Mark Evanier's Blog, page 236

Today's Video Link

Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban and the current casts of Hamilton and Sweeney Todd get together outside the Richard Rodgers Theater on W. 46th Street in New York to merge their musicals. Thanks to Tom Galloway who alerted me to this…

Today's Video Link

I will be the guest live this evening at 6:30 PM (West Coast time) on the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog Podcast. If the show's in progress as you read this, it'll appear in the window below. After the show's over, it'll replay in the window below. Ain't modern technology amazing?

ASK me: Tony Awards Delayed?

My old pal Pat O'Neill sent me this the day after this year's Tony nominations were announced…

The Tony nominations were announced yesterday and the ceremony is scheduled for June 11, to be broadcast by CBS. If the WGA strike is still going on that date (as most seem to be predicting), I assume there will be pickets outside the theater.

This leads to a question: Most of the actors who will be on stage for this show are not only members of Actors Equity, but of SAG-AFTRA. The latter has announced it is supporting the WGA and will honor its picket lines. (For that matter, so has IATSE, representing the technical people who would be involved in the broadcast.) So, what's the likelihood that the Tony presentation broadcast will be canceled or postponed? It's an important question for the theater community, because the Tony broadcast is a big "commercial" for Broadway.

Well, first of all, I question that "most" are predicting the strike will last that long. Writers Guild strikes do tend to last long but a settlement in the near future is not impossible. In truth, no one knows. In the past, they've lasted a long time for two reasons, one being that the producers sometimes have a hard time agreeing among themselves about a new offer.

Secondly, Writers Guild negotiations tend to be the battleground for issues that may eventually lead to increases or rollbacks for some or all of the other Hollywood unions. This is one thing it helps to keep in mind to understand Hollywood strikes. To you, it may look like it's an intermittent battle between The Producers and The Writers Guild. But from the viewpoint of the AMPTP, it's one long never-ending series of battles between them and 58 (that's right — I said FIFTY-EIGHT) guilds and unions. What they give us or take back from us impacts what happens with the other labor organizations.

It's like if you have a big family and you give one kid a bicycle, you're probably on the hook for more bicycles. It's called Pattern Bargaining and they can sometimes manipulate things to their advantage but it can also sometimes work against them.

In past strikes, we did not have the unusual timing of this one. The Directors Guild is commencing negotiations on its new contract tomorrow and the actors begin formal contract negotiations on June 7. I'm not saying this will cause the WGA strike to end sooner or later; merely that you can't look at past years and figure out how that will impact any of the bargaining for any of these guilds.

In the past, there was almost zero chance of all three being on strike at the same time. It's still unlikely but it's not impossible. The current DGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts both expire on June 30. The AMPTP may feel the need to get our deal wrapped-up before dealing with possible strikes from those guilds. Note my use of the word "may." Nothing is certain.

Also, past Writers Guild strikes were at a time when the broadcast networks were frantic to get things settled so as not to disrupt their Fall Seasons. Nowadays, the Fall Season isn't a major "thing" at those networks and those networks are not driving the AMPTP bus the way they used to. So we're really in uncharted territory.

So…as for how the work stoppage may affect The Tonys, this is one of my biggest "I dunno" answers. I dunno…and it's not just about The Tonys. There are a lot of shows that have to decide what they're going to do. And if there is a picket line outside whatever theater will be the location for the Tony Awards telecast, it may be up to individuals to make a difficult choice. Maybe the show will be postponed.

The DGA and SAG-AFTRA can't strike until their contracts expire at the end of that month but a general labor unrest could start well before then. Might it make a difference? It might…but I have no friggin' idea how. No friggin' idea.

Today's News Today

I feel the way most of you probably do about the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll matter.  And it's educational in a way.  If you're the kind of guy who likes to to grab women by their private parts against their will — and I sure hope for everyone's sake, you aren't — it's probably not a good idea to get recorded bragging about how you can grab women by their private parts against their will. It's almost as bad as getting recorded saying you want someone to find you 11,780 votes — one more than your margin of defeat.

The Lazarus Effect

If we're going to mention newspaper strip guys who drew a lot of strips, it's only fair to mention Mell Lazarus, a very funny man who had two long-running strips…

Miss Peach (eventually renamed Ms. Peach) started on February 4, 1957 and ran until September 8, 2002. That's 16,652 days.

Momma started on October 26, 1970 and ended July 10, 2016. That's 16,694 days.

Together, they add up to 33,346 strips…and Mell also wrote but did not draw a couple of other short-lived strips. There seems to be some argument among cartoonists and Friends of Mell as to whether or not he ever had assistants. I seem to recall him telling me that he did at times but that may have been with gags, not drawing. Others say he did it all himself so I'm not sure. Both looked like strips that one guy could draw several of in a day.

