Mark Evanier's Blog, page 154

Today's Political Comment

Rudy Giuliani has started to fit into the category of People I Shouldn't Feel Sorry For But Somehow I Almost Do. You rarely see someone who was once so respected descend into a steady stream of just making his reputation, his bank account and his legal status worse and worse and worse…

"I Want My Damn Chicken!"

Ever since the word "COVID" entered our lives, I've been enjoying weekly (at least) deliveries from Costco via the Instacart service. As long as my order is over $35 — and how the hell can you get out of a Costco for under $35? — I pay no delivery fee…just a generous tip. It's well worth it to me, especially these days when I'm largely confined to my home.

I get an array of things I need plus, of course, a Costco rotisserie chicken. Last night, I ordered 3 lbs. of bananas, a 24-pack of Sparkling Ice Zero Sugar beverages (they're for company), a cheese, two dozen eggs, some soap and, of course, a Costco rotisserie chicken. I specified delivery between 10 AM today and Noon, which is the earliest window they offer.

At 9:11 this morning, I was notified that my Instacart Shopper had just started shopping. He found all the items I sought except, to my horror, a Costco rotisserie chicken. He refunded that item which prompted me to text him, "No chickens?" He wrote back that they don't have them until 10 AM and sent me, as proof, a photo of the empty Costco Rotisserie Chicken shelves and another photo of this sign…

I wrote back, "So I don't get a chicken because you're shopping earlier than specified?" He wrote back an explanation that the order was sent to him when it was sent to him and he doesn't have the option of not filling it immediately. By this time, he had checked out with my order, sans chicken.

I immediately phoned Instacart Customer Service and they immediately offered to specify that I would never again get that shopper. It took a little while to make them understand that I wasn't complaining about the shopper. I was complaining about the fact that I asked for delivery between 10 AM and Noon, and they assigned a shopper before chickens would be available. I even said the line that is the subject of this post.

It took a little doing but the Customer Service person finally told me she could cancel my order — and even if the shopper is already in his car, he will return it to the store — and they can reschedule my full order so that some shopper (maybe the same one?) will bring me my order — with chicken — by Noon. I asked if the first shopper would be paid in full since it was not his mistake to shop so early. I was assured the first shopper would be paid in full since it was not his mistake to shop so early.

I'm a little skeptical the shopper will be paid in full but that's where the story stands at the moment. I'll insert a little line here and then finish the story after I get my delivery…

And at 11:23 PM, which is inarguably "by Noon," a different shopper delivered my full order, chicken included. I have no complaints except that I shouldn't have had to make that phone call…and I'd feel better if I was certain that first shopper got paid.

P.S., ADDED LATER: And at 12:03 PM, the lady from Instacart Customer Service called me back to make sure I'd received my order and was happy with it. Nice.

Today's Video Link

One of my favorite musical groups in its native habitat…

My Gag Order

Maybe the only two things I have in common with Donald Trump — and I sure hope there aren't any more than these — is that we both have funny hair and we both are legally obligated to not talk or write about certain things. My Gag Order is more correctly described as an N.D.A., otherwise known as a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It covers something I wouldn't disclose even if I could. Not at this stage, at least.

Recently in a nook or cranny of The Internet I have never visited, a person I don't know "revealed" that I had a new job. I put "revealed" in "quotes" because the revelation is not true. It is possible that at some point, it might become true but it also might not. I am in discussions about something and we haven't even reached the stage of discussing exactly how much money I'd be paid if (a) I decide I want the job and (b) they decide I'm the right person for the job. And there might even be a (c), they decide they're going to hire anybody for the job.

I have been a professional writer for…well, this July will make 55 years. That's 55 years of occasional staff jobs and a lot of freelance jobs…and even the staff positions have been the kind where you're never sure how long they'll last. The comic book might not sell. The TV series might not get picked up for another season. The publisher or the network might decide the comic book or TV show might do better with someone who was not me.

This is not in any way a complaint. It's just the reality of the profession I chose of my own free will. Elsewhere on this blog, I think I've written about people who sound like a plumber bitching that he's expected to fix broken toilets. Or, in the immortal words of Superchicken…

When I entered into discussions about this maybe/maybe not job, the folks who'd approached me asked that I DocuSign® a Non-Disclosure Agreement and I did. Why they needed this, I dunno…but as I learned the hard way when I was but a baby writer, it's better not to tell the world you have a new gig until it's absolutely, positively certain. That may not even be when you sign a contract. It may not be until a check clears.

