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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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It was the mid-1980s, and African American rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and blues musician and activist Daryl Davis had just finished performing a set with his band in a bar in Frederick, Maryland.

As he left the stage, a White man—who would later reveal himself to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan—went up to Davis, put his hand around his shoulder and expressed his approval and admiration for his performance. “This is the first time I heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he told Davis after they exchanged pleasantries. Surprised with the statement, Davis quickly replied, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style? . . . He learned it from the same place I did: Black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.” The White man was in disbelief and refused to accept Davis’ proposal.

Hearing about this incident on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast made me realise that I had been just as ignorant and oblivious as this man about the extent of the artistic contributions of Black people to American music. The moment also sparked within me many questions about my state of ignorance. Why did I not know about these artists? How much more did I not know? How much of the music I listened to was indeed Black?

As an Indian girl growing up in Kuwait in the 2000s, my exposure to American popular music came primarily through television channels like MTV Arabia (the Middle Eastern iteration of MTV) and MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) as well as the radio station Radio Kuwait FM 99.7. Hit singles from a range of American artists, including Black artists, were in heavy rotation along with other shows. My favourite was an MTV show called ‘Rewind’ which played classic pop, R&B and hip hop hits from the previous decades. Songs were played in cars and at parties and hummed in classrooms by local as well as expatriate teens of various nationalities who, like myself, were unaware of the cultural and historical backstories of the music.

For example, I heard of Elvis Presley, dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” on television shows and news media due to his iconic status, but until recently, I had no idea that Presley was profoundly influenced by and “borrowed” from Black blues, gospel and rhythm ‘n’ blues artists of and before his time. He was influenced by radio performances of then local Black disc jockeys like B. B. King (who later came to be known as the “King of the Blues”) and Rufus Thomas (who also became a successful recording artist) and by performers at the Black nightclubs he visited during his teenage and young adult years.

Furthermore, I only recently learnt that many of Presley’s early recordings were covers of original songs by Black artists and that some of his biggest-selling songs like ‘Don't Be Cruel’ and ‘All Shook Up’ were penned by a Black musician by the name of Otis Blackwell. In fact, the first time I heard about it was last year in a YouTube video of a speech that Michael Jackson gave in 2002. While facts like this have now become somewhat common knowledge for most people in the West, my lack of awareness of Blackwell and others like him may be the residual effect of a time in the United States’ past when racial segregation permeated every aspect of life, including music and entertainment.

Dr Portia K. Maultsby is a renowned ethnomusicologist and professor emerita at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and the founder of the university’s Archives of African American Music and Culture. Maultsby took up the study of African American popular music traditions in the 1970s when there was no one looking into it as a valid area of research. She explains that segregation ensured that White Americans remained ignorant of Black musical traditions.

“Due to the segregated structure of the country for years and years, White Americans were kept away from the sounds of Black music,” Maultsby says. During this time, many Black jazz, gospel, R&B and soul artists enjoyed popularity in and even toured different parts of Europe. However, within the United States, Black artists were relegated to the so-called category of ‘race music’, an umbrella term—later replaced by ‘rhythm ‘n’ blues’ in the 1940s—used to denote essentially all types of African American music made by Black people, for Black people. The songs were distributed by mostly White-owned record labels catering exclusively to Black audiences, which meant that the White population remained largely ignorant of the large volumes of work that was recorded by countless Black artists. Black artists also did not get paid as much as White artists or have as many resources, and segregation ensured that their performances were limited to smaller venues.

By the early 1950s, however, a number of independent radio stations (again, mostly White-owned) began popping up, including rhythm ‘n’ blues or “Negro” radio stations. Since it was not possible to segregate radio waves, Black music became accessible to everyone and White teenagers began taking an interest in it. Seeing this, the music industry recognised the potential of appropriating Black music and record companies started making sanitised covers of the music with White artists to distribute to White listeners. But as Maultsby explains, they did so while “keeping the original artists in the background, unexposed” and rhythm ‘n’ blues music, covered and performed by White artists, was now marketed to the mainstream White listener as ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ a term coined by radio disc jockey Alan Freed.

Record companies and White artists wanted the Black sounds and styles that appealed to the White audience but they did not want the Black artist. American record producer and founder of Sun Records Sam Phillips had been looking for “a White man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel” when he found Elvis Presley. The Beatles got their start by covering various blues artists like Arthur Alexander and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Janis Joplin, who was dubbed the “Queen of Rock”, wanted to sound like a Black blues musician and was influenced by Lead Belly, Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton. Pat Boone covered ‘Tutti Frutti’, an original song by musician, singer and songwriter Little Richard, and reached 12th place in the national charts of 1956—several places ahead of the original.

Covers like these were made by record companies much to the disapproval and discontentment of the artists. Little Richard, nicknamed “The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and whose style influenced big names like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince, told the Washington Post in 1984 that he felt as though he was “pushed into a rhythm ‘n’ blues corner” to keep him away from the White audience. He said that “they”—who he does not name—would try to replace him with White rockstars like Elvis Presley who performed his songs on television as soon as they were released. He believed that this was because “they” didn’t want him to become a hero to White kids.

Little Richard’s statement reveals the racism and the lack of agency that Black artists suffered while under exploitative record labels. Exploitation happened to almost all artists in the music industry, but Black artists were particularly targetted as they would receive very little or nothing in royalties. Forbes reports that Specialty Records purchased ‘Tutti Frutti’ for a meagre 50 USD and gave him just 0.05 USD per record sold in royalties, while White artists received much higher rates—a discriminatory practice that was quite common in the industry. Richard, after he left the label in 1959, sued Specialty records for failing to pay him royalties.

Dr Birgitta Johnson is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina and teaches courses on African American sacred music, African music, hip hop, blues and world music. She explains that Black artists were not protected by copyright laws and would often have their music recorded and sold by record companies without proper contracts—in other words, their music would get stolen.

“Back in the day, there was no expectation that the Black artist could fight someone in court even though some of them did,” Johnson says. “If they didn’t have the copyright stolen from them, the record companies would own the music [instead of] the artists, and [the artists] wouldn’t know it because a lot of the time, they wouldn’t have the legal know-how to recognise what was happening in contracts. They wouldn’t get paid royalties . . . even though they were due royalties.”

While this exploitation of Black artists continued, in the late 1950s, after the development of smaller and more portable transistor radios, a wider audience of White teenagers began listening to Black radio stations. This new generation no longer had to depend on the family’s devices and gained more autonomy over what and who they listened to. “Young White people, who would become the hippies of the ‘60s, are the generation of people who started to press for their freedom . . . to [listen to] what they wanted to hear,” Johnson explains.

Listeners who heard the originals would call up the radio or go down to their local record store and ask for the originals, and record companies had to start supplying to demands to stay relevant in the market. “The covers made money but didn’t last long,” Johnson says, “because young White people no longer wanted the covers, the fake versions, the copies.”

The problem was that cover bands and artists tended to simply do whatever the producers asked them to do, which was usually to copy the original artist’s sound, style and moves, and more often than not, it made for bland and inauthentic renditions of the originals. The covers lacked the authenticity that Black artists conveyed in their performance and the young audience who had heard the authentic versions could see this. “They knew what the good music sounded like—it was almost like they understood... they may not have understood the racial dynamics of it, but they knew [the real thing from the fake],” Johnson says.

