Ramblin' with Roger

Interview by Dymowski

Gordon writes: As promised, here are my five interview questions for your blog.

1) You’ve discussed Rod Serling multiple times on your blog. My question – what are your favorite Serling-written pieces? (You can pull from anywhere – the Playhouse 90 stuff, Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, et al)

There were some pre-Twilight Zone pieces, and maybe a Night Gallery or two, but I think I’ll stick with Twilight Zone, because there were so many:
“Time Enough at Last” with Burgess Meredith as a man after a nuclear war with time enough to read (finally!), but then who breaks his glasses.
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” with Claude Akins and Jack Weston. The power goes out. Is it the aliens? It turns out the monsters are ourselves. For some reason, in some ways, reminds me of an old EC comics story about the guy who is not saluting the flag, so the crowd beats him to death, figuring he’s a Commie, when, in fact, he lost his sight fighting in the war on our side.
“It’s a Good Life” with Billy Mumy as a very scary, and powerful, kid.
“A Game of Pool” with Jack Klugman, playing the game of, and for, his life.
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” with William Shatner. Is there something on the wing of the airplane, or is he crazy? This segment also appears in the Twilight Zone movie, perhaps to lesser effect.
I’m sure there are others: “The Dummy”, “To Serve Man”. There’s one, Little Girl Lost, with a kid going under the bed and ending up in another dimension, that TERRIFIED me in the day. I must also mention “Walking Distance”, that DOES have a carousel that reminds me of Rec Park in Binghamton. There was a segment, Nightmare as a Child, that was also in the Twilight Zone movie; I laughed out loud when I saw it at movie’s world premiere in Binghamton, because it namechecked Helen Foley, his favorite teacher and one of mine, who was in the audience at the time.
BTW, Gordon sent me this link to a bunch of “The Twilight Zone” TV Bumpers; here’s a definition of a bumper. Lots of them are for cigarette ads, especially early on; tobacco killed Rod Serling far too young. Oh, the picture above was purloined from here; when IS that museum going to open?

2) As a relatively new father, what aspect of parenting – or your daughter’s future – are you a little concerned about? Any adjustments that you think you will have to make?

There is always a balancing act between letting her do as much as she wants and making sure she doesn’t get hurt or frustrated or spoiled. She tends to be wary of strangers, which has its good and not-so-good elements. The world can be scary, and I want her to be cautious without being paranoid. It’s a fine line, that.

3) Does your local public library have a summer reading program? And if so, do you participate?

Yes, and as a matter of fact, as a member of the Friends of the Albany Public Library has authorized money to subsidize the program. Do I participate myself? No, but I’m sure we will in the future.

4) What strange, hidden secret of Fred Hembeck do you think the comics-reading public should know?

Interesting. I saw Fred, his wife Lynn, and daughter Julie just yesterday. He is a piler. He has piles of stuff. Reference materials for his blog here, reference materials for his cover redoes there. His Superman DVDs under those for Gilmore Girls. It’s not messy, exactly; it’s rather organized chaos.

5) What is your all-time favorite book?

I once said the World Almanac, and it’s probably true, or maybe one of those Billboard singles or album books. But if you’re talking about books with actual paragraphs, O Albany! by William Kennedy. I know this is sacrilege, but I’ve never gotten through any of Bill Kennedy’s Albany-based fiction, and I’ve tried. But I enjoyed his non-fiction piece. Favorite fiction, and I read very little these days: A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

ROG

The First Black President?

I was musing about whether the United States was ready for a black President. My initial premise was that we’ve HAD black Presidents already, at least in fiction. Morgan Freeman was Tom Beck, the worried Commander-in-Chief facing Armageddon from above in the 1998 movie Deep Impact. Then, of course, there were Dennis Haysbert (pictured) as the noble David Palmer whose death was mourned, then D.B. Woodside as his brother, and less well-regarded successor, Wayne Palmer, on the TV program 24. (Can you think of others?)

So, I was looking for other examples, but got totally sidetracked.

The best case for Black ancestry is against Warren G. Harding (pictured), our 29th president from 1921 until 1923. Harding himself never denied his ancestry. When Republican leaders called on Harding to deny the “Negro” history, he said, “How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence.”

