Mark Evanier's Blog, page 12

That Group Pic

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

At Comic-Con, we took a rather amazing group photo of a whole lotta cartoon voice actors plus me. In , we — and by "we," I mean "I" — asked for help in identifying everyone in the photo. A number of you sent in identifications, including one person who I think got 25 out of 35 wrong. But most of you got a lot right and the three people who were the most help were Amber Jones and Seth Rohani (both of whom were in the photo) and Chris Brown. For their help, these three people will receive, as promised, absolutely nothing.

At least, I think we have everyone correctly identified. If you believe — or better still, if you know for sure — someone has been misidentified, send that info to me at this address and I'll see about correcting the list. In the meantime…

Click here if you'd like to view or download a full-size image of the group photo.Click here if you'd like to view or download a full-size image of the group photo with everyone numbered.And if you'd like to view or download a smaller image of the group photo with everyone numbered and a list of names.

And thanks to all of you who played Name That Voice Artist…all of you except the guy who insisted #1 was Jeffrey Epstein. You'll pay for that, Eric.

Semi-Important Announcement

Lately, I've been serializing the story of a panel I moderated at Comic-Con in 2003 with Forrest Ackerman, Julius Schwartz and Ray Bradbury. Steady readers of this blog may have noticed that not only has the last chapter of this tale not appeared here but the first five which were here are no longer here. Here's why…

I said in the first part that as far as I knew, no tapes of this panel — audio or video — existed and I was reconstructing what was said from memory. Well, it turns out I was wrong: An audio tape does exist and I will soon have a copy of it. So I decided to take down the chapters I'd already posted and wait until I have the tape and then rewrite the whole thing with actual quotes. Once that's possible to do, I will post the new, improved version here. It might be a few weeks but it'll be here eventually. Thank you for your patience.

Scenes From Comic-Con #4

More photos from the con.  These are in no particular order…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

This is from a panel I was on but I did not moderate.  The moderator was Gary Sassaman and he's the one in the back.  He set up this panel as an extension of his video series, installments of which I often feature here.  It's called Tales From My Spinner Rack and it consists of Gary recalling comics he loved as a kid, particularly in the sixties.  This time out, he brought in John Morrow (of TwoMorrows Books and The Jack Kirby Collector) to discuss and assess the covers Mr. Kirby drew for his original run on the Fantastic Four comic books.  That's John in the Hawaiian shirt and if I look tired in this photo, I don't know why.  This was only my second panel of this convention.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

This was my seventh.  My pal Mark Waid and I do this panel called "Two Marks Explain Everything" which operates on the premise that if you have a question about anything pertaining to the comic book field and neither of us can answer it, nobody can.  So for an hour, folks threw questions at us and we did our best to answer 'em.  In one or two cases, the answer as to why some company had done something was "Because the guy in charge was stupid" but that's an answer…and in many cases, a correct one.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

On Friday afternoon at the con, I hosted five panels back-to-back in Room 10 and the "Two Marks Explain Everything" one was followed directly by me interviewing my friend-of-many-years Don Glut in the same place.  Later that evening at the Eisner Awards Ceremony, I would present Don with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, but first I got to interview Don about his long career working for among other houses, Warren Publishing, Gold Key Comics and Marvel.  The award is for a writer who has been responsible for a strong body of work that has not received sufficient attention and that perfectly describes Don's output.  You can read more about him here.

More photos from the con to follow.  I have a lot of 'em this year.

Today's Video Link

In 1973, there was an all-star benefit celebrating the work of Stephen Sondheim, a recording of which was released as a double record album. This is a video about that event. It's undergone some A.I. processing so a few of the faces look a little odd but it's a wonderful piece of history and I'm glad it's been preserved…

Severed Head

DC Comics is about to issue a hardcover collection of material drawn years ago for them by the late Alex Toth. This is a noble idea as Toth was one of the ten-or-so (maybe five-or-so) best artists to ever draw for the company but there's a problem. They've released a pic of the cover and it's a Super Friends cover drawing that Alex drew in 1975 when their Production Department was on a kick of retouching the work of freelance artists so they could say, "The artist screwed up and we fixed it!" In this case, they lopped off the head of Superman that Alex had drawn and replaced it with a stat of a Superman head by Curt Swan.