Moreover, artists who did covers were performing in styles that were foreign to them. “It was outside of their tradition; it was outside of their aesthetics; [and] they couldn’t bring the same excitement to it sometimes,” she explains. The music, performance and singing style had characteristic elements such as polyrhythms (layering of multiple rhythms), call-and-response, dance and improvisation—elements rooted in traditions that were brought to the United States by enslaved West and Central Africans between the 18th and 19th centuries. More importantly, the lyrics of songs by Black artists reflected the unique social customs, trends and living conditions of Black people, and these were not fully understood by people covering the songs. As a result, “[the covers] couldn’t compete with the real thing,” Johnson says.

Maultsby explains that due to the increasing popularity of the originals, record labels soon began recording more Black artists. However, she says, they watered down or “temper[ed] [their] heavy gospel-oriented sound” to make it more palatable for the White audience, and “one way they did [that] in the ‘50s and into the early ‘60s was to use pop production techniques” which meant a “background of strings and backup singers that sounded more White—concert-type singers—to soften the more raspier, emotional sound of the Black singer.”

By the 1980s, Black music gained exposure to an even wider international audience through television channels like MTV as well as broadcasts of live performances. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, collaborations between interracial duos were used as a mass-marketing strategy to increase the reach of Black artists and pop production continued to be used to “soften the Black sound.” Record companies also paired up White artists with Black producers to achieve that ever-popular Black sound.

“Thus, more White artists embodying or imitating aspects of the Black style made it acceptable and soon . . . that Black sound began to define the American sound,” Maultsby explains. However, this imitation and dilution meant that people could never experience authentic Black music.

According to Maultsby, who helped pioneer the academic study of African American popular music, the way non-African Americans experience African American music, even in the United States, is from the perspective of an outsider, and this applies to the international audience as well.

“By and large, within African American communities, music is created as a part of everyday life . . . music is a part of our lived experience,” Maultsby explains. “When that music is then taken out of that context and placed in the music industry, it becomes a commodity for mass dissemination, and it takes on a different meaning and a different function.”

She explains that the live performances of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin or James Brown were very different from the studio-recorded performances because the records were “mediated so that [they] fit a certain format that [could] appeal to a broader audience.”

“Record labels didn’t like recording performances live because they felt the audience interaction would interfere with the performance,” she says. “But that audience interaction [was] very much a part of the way Black music is created and experienced.

The writing and coverage of Black music both in and outside of the United States also did a poor job of representing its true essence. As Maultsby explains, White journalists who covered Black music would write about it from a White perspective rather than a Black one.

“A lot of misconceptions early on had to do with the music being reported by White journalists who reported through the lens of White audiences,” Maultsby says. “When journalists wrote about Black music . . . in the US—and this carried on to Europe and the rest of the world [including] Asia [and the] Middle East—they wrote about it through their observation of performances in venues with predominantly White or all-White audience, or in general, non-Black audiences . . . they did not go into the Black community to see how the music was performed and experienced.”

Writing about Black music and culture from a Eurocentric or White point of view has resulted in early Black contributions to popular music being misrepresented as well as erased from the general consciousness. Black culture was appropriated, exploited and diluted and in the process, consumers were left with watered down, commodified versions of the art that did not represent the people that were at the heart of creating it, and its after-effects have carried over to the present-day, among non-Western consumers.

Black contributions to music are also rarely discussed in mainstream media, which is largely controlled by White executives.

“The influence of Black music in a lot of American music are things that only get discussed in classes or documentaries—sometimes award shows—but mostly in formal environments, unless you’re from that tradition,” says Johnson. “[Artists like] Steven Tyler . . . [have] said, ‘I grew up listening to the blues; I love the blues’ . . . but the people who promote him don’t really have any interest in [promoting that] narrative because it’s really about selling a personality when you think about how the music industry works.”

She explains that though most people are analytically aware that the United States is a diverse country, images that are promoted by American companies are very White-centric. What is sold to the rest of the world as “American” is usually centred around Whiteness, whether that’s through music, movies, television or other forms of entertainment.

“The outside world sees a very limited package and predominantly a White or Eurocentric image . . . people look at America and assume this is basically a White space even though we have all this diversity—we’ve always had this kind of diversity of culture,” remarks Johnson, who often does not get recognised as Black American when she travels internationally. “When I go to China, they don’t assume I’m American. When I go to Thailand, they don’t assume I’m American."

Even though a lot has changed for Black musicians and artists in the United States since its “race music” days, the impact of racism and Eurocentrism lingers on and affects the way Gen Z as well as millennials outside of the United States, like myself, understand pop music in the 21st century. Many tributes have been paid to pioneering and legendary Black artists in award shows, documentaries and biopics and their contributions have been studied academically by scholars like Maultsby and Johnson, but my awareness of Black music and culture as a non-American is not only limited by what’s been given to me in the media, but also by what’s been left out of the conversations around popular music. How do we change this?

As Maultsby expresses, it starts simply with acknowledgement—just like a symphony orchestra’s roots are acknowledged to be European no matter who performs it or how it is reinterpreted in different cultures, or how a sitar is recognised as an Indian musical instrument whether it’s played in a jazz performance or a symphony orchestra, we need to continue to learn and acknowledge the Black roots of the music even when it has a local interpretation or variation.

“We all know [the symphony orchestra] comes from Europe; there’s no question there; we don’t try to claim it as our own conception, but we do participate in that culture. That’s how we have to think about Black American culture,” she says.

We need to recognise African American music for its role in shaping Western popular music, and understand what constitutes Black musical traditions and what differentiates it from the rest of the world, rather than generalise it as merely American music. And while music may have transcended cultural and racial boundaries, transcendence should not come at the price of obscuring and erasing the source.

“It’s fine as long as we keep in mind the source of that music,” Maultsby says. “We can say it transcends race—it just shows how influential Black has been internationally—but at the same time, we don’t need to erase the group that created the music and make Black people invisible in terms of their contributions. And that happens a lot.

“If we are not reminded that Black people are the ones that created the music you love, we question their contributions to society and to the world. We shouldn’t need to be reminded every day. It belongs in our consciousness.”

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redantsunderneath · 4 years

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I’ve Never Seen David Lynch and George Lucas in the Same Room at the Same Time…

The thematic parallels between David Lynch and George Lucas are something I keep coming back to again and again, but their careers and evolution have a lot of overlap too. They were born in the earliest Boomer cohort (George Lucas in May 1944, David Lynch January 1946) and had experiences growing up that were colored by the idyllic 1950s, but shifted into a distrust of authority structures that was common for many of their age cohort in the 1960s. They both came of age wanting to do something physical with her hands that felt creative to them in large grimy spaces - fixing cars for Lucas, and painting and installations with a fascination with organic materials, industrial metal, and rot for Lynch. They both fell into film because they were looking for something that satisfied their artistic bent (although film was never a primary aspect of her life to that point). They wound up making a handful of short films over a 3 year period, culminating in a longer short-film that would eventually get them noticed at roughly the same age (Electric Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB [1967] and the Grandmother [1970] for Lynch).

