I'll be at the Wizard World convention in Los Angeles, down at the Convention Center, all day Saturday and much of Sunday. If you want to get a copy of Kirby: King of Comics signed, wander by Booth 633. That's the space of my friend Steve Wyatt. He'll have a pile of books for sale and for a few hours each day, he'll have me. Also: On Saturday from 5 PM to 6 PM, I'll be hosting a discussion of Jack and the book in the Wizard Auditorium.

Those of you on the East Coast needn't feel neglected. I'll also be a guest at the New York Comic Con, which is being held April 18-20 at the Javits Center. There will also be a panel there about Jack, plus there will be a tribute panel for the late Steve Gerber…and I may also do a couple of panels about folks who are alive. I'll be signing the book at the convention, and then on Friday evening, April 18, I'll be doing that at Jim Hanley's Universe, a fine store situated on West 33rd St., just a giant ape's throw from the Empire State Building.

Where else am I going? Right now, to bed. It's late. Good night, Internet!

Ted Carey writes about the trailer for All That Jazz which we featured here yesterday…

I worked as an usher in the local movie theater while in college and this is the preview we showed all through the busy Christmas Season in 1979, which meant viewers of films like Kramer vs. Kramer and The Rose were getting this preview. When we started showing All That Jazz in January, there wasn't a night where (usually by the time Young Joe climaxes during his dance routine) patrons wouldn't be out in the lobby to complain about the nature of the movie and asking if this was the same film they had seen previews for. Many specifically said they were expecting A Chorus Line. Many were older women (although all of a sudden, fifty isn't all that old, eh?) who had (for the most part) never been to an "R" rated movie before. We rarely ever had patrons asking for their money back, no matter how bad the movie was — I'll say it didn't happen five times a year. For All That Jazz, it wasn't unusual to have that many and more ask each showing and I always knew it was because these people felt they had been deceived. We always gave full cash refunds (often for the popcorn and drinks as well as the ticket) and often threw in a free pass for another night.

That being said, I always enjoyed the movie and it did good business for the month or so we showed it.

Yeah, it's kind of a deceptive trailer…and it's interesting that they used the "Bye Bye Life" song in it. I would have thought they'd want to hide all suggestions that it was a movie about Death and instead use "On Broadway" or some other tune.

I would have thought a lot of patrons would have walked out and demanded refunds when they got to the scenes of open heart surgery. I once met Wallace Shawn, who was in the film…but he told me that many people didn't know that. The reason was that his scenes were intercut with the open heart footage and (he said) much of the audience either closed their eyes or walked out then. (Remember Johnny Carson's line about those scenes? He said, "Every filmgoer in America should be glad that Bob Fosse didn't have a proctology operation.")

Are you looking for great old comic books at good prices? Would you like to do a good deed for a good guy? You can do both at the same time.

For years now, one of the friendliest, comics-loving dealers in old funnybooks has been a gentleman named Bob Beerbohm. If you go to many conventions, you've probably passed his booth and maybe browsed and/or bought. You might also have spent some time discussing comic book history with Bob, because he's one of those great scholars, digging out hitherto-unchronicled information. Much of what is known about the industry's past is known because of Bob Beerbohm.

Bob is in need of dual hip replacements. This is not cheap and Bob is planning to go overseas for the work because the cost in this country is just too high. Even then, he needs to raise a lot of money and soon.

He is not asking for charity. He's just hoping a lot of people will browse his "for sale" list and buy stuff. Here's a link to his website so you can see what he has up for sale and buy some good comics for good prices for a good cause. I've known Bob for years and he's an honest fellow and most deserving of your attention.

The Los Angeles Times has an obituary up for our pal, Dave Stevens. They also have a shorter blog piece about Dave.

There are some other nice pieces about Dave on the web. Tom Spurgeon has an excellent, exhaustive obit. Dave's old co-worker William Wray wrote his thoughts. And the webmaster of Dave's website has set up this page where fans and friends can post tributes and comments, and that page contains a number of other links.

Animator and historian Mark Kausler writes about the Tony the Tiger commercial to which I linked this morning…

The announcer on that Tony spot you posted today is Dick Tufeld, the animator on the spot was Ed Love, looks like he did the whole thing himself!

