Thanks to Greg Hatcher over at Comic Book Resources who declared last Saturday "Mark Evanier Day" over there and wrote something nice about me. I was disappointed to find that the banks were all open on my day and the big parade was pretty anemic: Just a couple of homeless guys pushing their shopping carts down my street. But, hey, I'll take what I can get.
Also, there's a podcast online where you can hear me talk about myself for forty-one minutes and seventeen seconds, which is around forty-one minutes longer than the topic is worth. It's over at My Comic Crush, a fine new show to listen to, hosted by the delightful Vickie Sebring and co-hosted by her lucky spouse Scott Sebring. We spoke mostly about Groo the Wanderer and have I mentioned that the first issue of a new Groo mini-series will be out on or around the first day of Comic-Con in San Diego? If I haven't before, I just did.
Lastly: If you're anywhere near Pasadena, you might want to hustle over to Vroman's Bookstore the evening of June 24 — and this one isn't about me much. It's about my good buddy Paul Dini, who'll be there that evening at 7 PM to sign his new graphic novel from DC: Dark Night: A True Batman Story. It's a chilling (because it's true) story about a brutal mugging that Paul experienced and how the incident intersected with his then-current work of writing Batman. I have an advance copy and it's likely to be the most talked-about comic novel of the year. It's powerful, it's honest and it's a must-read.
What do I have to do with this? I'm the host/M.C. of the event and I'll be interviewing Paul there before he sits down to autograph copies of it. You'll want a copy and you'll want it signed by the guy who wrote the story and lived the story. See you there.
Some of you will love this. Recently, I attended and plugged mightily a revue about the city I grew up in. It was called L.A. Now and Then and no, you can't go see it…now, anyway. It closed but there are rumors it will be coming back. This is a number from that show, which was largely the work of writer-director-producer Bruce Kimmel.
Other folks who wrote songs and sketches for it, though. This one was written by Disney Legend Richard Sherman, who with his late brother Robert wrote all the songs for Mary Poppins, many of the songs for Disney theme parks and other movies, and even a lot of non-Disney things. It's a tune about the Disney Studios and the extraordinary man he worked for there and it's performed here by Robert Yacko.
This video is not from opening night. I was there opening night and so was Richard Sherman. At one point in the video, you'll see an ancient photo of him and his brother and when it was projected opening night, the audience broke into a loud, loving ovation. Even without that moment, it's still a touching number…
Last night's Tony Awards show got the highest overnight ratings in 15 years. No doubt that had a lot to do with all the fervor over Hamilton, which was wisely exploited by the telecast's producers. They teased a brief flash on it at the top but saved the actual number for rather late in the proceedings. Betcha if they'd done it in the first hour — and not had Barbra to close — they'd have had a lot more tune-out over the (long!) length of the program.
Still, those ratings must have had something to do with James Corden. He may turn out to be the biggest winner there last night.
Jonathan Chait on Mr. Trump's exploitation of the tragedy in Orlando yesterday. I don't think it'll work to base his campaign on the premise that he'd be tough on terrorists, whereas Hillary Clinton would be weak. Trump's credentials in that area are nothing but a lot of tough talk, whereas Hillary Clinton has some experience. Besides, I don't think the swing voters — the ones who haven't decided yet which candidate is the lesser of two evils — perceive Hillary Clinton as weak. They have other issues with her relating to honesty and ambition. And I think Trump already has all the support he's going to get from people who want to deport all Muslims and keep any more from getting in.
So last night, they had Barbra Streisand present the final award. As is her custom, she was not seen in the audience before. She hid out backstage or maybe didn't even get there until just before she made her grand entrance. I wonder if they risked trying to get her into the Beacon Theater — past hordes of rabid theater fans — during the live telecast.
But at some point, she's backstage and so is James Corden, who would be derelict in his duty as star of the show if he didn't formally greet and thank his famous last presenter. What are the odds Mr. Corden wouldn't seize on the opportunity to try and persuade Barbra to do one of his Carpool Karaoke segments? I'd say roughly zero, wouldn't you? They showed part of one during the telecast so Ms. Streisand could see what it involved and how much the audience loved it and how even Lin-Manuel Miranda — the biggest star in the building that night but for her — participated.
