My favorite horror movie host was a gent named Larry Vincent who appeared on Los Angeles TV a half-century ago under the name "Sinister Seymour." I watched him every time he was on even though it often meant sitting through horror movies I would never have bothered with had it not been for his interjections. I even wrote some interjections and patter for him and I penned this article about him in 1999. Here's a photo I took on his set at one taping…
Photo by me
For a long time, film of Seymour was nearly-impossible to find but some has turned up. You can see him briefly on a billboard and again on a TV screen in Mr. Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A few more clips have emerged which you can see if you watch the video below. It's an episode of The Retro Time Machine, a YouTube series/podcast that flashes back to entertainment of the seventies…and once in a while, adjacent decades.
In this episode, your host Jay Jennings talks about Seymour for an hour and 37 minutes with Larry Vincent's daughters. If you were ever a Fringie (that's what Seymour called his devoted followers), you will enjoy this…
This is the "In Memoriam" segment from last week's Emmy Awards. As usual, some folks are outraged that that certain people were omitted — Olivia Newton-John and Norm Macdonald seem to be the most glaring — and you'll notice that those complaints are only about performers. No one ever complains because they left out an important producer or director or writer or costume designer or musical director or anything but on-camera talent. I don't get angry about anyone in particular being left out but if I did, I think I'd get angry about that.
A lot of folks don't like that they've turned these segments into live musical performances. I don't mind that but I wish they'd make sure everyone who's shown in the montage gets a full-frame shot. My old cohort George Yanok was in there but you might not notice as he was way in the background. So were a couple of folks whose names I didn't catch at all…
Several folks have written to ask me how Chuck Cuidera pronounced his last name. I introduced him on panels and he didn't correct me when I pronounced it "Quid-Dara," first part rhyming with "kid," second part rhyming with "Sarah."
And Tom Galloway found an article online that indicates Steven Spielberg still has the movie rights to Blackhawk and they've even had a script developed. I'm sure Mr. Spielberg has lots of projects and lots of scripts that will never get in front of a camera but maybe a Blackhawk movie by him is likelier than I thought. Here's the article if you're interested.
As noted, DC Comics canceled the long-running Blackhawk comic book in 1968 with issue #243. Apparently, there were occasional discussions after that about bringing it back, spurred on often by some foreign publisher who'd been buying reprint rights to the book asking if and when DC might have more to offer. But it wasn't until 1976 that publication resumed with issue #244.
Gerry Conway had become a DC editor and they were adding some new books under his supervision. Blackhawk was one of them and I thought they did a very good job of it. Steve Skeates was the writer (with one issue written by David Anthony Kraft) and George Evans was the artist. Evans, of course, went back to the days of EC Comics and he was, I thought, an excellent choice. A few other artists assisted him with layouts and inking but the book looked good inside and read well.
I thought it should have lasted longer than the seven issues it did. Why so short a run? It's anyone's guess but I think (a) it didn't have very good covers and (b) it was a period when the whole DC schedule was kind of a mess. They were starting and stopping comics abruptly to the point where I don't think readers wanted to even begin reading any of their new books. Why should you when they probably wouldn't be around for very long? I thought that was the problem at DC the first time they canceled Blackhawk, too.
Also, I think it was rougher on bi-monthly comics then, which this Blackhawk comic was. The most popular books were all monthly and readers weren't used to waiting twice as long for the next issue. And Gerry Conway left DC and Carmine Infantino was fired as publisher and nothing was really stable. It was a shame because not only did Blackhawk deserve better but that particular reincarnation deserved better.
So now we get to the next revival of Blackhawk, which is the one I worked on. This piece of the story will run several chapters and it's not because I think what we did on it is any more important than any other version. It's just the one I know the most about and the one people keep asking me about. In fact, I started writing this series of blog posts just to answer questions about my time on the comic — ergo, the title of this string of articles. Then I decided to go back and make it an overview of all the versions.
As you'll see, there are a lot of "Someones" in the first part of this next part…
Contrary to what one website once claimed, it was not my idea to revive the book in 1982. It was Someone's notion but I do know the reason: Steven Spielberg inquired about the movie rights to Blackhawk…or maybe someone did on his behalf. In any case, he had expressed some interest. Having recently made Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Mr. Spielberg was as hot as a film director could possibly be. So Someone at Warner Brothers Studio decided they'd better make sure the film rights were locked up so that if and when Mr. Spielberg ever did decide to make such a movie, he'd make it for them.
