Here's a little puzzler or possible area of research for us comic historians…one brought to my attention by Scott Edelman. Last week, a gentleman named Lionel Ziprin passed away at the age of 84. I had never heard of Mr. Ziprin but he was apparently rather well known as a New York-based writer of poetry, mysticism and other heady topics, and the center of some artistic circles. He also apparently had a connection to the comic book industry. In his New York Times obit, it says, among other things…

Physically unfit for military duty, Mr. Ziprin began writing poetry after attending Brooklyn College and worked at an assortment of extremely odd jobs. He helped create a short-lived puppet show called "Kabbalah the Cook" for television. For $10 apiece, he wrote the text for a series of war comic books published by Dell.

And over on Mr. Ziprin's website, Scott found the following…

Through the late forties and into the fifties, Ziprin also cranked out comic books for Dell Publishing. At the time, DC Comics had a lock on the superhero genre. "You couldn't write about Superman or space. Dell made contracts with all the movie companies and I wrote a series of comic books on every battle in the Pacific and European theatres. They gave me the theme, or movies would come out, big movies; they handed me the script, and I had to put it into comic book form. All I got was ten dollars a page: six boxes, balloons and lines, and I had to sign away everything, that it was not my property, no credit. But I was America's best-selling writer of comic books, my comic books sold in the millions of copies."

Hmm. Like I said, I never heard of Mr. Ziprin and have seen no mention of him in any of the comic book history projects. That last sentence above is an obvious exaggeration. Dell had, during the period mentioned, a number of comics selling a million copies per issue and one or two that sold upwards of two million…but those were of name characters, mostly Disney, and if you ever wrote Donald Duck, you'd certainly mention that any time you talked about your work.

I am, however, not here to suggest Ziprin never worked for Dell. I assume he did, and there certainly are plenty of folks who did who have never been identified. I'm just a little fuzzy on what he worked on and when. I can't think of a series of comic books that firm published about "every battle in the Pacific and European theatres," especially not one done in the late forties and into the fifties. They weren't paying ten bucks a page for script back then, either. (As an aside: At that point, if you were working on the comics published by Dell, you were actually working for a separate company called Western Printing and Lithography. A more detailed explanation of the relationship between the two firms appears here.)

It would seem more likely to me that he worked for Western in the late fifties when they were really cranking out the movie adaptations. A few of them did sell into the millions and if the material was complicated, they might have upped the money occasionally to ten bucks a page. All those, however, were edited out of Western Publishing's Los Angeles office, which rarely employed writers outside of town. (They had a New York office and an L.A. office, and the only times I know of a writer or artist crossing over were cases where someone had a contract with one office and there was some special reason to have him do a job for the other.) The obit for Ziprin says he lived in New York until the late sixties when he moved to Berkeley.

So it's all kind of puzzling. Anyone here have any other ideas? Am I forgetting some Dell-published war series that would make all this make more sense?

Bill Rabkin, who I haven't seen in way too long, writes about ideas for Diagnosis Murder (on which he worked) which didn't get off the ground…including a proposed animated episode with Scooby Doo.

The eminently sensible Colleen Doran posts some tips on how to spot a fraudster. There are many out there, seekling to prey on eager writers and artists…and as the economic downturn continues to turn down, there will be many more out there offering "opportunities" that you should turn down.

Josh Marshall has one up that you simply have to read.

This coming Tuesday, there's a kind of Chuck Jones Celebration on Turner Classic Movies. They'll be running a new documentary, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, created by John Canemaker and Peggy Stern. This film, which I haven't seen yet, is built around one of the last filmed interviews with Jones and it includes clips from cartoons he directed and new animation based on drawings he made during the conversation.

They'll also be running a mess of short cartoons directed by Mr. Jones and the not-often-seen feature he did in 1969, The Phantom Tollbooth. The first time I met Chuck was shortly after that film had been released and he was explaining to a small group of his admirers why it had disappeared suddenly from theaters…so suddenly, in fact, that few of us had the chance to see it then. I can't quote the whole explanation now but it was a long narrative about high-level takeovers at MGM and of one regime promising theaters a slate of "kids' movies" for matinees and how by the time the film was done, there was new management reneging on that commitment. It sounded like he was blaming "the suits" for its failure but then he added, with a Bugs Bunny twinkle of candor, "…and I guess the film I made just wasn't good enough to overcome all that."

