Back when Robert Redford announced he was retiring, I wondered why he did that. Most workers retire from an employment status. Entertainers and freelancers don't have a normal work relationship. They're constantly going from job to job where they're lining up future jobs while being temporarily employed. When they decide to retire, they simply stop seeking new work. Why do some make the effort to say they're retired? I've met retired coworkers that regretted retiring because they didn't know what to do with all their free time.
I can understand why you're not seeking retirement. You like to write. You get to set your own hours. You don't have to be someplace five days a week at set times. You've chosen a career as a writer which you would do even if you weren't being paid. Very few people have a job they enjoy enough that they'd do it without pay. Having spent most of your COVID time working at home, would you ever take a writing job in the future that required you doing it in an office setting away from home?
Would Jack Kirby ever have retired for anything other than health?
Taking the last question first: No, I don't think so. But if he'd had the kind of financial cushion he deserved, he might have worked fewer hours and indulged some longings to travel or experiment with other kinds of art or writing. Maybe.
I can only guess about Mr. Redford's motives for announcing his retirement. My guess would be that he wanted to stop making movies but didn't want people saying, "Looks like Redford's career has tanked. Nobody's hiring him anymore." In other words, he wanted everyone to know his exit from the screen was his choice and was not dictated by a lack of demand for his services.
And then, if and when he does decide to make some movie at some point in the future, people will say, "Robert Redford came out of retirement to do this picture" and not, "Hey, look! Someone finally decided to hire Robert Redford!"
As for me, I dunno. I'm very comfortable working at home but there are some things you don't want to say "never" about. I can't say that if the right offer for the right project came in, I wouldn't grab it even if it meant going into an office every day. I guess it's in that category of "I'll decide if and when it becomes a real option." I've wasted a lot of time in my life thinking about what I'd do in given situations that never happened…or where the circumstances were way different than I would have expected.
There are a number of situation comedy episodes that people cite as the funniest ever. I can't pick one but a worthy contender might be this episode of You'll Never Get Rich, aka The Phil Silvers Show, aka Sgt. Bilko. It was late in their first season that they gave us "The Court-Martial," sometimes referred to as "The Court-Martial of Harry Speakup."
I posted a scene from this back in 2006 but the entire episode is now online. Here's some of what I wrote back then…
It first aired on March 6, 1956 and the writing was credited to Nat Hiken (creator of the series and its main director and head writer), Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby. I actually worked with Arnie Rosen on one of my first TV writing jobs and was somehow then unaware that he'd worked on Sgt. Bilko. Wish I'd known because I'd have asked him about it. Then again, he was more interested in pressing matters like writing the show we were doing and having me fired.
One of the many interesting things about the Bilko program was that even though it was done on film, they tried to treat it as much as possible like a live performance. They barely stopped filming between scenes and often, if someone bobbled a line or things went wrong, they left it in. There are a number of instances when actors — most notably Paul Ford, who was otherwise so good as Colonel Hall — forgot important lines and someone else — usually Silvers, who had a fast mind and a great memory — would ad-lib around the problem.
Silvers often improvised during the show and he had to ad-lib a lot in this because a trained chimp didn't always do what he was supposed to. At one point, the chimp ran over to grab a prop telephone and Phil came up with a terrific explanation right on the spot. His quick wit caused a few of the actors to almost break up. At several points in the trial scene, you can see some of them trying to stifle or hide laughter. Especially watch the kid at left playing a guard.
You probably won't be able to keep from laughing either…
I'm real busy at the moment but I spoke to the folks running Comic-Con and asked if they wouldn't mind postponing it for a few weeks and they said, "No problem! We'd be glad to do it for you, Mark."
That's not true. I didn't ask and they didn't agree…though given how frantic they must be, some of them would probably have loved the idea. As long as those conventions have been held — and remember: I've been to all of them — it has been impossible to start planning so far ahead that the last week is not hectic with Too Much To Do. It's hectic for those of us who attend and those people who stage the convention. But Preview night is still Wednesday and the con still starts officially on Thursday.
