Is there a Superman curse? A number of "news" stories currently moving about the wires are asking if actors are now shunning the role because of what it's done to those who've accepted it.  And I guess it's a good story — but even if one believes in curses, this one doesn't measure up too well.  Yes, George Reeves died a shocking, unexpected death…but Mr. Reeves was (a) drinking heavily to ease the pains from an auto accident and (b) fooling around with a mobster's lady.  Either or both can make you pretty dead pretty fast, as has been proven by a number of folks who never flew around in a cape.  Yes, Christopher Reeve suffered a paralyzing accident but — and I don't mean to make light of it — these things do happen among other folks who jump horses.

The first film Superman, Kirk Alyn, also died — though 49 years after he last put on the Superman suit.  Kind of a slow-acting curse.  Bud Collyer, who voiced the character on radio and cartoons also died a few decades after he stopped portraying the Man of Steel.  (Actually, he had returned to the role after a 20 year absence and voiced a few more cartoons.  I guess one could stretch and say he got cocky, defied the curse…and it finally got him.  But that's a bit of a reach.)

Some have suggested that it isn't that The Superman Curse takes your life; it's that it does something equally-awful to those in show business: It destroys your career.  There might be something to this but if so, it probably has more to do with the fact that portraying a cartoon character — wearing a garish costume on screen that overshadows its wearer — has never been a major boost for anyone's career.  It may not hurt but it sure doesn't help.  Years after The Wizard of Oz, Bert Lahr reportedly said, "Everyone told me it was one of the greatest performances in the history of film, but it was kind of like, 'We'll call you the next time we need a guy in a lion suit!'"

Thus, Kirk Alyn's post-Superman career was pretty much the same as dozens of other actors his age who'd starred in cheap serials and B-Movies.  Kirk was a charming gent who was a fixture at comic conventions until his death in 1999.  But I'm afraid I don't recall anyone suggesting that a great actor had been stifled.  Bud Collyer was enormously successful as a game show host.  George Reeves, despite urban legends to the contrary, had offers of work as both a writer and a director at the time of his death.  Christopher Reeve certainly had a lot more success as a film actor after Superman than before.  And as for the more recent wearers of the costume, it's too early to tell.

What I'm getting at (and what I was trying to say when quoted in this article over at E!Online) is that all these careers pretty much went as might have been expected without playing the guy from Krypton.  If any, the role helped — though not much.  And if a lot of actors are turning it down now, as has been reported, it's probably not because they think it'll kill them or their careers.  It's that the stardom of leading men these days gets judged from movie to movie, and playing that part can seem like a lose-lose situation.  If the film's a flop, everyone will say the star has no following and that he isn't hot anymore.  But if it's a hit, the star won't get much credit.  Everyone will say it's because people love Superman.

All right, everyone say it with me in unison: "Boy, I hope George W. Bush knows what he's doing."

Disney Comics are coming back.  Here's a link, thanks to Ken Plume, to a good interview with Steve Geppi about the marketplace and how mice and ducks may fit into it.

Well, I hope those of you who caught Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal based on my endless hyping thought it was worth the build-up.  (If you didn't see it, Game Show Network is running it several more times.)  The folks who put the documentary together did a good job, I thought, of telling the story and I really appreciated the fact that, though they interrupted the action for annotations, they pretty much allowed the videotape to speak for itself.

This morning, though I had nothing whatsoever to do with the program, I found myself on two different radio shows discussing it.  One host asked me why, in the era of "All Reality Shows, All The Time," I found this ancient bit of reality interesting.  I think the answer is that, first of all, it's your basic David/Goliath story.  Who could not like a story where a little guy came in and outsmarted a big-time TV network?  Secondly, today's Reality Shows are really Controlled-Reality Shows.  The producers may not know who's going to remain on the island after everyone else gets voted off…but they know someone will be.  They do not wind up standing around with their mouths open, muttering, "We never imagined that would happen."  Michael Larson, who went on Press Your Luck and won $110,000 (plus change) had just that impact on everyone.

Even supposedly-spontaneous TV shows aren't that spontaneous.  If Mssrs. Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, Kilborn, Kimmel and Maher are on for another fifty years, we'll never see any of their shows spin as wildly out of control as Press Your Luck did for about an hour there.  You will never see the stars, producers, directors and crew as clueless as to what's occurring on their own programs as the PYL staff was on account of Michael Larson.  Some execs at CBS almost didn't air the shows, ostensibly because they didn't want to revive memories of the quiz show scandals of the fifties.  Watching the Game Show Network airing last night, it dawned on me: They weren't really worried about that.  They were just uncomfortable that, for one brief moment there, they lost control.

