Scott King writes with a question about the fine comic book artist, Jim Aparo…

In a recent post, you mentioned that Aparo was very reliable and delivered 214 pages per year, every year.

Doesn't this mean that if he was on a title for a year he would end up one-two issues short? Most comics are/were 20-24 pages which is 240-288 per year, so the editor would have to find a fill in for part of that years run? Or was this the accepted price for having a skilled and reliable artist for the majority of the year.

Actually, Paul Levitz mentioned that Jim Aparo delivered 214 pages a year…but yes. When Aparo was doing the Batman and the Outsiders comic with Mike W. Barr, there were a few fill-in issues by other artists and I think in an issue or two, Aparo penciled but did not letter or ink.

There were also a couple of issues where they had a fifteen-page lead story drawn by Aparo and an eight-page featurette by another artist. I'm sure everyone involved with the comic thought that having Aparo as the regular artist was worth the occasional need to work around him.

This may interest someone. During that period, I was writing or sometimes writing-editing Blackhawk for DC Comics and it was drawn by Dan Spiegle. Dan was fast enough that he could easily have drawn every issue but The Powers That Were Then occasionally wanted him to draw a different book for them…like, I think he did a Sgt. Rock special and he did some educational comics that few people ever saw and a few other things.

They also liked the idea of guest artists in Blackhawk so we did a number of eight-page stories drawn by folks other than Dan, including Dave Cockrum, Alex Toth, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Mike Sekowsky, Will Meugniot and Doug Wildey.

At the time, a DC comic book was 23 pages plus a cover and almost every story then being published there was twenty-three pages in length. So the following situation would happen again and again and again…

I would get a call from some other DC editor and he would say — and this is a real example — "Mark, I'm in a jam. I need to give Curt Swan a story to draw starting next Monday." This was because Curt had a contract that guaranteed him that when he handed in one assignment, he would immediately get another. It also happened sometimes because a freelancer had an informal understanding with the company or the editor to get work like that.

The editor — in this case, it was Julius Schwartz — wanted to give Curt the next issue of Superman to draw but the writer was running late and the script might not be in and ready for Curt by next Monday. Julie might have had another script to give Curt or some other editor down the hall might have had one but it would have been a twenty-three page script that wasn't needed as urgently as that next issue of Superman.

It would take Curt 2-3 weeks to draw that which would mean 2-3 weeks before Curt got to that next issue of Superman and that was not good for the schedule. Which is why Julie called me. At that moment, those Blackhawk eight-pagers I was doing were just about the only stories being done at DC that were less than 23 pages. If I had one (or could quickly write one) that could be given to Curt on Monday, that would keep him busy for a few days until the Superman script came in. You follow?

I, of course, would say "Sure" and if I didn't have one ready, I'd sit down and write an eight-page Blackhawk story for Mr. Swan to draw…and right after I finished it, Julie would call and say, "Never mind! The Superman script just came in!" And then a week later, a different DC editor would call and say, "I need a script to give Irv Novick next Monday!"

This happened at least, I would guess, eighteen times. The one I wrote for Swan wound up being drawn by Don Newton because a script for whatever comic he was drawing then — Batman, I think — might not be in on time. But before it went to Don, it was going to be busy work for Novick and later for Jim Aparo.

Not all the Blackhawk shorts were done this way. Sometimes, I actually hired the artist and he drew the script I wrote for him. Still, a lot of them were written as per this scenario — because some other script was running late and another editor might have needed it so he didn't have to give some artist a twenty-three pager. Another Secret Behind the Comics!

John Cleese shows you how to accept an award…

We haven't been Trump Dumping lately because, frankly, I've grown way too accustomed to waking up to him doing something that would have had Republicans howling for impeachment had it been done by Obama or Clinton.

One of the arguably-good things Trump and the current partisanship overload has accomplished is to make me totally cynical about Republican Outrage.  I used to be at about 75% on that. I used to think there was some non-partisan component to Evangelicals and G.O.P. leaders who were offended by things like Obama not wearing his jacket in the Oval Office. Reagan, they liked to remind us, never took his off in there.

