Recently, I pointed you towards this new website that Jesse Hamm is setting up to salute and chronicle the work of the late comic book illustrator, Jesse Marsh. Here's a link to another site devoted to the controversial Mr. Marsh.

Harold Meyerson says that Governor Schwarzenegger is already starting to cut transportation and aid to the disabled, the poor and their children. Guess that's what he meant when he said that the budget could be balanced by eliminating governmental waste.

Got a busy day today so there probably won't be any posting here until after dark, California time. But you can go look at bad record album covers.

Comes now a nice message from Dave Mackey, one of several one-time collectors of Castle Films who have graced my e-mailbox since I veered off onto the topic. Here's Dave…

Our family acquired an Argus 8mm projector and camera outfit in 1968. Naturally, we made our own home movies, many of which are still within the family (I think [my brother] Robair has them), and we also had the Castle Films. Of course, we had the 50-foot version of Have Badge, Will Chase yet never connected it to A&C Meet The Keystone Kops, though we all saw the A&C films over and over again every Sunday morning on Channel 11. We also had a Woody Woodpecker film, Puny Express (1951), which for some odd reason was packaged in a box advertising a later Inspector Willoughby cartoon, Phoney Express (1962). We also had representative reels from Columbia's 8mm program, which mostly featured Three Stooges shorts, and Ken Films, which marketed the pre-48 WB cartoons on 8mm.

Castle made 16mm films available too, as 16mm was also a viable home format for a while. The bane of many cartoon collectors is the plethora of Castle-titled Walter Lantz cartoons that often don't have correct opens and closes and often leave off production credits. (Some were even censored, as in the case of Abou Ben Boogie and a few other titles which had, um, modifications.)

But the 8mm format was a dream to cartoon collectors: when I worked in a department store camera department in my teens, I had access to a near-complete collection of Lantz 8mm color/sound prints, which were then marketed under the name Universal 8, with Betamax and VHS merely a blip on the horizon and DVD's not even imaginable at that point. Features on 8mm? Only if you were really lucky. Cartoons on 8mm? Oh yes!

One of the games/frustrations of collecting 8mm films was in the title changes. Castle chopped Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops into at least two short films…Have Badge, Will Chase and Hollywood and Bust.  You had to kind of guess that No Bulls, Please was a cut from Mexican Hayride or that Double Cross at Criss-Cross was a drastic condensation of The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap.

No Fires, Please, was a cutdown of Fireman, Save My Child, which was the Abbott and Costello film that Universal made without Abbott or Costello. It was written for them and some very elaborate stunt scenes were filmed with the appropriate stuntmen. Then, Bud and Lou refused to make it so Universal cast Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett…a rare case of the stars being selected to match the stunt people, instead of vice-versa.

I remember a friend of mine who loved the Laurel and Hardy silent film, Liberty, and he was thrilled when he saw it listed in the catalogue of Atlas Films, which was one of the cheezier purveyors of 8mm movies. But Liberty was a two-reel film and Atlas had it in a one-reel version. He guessed that another film in their list, Trouser Trouble, might be the first reel of Liberty since Stan and Ollie never made a real film called Trouser Trouble and since the first half of Liberty is pretty much about them somehow getting each other's pants on and trying to find a private place to make the swap.

He ordered both films and was delighted to find that Trouser Trouble was the first half of Liberty and the film they sold under the name of Liberty was the second half…except that about four minutes was missing between the two reels…a scene where Hardy accidentally gets a live crab in his britches.

Further inspection of the Atlas catalogue showed that they were selling a 50-foot Laurel and Hardy film with the name, Crab Bait…another title that never existed in The Boys' official filmography. My friend sent off for it and, sure enough, it filled in the missing four minutes. He chopped off the title card footage that Atlas had created for two of the three films, spliced the main title from the one-reel Liberty onto the front of Trouser Trouble, spliced Crab Bait onto the beginning of Liberty…and he had a complete, two-reel 8mm copy of Liberty. Whew.

Just found out my pal Harry McCracken also has an online gallery of the boxes from 8mm home movies. He has some real treasures there so those of you interested in the topic might like to visit here.

The annual Comic-Con International takes place in San Diego next year from July 22-25. As always, I will be moderating a long list of panels, many of them dealing with the history of the American comic book. I can't divulge details yet but the con is presently arranging for a guest who promises to be a veritable gusher of info and insight on the early days of comics, DC especially. If you are interested in this area, plan to meet me in Room 8 at the convention center, 234 days from today.

To see what has been announced about the con, including some very fine guests, go here.