Changing subjects, but only slightly: Watching Press Your Luck might give you a hankering to test yourself against its cleverly-configured game board.  There was a computer "home game" marketed briefly back in the eighties but it wasn't too good.  A devout fan of the show — a gent I do not know at all — cobbled up an authorized homemade version for the PC that works rather well, at least on my computer.  I don't guarantee it will work on yours, so proceed — as they say — with caution and at your own risk.  It does not contain the question rounds, but you don't care about them anyway.  Here's the link to the site where you can download it.  You'll need an unzipping utility and no, I don't know of a Press Your Luck for the Mac.  Oh — and don't complain to me if it doesn't work or ask for my help.  I have nothing to do with it.

• The U.S. Needs To Open Itself To The World by Brian Eno, Time
• No Liberal Exchange Policy by George F. Will, Washington Post
• An Open Letter to Nader Voters by Charles Taylor, Salon
• The Glorious Bush Program: Sign Me Up! by Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate
• Truth Be Told by Peter Beinart, New Republic
• Anti-French Frustrations by William F. Buckley Jr., National Review

Here's an early "mark your calendar" notice for those of you in the Southern California area…

As is well known by anyone I'd ever want to associate with, Stan Freberg is one of America's great wits and satirists, and he has also been one of our great cartoon voice actors for close to sixty (60!) years.  His achievements in this last area will be celebrated and examined at an A.S.I.F.A. event on April 24th.  (A.S.I.F.A. is the Association Internationale du Film D'Animation — in plain English, the International Animation Society.  Click here to exit stage left to their website.)

What we're going to do — that's right; I'm the host of this thing — is to show a number of old cartoons for which Stan did voice work.  Some will be well-known classics like The Three Little Bops (above) but most will be obscure stuff which Stan may not remember well…or, in a few cases, never even saw in finished form.  Then I will relentlessly grill him and maybe we'll try whips and chains or sodium pentathol.  One way or another, we'll get him to remember something about the work and tell us.  The film program, which is being assembled by the inestimable Jerry Beck of Cartoon Research, will be chosen more for history than entertainment — Jerry promises at least one stinkeroo — but it should be fun, nonetheless.

That's Wednesday evening, April 24.  Check here or at the A.S.I.F.A. site for further details, including the location, which has yet to be firmed up.  But it'll be open to the public and you'll get to meet Stan and see a lot of weird cartoons he did and get to hear what, if anything, he remembers about them.  And if we're nice, maybe he'll do a little Pete Puma for us.

We keep hearing that judgments in medical malpractice suits need to be limited because insurance premiums are driving doctors out of business or out of certain areas.  The case for this seems anecdotal and weak to me, and I'm inclined to suspect that Ralph Nader is right; that we could solve the problem better by limiting how much profit the insurance companies can make.  (Actually, we will probably solve it some day with some form of national health care, but that will be a long time in coming.)  In any case, the issue is currently being tackled by that greatest of all medicos, Rex Morgan, M.D.  Here's a link to a site where you can read the comic strip.  And here's a link to a letter that appeared the other day in the Washington Post telling why the case being presented in the strip is bogus.

HBO Family is running the Li'l Abner movie (the good one, the one based on the Broadway play) on Monday night and again on March 27.  I mention this because, since it's not out on DVD and the VHS tape is long out-o'-print, some of you might like to record it.  But I also mention it because it's an excuse to run some pictures of Julie Newmar, which always increases donations to this site, hint hint.  As you may know, we have articles posted about this movie and about the stage musical from whence it came.  You can read them here and here.  We are also glad that HBO Family is running it because it's the perfect movie to introduce kids to the idea of musicals — hummable songs, colorful characters, energetic dances, a plot that even a resident of Dogpatch could follow.  Recently-announced plans to revive the show for Broadway seem to have evaporated.  But one of these days, someone will do it and it'll probably be a very big hit.  Even if that version won't (sadly) have Julie Newmar.