Mixed emotions are already flowing freely. How do we feel about returning there after two years of not going there? How do we feel about being in a convention center where folks are masked and checked for vaccination status? And some are a bit uneasy about being there? I'd be fibbing if I said the COVID thing doesn't concern me. I'm also concerned that for the last 27 or so months, I haven't been around many people and I haven't walked the great distances you have to walk at Comic-Con. But I'm still going.
Please do not call, write or otherwise ask me if I can help you get a badge, hotel room or parking space. And don't ask me just days before the con starts, as someone always does and one person already has this year, if I can help you get a panel added to the schedule. The schedule is already printed.
The production of The Music Man now playing on Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster is not the only interesting production of that show around. There's this one staged by and for deaf and mute folks as well as others. I'd love to see it if only to learn the American Sign Language signal for "Shipoopi"…
When you are auditioning an underemployed performer who gives a great audition, but is not right for the part, how do you give encouragement that doesn't come across as a "great try kid…don't call us, we'll call you" brush-off?
With rare exceptions, you don't tell them on the spot that they're not getting the part. You say, "Thank you for coming in" and if they're at all professional, they say, "Thank you for having me in" and they leave. Keep in mind that they usually have no idea if I have the final say as to who gets hired. For all they know, I have to play the auditions I recorded for others who will make the final decision. So they don't come in assuming that their mission is to please me and only me. If they were auditioning for a famous, award-winning director they might assume that but I don't have that problem. I'm just the guy running the audition.
So I try to remain positive and to give them whatever compliments I feel are warranted. And I do make notes about what they did well in case they can be of use to me later in casting something else.
I should also add that the voiceover business has changed a lot and that it's becoming very rare for someone to come in to audition. This was changing before The Pandemic and has now become pretty much the norm. Actors are sent the audition script and some sort of guidance as to what is needed, and they record their own auditions in their own studios and submit them.
Occasionally, a director or producer may be live online with them to direct their tryout performances but when that happens, it's usually in the second round of auditioning and beyond. They submit as above and then the submissions are whittled down to a handful for the one-on-one auditions. So that pretty much eliminates the situation where a director or producer has to interact with someone who's totally wrong for the part. Those folks got eliminated in the first round.
But still, you usually don't tell them to their faces that they aren't getting the part. And any experienced actor is used to not hearing from you and understanding that someone else booked the job. Not getting it is, after all, the norm. Even the best actors feel fortunate to be hired for one out of ten-or-so auditions. And doing it from their home studios makes it more comfortable since they didn't have to leave their homes — shave, shower, get dressed-up, drive somewhere, park, drive home, etc. — to be considered. Yesterday, I was talking with an actor who'll be on one of my Cartoon Voices panels in San Diego. That morning, he got up and recorded twelve auditions in one hour — before breakfast and in his pajamas…and he'll be happy if one yields a one-time paying gig.
There have been a few times when I've told an actor at an in-person audition that they weren't going to get the job. One was Robert Guillaume and I told that story here. Another was the same day for the same show. It was the actor in this story who insisted on ignoring the script and improvising a different character. But telling someone on the spot "We ain't hiring you" is very rare.
I haven't linked to one of these in a while. It's a commercial for Kellogg's Corn Flakes featuring Huckleberry Hound and the characters on his original show. The great Daws Butler did all the voices except for Boo Boo, who was voiced by Don Messick. Pixie the Mouse didn't have a line but if he had, his voice would also have come from Messick. I suspect Pixie had a line but it was cut for time.
I loved these characters when I was seven years old and I'm still fond of them today, in part because they were such an element of my childhood. Another part would be that I got to know Daws Butler (and to a lesser extent, Don Messick) and loved them both. And it's nice to hear them and see these characters involved in something with better animation than they usually had even if it is being used to move a product…
Hi, Mark. Could I ask you about a line in one of the Garfield cartoons? I can't find the episode because there doesn't appear to be one that has dinosaur in the title, so I am just going to describe it for you.
