Free Comic Book Day is receiving one of its largest public relations boosts, thanks to the conjunction of Wolverine in theaters and Hugh Jackman's promotional video. Jackman didn't do it by himself, of course, but he has consistently been a terrific advocate, not only for comic books, but also for comics' creators!
And, speaking of creators, a number of forces clearly had to come together to make that video and provide it circulation. Thanks to all!
As delivered this morning, when my United Airlines check-in was refused, and I was sent to work things out with USAir, which had arranged the flight:
1 "Don't give me attitude." (This was in response to my pointing out that, yes, as I'd said, I'd already done what she was telling me to do.)
2 "Good thing you got here early." Which I always try to do but am often mocked for. It took about half an hour to disabuse the computer of the notion that I had somehow canceled my return flight home or not made a connecting flight days earlier. (And I should say that the ticket agent did, indeed, solve the problem with the patience required to hang on hold with whoever necessary to resolve things.)
So lessons learned.
Every New Year's Day in recent years has brought a special fonts sale from "The World's Greatest Comic Book Fonts!" aka Richard Starkings' Comicraft service.
The deal is simple enough: On New Year's Day 2000, for example, every font was priced at $20.00. Inflation being what it is, the price has gone up, now that it's New Year's Day 2009: $20.09.
But it was still a pleasure to browse the fonts and pick new favorites. For $20.09 each today, I bought SpillProof, CutthroatLower-Intl, and SignLanguage. You may find others that tickle your fancy. (If you don't already have ComicCrazy, for example, I recommend it for starters.)
But the offer's only good today.
Check it out! You, too, can pretend you're a comic-book letterer!
Following the death of his father, Jeff Vaughn provided thoughts about their relationship in a moving post December 29. It's a sad end to the year -- but an illuminating view of what many comics people experience: a loving bond with a wonderful person who isn't interested in our field but cares deeply about us. (And that aside, Jim Vaughn was clearly someone that made the world a better place.)
Don't miss this reminiscence.
On Dec. 8, the Chicago-based Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. While news reports from around the Internet and TV broadcasts focus on the number of newspapers and TV stations included in the Tribune Company holdings (and the Cubs, which aren't included), I haven't heard anyone mention the syndicated features that are also part of the empire. Even the Tribune's own story doesn't seem to mention Tribune Media Services.
As you'll find, if you visit the TMS website, the firm syndicates comic strips: Animal Crackers, Annie, Bliss, Bottom Liners, Bound & Gagged, Brenda Starr, Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!, Broom-Hilda, Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, Gil Thorp, Housebroken, Loose Parts, Love Is ..., The Middletons, 9 to 5, Pink Panther, Pluggers, Raising Hector, and Sylvia, along with editorial cartoons by Paul Conrad, Matt Davies, Walt Handelsman, David Horsey, Dick Locher, Chan Lowe, Jack Ohman, Drew Sheneman, Wayne Stayskal, Dan Wasserman, and Don Wright.
The news stories all say plans are to continue business as usual for the time being. For the long term, could we be looking at sales of the strips to other syndicates eventually? Or folding the strips? Some would depend on the contracts binding the corporation and the creators, of course -- but bankruptcy reorganization can affect those contracts.
If TMS is part of the bankruptcy or somehow separate. And I'm still not finding a news story that gives me the answer.
You know how it is: Every so often, you Google a phrase to see whether a favorite topic has turned up information, whether it's to learn whether Alice Troughton is related to Patrick Troughton (she's not his daughter) or whether there's a chance that a favorite commercial from the past is posted somewhere.
And I'm delighted to report that a website posts a series of vintage commercials that opens with something I've been looking for for some time: the original New Country Corn Flakes animation-and-live-action combo. Don and I used to dash into the room to see this whenever we heard the introductory chicken call. We never figured out who did it (though we suspected the Jay Ward crew), but it made us laugh every time. And, by golly, we certainly remembered the name of the product when we were in the grocery store.
