Mark Evanier's Blog, page 234

Urgent Notice

I just installed Windows 11 on my computer.

Help. I am being held prisoner by the Microsoft Corporation.

Today's Video Link

I used to do magic and I still "dabble" a bit in it. There are several reasons why I gave it up and became more of a scholar of magic than a performer and for the same reason why I more or less gave up drawing. Writing, drawing and doing magic all require endless hours of devotion and practice…and I couldn't do enough of all three to reach any conceivable level of "not inept" at any one of them. So I picked the one I liked the best — and had already decided to make my career — and went with that.

Daniel Roy is one of my favorite magicians and he somehow managed to become terrific at handling cards and to become an expert in neurobiology. Most people look at his wizard with cards and ask, "How does he do that?" I look at his ability to excel in two areas and ask the same question…

Table Manners

Since WonderCon a month or so ago, I've received a number of messages that said basically the same thing. All but one of them put it nicely. One of them seemed slightly pissed-off that I wasn't seated behind a table for the duration of the con. I decided to run the slightly pissed-off one, minus the name of the sender, and to respond to it here…

I appreciate that you don't like sitting behind a table signing books all day at a con but you were a Special Guest at WonderCon and some of us go to cons under the assumption that we can bring things for Special Guests to sign. I brought quite a few books that I wanted to get your signature on and for three days, I was unable to locate you. It's no fun to carry a large bundle around for three days in search of the man who isn't there. Isn't that a little inconsiderate of your fans?

Well…first of all, let me say that I signed a lot of comics at WonderCon. Unlike any guests who may have canceled (as does happen), I was there all three days. Other folks had no trouble finding me, especially those who looked at the program schedule, saw when and where I was hosting panels and attended those panels or waited for me outside.

Secondly, I've never known of a convention that by announcing someone was a Special Guest was guaranteeing that the person would be there (like I said, guests sometimes have to cancel) or that they'd be there every day for all day…or that they'd sign everything for everyone for a price you'd find acceptable. In my case, the price is zero. I don't charge to sign a reasonable number of items for any one person…

…though if enough people start treating it as some sort of business obligation on my part, maybe I should start.

Listen, Slightly-Pissed-Off Person: I'm sorry I made a decision you don't like. Maybe part of the problem is that I've never been able to fully wrap my brain around the concept that I have that many fans. For a long time, I guess I thought that a lot (not all but a lot) of the people who asked me to sign a comic were merely interested in enhancing its resale value…and that is really the case with many of the requests.

I plan to be at Comic-Con where I'll be hosting a jillion-and-three panels. If you're there and you consult the programming guide, you should know exactly where I am about 80% of the time. I'm also looking for a spot where I can be available to sign stuff for maybe a half-hour a day. I'd do longer but I really don't anticipate that much demand.

Today's Video Link

I love photos and video of Las Vegas as it used to look and here we have a montage of them. Wouldn't you like to have seen Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at the Sands? Or just Dean there later on? (Look quickly at the later photo of Dean alone on stage. Jack Benny is in the audience.) I was going to write "My, that city has changed" but I've thought that almost every time I've gone there, even if the previous time was only a few weeks before…

Border Crossings – Part 4

This is, as you can see, Part 4 in a series. If you haven't read Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3 yet, you might wanna.

In 1938, Dell Publishing Company entered into an arrangement with Western Printing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin to jointly produce comic books. Prior to this, there had been comics from Dell. Depending on one's definition of a "comic book," you could look back as far as 1929 and The Funnies, which was more like an insert in newspapers that was reportedly sold sometimes without the newspaper.

There are comic book (and strip) historians who have practically come to blows arguing about what makes one publication worthy of being called "the first comic book" and I don't want to leap into that ring. But The Funnies was at some point one of the first, if not the first comic books. Western, meanwhile, was printing and in some cases also publishing all kinds of books and magazines for all sort of clients. Eventually, all the comic books Dell published were printed by Western, and Western also prepared the contents of those comics.

This is something that confuses a lot of people. Dell "published" in the sense that they financed the line, decided what would be in it and arranged for distribution of the comics. In later years, Dell was its own distributor.

But Dell did not hire editors, writers, artists or anyone like that, nor did Dell hold the licenses to produce comic books of the Walt Disney characters, the Warner Brothers characters, the Walter Lantz characters, the Edgar Rice Burroughs characters, etc. Western hired all those folks and Western held all those licenses. Under those licenses, Western also produced kids' books, coloring books, activity books, puzzle books and all sorts of other publications for younger audiences. Dell was only involved in the comic books…

…and only in the newsstand comic books. Under the terms of the Dell/Western contract, Western was free to do comic books for non-newsstand sales. For instance, Western produced a great many comics that were educational giveaways like this one…

There were a lot of these. They also printed in staggering numbers, issues of what was various referred to as Boys' and Girls' March of Comics or sometimes just March of Comics. Featuring many of the same properties they were then handling for Dell Comics, Western produced issues of this giveaway comic. Here's one they did using their then-current license to do comic books of cowboy superstar Roy Rogers…

And they didn't all say "Sears" on this one. Sears would order a half-million copies and Blue Bird Shoes would order a half-million copies and Peter Pan Shoes would order a ton of them, etc., all the same inside, most of them imprinted with the name of the retailer or product. When I was eight, I used to get them when my parents bought me Stride-Rite shoes.

