence.

Here's what Mr. Letterman was talking about last night on his show. The graphic below appeared on the CBS website for the last week or so, plugging Sunday night's People's Choice Awards.

As you can see, it shows the smiling face of Jay Leno who, along with Dave, was nominated in the Best Talk Show category. So was Oprah Winfrey, who won. Dave did a funny rant last evening about Jay's face appearing on the CBS website, demanding that some high-ranked CBS exec call him to apologize. The exec was supposed to also tell him that the person responsible had been fired, but was not supposed to actually fire that individual. Shortly afterwards, Les Moonves (the highest-rank exec at CBS, at least in Programming) called to apologize and tell Dave that the person responsible had been fired. Then, shortly after Letterman taped, the graphic on the CBS site changed as follows…

I will put aside a slight suspicion that the version with Dave's face was prepared in advance. They apparently got it changed in time to edit a shot of it into the show before it aired on the East Coast…but okay, maybe someone at the CBS website was working late and very facile. Legit or not, it was funny. I'm a little tired of Letterman's attitude towards Leno and network execs but this was funny.

Scott Shaw! offers us a nice profile/autobio of Willie Ito, a great cartoonist and a heckuva nice guy. The occasion is an Oddball Comics salute to the Beany & Cecil comic book, which wasn't particularly oddball. But hey, it's a great excuse to talk about Willie.