I'm not sure there's anything Trump could do in there — or anywhere — that would get more than token criticism from G.O.P. reps running for re-election in blue states.  Maybe if he did something that was fair to immigrants.

I also become more cynical about Democratic Outrage. It's not quite at 100% yet but it's getting there. The main difference between the Republican kind and the Democratic kind is that Democrats just aren't very good at outrage. Imagine what Republicans could do with even the rumor of a Democratic president paying hush money to cover up an extra-marital, condom-free affair with a porn star. Once when Barack Obama ordered a hamburger with dijon mustard, Sean Hannity made it sound more unAmerican than what the entire Democratic Party has been able to do with evidence that Trump may have conspired with Russia to rig our elections.

Oh, well. Here are some links that I think might be worth reading…

• Matt Taibbi calls Trump's musings about using nuclear weapons "insane and ignorant." It sounds like "incoherent" oughta be in there also.
• Ezra Klein explains why the Trump administration is in chaos. Key excerpt: "During the campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to 'hire the best people.'  But the best people want to work for the best bosses, in the best organizations, supported by the best cultures. Trump hasn't created anything of the kind. The Trump administration is a leaky, chaotic, dangerous place, where staffers operate under constant threat from Trump and each other…"
• Fred Kaplan, who might just be the only person in the country who actually reads military budgets, tells us what Trump would do to ours. It's the old belief that spending more money on defense makes you safer no matter what you spend it on. We've spent billions on planes that didn't fly but that didn't matter to a lot of people. The important thing for them was that we cared enough to spend the money.
• Jonathan Blitzer on how Trump's immigration policies are tearing families apart and creating misery. This is a lot of what the next election will be about. And the one after that and the one after that…
• John Cassidy on the White House's budget proposal. Time to haul out all the old quotes about fiscal responsibility that are no longer applicable.
• And lastly for now: Trump's answer to hunger in America? Get rid of food stamps and we'll assemble some crates of canned food and pass them out to poor people. He'll probably toss them into the crowds like rolls of paper towels. Eric Levitz has more.

As much as I love Stephen Colbert, I don't think I'll be a regular viewer of his new series, Our Cartoon President. It's well done but I'm starting to O.D. on Trump parodies. I need to limit them to two hours a day.  That includes the Trump parodies being done on a daily basis by Trump.

I don't have a lot to offer about comedian Marty Allen, who died a few hours ago in a Las Vegas rehab center.  He was 95 and had been suffering from complications related to pneumonia.

But I have that photo of me with him and I thought I oughta run it again and say that I always found the guy funny — not witty, not incisive, not innovative…just funny. In fact, he was funny with some of the worst material anyone ever took onto a stage. I think that's a compliment.

This obit and others online will give you the details of his life but I'll give you the quick summary. After Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis became the hottest act in show business and for many years after, every outta-work handsome male singer tried pairing up with some outta-work goofy comedian or vice-versa.

There were thousands of those teams and there were some comedians who tried hooking up with fifty different singers, just as there were singers who tried working with fifty different comics. If you leave aside Rowan and Martin — who didn't fit the singer/comedian role model — the only Martin/Lewis successors who ever had any real success was the duo of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. Why did they make a go of it where so many others had failed? Well, it sure wasn't because of Steve Rossi.

Marty was just one of those guys who loved performing so much that no matter what he did on stage, you couldn't dislike him. During the few minutes I spent with him before and after the above photo, he was happier to meet the people who wanted his autograph and/or photo than they were to meet him…and most of them were pretty happy. And he made every one of us laugh.