It's not Jones at his best or even his near-best but C-grade Jones is still better than a lot of folks operating at the tops of their games…and it's also, like I said, not a film you get to see often. A DVD release is said to be on the horizon but I think they've been saying that for a while.

TCM is also, of course, showing some of the best Jones work, including (inevitably) What's Opera, Doc?, One Froggy Evening and Duck Amuck. In fact, the full schedule is here. I wouldn't count on the short cartoons starting exactly when they say they're going to start.

Yesterday, I linked to an interview with Frank Welker, the workingest voice actor in the history of mankind. It turns out that the interview was swiped from the website of the folks who actually conducted it. I have deleted that item. This link will take you to the same interview but on the proper site. And this link will take you to Part Two of it.

That's right: I was fooled by an imitation of a Frank Welker interview.

Back when I was eating a lot more sugar than I do these days, I could sense it was healthier for me than that scariest of alternatives, High Fructose Corn Syrup. I don't ingest much of either these days but it's still nice to hear that a lot of companies are giving up the latter for the former.

I love the bounceback I get on this blog. Here's an e-mail from my friend Tony Tollin, who's an expert on, among other things, old radio shows and the character actors who worked in that medium…

Knowing your interest in animation voices and breakfast cereal mascots, I thought I'd point out that the Car 54 video features Arthur Anderson as the contest emcee. He's the second person you hear in the opening scene, and later introduces the various acts.

Arthur Anderson is probably best-known as the original voice of Lucky, the Lucky Charms leprechaun, a role he voiced for 29 years. A veteran of Let's Pretend and Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre (where he played Lucius in Welles' legendary modern-dress production of Julius Caesar and Jim Hawkins in the Mercury Theatre's radio adaptation of Treasure Island), Arthur has been a regular at the annual Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention for the past 30 years.

This episode also features Leon Janney as the doctor. A former child actor in vaudeville and films, Janney moved onto the airwaves at age 15 where he starred in The Parker Family and in the title role on Chick Carter, Boy Detective. He was a regular on Ken Roberts' Quick as a Flash quiz program and was also frequently heard on The Shadow, Charlie Chan and Mr. District Attorney. Leon also served on the national board of AFTRA for 30 years. Coincidentally, the most recent volume of my Shadow trade paperbacks (#26) features a 1944 Chick Carter radio script in which Nick Carter's adopted son shares an adventure with The Shadow and Thanksgiving dinner with Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane in a rare radio crossover.

And I'm pretty sure that's Ruth Last as the butcher's wife.

What Tony's talking about regarding The Shadow is that he publishes some fine reproductions of classic pulp magazines, The Shadow included. You can find out all about them at his website. Thanks, Tony, for all the info.

I don't want to spend a lot of blogging space here on these AIG bonuses. There are other blogs on the 'net covering this in more detail, plus we have more important things to discuss on this one, like Creamy Tomato Soup and books about Jack Kirby. But Jef Peckham sent me the following and I thought it was worth a little more discussion…

Things I have learned about the AIG excessive seeming bonuses and the House bill to retroactively tax them at 90%:

(I note for the record that these do not come from places many on the left considered biased, like Fox, but mostly from NPR, who discussed them extensively on All Things Considered.)

1. The "evil" bonuses were retention bonuses, not performance bonuses. In short, the contracts stated "If you work for us until such-and-such date, we will give you a bonus of X dollars." It was an exclusivity contract, which I'm sure you understand, considering they have been a part of both Hollywood and Comic industries for years. It served to keep the clowns who caused much of the problems in place to help clean things up, operating on the theory that they were some of the only ones who even remotely understood them;

2. The pre-existing contracted bonuses were specifically allowed by the Stimulus Bill, on an amendment submitted by Sen. Chris Dodd. Dodd now claims he was 'forced' to put that amendment in the bill by the administration. (Why do I doubt this?);

3. Treasury Secretary Geithner says he only learned the "full extent of the bonuses" on March 10. (Note his careful parsing of words, much like Bill Clinton in his Lewinsky situation.) How long did he actually know about the bonuses?;

4. Problem 1 with the House Bill is that it could be considered a Bill of Attainder, forbidden by the Constitution. A bill of attainder quite simply is a law passed to unjustly deprive a person or small group of their property. What little I've heard is that this bill is directed at the AIG bonuses and its' effect on other bonuses not in the financial sector is limited, leading to the law of unintended consequences which I will explain shortly;

5. Problem 2 with the House Bill: the Constitution also forbids Ex Post Facto laws, literally "after the fact." That is exactly what this House tax bill is doing, going after the bonuses after they have been paid. From that standpoint, I would have to applaud the 87 Republicans who voted against the bill.

