My Robert Culp Story

Given the passing of actor Robert Culp, I thought this would be an appropriate time to share a personal anecdote about the actor that actually connects to comics....

One night several years back, I came home to find a voice message from someone who said he had gotten my number from comics fan and mutual friend Shel Dorf. The quality of the message wasn't very good, but the caller in the message said he was developing a film adaptation of Milton Caniff's adventure strip, Terry and the Pirates, and was looking for an artist to do a comic-book tie-in with the movie. Shel had told the caller that I was one of the best Caniff-inspired artists around and passed along my phone number. He said his name was Robert Culp.

I didn't think anything of it (remember, the quality of the machine message wasn't very good) and the next day returned his call. When he got on the line and said, "This is Robert Culp," I paused—there was no mistaking that voice. I can't recall if I asked him right away, but at some point during our conversation, I blurted out, "Excuse me, but are you Robert Culp the actor?" He quickly and matter-of-factly said yes, then went on to talk about the project.

He told me he was going to be going to Asia to begin shooting a Terry and the Pirates film he had scripted and needed an artist to do a comic-book adaptation tie in. (I can't recall now if he said he was directing it as well.) It turns out Culp was a huge Terry fan.

In addition to spending a little time reminiscing about the strip, I ended up giving Culp a little overview of how the comics publishing and distribution business worked. I recall thinking that a better way to go would be to simply license the adaptation to an established publisher (like Dark Horse) and let them do all the work rather than expend his own time, effort and resources to write and publish the comic-book. But at the time I kept this to myself, partly because he seemed determined to do the book himself and because, frankly, I decided it best to hold a bit back thinking this might be a way at some point to become involved in the project by helping him to shepherd the project.

In terms of doing the art, however, I didn't feel I had the time to commit to such a project—but I told him I would send him samples of my work. (I recall a slightly deflated Culp saying, "Randy, don't break my heart.") I ended up referring him to a fellow artist who I thought would be a good fit for the job. I spoke with him afterwards. Although he said they had an interesting conversation, my friend wasn't sure yet if he would do it—he was concerned about the tight timeline and that Culp wanted a straight Caniff impersonation which wouldn't allow much room for personal expression—but he said if he did take the job, he'd need help and wondered if I would be interested. I, of course, said "yes," and had hoped I would have a chance to contribute somewhat to the project if my buddy did it.

Knowing how Hollywood works, I did immediately wonder how solid the film really was, especially since I hadn't heard about it. As time passed, of course, nothing came of it—but as I said, that's how Hollywood works. A year or two later I passed him at a signing at the San Diego Comic-Con, but decided not to introduce myself, not being sure if he'd remember our telephone conversation. (I think I have a photo from that time, but couldn't find it in time for this post.)

In doing some research for this piece, I did find a few Culp and Terry references. An article about the recent complete IDW compilation of the strip from 2007 mentions that Culp "had written several screenplays for a Terry film, but to date, nothing has come from it." The Wikipedia article on Terry and the Pirates also mentions that "Robert Culp admitted that the comic strip Terry and the Pirates was his inspiration for the 'tone' and 'spirit' and 'noir heightened realism' of the 1965 NBC TV Series, I Spy."

Though "I Spy" was before my time (though it was available in reruns when I was growing up) and I wasn't a big fan of "Greatest American Hero," I nevertheless was very familiar with Culp and enjoyed his affable, easy-going manner.

In any case, the news of Culp's passing gave me an opportunity to remember this brief personal encounter with the actor, connecting on a common interest we shared.

News links....

Here's a "news dump" for a couple of links of note....

Kirby Heirs Sue for Copyright
From one of my primary comics/pop culture news sources, Heidi MacDonald's Comics Beat, comes the news that the heirs of the late Jack "King" Kirby, who is credited with creating or co-creating many of Marvel Comics' most iconic characters including Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, etc., have filed for partial copyright ownership of the characters.