Allen and Rossi both wound up where old acts go to die — in Las Vegas, occasionally reteaming to create an "event" that nobody thought was much of one. I wrote about seeing them individually and together over in this post after Mr. Rossi died. Pretty much everything I have to say about either man is in that post…

…except for this: Right now, some cartoonist somewhere is drawing Rossi in Heaven wearing an angel suit complete with halo, standing there with a look of delighted surprise as Marty Allen (also in an angel suit) enters through them Pearly Gates saying, "Hello Dere!" If they really are meeting up there, it's about their seventeenth — and last — reunion.

As you may know, I have been the co-maker of Groo the Wanderer comic books, along with my best buddy Sergio Aragonés, for several decades now. So you can probably believe me when I tell you the following facts about the two drawings of Groo seen above…

1. They are (or were) for sale on eBay from a seller with many sales to his or her name and 100% Positive Feedback.
2. They were put up as "Original authentic" drawings by Sergio Aragonés.
3. They are absolute, total forgeries not done by Sergio but done instead by a very poor forger.
4. The seller has other sketches allegedly by other artists for sale and says he or she does not accept returns.

The Groo drawing on the left is listed as selling for its minimum bid of $149.  The one on the right is currently offered for a minimum bid of $149 with, as of this writing, no takers.

In the past when I've seen stuff like this, I've written to the sellers and politely informed them that they're selling fakes.  Often, that makes the offering disappear, at least for a while.  Sometimes, I get back a note that says something like, "Oh, thanks.  I didn't know.  I'll look into it."  I am unconvinced any of these sellers were innocent dupes.  What they didn't know was that someone with some authority could notice.  At best, this probably doesn't mean they won't sell the phony drawing.  They just might not sell it on eBay where I can see.

Take a look at those drawings.  If you're the kind of person who might someday like an original Sergio drawing and you can't tell that those aren't original Sergio drawings, perhaps you shouldn't buy an original Sergio drawing from anyone but Sergio.

From "Volare" comes this easily-answered question…

In comic books, I keep hearing the term "splash page."  Just what is a "splash page?"

It's one of those terms that has been corrupted from its original meaning and now has a fuzzy definition. The original meaning dates back to the days when comics were sold exclusively on newsstands and publishers believed that folks browsing those racks made their purchasing selections based on if a story premise or situation grabbed them.

Mort Weisinger, who was the editor of the Superman titles, was considered the master of putting some intriguing scene on the cover which would cause browsers to say, "Wow! I've got to buy this so I can read it and find out what happens!" But the practice pre-dated him.

It was also usually applied to the first panel of any story. They would show some interesting moment from later in the tale as a kind of flash-forward teaser, again to snare the person standing at the newsrack, flipping through the comics before deciding which one to buy. The actual story would then start in Panel 2.

If the first panel was one of these flash-forward teasers, it would be referred to as a Splash Panel. Sometimes, it would be a panel that took up two-thirds (or thereabouts) of the first page. Sometimes, especially on a longer story, it would be a full-page panel. If it was a full-page panel, it would sometimes be called a Splash Page. The idea, I guess, was that you were opening the story by making a big splash.

Over the years, stories in comics got longer and it became rarer to see Splash Panels that weren't full pages…so the term was used less and less. Also, more and more comics began to start the story with that first, full-page scene. This was a trend that Marvel popularized in the sixties, along with longer and even continued stories.

One of the "whose idea was this?" issues where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby concurred was that it was Jack's idea to start stories on page one instead of flashing-forward to preview an interesting scene from later in the narrative. Jack felt that any creative person should be able to come up with an interesting way to start a story without resorting to that and, in effect, wasting a page. Jack also had a lot to do with the practice of having a full-page panel (or even a double-spread) in the middle of a story. People began to refer to any full-page panel, even one in continuity, as a Splash Page.

So what that term once meant was a panel that previewed a scene from later in the story. And what it now refers to is any a full-page panel, regardless of content. Original art dealers also have had a lot to do with changing the meaning because "Splash Page" sounds more important (and therefore, desired) than "full-page panel."

