Todd Klein's Blog, page 311

Birds and Butterfly

I’ve been out scouting for the World Series of Birding this weekend, and using my new camera when the chances were good. This Rose-Breasted Grosbeak was near the feeders at the Cape May Bird Observatory in Cape May Point Friday.

This Fish Crow was even closer, on the porch railing. Why? They feed him. Oh, and how do I know it’s a Fish Crow, not an American Crow? Only by the call, which is a harsh “AUCH!” or “UH-OH!”

I spent quite a lot of time in Belleplain State Forest, but with mostly cloudy skies and uncooperative birds, this Red Admiral butterfly is the only photo I have. There was a huge number of them moving north through our area this past week.

A Cattle Egret, which is usually found in grassy fields rather than near or in water. Uncommon, and often hard to find.

This Bald Eagle looks like a young bird just fledging into its adult plumage, making it look rather unkempt.

A group of Brant, which are small geese.

Finally, a Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron, a rare bird unless you know where to find their roosting/nesting site. I went to the spot we found them last year, and there were about six there, two on nests. That’s great, if they had changed roosts, which they do every few years, it would be much harder to find them on the Big Day.

Exactly one week from now…

Do you know where you’ll be? I do. I’ll be in Belleplain State Forest on about my 15th straight hour of birding. I’ll be staggeringly tired, as well as bug-bit, bleary-eyed, and sunburned, wind-blown or soggy, depending on the weather. I’ll be with the CMBO Century Run Team doing the 2012 World Series of Birding, desperately seeking a few more species to increase our tally and raise more money for nature conservation, research and education.

If you enjoy this blog please consider pledging your support to my effort. Last year we tallied 118 species, but a more average number is 140. A pledge of 10 cents per species would mean a donation of about $14. For that you’ll get a signed comic I lettered (my choice). If you pledge 50 cents per species, for a donation of about $70, I’ll mail you any one of my signed prints. For $1 per species you’ll get two.

I do have some repeat pledgers, but it would be great to have a few new ones. How about you? Email me if you’d like to join us.

Ira Schnapp and the early DC logos, new information

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

Since I began seriously researching old logos about five years ago, one of the more tantalizing and elusive credits has been the early work of Ira Schnapp. Schnapp worked on staff at DC Comics from about 1949 until 1968, but many people in the field have said Schnapp designed or redesigned the logo above, which first appeared on issue 6 of SUPERMAN dated November, 1940, based on several earlier versions by Superman co-creator Joe Shuster. (His logos appeared on issues 1-5 and other places.)

I never had the chance to meet Ira, who died in 1969, but in trying to pin down this “common knowledge” attribution I’ve spoken to or corresponded with at least a dozen people who knew Ira or met and talked to him about his work, from contemporaries like Jerry Robinson and Murphy Anderson to kids who took the DC office tours like Marv Wolfman and Alan Kupperberg. When asked, most of them repeated the story about Schnapp designing this logo, some also gave him credit for other early DC logos like ACTION COMICS and DETECTIVE COMICS. But when asked if they themselves ever asked Ira Schnapp if he had designed those logos, the answer was either “no,” or “I don’t recall.”

I examined the earliest DC logos in THIS logo study and came to the conclusion that most of them did not look like the work of Schnapp, though the ACTION one did stand above the others in design quality, so I thought that one might possibly have been by Ira. I made guesses about possible designers for some of the others.

Recently on my “Todd Klein, artist” page on Facebook (link in the left column of this page) I ran this logo image from the DC files, done by Schnapp, which combines a photostat of the original SUPERMAN logo in part with new lettering for BABY. I said the perfect match in styles reinforced the idea that Schnapp had designed that SUPERMAN logo back in 1940, for which I had no real evidence. In response I got a message from comics writer and Batman movie producer Michael Uslan, who visited the DC offices several times as a child, and worked there as an intern a few years later. Michael wrote me about his memories of talking to Ira Schnapp, though he combined those memories with later talking to letterer Ben Oda and dated his recollection to 1972-73. When I pointed out that was impossible, since Ira had passed by then, we untangled his memories and Michael said it must have been in 1964-65 when he spoke to Ira, during some of the regular office tours given at that time. The important statement from Uslan, and one that I find convincing based on other accounts from those who talked to Schnapp is this one:

“He (Ira Schnapp) loved that I was interested in the history of the industry and DC. He showed me many of his logos and was proudest of creating the classic trademark Superman logo. I then assumed he designed every DC logo and he said he did not do the ones before Superman like Detective Comics or Action Comics but that he started right after that.”