These films netted both of them a patron (Francis Ford Coppola for Lucas, the American Film Institute for Lynch) and started filming their first feature-length film two years after those films. They both got their biggest name recognition bump by films released in 1977 and pulled away from the power of the studio system in roughly 1984. Famously, Lucas offered Lynch a chance to direct what would become Return of the Jedi in about 1981 ( I prefer the story where Lucas does this by picking him up in a Lamborghini - I’ve heard a phone call version too, but it’s not as perfect) and Lynch answered something like “it’s your movie George, you direct it.” They both spent the mid 80s in movie jail, and although they took very different paths in general after (I’ve been emphasizing the similarities) there are still things that jibe in the history - they both reminded people of what they liked about them with a late 80s movie, spent a lot of the 90s on TV projects, did one project around classic radio, returned to theatrical notice around the millennium, all the while generally keeping their own council and disappointing a lot of fans.

There’s obviously a world of difference. Lucas is a left brained technologist who equated freedom with an owning of the means of production. Lynch is it right brained impressionist seeing freedom-as no one ever being able to tell you what to do, acting as a solo artist with collaborators who merge with his sensibilities. Lynch is a production lone wolf, depending mostly on people believing in him and funding him, and losing out in the popular consciousness by making uncompromising art that may not be what the audience wants, meaning funding is sometimes hard to come by. Lucas is like the Democratic party controlling the Congress and presidency - having total power but unable to turn that into what he really wants to make, somehow. The idea of Lynch selling his body of work to Disney is absurd.

But the correspondences in this are telling and help to explain the thematic similarities and divergences. Plus, the differences often relate to the similarities - Lucas identifies with corrupted controlling paternalistic power as a horror of inevitable capture of the individual by larger structures, while Lynch sees the corrupted masculine influence as an archetype, the call coming from inside the house, agency coopted by a collective taint in the universal pattern . But on some level these are the same thing - what is this person I am capable of becoming seeing as I am in control but yet not, doing horrific things? Lucas’ constant commentary on slavery is about hegemony and a systemic oppression he is complicit in, while Lynch has whole pantheons of beings that turn people into vessels that oblate the self and make them act on subconscious programming. Neither probably think the word neoliberalism too much but tend to communicate similar things about it is almost diametrically opposed ways.

The thematic similarities are rooted in a few areas that unpack in to a variety of subspaces which overlap – patriarchal structures as psychoanalytic dynamics (more Freudian father fixation for Lucas, Jung for Lynch), boomer generational failure as socio-first-but-economics-ultimately, the artist as in struggle with larger forces (largely of the self), and an eastern religious metaphysics that is American Christian in flavor. The major line of difference running through this is gender/sex/desire, Lynch being on main with a lot of spiritual overtones of sin, guilt, and “the fall” and Lucas finding this kind of guilt and sin as a secondary phenomenon that is mostly actively suppressed and unconvincing when it shows up; yet both wind up often finding physical consummation at direct odds with art in a gendered creation way (that also links Eraserhead to Age of Ultron and the original Frankenstein). Try doing a psychosexual reading of Howard the Duck sometime.

Lucas’ developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s counterculture makes a movie where the young granola-ish revolutionaries win against the fascists in an effort to rewrite society but, having secured rights for “independent spirit” reasons now finds himself in control of something huge and immediately starts making art about boomer men becoming their controlling fathers and then moves on to movies where powerless freaks are the real focus. After a creatively fallow period, he comes back to make a sequel/prequel trilogy that is one of the most misunderstood complicated statements about people becoming what they hate as an eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, the artistic, you name it!

Lynch’s developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s outsider/art counterculture makes a movie where the young artist struggles with the idea of a regular life, initiated by fatherhood, which attempts to destroy the artistic spark, after which he enters the Hollywood system and makes an artist as freak movie and a movie about plucky rebels conquering space authoritarianism (that the future of is books about that ending in messianic authoritarianism) and then disavows that system. He then proceeds to make art about subject and object as a supremely gendered thing, in a land that has fallen from grace, moving inexorably towards the idea of eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, you name it!

They both have an idea of the father-artist identified with the abject oppressed, under siege as figure, resentful from being kept from creation, over a career realizing that their “self” is the horrific villain of their own story. For Lynch, this is psychosexual, then spiritual, with a resisted toxic masculine urge to control and overwhelm, often in a violent way. It is the artist’s own urges that get in the way of making art, of desiring in the universe that has an unbalanced power structure from some far off echoes of an original symmetry breaking inherent to the archetypal gender dynamic. For Lucas, it is the realization that the artist in control has a tendency to become the controlling dad and sexual relations are inherently problematic in a political and spiritual way. Real art seems impossible if the artist has control, identifying with the downtrodden is a bit of a lie, happy endings can’t happen not because of the happiness bit because of the ending bit. For both, there is a fundamental flaw in the cycle, which is patriarchal in nature, but Lynch just approaches this much hornier.

The boomer part probably requires the most discussion, but the TLDR is that they are both are crawling out, through Vietnam, from the 50s social order, and grappling with how badly the 60s idealism failed. Lucas does this in the prequels as a big canvas critique of how the social revolution was co-opted by the generation not being able to see its own flaws, of not seeing the system taking over again, an Empire calling itself a Republic. An inability to look in the mirror and really see. The wisest oldest hippie is the only one who sees what’s happening, but is powerless as his apprentices are inevitably spit out, and the next generation has to be raised not by a skeptic but a true believer in “liberal” “democracy” (cynic quotes theirs).

Lynch is interesting here in that he most directly addresses this only in Twin Peaks, but we see more naked reflections, divorced of contemporary politics, in his other works. In Twin Peaks, Ben Horn is the Palpatine figure, who winds up a sweet old man buying off the harm his life’s work and progeny have produced while ignoring the poor and next generation personally. Jacoby the neutered, fried Yoda that eventually slides into Alex Jones territory (the canonical Boomer ethos in a nutshell – “what me” neoliberalism and change the world ideology going crackpot). All of Twin Peaks except for Fire Walk with Me is directly socioeconomically generational (Bobby Briggs becomes a young Republican in season 2, the mill, the trailer park), but the other works are full of class issues informed by Lynch’s age. From Blue Velvet’s suburban kid exploring his darker side by going to the poor part of town through a career of classist low-life encoding (Bob is a denim jacket wearing homeless person, all the covered in grime by the dumpster/trailer park characters, Ronette as the factory floor version of Laura, etc), culminating in Inland Empire and Twin Peaks the Return chronicling the fall of man as partially an (generationally specific in TP) economic fall into a unequal class defined world of needing an opening and leaving the house to labor as where evil is born. TP OS is about how boomers turned out just as bad, the Return is about how we inhabit the world of their ideological blindness.