If I were running the Food Network or the Cooking Channel or anything like that, I would give these two people their own show in a minute…

My longtime friend Paul Levitz continues the discussion about freelancers who do or do not get their work in on time.  Paul spent many, many years of his life at DC Comics dealing with that problem and more than once, I was in the office when he had to cope with this age-old problem: A writer or artist had not delivered work when it was due and was running so late that it was creating major problems.

Some were of the human variety. Somebody was sick. Someone was in an accident. Someone's close relative had died. Someone's power was out for two days. There are a thousand excuses, many of them even true.

When comics are done on an assembly line basis, each person has to wait for the person before to complete their assigned function.  If the work is passed from writer to pencil artist to letterer to inker and then to colorist, anyone's tardiness may screw up those who follow.  The pencil artist, for example, can be sitting there waiting for the script, not earning a living because he has nothing to draw.  That not only costs him or her money, it means he or she will have to rush and perhaps work insane hours to get the book back on schedule so the letterer will have something to letter, the inker will have something to ink, etc.

And some of the problems were of the business variety because the book was contracted to be at the printers by a certain date to be printed so it could be in stores by a certain date to be sold.

An editor or other person in Paul's position learns how to budget time, to build pad into the schedule, to know who will probably be late and so forth…to have a Plan B for the inevitable times when the assembly line just plain grinds to an unanticipated halt.  On several occasions, I watched Paul cope with those halts, sometimes even shifting to Plan C or even D. He may not remember telling me this but once, on a book where one member of the team was famously irresponsible, Paul had a Plan E ready to go.

I've seen others deal with them and dealt with them myself.  Paul was very good at that kind of crisis management and he just sent me this e-mail…

Another reoccurring cause of deadline trouble that I've observed over the years: many freelancers tend to time their ability to deliver off their best speed, the occasion when they could turn something around the fastest. Of course, our best speeds are usually a combination of factors that don't always arrive in conjunction: lack of distraction in our personal lives, our sympathy for the material we're working on, the requirements of the project itself, and, oh yeah, our health and mood. But there was the time I wrote a really good full issue script in one day, so of course I can do that again…maybe some day.

On the other hand, there are guys like Jim Aparo, who would do one page a day, pencilled, inked and lettered, so reliably that he'd sign a contract for 214 pages a year, and deliver them like clockwork. (Not even talking about the one man factories like Jack Kirby…)

Editors treasured a guy like Aparo and I had folks I worked with who were also utterly reliable. I doubt any artist ever had a better track record for delivery-on-time than Dan Spiegle and like Aparo, it wasn't just that the work was there when it was supposed to be. It was there and it was very, very good. That matters, too. A topic for another time is how a high percentage of the best writers and artists in the forties through the seventies were also very fast and very reliable.

And I'm not suggesting that writers and artists of the eighties and beyond have not been fast and/or reliable but the job description has changed somewhat. I can't find the actual e-mail right now but I remember it pretty well. A year or two ago, a top artist wrote me and said…

What is it with editors who don't get that I'm not drawing when I'm not home at my drawing board? I agreed to do all the art for this graphic novel in four months and I'd have no trouble meeting the deadline but every week, they call me to ask if I can fly to some other city and do a bookstore signing for my last project for the company. Or he calls and says, "We really need you at this convention in Toronto next month." I told him fine if we change the deadline because I won't be doing the work when I'm at the con and he actually asked me, "Can't you draw pages on the plane? Or in your hotel room?" I turned down the con so I could get the job in on time and now I'm hearing that I'm not a good team player!!!!!

I remember that pretty well including the five exclamation points. There actually are artists who can set up in a hotel room and get work done and I've seen Sergio working in both pencil and ink on airplanes…but some can't and it shouldn't be expected of anyone.

Anyway, Paul's right. A couple times in my career, I've written 20-24 pages in a single day but I can't always do that. Or at least, I can't always do that and also be pleased with what's on those pages. If I expected to be able to produce at that pace every time, I'd have been late with a lot more assignments and the quality of most would have been much lower.