This was not unexpected and has been part of a broader trend. This action is based on copyright law revisions made decades ago that gave creators an opportunity to terminate transfers of copyright 35 years after the transfer in order to re-claim ownership of a property. The action by the Kirby estate follows similar action taken by the heirs to Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster against DC Comics/Warner Brothers, which remains ongoing and unresolved. (The heirs recently received some ownership of Superboy.)

Adding to the drama, of course, is the fact that Disney recently purchased Marvel, and has a history of aggressively protecting their properties. (They recently won a major judgment against the Winnie the Pooh estate.)

Interview with Disney Director Don Hahn
The Animation Magazine website has posted from the print publication an interview with Disney animation director Don Hahn, who played a role in Disney's animation feature renaissance during the 1980s that began with Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, and which Pixar has continued in spirit.

The interview coincides with a documentary that Hahn actively participated in called Waking Sleeping Beauty about the intense backstage politics and maneuverings the directors, artists and creative talent had to navigate within the Disney studio to get their features made. Though Hahn clearly looks back at those days with pride and fondness, there nevertheless was a lot of the kind of intensity and competition Hollywood is famous for—understandable given the amount of money at stake—that involved even the people at the very top including Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Roy Disney. Nevertheless, with hindsight Hahn is able to say something positive about nearly everyone and even learned new things himself about what was happening behind the scenes during the making of the documentary.


Backing into Forward
Last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Arts and Culture section had a nice article on Jules Feiffer, coinciding with the release of an autobiography, Backing Into Forward: A Memoir. I'll be picking it up at some point, if for not other reason than to read about his years working with Will Eisner (which the L.A. Times article mentions).

Motion Picture Costume Design Exhibit

It's often said that cartoonists aren't simply artists, but must also function as cinematographers, set and costume designers, prop masters, etc.

With this in mind, this past Saturday, I visited the 18th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in downtown L.A. with my family. (The show runs through April 17 and is free to the public.) Though I am hardly a clothes horse (or, as Steve Martin described it at this past weekend's Academic Awards ceremony, "clothes whore")—and it's my wife who usually takes the initiative to make sure we see the show each year—it's an exhibition I always enjoy taking in, and find instructive for my work as a cartoonist.

We actually have taken in the exhibition for many years now, which features the actual movie costumes and clothing created and worn in films from the preceding year, including most if not all of the costume designs nominated for an Academy Award. This year's exhibition featured costumes from, among many, Aliens in the Attic, Broken Embraces, Coraline, An Education, G.I. Joe, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Inglourious Basterds, Julie & Julia, My One and Only, Night in the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian, Nine, Pirate Radio, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Watchmen, and Where the Wild Things Are.

The show is fun because you get to see the actual movie costumes up close, and a sense of the actual size of the actors who wore the costume (for example, how tall Nicole Kidman must be in real life!).

However, it's also instructive because of my work as a cartoonist—getting the "costumes" right for a character—or at least making it interesting—is one of many challenges a cartoonist faces when working on a story. The exhibition understandably does not allow visitors to take photos (the photo accompanying this blog was taken from an Internet report of a past show), but one often sees numerous visitors at the exhibition—presumably aspiring fashion designers—making sketches. (Inspired myself by a few of the costumes, I borrowed a sketchpad from my wife to make some sketches for my own reference for the future!)

But even if you're not into fashion and just a movie fan, it's a fun, relaxing and enjoyable show to take in, located at the FIDM's gallery on its main floor in a quiet non-descript street L.A. just a few blocks from the new Staples Center where it's easy to find street parking on a Saturday, as we did (and do every year). While some people might find the exhibition itself to be a fairly quick walk-through, I would suggest using the visit to downtown as an opportunity to explore downtown by visiting the re-gentrified Staples Center or visiting the new trendy restaurants in the area, or perhaps some other landmarks like Japantown, the Disney Performance Hall, or the Museum of Contemporary Art. There's also a charming little park area right on the grounds, and the gallery features a small but funky museum store.

FIDM is located at 919 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90015.

Note: The photos accompanying this article are from past FIDM motion picture costume design exhibitions taken from other blog reports. Featured top right is a costume from the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and the Dark Knight Returns.