So we've been talking on and off…and not only are they not convinced I'm their guy but I'm not convinced I'm their guy…or that I'd want to be their guy. Someone — on their end, not my end — told someone who told someone who told someone…I have no idea how many someones might be involved here…

…but a someone put it on the 'net and in the last few days, I've received several phone calls (3) and e-mails (9) congratulating me and inquiring, sometimes not so subtly, as to possible opportunities for them in this deal. Then early this A.M., I got an e-mail from one of the folks with whom I'm in discussions asking if I leaked this news which isn't even news yet and may never be. I tracked down the "someone" who posted it and he said he'd take it down and that's where things stand.

If and when anything firm develops, I'll let you know…but these things have a way of never officially ending. The discussions just grow farther and farther apart and vaguer and one day, you realize you haven't had the latest discussion in months so you say, "Well, I guess they changed their mind." When I have some time, I'll tell you a couple of tales about how some offers of the past ended with no one saying no…just no one saying yes.

Hell, I've even had offers where everyone who had to say yes said yes and they still didn't happen.

Today's Video Link

So what's going on with Trump and all these contempt fine and threats about throwing him behind bars? An associate of the Legal Eagle explains…

ASK me: Arnold Stang

I received this question from "Disneyfan94 The Muppets Forever." I don't usually answer questions from people who hide behind handles but I'm going to take the chance that that's this person's real name — Mr. and Mrs. The Muppets Forever had a child and named him or her Disneyfan94. It's probably a very common given name these days. Anyway, here's what he or she wrote…

First off, I'm a huge fan of your blog. I know you worked with Arnold Stang on Garfield and Friends and due to him arriving at the recording studio early, you were able to discuss many aspects of his career including Top Cat. Could you please share some of the stories he told about voicing T.C.?

That was a great day for me. In fact, I spent a great week in New York then, visiting the DC offices, the MAD offices, the Marvel offices, the offices of David Letterman's show, and I think I even had lunch with Joe Simon. And of course, I went to Broadway shows. I took Imogene Coca (yes, the Imogene Coca) to dinner at Sardi's and then to see the musical, Crazy For You. And I took my friend Carol Lay to see Neil Simon's then-latest play, Laughter on the 23rd Floor in which Nathan Lane played Jackie Gleason playing Sid Caesar.

Then on Thursday, I recorded the voice tracks for three cartoons for our show with East Coast talent. It was something I wanted to do and even though it cost a lot of money, our producer was nice enough to indulge me. This is Lee Mendelson I'm talking about…the best producer I ever worked with.

Thursday morn, I checked out of my hotel in New York and was picked up by a limo (paid for by Lee) which took me to a recording studio in New York (paid for by Lee) arriving at 10 AM so I could check and make sure everything would be ready for our first actor to arrive at 11 AM. To my delight, everything was ready and the first actor was already there. The first actor was Arnold Stang. He was sitting there, reading a magazine, looking exactly like Arnold Stang.

We couldn't start until the other actors were in place in the studio we used in Los Angeles.  The two studios would then be linked by some sort of ultra-strong digital phone connection and I could direct everyone at once.  If you saw the finished cartoons, you would never imagine that one of the actors and the director were 2,815 miles away from the other actors and the main recording engineer.

Call time for the West Coast actors — Lorenzo Music, Thom Huge, Gregg Berger and Howard Morris — was 8 AM (L.A. time).  Thus, I had an hour to talk with Arnold about a whole range of things but mostly Top Cat, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and working with Milton Berle.   No, I did not ask him about Berle's genitalia but we did talk about the recording studio — the name of which I don't remember, sorry — where he'd recorded voice tracks for Paramount cartoons like "Herman and Katnip" and many other shows.

The main thing I recall from our Top Cat discussion is the fine line they walked to not echo the Sgt. Bilko show too much.  As you may know, the first episode or two were originally recorded with an actor named Michael O'Shea voicing the title character.  Mr. O'Shea does not seem to have done any produced cartoon voice work for Hanna-Barbera or anyone and many different stories have circulated as to why his voice tracks were dumped and Arnold was hired.

