Mark Evanier's Blog, page 9

Somewhere Over the Budget

I'm reading 'n' hearing a lot about the A.I.-assisted retooling of The Wizard of Oz into a cinematic thrill ride that will play at The Sphere in Las Vegas…and maybe nowhere else. I have no idea how I feel about it and probably won't until I go see the film which I have no intention of doing. Part of that is, as I've been writing here, Las Vegas has become a very overpriced place to be. This is not just my opinion. Tourists are staying away in droves, grosses are falling everywhere and the crash is so real that it's been given a name. Everyone's referring to it as "The Gouge."

Would you plan a vacation in a city experiencing what everyone is calling "The Gouge?"

So I have no interest in going to Las Vegas. The city was my second home for a few decades to the point where I seriously considered buying a condo there and living half the time there, half the time in Los Angeles. The hotels there are dropping prices and offering discounts but not enough and not with a lot of sincerity.

Will the shunning of the city affect this new, expensive refry of the classic movie? I dunno but all the stories about the new version seem to be omitting one very important face about it: The price. Ticket prices for a Saturday matinee start at $138 a seat and go up to $349. If you need to pay for parking or you want refreshments, you'll find similar pricing…and that's just part of what's wrong with Vegas these days.

A DC Comics Relic

I came across this in my files a few years ago and thought, "I oughta scan this and post the scans on my blog so everyone can see them."  I've finally gotten around to doing this.

At some point in the sixties — we'll discuss what point in a moment — if you sent a letter to the DC Comics featuring Superman, you sometimes got back a "thank you" postcard and you sometimes got back one of these green pieces of paper filled with answers to the most-asked questions they received.  I'm about 98% certain that the page was written by Nelson Bridwell, who was the overworked, underpaid and often mistreated assistant to Mort Weisinger, editor of those particular DC Comics.

I'm going to guess DC sent out a ton of these.  Someone else must have one or more of them…but the ones I received are the only ones I've ever seen anywhere.  I got about two dozen of them in response to letters I sent in and I recall sometimes receiving two or three of them the same day…but I only seem to have this one copy in my files.  Most of them came folded-in-thirds with a little round sticker keeping them closed and with the mailing address scrawled or typed on the outside.

This one though doesn't have my name and address on it.  The others I received did but this one came in an envelope with a stamp on it.  Why?  My theory then was that it couldn't go third class mail since someone at the DC office wrote in the answers to some questions I had.  And I'm pretty sure that's the handwriting of Nelson Bridwell.

So when was this printed and when did they stop sending these out?  I'm guessing it was written in early-to-mid 1966.  There's a plug in there for a forthcoming new Superman cartoon show debuting in the Fall of 1966.  They couldn't have known that much earlier than then.  (Before you ask about the Aurora model kits of Superman and Superboy mentioned in the mailer: The Superman model came out in 1963 and the Superboy model came out in 1965.  And Zip Codes — which appear in the mailer but not everywhere — started in '63.)

Someone who knows more about the Legion of Super-Heroes than I do could probably figure out exactly when that team's membership roster matched the one listed in the mailer.  How about it, Mark Waid?

The scribbled note talks about DC changing the size of their original artwork and they did that around the middle of 1967.  So that may give us a hint as to when this particular one was sent.  DC went through so many changes beginning around then that this mailer would have been pretty obsolete soon after that.  (And notice what I asked.  Even in '67 when I was 15 years old, I was more interested in how the comics were done than I was in the characters or their adventures.)

Okay, so here's your chance to download scans of both sides of what came to me as one 8-1/2" by 11" page — and lemme warn you: I made these scans pretty large since the typeface on them was so tiny.  Don't even try it if you're going to attempt to read it on your phone.  You'll need a big monitor and you'll probably have to zoom in on the text.  You can download the front of the page here and the back of the page here.  And don't say I never gave you anything.

Today's Video Link

Here's the latest episode of The Barbara Gaines Show with her Special Usual Guest Star David Letterman…

Something Else I Won't Be Buying

Up for sale in Wyoming is a 916,076-acre ranch and grazing empire. The entire spread is four times the size of New York City and it all can be yours for a measly $79.5 million dollars — but I have a hunch they'd take $79.4 mil.

Scenes From Comic-Con #9

Step into the Wabac Machines, Sherman, and set the dial for just two weeks ago…Sunday, July 27, 2025. It's the final day of the 54th Comic-Con in Summer in San Diego, California and I'm hosting my 64th Cartoon Voices panel.  Let's see who was on it…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

That's Abby Trott — lovely lady, great talent.  You heard her in Demon Slayer, Barbie Mysteries, X-Men '97. a whole lotta video games and many more…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

That's Vincent Martella.  He's Phineas Flynn in Phineas and Ferb and he was Jason Todd in Batman: Under the Red Hood and Death in the Family, and like everyone else on this panel, he has way more credits than I am capable of listing here. 