I'm pretty sure Mark's right about Ed Love, just as I'm pretty sure he's wrong about Dick Tufeld.

Eliot Spitzer's resignation. Who would have imagined such a thing?

I want to thank everyone who wrote notes of shock and regrets about Dave Stevens. I have more than eighty such e-mails so I may not get around to answering them all for a while.

I appreciate the thought and I hope this doesn't sound callous or rude but I'd really prefer that, instead of composing private messages to me, you spent the same energy posting to public forums, telling folks who might not fully realize, what a terrific human being and artist he was. I don't need to be told that…and I also feel uncomfy to be getting all these condolences when so many out there are in mourning for our pal. Dave had an awful lot of friends including — and my e-mailbox is crammed with proof of this — many he didn't even know.

Tomorrow on Stu's Show, our fave web-based radio program, host Stuart Shostak welcomes the amazing mouth of Fred Travalena. I love great impressionists and Fred's about as good as they get. In fact, he's pretty darn entertaining when he's singing or speaking in the voice of Fred Travalena, too. If you've never seen him perform live, you've missed something. Don't miss this chance to hear him interviewed…and put through his paces as Stu and his phone-in callers challenge Fred to summon up his great celebrity voice simulations. If you call in, ask him to do a little Sinatra.

Stu's Show airs live on Wednesday, then repeats throughout the week. This is not a podcast you can download or listen to whenever you want. It's like a radio broadcast only it's over the Internet and you can listen to it on your computer while you do other things on it. The show airs from 4 PM to 6 PM Pacific Time (7 PM to 9 PM Eastern) and you can listen in by going to the website of Shokus Internet Radio during those hours. You can also hear many wonderful things on S.I.R. at all hours of the day.

I'm sorry to say it's a Two Obits Day here at newsfromme.com.

Jerry Serpe, who may hold some record for the most comic books colored, died Monday in Florida. Serpe was a longtime employee of DC Comics, dating from the mid-forties. Before that, he worked for a company called Photochrome that handled coloring and color separation work on many of DC's publications, and when Photochrome went out of business, he and a man named Jack Adler moved over to work for DC.

Serpe colored thousands of comic books — issues of everything the company published during his tenure, and also did extensive production work, including art corrections and touch-ups. Few knew his name but every DC reader saw his handiwork and he even occasionally did a bit of artwork for public service or filler pages that ran in the company's books. For an extended period through the fifties and sixties, Adler was primarily in charge of the coloring of covers while Serpe supervised (and often, did) the coloring of the insides. For much of this time, DC did the color separations for the covers in-house, and Serpe did much of this work, as well.

In the late sixties, DC stopped doing color seps in-house and scaled back that department. Serpe seized on a fortuitous pension opportunity to leave the company. Thereafter, he ran an outside printing business and occasionally freelanced for DC. Eventually, he sold his interest in the printing company and began doing more freelance coloring but during the eighties, with so many new colorists entering the business, the available work declined.

Around that time, I was doing Blackhawk for DC with artist Dan Spiegle, and we had to pick a new colorist for the book. Several young and talented folks were suggested and even recommended but Dan was not always happy with the current trends in comic book coloring. I suggested he look through his pile of recent printed comics and see which coloring his work had received that pleased him. He did, deciding that a certain Sgt. Rock Annual had been tinted to his liking. It ran with no coloring credit so I called up Bob Rozakis, who was then in charge of DC's coloring department and told him, "Look that one up. Whoever colored it…that's the person we want." Bob checked the files and was delighted to find it was not one of the new kids but an old pro — Jerry Serpe, who wasn't doing much for the company by then.

Jerry colored the remaining issues of Blackhawk and did a fine job. When he got the gig, he called me up to say thanks. He was especially pleased that he'd won a "blind taste test" and been hired on nothing more than the merits of his work. And why not? It was always good.

[NOTE: I did a rewrite on this piece at 4:15 PM to correct some facts and add some details. Sadly, not a whole lot has ever been written about guys like Jerry Serpe so it's uncharted territory. Thanks to Paul Levitz for some info.]