Kirk Alyn
Obviously, he has not. The one and only Blackhawk film ever made professionally was the 1952 15-chapter movie serial starring Kirk Alyn as Blackhawk. Mr. Alyn, of course, had previously starred as Superman in two serials. I have never seen the Blackhawk serial nor have I heard particularly good things about it. If you want to judge for yourself, the DVD seems to be outta-print but there always seem to be copies available on eBay. [LATER ADD-ON TO THIS ARTICLE: Or you may be able to watch it here.]
There was also a Blackhawk radio series for a few months in 1950. Oddly enough, the guy who played Blackhawk on it had also played Superman. It was Maurice Fitzmaurice, who supplied the voice of The Man of Steel on his radio show after Bud Collyer gave up that lofty position.
Getting back to Mr. Spielberg and the various Someones: As we all know, he never has made such a film and we have no reason to believe he ever will. But it would not surprise me if Someone is still making sure the film rights are under option or a holding deal or something.
Then Someone at DC Comics said, "Hey, if Spielberg's interested, this might be a good time to revive the comic." I get asked often why DC restarted it with #251 instead of putting out a Blackhawk #1 as was then the custom with new titles. Collectors like #1 issues, often buying them by the pound for investment reasons. Readers often take them as a cue to jump on the bandwagon while it's starting to roll. Someone told me that Someone Else decided that not restarting the numbering would call less attention to the fact that the property had been dormant and deemed uncommercial for several years. And if you can't believe Someone about Someone Else, who can you believe?
I do not think there were any Someones at DC — not one — who thought the marketplace was clamoring for a new incarnation of the comic. Nevertheless, they went ahead. For a month or three, there was talk of various Someones doing it. At one point, Marv Wolfman and Dave Cockrum — both big fans of the original series — were at the top of the list of Someones. The problem was that Marv had a huge following due to the Teen Titans comic he was then doing and Dave had one due to his connection to the X-Men book at Marvel.
Someone said, "If Marv and Dave want to do a comic together, let's put them on something more marketable than Blackhawk." Marv and Dave did not wind up teaming on any project for DC but some time earlier, they'd done two issues of a proposed new comic for Marvel called Skywolf, which was very similar to Blackhawk. Every Someone who has ever mentioned it to me, including Marv and Dave, kept calling it Skyhawk.
It was quite good and it did something that DC had yet to try with Blackhawk: They'd set it in World War II instead of in the present day. Still, Someone at Marvel decided it wasn't strong enough to be a new comic so the material was shelved. Later, another Someone — and I think this Someone was Al Milgrom — decided to publish those stories in Marvel Fanfare #16 and 17. If you ever see copies at a reasonable price, grab 'em.
Once Marv and Dave were no longer being talked about for Blackhawk at DC, Someone — and this may be our next-to-last "Someone" — thought maybe they should go the other way with casting.
DC had writers and artists who were contractually guaranteed a certain amount of work. There were a few for whom no current project seemed right. So for a week or two, there was talk of issuing this new Blackhawk quarterly — only four issues a year — and to assign it to a certain writer and a certain artist in the "Well, we have to give them something" category. Yes, I know who they were. No, I'm not giving their names.
No other comic from a major publisher was then quarterly but the Someone who proposed this figured this was a way to say "Yes, we're publishing it" but to minimize how much they'd lose from it. It would also help keep that writer and that artist off comics the company cared about.
When the project was assigned to Len Wein as editor, Len said, "No, we're not going to do that." Len loved the old Blackhawk comics and he convinced everyone there they should at least try to do a book that readers would like. I gather this was not a tough sell at all. It would be monthly and they'd put Someone on it who might be able to make it good. How that Someone became me is a story for another day, possibly tomorrow.
Finally went to sleep about 7 AM, woke up close to 1 PM. I have no idea why I couldn't sleep last night and no idea if what I wrote was any good. That's how it sometimes is when you do what I do for a living.
I was going to post the last "telethon" request for cash here today but I woke up to being within forty bucks of my goal and I decided that's close enough — so no more overt requests for donations here, at least until my hosting company sends me another bill next September. Thank you to one and all who donated…and if you didn't but want to, there's a little box in the right-hand margin.
And if you have money to spare and don't feel like giving it to me, there's also a box there for Operation USA, which I have found to be a most worthy recipient of donations. Read their site and see how much good they do with what you give them and how little of it goes to staff salaries.