All filmmakers seem to, at least to a certain degree, bring the question of creation of art directly into their work via distant or close metaphor. In Eraserhead and Elephant Man, Lynch values the spark of art which the downtrodden protagonist is trying not to lose. In Dune, the visionary with a big project that seeks to upend the system (but that we know eventually become something even worse) is a project that fell apart due to studio interference. Blue velvet is about the act of watching awakening something uncomfortable in us that is incompatible with normie life (it wouldn’t be weird to say it was about porn). Twin Peaks is about television, FWWM about movies, and all at least partially about closure being a death act in art. Lost Highway is about the artist tortured by desire, Mulholland Drive about desire being central to be eaten alive by the Hollywood system. Inland Empire is about filmmaking as a way into understanding the world on a deeper level (as is its unofficial sequel Inception) to cure its ills. All of this is art’s struggle against power, with an element of the major powers being subconscious forces that control us leading to desires that ablate the artistic impulse.

Lucas' projects have over time been about a young upstart independent filmmaker, losing his soul by becoming successful, and becoming the system, man. He then tries desperately to identify as really not the one in charge, until he admits to what he has become. He consistently dips back into filmmaking as an adventure or a good fight, but he has to set these in a time period before his birth. As in Lynch, having a child is equated with not being able to fulfill the kind of artistic destiny, but Lucas goes further in equating it to an excuse for why the powerful artist goes bad and needs redemption. He had a naïve or-is-it canny motif focused on the short inhuman outsider, often related to music or primitive settings (often with wooden cages) as a recurring thing for a while. These characters are often wise, or at least no filter tell-it, and are similar to the Elephant Man. This is a trope, sure, the wise different wavelength other, but there is also an identification of the artist at knowing and right yet impotent and a clue to the author’s metaphysical system.

Lynch is the mainline protestant in upbringing and very much influenced by a kind of proto-eastern religion (you can just say the Vedas for shorthand). Lucas is not very religious, but was brought up Christian, influenced by Christian symbolism and became interested in world religion as narrative via figures like Joseph Campbell. Hence, they both gravitate towards some kind of Gnostic Proto Christian, So-Cal zen, Thomas Aquinas “gets” Plato kind of amalgam, which informs their work. Lynch has veered towards an eternal cycle framework, and the very physics compatible idea of something in the past breaking and causing consciousness/suffering, through which we can achieve joy as a counter only through letting go of the self, and the recurrence of ruptures on all scales demonstrating a fractal pattern of hurt and redemption. Lucas also sees a big cycle, but it is one more of human existence as narrative that has a tendency to return, with a little bit of Nietzsche and movie eastern spirituality thrown in. Both believe in a recurring pattern that plays itself out in a way that is terrible, but hopeful, as the struggle is where hope derives from. Both have inherently Christian ideas and symbols in their work but lean back on non-Christian ideas that the Christian ideas have a history with. Lynch has his virgin Mary as the real Christ figure female angels that show up, while Lucas has turnt space Jesus.

Suffice it to say that the tree trial scene in the Empire Strikes Back and the lodge sequences in Twin Peaks are a very good place to start looking for how the two auteurs meet. Compare Anakin/Luke Skywalker to Mr C, look at the 90s turn they both made, register their seeing the “sleeper must awaken” of fiction being terribly fraught, compare the force vs. the universal field, the way their relationship status and partners carve their work into eras, and their continued existence as mainstream experimental filmmakers.

#george lucas #david lynch

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years

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DEAN MARTIN

June 7, 1917 - December 25, 1991

Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio and became one of the most popular and enduring entertainers of the mid-20th century. A singer, actor, and comedian, Martin’s career breakthrough came in 1946 through his partnership with comedian Jerry Lewis, billed as Martin & Lewis. They performed in nightclubs and later had numerous appearances on radio, television and in films.

Lucille Ball’s first appearance with Dean Martin was on his NBC radio show with Jerry Lewis in December 1948. Lucy was then the star of her own radio show, “My Favorite Husband” on CBS.

Following an end to their partnership in 1956, Martin established himself as a notable singer, recording numerous contemporary songs as well as standards from the Great American Songbook. His hit singles, including his signature songs "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?" and "Volare".

He became one of the most popular acts in Las Vegas and was known for his friendship with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., who together formed the Rat Pack. Throughout his career, Martin appeared in 85 film and television productions. In the above photo at the Sands Casino, the Rat Pack is joined by Lucy and Danny Thomas (top) and Gary Morton (right).

In “Lucy and Wayne Newton” (HL SS2;E2) the Carters are driving down the Las Vegas strip when Craig notices that Dean Martin is playing at the Riviera. Kim says “He’s one of my favorites!”

“I'd hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day.” ~ Dean Martin

Part of Dean’s act involved his affection for alcoholic beverages. Jokes about Dean Martin’s drinking were common, even when Dean was not part of the show.

In “Lucy the Disc Jockey” (TLS S3;E26) Lucy tries to see the title of the song on a spinning turntable and gets dizzy, she says

“No wonder. It’s a Dean Martin album.”

In “Lucy the Stockbroker” (TLS S3;E25) Lucy discovers that Mr. Mooney is really hypnotized, not faking. Viv says

“He’s stiffer than Dean Martin.”

In “Lucy and Lawrence Welk” (HL S2;E18), Viv returns from the Universal Studios Tour and tells Lucy

“I saw...Dean Martin’s bartender.”

Lucille Ball adored working with Martin, despite the fact that their working styles were polar opposites. Ball was committed to rehearsals where Martin preferred to ‘wing it.’ Due to her great affection for him, she put up with it.

The first time Lucille Ball and Dean Martin appeared on the same television show (though not at the same time) came in 1950 on “Show of the Year: Telethon for United Cerebral Palsy” hosted by Milton Berle on NBC. It was broadcast from New York City with remotes from Philadelphia. (Photo, left to right: Gabby Hayes, Roger Clipp, UCP Poster Child, Jane Pickens, and Dennis James.)

Dean Martin never appeared on “I Love Lucy,” but his second wife did! Former Orange Bowl Queen Jeanne Biegger (billed only as Mrs. Dean Martin) appeared as herself wearing a Don Loper dress in 1955’s “The Fashion Show” (ILL S4;E19). The couple divorced in 1973. Martin then married Catherine Hawn, but the unioni lasted only three years. Martin’s first wife was Betty McDonald, who he married in 1941 and divorced in 1949. Martin had eight children.

“The three words you hear most around my house are 'hello,' 'goodbye,' and 'I'm pregnant.'" ~ Dean Martin

Dean Martin was one of the performers at the Friar’s Club Roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on November 23, 1958. The event, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, was not telecast.

It would be ten years before Lucy and Dean again appeared on the same show (again, not at the same time) with “The Bob Hope Buick Sports Show Awards” in 1961. The show primarily took place in Los Angeles, but Lucille Ball’s segment took place in New York City, where she was appearing in Wildcat.

Two years later, Bob Hope presented the “TV Guide Awards.” Lucille Ball is nominated for Favorite Female Performer, but is not present. A still photo of her is shown instead.

Starting in 1964, Martin was the host of the television variety program “The Dean Martin Show”, which was characterized by his relaxed, easy-going demeanor. Lucille Ball appeared on the show in 1966 along with singer Kate Smith.

In return, four days later Dean appeared on “The Lucy Show,” playing himself and his own stuntman, Eddie Feldman. Lucille Ball said that this was her favorite episode of “The Lucy Show.”