Here's a link (no registration required) to the New York Times report on Walt's nephew resigning the Disney Board of Directors. There will be fallout from this.

Around the time the original Star Wars was packin' 'em into theaters, a group of entrepreneurs approached Jack Kirby about starting a comic book company to be called Kirby Comics. They had some money and expected to soon have enough to launch such a business, and they offered Jack what on paper was really the only great deal ever presented to him in comics, post-Marvel. He would do a series of graphic novels that would be the company's initial offering, to be followed by more books, some by him, some by others. The pay was good, Jack would have an ownership position in the company and, most important, he could retain clear, uncontested title to his new creations. But of course, there were downsides — one small, one big. The small one was that they insisted the first book be not unlike Star Wars. Jack was torn by this. He never liked to feel like he was "following" someone else, and he had a minor resentment of the whole Star Wars phenomenon, feeling that some key elements of the film were inspired by his own work. On the other hand, Jack had a certain pride in being able to do something good with any premise. To him, there was no such thing as an idea that he couldn't make work in a fresh, innovative way. The other downside of the project was that when Jack was about two-thirds of the way through his first graphic novel, which he called Captain Victory and the Galactic Warriors, the entrepreneurs ran out of loot and the whole project collapsed.

The almost-finished Captain Victory story languished in Jack's closet until San Diego comic book dealers Steve and Bill Schanes decided to launch a comic book company that would, among other innovations, allow creators to retain copyright to that which they created. They approached Kirby, and he decided to unleash Captain Victory. Pacific Comics, as the Schanes brothers dubbed their new firm, would be publishing not graphic novels but conventional-sized 32-page comics, so Jack chopped up the first Captain Victory story to fit that format, and thereafter continued the saga with new stories. While at the time I didn't think it was the best thing Jack ever did, I've met an awful lot of people who count it among their favorite Kirby comics. Having found that Jack's work only improves with time, I keep meaning to haul out my copies of the series and re-read them.

Even better, I'll probably experience them anew with Captain Victory: The Graphite Edition, which is a new book from TwoMorrows, publishers of The Jack Kirby Collector. This volume reprints the first story in its "graphic novel" form. More importantly, it is reproduced from Xeroxes of Jack's original pencil art, not from the version that was lettered and inked by others, thereby giving you Kirby in its purest form. Jack had Xerox copies of many of his stories in the pencil phase, and the TwoMorrows company is now engaged in a most worthwhile project, which is to preserve and restore those Xeroxes. All proceeds from this new book are going to that effort, and that alone would be well worth your patronage. But the "Graphite Edition" is also a treasure, in and of itself, packed as it is with raw Kirby and many special features, including a screenplay of the material that Jack once wrote. For fans of Jack, it's a must-own.

Captain Victory: The Graphite Edition is not available in stores. You can only get it directly from TwoMorrows, and you can get it at this website. If you're familiar with Jack Kirby's work, you're there already.

As I've mentioned, my favorite of the "newer" stand-up comedians is a guy named Lewis Black. If you haven't seen him, go see him. And either way, you might want to read this interview with the man.

My thanks to Ben Varkentine for calling this to my attention. So I'll return the favor and suggest you visit Ben's weblog. He's a bright guy with stuff to say.

That's a photo of the late Walter Tetley. Now who the hell, you're probably asking yourself, was Walter Tetley? Explanation: Walter Tetley was an actor with a high enough voice that he spent his life playing kids on radio and in cartoons. His most notable radio voice was as Leroy, nephew of The Great Gildersleeve. His most notable animation work was voicing Sherman, the kid who got into the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and went back in time on the various Rocky & Bullwinkle programs. He was also the voice of Andy Panda for a time, and did some brief on-camera roles, usually as a kid or a delivery boy. His long and tumultuous career is examined in a new book, Walter Tetley: For Corn's Sake by Ben Ohmart and Charles Stumpf. You can order a copy at this website. Sounds interesting to me.

So whatever happened to Bill Watterson, creator of the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes? This article won't tell you a lot but it will tell you something.

Lower ratings seem to agree with Larry King. Like most of his one-time fans, I've watched his interviews deteriorate over the last decade…watched him lob more softballs than all the ladies' baseball teams combined. For a long time, he seemed to think that it was less important for his guests to address important issues than for them to enjoy being on Larry King Live and want to come back. Maybe the guests did but audiences haven't been flocking back to him. But lately, he seems to be trying harder. Maybe it's better preparation by his staff. Maybe it's that he hasn't been divorced lately. Whatever it is, he seems to be trying harder.