A LOOK BACK: Books about Comics (Part 3)

This is the third installment in an ongoing reminiscence of books from my adolescence that fed my interest in cartooning and comics history. Parts one and two are still available. 

The Adventurous Decade (1975) by Ron Goulart

Though Goulart is primarily a successful author and fiction writer, he also has developed a reputation as a comics and pop culture historian. I discovered The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the 1930s at a local library in the late '70s and it became a book I frequently borrowed. At some point, I had photocopied my favorite chapters from the book for personal use, but I finally purchased a used, early printing of the book.) Though it includes some comics excerpts, the book is primarily a collection of essays focusing on specific comic strips or genres. 

As anyone familiar with my work knows, the initial inspiration for my own comic-book series, Rob Hanes Adventures, grew out of my love of classic adventure strips, which came into their own and experienced their golden age in the 1930s, so this book was a natural for me. Chapters are devoted to Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, and Terry. The chapter on Terry is especially engaging, vividly recalling the immediacy and popularity of Milton Caniff's series, and the tremendous impact it had on the newspaper strip field. 

This book also introduced me to Roy Crane and his seminal adventure strip, Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy (which I have previously covered here and here). While I was already somewhat aware of Crane's work, this was the first time I began to have an inkling of how innovative and respected the artist was, who had been largely forgotten by the mainstream and even many comics fans, though his work was one of the most important precursors to the classic adventure strip. Indeed, it wasn't until years later that his work became somewhat more widely available (his run on Wash Tubbs has since been collected in its entirety, as has some of his work on Buz Sawyer). But at that time, that was my widest exposure to Crane's work. 

Backstage at the Strips (1977) by Mort Walker 

Mort Walker, creator and cartoonist of Beetle Bailey, as well as a co-creator and writer or artist of comic strips Hi and Lois, Boner's Ark, and Sam's Strip has long been one of the senior deans of the syndicated cartooning profession. 

While Backstage is a memoir of sorts, it's also a behind-the-scenes look at the cartooning profession. With the book, Walker tried to demystify the field a bit, primarily because, remembering when he was a young aspiring cartoonist himself, he felt there was little information about the nuts and bolts of the profession. Backstage is written in a very easy-going and entertaining manner, and Walker doesn't shy from telling funny anecdotes about his peers—back in the day, syndicated cartooning was a real "boys club" and a lot of their extracurricular activities seemed to be centered around golfing and drinking. 

As a young aspiring cartoonist myself, I recall spending hours reading this book in bookstores. (Like the Adventurous Decade above, I finally purchased a used copy a few years ago.) Though cartooning is clearly hard work, Walker acknowledges he is fortunate to be making a living at what he loves. He also shows himself to be an enterprising businessman. 

Walker reveals himself to be a true student of the field, as well as a fan—he talks about sending a fan letter to Milton Caniff. (Walker has also been the driving force behind the National Cartoon Museum, which had a tumultuous history until Walker merged his collection with the respected Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.) At the time it was published, Backstage provided a little seen window into the day-to-day life of a cartoonist. The book was perfectly complimented years later by a comprehensive interview that Walker gave for the Comics Journal, which I reviewed here. 

Origins of Marvel Comics (1974) by Stan Lee

This is another book I read as an adolescent primarily in bookstores. 

Capitalizing on the success of Marvel Comics as a mini-pop-culture phenomenon, as well as a mini-resurgence of interest in the form at the time, this book was one of the earliest attempts to document the history of Marvel Comics' early days—written by someone who was there, Stan "The Man" Lee himself! 

The story is engagingly told in Lee's distinctive personal voice, which played such an important role in Marvel's astounding success in attracting readers—in both this book and his "Stan's Soapbox" editorials in the comics, Lee had a way of making you feel like he was talking directly to you and that Marvel and its fanbase were one big happy family. Origins helped cement the mythos of Marvel for decades—in retrospect, it was as much a promotional tool for the company as it was a first-person account of the company's early days. 

