Mark Evanier's Blog, page 104

From the E-Mailbag…

My buddy Tom Brevoort sent me a question that a number of other folks sent me…

Your post today about the best and worst episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show immediately made me wonder the obvious question: if you'd rank "The Twizzle" about ten spots from the bottom, what do you consider to be the worst episode of the series?

I'm not sure I'd say "worst" so much as "weakest" because I don't really dislike any of them. Even the weakest episodes have moments when it's fun to watch that wonderful cast doing what they do. But if I had to list the nine weakest episodes in my opinion at this moment, I think they'd be — in no particular order — "The Bad Old Days," "You Ought to Be in Pictures," "Viva Petrie," "Uncle George," "The Square Triangle," "Happy Birthday and Too Many More," "The Lady and the Babysitter," "Like a Sister" and "The Lady and the Tiger and the Lawyer."

I don't care for most of the episodes that are about jealousy, especially ones where Rob or Laura thinks the other would be happier with someone else. The Petrie marriage always seemed so ideal that it couldn't be shaken by something as trivial and contrived as someone at work flirting with Rob or an old boy friend of Laura's showing up. I'm not saying there can't be jealousy in a marriage; just that in this show about this marriage, that kind of problem pops up out of nowhere and then it gets resolved ten minutes later by one or both suddenly remembering that they love each other.

Today's Double Feature

Here's one of Woody Allen's best movies, Hannah and Her Sisters from 1986…

And here's an even better Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall from 1977…

From the E-Mailbag…

The California Secretary of State, writing on behalf of Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, sent me this message…

Hello MARK EVANIER,

This is a message from the California Secretary of State on behalf of Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters. The US Postal Service has collected your ballot for the upcoming November 5, 2024, General Election and will deliver it to us soon.

Questions? Call (800) 815-2666 or email votebymail@rrcc.lacounty.gov. Visit https://lavote.gov for election information.

Thank you, California Secretary of State. It's nice of you to keep me informed like this. Now, could you possibly inform all the people and agencies who e-mail me, robocall me or send me text messages trying to influence my votes that I have marked my ballot and sent it off and that there's no point in them pestering me? I would be most appreciative.

10

The other day here, I listed My 25 Favorite Episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. A couple of folks wrote to ask me where they can be seen…and the answer is "All over YouTube and almost any streaming channel that carries vintage television programming." But to save you the hunt, I made up this page where I countdown my ten favorites. Happy viewing.

Today's Double Feature

We have two more feature films for you today…

This is American Graffiti from 1973…

And here's (arguably) the best movie Jerry Lewis was ever in, The King of Comedy from 1983…

Value for Your Money – Part 1

With rare exceptions, comic books are printed on presses that handle "signatures" of eight pages — so the insides of a comic book usually must be a multiple of eight pages.  The way some printers' presses worked, they had to be multiples of sixteen pages.

These days, those "insides" are on pretty good paper stock but for its first four or so decades, the industry put those insides on the cheapest paper available. Then they'd print a four page signature on a different, more expensive press with more expensive paper and that would form the cover, the inside front cover, the inside back cover and the back cover.

Bind it all together and you had yourself a comic book.

64 pages

As an example, let's take a long-running book like Action Comics. Action Comics #1 came out on May 3, 1938 and it featured the debut of some obscure character named Superman. The issue contained…

Superman (pg. 1–13) by Jerry Siegel and Joe ShusterChuck Dawson (pgs. 14–19) by H. FlemingZatara, Master Magician (pgs. 20–31) by Fred Guardineer"South Sea Strategy" (text feature, pgs. 32–33) by Captain Frank ThomasSticky-Mitt Stimson (pgs. 34–37) by AlgerThe Adventures of Marco Polo (pgs. 38–41) by Sven ElvenPep Morgan (pgs. 42–45) by Fred GuardineerScoop Scanlon (pgs. 46–51) by Will ElyTex Thomson (pgs. 52–63) by Bernard BailyStardust (pg. 64) by "The Star-Gazer"

There was also a front cover, an inside front cover telling us about the comic, an inside back cover ("Odds 'N Ends" by Sheldon Moldoff) and an ad on the back cover.  For the purposes of this article, we shall henceforth ignore covers and all page counts will be referring to the interiors.  So Action Comics #1 had 64 pages…and it cost a dime.