I mentioned the Law of Unintended Consequences. Here's my take on it. This law could make contracts with bonuses nearly worthless, as the recipient of the bonuses would get essentially nothing of that bonus. This could have a devastating effect on future contracts. Specifically, if the government is going to do this to the people who understand the financial system they are trying to fix, how many of those who know or understand the problems are going to be willing to work with the government to fix the problems? I suspect it wouldn't be very many.

Well, believe it or not, in all my years working in Hollywood and Comics, I've never had a real "exclusivity" contract. I've had hundreds of contracts, however, and I've encountered many instances of a company making a contract, then finding (or at least, trying to find) workable and maybe even legal ways of not paying off on it or modifying its terms later on, especially when the company gets into financial trouble. In this particular case, if the U.S. of A. hadn't stepped in to rescue AIG, most or all of those bonus clauses would have been worthless. They're only paying off because of the bailout. I wish contracts were sacred and I always got every dime mine said I was to get…but sometimes, I don't. And sometimes I only do when a lawyer working for me makes that happen.

Yeah, the AIG contracts were called "retention contracts" but there seems to be some debate out there over whether that's what they really were or even if all those people met the criteria of retention. And that's quite apart from the argument as to whether they should have been retained. Did those people, on whose watch the whole thing collapsed, really "understand the financial system they are trying to fix?" I dunno. But I'm skeptical of the claim that some seem to be making that since they burned down the house, they're the only ones who know how to rebuild it.

I mean, if you'd put me in charge of AIG, I could certainly have destroyed that company. That wouldn't mean I could undo my own destruction.

Why do you want to retain the services of folks you yourself call "clowns?" I mean, there may be a lovely Sondheim number there but we've already been suckered by a deal that held that if the company made astronomical profits, they kept 'em and if they had astronomical losses, we assumed 'em. I don't think it's wrong to be leery of the not-dissimilar premise that if these guys succeed, they have to be kept on because they're great at what they do…and if the company crashes and burns under their leadership, they have to be kept on because only they have the skills and knowledge to repair their own damage. What does an AIG executive have to do to warrant being fired if bringing the firm to total ruination is not enough?

Obviously, some erred big in not blocking these bonuses early on. If it was Senator Dodd, he'll deserve all the grief he'll undoubtedly get. I hope some of it is spread around amongst all who voted for the package. Right now, we're seeing a lot of Democrats trying to pin it all on Republicans and vice-versa, and I kinda doubt that either side has the cleanest of hands.

As I've suggested here, however, I'm not comfy with the constitutionality of deciding now to tax the bejeebers out of the bonuses. Others will decide if it is…and it sure wouldn't surprise me if for reasons you cite, they decide it isn't. I even suspect that some who voted for the tax fully expect it to be overturned but they figure (a) it's politically expedient at the moment and/or (b) the vote may just intimidate the AIG recipients to settle now for lesser amounts and cause others in line for similar bonuses to renegotiate them. I'm not sure those are good reasons (or that there ever are any) to vote for an unconstitutional bill. I also suspect that some or all of the 87 Republicans who voted against the new tax didn't have that in mind. Hearing some talk, they just seem to like the idea of government money being shovelled into private bank accounts…or just plain hate the concept of taxing wealthy people.

So, Jef, I probably concur with you on the constitutionality. I don't agree that only the AIG "clowns" (as you call them) can unscrew their own pooch. I also don't agree that this will destroy the concept of bonuses in contracts. There are first-year paralegals who can figure out ways around this one…ways to deliver bonus bucks under some other name, which will make them as sacrosanct as any payment ever is in any contract. I also expect there are financial experts who are already lining up to tackle the task of restabilizing AIG and other firms that bubbled their way into insolvency. There's probably a lot of money in being part of the cavalry that rides to the rescue on this one…and ways of making sure they actually get it.

Just fixed the Amazon link in the previous posting. I accidentally (yeah, sure) set it to order my book, Kirby: King of Comics, instead of the new The Best of Simon and Kirby. Not that you shouldn't buy both…