An interview with Don LaFontaine, possessor of one of the most-heard voices in the history of the entertainment industry. Thanks to Charlie Glaize (owner of another voice you hear a lot) for letting me know about this.

Jack Kamen, best known for his work at EC Comics, died yesterday at the age of 88. The cause of death is being reported as cancer.

A native of Brooklyn, Kamen was born May 29, 1920 and at one point in his life was heading for a career in illustration and sculpture. In 1941, he began getting work as an illustrator for pulp magazines…an endeavor that was interrupted by a draft notice. Upon his discharge, he found the pulp market in decline and so began picking up work for comic books, primarily for Fiction House where his clean style fit in well with the preferred look of their line. He was especially good at drawing pretty women, a skill that often typed one as an artist for romance comics.

That's what he was doing when he began his career with EC Comics and then, as they replaced their romance comics with horror, crime and science-fiction books, he stuck around to work on them. Some readers called him their "unfavorite" and wondered what a guy who produced such clean, shiny drawings was doing in horror comics. But publisher William Gaines and editor Al Feldstein believed Kamen was a valuable asset; that his sexy girl drawings added to the commercial appeal of their books. Scripts were written for him with that in mind.

When EC folded their main line, Kamen drew several issues of a new book for them called Psychoanalysis, which mainly consisted of people in therapy lying on a couch and describing their problems. It didn't sell and when EC folded its comic line, Kamen segued to advertising art, occasionally bring a "comic book" look to assignments. In 1982, he supplied the EC-like key art for the Stephen King motion picture, Creepshow.

In recent years, Kamen basked in the spotlight of his sons' accomplishments. Dean Kamen invented the Segway and the iBOT Mobility System. Another son, Barton, is a doctor who is now the Chief Medical Officer of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Kamen at the Comic-Con International in 2000. He was delighted by the attention that attendees gave to his work, and also by being reunited at the con with so much of the old EC crew. And an awful lot of people were delighted to meet him.

An interview in The Wall Street Journal with Paul Levitz, top guy at DC Comics. Don't miss the little sidebar of advice about breaking into the business.

We have here a message from Rob Schimmel…

My condolences on the death of your friend, Greg Burson. I mean no disrespect but I'm a little confused about something. You said he was Daws Butler's protégé and he also did a lot of Mel Blanc's characters. But haven't a lot of people done those voices? It seems to me I read, maybe on your site, that a number of different people did Bugs Bunny and Yogi Bear since the original voices passed away. Don't they just pick one person to be the new voice?

Usually, no. I think they should and a lot of folks in the creative areas (including the voice actors, themselves) seem to think they should…but the unofficial policy these days is not to let any one person have an absolute lock on a role. Some of that is because within the varied halls of Time-Warner or some other companies, there are differences of opinion as to how the characters should sound. One guy directing a Bugs Bunny radio spot may be in love with Mel's earlier, more Bronx-like Bugs voice while someone producing a Bugs videogame favors the later, more civilized Bugs sound. Or even if they agree on the ideal, they disagree on which artist gets closer to it. Burson used to tell tales of voicing Bugs one morning for a cartoon and then being asked if he wanted to audition to play Bugs on a commercial.

Plus, of course, if you don't let any one actor "own" a role, you eliminate the ability of any actor to demand a lot of money for a job. Mel could — and did. But there are at least ten actors who've voiced The Wabbit since we lost Mr. Blanc and every one knows that if he gets too expensive, there are at least nine others in town. It will probably be that way for a long time.

By the way: A minor distinction. I didn't say Greg Burson was Daws Butler's protégé. I said he was a protégé of Daws Butler. Daws was a great teacher and a lover of new talent…so he had many protégés. A lot of good people went to his classes — and Daws wasn't one of those teachers who will take on anyone who can pay. You had to audition to get into his class…had to prove you had talent worth developing. (Daws also didn't run the classes for money. You wouldn't believe how little he charged.)

So many, many good people emerged from his classes and Daws was proud of all of them. Greg was one. For what it's worth, I got the sense that while he was impressed by Burson's ability to replicate Yogi, Huck and the rest, Daws was even prouder of Greg's ability to read copy in his own voice or to create new ones. It was pretty much the same view that Jack Kirby had about artists who could ape his drawing style. What really made an impression on Jack was not that someone could produce work that looked a lot like Kirby but that they'd followed in his footsteps of creating something brand new.

A memorial service is being held this coming Saturday for Greg Burson, the voice artist who passed away on July 22. If you were a friend of his and want details on the event, drop me a note.

The Circuit City chain yanked the current issue of MAD Magazine from its stores because of a spoof of their stores. Then someone had second, saner thoughts and the decision was reversed. Here's the story.

There are people, believe it or not, who only come to this blog to see my occasional reports on animals in my backyard. If you are such a person, this one's for you.

Things have changed and to explain this, I need to review the Cast of Characters, all of whom are feral felines. More than a year ago here, I told you about the Stranger Cats, as we called them — two strays who I think were brother and sister, who came around every night in search of food. There was the Stranger Cat (male) who was bold enough to come onto the porch at any hour and demand to be fed. There was also the Stranger Stranger Cat (female) who usually but not always was timid and shy. She'd hang back at a distance, waiting 'til the Stranger Cat got some food into the bowl and then she'd creep up and nibble on whatever her brother (?) was willing to share.

