NEWS from me

July 26, 2002 · 6:00 PM PDT · link

GORDON KENT liked what I posted about him (previous item) but suggested I explain to folks why he didn't get paid for coloring the first Groo story. It's because it appeared in a benefit comic for which no one got paid. Back in 1982, our friend Steve Gerber was locked in a battle with Marvel Comics over his creation, Howard the Duck. Marvel's admitted strategy was to make the battle so expensive that Steve would just give up. That he didn't...that he was able to continue it until a satisfactory settlement was reached...had a lot to do with Destroyer Duck #1. A whole batch of us — including Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Neal Adams, Shary Flenniken, Marty Pasko, Joe Staton, Scott Shaw!, Dan Spiegle and a couple of other folks, including Steve — donated our time and talents to put out this comic, all proceeds going towards Gerber's legal bills. Sergio contributed the first-completed Groo tale. I was very proud to be involved in this project and glad to have Gordon and all the others participating.

NEXT WEEK'S TV Guide features a list of the "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time." Their top five are, in this order: Bugs Bunny, Homer Simpson, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Beavis & Butt-Head and the Grinch. Although I am quoted as an authority in the article, I never place much stock in this kind of list. It is, after all, just the opinion of some small group of folks, whose levels of expertise and taste — and perhaps even, their identities — are unknown to us. You and I could get three friends together and cobble up a list that would be just as valid or invalid. The only difference would be that ours wouldn't be in TV Guide.

Their list is odd. It includes Gerald McBoing-Boing, Wonder Woman, Angelica Pickles and the bill from Schoolhouse Rock...but omits Droopy, Huckleberry Hound, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Yosemite Sam, Goofy, Super Chicken, Crusader Rabbit, Elmer Fudd, The Tasmanian Devil, The Pink Panther, Foghorn Leghorn and many others. There are no Jetsons or Smurfs, and there are a lot of odd rankings (Josie and the Pussycats are #24, Porky Pig is #47) and strange groupings (Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are one listing, whereas Homer Simpson is one, Bart and Lisa Simpson comprise another).

But it's just a list, just someone's opinion...and I wonder why anyone takes something like this seriously, as I'm sure folks will across the Internet in the coming week. Watch the fighting begin.

JUST ADDED another page of Groo Stuff. One of the items there is a clipping from a magazine that once declared my partner, Sergio Aragonés, deceased. There's a current auction of his work on eBay that did likewise. Folks wrote to the guy to tell him that Sergio was alive and the seller updated his auction to say, "I could have sworn that I heard that he'd past [sic] away a few years ago, it must have been one of those pranks that Sergio is notorious for pulling." I've known Sergio for 32 years and I can't recall a single prank he's pulled, let alone faking his own demise.

July 26, 2002 · 1:00 AM PDT · link

MY LONGTIME PAL Gordon Kent is writing gags for the new Pink Panther newspaper strip being offered by Universal Press Syndicate. Here's a link to a page that's hawking it to potential buyers. There, you'll be able to see a number of samples and you'll see that it seems like a clever, funny strip so far. This is probably because Gordon is clever and Gordon is funny. When he isn't doing things like that, he's directing or producing some of the better animated shows for TV. The guy's certainly come a long way from those humiliating days when a so-called "friend" conned him into coloring the first Groo story and didn't pay him one red cent. Lately, he's done a number of shows for Disney where they pay better...though not by much.

July 25, 2002 · 12:30 AM PDT · link

WELL, HE DIDN'T DISAPPOINT. We all expected James Traficant's address to Congress to be rambling and incoherent and full of wild-eyed conspiracy theories...and he even managed to get to an anal joke in his first five minutes. Aside from donning women's clothing or biting off part of somebody's ear, there wasn't much he could have done to make it more embarrassing. Maybe if he'd dropped his pants and fired a rocket.

The thing I find especially funny is that Traficant received one vote and it wasn't his own. He abstained, or perhaps he wasn't allowed to vote. No, he got one vote and if you didn't hear who cast it, think for a second. Who would it be? If you were trying to think of the perfect way to cap this thing off and create fodder for Mr. Leno's monologue, who would have be the one member of Congress to vote against Traficant's expulsion from the House?

Yeah, it was him...a little present to say, "Thank you for making me no longer the biggest sleaze in Congress." (If you still haven't figured out who it was, click here to consult an article about the vote.)