The bad side of that is more shows about the Laci Peterson case, the Michael Jackson case, etc., and more bogus authorities. When Jermaine Jackson complained about the media giving air time to people who falsely claim to know his family, he probably had Larry in mind. I really wish King (and others on the cable news channels) would raise the standard of what constitutes an expert, an intimate friend or a spokesperson. Larry King Live keeps featuring these "panels" of six people, only one of whom has anything of substance to say.

But one thing Larry has to offer is a long friendship with most of his celebrity guests. He's lately out of his element on newsy topics but pretty good with show biz veterans…and he is kind of a legend. Saturday, CNN is rerunning a special show that ran on the 19th to celebrate Larry's 70th birthday. It started out as an hour with Regis Philbin but about five minutes in, Regis announces that the rest of the hour is actually a surprise birthday party for Larry. Dr. Phil takes over the host chair while Larry moves over to be guest on his own show, claiming to be utterly surprised. I suspect he was not, but you can judge for yourself if you catch it on Saturday. Most of the hour is a cavalcade of stars showing up live, via remote or pre-tape, to wish King a happy seventieth. The list includes Mike Wallace, Jay Leno, Nancy Reagan, George and Barbara Bush, Wayne Newton, Liza Minnelli, Dick Cheney, Tony Bennett, Sharon Stone, Madonna, Ross Perot, Bill Maher, Cher, Don Rickles, Jimmy Carter, and on and on. Weirdest of all is a live remote to Jerry Lewis in some hospital somewhere with an oxygen line taped into his nose. It's the oddest moment in a very odd hour.

As this article in The New York Times notes, the Disney organization is struggling to make Mickey Mouse as popular as…well, as popular as Mickey Mouse oughta be. There are a couple of obvious reasons why he isn't, one being that his best work is being hidden. The Disney Channel and Toon Disney rarely feature the classic Mickey cartoons, and the home video releases have been more slanted to the collector market. The comic strips are gone and the comic books are sparse in their availability and tend to treat Donald and Scrooge as the superstars. Yes, Mickey presides over Disneyland and Disney World and is well-represented therein…but only because he has the job. He's increasingly becoming like one of those faux celebrities who is famous only for being famous. You wake up one morning and folks are insisting on his greatness but you never get to see it; ergo, you never fully accept it. So how is a kid to fall in love with The Mouse? And when Mickey's classic adventures are accessible, do they not seem a bit grounded in an earlier, unfamiliar era?

Those are good questions and the solution obviously has to do with generating great new Mickey adventures in several venues. But this brings us to a major stumbling block that inevitably diminishes every great character that is controlled by a corporation: Too Many Bosses. If you were to roam through the Disney organization, you'd find hundreds, maybe thousands of folks who have some sort of "executive" position and what they think is a clear take on what to do with Mickey. They're not all wrong but they're not all right in the same way. Which creates massive gridlock and unhappy compromises since they won't concede to having no say in Disney's signature asset. Not long ago at another big corporation which shall remain nameless (it was Time-Warner), I had a meeting with a mid-level exec who at that moment had nothing to do with Bugs Bunny…and boy, was she pissed. The lady had every intention of rising up in the Time-Warner hierarchy to better jobs with bigger salaries, and that meant she had to get some control over The Wabbit and his immediate cohorts. It was demeaning that she was excluded from Bugs projects, just as I gather it's demeaning in a non-entertainment company situation if you don't get to eat in the Executive Dining Room or tinkle in the Executive Washroom. Don't think that kind of thing doesn't happen in any corporate situation, and Disney is no exception.

Ideally, what Disney needs to do is to find one cartoonist or one small group and appoint them to be Mickey Dictators. Give them the power to define Mickey anew and to say no to anything that involves Mickey the way Walt once could…and did. But no one high up in Disney is about to exclude themselves from such decisions. This has always been true but it's truer now than ever. Once upon a time, people who went to work for a company like that envisioned long careers, staying there forever, if possible. The business has changed. Now, the mindset is that everyone's a temp, and you want to get as much as you can for as long as it lasts. That means rising up quickly in the company and not caring a lot about the long-term health of its properties, which leads to something as symbolic as Mickey Mouse being caught in umpteen tugs-of-war. Every office, every division wants a piece of Mickey, which means that key decisions are made, if they're made at all, by committee. With a committee, it may go in as a Mouse or a Duck or a Wabbit, but when it comes out, it's always The Camel. One of the main things that made Walt Disney as successful as he was was that he didn't have to fight anyone to prove he was in charge. And of course, he expected to be with the company for the rest of his life.

Here's a brief news story on the lawsuit 'twixt Todd and Twist. Nothing you don't already know, but it does indicate that some pressure is growing for the Supreme Court to get involved.