A good and bad thing about writing as a profession is that you can do it any time you feel like it. The last few nights, I slept real well but when I went to bed tonight — meaning about five hours ago — I just plain couldn't sleep. The body was willing but the brain refused to dial down and after way-too-long of lying there stark awake, I finally got up and went to this here computer. If I worked in a shoe store that kept normal hours, I couldn't go in and sell Nikes to customers at 4 AM.
I'm getting some pages done on a novel that has been an on-again/off-again project since COVID made its debut. I work on it between more pressing assignments and sometimes I think I'll finish it and try to get a publisher and sometimes, I read over some of it and think, "Aww…nobody's going to want to read this." Novelist friends tell me that's absolutely normal. They also agree with me when I say that at times, I feel like I'm writing it because I want to see what the characters do. They sure haven't done a good job of following the outline in my head.
I dunno how long I'll work…until I get punchy or fall face-down asleep on my keyboard, I guess. Lately when I go to bed and expect to doze off quickly, I dictate a note to Alexa and tell her what time it is. If I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm not sure if I've had enough sleep (and I'm alone), I ask Alexa to read the note aloud and then I have her tell me what time it is at that moment. If the difference is much less than five hours, I go back to sleep. One recent night, it was nineteen minutes. Sometimes, it's hard to tell.
Posted on Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 11:50 PM
I love seeing American musicals in other languages. Here's a little bit of the Disney Beauty and the Beast musical as performed onstage in Kyoto, Japan…
This chapter is about Chuck Cuidera. As mentioned back in Part 1, Cuidera was there at the beginning of Blackhawk, sometimes as an artist and sometimes as the inker who inked the work of another artist. He was involved in the feature's creation but I'm not prepared to say exactly how. Will Eisner, best known as the creator of The Spirit, was the boss then and he too was involved, as was artist Bob Powell. All three men have been cited as the strip's creator.
As mentioned in Part 3, Blackhawk underwent a major overhaul in 1967 as Carmine Infantino, newly installed in the editorial division of DC Comics, began making changes — some sweeping — in almost every comic they published. One of the major alterations he made was to break down the old system where each DC editor had a small group of freelancers who worked almost exclusively for that editor. He began moving freelancers around like chess pieces, discarding a few and moving others to different books with different editors. Ross Andru, for example, had drawn almost exclusively for comics edited by Robert Kanigher. Under the new system, Andru was routinely assigned to comics edited by Mort Weisinger or Julius Schwartz or anyone in the office.
Comics he penciled had almost always been inked by Mike Esposito. Comics penciled by Dick Dillin (like Blackhawk) were usually inked by Chuck Cuidera. Carmine decided to experiment by having inkers ink pencilers they had not inked in the past. Dillin soon proved to be quite valuable penciling super-hero comics, especially when not inked by Cuidera. So what to do with Chuck?
He inked a few other comics here and there and they weren't happy with him here or there. Then he penciled and inked a four-page war story that was published in Our Army at War #198. It looked like the art had been heavily retouched by Joe Kubert, who had taken over as editor of the war titles from Kanigher. Then Mr. Cuidera disappeared from comics…or at least any comics that I purchased.
I've always been interested in the men and women who create comic books. Honestly, I'm more interested in them than in the characters they write and/or draw…and I think some of them are more remarkable than the super-heroes they bring us. I was curious why a guy like Chuck Cuidera, who'd been working in comic books since 1940, suddenly vanished from the industry around 1969. I'd never met Chuck and really knew nothing about him except which books he'd worked on.
But I wondered: If a man specializes in one career for almost three decades, where does he then go to start a new career? Cuidera, I later learned, broke into comics around 1939 and was primarily an inker for most of those decades. Where did he go when he broke out (or was shoved out) of the business at the age of 53?
Visiting the DC offices in June of 1970, I got to talking with Nelson Bridwell, who was an assistant editor up there and the office's foremost Guy Who Knew Everything. We were discussing all the changes and hirings and firings that had occurred there in the previous year or three. When I asked about Cuidera, Nelson told me the following story. I am here reporting what he said then. I am not saying this is what actually happened.
He said Chuck was given a few assignments inking other artists and Carmine didn't like the results. (One of those he inked was Carmine.) So they gave Chuck some short war stories to draw and he did them and Carmine didn't like those results, either. He directed Kubert to do serious art corrections on at least one (the one that was published) and Nelson thought the others were discarded. Then they tried to figure out what else to try him on.
Before anyone came up with a thought, Chuck visited the office and happened to see the "corrected" pages. He blew up, stormed into Kubert's office and yelled at him and said he never wanted to work for that #@&*%@!!! company again. Fill in the curse words of your choice. Then he stormed out…out of the office and out of DC Comics forever.