Basically, it was a Barney parody. The dinosaur wanted to use a kiddie show in order to force all the people and their kids to obey him. In the end, Garfield foiled his evil plan and ended up convincing him to try his luck in show business with Garfield as his agent. However, the dinosaur became so successful, he fired him as his agent. Garfield then exclaimed, "The nerve of him. I taft-hartlied him on his first acting gig. And he couldn't even read a script."
What does it mean to "taft-hartly?" For a Bulgarian man, I am pretty in tune with American pop culture over the years but I have no clue what that means.
Well, first of all it means that you stumbled onto one of those jokes I occasionally put in something I write, knowing full well that about ten people will understand it. Don't feel bad that you are not one of those ten.
It was an episode of Garfield and Friends called "The Beast From Beyond" and it was kind of a spoof on Barney the Dinosaur, who was then big on TV in this country. The character was named Sidney and it might interest someone to know that Sidney's voice was supplied by Stan Freberg doing pretty much the same voice he'd once supplied for Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany. Another "inside" joke.
The Taft-Hartley Act was a packet of laws passed in this country in 1947. It changed some rules for labor unions, weakening them in many ways. But when we say we "Taft-Hartleyed" someone, that's shorthand for saying we invoked one particular provision of the Act. It means you gave them a job in some field even though they were not (yet) a member of the labor union to which one belongs to work in that field. It generally applies to their first job. If they continue to work in that field, they are expected to join the appropriate union. (There are ways around this but most people don't want to use them.)
So let's say you're a new voice actor and I give you your first job doing a voice on my cartoon show. Since there's a possibility this may be your only such job ever, you don't have to join the union and fill out all those forms and pay that hefty initiation fee. I gave several people their first voice jobs so they were "Taft-Hartleyed" and then, if and when they got a second job, they joined the union. Basically, it means to hire someone who is not (yet) in the union. When we did this cartoon, I think I had just done that with one of several folks who got their first professional job on the show and went on to long and very real careers.
Some months ago here, I linked you to a number of American musicals as performed in Korea — some in English, some in Korean. Here, suggested to me by Micki St. James, is "We Both Reached for the Gun" number from the show Chicago in Korean.
In the number, Roxie Hart sits on the knee of the gent playing scummy lawyer Billy Flynn and she makes like a ventriloquist dummy. I've seen this number staged with the lady playing Roxie doing her own voice but trying to make it sound like it's coming from Flynn. I've seen it done with the actor playing Flynn doing both parts. I've seen Roxie's voice provided by someone not on the stage. I'm not entirely sure which of the latter two options this is…
The weather forecast for San Diego throughout Comic-Con calls for it to be partly cloudy and 72° during the day and 65° at night. That is pretty much the forecast for San Diego about 85% of the time.
There are still people around who somehow think it would be a good idea for Comic-Con to move to Las Vegas. I have dozens of reasons why that would be a very bad thing, one of which is the weather. Next week in Las Vegas, it will be 110°. How would you like to cosplay as Iron Man in that climate?
Here's a short Q-amd-A that Jon Stewart did recently with the live audience at his TV show. I'm putting it here because at one point in it, Mr. Stewart reveals something that I believe is very true about how TV shows are staffed these days.
The Internet is full of people asking the musical question, "Is Donald Trump going to run for president again?" I don't know why we're wasting valuable data bytes over this when the answer is pretty obvious: He's sure gonna try. And I don't mean just in 2024. I mean every time he can for the rest of his life. There are many reasons for this but let's just do four…
When Trump runs for office, there are people who send him money and not just small amounts. Trump likes people sending him money.
No one, not even Trump, knows exactly the full list of legal indictments and trials he may face but whatever it is, he'll want to claim that it's all political, ginned-up by people who know he'll easily retake the presidency and must be stopped.
By running, he'll get way more attention than he will receive by not running. Trump lives for attention.
