Mark Evanier's Blog, page 225

Saturday Morning

Working my way back into regular posting…

The Internet abounds today with speculation and rumors about the extension of talks in the SAG-AFTRA negotiation. Most of it — maybe all of it — is based on absolutely nothing. If you're behind your union, as you should be, stay behind them until you have a concrete reason to decamp. Imaginations running wild do not constitute a reason. Like the WGA, the actors are very well organized and they have the support of ~98% of the membership and a stunning number of prominent, working-all-the-time members. Remember what Ben Franklin said about hanging together.

Like a lot of folks, I'm disappointed in a couple of recent Supreme Court decisions. Kevin Drum thinks the one on Affirmative Action will not affect that many people. I hope that's the case but it's a "win" for a very bad attitude towards one's fellow human beings. And President Biden seems to already be on top of a workaround regarding Student Debt. Still, maybe Liberals should have taken more Supreme Court Justices on expensive luxury vacations and maybe bought homes for their mothers.

Comic-Con is eighteen days away — unless I'm not ready, in which case I think I can get them to postpone it 'til late August. I am currently moderating ten panels and appearing on three others. The Cartoon Voices panels, Quick Draw!, the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel and Cover Story will all be in their usual time slots, though a few will be in different rooms.

Ignore all articles that claim that the paucity of Big Stars this year spells doom for the con. The unavailability of hotel rooms proves there will be no diminution of attendees and there will be no strike by writers or actors in at least the next few years to come.

I still haven't been able to watch the rest of the Tony Awards.

If you're in Los Angeles — or even if you aren't in Los Angeles — the Nuart Theater in West L.A. is running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World twice a day on Monday and Tuesday.

Every time I mention a screening, people ask me which version is being run. There's only one that is available in any kind of projectible shape either on film or digital. It's two hours and 39 minutes and it's the one that was in theaters a few weeks after the film's original release, after it was cut down. But it's the one the film's director-producer Stanley Kramer called the official version. I'd go if I wasn't so busy and if my friend Amber was available to go with me.

From what we're hearing, there is cause to be guardedly optimistic that Turner Classic Movies will remain the same channel we know and love. I wish I was as confident about some other divisions of that corporation.

Back soon. It'll be a few more days before the next installment of "Border Crossings."

Today's Video Link

Here's the entire episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, minus commercials, for 11/12/1976. The guests are Frank Sinatra, David Janssen, Olivia Newton-John, ex-con Ray Johnson and there's a "surprise walk-on" by Don Rickles. There were very few actual surprise walk-ons on Johnny's show and he was reportedly pissed about every one of them.

Two quick thoughts: Rickles fawning over Sinatra reminds me a lot of certain Republicans talking about Donald Trump. And it's interesting to me that when you remove the commercials from this 90-minute show, it runs about 64 minutes…

Today's Video Link

A new "Legal Eagle" video, this time about Hunter Biden…

Mushroom Soup Rest of the Week

The good news is it that we're cautiously optimistic that Turner Classic Movies is going to more-or-less stay the Turner Classic Movies it's always been. And the further good news is that there's no good news for Donald Trump who just sinks deeper and deeper into that hole he insists on digging for himself. But then there's the bad (to some) news that I'm so swamped with Things That Must Be Done that I may not have much time to post here the next few days. So don't waste your time checking in here. There won't be much. Sorry.

Today's Video Link

Here's Mel Blanc guesting on Johnny Carson's show for May 26, 1983. I used to see Mel a lot when I worked at Hanna-Barbera and occasionally talk to him a bit. A year after this appearance with Johnny, I actually directed him for a brief voiceover for a CBS special and got to have a long conversation with the man. I told that story here — and I just realized I had the year in it wrong so I have corrected it. It was September of 1984.

Every time I saw Mel at H-B or that day in a recording studio, he was walking shakily with a cane. Given the severity of the 1961 traffic accident, it was amazing that he could walk at all…and I notice that when he made his entrance on Johnny's show, he managed to not use or seem to need that cane. I can't say I ever knew him well except in the sense that we all knew him well from growing-up with his voice so often in our ears. He really was as good as his reputation said he was.