This is what Nelson told me had happened, not long before…but Nelson had not witnessed any of this. It's what he'd been told so, he said, "That may not be exactly what happened." But it is true that Cuidera never worked for DC (or any publisher of comic books again) and only one of those war stories he'd drawn was ever printed.
Ten, maybe fifteen years later, I got to know Joe Kubert pretty well and we spent an evening or two at a comic book convention dining and hanging out. Joe loved to talk about comics and the people he'd worked with and when I asked him about Cuidera, he said something like, "We gave Chuck some war stories to draw and it didn't work out. Maybe he was rusty, all those years of inking and not penciling. He was unhappy having his work corrected. So were a lot of guys."
Chuck Cuidera (L) and Will Eisner
Joe went on to say that during the period in question, he thought the DC editorial division was too "handsy" with the artwork by freelancers, too eager to look at a page and say, "Oh, we need to fix this." He thought it was the proper move at times but it was done too often and sometimes too gratuitously as a kind of Power Move. As we all know, Jack Kirby's work during this period for DC was often heavily revised by folks in the office.
Kubert felt that was wrong and that he himself had done too much retouching on artists' work. Some of that was on the orders of his superiors but some of it was on his own volition. He recalled Cuidera being furious but perhaps not quite as furious as Nelson described. But remember Nelson did not witness the blow-up…if indeed there was one.
I asked Joe if he knew what had become of Chuck. Many of the guys who were fired or who quit when Infantino took over at DC quickly surfaced at Marvel or elsewhere…but Chuck had truly disappeared from the industry. Joe said that comics were a part-time profession for Chuck. He was very much involved with scuba diving, both as a trainer and as someone who sold and even designed equipment. That one published war story over which they almost came to blows was about scuba divers. It's a good bet it was assigned to Chuck for that reason, perhaps even written with him in mind.
Joe recalled hearing something about Chuck getting involved in city planning. "Someone told me he was on the city council or some sort of office in Essex, New Jersey. If you ever find out anything about him, please let me know."
That conversation was around 1985 or so. I heard nothing about Chuck Cuidera but around April or May of 1999, I was having a phone conversation with my friend Dave Siegel. Dave was then a cab driver in Las Vegas with a great interest in old comic books and in the folks who made them. He loved to track down guys who'd worked in comics, especially in the forties, and who had long since disappeared from the field. Dave had been instrumental in getting some of them invited to San Diego Comic-Cons (the annual event now known as Comic-Con International) and he was the main mover behind the annual Golden Age Panel that I moderated until we ran out of folks who qualified to be on it.
That day in '99, he asked me if I had any idea what had become of Chuck Cuidera, the Blackhawk guy. I told him what Kubert had told me and Dave began working the phone. Before the day was out, he called me back and said, "I found Chuck Cuidera! He's alive and well! Do you think we could get him invited as a Guest of Honor at San Diego this year?" It turned out we could. The convention has always been very good about that kind of thing.
In those years, Will Eisner was a regular at the con so naturally, the thought arose of doing a panel with Will and Chuck discussing their work together on Blackhawk and other comics. I called a friend who had dealt recently with Eisner to get Will's current contact info. He gave it to me but cautioned that he sensed there might be some sort of bad blood between Eisner and Cuidera. "You could be opening old wounds," he said. Maybe so but I didn't think it could hurt to ask.
He'd given me Will's fax number so I wrote a note and faxed it his way, mentioning that I'd heard a rumor he didn't get along with Chuck but I was hoping that was not the case. And if it was not the case, would he appear on a panel with Chuck at the con? Then I waited. And waited. Two weeks passed and I was thinking maybe I'd touched some nerve or something and upset the great Will Eisner. That was until I received a fax from Will. I'll let you read it in his own handwriting…
The panel was arranged at a time convenient for all and it went very well and there's a partial transcript of it on this blog. You can read the first part of it here and the second part of it here.
You will notice that when we got to the part about Chuck getting out of comics, I asked him, "Was there a specific event? Were you not getting enough work? Were you tired of it?" I was thinking about the fabled altercation with Joe Kubert and wondering what he'd say. And as you can also notice, he just said he got out because he wasn't making enough money, which in and of itself was almost certainly true. He wasn't getting a lot of work and the work he was getting didn't pay enough to keep your head above water. Which is important in this world even if you aren't a scuba diver.
