Don Markstein's Toonopedia Blog Entries

EXCERPT: I've mentioned before that I like to post articles on relevant anniversaries. In fact, if all goes well, I'll be doing one tomorrow. I meant to do one last week, too, but events kind of got away from me. The idea was to post the one about The Truth about Mother Goose on August 28, the 51st anniversary of its theatrical release and the day before a local sci-fi convention where I'd been scheduled for several panels. But that time got used for unexpected preparation necessities, and...

EXCERPT: There wasn't one Monday. In fact Tuesday's wasn't posted until two in the afternoon. This isn't quite unprecedented in the seven-plus years I've been running this site. I've posted it late several times — once, in fact, the Sun had set before I got that day's anniversary posted. And when I returned from overseas a couple of years ago, I found the mechanisms I was relying on to post my previously-prepared entries had failed once; and one of those scheduled didn't get onto the...

EXCERPT: If you're reading this on the day it was posted (August 6), and happened to glance at "Today in Toons" on the way over (or at the headline of this page), you know what momentous event this is the anniversary of. I wrote an article to commemorate the event, that I was meaning to get done for a long time. I put it off until I'd broached the subject of Japanese imports, but now that I have, and the appropriate anniversary is here — no excuses! It's posted, and that's that. ...

EXCERPT: According to modern usage, the term is "superheroines". And as we all know, proper use of a living language is determined by how people use it. But I'm old-fashioned. So old-fashioned, I even think "media" is a plural noun, despite the fact that modern usage says it's so singular, I've become practically a crank for saying otherwise. Besides, in the case of "superheroine", I think modern usage, defying a general trend for the language to...

EXCERPT: This is not a review. I can't very well review a movie I haven't seen and don't intend to see until I can do so for free, in my own living room, and maybe not even then if I can't spare the time. I got what I "know" about it (and the title) as hearsay, from Antiwar.com, of which I'm a near-daily reader. But then, many people make their entertainment decisions from third-party reviews. I understand the 1962 origin of Iron Man, a Cold War...

EXCERPT: As practically everyone will agree, Al Capp was one of our truly great cartoonists. Now, I wouldn't blame you one little bit for not clicking on that link, especially if you're a regular reader of this site — I linked to that glossary entry more than 500 times, by actual count. (No, I do have a life, thank you. A machine did the counting.) But if, by chance, you did click, you saw that as I use the word here, cartooning includes the script as well as the art. So to...

EXCERPT: A writer's published work is only the tip of an iceberg. Notes, letters, early (and sometimes radically different) drafts, writing exercises, proposals, incomplete work … even, tho one hesitates to admit it, the occasional piece that just didn't click with any editors. Tho this mass of verbiage doesn't even enter the public consciousness, it piles up like month-old red-hot comics in a retailer's back room, because when it comes to his own stuff, the average...

EXCERPT: In the real world, all Americans know how to demonstrate their patriotism. They wear a little lapel pin made in the image of a flag. With one of those in plain view, nobody will ever doubt you're a rootin' tootin' patriot. Without it, you'll never convince anyone you love your country. It's not so simple in Superhero Land. There, they don't call you a "patriotic hero" unless you wear the whole darned flag. Yesterday (May 26), I posted a...

EXCERPT: In my article on Wonder Warthog, I mentioned a Gilbert Shelton creation titled Not Quite Dead, about an aging rock band, which, when I wrote the article, was available in parts of Europe but not in America. A few years ago, I not a message from a friend, to the effect that Not Quite Dead had recently made it to these shores. I made a note to myself to check it out at the neighborhood funnybook store, next chance I got. Used to be, the comics store was one of my regular stops....

EXCERPT: In the Toonopedia Forum the other day, the topic happened to come up (in a thread titled "The Real Reason") of partisan politics impinging on Al Capp's Li'l Abner. Newspaper editors are collectively accused of having dropped the strip for attacking their "sacred cows", causing premature (two years before Capp's own death) cancellation of the strip itself. Apparently, the poster was thinking of this alleged "sacred cow" attack as an...