Mark Evanier's Blog, page 32

Sunday Morning

Well, a lotta folks online seem to be very happy that (a) the "No Kings" protests yesterday were wildly successful and (b) that Donald Trump's military parade and birthday celebration was not.  We're just starting to see the revisionism that these two things were not as they appeared but that's just denial of reality.  It's just like when any Trump staffer is asked "Why did this endeavor of yours fail?", the only answer they're allowed to give is "It didn't fail."  But we (and they) know what really happened.

Today's Video Link

Superman by Wayne Boring

My buddy Gary Sassaman is back with another video about comics he loved as a kid. This one is about his favorite Superman artists and I'm linking you to it even though Gary and I differ on a few folks in that category. I first knew Superman as…well, I first knew him as George Reeves and then I knew him as a cartoon character in those Fleischer/Paramount cartoons. But my first Superman in comics was the one drawn by Wayne Boring and I still associate him and his style with most of my favorite Superman stories of the fifties and sixties.

Don't get me wrong: I love Curt Swan and have on one of my walls, a big still-in-pencil drawing he did for me of Superman flying over the Daily Planet building as Lois waves to him. But I felt Swan did the best Superman on covers and pin-up style drawings and Boring did the best Superman dramas. Your mileage, depending a lot on when you started reading those comics, is likely to vary.

(Actually: I think Mr. Swan was one of those artists who was probably better than we knew.  I think his work was seriously reduced by most of those who inked his penciled artwork and it was further harmed by editors urging him to try to be "more dynamic" with his page layouts.  This is a conclusion I reached after a devoted Swan collector showed me a number of never-inked Swan pages — stats and originals — dating back to the sixties and seeing how much better his compositions were when he didn't try squeezing them into oddly-shaped panels and stuck with squares.  Just my opinion.)

Also, one of my favorite Superman artists of the later period — unmentioned by Gary in this video — was Ross Andru. I didn't always love the stories he drew but that wasn't his fault. He drew what was for me the Superman of that period who most looked like he could lift up a car or break through a brick wall. But Gary and I agree on some others, especially Kurt Schaffenberger. Did I ever tell you that when my mother was going to high school in Hartford, Connecticut, her best friend was dating a kid who went to a nearby school…a kid who wanted to grow up to draw comic books and, according to my mother, drew Superman on everyone's book covers? And yes, that was Kurt Schaffenberger who did indeed grow up to draw comic books…and very well.

Anyway, here's what Gary has to say on the subject…

This Just In…

Wow! Millions of people are turning out for "No Kings" protest rallies all across the nation. This must be costing those unknown parties who hire all these paid protestors a fortune!

Royal Protest

My foot is forbidding me to go out and join the mass protests today but I can put up a banner on my blog and leave it up all weekend. This may fall into the category of The Least I Could Do but it's something. I can also express my open-mouthed astonishment that we even have to do this; that there are people in this country who don't see what this man is doing to this country.

MORE RECENT POSTS APPEAR BELOW

Today's Video Link

Jim Henson died on May 16, 1990 and a lot of people cried…including a lot of people who never got to actually meet this extraordinary man but felt like they had. I did once — I'm sure I've told that story before on this blog — and he was just as nice and smart a person as you would have thought from his many television appearances.

A few months after we lost him, all of his associates pooled their talents to create a special called The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson. It aired on CBS on November 21, 1990 and I thought they did a great job…and one that couldn't have been easy, especially for those closest to the man. Here's the whole special. It's difficult to watch the last ten minutes with dry eyes…

By the Way…

I used to occasionally do a post on this blog where I'd identify a "Person I'm Glad I'm Not Today" or words to that effect. Then I'd name someone who was in a whole lot of trouble with no chance of belief in sight. Well, for the record, a person I'm glad I have never been and never will be because he has nothing but misery and financial ruin ahead is Mike Lindell.

Study this man. He's showing you every single thing not to do when you're being sued for defamation including being unable to even pronounce to word "defamation." I'm also glad I'm not one of his lawyers.

