Questions You Never Asked: If I Were Writing Superman, What Would I Do Here?

Okay, let's see how closely you've followed my own comics writing/translation/dialoguing work of recent years...

If I were writing the following panel of SUPERMAN, what would I change?  

Send your answers in the form of comments, please!  

Questions You Never Asked: Why Did Huckleberry Hound Start Wearing a Mask?

A question for our crazy times...  Why did Huckleberry Hound start wearing a mask? 

No, it wasn't because of a skunk! 

...Give up?  

He was concerned about catching the "O-M'DARLIN" variant of COVID!

Y'know, like this here one...

Now, you know why you NEVER asked that question! 

You just never can tell what a feller's got to protect himself from these days! 

Questions You've Never Asked: Did Quick Draw McGraw Ever Ride a Horse?

The answer is NO, he didn’t! Hanna-Barbera’s Quick Draw McGraw was never seen riding a horse, over the three original seasons (1959-1961) of his animated series!

Indeed, he might have been the only western star in the entire history of entertainment who never rode (or even interacted with) a horse… a tiny midget horse he was once assigned to capture for a circus (“Bronco Busting Boobs”), notwithstanding.

Sure, he drove a stagecoach in his opening and closing show credits but he was never ON a horse itself. He usually walked into town, or drove a jeep (!), and once he even rode an elephant!

Tsk! Tsk! What would Marshall Matt Dillon think!

Probably for the same reason Goofy didn’t walk Pluto on a leash, I guess…

Then again, Huckleberry Hound WAS a dogcatcher once upon a time…

Cartoons… who can figure ‘em!

Questions You Never Asked: Who was the First Disney Comics “Super Villain”?

In comics, we take the concept of the “super villain” so much for granted that it’s small wonder this is a “Question You Never Asked”. There are “villains” and there are “super villains”. The fine line of interpretation comes down to the scope of their villainy and, quite frankly, the impression they make on both their “good” or heroic counterparts – and the readers.

The Beagle Boys, for example, (…even during Carl Barks’ “Terrible Beagle Boys” phase) for all their enduring tenacity, would probably not be considered “super villains” because they do their thing with mere trickery and brute force. The same criteria also eliminates Peg Leg/Black Pete.

Magica De Spell, by contrast, qualifies, due to her supposedly supernatural abilities – even if a fair amount of that is also “trickery” of sorts. Evil Inventor Emil Eagle also gets a talon in the door, by virtue of his scientific prowess and his “crossover appeal” as a foe to both the “Duck and Mouse” groups of characters.
Even a relative newcomer like alien criminal Tachyon Farflung gains entry to the club, given his otherworldly technology. And Don Rosa’s Black Knight hits all the nasty notes as well. But, just who might be Disney comics’ FIRST “super villain”?

The immediate reaction would be to say The Phantom Blot, one of the most memorable malefactors to menace Mickey Mouse, waaay back in 1939. He certainly qualifies in the “fear factor” department, and has the reputation with both fellow characters and readers alike.

But, while there may be no definitive answer to this question, one answer MAY lie in the TERM “super villain” itself.

It’s opposite; the term “super hero” has been around seemingly since the Golden Age of Comic Books (Predominantly: The 1940s) , if not longer. However, I’m truly at a loss to pin down when – and by whom – the term “super villain” was coined. Even Wikipedia’s entry for the term “super villain” (Click HERE) defines it and provides examples throughout the history of fiction… but offers no definitive origin of the term itself.
I’m not entirely certain that the term “super villain”, as such preceded Comic Books’ Silver Age (Predominantly: The 1960s) – when most of the conventions of super heroics born of the Golden Age were fleshed-out and SOLIDIFIED into the basic tenets that still apply today.

To my knowledge, the term “super villain” had never appeared in a DISNEY comic book… until (Drum roll!) MICKEY MOUSE # 111 – released in December of that unforgettable year – 1966!

Yes, indeed… According to the cover caption “A SUPER VILLAIN operates a dynamite-filled blimp in… THE MIDNIGHT MYSTERIES”!

Ah… BINGO!
In this lead detective adventure tale by writer Vic Lockman and artist Tony Strobl, said “Super Villain” turns out to be the rather presumptuously (…and unoriginally) named “Crime King”!

The Crime King’s reign is quite short – the story was 14 pages long and he, himself, appears in a pathetically puny TWO PANELS (!) of those 14 pages, and was never seen again…

…BUT, at least by this line of reasoning, and quirks of both timing and terminology, we hereby salute “The Crime King” – Disney comics’ first “Super Villain”!

So modest is he, that we don’t even have an Internet scan to represent him! (…And heck, we even found one for Tachyon Farflung!)

Now, aren’t you sorry you never asked that question?

Questions You Never Asked: When Did TV Shows Shrink?

Here’s a topic I don’t believe I’ve ever seen discussed in any meaningful way.

Over the years, TV shows “shrank”!


Observing DVD running times of shows from my prime viewing period of the Sixties, an hour-long show ran about an average of 50:00 to 52:00.

This would cover the period of Perry Mason, Outer Limits, Lost in Space, Star Trek TOS, Wild Wild West, Man From U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, etc.

There are two “modern” hour-long shows that I collect on DVD – Lost and Heroes. Their running times average 40:00 to 42:00. I’ll assume that is the modern standard.

We’ve lost about Ten Minutes per hour show, and (I’d guess) a corresponding drop-off for half-hour shows. I’m curious as to when that happened.