This description fits very well with what I’ve heard from others; that Ira loved to talk about his work, was very friendly, and often talked to the kids on the office tours and showed them things he was working on or had done. Uslan was an enthusiastic comics fan, especially DC Comics, and the perfect audience for Schnapp. The fact that he mentioned the classic SUPERMAN logo in particular says to me that, not only was he proud of working on it, he probably told lots of people the same thing, leading to that “common knowledge” so many have repeated. And, while Uslan’s memory may be a little hazy in some areas, it makes sense to me he’d remember that conversation.

That returns the designer of ACTION COMICS to a complete mystery, as it was before I started my research, but it does open up some other interesting possibilities. We know the designer of the BATMAN logo, Jerry Robinson, but the creator of other logos for the company in the 1940s are mostly unknown. Those done for All-American Comics, the sister company to National (as DC was then known) do not look like the work of Schnapp to me, but perhaps he designed the WORLD’S FINEST logo or the script WONDER WOMAN logo. I’ll have to think more on this, but I’m grateful to Michael Uslan for his memory of what Ira Schnapp said on this subject. While not hard evidence, it may be the closest I’ll get to the truth on this topic.

And Then I Read: LEGION SECRET ORIGIN 6

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

The final issue of this miniseries wraps things up nicely, and in some ways that I found surprising, though I can’t say too much about that without giving away plot points, so I won’t. Though I had some doubts that there was enough story to tell about the early days of The Legion without repeating past stories, Paul Levitz proved me wrong. There’s plenty of fresh events and fine character moments here that I haven’t seen before.

The art by Chris Batista and Marc Deering has a refreshing openness to it that is kind of a nice break from the very busy and detailed art many of today’s comics have. There’s room for the characters to breathe, and interact, and relate to each other without lots of clutter. Perhaps a bit more variety in shot choices would be a good addition to the mix (distant shots, high and low angles, extreme closeups, silhouettes), as there’s not too much of that, but overall this is really nice work, and the characters are portrayed in a way that I find appealing and even playful, appropriate for their young age, though they don’t look as young as they did in the real early Legion stories.

Recommended.

And Then I Read: JUSTICE LEAGUE 7

Images © DC Comics, Inc.

This issue begins not one but two new storylines, as the book has a main story and a backup. Geoff Johns writes both, the feature has art by Gene Ha, an excellent choice to replace Jim Lee. More on that in a minute. The story focuses on a new villain called Spore, who seems more of a typical human-turned-monster than previous JL opponents, and the “team” continues to act more like a group of headstrong individuals when facing this new danger. The interplay is rather fun, but this is not much of a team. At the end we have a quite interesting character story about Colonel Steve Trevor, who is acting as a sort of JL liaison to the U.S. government, his new assistant Miss Candy, and a certain Wonder Woman. It plays out well for me.

Here’s a page of fine Gene Ha art with some pretty creepy monsters created by Spore.

The backup features the relaunch of the character formerly known as Captain Marvel, now simply Shazam, I think. It begins as almost an homage to the stories of the Golden Age character, but then takes a swift turn into something much more contemporary. I thought I might dislike this, but I actually rather like it. Kind of looking forward to more. Be interesting to see how they handle Shazam, as he simply appears on the final page. Artist Gary Frank does an excellent job with the art as well, drawing a great Batson with lots of subtle acting.

Recommended.

Incoming: The LOXLEYS and the WAR OF 1812

Images © Renegade Arts Canmore Ltd.

Just arrived is this handsome slightly oversized hardcover, very similar to DC’s Deluxe format. Sewn binding, excellent printing and paper, and a story I really enjoyed working on. As the sole American on the creative team I learned a great deal about this war between the U.S. and Canada, and found Alan Grant’s script compelling, even though the Americans don’t come off so well!