Other commercials of interest for one reason or another are in the medly, but I leave it to you whether you watch them all. I'm just saying you owe it to yourself to click on that link, crank up the volume (unless you're in an office, in which case use your discretion), and enjoy the next 60 seconds.
As I wandered through Barnes & Noble a week ago, I stumbled over a paperback titled Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! It's by Dilbert creator Scott Adams and it consists in large part of postings from his website blog. And it's my kind of humor and comedic insight -- which is, of course, not to say I agree with everything he says. But wow, he is so bang-on with so much and says it so well, that I can't believe I haven't seen at least some of it before via my wide range of acquaintances.
He points out in the pb introduction that there was an earlier, hardcover version -- which I'd also managed to miss. Agh! On the other hand, that very introduction says, "The paperback version of this book is superior to the hardbound version in several ways. First, if you plan to read it aloud, there's a good chance someone will yank it out of your hands and start beating you with it. That's when you really appreciate the softness.
"The paperback version costs less, it's lighter, and the material has a solid track record of not triggering epileptic seizures. But most important, this paperback version includes some new content."
In any case, some of the entries (and they're all brief: ideal for consuming with your eyes in much the way you consume grapes or Cheetos [your choice] with your mouth) focus on being a newspaper cartoonist. Several essays focus on Dilbert strips that had to be changed at the behest of the editors at United Media. One passage, for example, is titled "Comic Asses" and discusses the strip that ran Nov. 12, 2006 -- and Adams' original version -- and resolves itself in a list of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" comic-strip butts.
Not all the essays are comics-oriented. One, for example, begins with the information that it costs about $25,000 to keep one criminal in jail for a year -- going on to suggest converting a spare bedroom into a prison cell and charging the government $25,000 a year to house a convict there.
Just keep in mind one of his remarks: "I may be dumb, but I'm not dumb enough to express my true opinion about anything important. The one thing I've learned about freedom of expression is that you really ought to keep that sort of thing to yourself." Love it.
I note that the AP story on Forry's death includes the hesitant notation that he was "widely credited with coining the term 'sci fi.'"
That's what you write when you've been editing long enough to know that many claims to be the first or the biggest or the originator are not necessarily accurate. So when people say, "Forrest J Ackerman created the term 'sci fi,' based on wordplay involving the term 'hi fi,'" the cautious editor will hem and haw or simply back away to a statement that is factual enough: that Forry was credited with the term.
But take it from me (or from the Fancyclopedia II passage quoted earlier today): Forry Ackerman did coin the term "sci fi." Some people have never forgiven him for that.
(Oh, and Maggie Thompson coined the term "Done in One." Just thought I'd mention it, while I'm at it. Years ago. In the pages of CBG. When serials had become so integral to comics that issues containing a tale with beginning, middle, and end deserved special mention. Now you know two anecdotes about originating terms. Amaze your friends.)
Though Mom and Dad must have hung out with Forry at science-fiction conventions and maintained longtime correspondence, my first interaction came when Forry asked my family whether they had any Walt Kelly comic books we could send to his friend who was a French SF fan who also loved Kelly’s work. So it was that I really internalized the "better to give than to receive" feeling for the first time, as Jean Linard became a dear friend: a man who spoke almost no English but who read and wrote a delicious mix of "normal" English and Pogoisms. And that was part of what made SF fandom – and Forry – so marvelous: friendship and influences in interactions with people who seldom, if ever, met. Such interactions had grown in the 1930s, before I was born, and were long established by the 1950s and 1960s, as I entered the world and conventions (in both senses) of fandom. And, of course, it was decades before the Internet brought the world what we in the world of SF took for granted.
In 1959, a fan named Dick Eney produced one of the major reference works of fandom, a fan project itself: Fancyclopedia II, an updating of an earlier reference. The complete text appears online.