Illustrator Dave Stevens, best known for his "good girl" art and The Rocketeer, died yesterday following a long, wrenching battle with Leukemia. Dave was born July 29, 1955 in Lynwood, California. He was raised in Portland, Oregon, then his family relocated to San Diego, where he attended San Diego City College and became involved in the early days of the San Diego Comic Book Convention, now known as the Comic-Con International. His skills as an artist were instantly evident to all, and he was encouraged by darn near every professional artist who attended the early cons, but especially by Jack Kirby and Russ Manning. In 1975, when Manning began editing a line of Tarzan comic books to be published in Europe, Dave got his first professional assignment, working on those comics and also assisting Russ with the Tarzan newspaper strip. Soon after, he worked on a few projects for Marvel (including the Star Wars comic book) and a number of underground comics. Later, he also worked with Russ on the Star Wars newspaper strip.

In 1977, Dave went to work for Hanna-Barbera where he drew storyboards and layouts, many of them for the Super Friends and Godzilla cartoon shows and bonded with veteran artist Doug Wildey, who produced the latter. Wildey and Stevens became close friends and in 1982, when Dave created his popular character, The Rocketeer, he modelled the character's sidekick, Peevy, on photos of Doug. Dave himself was Cliff Secord, who donned the mask of The Rocketeer, and other friends appeared in other guises.

The Rocketeer made Dave's reputation and also spawned a resurgence of interest in fifties' figure model Bettie Page, whose likeness Dave used for the strip's heroine. But the strip was not profitable for Dave, who was among the least prolific talents to ever attempt comic books. It wasn't so much that he was slow, as his friends joked, but that he was almost obsessively meticulous, doing days of study and sketching to create one panel, and doing many of them over and over. Even then, he was usually dissatisfied with what he produced and fiercely critical of the reproduction. Friends occasionally pitched in to help with the coloring but some begged off because they knew it was humanly impossible for anyone, including Dave himself, to produce coloring that he'd like. Eventually, he sold most of the rights to Disney for a Rocketeer movie that was produced in 1991. Dave served as a co-producer of the film and did a brief cameo, but the endeavor was not as lucrative for him as he'd hoped, and it pretty much ended Dave's interest in continuing the character.

Most of what Dave did after that fell into the general category of "glamour art," including portfolios and private commissions. Many of these were illustrations of Bettie Page who, though once thought deceased, turned out to be alive and living not all that far from Dave. They met and Dave became her friend and, though he was not wealthy, benefactor. Deciding that too many others had callously exploited her likeness, Dave voluntarily aided Ms. Page financially and even took to helping her in neighborly ways. One time, he told me — and without the slightest hint of resentment — "It's amazing. After years of fantasizing about this woman, I'm now driving her to cash her Social Security checks."

Dave was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life…and was certainly among the most gifted. Our first encounter was at Jack Kirby's house around 1970 when he came to visit and show Jack some of his work. As I said, Kirby was very encouraging and he urged Dave not to try and draw like anyone else but to follow his own passions. This was advice Dave took to heart, which probably explains why he took so long with every drawing. They were rarely just jobs to Dave. Most of the time, what emerged from his drawing board or easel was a deeply personal effort. He was truly in love with every beautiful woman he drew, at least insofar as the paper versions were concerned. (Dave was married once…for six months to the prolific movie actress, Brinke Stevens, and she retained his last name after they divorced.)

Dave's illness these last few years was a poorly-kept secret among his friends, but he insisted that it be kept quiet, and struggled to make occasional public appearances. We tried to get together for dinner every month or so but it wound up being more like every six months. The last time, he joked that it was lucky he had such a reputation for slow production. Now that he was unable to work for weeks at a time, no one noticed that his output had declined. His main efforts went towards an "Art of Dave Stevens" book he was struggling to assemble. Mostly though that evening, we talked about comics and comic artists. Dave was a fan in the very best sense.

I don't really know how to end this and maybe I don't want to…because it will mean another level of loss regarding one of my closest friends. As long as I can keep writing about him, I feel he's still with me in some manner. And the thought of losing a great guy like Dave Stevens is just too, too sad. He was truly loved and admired by all who knew him. I'll post information about a memorial service, if and when I hear about that kind of thing.