Beautiful Balloons with Maggie Thompson

Who's the Longest-Running Fictional Character Ever?

David — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:57:32 GMT

That's the question asked by National Public Radio on its "Monkey See" blog today. Take a look -- not only at the query and the essay but also at the second-guessing.

I think we're especially able to participate in this discussion, don't you?

Thanks to Hugh Jackman!

David — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:08:29 GMT

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!

Counting Down to Free Comic Book Day

David — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:49:56 GMT

Well, I already posted (at CBGXtra) the link to National Public Radio's Free Comic Book Day plug, snark and all. But now it's time to be sure I've assembled what I'll need for the annual jaunt to Madison, Wisconsin. This is complicated by its being the first year that I've gone down the day before in order to report on a museum exhibit devoted to underground comix; guest star is Denis Kitchen, with whom I haven't had a chance at a relaxed chat for months -- maybe years.

+ camera
+ camcorder
+ audio recorder
+ cell phone
+ gas for the car
+ cash for store purchases
+ Palm Pilot (and notebook) with addresses and phone numbers
+ want list

Oh, yes, and: tape for the camcorder and battery charging for every battery-operated item I'll be lugging along. Time to plug in!

What do you make it a point to haul along?

Yay! First Independent to Release Rob Siegel's "Big Fan"

David — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:37:32 GMT

Those who thought The Wrestler erupted full-blown, Athenalike, from the brains of director Darren Aronofsky and actor Mickey Rourke may be surprised to learn that the project actually originated with former Onion editor Rob Siegel. As Rourke thanked his dog at an awards show and Aronofsky failed to mention Rob in a lengthy NPR Fresh Air interview, I waited eagerly for the universe to acknowledge who had created the flippin' thing (and who did, at least, get a cameo in the movie's opening scene).

And then I began the wait to get a chance to see Rob's next project: one for which he'll actually receive credit, since he's directing it. And now it's been announced that First Independent Pictures will distribute it to theaters before the end of the year. Huzzah!

What Transformed You into a Geek? (If You Are One.)

David — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:49:10 GMT

In a delicious essay titled "Why a 42-Year-Old Superhero Cartoon Is Better than a Pony," National Public Radio blogger Glen Weldon identifies the magic moment that made him what he is.

Here's the link. And what was the magic moment for you?

Neil Gaiman and The Colbert Report

David — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:34:08 GMT

It's tonight! It's tonight! It's tonight! Set those timers!

Can You Identify This Cartoon?

David — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:19:03 GMT

It seems to be a constant challenge in our field to identify anonymous artists -- so let me toss the challenge out here, while I'm at it.

I recently bought the original of a magazine cartoon I'm sure I've seen before but I don't know who the artist is or where the cartoon appeared. I've posted the cartoon on my website, and it's only been a day -- but I'm already getting impatient about a possible answer.

Any ideas?

Vertigo's The Unwritten

David — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:39:33 GMT

The new series from Vertigo is written by Mike Carey and drawn by Peter Gross; it was announced at the recent New York con, and now photocopies of the first issue (priced at $1 and scheduled to ship May 13) have gone out to reviewers.

The concept (at least, as revealed in #1) is something along the lines of: What if an internationally popular fantasy series (like the Harry Potter books) had been written starring the author's son (like A.A. Milne's Christopher Robin) -- and then the author had disappeared? Picking up the action as the author's son (Tom Taylor) is an adult trying to eke out a living on the convention circuit, the story quickly plunges into what it would mean to him when his life is suddenly exposed to turmoil.

DC's promotional copy says, "To discover the truth about himself, Tom must search through all the places in history where fiction and reality have intersected. And in the process, he'll learn more about [an] unwritten cabal and the plot they're at the center of, a plot that spans all of literature, from the first clay tablets to the gothic castles where Frankenstein was conceived to the self-adjusting stories of the internet."

One of the first people to enter the tale is a young woman named Lizzie Hexam, who says she's studying media at King's College. Unrevealed in the first issue is that "Lizzie Hexam" is a character in Charles Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. In that novel, written in 1864-65, Lizzie is a lower-class woman pursued by two men, both of whom are changed by their fascination with her. But Our Mutual Friend isn't a fantasy -- and The Unwritten is. Is this the same Lizzie -- and is she one of the intersections? I have no idea. But this is so promising, I'm eager to find out.

Away for more than a MONTH?

David — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:13:33 GMT

Yeah, sorry. Seriously, sorry.

Now let's try to get this blog back on a daily basis.

Blush ...

Gaiman and Kubert Batman Two-Parter

David — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:38:03 GMT

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. Memo to self: Do more posts.

At any rate, whether I post or not, I check the links on the left as often as I can. And I just stumbled over Neil Gaiman's January 4, 2009, post -- in which he not only offers a bunch of remarks regarding Coraline, both his novel and the upcoming movie, but also provides advance peeks at the upcoming Batman two-parter he's doing with Andy Kubert. So do yourself a favor and take a look! Woo hoo!

2 Travel Tips from US Airways

David — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:39:00 GMT

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.

New Year's Day Means New Fonts for Maggie!

David — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:40:08 GMT

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!

Jeff Vaughn Shares Memories

David — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:42:32 GMT

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.

The Chicago Tribune Has Comics, Too

David — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:49:58 GMT

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.

Reclaiming the Past with New Country Corn Flakes

David — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:11:17 GMT

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.

Hey, I Didn't Know Scott Adams Had a Blog!

David — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:06:13 GMT

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.

Cautious Editing

David — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:25:56 GMT

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.)

Memories of Forry Ackerman, Nov. 24, 1916-Dec. 4, 2008

David — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:50:18 GMT

I first encountered Forry, who died Thursday, via my mother, science-fiction writer Betsy Curtis. I think he may have functioned as her agent at one point. In any case, they were long-time 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.

Shel Dorf Is Ill

David — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:55:16 GMT

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.)

Next Barnaby 48 Years Ago Today

David — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:53:46 GMT

I'm not going to keep this up for long, but wouldn't it be great to get this on a daily basis? Or in a book? Or (better yet) the original run printed large -- in a book?