Alan Woollcombe writes, regarding this video link from the other day…

A little bit of film trivia here: the universal reaction in our household to your Jack Benny/Liberace clip was "Hey, that's Richard Wattis!"

Who?

Well, speaking from a British perspective, we didn't have Jack Benny or Liberace on our TV screens in England in the 60s (though most knew who Liberace was). What we did have was the tail end of a great British film comedy boom, and one of the principal character actors was Richard Wattis, who makes a fleeting appearance in your Benny/Liberace clip here as the butler. He did a great line in exasperated officialdom (he was in the St Trinian's films as a man from the Ministry of Education) as well as snooty butlers. When British comedy migrated from the big screen to the small, Wattis largely disappeared from view — at least to British audiences. Interesting to see that he made it onto American TV. Was he a regular on either Benny's or Liberace's shows?

If you have any more Wattis clips — with or without that showoff piano player or disgruntled violinist — do let us see them. The man was an unsung genius at what he did.

I don't have any other clips. I don't even have that one. I just linked to it on YouTube, where I believe it's a preview of an upcoming DVD release of Liberace's TV work. Mr. Wattis certainly wasn't a regular on Benny's shows and I'm not familiar enough with Liberace's to know if he made appearances in other episodes. (For that matter, I don't know if the program was taped here or in Great Britain. In the late sixties and seventies, a lot of American TV shows taped over there for no other reason than that it was cheaper.) In any case, Wattis sounds like my favorite kind of comic actor. I'll keep an eye out for him elsewhere.

George F. Will thinks The Surge has failed and that there's no rationale for the current U.S. military strategy in Iraq. And frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of America-hating Liberals like him wishing for our nation to fail.

As we explained back here, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy shot foreign versions of several of their movies, reading phonetic Spanish or French (or whatever language) off an off-screen blackboard. Here's five minutes from the Spanish version of their feature, Pardon Us, which took place mostly in prison. In Mexico or Spain, Stan and Ollie were called El Gordo y El Flaco. For obvious reasons.

Another comic book artist of the past has left us. Larry Woromay, who went from pulp illustration to drawing for Atlas Comics (later known as Marvel) died August 26 at the age of 80. Woromay was born in Greenwich Village in New York in 1926 and after serving in World War II, attended the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York on the G.I. Bill. He got into pulps just as that form was dying out and segued into freelance comic book work, mostly for Stan Lee, starting in 1950. He drew mainly crime and horror comics until 1956 when Atlas had its famous crash/downsizing and most of its artists were told there was no more work.

That was Woromay's cue to get out of comics…which he did for the most part, eventually securing a job as director of an enterprise called Puppet Theater in Nassau County, New York. He worked there for twenty years (until retirement) but supplemented that income with occasional work in comics, mostly for Charlton in the late sixties. He also drew one story for Warren's Eerie Magazine in the days when Archie Goodwin was its editor. Woromay moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1995, which is where he passed away. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, two daughters and seven grandkids.

Eric Newsom sent me this link to the text of an interview that Ditko did in 1968 for the fanzine, Marvel Main. If you look at the work he was doing for Marvel just before he left and then you read his words from this interview, you can get a pretty good idea of the creative tensions that were going on in the Lee-Kirby relationship. The company dynamic had evolved into offering a diet of "heroes" who were either flawed or uncertain of their own heroism and values. That's not the way Ditko saw the world.

Also, Josh Wendell just wrote me to ask…

I'd heard Ditko quit Spider-Man because of the storyline about the Green Goblin who was about to be unmasked. Ditko wanted it to be one person and Stan wanted it to be someone else. Is this not true?

It may be that they differed on that plot point…although you also have to remember that the two men weren't speaking by this point. Ditko was plotting and pencilling Spider-Man, then handing it in with notes to Stan's Production Manager, Sol Brodsky. Stan then dialogued the material and it was lettered, then returned to Ditko…who increasingly disagreed with the dialogue Stan had scripted and the changes he'd made in what Ditko regarded as "his" stories.

But come on. You don't quit a company that's employed you for years because you want the Mystery Villain to be one guy and your collaborator wants it to be someone else. At most, that might be a Last Straw that caused you to ask off that particular book. Ditko left Marvel completely and either said or gave folks there the impression that he was never coming back. I'm not taking any sides in who was right or who was wrong…but obviously, Lee and Ditko weren't getting along well before they got near the Green Goblin unmasking storyline. More than a year previously, Ditko demanded and got a plotting credit, and probably some writing money.

And as the friction grew, Stan stuck Spider-Man into the Daredevil comic so that he could "audition" its artist, John Romita, in case he needed to replace Ditko. It had all been building for some time before Ditko quit.

