Mark Evanier's Blog, page 167

Today's Video Link

This is the episode of Lunch With Soupy Sales that ran January 7, 1961 on Los Angeles television (and perhaps elsewhere) and it was probably my favorite TV series back then. If you don't love it, maybe that's because you aren't nine years old like I was. It ran around the noon hour on Saturdays on Channel 7 and my friends and I would never miss it.

The show starred Soupy (of course) and everyone else on it was played by a wickedly funny gent named Clyde Adler. When I watched the show, I dearly wanted to be one of those people on the set that you heard laughing. Many years later when Soupy did a short-lived syndicated revival, I was.

My good friend, the late Earl Kress, grew up on the East Coast so to him, The Soupy Sales Show was the version that Soupy did out of New York from 1964 to 1966 with Frank Nastasi taking over for Clyde. But to me, The Soupy Sales Show was the version Soupy did out here from 1960 to 1962 with Clyde. This was just about the only thing Earl and I ever disagreed on. Here's a prime example of what to me was what Soupy was all about…

Today's Political Comments

Like an awful lot of folks on the 'net today, I thought Joe Biden gave a helluva State of the Union address last night. How…strong…was it? Strong enough that detractors like Trump and Hannity couldn't dismiss it as senile doddering; they had to retreat to the lame insistence that Biden had to be on performance-enhancing drugs or something.

We in California had three strong candidates vying for the Democratic Senate nomination — Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter. I would have been satisfied with any one of them and am happy to see it'll be Schiff. Since no Republican has won statewide office in my state since 2006, Schiff looks to be in a strong position.

It dawned on me the other day that I haven't seen a word in the press lately about Rudy Giuliani. I thought, "He has to be in more trouble by now" and, sure enough, he is.

Lastly, here's another Kevin Drum link: A chart of All the Major Trump Court Cases Since 2016. Donald sure can't be getting sick of winning yet.

ASK me: Obligations

From David Collins came this intriguing question…

This is going to sound weird, but I want to ask you a question that I think I already know what the answer is.

The fact is, I grew up with a lot of 80s and 90s cartoons. I love such animation, still do to this day, it brought me a lot of comfort and fun. I felt growing up I had an obligation to help create cartoons such as this to bring happiness and joy to other generations of kids. Just like cartoons had helped me, I wanted to help others. Real life turned out to be more complicated than that; my life took many strange turns, but I keep wondering if I'm doing enough to fulfill that "obligation" I felt I had. An obligation which nobody thrust on me but I still feel its pull on me.

So I thought I'd ask you, a writer and creator of some of those cartoons I loved so much, if you thought I had such a responsibility. When people watch or read your stuff, do you think they've a responsibility to pass it on?

If you thought my answer would be no, you're right. At least, that's not why I got into the industry. I got in because I thought it would be good for me and I never for a second thought I could create work that would bring a significant amount of joy to a significant number of people. If anything I've done has ever done that, it was an unintended happy consequence. I chose the career I chose to pursue because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to do or could be any good at.

When you answer the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?", I think there are two considerations. One is "What do you think you can do that you might be able to succeed at?" If I'd selected being a dancer or a nuclear physicist, I don't think I'd own a house now or be even remotely successful in either profession. I think I'd instead have had to take a job — any job, not necessarily one that appealed to me — just to pay rent and buy groceries. My father had to do that and I saw how he hated it and the resultant ulcer.

That's one consideration. And to me, the other way to answer the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is by asking yourself, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I wanted to write cartoons and comic books and TV shows and other things but not because I felt any "obligation" to those forms. I did have some gratitude to the people who made them and whenever I have been in a position to express that gratitude and "pay back" those folks I have and still do.

But I didn't start writing comics or anything else for anyone else's benefit but my own. I hope that doesn't sound harsh or selfish. I just never thought I had an obligation to "bring happiness and joy to other generations of kids." I didn't have any particular confidence that I could do that.

Today's Video Link

The fast-talking lawyer Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone explains all about in vitro fertilization and Alabama laws and so-called "Pro-Life" people who pass laws without thinking them all the way through or consulting experts. His report is a little outta date already but if you're puzzled by any aspect of this, he probably explains it somewhere in here…

ASK me: Questions From Joe Frank…

And here's Joe…

Hope your ankle is on the mend. Don't do anything to aggravate it like race against the Flash or buy a vineyard and stomp your own grapes.

A number of birthday related questions: How early did you discover the Marvel Comics Group? How soon till you were buying all their releases (if you did)? When did you stop following the titles?

Also, as you're six years older than me, did you have to sweat out the draft? As a kid, I wished I was five years older, so I could have read the Fantastic Four from the start rather than #55. Then, eventually, it occurred to me that, had that been the case, I might've been reading Sgt. Fury from a Vietnamese foxhole rather than on my bunkbed.

Actually, I just stopped wearing this huge, clunky boot that I'd been wearing whenever I walked after the surgery. With it on, I could have squished a grape orchard into Manischewitz Concord with a couple of stomps.

