Mark Evanier's Blog, page 240

Go Read It!

My pal Lee Goldberg is a fine writer of mystery novels and scripts. Once upon a time, he wrote a screenplay that was to star Dame Edna and if you click on over to Lee's site, he'll tell you all about it.

Today's Video Link

Jordan Klepper hosted The Daily Show last week and I thought he did a really good job. I dunno if the folks at Comedy Central are viewing the new "host-of-the-week" rotation as auditions for a permanent M.C. or it they've decided to go the Saturday Night Live route and change every week from now on. If the former, I don't think they could do better than Mr. Klepper…though they might think he's more valuable out doing field pieces.

Here's something he said to the studio audience during a break or before or after one episode this past week. Seems to me there's an important point in what he says…

Comic-Con is Coming!

It's 86 days until Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego. I'm starting to plan what I'm going to be doing there and if you're going, you shouldn't wait too long. Planning Ahead is key to an enjoyable convention experience. Plan when you're going, how you're going to get there, where you're going to stay and/or park, where you're going to eat, etc. The COVID policy could be changed between now and then but it might be a good idea to read this regarding the current policy. In fact, it's good to keep an eye on the entire convention website which is updated from time to time.

My friends at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog also have loads of great information. They're currently reporting that the dates for next year's Comic-Con appear to be Wednesday, July 17 through Sunday, July 21. That hasn't been confirmed but it sounds likely to me.

Lizard in My Kitchen

Friday evening, a lady who was visiting me said she saw a lizard in my kitchen. She was trustworthy so I believed her even though I myself had never seen a lizard in my kitchen. About an hour ago though, I did. I went downstairs for the first time today and there, acting like there was nowhere in the world it would rather be, was this lizard.

I took a photo with my iPhone, then asked the lizard politely to leave my house. It ignored me so I decided to ask more firmly. It again did not comply so I went over and opened the sliding glass door out to my patio. When the lizard in question refused to take that not-so-subtle hint, I circled around behind it and tried to physically intimidate said lizard into going out towards that door.

When it still did not comply with my wishes, I grabbed up the lid to a plastic container that was within reach and began to "scoot" the lizard in the direction I wished it to go. It finally grasped the concept and sprinted out the door without so much as a "goodbye" or even a plug for its new projects.   I then closed the door and, just to be safe, latched it.  I no longer have a lizard in my kitchen and now that I know how to do it, I'm going to use this technique on a few human but equally unwanted visitors.

Whadda Ya Say, Old Friend?

The other day, I made a wrong turn on YouTube and found myself looking at this video about Russell Myers, the funny, funny man behind the newspaper strip, Broom-Hilda. The video was assembled by his old high school when they inducted him into some sort of Hall of Fame…

Russell Myers is a friend of mine. I'm not certain how long he's been a friend of mine but if it isn't fifty years, it's darn close to that…and somehow, we haven't spoken in the last five or six of those years. So even though I have pressing deadlines, I decided there was nothing more important than reconnecting with my pal Russell. I called him yesterday and we spent a delightful hour or so chatting. I have a few more friends I need to do this with.

I've always loved Broom-Hilda and even though there's no local newspaper in which I can follow it, I make a point of going every so often to this webpage and catching up on it. It was also a joy catching up with Russell…and a question came up which neither of us could answer. Maybe one of you can.

As we all know, some newspaper strips run an awful long time. Gasoline Alley has been appearing since 1918. Barney Google & Snuffy Smith began the following year. Blondie started in 1930, Dick Tracy in 1931 and Prince Valiant in 1937. All of those strips are still running but they've all had several different writers and artists over the years.

Broom-Hilda started appearing in newspapers on…well, various online sources say it was 4/19/70 but Russell says it was the 20th. Either way, that's 53 years and a couple of days…and all 19,361 (or 19,362) of those strips were drawn by Russell Myers. No one else. And the question is — make that questions are — is that an all-time record? And is there any current strip that's been done for so long by one person?

A couple of places on the Internet say that Charles Schulz drew 17,897 published Peanuts strips and one or two of those sources say that's the all-time record. If that number's right, Russell broke that record some time ago.

"Russell" seems to be a good name for folks who drew comic strips for long periods. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Australian cartoonist Jim Russell drew a strip called The Potts without assistance for 62 years but he did not originate that strip and it was weekly for the first twelve of those years.

And the late comics historian R.C. Harvey wrote once that the longest-running American comic strip was Mister Oswald, which was drawn by Russell Johnson for 62 years…but that was not a newspaper strip and it was not daily. It appeared in a monthly magazine called The Hardware Retailer which I'm sure you all eagerly devoured. By contrast, Broom-Hilda has appeared seven days a week since it started.

Okay, Comic Strip Experts…and I know you're out there. Am I missing something here?

The Creative Process

Spectreman was a popular superhero TV show in Japan. Created by a man named Souji Ushio, it debuted on Fuji TV in January of 1971 and ran for 63 episodes. The shows were eventually dubbed into English and syndicated on American television commencing in the fall of 1978.