When we were alone after the panel, I asked him about the Kubert incident and he said it absolutely did not happen. Everything about his exit from DC was cordial and he left just because he wanted to go do something that would pay better. He said that getting out of comics when he did and getting into his new profession was one of the best things that ever happened to him
You can believe that or not. I can certainly believe he was happy with his new profession and income. But given what Nelson Bridwell and Joe Kubert told me, I wonder how voluntary it was.
But hey, maybe that's the way Chuck honestly remembered it. It's a good example of a problem some of us run into trying to record comic book history. In fact, it probably applies to most kinds of history that is preserved only in some memories, not on paper. Often, differing accounts all fit together fairly neatly but sometimes, they don't…as with the question of who created Blackhawk in the first place.
Chuck Cuidera passed away in 2001. I remain grateful to Dave Siegel for locating him and getting him to the 1999 convention so that we could meet Chuck and he could get some applause and an Inkpot Award. I suspect that appearance led to DC Comics sending him some very nice amounts of money for reprints or other services and I believe he was invited to a few other cons.
And I agree with something Will Eisner said on that panel. He said, "Chuck Cuidera made Blackhawk what it was…and he should get the credit." For that, those of us who loved the comic — especially if we worked on it — should all be grateful to both Will Eisner and Chuck Cuidera. And I like that Chuck's story seems to have had a happy ending.
David Grudt did some more research on that Keep U.S. Beautiful special we've been talking about. Sez he, it did indeed air on 3/27/73. On the West Coast, it followed the Academy Awards — this was back when they aired on NBC — which started at 7 PM and were supposed to conclude in time for a Bob Hope Special at 9 PM and Keep U.S. Beautiful at 10. The Oscars, of course, ran over…by 38 minutes so the two specials (and the 11 PM news and The Tonight Show) were delayed accordingly. On the East Coast, Keep U.S. Beautiful was on at 8 PM and Hope at 9 PM and the Oscars started at 10:00.
Some years later, the Academy and whichever network was then airing them decided it wasn't a good idea for the most important awards to be presented when for so much of the country, it was after 12:30 in the morning so adjustments were made. Thanks, Dave.
I was going to run this thing for the whole month of September but I've decided to stop hectoring you for loot this weekend. Oh, you'll still be able to send money any time you want, as is the custom with most non-commercial blogs (and even some commercial ones) but I don't like this blog as much when every few messages, I have my hand out. We're near the number that will cover running and recoding this blog until next Labor Day so I'm only going to post one more of these tomorrow and that's it.
My gratitude is great and my enthusiasm for posting here has been renewed. Here's the next-to-the-last one of these you'll see here until I get next year's bill from my hosting company…
Contrary to recent rumors, we're now hearing that the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood (which includes my fave place to see a movie — the Cinerama Dome) will not be reopening this year. They're now saying "the latter part of 2023." Drat.
The longest-running Broadway musical ever, The Phantom of the Opera, has announced its final performance will be February 18, 2023. It would not surprise me if this announcement sparks a surge of folks who want to see it again or even for the first time. And it would not surprise me if that surge caused the closing date to be delayed. But the end is probably in sight.
As we noted here, the next longest-running musical — the revival of Chicago — is 3,643 performances behind Phantom. At eight performances a week, that means it would take a little more than 455 weeks (or close to nine years) after Phantom closes for Chicago to tie that record.
Very busy today. The next installment of the Blackhawk history will be along tonight or maybe tomorrow.
This week, I lunched with former blogger Ken Levine. He's shut down his fine and fun long-running blog but (a) he's still doing his weekly podcasts and (b) the blog is still online and you can still browse it and enjoy that which you read before and that which you missed. Also: I've long resisted requests from people — usually strangers looking to plug something — to do "guest posts" on my blog. I still resist that but if Ken has something he needs or even just wants to say, I'll make an exception for him. And I've added a link to his podcasts in my right-hand margin.
Thanks to all of you who sent in suggestions for my iPhone problems. Some good ideas there and maybe some of them will even work. A few of you reminded me of a guy who used to write me every time I posted a computer problem here. I'd say the "v" key on my keyboard was sticking and ask what to do. This guy would write — and this was his solution to everything — "Throw out that crappy P.C. and buy a MAC, the only decent computer that has ever been made." Sometimes, he predicted that all the makers of P.C.s would be outta business within three years…and he started saying that in 2003. And today, that man is Mike Lindell…
Lastly for now: A few folks overseas have written to ask how they can donate to this blog since they somehow can't do it via PayPal. Well, you could send a check to me at the address over on this page. And again, I thank everyone who gave any amount via any means.