Barbra has a new album coming out. She has a new movie in the works. She needs to remind a new generation what a sensation she is.
Hey, didn't James Corden do a fine job as host of the Tony Awards last night? As a talk show host, I find him way too fawning and wildly in love with everyone around him…though I must say I met him briefly last year at Academy screening of Into the Woods and decided it was utterly sincere. That's just who he is. If you can get past that, he's really a fascinating, talented performer and he sure showed that last evening.
Much of the broadcast was boring but that's the nature of the Tony Awards, I'm afraid. It is, after all, about giving awards to people and shows that even a moderately engaged theater buff such as myself has never heard of. It's not fair to judge the host and the folks who assemble the telecast for that. It is fair to judge them by what they wrap around all that award-bestowing and I thought they did quite well, especially in paying proper reverence to the mass murder in Orlando without allowing it to drag down the program. I wonder what kind of announcement, if any, they made to presenters and recipients about mentioning it or not mentioning it.
But back to Corden. He was just delightful, as he always seems to be when he isn't wedged into a recycled Letterman remote bit or telling someone who's on a CBS sitcom how super and marvelous and super and wonderful and positively super they are. His show is doing well too and the rumor is about that certain folks at CBS wish he was on at 11:35 and that Mr. Colbert, if he was on at all, followed him. Some of that is due to Corden's staggering success in having his clips go epidemic-level viral on YouTube. Some of that is due to a general disappointment with Colbert not doing as revolutionary a show on CBS as he did on Comedy Central.
I still think Stephen Colbert may be the most gifted performer who ever got a late night talk show but I'm liking his show less and less with each passing week. I have no inside info there but I'll tell you how it feels to me as a viewer. It feels like when they started out, they accepted the arguable premise that Colbert couldn't bake from scratch; that he had to balance any desire to reinvent the form and do things no one has ever done before with the recognition that certain things have just plain been proven to work in that format lately. The fact that he took over David Letterman's slot in David Letterman's studio with some of David Letterman's crew may also have contributed to the latter consideration.
So it feels — and again, remember this is my sense as a viewer — like they said, "Well, we'll do one-third innovative stuff and two-thirds of the show will be the kind of bits and interviews that worked for Dave, that are working for Fallon and Kimmel and other shows. Then as things progress, we'll ramp up the former and tone down the latter."
And then as the ratings failed to soar as much as was hoped, it's gone in the other direction. More latter, less former.
Colbert is a terrific improviser. He proved that on his old show when each night, he not only conducted a largely-unscripted interview with a guest — who often was not a seasoned performer or particularly skilled at verbal banter. And not only that but Colbert did it in character. Johnny Carson in his prime could not have done that. Not and made it funny.
But increasingly on his current show, Colbert might as well be reading the whole thing off the TelePrompter, including the jokes about Donald Trump reading off a TelePrompter. Every so often, Stephen has on a guest — usually an old friend of his — for an actual spontaneous conversation. Here's one from a few months ago when he had John Oliver in the guest chair. This clearly was not a re-creation of a pre-interview by some Talent Coordinator or a semi-scripted chat based on input from Oliver's publicists…
Just two funny, witty men talking without much, if any prearrangement. This does not occur often on talk shows today. It has become obvious to all in the business that the guests who drive ratings are mainly the kind of guests who have a new movie or TV show or book to plug. That's always been true to some extent but it's truer these days. And another thing that's changed is that those new movies or TV shows (sometimes even those new books) have so much money riding on them that the guest appearances are more rigidly planned. Publicists for the product won't let the guests do Fallon or Colbert or Kimmel without exerting controls to make sure the plug is properly delivered and "on message."
Once upon a time when Jack Lemmon had a new movie coming out, he'd go visit Johnny Carson for a chat and they'd talk about various things, some of which concerned the upcoming movie. Johnny had notes and planted questions but Jack was a charming, funny man and they might well depart from what was in those notes. The segment with Lemmon would also be longer because the presumption these days is that viewers (especially the ones in the younger demographics) have much shorter attention spans. Shorter interviews mean you have to get to the sales pitch faster.