Both Lucy and Dean were part of “Jack Benny’s Carnival Nights” in 1968, although once again they do not share screen time. Martin does a quick cameo playing the Amazing Sleeping Man! The opening of the show was performed on the set of “The Dean Martin Show” complete with fire pole and sexy assistants!

Martin was in attendance at the “20th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards” where Lucille Ball won her fourth (and final) competitive acting Emmy,along with Bill Cosby (”I Spy”) and Don Addams (”Get Smart”).

In 1968, Lucille Ball (and many other stars) makes a cameo appearance on “The Dean Martin Christmas Show” to announce the donation of toys to children in hospitals. The cameos are filmed without Martin present.

A year later, the two were also on the bill for “Ann-Margret: From Hollywood With Love.” Dean Martin and Dean Martin sing a medley of country western songs and then do a sketch where the gender roles are reversed. Lucy, appearing in a separate segment, plays herself and an autograph hound named Celebrity Lu.

Lucille Ball (and dozens of other stars) make guest appearanced on “The Dean Martin Show’s” sixth season opener in September 1970.

In “Jack Benny’s 20th Anniversary Show” (November 1970) Lucy plays Jack’s maid, Janet, while Dean plays himself. Martin knocks on Jack’s dressing room door to wish him a happy anniversary and dance “The Anniversary Waltz” with him. The bit lasts less than 30 seconds.

Later in November 1970, “John Wayne’s Swing Out Sweet Land” featured Dean Martin as Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) and Lucille Ball as the voice of Lady Liberty.

In February 1975 “Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roast" was dedicated to Lucille Ball. On the dais, Martin presents Lucille’s friends and colleagues Bob Hope, Gale Gordon, Milton Berle, Henry Fonda, Ginger Rogers, Jack Benny, and Vivian Vance.

A year later it was Lucille doing the roasting, this time of her friend Danny Thomas. Also on Martin’s dais are Orson Welles, Milton Berle, and Gene Kelly.

Two year after that, in 1978, Lucille returned for yet another Dean Martin Roast, this time for her Beverly Hills neighbor, Jimmy Stewart.

In 1975, on of the Lucille Ball CBS Specials was “Lucy Gets Lucky” starring Dean Martin. Ball plays Lucy Collins, who travels to Las Vegas to see her favorite star perform. To get into the sold out show she must work a variety of casino and hotel jobs!

“NBC: The First 50 Years” (1976) was a four and a half hour extravaganza that naturally included clips of Dean Martin (who’s show was on the network) but also included Lucille Ball on “The Danny Kaye Show.”

“CBS Salutes Lucy: The First 25 Years” (1976) includes Dean Martin talking about how much he loves working with Lucille Ball.

At the start of 1980, Lucille Ball and Dean Martin are just two of the many guests in “Sinatra: The First 40 Years” celebrating his 64th birthday and 40th year in show business.

“Bob Hope’s Unrehearsed Antics of the Stars” on September 28, 1984 featured Lucy talking about her audition for Gone With The Wind and Dean Martin in a clip of a sketch with Hope about airline pilots.

In 1984′s “An All-Star Party for Lucille Ball” Dean Martin sings “When You’re Smiling” with special lyrics to suit the occasion: “When you’re Lucy, When you’re Lucy, You’re never off TV.”

Their last on-screen collaboration was to celebrate the opening of the Bob Hope Cultural Center at Palm Springs in “America’s Tribute to Bob Hope” in March 1988. Dozens of friends gather and offer comedy and musical performances to honor the building’s namesake including Lucille Ball, Dean Martin, George Burns, Ann-Margret, Dinah Shore, and Danny Thomas.

A further connection came offscreen when Lucille Ball’s son Desi Aranz joined with Dean Martin’s son Dino and Billy Hinsche to form a rock band known as Dino, Desi and Billy.

“I want to be remembered as a damn good entertainer, nothing spectacular. A good entertainer who made people enjoy themselves and made them laugh a little. I want them to think 'He was a nice guy. He did pretty good and we loved him.'" ~ Dean Martin

#Dean Martin #Lucille Ball #I love lucy #The Lucy Show #Dino Desi & Billy #bob hope #jack benny #Ann-Margret #Frank Sinatra #Las Vegas #Jimmy Stewart #Danny Thomas #Kate Smith #Bill Cosby #Don Addams #NBC #CBS #TV

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blackkudos · 4 years

Text

Billy Dee Williams

William December "Billy Dee" Williams Jr. (born April 6, 1937) is an American actor, voice actor, and artist. He is best known as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, first in the early 1980s, and nearly forty years later in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), marking one of the longest intervals between onscreen portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history.

Williams was born in New York City, and raised with his twin sister Loretta in Harlem. In 1945 he made his Broadway theatre debut at age seven in The Firebrand of Florence. He later graduated from The High School of Music & Art, then won a painting scholarship to the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, where he won a Hallgarten Prize for painting in the mid-1950s. To fund his art supplies he returned to acting, including stage, films, and television. He kept creating art, his work has since been shown in galleries and collections worldwide.

Williams’ film debut was in The Last Angry Man (1959), but he came to national attention in the television movie, Brian's Song (1971) which earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Actor. He has appeared in at least 70 films over six decades including critically acclaimed and popular movies such as, Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Mahogany (1975) both starring Williams paired with Diana Ross; and Nighthawks (1981). In the 1980s he was cast in his most enduring role as Lando Calrissian, becoming the first African-American actor with a major role in the Star Wars franchise, in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). He also delivered Lando as a voice actor in video games, animated series, and the National Public Radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. He was inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in 1984, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985. Another enduring franchise relationship started with Batman (1989), playing attorney Harvey Dent, a role that was also developed into a villainous alter-ego, Two-Face, which he voiced for The Lego Batman Movie (2017).

Williams's television work has over sixty credits starting in 1966 including recurring roles over the decades in Gideon's Crossing; Dynasty, General Hospital: Night Shift; and General Hospital. Numerous cameos and supporting roles included being paired with Marla Gibbs on The Jeffersons, 227, and The Hughleys. Later work included voice acting in the series Titan Maximum (2009), and appearing on the reality show Dancing with the Stars (2014). His work has earned him numerous awards and honors including three NAACP Image Awards, and the NAACP Lifetime Achievement award.

Early life and education

William December Williams Jr. was born in New York City, the son of Loretta Anne (1915–2016), a West Indian-born elevator operator at the Lyceum Theatre and aspiring performer from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr. (1910–2008), an African-American caretaker, with some Native American ancestry from Texas. He grew up in Harlem on 110th Street, between Lenox and 5th, adjacent to Central Park North–110th Street station. He used to go to Central Park to see the Negro league players and the Cuban baseball league, “They were fantastic, and I wound up working with a lot of those guys,” (in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)). He has a twin sister, Loretta, and they were raised by their maternal grandmother while their parents worked several jobs. His mom had studied opera for years, becoming an accomplished opera star who wanted to break into movies; the family was richly cultured, exposing the children early on to drawing, painting, theatre and similar creative experiences; Billy Dee would remain a fan of the arts including opera. In March 1945 he made his Broadway debut at age seven portraying a page in The Firebrand of Florence, Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s operetta starring Lotte Lenya. His mom, who worked at the theatre, volunteered him for the part which he found boring.