That was how big an issue of Action Comics was for a while but as we know, prices go up.  They go up on printing and they also go up on what writers and artists have to spend each week on food and rent…so what they were paid had to go up.  Furthermore, as World War II wound down, paper costs soared and it became apparent to all funnybook publishers that they either had to raise prices or decrease page count.  As far as I know, there was no consultation among the many houses that put out comics.  They all just kind of decided that "kids" (which is how they referred to their customers) would object to paying more and it was preferable to give them less.

56 pages

So as of #61, which came out in April of 1943, Action Comics lost eight pages, slimming down to 56 pages.  That size didn't last long.  It was more efficient to print 16-page signatures so a little more than a year after going from 64 to 56, Action Comics (and most others) went to 48 pages. Action Comics #75 was the first Action Comics of this thickness.

48 pages

A few publishers had longer-term contracts with their printers or other arrangements that kept costs down but the whole industry pretty much moved to 48 pages…

40 pages

…until 1951 when another downsizing of the package seemed necessary.  Action Comics #162, which came out in September of that year, was 40 pages.

And then in 1954, DC faced a moment of truth.  They either had to go to 32 pages or raise the cover price from ten cents.

Other companies had already made that decision.  Martin Goodman's company — the firm we now know as Marvel — had been offering 32 pages for a dime for over a year. Fawcett — the output publishing Captain Marvel (the one in the red suit who said "Shazam!" a lot) had been selling 32 pages for ten cents since about the time DC went to 40 pages.  Other companies bounced around.  Dell for quite some time put out some 32-page comics for ten cents and some 48 page ones for the same price.

But in '54, DC had to decide what to do.  32 pages for ten cents or raise the cover price?  I once asked Whitney Ellsworth, who had the title of Editor-in-Chief at DC then and he muttered something I didn't quite understand.  Mr. Ellsworth was one of the most nervous, terrified-of-saying-the-wrong-thing human beings I have ever encountered and I think (italicized for emphasis) that what he said was something like, "We looked at the sales of other companies and it didn't seem like going to 32 pages had hurt sales."

And I'm pretty sure he said — and this is a paraphrase but it's close — "We knew that if we raised the price and anyone else stayed at a dime, we'd get murdered."  So DC went to 32 pages for ten cents and pretty soon, that became the standard for any comic book that wasn't so thick that it felt like a special.  The first 32 page issue of Action Comics was #197 which hit the newsstands in August of 1954.

32 pages

You really couldn't make a comic book any thinner than that…so the next time costs went up for the publishers, they were going to have to do something they dreaded, something they feared greatly.  They were going to have to raise the price.

I'll continue this in Part 2 in a few days.

Today's Video Link

The beginning of the COVID Lockdown feels like it happened decades ago but it was actually March of 2020.  Just before things started closing left and right, Lewis Black did this comedy special. Watching it the other night was for me a well-spent hour…

Drug Deals

The Walgreens chain has announced its plan to close 1,200 stores…which they could probably do by cutting back to one store per block in New York City. They currently have them all strategically placed to snag any customer who doesn't feel like walking up to 10 yards to the nearest Duane Reade.

As I've mentioned here, I keep getting spam calls from people claiming to work for Walgreens, trying to find out my private medical information. It occurs to me that with the actual Walgreens closing so many stores, a lot of real Walgreens employees are going to be unemployed and some will probably get jobs making those spam calls to me claiming to be Walgreens employees.

Today's Double Feature

An awful lot of full movies are being uploaded, apparently quite legally, to YouTube.  So for a while here, I'm going to link you to two of them each day. Let's start with a little Mel Brooks Film Festival, shall we?

Here's Spaceballs from 1987…

…and Life Stinks from 1991…

Go Read It!

I don't have time today — or for that matter, the stomach — to write a long post about politics and the election. But go read Fred Kaplan and his summary of the new Bob Woodward book. The stuff about Trump's relationship with Putin is chilling.