At Comic-Con next month, there will be a panel on 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, July 22. I think I'm not supposed to announce program items before the con does but they'll forgive me for this one. The brilliant cartoon voice actor from Australia, Keith Scott, will be in town for the con. He'll be on the Cartoon Voices panel I'm hosting earlier that day at 1 PM and then later, in the 4:30 panel, Keith will be discussing the history of cartoon voice actors with myself, Jerry Beck and Leonard Maltin. The panel will cover just a smidgen of what's in two must-have books that Keith recently released.

We will, of course, be talking a lot about Mel Blanc, the man who pretty much defined what it means to be a cartoon voice actor. Here's Mel in 1983…

In the Audience…

Last night, I linked you to a video of some of David Letterman's first morning show. A number of folks have written to me to suggest that at this point in the video, one sees Bill Maher and maybe Larry Miller in the audience. Also, there's a sign in the audience that says "The David Letterman Show" and the person seated just above the "The" looks like Budd Friedman, owner-operator of The Improv. You make the call.

Today's Trump Post

So by now, you've probably heard the recording of Donald J. Trump apparently committing one of the crimes that Donald J. Trump is alleged to have committed. In many corners, this moves the discussion from "Will he be convicted?" to "How much time will he do?"

With expert timing, YouTube's Legal Eagle has a new video up explaining all about sentencing guidelines. It's kinda informative about how those guidelines work but all it'll tell you regarding Trump is that he surely won't be sentenced to the jillion-and-three years that some are suggesting…and that we can't say with any certainty what the actual magical number might be. Here's the video if you want to watch…

And this doesn't even address the question of what other crimes Trump may be charged with and what kind of sentences they could carry. Tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will be interviewed by investigators from special counsel Jack Smith's office.

Today's Video Link

As you may know, before David Letterman started his late night show (called Late Night) on NBC, he briefly had a daily morning show on that network. It went on the air on June 23, 1980 as a ninety-minute program, was cut to an hour as of August 4th, then left the air completely as of October 24. They then kept Letterman under contract — for a reported $20,000 week — until they could find a new spot for him…which more than a year later turned out to be following Johnny Carson's show.

Here from February 1, 1982 is the first segment in Dave's morning show which I remember as being a rather awkward series that didn't seem certain what it was or why it was on, especially in that time slot…

Monkey Business

Imagine paying $1,809 for a fine art painting of Groucho Marx…

…only it's not Groucho Marx. It's Frank Ferrante.

Border Crossings – Part 6

Hi. Before you venture into the sixth part of this series, it might be a good idea to read the First Part, the Second Part, the Third Part, the Fourth Part and, just for good measure, the Fifth Part…

All up to date? Good. So when we last left me, I was ten years old and wondering why many (but not all) of my favorite Dell comic books had suddenly turned into Gold Key comic books. Here is a simple before-and-after of one of those comics. At left is The Flintstones #6 with a cover by Harvey Eisenberg,  It's Fred mooning the readers.  At right is The Flintstones #7 with a cover by Pete Alvarado…

As you can see, apart from a different symbol in the upper left hand corner, not much difference. There was not much difference inside, either but some of these comics changed as they passed from Dell to Gold Key. Below left we have the first page of the last Dell comic of Bullwinkle and at right, we have the first page of the first Gold Key issue of Bullwinkle. For this, it will help if you click on the image to make it larger on the screen…

See the difference? I don't know the names of the artists on the two pages except that they're not the same person and neither one of them is Al Kilgore. But the two pages have the same letterer — Ben Oda, who in his long career lettered an insane number of comic books for half the companies in the business. The difference in the word balloons was not Ben's idea. He was just doing what he was told by his editor.