Omac was a comic book created by Jack Kirby and published by DC Comics beginning in 1974. It didn't last long and I have been known to make the case that it, like a lot of comics DC launched between around 1968 and 1976, was a good publication that should have and could have lasted longer if its publisher (a) was better at marketing its wares and (b) hadn't been so quick to cancel anything that wasn't an immediate hit. Omac has since been revived and reprinted many times indicating that some people liked it but its success has nothing to do with this piece.

What do these two properties have in common? There are a few similarities between the characters and their storylines, just as there are some similarities between almost any super-hero comic and almost any other super-hero comic. I'm no expert on Spectreman but the parallels seem to me to be few in number. Still, the other day on Facebook, someone asked if Omac could have in some way been inspired by Spectreman.

I sure don't think so. For one thing, Spectreman was not on American TV — or as far as I can tell, exhibited anywhere in this country — at the time Jack did the first issue of Omac. If it was somewhere, it wasn't in English and Jack did not speak or understand Japanese.

For another thing, Jack told the core idea of Omac to me and my then-partner Steve Sherman in either late 1969 or early 1970. It was an idea he developed while at Marvel a few years earlier…an idea for a Captain America series set in a bizarre future.

It began with the premise that Steve Rogers, the gent who then wore the costume of that star-spangled hero could not live forever. There would come a point — and I thought they'd already past it — when a guy who was doing superhuman feats in World War II could not be doing superhuman feats a few decades later; not even if he'd been frozen in a block of ice for some of those years.

Ah, but the concept of Captain America could. The series Jack had in mind involved a new guy — or maybe even a gal — going by that name, wearing a futuristic patriotic costume in a very different era. Jack might have done it at Marvel had not the company refused to ever let him have a financial share in, or even a creator credit on any new book he launched or helped launch.

I do not remember every detail of the idea Jack told us then but I remember enough to know some of it formed the basis of Omac a few years later. But this piece is also really not about that.

What it is about is that people who rarely if ever create things for a living often don't get that because a book, movie, TV show or any form of entertainment has one or two things in common with something else, it doesn't mean that one was inspired by or copied from the other.

In Batman #156, which came out in April of 1963, Robin the Boy Wonder encountered a character named Ant-Man. A few years ago on the Internet, a fellow who couldn't seem to read dates kept insisting that Marvel copied its Ant-Man from that Ant-Man — this despite the fact that Marvel's came out close to a year earlier. When he finally grasped the concept of time moving in a forward direction, he became equally certain DC's was plagiarized from Marvel's.

Me, I think it was a coincidence and I have two reasons. One is that while folks in comics do sometimes copy what others have done, they usually wait until something is a smash success — which Ant-Man wasn't back then — to rip it off and they usually don't give their imitation the same name. Makes the crime kinda obvious.

Secondly, in an industry where someone thought of naming characters Batman or Hawkman or Catwoman or Spider-Man, it seems quite possible that two different people could independently think of pairing the word "ant" with the word "man." And the idea of having a teensy human in a normal-sized world had been around in fantasy and science-fiction way before DC launched the tiny version of The Atom (in 1961) or Quality Comics had Doll Man (in 1939).

I am not saying one person's idea might not inspire someone else's…and often you can lay the final work next to what inspired it and not see any similarity whatsoever. I'm just saying that just because one thing reminds you of another, that's not prima facie proof that the creator made the same connection you did.

Jack Kirby was not shy in admitting that the original Captain Marvel (the one who said "Shazam!" a lot) was a major inspiration for the Marvel version of Thor. And now that I mention it, some of you are probably saying, "Oh, yeah! I see the connection!" But that didn't occur to me until I heard Jack say it…and even if he hadn't said it and I noticed a tenuous connection, that wouldn't be proof that the latter was inspired by the former.

Dame Edna Everage, R.I.P.

Also known sometimes as Australian entertainer Barry Humphries. Never met him or her and I have no stories. But boy, was he/she funny…and the best reason in the world to not outlaw drag.

Today's Video Link

As you may have heard, Mike "My Pillow" Lindell offered a challenge: He'd pay five million dollars (that's FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!!!) to anyone who could disprove his "proof" that the last presidential election was stolen. Someone did and now that guy's trying to collect…

Go Read It!

Here's a disturbing article headlined, "Oklahoma’s Top Prosecutor Doesn’t Want to Execute an Innocent Man. A Court Is Forcing Him to Do It Anyway."

It's the kind of piece where my first reflex is to think, "There must be some aspect of this matter that the reporter isn't reporting here." But I have a hard time imagining what it could be.

Today's Video Link

Nathan Lane takes us through the catalog of plays he performed in on Broadway. This runs a little over 26 minutes and I wish it ran a lot longer.

I saw him in five of these shows: Guys and Dolls, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (which I saw twice), The Producers and November. I enjoyed them all but thought that November was a mediocre play made entertaining by Mr. Lane and co-star Laurie Metcalf. There are quite a few other shows covered here that I wish I'd seen but it's nice to hear Lane talk about them…