And crowds. And rallies. And people cheering him. And you get the idea.
He also may think that once he announces, his very presence in the race will scare off a lot of potential challengers and leave more donations and attention for him. Why would this man not run again? And any setbacks or losses he experiences along the way will all be explained as conspiratorial sabotage by his opponents.
This piece first appeared here on 12/14/14 and there's nothing to update in it…
I attended Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. Somewhere on this blog, I've doubtlessly used the joke I used all through my time there: That I was the only person on campus who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. The principal thought he made radios.
There were things I liked about being at Emerson…and if I could think of one just now, I'd lead off with it. Mostly, I view my three years there as a waste of time, at least in the classrooms. Outside the classrooms, one could do a certain amount of the kind of growing-up you have to do at that age, learning (somewhat) how to get along with others. But inside the classrooms…well, I can't remember a whole lot that went in one ear and didn't trickle quickly out the other. Oddly enough, I may have gained the most valuable "taught" knowledge (as opposed to the self-taught kind) in a group of classes I absolutely hated at the time.
Students were required then to take half a semester of Wood Shop, half a semester of Electronics, half a semester of Metal Shop and half a semester of Drafting. That's if the students were male. The female ones took classes in Homemaking and Cooking and things like that. This was, of course, back when the best thing a female could aspire to be was a wife and mother. It did not escape me even then that boys could stand to learn some things the girls were studying and vice-versa. I still don't know how to sew a button on a shirt and I seem to have passed the age where that's learnable.
My problems at Emerson were not so much the classes as the teachers. Metal Shop was taught by Mr. Delak who was also a gym teacher and who talked like a prize fighter who'd taken one too many to the head. He talked in halting phrases and rarely employed a word with more syllables than letters. He was okay, I guess. My problem there was that I can't think of too many skills I've ever been less likely to need in my life than riveting.
Less okay was Mr. Platt, who taught Electronics and explained things with a thick Southern accent. He kept talking about "sotta" and I wasn't the only student who took half a semester to figure out he was referring to "solder." I had other problems with him but I had them all on a grander scale with Mr. Mitchell.
Mr. Mitchell, who taught the Drafting class and Wood Shop, was the least okay. Both he and Mr. Platt had this fixed idea of what a guy was supposed to like and be like. He was supposed to revel in the shop classes and there was something wrong with any male who didn't love that stuff. Their attitude was along the lines of "A man builds things with his hands" and you could detect the subtle insinuation that if you didn't run a drill press once a week, you were probably queer. (I typed that sentence before I realized how phallic it sounds…)
Mr. Mitchell took an instant dislike to me and I, therefore, took one to him. He obviously thought I was a smartass…which was probably true but I still think that's not necessarily a bad thing to be when you're 13. If you think you know better than everyone else at that age, there's a good chance you do…and if you don't, well, that's a good time to learn you don't.
I got through Drafting class with Mr. Mitchell and may even have shown a teensy flair for it. It was, after all, drawing of a sort and I had some interest in drawing. Also, I was the best letterer he'd seen in years. Well, why not? I'd learned from the masters, not of Architecture but comic books. At any rate, my lettering impressed him and I didn't broadcast the fact that I had zero interest in a career doing what he was teaching us.
It was when we got to the Wood Shop class that things splintered. Mr. Mitchell treated woodwork as some sort of sacred male ritual. I was not able to hide how silly I thought a lot of it was. What he taught was, to me, a potentially useful skill, not a rite of male passage and a future profession.
And yes, I know woodwork can also be an art and a very fine one…but not at the level Mr. Mitchell taught it. Over the course of our ten weeks, we were to build three items: A key rack, a memo pad holder and one project of our own choosing from a catalog of plans he had. Our grades were based not on how creative we were but on how precisely what we made adhered to the diagrams we were given.
The memo pad holder I made in Wood Shop.