In the last year, the Stranger Cat has obviously found other sources of free eats. He comes around — alone — every week or three. I think the last time I saw him was about two weeks ago…but then I've been away and even when I'm here, I only check the back yard occasionally. Perhaps he's here more often than I think. On the other hand (paw), the Stranger Stranger Cat is definitely here a lot, but always too shy/skitterish to come near me, even when I'm putting chow out.

More recently, as you've read here, a small feline I named Lydia became Top Cat of my yard. She's the one I had to trap and haul in for a kitty abortion and spaying. She was coming around all the time and sleeping on an old chaise lounge I have out by the pool. Also coming around occasionally was a black-and-white cat I haven't named but which seems to have some connection to Lydia. This is the cat I accidentally caught in my trap when I was trying to catch Lydia.

Still more recently, Max began showing up. Max, as I call him, is a very large male. When I first saw Max, I briefly thought I had another seriously-pregnant, about-to-pop cat on my hands. That was before I noticed the testicles. Max is a widebody, perpetually-hungry cat, not unlike the one whose cartoons I write. If I fed both Max and Lydia at the same time, Max would devour a full can of Friskies, then go over and start helping himself to whatever portion of Lydia's dinner was unconsumed. When I was present, I'd referee such disputes and make sure Lydia got to eat.

So what's happened lately is that Max and the Stranger Stranger Cat are an item. More than an item, they're just about inseparable. That's them in the photo above.

Max and the Stranger Stranger Cat have taken over that chaise lounge — the one Lydia used to sleep on — and I often see them on it, napping practically on top of each other. When they spot me, Max is instantly on the porch, insisting on food for the both of them. He protects her and feeds her and nuzzles her and licks her face…and all of this would be quite commendable except that some of it involves chasing Lydia away.

Max doesn't mind the occasional possums or raccoons who wander into my yard to help themselves to the cat food. In fact, I've seen Max out there just watching them dine, waiting until they leave so he can hop back up on the porch and howl a howl that seems to say, "Refill, please!" But let another cat get near the bowl? Unthinkable.

So once or twice an evening now, I go downstairs and chase Max away so Lydia can come in and eat. I sit out there guarding her 'til she's done and leaves on her own accord. I just did that…and tonight, Lydia brought the black-and-white cat along for dinner! It's the first time I've seen the black-and-white cat in at least a month.

That's how it works out there now. I have two teams of cats eating in shifts and I have to stay out there to make sure the visiting team gets their Friskies Sea Captains' Choice, which I gather is a lot of leftover fish parts from somewhere, involving no Sea Captain and very little choice. If I can't get them to live in peace, I may have to move my computer out there and blog from the back yard while I play Traffic Cop at the cat dish.

I said that the Fish Grill chain in Los Angeles serves clam chowder. What was I thinking? It's a Kosher chain. They don't have shellfish on the premises. What they have is a great fish chowder that actually reminds one of clam chowder. Thanks to Geoff Klein for catching my blunder.

Also, I said in the previous posting that I was bad at plugging my work here. Kurt Busiek informs me that I'm even worse than I thought I was. He writes, "I don't think you mentioned your participation in the finale of Steve Gerber's Dr. Fate story, either." He's right. When our pal Steve Gerber passed away, he'd written (or helped write) seven parts of an eight-part story that was running in DC's book, Countdown to Mystery.

Rather than have one writer write The Ending to Steve's story — which almost certainly would not have finished it off the way Steve would have — editor Joey Cavalieri asked four of us (me, Gail Simone, Mark Waid and Adam Beechen) to each write An Ending for that issue, thereby quadrupling the chance that there'd be something in there close to what Gerber would have written. This issue came out a few months ago and I was proud to be included, saddened that it had to be done.

I'm real bad at plugging stuff I have coming out. It's been eons since I've mentioned Will Eisner's The Spirit, which comes out every month, or our upcoming "Groo Meets Conan" series…and I don't think I've made any reference at all to an upcoming Indiana Jones book I'm writing for Dark Horse. This is because there are more important things in this world to write about…like alarm clocks that wake you up to the smell of bacon.

But I should mention this: Years ago, a talented gent named Will Meugniot conspired with me and we came up with a super-hero series called The DNAgents (which way too many people referred to as "The DNA Agents") and it lasted a few years and was enormous fun, at least for us, while it lasted. Will left at some point and I continued it with others…and the Evanier/Meugniot issues (including a sequence or two drawn by Dan Spiegle) are about to be reissued in a fancy paperback with new color covers and mostly-old black-and-white interiors. DNAgents: The Industrial Strength Edition comes out the middle of October from Image. It's 452 pages, some of which contain special features by Will and a new foreword by me, for a paltry $24.99. Will is personally supervising the production of it so it oughta look real good.

And that's about all I have to say about it except that if there's sufficient reaction (i.e., sales), I assume they'll reprint the other issues, as well as some of the spin-off books we did like Crossfire. You now know just about as much as I do about this. The only difference is I don't have to pay for my copy and you do. You can advance order a copy from Amazon by clicking this here link. It's only sixteen and a half bucks from them…such a deal.