Claude St. Aubin’s art is also quite good, as is the coloring by Lovern. In addition to the graphic story following one Canadian family thrown into this war, there’s a lengthy and detailed text article by historian Mark Zuehlke filling in lots more of the details. If you’re interested in American or Canadian history, this will not only entertain you, it will probably educate you as well. Find or order it at your comics shop, or contact the publisher for more information:

Renegade Arts Entertainment: War of 1812.

 

And Then I Read: CREEPY COMICS Volume 1

Images © New Comic Company & Dark Horse Books.

This trade paperback collects the first four issues of new stories put out by Dark Horse, in the tradition of the original Warren magazine. I was not a huge fan of Warren, though I did buy and read select issues of CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA. I remember enjoying some of the stories, particularly those of Archie Goodwin, but it was mostly the art that attracted me. This new collection has a wide variety of artistic styles, which I like, and includes some veterans like Angelo Torres and Bernie Wrightson as well as artists like Hilary Barta that I’d consider more of my generation, and quite a few younger guys, some of whose work I recognize, some I don’t. The stories also have a few by veterans like Doug Moench and Joe R. Lansdale, but are mainly by writers who I assume are younger and unknown to me.

In general I enjoyed the book, though the level of blood, gore and violence seems pretty high, and is not really to my taste, even in (mostly) black and white. There’s a bit too much of things like cannibalism and serial killing. I kind of prefer more psychological horror, and there is some of that, but not a lot. These stories tend to go for the gross out. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll find plenty of it here.

Here’s a page by Angelo Torres, whose work appeared in both EC horror comics (also known for going to the gross stuff) and Warren, but his work here is a little cartoony and more reminiscent of his MAD MAGAZINE years. Still quite good, though.

If you like horror this is certainly worth a look. I kind of doubt I’ll be getting later volumes myself. Mildly recommended.

My New Camera

The digital camera I’ve been using since 2003, an Olympus C-730, has served me well, and taken thousands of great pictures, but at times I ran up against its limitations, too. It has a 10x optical zoom and 3.2 Megapixel image size, and has been great for a point and shoot camera. A few weeks ago I noticed that there was debris inside the lens, some of it on the lens surface, creating blurry spots in my photos. I had no way of getting it out, and didn’t think it was worth having it professionally cleaned. I decided it was time for a new camera. I spent about a week reading up and shopping online and settled on this Panasonic Lumix FZ150. It’s what’s called a “bridge” camera, meant to bridge the divide between point and shoot cameras and full-fledged SLRs. It has a single non-changeable lens, but what a lens! It zooms from wide angle to 24x optical magnification. Picture size is about 12 Megapixels, so four times more detail in the images than my previous camera. And it has lots of other features I thought would be handy, including a large LCD screen for shooting or viewing photos and videos (it does that, too) as well as a viewfinder, image stabilization, a top-rated automatic mode and lots of manual options. The camera arrived yesterday, and today I spent some time using it.

This morning I went out birding and picture-taking first in Belleplain State Forest, and it was a beautiful sunny morning. I was hoping for some good birds to test the abilities of the camera, and I found a few.

Here’s a Summer Tanager shot at full 24x zoom, then cropped to make the bird appear even larger.

And here’s a Worm-Eating Warbler at much the same settings. These are two birds I could never have captured this well with my old camera, so I’m very pleased. Of course, the opportunities to get good photos of small songbirds are always rare, so there were plenty I missed because they were moving to much, hiding too much, or just plain invisible!

As far as wide angle shots, the camera does great with those as well, with East Creek Pond, above, as an example.

I then drove to Beaver Dam Road for another birding spot and found this Snowy Egret, a much larger bird, and one that’s much easier to photograph.

Butterflies are smaller than birds, but usually easier to photograph because they sit still for a while. This Spicebush Swallowtail posed helpfully in the sandy road.

Some butterflies are quite small, like this Red-Banded Hairstreak, and they’re more challenging, but the zoom on the new camera made it pretty easy to get this shot. Compare the size of the sand grains here to the picture above to get an idea of the size difference.

Back home I tried out the flash on our older cat, Katie.

And took this of the boys, Tigger and Leo, on our screened porch.

I took lots of yard pictures, but I’ll show just this one, which I like the best, of a Bumblebee on an Azalea.