I'd like to think we haven't heard the last of James A. Traficant. He's probably going to prison but when he gets out, he'll be back...maybe as a radio talk show host...maybe as the commercial spokesperson for Preparation H. He'll turn up somewhere. Heck, if the rules allow it, he could even run again and probably win. By that time, with all the indictments and convictions were likely to see in the financial scandals, he'll look positively honest by comparison. Beam me up!

R.C. HARVEY has posted a great bio of cartooning great Roy Crane. Crane was one of the best "storytellers" to ever work in the medium and anyone attempting to draw comics (books or strips) would do well to seek out and devour his work. Here's the link to Bob's fine article.

A FEW DAYS AGO, in this item, I mentioned a man who claims to have psychic powers when he fondles a person's buttocks. I pinned the looniness on Florida, which was not quite correct. The ass-reader is based in Germany. The link was to a story about him disseminated by a Florida news outlet. You can all readily understand, however, how I could have made such a mistake.

July 24, 2002 · 11:00 AM PDT · link

DEBATE on Mr. Traficant is scheduled to start at 6 PM Eastern time and to be covered in full on C-Span. I can't wait. I hope they don't spoil it with one of those annoying laugh tracks.

July 24, 2002 · 10:30 AM PDT · link

COMIC BOOK superstar Todd McFarlane has won, at least for now, his battle with hockey player Tony Twist. Todd modeled a character in his Spawn comic on Twist, who turned around and sued over the unauthorized use of his name. Two years ago this month, a Missouri jury awarded Twist $24.5 million. (Do you realize how many baseballs you could buy for $24.5 million?) Later that year, an appeals court overturned the decision. Twist filed an appeal but the Missouri Supreme Court has now decided to side with the appellate guys. Here's a link to the text of the 35-page decision if you'd like to plow through it. Basically, it comes down to this line:

The use of a public figure's name and persona in a work of fiction is protected by the First Amendment when no reasonable person could believe that the things described in the fictional work are "of and concerning" the plaintiff.

Congrats to Todd...and my admiration for not settling this outta court for a million or three, which is probably what Mr. Twist and his lawyers figured you'd do. That kind of settlement chips away at the First Amendment as effectively as any censor or book-burner. And I must say I was disappointed in a couple of folks in the comic book field who subordinated an important principle to their schadenfreude-type hope that Todd would lose big.

July 24, 2002 · 3:30 AM PDT · link

THOUGHTS JUST BEFORE BEDTIME: They're saying a vote on James Traficant could come as soon as this evening, which would mean his 30 minute defense would occur sometime today. I'm so worried he won't be able to outdo his previous levels of embarrassing behavior, especially since he'll only have a half-hour. I keep telling myself James won't let us down but...I don't know. He's going to really have to go some. Maybe he could just come out and do Rip Taylor's old act...throw some confetti around...

CONAN O'BRIEN hosting the Emmys. Excellent idea. Might even get me to watch.

THE LAST FEW DAYS, every "talking head" show I've caught on CNN, Fox or MSNBC has had little to offer but Democrats and Republicans arguing over which is to blame for the current stock market meltdown. What I don't think some of these guys get is that the American public thinks they're both responsible...and that even if one party took more direct action to cause these financial disasters, we expect the other party to stop them. This is, after all, why we have opposition parties, isn't it?

FOR THOSE ATTENDING the Comic-Con International next week in San Diego: AccuWeather is predicting mostly clear, with daytime highs between 72 and 80 and evening lows not much cooler. Here's a link to their forecast. While we're at it, here's a link to this site's list of convention tips.

And here's that link again to the list of panels and events I'm moderating. Every one a gem! The entire schedule is now up at www.comic-con.org if you have the slightest interest in the stuff I'm not hosting.

July 23, 2002 · 10:00 PM PDT · link

DO YOU SEE a picture of famed Stooge Shemp Howard above? If not, you'll want to read our latest NOTES from me. It's all about all the different graphics formats that you may find popping up on the Internet and why you should always update your browser so you can be up to date on them. You should especially do this if you are unable to read this text. (Don't try to figure this out. Just read the article.)