My key rack got a "D," not because it didn't look nice or hold keys but because it didn't look exactly like everyone else's. And he further marked me down as a problem student because I couldn't hide my disinterest in Wood Shop. "We need to work on that attitude of yours," he'd say to me, once while he was holding a circular saw. It felt…threatening. My memo pad holder notched a "C-minus" and the less said about my elective project, the better. By that point, Mr. Mitchell thought I was the worst student he'd seen in years.
He reached that view about four weeks into the ten-week course. One evening, Emerson had this ghastly event called "Parents Go To School Night," designed to promote better teacher-parent communication. One or both of each pupil's parents would show up at Emerson that evening, hear an address from the principal in the auditorium, then go from classroom to classroom in a compressed version of their child's daily schedule. Instead of an hour, they'd spent fifteen minutes in each classroom listening to the teacher discuss the curriculum and then answer questions.
It made sense on paper, I guess, but whoever made up the timetable gave the parents the same barely-sufficient seven minutes we had between periods to get from classroom to classroom. We could do that each day because we knew where we were going and also, it wasn't nighttime on the campus when we were there, plus we were young enough to walk up and down stairs and between buildings that were often far apart.
My father had the fine sense not to go at all. My mother, like all those parents who did attend, got repeatedly lost and was late for most "classes." She missed one entirely because even with a huge map, she and many others couldn't find Bungalow B-22. I had a class in the well-hidden Bungalow B-22 and I thought you should have received an "A" in any course taught in it if you could locate it.
Alas, she was able to make it to the Wood Shop where she listened to ten minutes of Mr. Mitchell bragging how he taught the most important class at the school…the one that made capital-M Men out of small-b boys and gave them a profession that would serve them well in later life.
Finally, Mr. Mitchell took questions and my mother — and this will explain a lot about me to my friends — asked, "What do you do when you have a student who hates the whole idea of woodworking and is only in this class because it's required?"
When she got home, she told me, "The minute I said that, Mark, I knew I'd gotten you into trouble. He scowled, jotted down my last name and said, 'If your son feels that way, ma'am, I think you have the problem, not me.'"
The next day, Mr. Mitchell called me over to his desk. "Evner," he barked — he always called us by our last names and mispronounced mine — I met your mother last night." Only Mr. Mitchell could make the word "mother" sound like an insult. "She said you hate the whole idea of woodworking. What are you doing in my class if you hate it?"
I said, "They make me take it. I don't like doing push-ups either but they make me take gym, too."
Wood.
Once again, he told me "we" needed to work on my attitude. "I teach woodworking but I also teach discipline and learning to follow instructions." He then assigned me the messiest job he had during the clean-up session at the end of class: The paint locker. You had to be real careful not to get smears of flat gloss multi-hued latex all over your jeans. As I did it, I just told myself, "Well, if I do, my mother's the one who's going to have to get it off or buy me new pants. And it'll be her fault."
For the rest of the term, Mr. Mitchell snapped at me, snarled at me and generally acted like a bad actor playing "Sarge" in one of those Marine Corps movies about making life hell for the new recruit. And the less I cared about it — and I really didn't — the nastier he got.
I had a friend named Dave who was a year ahead of me at Emerson and one day, we got to talking about Mr. Mitchell. "Has he put you in charge of the tool inventory yet?" Dave asked. I told him he hadn't. "Well, he will," Dave explained. "And when he does, here's what he'll probably do to you…"
Sure enough, a week later, I was put in charge of the tool inventory. It was getting near the end of class and I think he thought this was his last chance to make me suffer for the sins of my mother.
When you were in charge of tool inventory, you had to check the cabinet at the end of clean-up and make sure it held the right number of hammers and screwdrivers and levels and scratch awls and such. Then you had to report to Mr. Mitchell that every tool was in its proper place. If it wasn't, everyone in the class was in trouble but you especially were. No one could be dismissed to go to their next class if even one tool was missing.
The guy in my position was in charge of finding it…and responsible if it was not located. And like I said, no one could leave even if it meant they'd all be marked tardy or A.W.O.L. for their next class or miss their bus home. Legend had it that Mr. Mitchell had once made an entire class sit there during their lunch hour because of a missing chisel.