FACT CHECK: Truth Dying in Darkness

Here's someone who's not Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post fact-checking a lot of the things Trump and his mob have been claiming about California. I'll quote this one paragraph…

In California, violent crime is down, and the unemployment rate is close to the national average. The state recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has the highest number of immigrants — both legal, most of them citizens, and undocumented. But in recent years, the state has lost hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to their homelands or to more-affordable states. Unauthorized immigrants in California remain well below the peak of nearly 3 million more than a decade ago for reasons that often have little to do with enforcement — or Trump.

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Fact-Check.org debunks the claim that protestors are paid and notes that Trump is now citing murder statistics he used to insist were "Fake News." Also, there's a graphic making the rounds of the Internet that fibs about what's in the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill."

You can also find an awful lot of videos on YouTube where Congressfolks are arguing with members of the Trump team over what's in the bill…and the Trumpers' responses are pretty unconvincing. It's like even they don't believe what they've been told to say. This has become the norm since Trump was sworn in by placing his hand on that book he's never opened except to autograph copies for sale.

Quick Request

Hey, could someone who knows how to correct Wikipedia make a fix on this page about the San Diego Comic Convention? People keep writing to me to point out that it says that in 1992, there was a celebration of Jack Kirby's 75th birthday and that Phil Foglio was the host. That wasn't Phil Foglio. That was me. [UPDATE: Thanks to whoever fixed it.]

Today's Second Video Link

Some folks affiliated with the Peacock Network were producing these "Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live" videos which take a look at each season and the backstage details — who hosted, who was fired, how the show changed, etc. They mysteriously stopped with Season 20 back in January of this year but now here's Season 21, which I remember as a season I don't much remember because my interest in the show hit a new low. Maybe you were a steady viewer this year but I wasn't…

ASK me: Mae Questel

Michael Grabowski wrote to ask me this question about Mae Questel, who did loads of cartoon voices in her day…and commercials such as for the product she's clutching in a photo below. She voiced a lot of popular characters but the two biggies would be Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. In fact, she even voiced Popeye in one short…

All your talk about Boop! lately got me wondering if you ever had the chance to direct, work with, or otherwise encounter Mae Questel. Tangentially related, can you say anything about what it's like to get voice actors to sing in character when there are musical bits? I'm thinking of the typical voice actor, such as Ms. Questel, Mel Blanc, or Dan Castellaneta, rather than professional singers hired just for the musical parts.

Nope. Never met or had any contact with Ms. Questel. When I was voice-directing and casting the Garfield and Friends cartoon show, I indulged my inner child — who usually is not that "inner" — and hired a lot of veteran voiceover specialists including Shep Menkin, Marvin Kaplan, Dick Beals, Dick Tufeld, Bill Woodson, Stan Freberg, Julie Bennett, Don Messick, Larry Storch and others. Our producer Lee Mendelson was nice enough to pick up the considerably-added expense of me going to New York to record a couple of cartoons with New York based talent including Arnold Stang and Eddie Lawrence and I tried to book Mae Questel but she was unavailable — for what reason I do not know.

Since she was based in N.Y., I didn't have much opportunity to cross paths with her. When Hanna-Barbera out here did a new Popeye show in 1978, I did get to briefly meet Jack Mercer, who voiced the sailor-man for many decades. He flew in from the East Coast several times to record shows and I think he also did some from New York. I didn't get to meet Mae Questel who reportedly auditioned to play Olive but didn't get the job. The rumor in the H-B halls was that the studio didn't want to pay the cost of dealing with (and sometimes, flying in) more than one actor who lived that far away.

Even then, Ms. Questel was pretty busy for most of her long career. She was really good at what she did, which was acting on-camera and off.

As for having voice actors sing…it's just like anything else we might ask them to do. Some of them do it real well, some don't. When a voice actor isn't an A+ singer, studios often bring in someone to be the singing voice of, for example, Yogi Bear in Hey There, It's Yogi Bear…and I always think that's a mistake. I've never had any trouble getting an acceptable singing performance out of any voice actor. Even if the voice actor isn't the greatest singer, he or she can always at least sound like the character and that's what matters.