When Colbert started, I predicted he'd do well. I assumed his show would be configured to let him do the things he did so well. It's not working out that way…and by the way, I don't mean to suggest he's being victimized here. He obviously is complicit in all of this, possibly even believing it's the way to go. It would not be the first time a performer, in moving from the small time to the big time, abandoned too much of what worked for him in the old venue. I think that was one of the mistakes Conan O'Brien made when he took over The Tonight Show.
You know, everyone who does talk shows gives props to Steve Allen, Johnny Carson and David Letterman for being masters of the form. Some include Jack Paar, as well. But no one seems to want to do what made those men masters, which is to do a talk show that presumed the host could ad-lib and handle unplanned situations…and then allow those unplanned situations to occur. Even Dave's show didn't do much of that its last decade or so.
Colbert could do it. Since Craig Ferguson became a game show host, Colbert may be the only guy with a talk show days who could, which is why it's maddening that he's doing so little that everyone else can do — and does.
Janet Waldo, whose career in entertainment stretched from motion pictures to radio to television to the world of cartoons, died this morning. The cause was a brain tumor and her age…well, no one's quite sure how old Janet was but she sure never looked or sounded it. Since she made her radio debut playing ingenue roles in 1940, it's safe to say she was in her nineties.
She was a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was the widow of writer Robert E. Lee, whose credits as a playwright included collaborating on Inherit the Wind, Auntie Mame, The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail and many others. Lee passed in 1994 and Janet kept his office intact in the home they shared together. Once when I visited her there, she made me sit in his writing chair and told me wonderful stories of this fine writer.
She appeared in more than two dozen movies but established herself in radio, mostly notably as the star of Meet Corliss Archer. Her most memorable role in television was probably the episode of I Love Lucy in which she played Peggy, a teenager with a crush on Ricky Ricardo.
In 1962, she spoke for Judy Jetson in the animated series, The Jetsons. It was her first cartoon but it launched an entire new career in that area, mainly working for Hanna-Barbera. She was Josie in Josie and the Pussycats, Penelope Pitstop in Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Granny Sweet in the Precious Pup cartoons and was heard in hundreds of other roles.
She continued voicing Judy Jetson in many incarnations of The Jetsons but in the 1990 animated feature, a controversy erupted. Janet recorded the speaking role of Judy and it was expected that the then-current pop sensation, Tiffany, would only supply the singing voice. Tiffany was signed but she and/or her managers reportedly insisted that Tiffany also replace the spoken lines. At the insistence of Universal Pictures, which was releasing the film, this was done. Janet was upset, though comforted by an incredible outpouring of support from her many fans. In 1997 at a retirement party for her frequent co-star Don Messick, Joe Barbera spoke and took the opportunity to apologize in front of most of the voiceover community to Janet for letting that happen. She forgave him and that more or less buried that matter.
Janet continued working until just a few years ago when illness prevented her from continuing. It was about the only thing that could. She was a wonderful lady and a great trouper and talent. I had the honor of working with her on several occasions and I can't think of anything she ever did wrong or anyone who knew her who did not absolutely adore her.
And as I said, I don't know how old she was. But I can tell you that well into her nineties, she could still sound like the teenage Judy Jetson. I think I'll just assume she was always that age.
I assume you've seen the news about the shooting last night in an Orlando nightclub. 50 dead. 53 more injured — and both those numbers may grow. This is horrible on two levels, the first of course being the shooting itself. The second is the rush — already in hyperspeed on the 'net — to spin this for political advantage.
It presents endless opportunities for that. It's about all sorts of topics in the news: Automatic weapons, Radical Islam, gays (it seems to have been a gay nightclub), immigration (maybe)…lots of elements there to play with, plus nobody with a cause wants to miss the chance to link theirs to "The Worst Shooting Attack in U.S. History." Or wait until they have more facts.
