ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 57 of 91

S is for Phil Seuling

FantaCo wouldn’t have thrived without Phil Seuling.

douglas.seuling.pini.farr — 1977: host Mike Douglas, Phil Seuling, Wendy Pini, guest cohost Jamie Farr

Phil Seuling invented the direct market for comic books. From Wikipedia: “The evolution of the comic book specialty shop (or “direct-only stores”) in the early 1970s created a whole new system for delivering comics to customers. Before the advent of the comics retailer, most comics were found in grocery, drug, and toy stores. The specialty shop presents a number of competitive advantages over those other venues.” If it weren’t for Phil, there would not have been a proliferation of comic book stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics, once a customer and later competitor of Phil’s, wrote a lengthy Evolution of the Direct Market. Naturally, he mentions Phil straight off:
“Phil began Seagate in 1972, long before selling to comics shops was economically viable. He was a schoolteacher at the time and was well known in the New York area not only as a dealer in comics and original artwork but also as the operator of the huge 4th of July convention in NYC. As I’ve heard the story told, Phil brazenly walked into DC, Marvel, Warren, Harvey, and Archie in 1972 and convinced them that their future lay in selling comics directly to comics specialty shops. He also convinced them to give him a special deal by which they would pay the costs of packaging and shipping all of the books ordered by his accounts. In exchange, he promised them that he would purchase all books from them on a non-returnable basis. Returns had become a very big deal in the early 1970s, as comics were no longer selling in the percentages of previous decades.”

Chuck also describes Phil the person, and this I can verify from meeting the man himself: “If you ask anyone who knew him, one of the first things they will tell you is that Phil was a person who epitomized the concept of an individual being ‘larger than life.’… Chuck describes Phil’s place quite well. I was there a few times myself when Phil was throwing lavish parties.

More to the point, the store I worked at, FantaCo, wouldn’t have thrived – if it would have existed at all – without Phil Seuling. Not only was Seagate FantaCo’s initial distributor, but Phil also bought sufficient amounts of FantaCo publications to distribute when they were unproven commodities.

Unfortunately, Phil Seuling died of liver cancer in 1984 at the age of 50. Tom Skulan, the FantaCo founder, wrote a nice piece about Phil in the FantaCon 2013 program.

Enjoy this video of Phil Seuling on the Mike Douglas Show in 1977, from which the above picture was taken.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

R is for Rogers

Note I did NOT use Rodgers, since Rodger is NOT my name, though people have erroneously spelled it that way.

Apparently, I DO take requests. When I wrote R is for Roger, Redux six months ago, Martha asked, “Have you tried using Roger (or Rogers) as a last name? That might be fun too.” Well, I had not. Of course, there are a LOT of them, but here’s the list I thought of:
Non-Fictional:

Fred Rogers (1928-2003) – the beloved host of the children’s program Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Well, popular among most people: here are some local FOX News personalities speculating that his positive message of valuing all people was actually harmful to children. (n.b., I believe these people are nuts.) Personally, I thought the man in the cardigan sweater brought a certain calmness to kids’ lives. HERE he accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 24th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 1997. You might be surprised by the number of times I’ve been called Mr. Roger by parents of children I’m acquainted with.

Ginger Rogers (1911-1995), nee Virginia Katherine McMath – the regular dance partner of Fred Astaire. A musical about her life was called Backwards in High Heels, a reference to the quote Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in high heels, which originated in a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon by Bob Staves, and popularized by the late former governor of Texas, Ann Richards.

Kenny Rogers (b. 1938) – I first heard Kenny Rogers with a group called The First Edition, singing songs such as But You Know I Love You and Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) [LISTEN]. He then became a country crooner with many hit songs, notably The Gambler, which became the source of a couple of TV movies. He has sold over 68 million albums in the USA alone. Rogers is a 2013 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Marshall Rogers (1950-2007) – though he drew stories with both Marvel and DC Comics, I always most associate him for illustrating the stories Steve Englehart wrote about Batman in Detective Comics. They teamed up to do stories of the Silver Surfer as well.