This piece suggests that at least five former Presidents, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Harding, and Calvin Coolidge had black ancestors. This version even has a link to a video, laying out the case. Other pieces, even more speculative than these, suggest George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and Bill Clinton also may belong to the tribe.

So, if any of this is really true, then the precedent re: the Presidency has been broken, and electing someone who looks like this guy should not be a problem, eh?

ROG

By the Numbers QUESTIONS

1. OK, this is a rhetorical question, but if the Interstates are part of our National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, how is it that the bridge in the Twin Cities, part of I-35, was able to fall into such disrepair? I mean, forget silly things like human lives and massive inconvenience; we’re talking Homeland Security here. It seems to me that some of this massive amounts of $$$ for our supposed safety could, SHOULD be put in the less sexy area of infrastructure repair.

I suppose people around here, when they see the Minnesota tragedy, may recall the I-90 bridge collapse back in April 1987 west of Albany, near Amsterdam, in which 10 people were killed, or more recently, the I-88 culvert washout in which two truck drivers died. I travel over both areas regularly and say a little prayer each time I cross any bridge.

2. If you want to give yourself a headache, read a few dozen messages commenting on controversial videos on YouTube such as this one:

Al Jazeera English – Thank you for your feedback

“Still want to hear more from you so keep watching and keep sending in your videos”

This, and the original post asking for videos, got lots of feedback, from “Al Jazeera should be provided on all US cable companies as a regular NEWS channel” to “Al Jazeera represents a culture that stands in direct opposition to EVERYTHING America was founded on” to mentions of the attractiveness of the news reporter. But one reply just baffled me. It just gave four dates:

May 7, 1915
February 27, 1933
December 7, 1941
September 11, 2001

Now, I know what 9/11 was, and Pearl Harbor Day (12/7/1941). 2/27/1933 was the Reichstag fire in Germany, and 5/7/1915 was the sinking of the Lusitania. But what do the dates have in common, other than destruction? And what do they have to do with Al-Jazerra English? Am I missing something?
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On a lighter note, Chris Black gets funky. Who woulda thought?
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I want to plug FairVote’s Upgrade Democracy video contest.

Tell us what do you think ought to be done to improve elections by making a short video answering the question:

“If you could change anything you wanted about elections, what would our democracy look like?”

You could win $2000 and have your video seen by celebrity judges like filmmaker Richard Linklater (School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly), political guru Donna Brazile, and The Daily Show’s Dan Bakkedahl!

For full details, visit: www.UpgradeDemocracy.com

ROG

There IS Need to Fear

Underdog is here. I’ve seen the commercials for the movie of the live-action character, opening today, voiced by Jason Lee (Earl of My Name Is…) and it seems lame. A Chicago Tribune piece by Louis R. Carlozo seems to agree: “…redux has all the hallmarks of a film that lives up to its title, minus the ‘under’ part.”

Fortunately, the REAL Underdog is here. The cartoon version, voiced by Wally Cox, my favorite Hollywood Square, is also coming out today: three volumes of The Ultimate Underdog, six episodes each, $12.93 each from Classic Media. The product also features shorts of Tennessee Tuxedo, voiced by, would you believe, Don Adams, plus Commander McBragg and the annoying Go Go Gophers.

I was never a big fan of live action versions of cartoon characters. The Garfield movie seems a little creepy to me. But I didn’t really care that much about Garfield, anyway.

The Underdog cartoon, though, I was invested in. Beginning with its faux Superman opening – “It’s a bird.” “It’s a plane.” “It’s a frog.” “A FROG?” – let even this 11-year-old in on the tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek joke. But it was clever, not condescending, or dopey. “Not bird or plane or even frog. It’s just little ol’ me [CRASH ] Underdog.”

What does it say about me that I know the theme songs for all four of those cartoon segments?
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More Spider Pig on ‘Simpsons’ DVD and other pop culture stuff.

ROG

Why A Duck?

When I did my Simpsons avatar a little while ago, the T-shirt had a duck on it. As a kid, and even now, I like to make sounds like various fowl. One sound is like an even more incoherent Donald Duck. I suspect that I was doing this back in my FantaCo days, because when Raoul Vezina drew me into a Smilin’ Ed Smiley story, I was portrayed as a duck.