Williams attended Booker T. Washington Junior High School where he had dreams of being a painter. He graduated in 1955 from the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, where he majored in arts with a focus on visual arts. The school would later be the subject for Fame (1980), and its derivative television series. While there he got a two-year scholarship for the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design in New York—which later changed its name to National Academy of Design—to study with a focus on "classical principles of painting". He was nominated at eighteen or nineteen years old for a Guggenheim Fellowship grant—for “creative ability in the arts;” and won a Hallgarten Prize in the mid-1950s. Although he had scholarships to pay for school tuition, he turned to acting to pay for his paints, supplies, and canvasses. His first Broadway theatre “big break” was a play, A Taste of Honey. He continued to struggle as an actor for ten years working as an extra, doing small and large theatre, and “slowly breaking into television and film”. During art school he gained interest in the Stanislavsky Method—experiencing a role contrasted with representing it, to mobilize an actor's conscious thought and will to in turn activate emotional response and subconscious behavior—and began studying at the Harlem Actors Workshop. It was run by blacklisted actor Paul Mann who embraced actors of all races; Williams also studied there under Sidney Poitier. He first viewed his acting as a way to pay for his art supplies, by the early 1960s though he began to “devote all of his energy to performance.” In succession he got an actor agent through a friend, started getting major Off-Broadway roles, then work on Broadway.

Career

Stage

Williams first appeared on Broadway in 1945 in The Firebrand of Florence. He returned to Broadway as an adult in 1960 in the adaptation of The Cool Word. He appeared in A Taste of Honey in 1960. A 1976 Broadway production, I Have a Dream, was directed by Robert Greenwald and starred Williams as Martin Luther King Jr. His most recent Broadway appearance was in August Wilson's Fences, as a replacement for James Earl Jones in the role of Troy Maxson in 1988.

Film and television

Williams made his film debut in 1959 in The Last Angry Man, opposite Paul Muni, in which he portrayed a delinquent young man. He was frustrated in the 1960s with the “paucity of parts for leading black men,” the majority of roles he wanted went to Sidney Poitier. He enjoyed doing theater and television, but “his slow-building film career ate at him.” He found LSD, a popular hallucinogenic drug with the era’s hippie movement to be a cure, “LSD saved my life ... I wasn’t doing it to get high. It let me get inside of myself.” Otherwise he is anti-drug.

He rose to stardom after starring in the critically lauded blockbuster biographical television movie, Brian's Song (1971), in which he played Chicago Bears star football player Gale Sayers, who stood by his friend Brian Piccolo (played by James Caan), during Piccolo's struggle with terminal cancer. The film was so popular that it was given a theatrical release. Both Williams and Caan were nominated for Emmy Awards for best actor for their performances. Williams said the role was the one of which he was most proud:

It was a love story, really. Between two guys. Without sex. ... It ended up being a kind of breakthrough in terms of racial division.

Having broken through, Williams’ success with Brian's Song earned him a seven-year contract with Motown's Berry Gordy. He became one of America's most well-known black film actors of the 1970s, after starring in a string of critically acclaimed and popular movies, many of them in the "blaxploitation" genre. In 1972, he starred as Billie Holiday's husband Louis McKay in Motown Productions' Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues. The film was a box office blockbuster, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of the year and received five Academy Award nominations. Through his portrayal he became “a full-fledged sex symbol, touted as the ‘black Clark Gable.’” Diana Ross starred in Lady Sings the Blues opposite Williams; Motown paired the two of them again three years later in the successful follow-up project Mahogany.

1980-present

Williams was cast as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), becoming the first African-American actor with a major role in the series. J. J. Abrams, who would direct Williams in the ninth installment film in 2019, noted, “Lando was always written as a complex, contradictory, nuanced character. And Billy Dee played him to suave perfection, ... It wasn’t just that people of color were seeing themselves represented; they were seeing themselves represented in a rich, wonderful, intriguing way.” He would reprise the role soon after in Return of the Jedi (1983). Between the latter two films, he starred alongside Sylvester Stallone as a cop in the thriller Nighthawks (1981). The charm of his role as Lando Calrissian proved to be popular with audiences. Williams has voiced the character in the 2002 video game Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, the audio dramatization of Dark Empire, the National Public Radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, two productions for the Star Wars: Battlefront series, The Lego Movie, and in two episodes of the animated TV series Star Wars Rebels. Some fans were disappointed with Calrissian's absence from the first film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Force Awakens, but in July 2018 it was announced that he would reprise his role in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), marking one of the longest intervals between onscreen portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history.

Williams co-starred in 1989's Batman as district attorney Harvey Dent, a role that was planned to develop into Dent's alter-ego, the villain Two-Face, in sequels. However, that never came to pass; he was set to reprise the role in the sequel Batman Returns, but his character was deleted and replaced with villain Max Shreck. When Joel Schumacher stepped in to direct Batman Forever, where Two-Face was to be a secondary villain, Schumacher decided to hire Tommy Lee Jones for the role. There was a rumor that Schumacher had to pay Williams a fee in order to hire Jones, but Williams said that it was not true: "You only get paid if you do the movie. I had a two-picture deal with Star Wars. They paid me for that, but I only had a one picture deal for Batman." Williams eventually voiced Two-Face in the 2017 film The Lego Batman Movie.

Williams' television work included a recurring guest-starring role on the short-lived show Gideon's Crossing. He is also known for his advertisements for Colt 45, a malt liquor, for a five-year period starting in the mid-1980s; he would reprise his spokesperson role in 2016. Williams brushed off criticism—for the subtext of the ad campaign, ‘works every time,’ and the target audience—of the choice, "I drink, you drink. Hell, if marijuana was legal, I'd appear in a commercial for it." Colt 45 hired Williams “simply because he was so cool,” and went from trailing behind Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in barrels produced, to “skyrocketing” a year after the 1986 ads ran to two million barrels in the top spot for malt liquor.

In the 1984–1985 season of Dynasty, he played Brady Lloyd opposite Diahann Carroll. Williams was paired with actress Marla Gibbs on three situation comedies: The Jeffersons (Gibbs's character, Florence, was in love with Williams and challenged him on everything because she thought Williams was an imposter); 227 (her character, Mary, pretending to be royalty, met Williams at a banquet); and The Hughleys (Gibbs and Williams portrayed Darryl's parents). In 1992, he portrayed Berry Gordy in The Jacksons: An American Dream. In 1993, Williams made a guest appearance on the spin-off to The Cosby Show, A Different World, as Langston Paige, a grumpy landlord, in a backdoor pilot for his own series. Williams appeared as himself on Martin where he provided Martin Lawrence's character with advice on getting back together with Gina.

Williams made a special guest appearance on the hit sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1990. He portrayed Pastor Dan in an episode of That '70s Show. In this episode, "Baby Don't You Do It" (2004), his character is obsessed with Star Wars, and uses this to help counsel Eric Forman (himself a Star Wars fan) and Donna Pinciotti about his premarital relationship. Williams made a cameo appearance as himself on the television series Lost in the episode "Exposé". He also appears regularly on short clips on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! as a semi-parody of himself. In February 2006, Williams guest starred as himself in the season 5 episode "Her Story II" of Scrubs, where he plays the godfather of Julie (Mandy Moore). Turk hugs him, calling him "Lando", even though he prefers to be called Billy Dee. Williams played Toussaint Dubois for General Hospital: Night Shift in 2007 and 2008. Williams reprised his role as Toussaint on General Hospital beginning in June 2009. Also in 2009, Williams took on the role of the voice of Admiral Bitchface, the head of the military on the planet Titan, in the Adult Swim animated series Titan Maximum. In July 2010, Williams appeared in the animated series The Boondocks, where he voiced a fictionalized version of himself in the episode "The Story of Lando Freeman".