Mimi Rogers (b. 1956) – actress I know best as the costar of the Geena Davis Show (2000-2001), and who you probably know best as an ex-wife of Tom Cruise. No, I never saw her in X-Files, or Two and a Half Men, or Austin Powers, among her many credits.

Roy Rogers (1911-1998), ne Leonard Slye – the singing cowboy, whose closing theme, Happy Trails To You, was written by his wife, Dale Evans. I own a Sons of the Pioneers CD on which he sings. The very first question I got right when I was on JEOPARDY! I knew because of watching Roy’s show; it was about sidekick Pat Brady. The series featured Roy’s golden palomino, Trigger, and his German Shepherd dog, Bullet, and I watched religiously every Saturday morning on CBS-TV. He was also in over 100 movies, none of which I ever saw. He shrewdly had a clause in his 1940 contract with the studio where he would have the right to his likeness, voice and name for merchandising; there was a LOT of Roy Rogers merchandise in the day. Like Kenny Rogers, Roy was also a restaurateur, though not an active participant.

Will Rogers (1879-1935) – an Oklahoma wit full of pithy quotes, who was a cowboy, writer, actor, and radio commentator, giving bipartisan barbs to the politicians. There’s a nice page about him on the PBS website. He died in a plane crash with noted aviator Wiley Post.

Fictional:

Buck Rogers – a 25th-century explorer. Popular on television, though I have no particular memory of it.

Sally Rogers – played by Rose Marie (b. 1923) on the television series Dick Van Dyke Show, she was the female comedy writer on the variety program The Alan Brady Show. Single – except for her cat – and not generally happy about it.

Steve Rogers – in the comic books, scrawny kid not eligible for military service during World War II, but signs up for a secret experience that gives him superior strength. Frozen in a block of ice, he is reanimated in the comic book Avengers #4. In several live-action and animated films.

Note I did NOT use Rodgers, since Rodger is NOT my name, though people have erroneously spelled it that way.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Q is for Queen City: Charlotte, NC

Charlotte, NC also grew as a function of alcohol: “Prior to 1978, single drinks could not be served in North Carolina. People who wanted a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant would have to bring their own bottle.”

There are a number of cities nicknamed Queen City; I knew about Cincinnati, OH, and a few others. However, I’m going to talk about Charlotte, NC, in no small part because I have been there several times.

Back in 1973 or early 1974, my father lost his job with Associated Building Contractors in Johnson City, NY, next to Binghamton. He saw this an opportunity to go wherever he could find a job anywhere in the country. He looked everywhere from Syracuse to San Francisco. Ultimately, he found a position at J.A. Jones Construction in Charlotte, as the safety coordinator. He went down first, then my “baby” sister Marcia, and finally my mother. Both of my parents were born in Binghamton, but Mom was less than enthused about moving to the South.

My father, while liking Charlotte well enough, referred to it often as a “big old country town,” where a train might stop traffic within the city limits. It was big and getting bigger, in large part because of annexation. Cities in North Carolina and other predominantly southern states were allowed to annex unincorporated territory adjacent to them as long as the municipalities met minimal criteria of “urbanness”, two people per square mile, and provided police, fire, and water services. This action was taken to require those living on the fringe of the city to be added to the tax base, a luxury most Rust Belt cities can’t do because of fairly fixed borders.

There were annexations in 1972, 1974, and 1977. I was in graduate school in Public Administration at UAlbany in 1979-80, and actually did research on the effect that the rapid growth had on the city. What I’ve noticed since, though, is that the growth has continued: “Until 1978, Charlotte – like many other mid-sized southern cities – was struggling to grow, reeling from the decline of the textile industry. But that year, Charlotte began its transformation into the second-largest banking center in the United States. The city’s population has more than doubled, from 315,474 in 1980 to an estimated 751,087 in 2011.”