Then again, if I'd been late with a lot more assignments and the quality of most had been much lower, I wouldn't have gotten as many assignments. So maybe some of this problem is self-correcting…

I write a lot of obits on this site. Some are about people I didn't know very well.  Ten years ago today, I had to write one about someone I knew well and liked a lot.  I still miss Steve Gerber and so does the comic book industry even if some who work in the field don't know it…or him.

I don't think I ever told you how I met Steve.  I knew him first through his published stories which I thought were some of the best coming out of Marvel at the time.  From a writer's standpoint, there are two kinds of comics you find yourself writing for a company like DC or Marvel.  One is the kind where you're handling characters created by others, working in a mythology established by others.  Some writers do some wonderful work in this arena but when I think about my favorite comic book writers, I'm more impressed with their work in the other kind of comic book.

That would be the kind that you either create the comic or co-create the comic…or you take over a book about which very little has been established.  Generally speaking, you have to be the only person writing those characters at the time.  That gives you more freedom to shape the environment of that book and to add new characters or reshape existing ones such that you can tell the kinds of stories you have to tell.  You make it your own, at least for the time you do that book, which generally has to be a long period.  It never happens when you're doing an issue or three.  You have to stay on a book for a while before you can form-fit it to your strengths.

Steve did that when he took over a comic called Man-Thing, making it distinctly his own for a while.  He did it of course with Howard the Duck and a few other comics he launched.  He wrote some good stories for ongoing comics handled by many like The Defenders and  Sub-Mariner but he found his voice in the more personal books.  In them, he wrote more about human beings even if those human beings were monsters or ducks.

Anyway, I liked his writing but before I met him, when I mentioned his name to anyone at Marvel, I was told he was crazy…and I don't mean brilliantly, eccentrically crazy.  I mean "crazy" the way Charles Manson was crazy.  Several people, including a writer or two who I guess thought of him as competition, told me that any day, Steve Gerber would be hauled off to the looney bin.

I didn't necessarily believe them.  I've had too many people in my life turn out to be exact opposite of the way they were described.  But I also didn't not believe what I was being told about this Steve Gerber person.

Now then: For several years in a row, my partner Sergio Aragonés would host an annual post-con party right after what we then called the San Diego Comic-Con and now call Comic-Con International.  The con ended on Sunday afternoon and a lot of us would caravan (or drive home) to Los Angeles and by 8 PM, there'd be a big crowd at Sergio's old home in the Hollywood Hills, sitting around the pool and eating pizza.  Just talking and unwinding.

At one of these parties, I found myself talking to a guy with glasses.  We were discussing comics, the world, life, movies, the pizza we were consuming, everything…and the guy was bright, funny, perceptive and I had no idea who the hell he was.  He somehow knew who I was but if I'd been introduced to him, I hadn't caught the name.  And after 40 minutes or so of great, enjoyable conversation, I didn't feel like I could say, "By the way, who are you?"  I was trying to figure it out without doing that.

I forget which comics he mentioned he'd worked on but let's say one of them was Daredevil.  He'd say, "You know, when I was writing Daredevil…" and I'd start thinking, "Okay, who wrote Daredevil besides all the people I know who wrote Daredevil?"  And then I'd think, "Well, I believe Steve Gerber wrote a few issues but this person is way too sane to be Steve Gerber."  He'd mention some other comic that several people had written and I'd think, "Gee, the only person I can think of who wrote that comic and who I don't know is Steve Gerber.  Could this possibly be Steve Gerber?  Naw…"

Finally, he mentioned writing Howard the Duck and I thought, "This is Steve Gerber!"  And I instantly realized that not only was he not demented or insane but he was saner and smarter than any of the people who'd told me Steve Gerber was out of his mind.  He was also a better writer than any of them.