My occasional employers, Sid and Marty Krofft, have built some incredible things: Costumes, puppets, even an entire amusement park.  Every so often, they downsize their warehouse a bit and sell off a few items which are snatched up by folks who grew up on the likes of H.R. Pufnstuf and Lidsville.  One such auction is being held tomorrow, conducted by the Butterfields people.  Here's a direct link to the listings in case you want to bid on one of Hoodoo's old top hats…or just want to window-shop.

It's too bad that on the entire Worldwide Web, you can't find a site devoted to the wearing of hats made out of meat.  Oh, wait.  You can.  Thank God.

Check out this cartoon by Peter Bagge.  It's all about copyright and intellectual property.  And it's truer than one might imagine.

We highly recommend two books about Gil Kane, both compiled by a perceptive gent named Daniel Herman.  Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics features history and analysis.  Gil Kane: Art and Interviews features conversations that helped inform the first book.  And both feature a lot of wonderful artwork by one of the great comic book illustrators of all time.  Note that I am recommending both books.  Like love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.  (Well, you can.  Dealers like Bud Plant will sell you either one or both.  But you shouldn't get just one of them.  Between the two volumes, you get a good portrait of a fascinating artist and an erudite, wise gentleman.)

Here's a blind item from the highly-competitive world of TV talk shows.  Let us imagine that a certain talk show is seeking to promote an attention-getting feud with a rival talk show that has much higher ratings.  They decide it might be a funny stunt to hijack some or all of that other show's live audience.  The idea is that they will send a bus over to the other show's studio, to where its audience members line up to get in.  The hijackers, either through fibs or bribes, will seek to get some of those folks to get on the bus and to go out and be wined and dined or otherwise entertained, then brought to the studio of the lower-rated talk show to see it, instead.  This will be humorous, the producers think, and will also promote the notion that the home audience ought to forsake the higher-rated show and watch the lower-rated one, which they otherwise don't seem to be doing.

But what happens is that a staff member at the lower-rated show tips off someone at the higher-rated show, which promptly changes the location where its audience members line up.  Instead of outside on the street, they are moved into the midway on the lot, past studio guards, where the hijackers cannot get to them.  The plot is foiled, but the lower-rated show isn't giving up.

Wouldn't it be interesting if that had actually happened the other night?  And how come a TV talk show seems to have better Homeland Security than Tom Ridge has been able to give this nation?

For a few years now, a group of filmmakers have been compiling a documentary on the life and art of the great fantasy illustrator, Frank Frazetta.  It's said to be almost finished, with screenings now being scheduled, including one on April 6 at the comic convention at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles.  In the meantime, you can view an online trailer for the film by clicking here.  And what the hell am I doing updating my weblog at this ungodly hour?

Let's go to the mailbag.  "Waltstar" writes to ask…

The other night on his show, Conan O'Brien did a bit where he brought on an artist who does graphics for NBC.  It was a fellow named Pierre Bernard and I think he's been on the show before.  It's been driving me crazy where I know that name from.  I thought if anyone would know, you would.

I do.  Back around 1980, Pierre Bernard Jr. was a letterer for DC, Marvel, and other funnybook factories.  He now does a lot of the distinctive (and very striking) graphics for Late Night and Saturday Night Live, as well as other clients.  So if you're a comic book reader, you probably recall his credit from back then.  Nice to see the guy doing well, as he seems to be quite creative.

My pal Earl Kress (who's at Disneyland so often, he oughta be registered to vote there) read this earlier item about the old guy who played Mickey Mouse at the Magic Kingdom and sent me this…

That gravelly voiced, old Mickey Mouse worked at the park for many, many years.  I was told by an ex-character that he had been hired by Walt and therefore was untouchable — so much so, that he was the only costume character, besides the "face" characters (those not wearing giant heads like Alice in Wonderland or Peter Pan), that was ever allowed to talk.  Even though he sounded nothing like Mickey, he would greet people with his gravelly voice, saying, "Hiya, kids!  Hiya!  Hiya!"  I'm not sure how parents ever explained that voice.  Mickey Mouse hits puberty?

I wonder if the Disney folks ever experimented with or considered hiring folks who could do a decent Mickey impression to wear the costume.  It's not a difficult voice to do.  Maybe they figured that since they wouldn't be able to have all the walkaround characters talk, it was better not to have any do so.  And why didn't they consider switching the gravelly-voiced guy into the Grumpy suit or something?

I think about this kind of thing.  And it worries me that I do.