They dispensed in this story with the traditional panel borders.  They put the words in oddly-shaped balloons and floated them away from the edges of the panels so the white of the balloon did not meet the white of the gutters between the panels.  This was supposed to make for better coloring since the colorist didn't have to deal with a huge blob of white in each panel throwing the color compositions off-balance.  They also reduced the "tail" (the pointer) on each balloon to a single line…and to do all this, they put fewer words in each balloon and limited the amount of space the artist had to draw in.

Personally, I thought it was a bad idea.  But suddenly, a lot of Gold Key comics were doing this to some (not all) stories in each issue.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter that I'm too lazy to look up, some of the comic books produced by Western Publishing — at first under the Dell label, later under the Gold Key imprint — were produced out of an editorial office in Los Angeles and some were done in an editorial office in New York. There were several editors in each office but the main guy in L.A. was Chase Craig and the main guy in New York then was Matt Murphy.

Chase Craig was a traditionalist when it came to doing comics. (Full Disclosure: He was my main editor when I wrote comics for Western in the early seventies. He was a lovely man who was very good to me and he taught me a lot. He was also the primary — but by no means the only — person who gave me the information I am imparting to you in this series.) Matt Murphy was of the opinion that the switchover from Western producing comics for another company to Western producing them for their own company was the perfect time to try reinventing not so much the contents of the comic books as the graphic style. (Full Disclosure: I never met Matt Murphy but I met many of his associates.)

The two above issues of The Flintstones were edited by Chase Craig out of the Los Angeles office of Western Printing and Lithography. The two above issues of Bullwinkle were edited by Matt Murphy out of the New York office of Western Publishing and Lithography. Chase and Matt fought a lot.

I don't mean they were bitter enemies. They got together for friendly conferences and meals a few times a year on one coast or the other. They agreed on a lot of things. They just didn't agree on everything…and among the non-agreements were many of Murphy's ideas of changing how comics looked. To complicate matters, the New York office did most of the production work on covers, including things like title logos and lettering placement, and the coloring of all the interiors. Though he was in charge of roughly half the line, Chase did not have final say on the coloring on the comics he edited and he often disliked it a lot.

When Murphy persuaded the folks upstairs to try some of his innovations, Craig was told to apply them to the West Coast books. He balked and stalled…and he had an advantage. Most of the comics he edited had long-range contracts and were in no danger of being canceled so he was allowed to get them way ahead of schedule. He had issues of Mickey Mouse that had been completely drawn for the "old" format and wouldn't be going to press for a year.

But a lot of New York books were doing these experiments with no panel borders or balloons not touching panel borders or one-line tails on word balloons or color in-between the panels. Here are pages from two New York books from this period. And again, you can make the image larger by clicking on it…

I don't know who did the page on the right but the one on the left was drawn by Mike Sekowsky for the Boris Karloff Thriller comic. And both were, again, lettered by Ben Oda.

According to Chase, the New York office had the idea that these new approaches made the comics feel more sophisticated and set their books apart from what the other comic book companies were doing.  They were "gung ho" (that was the term Chase used) to make the whole line like that, even printing up new page blanks for the artists to draw upon.

Comic book companies have occasionally done that.  They print up sheets of quality (hopefully) drawing paper that are cut to the proper size and they print guidelines on each piece in light blue ink. The artist then fills in the blanks. It saves them from having to buy paper, cut it to size and then rule off the size of the image on the page and where the gutters between the panels will go. Also, if the penciler buys his own paper, others who work on it (like the letterer or inker) may complain they don't like his choice of drawing paper.

When a comic book page is finished in ink and is photographed for printing, light blue ink doesn't reproduce unless the camera guy or scanner makes special adjustments…so it can become invisible in the final image.  Western printed up pages with the margins for the art indicated in light blue and within each panel, there were margins to show how far from the panel borders (that were not going to be inked with black lines) the word balloons should be.

At first when Chase passed out these new page blanks to the artists drawing for him, Chase told them to ink in the panel borders and to ignore the dotted line margins that kept the word balloons away from the panel borders. And when he did that, a kind of intra-company Civil War broke out. We'll take that up in the next chapter.