We spent a lot of time together.  When I was running the Hanna-Barbera comic division, I brought Steve in as my assistant and he also wrote a lot of the comics, most of which were published overseas.  Later, I recommended him for animation writing for the Ruby-Spears studio and he quickly became one of their most valuable writers and story editors.  He wrote for many of their shows and developed Thundarr the Barbarian.

Often, you bond with people by charging into battle alongside them.  Steve had his infamous legal battle against Marvel over Howard the Duck and a lot of folks (not just me) joined that battle in whatever way we could.  But Steve also fought a lot of fights to better working conditions and compensation for all writers, not just himself.  If and when an accurate history is ever written of how life in comics got better for creative people in the eighties, Steve's name will be mentioned a lot.  That's what I meant about how the industry misses him.

I do, too.   He was a clever, creative guy and we all out missed out on the wonderful things he might have written if he'd been around the last ten years.   A great, great loss.

When Steve died, I seized control of his blog and it's still up and running at www.stevegerber.com.  Not a lot has been posted since and as I write this, the most recent post and comments are from October of '16.  But every message Steve posted is still there, followed by many posted since we lost him.  You might want to drop by and read and maybe even write something.

Julien Neel — who all by himself is one of my favorite singing groups — favors us with a song from 1927…

This piece I wrote about a freelance artist who fibbed and gave me a huge deadline problem continues to draw mail. This is from Steven Marsh…

I've been a professional magazine editor for nearly 18 years, and your column about Mr. "No Problemo" darn-near gave me an anxiety attack just to read and experience second-hand. So, once again, your writing has provoked an emotional response from me!

My question is: Do you have any insight into WHY an artist (or other creative) would DO something like that? Is it hubris? Delusion? A vain attempt to FORCE the creativity to come? What's the best-possible outcome they can envision?

Yeah, I can explain it because after I forgave the guy and began giving him work again, we discussed it. The artist was a freelancer who worked for many companies and editors. I absolutely sympathize with anyone in that position because that's been my entire career for 49 years now — juggling assignments, working for several places at the same time.

By his own admission, this artist worried incessantly about not having enough work to meet the expenses of life. Even when he had a full dance card and was turning down work, he was fretting, "What if there's nothing more after I hand in my current assignments?" When I asked him to draw the story for me, he should have said no, he didn't have time. He was already committed to too many other jobs but on impulse, he said yes. Remember that I had just become an editor for the Hanna-Barbera comic book division. He wanted to establish himself with me because I was a new source of work for him.

He also wanted to get a lot of work from that division. We paid a little better than others and we paid faster than anyone else. With everyone else he worked for, it took a week or two to get the check. If I received the work before 2 PM, the check would go in the mail that day or if you brought the pages to me before 2, you could hang around for fifteen minutes and I'd get the accounting department to issue the check then and there. Also, the artist liked me and wanted to work with me.

He thought he was doing both of us a favor by taking on the job…and he thought he'd have more time than I said. When most editors say "I need this in two weeks," the freelancer assumes he can fudge it by a week or two; that there's padding built into the schedule. I told him there wasn't but as he explained to me later, "I always assume there's more time than the editor says because there almost always is."

I probably erred by not saying something like, "And I honestly just have to have it in two weeks. Please don't take it on if you can't get it done in two. I'll offer you some other work soon but I truly need this one in two weeks."

So he took it on and then one of his other employers made some threatening noises and he felt he had to do an assignment he had from that guy before he tackled mine and…well, everyone has limits. He simply mismanaged his time and mis-estimated how long everything would take him to do…so he couldn't get everything done when he said he'd get it done. This happens. His real crime was in not being straight with me as to how the work was proceedings. He apologized, I decided he was sincere and we put it behind us.

This reminds me of a story about Betty White that I don't think I've told here. I'll try to write it up in the next few days.

There have been a lot of great dancers in movies but nobody danced better than the Nicholas Brothers…

This news story has my favorite headline of the week…

• 90% of Libertarians and Independents I meet are Democrats or Republicans who are too embarrassed to identify with the party they'd gladly belong to if it did what it was supposed to do.