In recent years, it's been popular to disparage Origins—Lee's persona and the aura of Marvel Comics in those early years were closely intertwined, and some feel Lee's charisma and natural talent for self-promotion made the book a bit self-serving and downplayed the contributions of the cartoonists he worked with; some have even considered the book an attempt by Lee to rewrite history by grabbing the lion's share of the credit for Marvel's success for himself. 

Frankly, when Lee wrote the book, I doubt he was thinking that far ahead. Always the quintessential company man, Lee likely saw the book as a way to promote the company and, at the time, he probably didn't consider the book as something that would stand as the final world on the subject—again, he was merely advancing the mythos of Marvel, to which he was inarguably central. 

Nevertheless, with these caveats in mind, Origins is a jaunty, entertaining read. It remains one of the first primary source materials written by someone who was there and provides some insight into Lee and the early days of the company. Given the rise of the company into an entertainment powerhouse—culminating this past decade with the success of its own movie production company and Marvel's eventual sale to the Walt Disney Company—it should be looked at as a rough draft of the company's first act, and a precursor of what was to come.

In Time for Valentine's Day....

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, I thought it fitting to place front and center at the rhadventures* website a Rob Hanes Adventures romance story I did back in 1999 entitled "The Real Julianne Love." Click here or on the image at right to read the 8-page story in its entirety.

The story appeared in Love in Tights #2, a quarterly superhero–romance anthology series published by Slave Labor Graphics that appeared in February 1999. When I was invited to submit a story by the editor, J. Torres, I leapt at the chance. Around that time, I had become enthralled by the romance comics work of one of my favorite cartoonists, Alex Toth—Toth had done extensive work in the romance field and the work was finally being more widely seen thanks to a series of compilations devoted to this respected artist's artist. Toth was well suited to the naturalistic, illustrative tone of romance comics (versus the more operatic superhero comics), and said he enjoyed working on such stories when they were well written. Toth was very much on my mind when I produced "Julianne Love." I enjoyed the opportunity to do a romance story as well as work in a superhero adventure of sorts—and all within just 8 pages!

So I am pleased to re-present the story in time for Valentine's Day. Enjoy!

* Updated 10/2019: The webcomic link is no longer active, but new links have been inserted that takes you to preview pages of the story.

Below: Toth romance story page.

Ski Time!

Above: From our first ski trip of the season.
After a relatively mild winter, some "real weather" arrived in Southern California in the form of storms this past January. And rain in SoCal means snow in the mountains.

There must have been a lot of pent up demand, because on the first weekend of the storm, (January 23–24) traffic was so bad in the local mountains that it made the news. Some people spent six hours or more driving only to find roads closed or the ski resorts sold out. Though I'm an avid skier, this puzzled me because the snow was still going to be there later in the season, and the ski resorts keep their runs groomed and can add man-made snow to the base when the weather conditions are right. But I guess people wanted to be the first to experience the fresh powder. (Many years ago, I got to ski in a blizzard at Mammoth—a longtime dream come true! Talk about fresh snow—I remember visibility being no more than 10 feet at times due to the snow and fog!)

This past week, my 8-year-old's elementary school was closed Friday for an administrative day, so my wife and I used it as an opportunity to take a one-day family ski trip to Snow Valley. As I have mentioned in a past blog, we have started going to Snow Valley because it's less than halfway up the mountain that leads to Big Bear Lake where some of the larger ski resorts are located. And while the runs at Snow Valley are a bit less challenging for me, because the focus right now is to acclimate our kids to the sport, it's been a great alternative that's less of a production to get to and ski at.

We actually had visited Snow Valley just two weeks prior for a two-night trip. Though there was no snow in the mountains at the time, there had been enough of a base earlier in the season for adding man-made snow, which made skiing fine—coverage was actually very good on the trails that were open. Over the years, I've skied late in the season when coverage and conditions were iffy due to melting snow, so I was impressed by the coverage.

We left West L.A. at 6 a.m. and, accounting for the time we got momentarily turned around and then got caught behind a very slow-moving snow plow going up the mountain, we made it to our ski-rental place about 5 miles out of Snow Valley at 8:30 a.m. Because of the minor delays, the wait to purchase our lift tickets turned out to be surprisingly long, so we didn't actually start skiing until around 10:15 a.m. (It helped that we had a coupon to purchase our tickets at half price!)