July 23, 2002 · 2:45 PM PDT · link

IT WAS some time ago, we reported rumors that the long-running Mad knock-off, Cracked Magazine, had bitten the dust...and, indeed, they've gone through some changes in proprietorship, were off the stands for a time and endured a lot of hardship, including a reported Anthrax scare in their building. But as Dan Fiorella — a very funny writer who can occasionally be found in its pages — reminds me, Cracked has returned in all its wacky glory to newsracks. Issue #358 has just gone to press (including some work by Dick Ayers) and will be out on August 6. If you can't wait, you can rummage around on the Cracked website.

July 23, 2002 · 12:30 AM PDT · link

I LOVE TYPOS. Here's one I just found over on the front page of The Washington Post website and "captured" so I could post it here for you all. This just proves that if you want to reform the accounting practices of this or any other country, you have to start by getting yourself a pair of real shoes.

July 22, 2002 · 8:30 PM PDT · link

MY LONGTIME BUDDY Leonard Maltin has just unveiled his own website. Those of you who spend a lot of time browsing the articles on this site can now divide your time. Waste half as much of your life here and waste the other half over reading his informative comments on www.leonardmaltin.com. Leonard has been providing important film history and commentary for years and it's nice to have him here in the vast wasteland of Cyberspace.

VETERAN Mad Magazine artist George Woodbridge has suffered a small foot injury...just serious enough to force him to cancel his appearance at this year's Comic-Con International. Drat.

In the meantime, we've added Maurice LaMarche to our panel of Cartoon Voice Artists on Saturday afternoon. Maurice is one of the best, as viewers of Futurama, Pinky and the Brain, The Critic and dozens of other shows can attest, and we're glad to have him aboard.

July 22, 2002 · 10:30 AM PDT · link

OBITUARY for Gene Moss in the L.A. Times. Here's the link to it. And David M. Lynch writes to remind me that I omitted a very important credit from the man's résumé...

During the onset of the British invasion, there was a top-40 parody of the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," entitled "I Want to Bite Your Hand." It came from an RCA album called "Dracula's Greatest Hits." Said album featured several drawings (front and back cover, and a set of "monster cards" enclosed within the jacket) by the great Jack Davis. Every song on the LP was "sung" by a guy named Gene Moss, doing a Bela Lugosi impression. This LP was one of my cherished childhood possessions, and one of the first things I began looking for when I first started visiting eBay.

Thanks, David. I also forgot (because this, I didn't know) that Moss was the voice of Smokey the Bear for commercials. He was an amazing talent.

A FELLOW NAMED Brian Fitterman has an interesting hobby/business: He collects and sells high school yearbooks. He has over 2,500 of them and sometimes sells on eBay. Right now, he's auctioning a 1926 yearbook from Glendale High School. Here's the listing and, as you can see if you get there in time, this yearbook is full of drawings by the great animator, Dick Bickenbach. "Bic," as everyone called him, had a tremendous career animating for Warner Brothers and MGM, among others, and occasionally dabbling in comic books. He drew most of those Flintstones and Yogi Bear comics I wrote back in the seventies for Hanna-Barbera and he knew those characters well, as he'd been one of the main designers of their shows. (At one point, an H-B merchandising exec — a man whose ignorance of their own characters was legendary — tried telling me that the Yogi of our comics didn't precisely match the Yogi of the official studio model sheet.

I smiled sweetly and pointed out that both were by the same artist, Dick Bickenbach.) Bic also dabbled in cartoon voice work, supplying his Bing Crosby imitation whenever such was needed...as in the classic WB short, Swooner Crooner. He was quite a guy and I think he'd be astounded (and amused) to see his old yearbook up for sale because of his teen-year doodles.

AND RIGHT here we have another one of those news stories that's worth at least a week of Leno monologues: A blind psychic who "reads" people by fondling their buttocks. And wouldn't you just know, the guy's in Florida? (Thanks, Carolyn)

July 22, 2002 · 12:30 AM PDT · link

FOR MANY YEARS, it was everyone's favorite restaurant (including mine) in Hollywood. Last week, it became an empty lot. Here's the story of Hamptons (later known as Hamptons Hollywood Cafe) with special guest star Paul Newman. It's the special of the day over in NOTES from me.

THERE'S NO ONE who does their job better than Vin Scully when he narrates a Dodgers game. I stopped following baseball about the time I discovered ladies but every now and then, I catch a few innings of Mr. Scully at the mike and it really doesn't matter who's playing or what the score is. It's just wonderful to hear him. I still remember listening to the final innings, that night in 1965 when Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game. If you have RealAudio installed and you click on this link, you can hear that last, historic out.

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