Daws Butler had told me that at one point he was going to be Top Cat's voice.  He recorded either an episode or a demo of some sort using what was essentially the same voice he used for Hokey Wolf.

My great friend, the late Earl Kress and I used to puzzle about another piece of this puzzle.  On Top Cat, H-B used Maurice Gosfield, who'd played Duane Doberman on the Bilko show, to voice Benny the Ball.  Obviously, that was because of the Bilko connection…so why were none of the voices of Top Cat's cronies done by his fellow Bilko cast mates, Allan Melvin or Harvey Lembeck?  Melvin was then doing a lot of voices for H-B and Lembeck, though I don't think he ever received any screen credit there, can be heard voicing minor roles on one or two concurrent H-B shows. (Before anyone asks: Joe E. Ross, who was a semi-regular on Bilko and later did voices for H-B, was filming Car 54, Where Are You? in New York while Top Cat was recording in L.A.)

The answer to all this, I learned from Arnold that day, was that Top Cat vacillated between being too much like Bilko and not enough like Bilko.  "The lawyers couldn't make up their minds," he told me.  "One week, they wanted me to sound more like Phil Silvers and the next week, they wanted me to tone it down."

Apparently, Daws sounded too much like Phil Silvers and Mr. O'Shea didn't sound enough like him.  Arnold was the compromise.  Arnold didn't know anything about Melvin or Lembeck ever being part of the cast but that might have been before his time there.  He was good friends with both of them.  (He also was occasionally recorded separately from the other actors because he was sometimes commuting from New York. At the time, technology did not allow them to be able to record the way we did in '94. Some of Arnold's later voice work for H-B was done that way.)

Arnold was also good friends with Howard Morris, who was in our regular Garfield and Friends cast and was in the studio in Los Angeles that day.  Once we had the L.A. folks online, Howie and Arnold got to talking about all the times — and there were a lot of them — they'd been up for the same parts.  Howie had beaten Arnold out for the title role in the Beetle Bailey cartoons and the voice of the koala in the Qantas Airlines commercials.  Arnold had beaten Howie out for the role of Hysterium in the national touring company of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and a part in the cinema classic, Skidoo. Of Skidoo, Arnold said to Howie, "I should have let you have that one."

I told of other memories of that day in this post.  Before he left, Arnold was nice enough to record an answering machine message for me…

After we finished recording, the limo took me to the airport and I flew down to Orlando, Florida for a Garfield conference.  Many moons ago, I wrote a column about what happened down there.  I've never posted it on this website but in the next few days, I will.  And if I remember anything else Arnold Stang told me that day, I'll post it.  He was a great talent and I'm so glad I got the chance to spend time with him and work with him.  I have worked with no one else in the animation business who would have spent the money that Lee Mendelson spent to make that happen.

All the Cartoons You Could Possibly Need

In case you haven't seen the announcements, the folks who bring you MeTV, MeTV+ and a whole bunch of other channels will soon be bringing you MeTV Toons, a channel which will run 24/7 cartoons. Many will be from the Warner Bros. library…so a lot of Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Flintstones, Jetsons, etc., but they will be also tapping other toon libraries. Mentioned so far are Rocky and Bullwinkle, Casper, Betty Boop, Speed Racer, Woody Woodpecker and others.

More exciting for some of us is that our friends Jerry Beck and Bob Bergen are involved — Jerry as a consultant and as a producer of new content to run before and in-between classic cartoons, Bob as the signature voice of the channel.

The announcements I've seen say the channel will commence on June 25, 2024.  There will soon be info available on how you can watch it on your TV.  This is all very good news.

The Fickle Finger of Fate

The late Bill Finger, as many but not enough of us know, was the unbilled-for-far-too-long co-creator of Batman and much of the Batman mythos. Throughout his life, he received way too little credit for this (i.e., none) and nowhere near enough financial reward.

That injustice has been undone somewhat as the credits on Batman now say "Created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger," whereas they used to just say "Created by Bob Kane." It's sad that Mr. Finger never lived to see this happen but at least it has happened. Unfortunately, his face continues to be miscredited. Very few photos of Finger exist and one often sees photos of other longtime contributors to DC Comics identified as Finger.