The Toth interpretation of The Man of Steel was appearing on millions of TV sets every Saturday morning on the Super Friends show but it was somehow not good enough to appear on the cover of a magazine with a circulation of (probably) under 150,000. I wrote about this awkward transplant years ago in this article.

From the back cover

In that piece, I congratulate DC for sort of "undoing" the redraw many years later when they issued a poster of the same piece of Toth art. They cloned a Toth-drawn Superman head from the back cover of the same comic and installed it where the Swan-drawn head had once been pasted. I hope before this new hardcover goes to press, someone at DC thinks to do the same thing. If they need a clean, hi-rez copy of that back cover art, they should contact me. I still have the original art to it and I'll scan it for them if they promise me a free copy of the new book. Hell, I'll even scan it if I have to buy a copy…just so long as they restore what Alex drew.

The Latest Colbert Report

Over on this page of Time magazine — and yes, like you, I'm surprised Time is still around and doing anything more than crown someone Person of the Year every year — Judy Berman posits that Stephen Colbert is practically daring CBS to throw him off the air before the remaining ten months of his series are up.  She writes in part…

…whether you think his response to The Late Show's cancellation is brave or foolish, you can't deny that he's playing his cards perfectly against Paramount and CBS. If the powers that be pull him off the air before May 2026, he'll have all but proven that their decision to dump him was about more than the cost of making his show. And if they resign themselves to letting him say whatever he wants for the next 10 months? Well then, he'll get to say whatever he wants for the next 10 months. I can't imagine either option making his bosses jump for joy.

Interesting theory…and I should mention that now that his employers have gotten what they wanted — the approval of that merger — and Colbert's ratings are up, it is also being theorized Out There that maybe they'll rescind the cancellation notice. Or that he'll wind up at ABC. A friend of mine in the teevee biz wrote me to say, again in part…

It's no secret that Jimmy Kimmel wants to get out of his late night duties on ABC. He's barely even doing his show anymore and I think he and Colbert still have the same agent, James "Baby Doll" Dixon. Could Dixon work a deal where one of his clients replaces the other?

I dunno…but I don't think Disney, which owns ABC, is going to be involved in a merger deal with some big right-wing corporation. And Kimmel has been pretty outspoken in his support of Colbert, as witness this billboard which is turning up around the city…

Plus, you also have the speculations that Colbert may run for elected office…say, against Lindsey Graham for his seat in the Senate. But this all strikes me as people speculating on the plans of people they don't know who probably haven't made any real plans yet. All I'll predict is that Donald Trump is not succeeding, as he's crowing he is, about vanquishing Stephen Colbert.

From the Management

Comic-Con was great but prepping for it, attending it, unpacking from it and catching up on sleep have all put me behind on a lot of things. I have tons of e-mails that are unanswered and there are blog posts that need to be up here soon. Please forgive me. All will normalize before long.

Oh — and I could use more help identifying all the cartoon voice actors I asked you to help me identify in . I have a number of messages but not enough. What'samatter? Aren't you all eager to enter a contest with no prizes whatsoever? To encourage more participation I hereby double the prize. Instead of getting nothing, you can get twice nothing. Don't miss this opportunity!

Scenes From Comic-Con #3

Hey, how about some photos from the Quick Draw! game we played at Comic-Con a week ago yesterday?  Each year, we have three fast 'n' funny cartoonists competing.  This year, it was Scott Shaw!, Tom Richmond and Emma Steinkellner.  Here's a photo of Scott Shaw!, Tom Richmond and Emma Steinkellner…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

During Quick Draw!, I bring various folks up to play a game in which they try to guess what the heck the cartoonists are drawing. Here, trying to guess what the heck the cartoonists are drawing is one of my favorite comedians, Dana Gould. As you can see, he didn't have any idea at the moment Bruce took this picture and neither did I…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

During the game, I sometimes bring up three more cartoonists to collaborate with the three we already have in stage. Here are two of the tag-teamers from last Saturday…

Photos by Bruce Guthrie

The gent on the left is Lalo Alcaraz, who is responsible for the popular newspaper strip, La Cucharacha. The gent on the right is Greg Evans, who is responsible for the popular newspaper strip, Luann.