I suspect it was slow and gradual… a minute here, two minutes there, until ten minutes were excised. I further suspect it happened over the seventies and eighties, but those periods are not well represented in my collection.

Further, did a series actually shrink over its run? I would assume so, if it straddled the periods in question. Ironside ran from 1967 thru 1975. I wonder if the later episodes are shorter than the earlier episodes. Hawaii Five-O might be an even better test case, given the length of its run (1968-1980).

This is why, on the RARE OCCSAION that you ACTUALLY SEE an older show these days, it is always edited – and never aired uncut. I’m curious as to how we went about losing those ten minutes.

I posed this to an online forum, and received a wide range of theories including: Deregulation of the FCC – or back when programs had “specific sponsors”, the ads for other products were limited to give the primary sponsor the most indelible impression with the audience – to just plain old, garden variety corporate greed. But, no clear and winning direction emerged.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome… and, if you see those missing ten minutes (times the number of shows per season!) of LOST or HEROES, please let me know – they might make great DVD extras!

Questions You’ve Never Asked: “Why the White Gloves?”

Every now and then at this Blog, we’ll answer an age old question you’ve probably never asked…

Recall the Mickey Mouse / Giant Ants comic book cover that illustrated my last post concerning our “home invasion” by hoards of ants? If not, go visit it HERE.

Back already? Okay, so Mickey’s ALWAYS worn the white gloves, ever since Uncle Walt and Uncle Ub Iwerks originally designed him. But, in one of those loveably absurd things (…or would that be absurdly loveable things?) that abound in comics and animation, the ANT is wearing those danged white gloves too!

Here are my thoughts on the matter of “Animated Characters and the White Gloves They Love”, along with a theory on their origins from comic book writer Dwight Decker, that I published in my APA / Fanzine column The Issue At Hand # 76, back in 2006.

Picture an animated cartoon character created anywhere from the late 1920s to early 1940s. That would be Mickey Mouse and Dippy Dawg (…who eventually evolves into Goofy) on one end of the spectrum and Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker on the other end. Heck, you could even throw in classic comic strip characters like “Mutt and Jeff”. Name something that they have in common. Think hard… I’ll wait.

Didn’t wanna think, eh? Skipped right to the next paragraph and the answer? Immediate gratification over all, huh? That’s the Internet for ya! Okay, the answer is WHITE GLOVES!

I hardly noticed the gloves in my younger days. They were just part of a character’s design. As I became older, and looked at some of the “classic” comics with sharper and more cynical eyes, I began to notice some of their more absurd (…whether intentionally, or otherwise) applications, particularly in the various Mickey Mouse comic books.

In a lair of giant, mutant, upright-walking ANTS (!), neither Mickey as prisoner, nor I as reader, batted an eye over the fact that the ants wore those omnipresent, four-fingered white gloves.

(Here’s the Original 1950 Cover to that story… Oddly the Ant is wearing YELLOW GLOVES here! This, of course, was corrected for the later reprint in 1965! …And aren’t we glad of that!)

When a villain awarded Mick his freedom if he could run a gauntlet of axe-wielding ROBOTS, can you guess what the otherwise unclad automatons were wearing?

Most recently, we readers were treated to a spectacular “Mickey Mouse version” of Dante’s Inferno. And I’ll be (pun intended) “damned” if the demons of this particular Hell weren’t equipped with BLACK VERSIONS of those (duplicate pun intended) “damned” white gloves! Such a wonderful parody of this basic design element! .

My letter of comment to this issue was forwarded to Dwight Decker, one of the writers involved with the script. He responded to me with a reason for the use of the white gloves. So, now it can be told. Here’s Dwight Decker:

“You mentioned the business of those gloves Disney characters always wear. I never quite understood that until I saw a photograph that must have been taken about 1925, showing Charlie Chaplin with Martin and Osa Johnson (wildlife documentary filmers of that era) -- and Osa was wearing white gloves with three lines on the back!

"The only thing I can figure is that such gloves were stylish and commonly worn in the '20s just when animated cartoons were coming into their own, and it was only natural for characters in the cartoons to wear what real people wore. (I've heard white gloves made Mickey's hands stand out better in the old black and white cartoons.) Somehow the gloves became a standard convention for animated cartoon characters and persisted after they fell out of fashion for real people, the reason for gloves was forgotten, and cartoon characters wear them to this day.”

Just for this Blog post, Dwight added:

“I'm not sure if the three lines on the backs of the gloves are really a black decorative element or are just built-in folds so the gloves can expand when the hand is clenched. I suspect the latter, though there may have been styles where the folds were colored in.

"One funny thing I saw a few years ago was a cartoon of the Marvel super-heroes drawn in the old rubber-hose animation style, and of course all wore gloves like that. The crowning touch was that the Hulk's hands were bursting out of his gloves.

"The glove thing is an odd convention, though. It was satirized in the splash panel of Kurtzman & Elder's "Mickey Rodent" parody in Mad #19 (a character obviously Horace Horsecollar is hauled away by the cops for appearing in public without gloves), so the absurdity was realized as early as the '50s. In Disney comics, I've seen characters go swimming wearing bathing suits *and* gloves, and there have been surreal bits like a Beagle Boy filing his nails with his gloves on. It's one of those oddities that make you wonder who decides these things.”

Thanks, Dwight for a great contribution!

…So, how ‘bout that! The things you can learn by reading this Blog!