One other thing I should have mentioned: A few months before Ditko announced his resignation, Marvel made the deal for the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon show, the first time those characters were transferred to another, more lucrative medium. The show went on the air with segments of five Marvel heroes (Iron Man, Thor, Sub-Mariner, Hulk and Captain America) "animated" — I'm using that verb loosely — right off the comics that had been drawn by Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Ditko and the others. Ditko didn't mention this to me or to anyone I know who's discussed those days with him…but Kirby and Heck were sure rankled that their poorly-paid comic book work was being transferred to television without any additional compensation. It would be surprising if Ditko wasn't.

It's also not widely known but when the deal for that show was made, Sub-Mariner was not included and Spider-Man was. The original sales presentation film (a bit of which I showed at the Comic-Con in San Diego last year) included Spider-Man. He was taken out of it because a more lucrative offer for a network Spider-Man cartoon series seemed likely…and indeed, such a series was on ABC the following season. In any case, at the time Ditko left Marvel, he was well aware that his co-creation had been sold for a TV show and that there would likely be a flood of Spider-Man toys and merchandise, and that he wouldn't be sharing in that windfall. I can't think of another freelancer in comics who wasn't upset when he found himself in that situation, even if some of them chose to not go public with their feelings.

So is it really that huge a mystery as to why Steve Ditko quit Spider-Man?

Next Sunday, BBC4 in the U.K. is running In Search of Steve Ditko, a film by Jonathan Ross. I'm told it'll turn up on YouTube and other online sites soon after that and I would imagine that DVDs and such will make the rounds. This page gives you the broadcast times in case you can get BBC4 where you are. I spoke with Jonathan about it at the Comic-Con and it sounds like a "must see" for those of us interested in comic book history.

Nevertheless, I'll quibble with some of the rhetoric on that web page. It says, and I quote…

Ditko is a recluse and has never revealed why he left Marvel Comics. He has never been interviewed and won't allow his photograph to be taken.

"Recluse" seems a bit harsh to me, suggesting as it does a person who never associates with other human beings. What we have in Ditko is a very gifted gentleman who refuses interviews and convention appearances and wide interaction with the comic book community and personal publicity. But dozens of folks from that community (including me, years ago) have visited him in his studio or spoken with him in comic book company offices and such.

Yeah, he's never been interviewed in the accepted sense. That's if you don't count a couple of brief Q-and-A things he did for fanzines many years ago. Also, a few years ago, two separate individuals were telling people they'd recorded long phone conversations with Ditko, and they were guardedly letting out tapes. I wouldn't count those as interviews, either. (And don't bother asking if I know where you can get copies. I don't. I refused to accept one because I thought, and still think, it's a slimy and probably illegal thing to do.)

But the man has certainly discussed with others why he left Marvel Comics, even if he has sometimes claimed in print that he hasn't. He was unhappy because he believed Marvel's then-owner was reneging on certain promises about sharing in the revenues of the characters Ditko co-created, Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. He was upset with the way his comics were then produced, feeling that he was doing most of the writing work on the comics he did with Stan Lee, but that Lee — as dialogue writer — was getting too much of the credit and money. (Marvel's two other best artists of the period, Jack Kirby and Wally Wood — both good friends of Ditko's — felt the same way.) There were also personality clashes between Lee and Ditko — they didn't speak for the last eighteen months or so of their "collaboration" — and Ditko was displeased by many of the creative choices Stan was making, treating Spider-Man as a morally-confused, troubled protagonist. Ditko, as was obvious from his subsequent work, didn't like heroes who didn't rigidly adhere to his own interpretation of good and evil, black and white. But Stan, of course, was the editor and had the last word.

Ditko told me all that in his studio in 1970, not long after he quit. He's said it to others and I also think it's pretty easy to perceive in his other comics and in the occasional essays he's written for the fan press. He may write things like "My reasons are my own and I've never divulged them to anyone" but we don't have to believe that. Besides, what other reasons could there have been? He didn't quit Marvel in 1966 because he didn't like the ties Stan was wearing in the office.

Jonathan Ross is quite a brilliant man so I'll presume his documentary doesn't presume there's some dark, unfathomable mystery why someone walks out of a company and refuses to ever work for them again…a vow Ditko kept until 1979 when Charlton, the main company that employed him after Marvel, cut back on buying. (Even then when Ditko returned, he steadfastly declined to draw his old co-creations, Spider-Man or Dr. Strange. Many tried to convince him and a few writers even snuck them into scripts for a panel or two, only to have Ditko politely refuse.) In any case, I think it's time to bury this myth that Ditko's reasons for quitting are unknowable, even if he says they are. They were pretty much the same reasons that anyone quits a job like that.

By the way: I went to look up one Ditko fact on Wikipedia and spotted an error there. I don't know how to correct an entry so I'd appreciate it if someone else could fix this line in their page on Ditko…

In 1968, Charlton editor Dick Giordano moved to DC Comics. Steve Ditko, and several other artists and writers in Giordano's stable, moved with him.