Most often, it's a photo of Robert Kanigher, who wrote Wonder Woman for about eight million years and who edited and often wrote DC's war comics for a very long time. When Kanigher received a posthumous Bill Finger Award, I procured a photo of him from a relative of Kanigher's and did an awful lot of Photoshopping to make it look even that good. It was part of the press release announcing the award.

The way search engines like Google and Bing index photos is that they find photos and then they find words and names near those photos. If I were to go onto the 'net and post a photo of you on many websites with the word "aardvark" near your pic, the engines would eventually decide you were an aardvark and would probably display the pic of you when someone searched for an image of an aardvark.

Because the photo of Kanigher often appeared near the term "Bill Finger" on the web, the search engines display it when you search for a photo of Bill Finger…so I keep seeing Kanigher identified as Finger.  I made up this graphic and I'm posting it here to alert anyone who comes here…but I'm also posting it because I want them to get into the databases of Google, Bing and other search engines.

If you have a website that has anything to do with comic books or Batman or which just gets a lot of hits from the "spiders" that crawl the web collecting images for search engines, please copy the image below and post it on your site. Do not change the name of it.

Put it up and if enough folks do this, it will be seen among the first images when someone searches for a photo of Bill Finger, the most neglected man in comics.  Thank you.

ASK me: Canceling Comics

Micah Olsen sent me the following…

I was interested to read about the cancelled DC comics you mentioned, and it brought to mind a long running question I've had about them. I read all of those short-lived 60's series you mentioned a couple of decades after they were published. I especially liked Bat Lash, but I agree with you that they were all pretty good and I was disappointed that they didn't have much longer runs.

My question is what was happening in the market in the late 60's that caused the sales to go down enough that new series were quickly cancelled? It seems like series started earlier in the 60's from DC (Atom, Aquaman, Hawkman, Metamorpho, etc.) lasted longer. Even a non-superhero series like Captain Storm got 18 issues. I've figured something was going on that made it tougher for new series to get a foothold — beyond panicked employees at DC. As a reader at the time and a professional soon thereafter, do you have any insights about what why new series had so much trouble catching on in the late 60's?

I've discussed this at length with a lot of folks who were around then, a few of whom are still around and we're still discussing it. My answer is that there were many problems but I would put "panicked employees" pretty high on the list. When a bi-monthly comic ran 5-7 issues, that generally means that they gave up on it after seeing the early sales figures on the second issue.

I also think that kids were increasingly non-captivated by bi-monthly books, which is the way DC tried launching almost everything that was new. Most of the Marvel books were monthly and interconnected so you could get a couple visits to that world every week, whereas you had to wait a long time between issues of Anthro. Kids raised on television didn't like to wait for their entertainment.

In the late sixties/early seventies, the system via which comic books were distributed was crumbling and Marvel was gaining a headlock on what was left of it. Fewer and fewer stores had comic book racks. In 1970 when my pal/partner Steve Sherman and I visited DC Comics for the first time, the guy in charge — Carmine Infantino — kept quizzing on where we bought our comics in Los Angeles. He was asking us if we had any ideas of how DC could get comics to more potential buyers in our town. He wouldn't have been asking us if Independent News — a division of the same company that was the major magazine distributor in the U.S. — had any ideas.

But they clearly didn't. And what we learned was that the folks over in Independent office had very little confidence that the problem could be solved…or was worth solving. It was rumored around the DC office that some were suggesting that DC just scale back to the few properties that had merchandising value — Superman, Batman, a few others — and just publish those books, maybe as reprints, to keep the properties "alive."

Infantino was a wonderful artist. If you only know his later work, seek out what he did before he was elevated into DC management. Brilliant designs, brilliant storytelling. And when he was moved from drawing comics into the editorial division, he greatly improved the look and feel of the DC line, especially the covers…but only for a while. Others may give you other views of this but mine is that Carmine's skills were largely creative and he was installed in a position that required more of a head for business and marketing than he possessed.

As I keep pointing out here, when a TV show is canceled, that doesn't always mean it was a show no one wanted to watch. It may have been a case of someone in management panicking or making a bad call and dropping a show that would have built up a solid following if it had been given more time. There are plenty of examples of programs that were almost canceled but were given enough time including M*A*S*H, Cheers and Seinfeld. I don't see why anyone would think that the decisions to cancel certain comics after a few issues couldn't have been bad decisions.

Today's Video Link

When my ankle gets better, I wanna learn to do this…