This is feeling to me like a good day to stay off the Internet. I'll probably be back later but not to write about this.
The (then) famous comic actors Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna voiced the Mad Hatter and the March Hare (respectively) in Mr. Disney's 1951 animated movie of Alice in Wonderland. The two performers were filmed so the animators could study their gestures and expressions but it was generally assumed that these were separate duties; that they recorded their voices in one session and acted out the scenes in another. Apparently, no. The person who put this video together figured out that the audio from their on-camera filming was the audio in the cartoon…
Are voters this year more pissed-off than ever? Kevin Drum doesn't seem to think so…and to the extent, they might be, what accounts for that? Here's something he wrote to eliminate possible reasons…
I was chatting with a friend yesterday about the (alleged) anger of low-income whites this election season, and she asked what kinds of concrete, long-term trends might be responsible for this. Concrete in the sense of important, measurable stuff that truly makes people's lives worse. The truth is that I don't know of many. Crime is down. Teen pregnancy is down. Student test scores are up. Graduation rates are up. Illicit drug dependence is down (yes, really) and it's way down among teenagers. The growth rate of health care is on a multi-decade downward trend. The Great Recession did immense damage, but we've been recovering nicely for several years: growth is steady; unemployment is below 5 percent; inflation is below 2 percent; job openings are rising; and household debt, which has been trending downward for nearly a decade, is at its lowest point since 1980.
If you read his article, you'll see that Kevin came up with two (well, two and a half) reasons why voters might actually be more enraged than usual. I'd like to toss another one out for consideration. We're ending eight years of relative impotence for both sides.
Obama hasn't been able to do many of the things he wanted because of the Republicans and Republicans haven't been able to do many of the things they wanted because of Obama. Activists on both sides have been stewing, waiting for 2016 and fantasizing it was the year they'd nuke the other side and no longer have to settle for, at best, tiny victories. There's always some of that but because of the partisan gridlock, it's been worse than ever.
So you have a lot of leftie voters lining up for Bernie because Bernie was the guy who wasn't going to just give them tiny victories but big, sweeping revolutionary ones. Having been denied so long, they're hornier than ever to get things on their wishlists.
And you have a lot of rightie voters who were angry for eight years of the gay Muslim from Kenya pretending to be president. The thing they want most is to win and I think most of them looked over the field of candidates they were offered and saw Trump as the guy most likely to win — the guy who'd kick and scream and throw things and insult the people they hate…and win. It sure wasn't Jeb "Low Energy" Bush.
My theory is if along the way, there had been a lot of compromises and creative "working together" between Obama and Congress — if each side could have felt they were getting a good chunk of what they wanted — you wouldn't have as much rage. Some, just not as much. But we've reached the point where that's not possible so you have a lot of people who see it as all-out, kill-the-enemy war. They figure that's what it's going to take to accomplish anything.
So last night, I was watching a police chase on television. Here's the news flash on it…
A driver of a reportedly stolen car led police on a chase on Friday along Los Angeles freeways. The driver of the 1990s model Honda Accord traveled at high speeds, often followed only by a police helicopter.
The chase began in the north San Fernando Valley before heading into downtown Los Angeles and onto the 110 Freeway. He exited the freeway at Manchester and drove on surface streets in the Florence area before returning to the freeway, returning to the north.
And then afterwards, he fled through Coldwater Canyon where it was too foggy for the copters (TV or police) to track him from the air but cops on the ground nabbed him. He was taken into custody and I'm now imagining him appearing before a judge, accompanied by his attorney…
ATTORNEY: Your honor, my client wishes to plead Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity.
JUDGE: I see. Counselor, have you any proof that your client is insane?
ATTORNEY: Yes, your honor. Your honor, with all the other cars on the road to choose from, my client actually stole a 1990s model Honda Accord.
To get you in the mood for the Tony Awards on Sunday night, there's a medley/mashup of songs from shows currently playing on Broadway. It's performed by RANGE a Cappella and it's pretty darned good…
When I heard that Pat Buchanan is backing Donald Trump, I couldn't believe it. Pat Buchanan is still alive?
Apparently so because he wrote a column called "Why Trump Must Not Apologize." I gather he means for anything, even when he's wrong. There are people who believe that never admitting you're wrong is the same thing as being right.
And speaking of being wrong, I think Buchanan is wrong in that piece when he says…
…in rejecting demands that he apologize for his remarks about the La Raza judge presiding over the class-action suit against Trump University, the Donald is instinctively correct.
Assume, as we must, that Trump believes what he said.
Why, then, should he apologize for speaking the truth, as he sees it?
I don't know why we must assume Trump believes what he said. I rarely think any politician believes everything he or she says. One of the few might be Pat Buchanan, who ran for president three times and got zero electoral votes. There's a guy you want to listen to if you're interested in winning.
Frankly, I can't think of an actual presidential candidate who impresses me less than Trump does in the category of Believing What You're Saying. Those who want to do a wee bit better than Buchanan did all pander to some extent to the crowds before their podiums. This whole thing with the judge seems pretty simple: Trump's reputation is being sullied by this Trump University lawsuit and he stands a good chance of losing it so he needs an explanation for why it's rigged. Blaming a Mexican sits very well indeed with Trump's base.
Hey, I just Googled Buchanan's name to find out something I was going to write about here and I discovered that Ed Kilgore just wrote a terrific response to Buchanan's column. I don't have a strong finish for this so I'll just suggest you read him.
The wonderful folks who run Comic-Con International today announced…
Elliot S! Maggin, Richard E. Hughes to Receive 2016 Bill Finger Award
Comic-Con International is proud to announce that Elliot S! Maggin and Richard E. Hughes have been selected to receive the 2016 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.
"Once again, I asked on my blog for suggestions of worthy recipients," Evanier explains. "We wound up with a lot of worthy names from which to choose, but these two seemed the worthiest."
The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 on the suggestion of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. "The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition," Evanier explains. "Even though the late Bill Finger now finally receives recognition for his role in the creation of Batman, he's still the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition." Evanier will present the awards during the Eisner Awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 22 at the San Diego Hilton Bayfront.
Elliot S! Maggin began his career the hard way, submitting a script completely on "spec" to DC Comics in 1971. Editor Julius Schwartz thought it was the best submission he'd seen in several decades and bought it. Before long, Maggin was writing for most of DC's star characters with a special emphasis on Superman. He has published several novels, including the upcoming Not My Closet and the soon to be re-released Superman: Miracle Monday. Among his other comic book credits are Green Arrow, Archie's Super-Teens, Batman, Justice League, Elseworlds, Hulk, Peter Parker, Strange Sports Stories, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Ellison's Dark Corridors, Star Raiders, Joker, and a bunch of others, including a Marvel Classics version of Homer's 24-book Iliad "crowbarred" (his term for what he did) into 48 pages. He has also taught at every grade level including adults, run twice for Congress, designed games and software, and raised horses, dogs, bees, and kids.
Richard E. Hughes (1909–1974) was one of the most prolific writers and editors to ever work in comics, so much so that his work was published under dozens of pen names ranging from "Ace Aquila" to "Zev Zimmer." Even "Richard E. Hughes" was a pen name for the man born Leo Rosenbaum. "Hughes" began writing for advertising and pulps in the 1930s, and his first known comic book credits were for Pine Comics where he co-created and wrote Doc Strange (no relation to the later Marvel hero) for Thrilling Comics #1 in 1940. His best-known character of that era was probably The Black Terror for Standard Comics. He eventually assumed the editor position for publisher Ben Sangor and helmed Sangor's American Comics Group, which published both funny comics and the first horror titles, such as Adventures Into the Unknown. Hughes wrote many of the scripts for years and almost all of them the last decade of ACG's existence. His best-known work came in a 1958 issue of Forbidden Worlds, where he wrote and co-created the Fat Fury, Herbie Popnecker, who later spun off into his own, well-remembered comic book series of the sixties, Herbie.
The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.
In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.
The major sponsor for the 2016 awards is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.
The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. Additional information on the Finger Award can be found at this link.