In February 2011, Williams appeared as a guest star on USA Network's White Collar as Ford, an old friend of Neal Caffrey's landlady June, played by Diahann Carroll. In February 2012, Williams was the surprise guest during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show spotlighting Diana Ross. Ross and Williams were reunited after having not seen each other in 29 years. In October 2012, Williams appeared as a guest star on NCIS in Season 10 Episode 5 titled "Namesake", as Gibbs's namesake and his father's former best friend, Leroy Jethro Moore. On January 9, 2013, Williams made a cameo appearance as himself on Modern Family, season 4, episode 11 "New Year's Eve".

In 2014 Williams competed on the 18th season of Dancing with the Stars, a reality show/dancing competition partnered with professional dancer Emma Slater. The couple had to withdraw from the competition on the third week due to an injury to Williams's back.

Over the years, Williams has been a featured guest at fan conventions, mostly science fiction ones for his iconic Lando Calrissian role in the Star Wars franchise. Of his fan interactions he has said they have mostly been positive ones, "I love every single moment of it, I'll have an audience for the rest of my life."

Return to painting

In the late 1980s, Williams resumed painting devoting much of his time to the work. He returned to New York to star in August Wilson’s play Fences replacing James Earl Jones in the lead for four months starting in February 1988. It marked a turning point for him, returning home, and for him, the center of the art scene. He also renewed his friendship with Peter Max who had also trained, and sold art in the city, and renewed Williams' interest in painting. Within a two year span he “cranked out 120 original works of art.”

Williams is the Honorary Chairman of Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (TMIJ) in Washington, D.C., which fosters jazz education. TMIJ uses his artwork each year for its competition programs since 1990. He had his first solo exhibition in 1991 followed by many throughout North America, and later, the world. Around 1992, Williams, inspired by his friend and fellow New York artist Peter Max who had a teapot collection, started a cookie jar collection. Being an opera fan, he first found a jar in the shape of a singer in an opera gift shop by artisan couple Michael and Shelley Buonaiuto; later buying more than a dozen from their limited lines including ones of jazz artists Josephine Baker and Fats Waller. His 1993 self-portrait is at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.) with a description that he “specializes in acrylic paintings combining traditional brushwork with an airbrushing technique;” he also works in oils. Williams painted a series of impressionistic portraits of the Tuskegee Airmen, the “African-American pilots whose real-life exploits changed the course of American military history.” He started the series in the 1990s but when officials from National Air and Space Museum (NASM) saw them they wanted more, and to use them in an exhibition. In 1999 they were displayed at the African-American Museum of Art, Culture and History in New Orleans, and in early-2000, the NASM in Washington, D.C.

He was commissioned for four paintings—including one of track and field star Jesse Owens sprinting, and another of a pair of boxers in a fight ring—for Nissan that were displayed at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1997 he did paintings for Walt Disney Company’s Mighty Ducks arena for the Anaheim Ducks. From a description, circa late 1990s, at one of the galleries that carries his work, “Billy’s paintings are usually acrylic on canvas, applied with brush and airbrush. He also works with collage elements and has even created three-dimensional canvasses incorporating ceramic, Lucite, and neon light.”

He got permission from Star Wars’ creator George Lucas to sell lithographs of a montage of Williams’ iconic character from the franchise, Lando Calrissian. As of 2001 his paintings sold for an average of $10,000 to $35,000 (equivalent to $50,537 in 2019). "I call my paintings 'abstract reality.” Said Williams, “Sometimes I refer to them as 'impressions/expression.' It's the best way I can explain them." In early 2001 Williams was one of the celebrity artists painting seven-foot angel sculptures as part of the Oscar Academy’s sponsoring L.A.’s “A Community of Angels” charity project. The art angels were displayed for months then auctioned to raise funds for L.A. youth programs. In his online gallery biography, he states, “[an] interest in Eastern philosophy characterizes his images, first to record the physical reality, and then to uncover through the application of light, color and perspective. He cites Edward Hopper, M. C. Escher—the Dutch Master, Frida Kahlo, Tamara de Lempicka, Thomas Hart Benton, and the exciting, vibrant forms of African art as some of his strongest influences.” Williams’ work is included at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

In a 2001 interview he said, "Either I want to drop dead with a paint brush in my hand or I want to drop dead doing a soliloquy on the stage, I love acting. I love it. I take my acting very seriously, but I also find it fun. To do what children do and get paid for it is a lot of fun. I'm very fortunate." In late 2007 he was a guest artist on a ten-day Princess Cruise liner. They bought about eighty pieces which they put on their cruises and then auctioned off. He was commissioned for another set of Disney paintings to be unveiled in 2011 at Disney’s D23 Expo, also in Anaheim, California. For those, he set iconic Disney characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and Goofy in jazz music settings. In a 2011 interview he said, “I mostly create abstract paintings. I paint what's obvious to the eye and then incorporate an abstract point of view, which allows me a lot of space to play in. I work a lot with acrylic and oils, mostly acrylic right now and do a lot of line drawings.” In a September 2015 interview he said he finds painting “cathartic” compared to collective film work, “When you’re painting you just lock yourself up in your little private world. And it’s all about you and your imagination and nobody else interfering with that. It’s a great exercise because you really start discovering who you are and what you are without a lot of assistance … and the moment you come up with something interesting it’s a success that’s really based on your own personal, private sensibility.” As of 2019 he has made around 300 paintings, which Williams sees as his legacy.

Other ventures

Let's Misbehave

In 1961, Williams recorded a jazz LP produced by Prestige Records entitled Let's Misbehave, on which he sang swing standards. The album, which was a commercial success, earned Williams a spot on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983).

The album included the first-ever vocal recording of “A Taste of Honey”, a song by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow later covered by The Beatles on their 1963 debut album Please Please Me. Williams was the first to sing the song in the U.S., on the Broadway stage with Joan Plowright as part of the original Broadway production of the play A Taste of Honey. Williams said of the album, “Recording it was sort of a lark. I did some singing in clubs, for a moment, and then I stopped. I have too much respect for singers to really think that I'm a singer.” The album was re-released on CD, Download and Streaming platforms in 2014 and continues to be available.

Thirty years later, in the early 1990s, he sang on a “celebrity-packed charity single,” “Voices That Care,” to honor U.S. troop of Operation Desert Storm, the 1990-1991 Gulf War, and supporting the International Red Cross. The single reached number eleven on the Billboard Hot 100, and number six on the Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks. Through sales and plays of the song Williams and the other celebrities became platinum-recording and Billboard-charting artists.