And you'll never guess who took this photo

And here's the third bonus cartoonist, Steve Leialoha, whose work should be familiar to everyone who's read comic books in the last few decades, especially Howard the Duck. He's talking with Scott about I-have-no-idea-what before (or maybe after) they briefly swapped places to draw. If you've never seen us do Quick Draw!, it's always a lot of fun. And very, very difficult to get a seat for even though the room has an awful lot of seats in it.

Today's Video Link

I'll link to just about anything with Buster Keaton in it.  In the late fifties, he made a whole bunch of commercials for Alka-Seltzer with Dick Beals supplying the voice of Speedy, the Alka-Seltzer mascot.  Buster was the perfect choice for these ads because he always looked like a guy who needed an Alka-Seltzer — or something…

A Comic-Con Tale from 2003 – Part 5

To read the previous chapter of this tale, click here.  To go back and start at the beginning, click here.

Before we proceed, I should mention something. As far as I know, there are no recordings, either audio or video, of this panel and no transcripts. If any exist, I would love to have copies of them. But for now, I'm doing this from memory and this panel was a little over 22 years ago. So what I remember is what I remember and the dialogue that follows is highly approximate.

Just before I started the panel, Julie Schwartz waved me over and whispered, "Don't forget Forry and me. This is a Ray Bradbury panel but it's not exclusively a Ray Bradbury panel. Ask us questions about our associations with Ray and make sure we all get to talk." I promised him I would. He also said, "Ask me to tell you a secret thing about Ray that only I know. I've got a real good answer. And ask Forry what impact Ray's work had when it started appearing in science-fiction books and anthologies of the day. Forry's got a real good speech he gives about that."

I told Julie I would do as requested, then I started the panel. Julie got a big reception when I introduced him.  So did Forry. When I introduced Ray, the audience clapped and cheered so loudly, I thought we might get a call from Tijuana asking us to hold it down for God's sake. I think I started — remember, I'm doing this from memory — with "Julie, you were Ray's first agent. How did you come to represent him?"

Julie thought for a moment and then he said, "I think he submitted something to me." Then there was a long pause that indicated that was all he was going to say on the subject.  In my head, I heard this sound effect.  So I went to Ackerman. "Forry," I said, "what was the impact of Ray's work when it started appearing in science-fiction books and anthologies of the day?"

Forry thought for a moment and then said, "Big. Very big." And that was all I was getting out of him just then.  Again, I heard this sound effect.

So I went to Ray: "Ray, how did it feel when you made that first sale?" And Ray, who was one of the best public speakers it has ever been my honor to speak with, launched into a six-minute discourse on what it means to a beginning writer. It was fascinating, passionate, engaging and the audience hung on every single word like Harold Lloyd dangling from the minute hand of a big clock. A wonderful speech.

So then I went back to Julie and, remembering what he'd asked me to ask him, I said, "Julie, I'll bet there's a secret about Ray that you know and nobody else does. Can you tell us what it is?"

Julie thought for five or ten seconds and then said, "What would that be, Mark?" Again, I heard…well, you know the sound by now.

I quickly moved on to Forry. I'm not sure what I asked him but I think it was "You attended the very first science-fiction fan convention. What do you remember about it?" Whatever I asked, his answer was something like, "Very exciting." That was the totality of his reply and it was more Sad Trombone in my noggin.

Okay, back to Ray! I asked him something and he responded with another fascinating, passionate, engaging story that must have lasted five or six minutes. I watched the audience and they were listening to and loving every syllable the man uttered.

And that was how it went — or at least, that's how I remember it went. I'd ask Julie a question and get a short, uninteresting reply. Then I'd ask Forry a question and get a shorter, even less interesting reply. Then I'd ask Ray a question and he'd go on for several minutes of wonderful oratory with the audience eating every bit of it up. This would ordinarily not be a problem for the person in my position because the audience was loving about 85% of what was being said.

But I knew that if it was all like that, Julie Schwartz would be pissed at me — not at himself but at me — because it was a Ray Bradbury Panel where the other two guys said almost nothing. He would not fault himself for not swinging at anything I threw his way. He would just blame me. About two-thirds of the panel was over and I was trying to think what I could do in the final third to rectify matters…and I actually came up with something that felt like it might work.

It didn't. It made things worse. In the next part, I'll tell you this it-sounded-good-at-the-time idea and how it didn't work. Hang in there, folks. We're almost through this long, long tale but we have a few more Sad Trombones to get through.