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Meet Gabe Kunda, a busy voice actor from Dallas and he can also be heard singing bass for the Grammy-nominated a cappella group Kings Return…and if you read this blog, you know how much I love a cappella singing groups.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

I wrote about Kaitlyn Robrock a few posts ago here.  She's one of those people who worked hard to break into the field and once she did, everyone wanted to cast her in whatever they were doing.  On the panel when the actors read a hoary fairy tale script, I cast her as the Evil Witch and Michael Scott Action (below) as the Handsome Prince and somehow — don't ask me how — he wound up beatboxing with his mouth and Kait was suddenly rapping to it in perfect rhyme and rhythm.  It was not planned but it was hilarious.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

And that's David Errigo Jr., who showed up for the panel thinking he was just going to sit in the audience and watch his friends…but he's now Ferb on Phineas and Ferb among his many roles and I got to thinking, "We have Phineas up here…we might as well have Ferb, especially since I had this extra nameplate made up with David's name so…"

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Maurice LaMarche has been on ten of my Cartoon Voice panels and I'd have him on every one if I could.  He certainly has enough different voices.  I first saw this guy as a stand-up comic/impressionist on TV and was real impressed at his ability to "do" people no one else did or two put his own spin on the celebs that others did.  I am thoroughly unsurprised he became a top cartoon voice person.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

And this gent calls himself Michael Scott Action.  He used to be Michael Scott but there were a lot of other Michael Scotts around, some even in the actors' union.  An actor named Joe Lane had to rename himself Nathan Lane for the same reason.  Michael slapped an "Action" onto his name so his name would be as unique as his talents.  This was his first Cartoon Voices panel but far from his last.

I think I have one more page of convention pics to post. I'll try to have it up here tomorrow.

Sneak Peek

People magazine offers you a little preview of my forthcoming (first week in October) book celebrating the 75th anniversary of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and all the kids 'n' creatures who made up the comic strip Peanuts.  If you're a steady reader of this blog, you're going to get real sick of reading about this book here.

More Recommended Reading

Greg Gutfeld on Fox News is being called The King of Late Night by those who note that his Nielsen Ratings are higher than Stephen Colbert's — and that's true but it's not the whole story. As Sophia A. McClennen — a Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University — writes, there are other metrics and other aspects of to consider. I would think a big one is that Colbert is way more popular on social media and among people who know what a joke is.

Recommended Reading

In The New Yorker, Jon Allsop suggests an interesting way to look at one of the aspects of this Trump presidency. Basically — and these are my words, not his — Trump won the election by convincing enough voters that the American economy was much, much worse than it was. And now, his task is to convince them it's much, much better than it is.

Today's Video Link

In a post last night, I linked you to thirty minutes of Dana Gould doing stand-up.  Based on my e-mail, a lot of you found him as hilarious and clever as I do so here's a whole hour of him…

Scenes From Comic-Con #8

I've been hosting Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con and WonderCon since 1997 and the two we did at Comic-Con this year might have been the two best.  I'm a semi-impartial person since I pick the panelists but can take zero credit for how brilliant and/or hilarious they turn out to be on stage.  Lemme tell you who I picked this year for the Saturday panel…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

On the very long list of skills I lack, right up there with Prostate Surgery and Interpretive Dance, you'll find Doing Impressions.  Never mind not being able to sound like Christopher Walken and Robert DeNiro, I can't even do a recognizable Mark Evanier.  But I'll tell you who can do a spot-on Walken or DeNiro or just about anybody else famous: Jim Meskimen can.  One of the reasons I love having him on the panel is because I get to watch audience members stare open-jawed at his ability to not only sound exactly like the people but to crawl inside them and ad-lib in perfect character.  You've gotta hear this guy to believe him.  Here he is in the photo demonstrating his uncanny Leonard Nimoy.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

This was the first time we had Benni Latham on the panel but not the last, even if I have to recruit her at gunpoint.  What a funny, versatile lady.  We did a reading of Beauty and the Beast with her as Belle and she got a laugh on every line.  Every single line.  After the panel, an attendee thanked me for getting Benni and said that her performances as Dot Malto on one of the Transformers series was their favorite bit of acting on a recent animated program.  I'm not surprised.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

That's Audrey Wasilewski, who I first worked with on The Garfield Show.  She was the voice of Garfield's lady friend Arlene and you've heard here on dozens of shows and seen her in a lot of commercials.  One of those folks who never stops working — and speaking of folks who were on The Garfield Show and who never stop working…

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

Gregg Berger was the voice of Odie and many, many other characters on The Garfield Show and before that, on Garfield and Friends.  You've also heard him voicing Eeyore (on Winnie the Pooh) and Grimlock (of The Transformers) and Cornfed (on the Duckman show) and a long list of other programs.  Gregg holds the record for the most appearances on my Cartoon Voices panels.  I've done 63 of them (here's the list) and Gregg has been on 22 of them.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

I was delighted to get this guy on the panel this year.  That's Dana Gould, who I consider one of the brightest, funniest stand-up comedians working these days.  If you're not familiar with his work, click here and become familiar with his work.  Dana does voiceovers too so I pounced on him and he did not disappoint.

Photo by Bruce Guthrie

And lastly, that's Fred Tatasciore, who is the voice of The Hulk in Hulk cartoons and of The Beast in X-Men cartoons and I'll have to do a whole post here one day and tell you all about Fred.  One of the great talents and a helluva nice guy.

If it seems like overkill that I'm praising these people…well, if I didn't think they were real good at cartoon voices, I wouldn't have asked them to be on my Cartoon Voices panel, right?  Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the terrific people I snagged for the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel.