News from me - August 23, 2001

August 23, 2001

WELL, NO ONE I care about died today, so we'll put another $20 in the jackpot...and I'll use this space to plugone of my books. Last year, Sergio Aragonés and I did a six-issue mini-series for DC Comics and all six issues have just been reprinted in a nice, little trade paperback book. It's called Fanboy and it's the story of an aspiring comic book artist named Finster who has occasional troubles separating Reality and Fantasy. Sergio drew the Reality and an awe-inspiring array of guest artists drew the Fantasy: Neal Adams, Marlo Alquiza, Brent Anderson, Jordi Bernet, Will Blyberg, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Joe Giella, Mike Grell, Matt Haley, Russ Heath, Phil Jiminez, Bob Kane (posthumously), Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Kevin Maguire, Frank Miller, Jim Mooney, Kevin Nowlan, Jerry Ordway, Wendy Pini, Steve Rude, Marie Severin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Tom Simmons, Dan Spiegle, Dick Sprang, Bruce Timm and Bernie Wrightson.

If you follow comics at all, a few of your faves are surely on that roster. I had enormous fun doing it and I hope it shows. (For more on this series, click here.)

JUST RECEIVED my copy of Groucho: A Photographic Journey, which is a fancy new book by Arthur "Son of..." Marx. It's a beautiful book of photos, most of which I'd never seen before. And if I'd never seen them, odds are you haven't, either. If you care enough about the Marx Brothers — Groucho, of course, in particular — to want to see wonderful photos of them, offstage and on, you need this book. You can order it from www.amazon.com or, if you want to pay a few bucks more and get it autographed, order it from www.grouchoworld.com. At the latter, you can also order the CD and home video of Frank Ferrante's glorious Groucho replication.

OUR PAL LORENZO MUSIC passed away on a Saturday morning and I posted an obit here that evening. Word of his departure didn't make the wire services until Tuesday or Wednesday but it was all over the Internet by Sunday night, prompting many, many expressions of regret...and a few folks pondering if, perhaps, it wasn't on the news sites because it wasn't true. On newsgroups, message boards and in a few e-mails to me, four or five people were wondering if perhaps I was grossly-mistaken or pulling some wretched-taste hoax.

My first reaction — apart from wishing it was a mistake or hoax — was to take a bit of umbrage. It was like, "Didn't these people look at my site? Didn't they notice that I was someone who'd worked with Lorenzo? Who obviously knew him? There's even a photo of me with him over on the Garfield page." But then I realized something which I'll put it in bold italic type because I think it's important: These people were right to be skeptical.

Absolutely. The Internet is a repository of spurious information, some of it packaged to look very knowing and official, indeed. It is also a dandy place for hoaxes and miscommunication. Lately, those who follow news of the comic book industry on the 'net have witnessed one outright death hoax and another misunderstanding — both about professional artists, both so authoritative that even insiders were taken-in by them and passed them on. You should be suspicious of everything you read on the Internet, even if you read it here. Hell, you should be suspicious of everything you read in a newspaper or hear on the news...

I'VE RECOMMENDED articles by Joe Conason before and I'll highly recommend his current one. It's about Dick Cheney stonewalling on his energy commission while Republicans are leaking details of Bill Clinton's confidential conversations with Ehud Barak. Here's the link.

And another aspect of the same situation is covered over on Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points. Go there by clicking here and read down the page a bit because he keeps adding new items at the top..

IN CASE YOU MISSED the announcement on the first page: If you've been getting to this site via the address, www.evanier.com, please switch over to www.POVonline.com. It'll get you to the same place...and almost a thousandth of a second faster. And if you mention this site elsewhere or link to us, please use the latter name. The old one will still forward, at least for a while.

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