I'm a bit fuzzy on when I began buying Marvel Comics and I think some of the early issues were not distributed — or distributed well here in Los Angeles. I'm fairly sure I bought a few pre-superhero Marvels — comics full of silly monsters — before Fantastic Four #1 came out. And I'm pretty sure my first issue of F.F. was #11 and I found it at Bart's Books, which was a second-hand bookshop out in Santa Monica. That was not a wonderful issue but I still got hooked right away and quickly filled in the back issues. And at about the same time, I bought Amazing Spider-Man #1 off the newsstand.

I bought everything until such time as Marvel put me on the "comp" list and at some point in the eighties, the number of titles that arrived in the box each month was going up and my interest in their product was going down. I finally called someone and asked them to stop the shipments and I put a few years' worth of mostly-unread books in storage. Then a few years later, I gave them to a dealer and told him to sell them cheap and keep the money or donate it to charity or something. I just couldn't keep up and I needed the storage space. I can't give you a year on this.

I wrote about my experience with the draft back in this post. In hindsight, I don't know why I wasn't more worried about that than I was. I sure didn't want to go and my father really, really, really didn't want me to go. I think the happiest moment of his life was when I was assigned such a high draft number. Thanks, Joe.

Steve Lawrence, R.I.P.

I never met Steve Lawrence and I don't think I ever saw him perform live…but he was a presence on television as long as I've been watching television and I never saw him not sing well. I also never saw him not be funny. As a game show panelist or talk show guest, he was always amusing and you sure got the idea that when not performing, he was a real nice guy. I have no great anecdotes about the man. I just wanted to say what I just said.

Go Read It!

Cookie Monster getting political.

A Very Worthy Cause

I'm sparing with my promotion of GoFundMe campaigns and other crowd-funding endeavors but I'm going to make a rare exception for this one. My friend Ron Friedman is one of the funniest, nicest gentleman it has ever been my pleasure to know and he very likely wrote one or more of your favorite TV shows. His credits include The Danny Kaye Show, The Jonathan Winters Show, Get Smart, The Odd Couple, All in the Family, G.I. Joe, The Transformers, Starsky & Hutch, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Barney Miller, The Partridge Family and so many more. And if you're into animation, he was a very important writer of The Transformers and G.I. Joe.

Ron and his lovely wife Val are both suffering from ailments, some of them caused by a car accident. Their medical bills vastly exceed what their insurance will cover. They need help. If you ever enjoyed any of the shows I just named — or one of the many others you'll find on his IMDB listing — please donate to help two very deserving people. Here's the link.

Beautiful Balloons

There are those who would tell you that Todd Klein is the current master of the art of lettering for comic books. He's certainly the most knowledgeable about the craft and its history…and about the many fine artists, most of whom were uncredited or undercredited, who have done that job. Todd has written many articles about them and their work and now he's compiled them into a free online-only book which I recommend to anyone with the slightest interest in this form of art. Jack Kirby once said of longtime Marvel letterer Artie Simek, "Often, the best art on a page of comics is what Artie put there."

Today's Political Comment

Okay…so Nikki Haley's dropping out of the presidential race — as if she was ever really in it — and Mitch McConnell's endorsing Trump. Do either of those announcements surprise anyone anywhere? The press wants you to pay careful attention to all this and watch what they want you to watch and click where they want you to click as if the election's all but over. I think it's all but started. I don't see that any of this strongly foretells the future.

Think of all the stuff we don't know at this moment. We don't know who Trump will select as his running mate and we're not 100% sure Biden will stick with Kamala Harris. We don't know what the economy will be like when it becomes time to mark ballots. We don't know what the status will be of the wars in the Middle East or Ukraine. We don't know the outcome or timing of certain trials involving Trump…and would it shock anyone if there were more indictments or revelations about him by November?

The recent Republican-led efforts to sell the concept of a Biden Crime Family that's worse than or as bad as Trump's is collapsing…but they'll try again. With something.

And since the candidates' ages and mental states are emerging as issues of importance: We don't know how either man be talking or walking by the time it comes to vote. One of those guys falling down or getting hospitalized or saying something really, really mindless could wildly swing the election. And this list of Things We Don't Know Now could go on and on.

I also think a lot of people who today can and do say "I will never in a million years vote for that man" will vote for that man. Or stay home and not vote for his opponent…which is kind of a way of voting. If I'm running against you for office and most of the people who support you can't bring themselves to mark their mail-in ballots or go to the polls, I probably win.

I know we're all impatient to know if the wrong guy is going to get back into the Oval Office and destroy the world (or at least, America) but I don't think we have enough evidence to be worried or over-confident now or even soon. This election will turn on a lot of things that just plain haven't happened yet.

I'm going to cite three items here from Kevin Drum's site, one being this article which I agree with. It's just too early to think Biden's in trouble. And as further evidence of this, read this article which shows that most voters haven't paid much attention yet to matters which obsess those of us who follow the election closely…and perhaps too closely.

Lastly: Almost every Trump supporter I see on TV is wailing about how terrible the Biden Economy is and how inflation is killing us all. Donald's doing his usual "it's a disaster and only I can fix it" routine. But that's just a lie. Right now, the U.S. has the second-lowest inflation of any major nation in the world. Trump would be taking bows if he'd had those numbers on his watch. That's got to sink in to voters eventually.

I have friends who support Biden. I have a few (not as many but a few) who support Trump. I'm tired of both thinking the election is almost over. Like I said, I think it's almost begun.