I’m very happy with the camera, and you can expect lots of pictures from it here in the future. And if I can figure out how to get video onto my Mac, maybe some of that, too, we’ll see.

 

World Series of Birding, 2012

Two weeks from today, Saturday May 12th, is the annual outdoor escapade and fundraiser known as The World Series of Birding. Ellen will be away this year, but I’ve signed up with the Cape May Bird Observatory Century Run team as usual. Along with many other teams we will attempt to spot as many bird species as possible. The top teams will go from midnight to midnight, and cover the entire state of New Jersey. Our Century Run team’s goals are a little more relaxed: we go from 5 AM to about 9 PM and stay within Cape May County. It’s still a marathon to test one’s determination, but usually a lot of fun, too. Each participant pledges a minimum of $1 per species seen, which you can supplement with pledges from friends and family if you like. And that, my good friends, is where you can participate!

As in the past, I’m encouraging you to make a pledge for my WSB big day, to help me raise funds for the Cape May Bird Observatory, part of the New Jersey Audubon Society, and their valuable mission of conservation, education and research. You can pledge any amount, but the usual method is to pledge per species seen. Last year our total was a measly 118 species, as the weather really worked against us. A more typical total is 140 species. If we tally 140 species, a pledge of 50 cents per would result in a monetary gift of $70. A pledge of $1 per species would mean a gift of $140. As a bonus, I’m offering any of my Signed Prints as incentives: for a pledge of 50 cents per species, the print of your choice, for $1 per species, any two! Higher pledges are welcome and will garner more prints in the same ratio. Pledges lower than 50 cents will get you a signed comic or two that I lettered, my choice. All pledges will support education about and preservation of New Jersey wildlife and natural resources, as well as my enduring gratitude!

Here’s a LINK to my blog about last year’s WSB Century Run, if you’d care to read it. And if you’d like to pledge, click the CONTACT ME link in the left column of this page and let me know by email. I’ll be collecting pledges until May 11th. Oh, and if you’d like to participate in person by joining the team, let me know that too, and I’ll put you in touch with someone to sign you up. Our team will be out there tallying on the 12th, rain or shine, hoping for good weather and lots of migrating birds. Who knows, maybe this year we’ll hit the elusive goal of 150 species. Here’s hoping!

Baby Possums

I came downstairs this morning while it was still dark to do my stretches, and let Tigger and Leo out on the screened porch as I usually do. A half hour later it was starting to get light, and I saw that they were staring intently at something on the ground about a foot away from the porch, a gray mass. I went out for a closer look, and it was an apparently dead mother Opossum with three pretty large and alive babies.

What to do? I knew we couldn’t raise the babies, but Ellen would want to try if nothing else was possible. I left them alone for a while just in case the mother was “playing dead,” as possums do, but this was an unlikely place for that, and when I went out for a closer look it was clear the mother was cold and stiff. I’m not particularly fond of possums, but they do us no harm and probably some good eating things like grubs. And, as with most animals, the babies were cute, and I wanted to help them if I could. When Ellen came down she suggested we try to contact Steve Serwatka, a licensed animal rehabilitator in our county. We’d seen him do some animal outreach programs for kids with animals he’s rehabilitated but that are not releasable back into the wild, and he seems like a good person with a heart of gold for animals.

I was able to find his phone number online, and called. I woke him up (sorry, Steve!), but he said he could take the baby possums, and gave me his address and directions. As Ellen said, thank God for people like this! I went out with a box and a towel and put the babies into it. They were a bit squirmy, but not hard to handle. I put the box in the garage on a heating pad, and they burrowed into the blanket. Then I went back out and carried the mother well out into the woods behind the house to let nature take its course.

Ellen just had to pick one up for a minute. After we had breakfast, I drove them over to Steve’s house, about a 15 minute drive, and he was there to take them. He brought me into his animal workroom, filled with cages and equipment. He looked the babies over, said they were in quite good shape, and that they should be fine. I filled out a form, and gave him what I think is a generous donation to help with his work, which I’m sure is always in need of funding. Here’s a link to Steve’s Facebook page, if you’d like to see a bit more, though there isn’t a lot there about his rehab work.

For us, the problem is solved, and we’re very grateful. For Steve, the work is just beginning. Thanks again, Steve!