But in any case, the record for launching one newspaper strip and drawing it day after day after day, still belongs to Russell Myers on Broom-Hilda. Today's Broom-Hilda strip is #19,378. But it should be noted that Mell Lazarus came close…twice!

Today's Audio Link

On this blog, I often tell you about talented people I know…and I know a lot of them. One of my more interesting friends is the international performance artist, Ptychka…a person who does so many things, it's hard to put them into any one category. Ptychka writes, she acts, she models, she dances, she performs amazing aerial choreography, she makes music, she sings…and she does all these things in English and Spanish and French and Russian and Japanese…

One time when she dropped by, my partner Sergio Aragonés was here and the two of them began talking in several of those languages. I didn't even understand the occasional parts of the conversation that were in English. You can read more about her at this link. It discusses her newly-released Japanese-inspired song, "Ichi" — which you can listen to in the embed below. You're going to hear a lot about this lady…

ASK me: Reprints 'n' Reconstructions

My Great Interrogator, Brian Dreger, writes to interrogate me thusly…

I am re-reading the DC Archive editions of the Legion of Superheroes (I find these old stories charming with their simplistic storylines, and I love this eras artwork). But on the inside page with the copyright info, I noticed this credit: “black-and-white reconstruction on selected interior pages by Rick Keene.” What does that mean (all the stories printed inside are in color)? And why would they need to be reconstructed? As far as I can tell, these stories are from the late 1950s & early 1960s.

Okay. At some point in our history, the coloring of comic books switched from what were sometimes called "hand-cut" color separations to digital color separations. "Hand-cut seps" were done by hand with people cutting multiple overlays for each page and it was a tedious, labor-intensive and not all-that-good process. The digital kind are done on computers.

Reprinting the latter merely involves using the original digital files again and those are almost always available. Digital files are a lot easier to store than the old film was. They don't rot and it's easy and basically free to make plenty of back-up copies.

Reprinting comics from the earlier era can be way more complicated depending on what source material is available. This would be the case with anything from the seventies or earlier and some comics from the eighties. The absolute best thing would be if you had access to the film or negatives from which the original printing plates were made.  That material though is almost always long-destroyed or thrown away…and even if it is around, it's probably decomposed.  If you do locate good film, it may be difficult to adapt it for certain modern-day printing techniques.

In the absence of that, you have two choices. You could scan copies of the printed comics in color and have someone do a lot of computer clean-ups and adjustments on the scanned images. This is a form of reconstruction but often, it yields a product that looks a bit muddy and has all or most of the flaws of the cheap, original printing.

Or you could do reconstruction starting with the original black-and-white image that the artist(s) drew. This work would have to be recolored and you would then have the option to copy the original coloring or to do new coloring. Since the work would now be printed with better printing on better paper, and since coloring techniques have improved since then, you would probably opt to have someone do new coloring that didn't slavishly follow the original coloring.

But to reconstruct, you need that good black-and-white image of the page. Once in a while, the original art is available and that can be scanned but usually those pages are hard if not impossible to find.

Publishers usually (not always) kept good black-and-white photostats of their published material in case they wanted to reprint it later or some company overseas wanted to buy the rights to reprint that material in their country. Those stats would enable you to begin reconstructing the work but sometimes, they just plain don't have any. They were lost. They were thrown away. In a few cases, a publisher somewhere — let's say in the Republic of Botswana — purchased reprint rights so someone at the company shipped a set of stats to Botswana not realizing it was the company's last set.

Also, comic book publishers have sometimes been some of the cheapest people on this planet and they didn't bother to make good stats. That is an example of a widespread problem that many businesses in this country face. The folks running the company at one point didn't want to spend the dough to preserve certain assets which could now yield revenue.

You're probably aware that certain movies or TV shows cannot now be shown or monetized via home video because no decent copies of them exist. The same thing happened with some comic books. Someone didn't want to spend money on preservation. If they made stats at all, they made them on really cheap paper and the images have faded or the paper has turned brown and moldy.

So what they do in this case is to locate a printed copy of the comic, scan it and then have someone filter the color out of the page leaving the black-and-white line art. But the process that takes out the darker colors will probably take some of the black lines with it so the pages may need serious retouching. This is what they mean when they say "restoration." It's doing a digital re-inking of the pages to repair damaged linework.

So that's what they're talking about when they mention "reconstruction."  Someone had to fix up bad source material so that the comic book could be reprinted.  Sometimes, minor surgery is necessary.  Sometimes, major.  Sometimes, it's done so well that it's hard to detect.  At other times, it's obvious and collectors have been known to complain.  My own observation is that it's getting better and better…with occasional exceptions.