But it wasn’t a story in one of the four issues of Smilin’ Ed comics that FantaCo published; it was the story in X-Men Chronicles entitled “If Smilin’ Ed Smiley bought a Case of X-Men #94 When It Was Brand New, What Then?” “What Then” was our way of saying “What If” without actually being in violation of Marvel’s copyright or trademark.

Now, I should acknowledge why FantaCo put out the X-Men Chronicles when it did. It was to beat to market the X-Men version of a series of Marvel Indexes compiled by someone named George Olshevsky. The X-Men Index would be No. 9A (for some reason) and was scheduled to come out later in 1981.

I had forgotten this: FantaCo, probably Tom, had asked Wendy Pini to do the X-Men Chronicles cover. Wendy and Richard Pini were known for doing the Elfquest comic book, and had done a number of in-store signings. She called back on May 21, 1981, to decline, but she gave us Paty Cockrum’s number at Marvel so that we could contact her husband Dave, who had drawn the X-Men. From my journal: “Dave agreed to do the cover for $200-250. I told Tom, but I was less than enthused because Fantagraphics’ book [the Marvel Indexes were distributed by them, I guess] is also going to have a Cockrum cover. My attitude was incomprehensible to Tom.” (The actual cover I did really like, and was a lot more interesting than the Index cover.)

So we got our Dave Cockrum cover, got some local, and not so local people, to draw and write some pieces. I commissioned Arro Verti to put together our own index, short on graphics, but long on text. Oh, who am I kidding? *I* was Arro Verti; Arro=R.O.; and Verti for Green.

While we had published previously (Smilin’ Ed, Hembeck 1980, John Caldwell’s Mug Shots), we had never done a commentary book before. While I now know that we almost certainly didn’t need Marvel’s permission to do what we were doing, we sought it then. And Marvel was…cagey.

On the day I went down to pick up the Dave Cockrum cover, July 15, I met with Paty, then briefly with Marvel editor Jim Shooter, who said that there was no need to license the X-Men Chronicles if we were doing a journalistic piece. Then he said: “If you violate our copyright, we’ll just sue.” He was so matter-of-fact about it. I wrote later that I really liked Paty; Jim, not so much.

Another heretofore lost detail: Dave’s cover wasn’t ready on the 15th; in fact, I think he had just started it. So I took train to Philadelphia, visited friends, took a train back to NYC on the 17th, got the cover from Dave, a bearded fellow with what I described as a “soft Southern accent”, THEN took the still-wet painting home on a bus to Albany. The first copies of the magazine came out July 31.

As the editor of the X-Men Chronicles, one of my great disappointments about the book was the type size, which was 6-point type (don’t remember the font), which I thought was too small, but who our typesetter thought was fine. He was the professional, so I yielded to his judgment, which was, as it turns out, WRONG.

This had created another problem: we were five pages short for our 32-page publication. Enter Raoul Vezina, who, in a remarkably short time, cooked up with Tom Skulan a story about greed and hubris. Raoul’s story ended up to be six pages, and we had to bump something, as I recall, but this tale was my favorite part of the book.

When Tom came back from vacation sometime afterwards, he brought back these polished stone animal figurines from Mexico. Mine, of course, was the duck.

Which brings us to the picture above, which Raoul drew for my friend Lynne late in 1981. It’d been hanging on her wall for a quarter century when I e-mailed her and her husband Dan for a copy. Dan scanned it, Lynne made it into a PDF, and I made it into a .jpeg. ADD had something to do with the process, too.

Seeing it again just makes me smile, and sad, too, for Raoul died in 1983. At least I have his art to remember him by.
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Hi, Eric and Joelle! By coincidence, I ran into a guy named Eric who used to work at FantaCo doing mail order yesterday. He kindly said I was “a little grayer”; it was good to see him. His sister Joelle, I believe, was the first female to be on the FantaCo payroll, and, according to him, is the more computer-savvy of the two.
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This story says there were only a “handful” of FantaCo Publications; not true, as this roster will attest. Many were published after my tenure there, but FantaCo, in its time, and, especially in its later horror comics niche, was quite prolific.

ROG