Above: An overcast day at Snow Valley—great ski weather!
But it turned out to be great skiing! As I mentioned, there was fresh snow from the week before, and it was nicely packed and groomed. It also was overcast much of the day and reached a high of only about 49 degrees—the first time in years I got to wear my ski jacket and goggles! (My daughter wore one of my old pair of goggles as well.) Though we learned later in the day that the ski resort had sold out partly due to promotions—which resulted in people reportedly taking as long as three hours to purchase their tickets and rent equipment, I was surprised at how relatively short the lines were for the chair lifts and how uncrowded the slopes were!

Obviously, one reason we wanted to take the trip was to get the children more ski time. As mentioned here last year, my daughter learned to ski last season and she has improved every trip. Last year, she easily made the leap from the bunny slope to the beginner's-to-intermediate trail. On this trip, seeing her growing capabilities, I took her down a short, steeper run that she quickly mastered—which was helped by the fact that she had somehow instinctively figured out how to turn and change direction on the slope. After seeing this, I told her she was good enough to ski down from the top of the mountain which I had done earlier in the day on my own, finding a way down using fairly intermediate trails and avoiding harder black diamond runs. At first she said she wasn't interested, but near the end of the day as twilight approached, she suddenly said she wanted to give it a try. (Of course, I suddenly got cold feet and, after making sure she felt truly ready, as we rode the long lift up to the top, I kept going over some pointers and reminding her to take it in easy stages.)

Below: A ski bunny in the making.

Well, it was clear my assessment was on the money—my daughter ended up taking the run from the top so easily that when we got down to the bottom and I noticed there was no line for the lift, we did it again before calling it a day! I can now truly say my daughter is a "real" skier!

What's funny is that my daughter takes the runs pretty fast. When we ski with her, my wife and I constantly shout after her to slow down—not merely for safety reasons, but also so that she can enjoy the run and the view. But she just likes to tear down the slope!

We signed up our 4-year-old for his first ski lesson—just a half day—during our trip a couple weeks earlier. This was partly to give my wife a chance to hit the slopes herself for the first time since the kids were born (I started up again about three years ago.) He always has been more cautious than his older sister and, to be fair, she did not start until she was 6. But though we had given him a feel for what it was like to have skis on before he went to the class, he sat out the lessons and refused to participate for more than an hour-and-a-half until his mom finally persuaded him to give it a whirl. So he really only got the basics.

Once he got on the bunny slope after the class, however, he refused to get on a lift—we suspect he was too scared to ride the chair. So my wife and I took turns hiking partway up the bunny slope with him (while the other skied with our daughter) and then, while holding hands, skiing down with him. Although it was pretty tiring to have to constantly hike up the slope in the snow carrying our skis, what's important at this stage is that he enjoys and finds it fun. Next year we plan to put him in a class again to reinforce his basic skills so that he can begin skiing on his own.

We left the ski resort at about 5:30 p.m. Although we were driving home 90 miles across the length of L.A. in the middle of rush hour on a Friday night, it took us only two hours to get home! Anyone who knows L.A. will know that this is very impressive—it helped that we were going against rush hour traffic and took the carpool express lanes almost the entire way! By that time, the kids were pretty tired and slept much of the way home—I actually had a lot of ski in me left and could easily have gone another day.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable trip and it's nice to know now that a one-day trip with the whole family is doable! My wife and I are very happy to be passing along our enjoyment of this activity to the kids at such a young age.

It's Hammer Time!

I finally found a free afternoon to visit (with my family) the Robert Crumb exhibit at the UCLA Hammer Museum in West Los Angeles this past weekend, which closes February 7. The official name of the exhibition, "The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis," focuses on cartoonist Robert Crumb's well-received The Book of Genesis Illustrated, his unabridged adaptation of the first book of the Old Testament, a project which took five years.