As an alternative, he also had a piece of paper that the person in my appointed position could sign. On it, I would admit I was responsible for the lost tool and I would promise to pay the full cost of replacing it. Another legend had it that a couple of students over the years had had to cough up the cost of a hammer or two.
But Dave had warned me of how this game was played. The day I was placed in charge of tool inventory, I never took my eye off the cabinet. I wasn't watching my fellow students so much as I was watching Mr. Mitchell. And sure enough, at a moment when he thought no one would notice, Mr. Mitchell slithered over to the cabinet, took a screwdriver and one of those long metal files with a wooden handle, then put them in his bottom desk drawer. Dave had told me he'd do something like that.
Clean-up that day proceeded apace. When we'd all put our stuff away, all the other students took their seats in the classroom area to await my inspection, my report to Mr. Mitchell and then their dismissal. I marched up to him and in front of the class proclaimed, "All of the tools are present or accounted for, sir." The other students, assuming they were about to be released, gathered up their books and got ready to stand and go.
Hammer.
"Not so fast," Mr. Mitchell told everyone. He marched over to the tool cabinet, peeked in and then returned to his desk where I was waiting. "Evner," he said. "There's a screwdriver and a file missing and you're responsible for them. No one's leaving — do you hear me? No one! — until you either find them or pay for them!"
I opened my notebook and showed him a page on which I'd written, "Mr. Mitchell's lower desk drawer: 1 screwdriver, 1 file." Then I added, "They've been accounted for, sir. You have them."
He yanked open the drawer, pulled them out and turned to the class, accusingly: "Who put these in there?"
I said, "You did, sir. At 11:44."
Mr. Mitchell glared at me. Then he glared at the students, all of whom wanted to laugh and cheer but knew enough not to do that until they were at least a hundred yards from that building. Then he chuckled like he was pleased I'd outfoxed him (he wasn't) and said, "Class dismissed."
I tried to follow them out but he motioned for me to stay. When everyone else had gone, he said to me, "You know, learning to make things and work with tools can be a very valuable skill. Now, get out of here." I got out of there.
And y'know, he was right. In the half-century since I took his class, I have occasionally had to do things I learned how to do in his class. I can't say that for Chemistry or the Anthropology courses I took later at U.C.L.A. or even for Mr. Delak's Metal Shop class at Emerson. But I do occasionally have to do something with a hammer or a saw and I know better how to use them because of Mr. Mitchell. That doesn't make up for the hard time he gave me, quite unnecessarily. It's just something worth noting.
He never apologized to me or admitted he was wrong and I never did either of those things to him. He did give me a "D" in Wood Shop, the only one I ever got in any class. When my mother saw it on my report card, she said, "Son, I'm very proud of you…but why couldn't you have gotten that horrible man to give you an "F"?
I am a fill-in-for-someone-else guest today on Stu's Show, that fabulous web-based program you can watch online or on its own Roku channel, or listen to online or subscribe to or buy ($) as a download or however you like getting your Stu's Shows. Tune in and you just might enjoy a lively (and loooonng) discussion between Stu Shostak, his resident TV critic/expert Wesley Hyatt and me. Among the topics will be the new Fall season TV season, the future of Jeopardy!, what I'll be doing at Comic-Con next week, the January 6 Hearings, Late Night TV, a bunch o' TV shows I worked on, the late Larry Storch, the late Robert Morse, Wesley's disgust about the new Magnum P.I. and many more issues of the day.
You can watch or listen at the Stu's Show website and over there, you can also find out how to watch it on your Roku-equipped TV and other places. The fun starts at 4 PM Pacific Time (7 PM back east) and it will run for quite some time after.
Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.
Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.
Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.
Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Saturday, July 23 — 4:o0 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.
Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.
Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.
Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!
Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much.
If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM. But if you see me and want to say hello, please do. I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac. At other times, I am approachable and easy to find. I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.