That's the way it keeps getting reported and it's wrong. Ditko was hired by DC before Giordano. The editor of Ditko's first comic for DC (Showcase #73, the first Beware the Creeper) was Murray Boltinoff. In fact, it was in part because Ditko gave him a recommendation that DC management decided to hire Giordano, who then joined up and became editor of several comics, Ditko's among them.

Fred Kaplan reports on today's testimony by Petraeus and Crocker. I agree with him. It was all about as predictable as me linking to a Fred Kaplan article.

Okay, another Jack Benny clip. This is from a 1969 TV show hosted by Liberace. It's not a great bit but it's always interesting to watch Benny, even in a not-great bit. He takes his time. He works the pauses. He keeps his attitude perfectly intact. One of the things that makes it play is that the director wisely did it all in one take with no edits and so didn't monkey with the performers' timing. The minute anyone started to monkey with Benny's rhythm, it threw everything off. Even on his own show, they didn't always know that and there were some horrendous edits in the ones he did on film and in his later specials that were done on tape. Nice to see that someone was smart enough not to do it in this segment…

I started to write a post about today's Iraq testimony and then I came across this paragraph from the famed blogger, Atrios…

This has been said a million times in a million different ways, but the whole point of this exercise is to ensure that Bush's war continues until it's time for him to cut brush permanently. The surge can't have worked because then it could start ending, and the surge can't be not working because then it would a tragic waste of lives and money, so the surge is working just a little bit…but might work a little bit more soon!

That's it, really. The folks arguing what we should do there — especially the ones who want us to stay — don't really care that much what happens to Iraq. Most of them wouldn't know a Sunni from a Shia. George W. Bush decided we should be in Iraq and no force on Earth can get him to admit that might have been a mistake. So it's all about keeping us there until someone else gets us out and Bush can say, "It would have worked but my successor chose to cut and run."

The Phil Spector/Lana Clarkson murder case has gone to the jury. Spector has denied that he told a reporter that his fate was "in the hands of twelve people who voted for George Bush." I guess that means he's not too confident of the outcome.

In the meantime, I'm getting concerned. It's been a little over forty minutes and we don't yet have a verdict. I'm going to continue planning my killing spree. Just in case.

General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify before Congress and report on how things are going in Iraq and how they recommend that we handle matters in the future. I'll bet George Bush is worried sick that they won't say that The Surge is showing definite signs of progress and that we need to give it more time.

It was revealed on a panel at the Baltimore Comic Convention so I guess I should post it here. DC Comics, as you may know, publishes a fine comic that continues the adventures of Will Eisner's The Spirit. Darwyn Cooke has been writing and drawing it but he's departing the book. That's all old news. The new news is that while its next artist has not yet been announced, the writing will be handled by Sergio Aragonés (the plots) and me (the words). I'll tell you more about it when there's more to tell.

Also, I recently completed the script for a new eight-page story of Crossfire, the comic that Dan Spiegle and I did for several years. Dan is currently drawing the story which will appear in a forthcoming anthology comic. I'll fill you in on it shortly.

And while I'm plugging my comic book projects: The 25th Anniversary Groo Special — the first Groo in quite some time — will be arriving in comic book shops this week. It will be followed in short order by a mini-series called Groo: Hell on Earth, which will run four issues. And then that will be followed by the long-awaited "Groo Meets Conan" mini-series. I don't know what we're calling it officially but that's pretty much what it is. Groo's going to meet Conan and may the best barbarian win!

Robert Spina, who often sends me great links that I can pass on to you folks, called my attention to this video. What can I say? It made me laugh.

Senator Larry Craig, who will soon be just Larry Craig, is filing papers to have his guilty plea overturned. According to this article, "He said he was under stress and pleaded guilty only to put the matter behind him."

So, uh, how'd that plan work out?

My friend Len Wein sends this amazing bit of synchronicity…or whatever it is…

Under the category of "Truth is inevitably stranger than fiction", I went to check out the New York Times article you linked to today with the slide show showing us all the places where Stan Lee has lived in his life, and I was astonished to discover that the apartment building he and brother Larry lived in as teens, specifically 1720 University Avenue in the Bronx, was also the same building where I lived for the first seven years of my life.

Now what are the odds of that?

Better than even money, I'll tell you that. What an amazing coinky-dink. (For those of you who don't know, Len is a writer-editor who followed in Stan's footsteps to the point of writing many of the same characters — like Spider-Man, Thor and The Hulk — and serving for a time as editor-in-chief of Marvel.) Len writes a longer account of the above on his weblog.

And you're probably thinking what I was thinking…and the answer is that I called and asked him and we don't know if it was the same apartment. The Weins moved when Len was seven and he doesn't even recall what floor they lived on. But he's going to ask an aged relative and maybe we'll find out. That would be just too weird, even for comic book writers.