Let me take you back that far to provide an increased appreciation of what Forry was half a century ago. Almost from the beginning, Forry was what was termed a BNF (Big Name Fan), though Forry himself (and such possible entries as 4SJ) didn’t merit a separate entry. But "Ackermanese" did. Because he was that influential Way Back When. Here’s some of the entry for that:
"The grammatical practices followed by Forrest J Ackerman and in part -- the degree varying from fan to fan -- by those in whom his example propagated. Several minor wars were fought over the question of its uses but the invention went on insidiously spreading till about the time of the Insurgent War in LA.
"The practice, tho not the name, was revived about 1954 as described under DEMOLISHISMS.
"Lapse of Ackermanese was not directly caused by the Blowup; it was abandoned by 4e himself, with the explanation that he was disgusted with a lot of things like this that he'd tried to popularize with slight success.
"Originally it was a radical form of simplifyd spelng, like 'U & I r to b praps th lst 2 men to go roketng to an xtra-galaktik planet wher a rekt ship is strandd'."
But here, in 1959, it targets one of Forry's legacies:
"SCI-FI (Ackerman) 4e is trying to popularize this expression as an equivalent for stf, i e a contraction for science-fiction. So far it has attached chiefly to several professional movie-fan magazines and other Hollywood-level stuff."
"Trying to popularize" is right. He popularized it by his creation of (and ongoing editorial control of) the Warren magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. While SF fans had known him for decades as one of its foremost fans, the larger world became acquainted with him via the fascination of a generation of boys who grew up captivated by monthly images of SF and fantasy pop culture both old and new. Forry was the oldest of the 12-year-olds whom he led, and he remained forever that obsessive 12-year-old. With the February 1958 issue (with publisher Jim Warren wearing a Frankenstein’s monster mask and accompanied by a curvaceous young woman), FMoF began years of inspiring young readers to seek out fantastic classics, especially those with vivid horror elements.
At the SF WorldCon in St. Louis in 1969 (1,534 attendees), Forry could be spotted as the tall man surrounded by a shoulder-high mob of young admirers, termed by the rest of us "Forry’s Little Monsters." He was their guru; make no mistake. When they grew up, so many of them became pop-culture professionals that his "sci-fi" coinage was embedded in the very field he’d chosen as his focus. For example, when Don and I met Stephen King on his book tour for (I think) The Dead Zone, the conversation turned to Forry, and we suddenly realized that King might have been one of that herd of Little Monsters; he cheerily confirmed our suspicions.
Forry made his home a tourist treat for friends and young admirers. I recall a conversation in which he told of his discovery that his precious Dracula ring had disappeared. He delightedly told of solving the mystery -- and the social problem -- by contacting the suspected thief to say, simply, "Give me a ring." And it was returned immediately.
Forry was never able to accomplish one of his goals: to be supported financially forever as the lifelong custodian of a museum comprising his collection of memorabilia. But he gave us a word -- and a legacy of a strengthened genre of pop culture that continues to bring goosebumps to the world.
So it's been a full month since I last posted anything here, and I apologize; life gets in the way sometimes. And it's doubly sad that it took this news to get me back to the CBGXtra keyboard.
Mark Evanier posted (and I finally got a chance to check out his blog) recently that one of the most vital instigators of the annual comics convention in San Diego has been hospitalized since April! It seems Tom Spurgeon, who doesn't know Shel, posted the news with Shel's address there.
Thanks to Tom -- with an added guilt trip that I hadn't been paying enough attention on my own to learn this. In CBG #1649, my Beautiful Balloons column discussed some of the history of what is today Comic-Con International: San Diego -- so I'd already begun hoping to catch up with the man who was so instrumental in its formation. The first time Don and I went to the event was at his instigation -- in 1976 -- where we received (also, I bet, at his instigation, at least in part) an Inkpot for our fannish activities.
Seriously, if you've ever enjoyed the San Diego show, now's the time to thank Shel for his part in bringing it to us. He wasn't alone in the project; no one person could have done it alone. But, by golly, its formation and early growth owed much to Shel. (And let's not forget the dozens of excellent interviews he provided to CBG and its predecessor publication over the years.)