Again, Dell was not involved in these. The contents would be assembled out of offices that Western had in Los Angeles and in New York — the same offices that were creating the contents of the Dell comic books. Each office would buy scripts and artwork from local freelancers.

This is something else that some folks don't know about comics produced by Western. There were two separate offices with separate editorial staffs and while a few of the contributors sold material to both offices, most worked for one or the other. At times, the two offices almost functioned like separate companies and, as we'll see, they sometimes had serious disputes.

I am most familiar with the Los Angeles office, which moved from time to time. The first one was somewhere in Downtown L.A. In the fifties, they were in a fairly large building on Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, a few doors west of the world-famous Friars Club. My family and I used to drive by it all the time…and at age eight, I knew — I don't know how I knew but I knew — that that's where many of the comic books I loved came from.

I was never inside that office. The first L.A. office of Western Publishing that I visited was in the Max Factor Building on Hollywood Boulevard, directly across the street from the even-more-world-famous Grauman's Chinese Theater. I worked for the senior editor there, Chase Craig, and from his window, you could look right across the boulevard at the courtyard with the stars' footprints.

Photo by Mike Barrier

That's Chase Craig in that office. Later when the company downsized, they moved to a small office building on Forest Lawn Drive in Burbank, not far from the cemetery that bears the street's name.

From the last two locations, they were very close to the Disney Studios, to the Hanna-Barbera building, to the Warner Brothers lot…and to other firms that controlled the characters that Western licensed. Writers and artists who worked at all those locations moonlighted for Western and could easily drop off work or pick up checks at their offices.

With rare exceptions, the Los Angeles office did all the Disney, Walter Lantz, M.G.M., Warner Brothers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hanna-Barbera and many other comics. The New York office did Little Lulu, Jay Ward, Terrytoons, Star Trek, Dark Shadows, King Features, Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff, Fat Albert and many others. Magnus, Robot Fighter and Pink Panther were L.A. books. Doctor Solar and Turok were New York books.

There were some genuine differences between the two offices and some intra-company arguments. They weren't huge when the firm was producing comics for Dell but in 1962, Dell and Western decided to get a divorce. We'll be discussing that in our next installment.

Today's Video Link

We flashback to Jordan Klepper's first appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And stay tuned because after the clip, Klepper talks about how he felt that day…

Online Help That's No Help

I find myself dealing lately with more and more companies that have reduced the cost of labor by replacing competent employees with computer bots and/or people who don't seem to know how to do anything except apologize for problems. The latter don't fix the problems. Though they are in "Customer Service," they don't serve customers. They either don't know how to fix the problems or their employer hasn't given them the means to fix the problems. About all they can do is apologize.

This morning, I was trying to get onto a website to place an order. Please note: My goal here was to give this company money.

You'd think they'd want that…but somehow, their site wouldn't let me in to place that order. I called Customer Service and got someone who, first of all, sounded like they were on some other planet, leading me to suspect they do not live or work in the country in which the company operates. And secondly, they were utterly clueless as to how to get me back on their site. I got about as much help as if I'd asked a goldfish to hand me a crescent wrench.

Finally, they — whoever "they" are — suggested I use the "Live Online Chat" feature of their site. It did not seem to actually have a live person on the other end…or if someone was there, they were just selecting canned, pre-written responses. At one point, I asked something for which they did not seem to have a pre-written response and this happened…

I just let that sit on my computer screen to see what response, if any, I would get.  After another 22 minutes of receiving no reply, I gave up and ordered from someone else.  Somewhere in this world, some minimum-wage employee is still trying to pull up my account and additional resources to assist me in the best way possible.  Or maybe they really are being held for ransom.

An Observation

I used to be rather confused about the meaning of the word "woke" in its political context. Hearing people use it in their sentences, I could not figure out a consistent definition. I finally realized it has no consistent definition. It just means "anything me and my friends don't like."

You probably figured that out a long time ago.

Mushroom Soup Friday

I have an awful lot o' stuff to do today so things may be quiet on this blog. Surely, somewhere on the World Wide Web, you can find something else worth reading.

Today's Video Link

Here, from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for May 20, 1987, is one of my favorite comedians, Pete Barbutti. Pete was on with Johnny more than any other comedian who performed "in one" on the program. This is him demonstrating the Cordeen…