My primary interest in the exhibition, of course, is professional: as a working cartoonist, I always enjoy seeing original individual pieces of comics art on display which, like most pieces of art, often take on a different life when seen in person. This is especially true for comics art, which is intended of course for print—only relatively recently has original comics art been deemed to possess any value in of itself. Seeing the original art often provides insight into a cartoonist's working methods and thinking. (Note: Photography of the art was not allowed and is not included in this blog.)

Though I didn't count all the pages, and my wife assured me there were some pages missing, it otherwise appeared to me that nearly every page from the book was included in the show. Each page was individually framed and displayed in page order in the exhibit—one could easily have read the entire book at the museum! (A reading room also was provided that provided multiple copies of the book for reading.)

Two things struck me about the original art: the first at how relatively small they were. Traditional original comic art pages are usually drawn within a 10"x15" space,which is then reduced in printed format to 6"x9". In contrast, Crumb's book is a hardcover artbook, which means its dimension is larger than comic-book size; but the original art seemed only slightly larger than the final published size!

Second, I also was impressed by the pristine quality of each page. I am assuming Crumb uses a lightbox to trace his roughs onto the final pages because there was no evidence of any underlying pencilwork (or erasures) on the pages, and barely even any use of correction on the art. One can see the meticulousness of Crumb's fine linework and crosshatching. (A nearby exhibition at the Hammer of Rembrandt prints invited interesting and illuminating comparisons for me to Crumb's work—the artists' linework in both exhibitions were equally exquisitely rendered. The magnifying glass at the Rembrandt exhibit for studying the master's linework would have been equally as helpful at the Crumb exhibit! And many of the Rembrandt prints featured work that one would consider "cartoony" in their impressionistic representation.)

Also included in the exhibit was some of the reference and research material Crumb used in his project. In addition to reading scholarly works on the subject, he used for reference screen captures from Hollywood biblical epics loaned to him by a colleague. This initially surprised me until I realized, of course, that no extensive historical records exist that truly document the clothing, shelters, tools, etc., of the earliest existence of man portrayed in Genesis. Crumb also depended much on direct source material, particularly by scholars and people who lived in the region where the early days of the Bible took place. Also featured in the exhibit were samples of other biblical adaptations in comic-book form.

Ultimately, of course, Crumb's adaptation of Genesis is also a literary endeavor and any review of the exhibition would be incomplete without a comment about the book itself and the artist's intentions.

The text to Genesis is included in Crumb's adaptation in its entirety and unabridged. Crumb states in his introduction (reproduced wall-size at the entrance of the exhibition, as seen in the photo above) that he tried to approach the book unironically; indeed, Crumb certainly appears to have treated Genesis with respect, if not reverence in the traditional sense. One can also see the appeal for Crumb of tackling Genesis—the artist, after all, has made a career of exploring the most primal aspects of human existence (particularly sex!) and its flaws. Much of Genesis, beginning with Adam and Eve partaking in the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden which precipitates the fall of man, puts humankind's worst instincts on display, and includes a variety of tales both notorious and salacious, worthy of any modern-day gossip rag. On the flip side, of course, as the first book of the Torah and the modern Bible, Genesis also tells the story of creation and the earliest history of the Jewish people and formed the foundation for modern Christianity.

In his introduction, Crumb states that while some people consider the Bible to be "the word of God," it's his view that the Bible is, in fact, only the words of men. Such a disclosure naturally raises the question of whether this view has in some way colored and affected his presentation and approach. Personally, I saw no evidence in the work that Crumb did anything other than try to honestly present and illustrate the text as literally as possible, as he intended—though the mere act of representation in itself, which required Crumb to make decisions about how to present, illustrate and break up the text, could be deemed an act of personal interpretation that diverges from the truth of the text. This leads to the age-old question of whether a work of art can be fairly and objectively assessed on its merits, independent of any inherent bias about either the work or the artist and his intentions.

How that ultimately comes into play in Crumb's adaptation of Genesis I'll leave for the scholars to debate!

More information about the show, including videos and interviews with the artist, may be found at the Hammer Museum's web page about the exhibition.