The Con is Coming…

I love websites that provide valuable services and ask little or nothing in return. One such is The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog, run by a couple of enthusiastic folks who love Comic-Con (the one in San Diego) and WonderCon (the one in Anaheim) and make a great effort to help others enjoy those cons as much as they do. Their enterprise is totally unaffiliated with the conventions themselves but it offers valuable information and suggestions to make your con-going experience easier, safer, less expensive and just plain happier.

If you are thinking of attending either con any year, you should keep an eye on the SDCCBlog. Among other things, they'll tell you how to perhaps get badges for the San Diego one when it is possible to perhaps get badges for the San Diego one. It's pert near impossible now, 72 Days before the event, but it was sorta/maybe possible several months ago. You'd have known when that was if you followed the SDCCBlog. (You should also keep an eye on the official Comic-Con website, which is also very good. The SDCCBlog provides supplemental info.)

You should also listen to their fine podcasts which commence in May each year. The first one leading up to this year's Comic-Con will be live online tomorrow night, May 9, at 6:30 PM West Coast Time, which of course is 9:30 PM back east. As has become customary, their first guest of the year will be me. I will be talking about my history with the con and the thousand-and-one panels I'll be hosting there this year. (SPOILER ALERT: It's most of the same ones I host every year but with some different people on them.) Tune in. Ask questions. I'll embed the video on this site after the fact but you'll enjoy it more if you watch live.

The Will of the People

Following yesterday's mass shooting, we have the usual Internet Discussions. "It's too soon after the tragedy to be discussing this" doesn't work when we have one of these every day or so…so here's a thought: Why don't we try some of the things that over 75% of the American population thinks we should try?

And I'll bet if you change "Ban Assault Weapons" to "Limit Access to Assault Weapons," it would be over 75% too.

Norts Spews

I've been asking here if anyone could come up with a newspaper strip that's been drawn by one person, unassisted, longer than Russell Myers has been drawing Broom-Hilda. Someone finally wrote in to suggest Tank McNamara as a likely runner-up. While it hasn't been around as long as Russell's witch, Tank McNamara has had a pretty impressive run and is still running.

The Tank McNamara newspaper strip debuted on August 5, 1974 and I think it was daily and Sunday from the start. It was then written by Jeff Millar while Bill Hinds did the drawing. Hinds took over writing it when Millar passed away in 2012.

Broom-Hilda started Monday, April 20, 1970 so Myers' strip is 1,568 days ahead of Tank McNamara and always will be as long as the two strips' makers are still making 'em. But as of today, Tank McNamara has appeared for 17,807 consecutive days and as far as I know, they've all been drawn by Mr. Hinds. I may be wrong but I don't think he's employed any assistants or reprints.

17,807 strips means he's 90 strips shy of Charles Schulz's run on Peanuts. If my numbers are correct, that means that in about three months, Tank McNamara will be in second place among newspaper strips drawn by their original artist. But it's also worth noting that for a time, Hinds also originated and drew a strip called Cleats that ran from 2001 to 2010…so maybe he's drawn more strips total than Myers.

I haven't gotten into figuring out who might be the leader if we add up multiple strips. (Myers had another newspaper strip for a time and both men did a lot of work not in daily comic strip format.) Mort Walker was probably involved in the production of more individual strips than anyone but after the first few years of Beetle Bailey, they were all team efforts.

A few folks who wrote in asked about artists like Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Mell Lazarus, Johnny Hart, Chester Gould, Walt Kelly and Chic Young. Yes, they all had long runs signing their names to newspaper strips but all of them used assistants — sometimes sparingly, sometimes a lot. Al Smith ghosted Mutt & Jeff for centuries (it seemed) but he didn't start it just as Bud Sagendorf didn't start Popeye or the guys who drew the bulk of Gasoline Alley or The Katzenjammer Kids didn't start them.

And a couple of readers — who could easily have looked up this information — seemed certain that Doonesbury has been around longer than Broom-Hilda. Nope. Broom-Hilda, as mentioned, started 4/20/1970 and Doonesbury started 10/26/1970. It's a great, ground-breaking strip but Garry Trudeau has taken many a hiatus and had a lot of help and the daily strip is now reprints. Broom-Hilda has been in papers for a longer time without its artist taking vacations or having someone else do much of the drawing.

You can catch up on Tank McNamara on this page. If, like me, you didn't follow it often when the place to do that was in something called a newspaper — which ran it in something called a "Sports Section" which you had no interest in opening — you might be delightfully surprised. And you can sample Cleats over on this page.