It also grew as a function of alcohol: “Prior to 1978, single drinks could not be served in North Carolina. People who wanted a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant would have to bring their own bottle. Bars simply didn’t exist.

“After state voters passed what became known as the ‘liquor by the drink’ law, Charlotte’s hospitality industry began to grow. Around the same time, the first wave of northern immigrants arrived… In 1978, IBM moved 1,000 families from upstate New York. That was the first big influx.” Before that, “You couldn’t buy pasta. You couldn’t buy a bagel in Charlotte. The IBMers really began to change the community.” True enough; the pizza was TERRIBLE when my parents moved there.

Transportation has also played a part. The airport has become a hub. Charlotte now has light rail; when the family relocated there, the bus system was, to be generous, inadequate. This is still true once one gets out of the core downtown, though: “It’s also very easy to get lost: everything looks very similar.” That’s comforting to read because it almost always happens to me. Charlotte is changing all the time.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Blogging, state of

Writing on deadline gives me agita

I had this really great week with my Times Union blog at the end of August. Thrice, a post was one of the highlighted posts. I say I do the blog for myself, but it’s also true that I have enough ego to enjoy when my efforts are appreciated. And the matrices are quite varied: visitors, of course, but I really appreciate it when people who’d NEVER commented before are moved to write; it says I hit a particularly responsive chord. I also like it when folks repost my meanderings on Twitter and Facebook.

This also made me happy: “Just a quick thanks for the work you do on the NYSDCA blog. I had someone asking for religion data today, and I thought, hm, I remember seeing something about that Continue reading “Blogging, state of”

P is for Pope Francis I

Pope Francis has launches reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank.

As I have noted, I’m a Protestant with an odd fascination with Catholic popes. The accession, in March 2013, of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, 76, to become the 266th head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, especially when his predecessor, Benedict XVI is still alive, intrigued me.

I admit that I’ve enjoyed that he’s made some in the church hierarchy nervous, when he faults the church’s focus on gays and abortion, though that feels more like optics rather than actual change to me. He may be right, though, when he describes ideological ‘Christians’ as a ‘serious illness’ within the Church.

More interesting to me is his suggestion if it’s understood correctly in a secular press, that it’s OK not to believe in God if you have a clean conscience. For a different perspective on what the Pope may have meant, read Anthony Velez, who is studying for the (Protestant) ministry.

Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville had perhaps the best take on the new pontiff in the Huffington Post:
Many traditional Catholics are beginning to feel–as Time magazine columnist, Mary Eberstadt recently suggested–that they have been “thrown under the popemobile.” …

They would be wrong. While Pope Francis has said that “we cannot insist only ” on these culture war issues, most have not noticed that he also added that “the teachings of the Church are clear…and I am a son of the Church…but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”…

And, while traditionalists maintain that we still need to talk about them sometimes, an increasing number of progressives and traditionalists are beginning to acknowledge the possibility of finding a true common ground. If Pope Francis can help us reach that common ground, then his pontificate will truly be the “one we have been waiting for.”

A few years ago,…I titled a chapter in [my book Status Envy], “A Pope Away from a Perfect Life.” The chapter suggested that progressives have always believed that they were a “pope away” from a Catholic Church that would allow full reproductive rights, female ordination, and same-sex marriage.

It is likely that progressives–and traditionalists as well–will still have to wait a while for that perfect life. Besides, Christians know that we all remain “strangers in a strange land” here on earth. There will never be a “perfect life” here. But Pope Francis is simply asking that we all work together to make that life better for each other. Perhaps it is time to start.

Frankly, I’m more impressed that Pope Francis has launched the reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank. In September, “the bank released its first-ever financial report (it is doing quite well, making $117 million last year, more than quadruple the 2011 figure. This year’s number is projected to be substantially lower partly because of the costs of the transparency campaign).” Now, to quote someone else, THIS is a change I can believe in.

This action, tied with his simpler lifestyle, more in keeping with Scripture than some German bishops have been living, gives me some hope that some positive permanent change might come from this papacy.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13