Video games

Williams voiced Lando Calrissian in the video game Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Battlefront as well as the spin-off Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron. However, the Battlefront appearances were archive footage and his voice-appearance in Elite Squadron is left uncredited or unknown. He also played a live-action character, GDI Director Redmond Boyle, in the game Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, which was released in March 2007. This made him the second former Star Wars actor to appear in a Command & Conquer game, with the first being James Earl Jones as GDI General James Solomon in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Williams voiced Lando Calrissian in 2015's Star Wars: Battlefront for the DLC pack Bespin and its 2017 sequel Star Wars Battlefront II.In the 2016 game Let It Die, Williams voices Colonel Jackson, who acts as the 2nd major boss players face.

Internet

In 2008, Williams reprised his role as Lando Calrissian to appear in a video on Funny or Die in a mock political ad defending himself for leader of the Star Wars galaxy against vicious attack ads from Emperor Palpatine. Williams is currently a cast member of Diary of a Single Mom, a web-based original series directed by award-winning filmmaker Robert Townsend. The series debuted on PIC.tv in 2009.

Personal life

Williams has been married three times, and has three children, and two grandchildren. His first marriage was to Audrey Sellers in 1959. They were divorced some years later, after which he apparently became depressed. He stated that "there was a period when I was very despondent, broke, depressed, my first marriage was on the rocks." They had a son, Corey Dee Williams, born in 1960. In 1968, Williams married model and actress Marlene Clark in Hawaii. They divorced in 1971. He moved from New York City to California in 1971.

He married Teruko Nakagami on December 27, 1972. She brought a daughter, Miyako (b. 1962), from her previous marriage to musician Wayne Shorter. Together they have a daughter, Hanako (b. 1973). In 1984 he bought a “Zen-like contemporary” home in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood of Beverly Hills, California; he sold it in 2012. He filed for an amicable divorce from Nakagami in 1993, but they reconciled, and were again living together by 1997.

Williams was arrested on January 30, 1996, after allegedly assaulting his live-in girlfriend, whom the police did not identify. He posted a US$50,000 bail. L.A. Police said the woman had minor bruises and scratches. The attorney's office filed misdemeanor charges of spousal battery and dissuading a witness. The woman later stated that the incident was her fault and hoped the police would drop the case. In a plea bargain, Williams was ordered to undergo 52 counseling sessions. In a 2019 interview, Williams says he never slapped or abused women.

In late 2019, Williams talked about his feminine side in an interview, and used masculine and feminine pronouns to refer to himself. Media outlets widely speculated that Williams might be gender fluid, but he clarified that he was referring to anima and animus: the feminine side of men and the masculine side of women in Jungian psychology.

Honors and awards

Primetime Emmy [Nominee] (1972) for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in "Gale Sayers" in Brian's Song (1971)

Inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in 1984.

Hollywood Walk of Fame

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films

Film Independent Spirit Awards

Multicultural Motion Picture Association (Diversity Awards): Circa 2000-2001, Lifetime Achievement Honor

Black Reel Awards: Nom 2002 Theatrical - Best Supporting Actor for The Visit

NAACP Image Awards (NAACP)

Indie Series Awards

TV Land Awards

African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)

Behind the Voice Actors Awards

American Black Film Festival

Star on the Walk of Fame (1985) at 1521 Vine Street.

Saturn Award [Nominee] (1981) for Best Supporting Actor in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Saturn Award [Nominee] (1984) for Best Supporting Actor in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)

Independent Spirit Award [Nominee] (2001) for Best Supporting Male in The Visit (2000)

Image Award [Winner] (1972) for Best Actor - Motion Picture in Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

Image Award [Winner] (1977) for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

Image Award [Nominee] (2001) for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture in The Visit (2000)

Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to the arts in 2006.

ISA [Winner] (2010) for Best Performance by a Guest Actor in Diary of a Single Mom (2009)

ISA [Nominee] (2011) for Outstanding Supporting Actor in Diary of a Single Mom (2009)

TV Land Award [Winner] (2006) for Blockbuster Movie of the Week In Brian's Song (1971)

TV Land Award [Nominee] (2003) for Most Memorable Male Guest Star in a Comedy as Himself In The Jeffersons (1975)

Special Achievement Award [Winner] (2012)

BTVA Feature Film Voice Acting Award [Nominee] (2018) for Best Vocal Ensemble in a Feature Film in The Lego Batman Movie (2017)

(2018) Hollywood Legacy Award

Books

PSI/Net (1999), ISBN 978-0-312-86766-9, novel co-written with Rob MacGregor based on an actual government program of psychic spying.

JUST/In Time (2001), ISBN 978-0-8125-7240-7

Filmography

Williams’ film debut was in The Last Angry Man (1959), but he came to national attention in the television movie Brian's Song, which earned him an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actor. He has appeared in at least 70 films over six decades, including critically acclaimed and popular movies Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and Mahogany (1975), which both starred Williams paired with Diana Ross, and Nighthawks (1981).

In the 1980s he was cast as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). He would portray Lando in the Star Wars franchise for nearly forty years, including The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and as a voice actor in video games and animated series. Another enduring franchise relationship started with Batman (1989) playing attorney Harvey Dent, a role that was also developed into a villainous alter-ego, Two-Face, which he voiced for The Lego Batman Movie (2017).

#04/06

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twd-clementine2020 · 4 years

Photo

David Shannon is an author of numerous children's books. He was born on October 5, 1959, and grew up in the state of Washington. He studied illustration at The Art Center College of Design and now lives in Los Angeles, CA. Many of his books include; "Duck on A Bicycle", " David Goes to School", "Too Many Toys", and "A Bad Case of Stripes".

"A Bad Case of Stripes" is a children's book written and illustrated by David Shannon. It was originally published by Blue Sky Press in the year of 1998.

Many grade-schoolers like Camilla often become more self-conscious at such a young age. True, we desire to look nice for others, seeking each other's opinions. But do not let others define who you truly are, and to not let your popularity go too far. Camilla went to the extremes of not eating her favorite food. However, unlike her friends in the story, I don't judge her for liking them. She learned to accept who she is and to embrace her weirdness. We all have our likes and dislikes, and we should not judge each other by our personal dislikes or shun others.

When I was young, this message was not entirely clear, now that I am nearly eighteen years old, it is much more obvious that the main message of this book is to just be yourself, not to let others define who you truly are and to not take other people's opinions true to heart.

An undiscussed topic for "A Bad Case of Stripes" that is unknown is the time; the period it takes place in. Here is my belief on that; by studying the illustrations that David Shannon provided, I came up with numerous possibilities: ranging from the mid-1940s, 1950s, 1960s and possibly the 1970s and into the 1980s - 1990s.

My Findings:

In the book, it appeared that the girls wore dresses or skirts, that can be a huge factor for the decade, while also considering technological advancements.

-They had microphones, which were used during the early 1920s,

- News vans for the news were used since 1938.

-about the news vans, many of them had a satellite dish. The satellite dish was not invented until 1976. And hence, they were on the news vans.

***However, due to my 11/19/2019 findings, I have found that the first CONUS 1 Satellite truck was not invented until 1984 by a broadcaster named Stanley S. Hubbard. ***

- The Cream family had a Television, which was invented in the early 1920s indicating that they had electricity. So it could have taken place in the 1920s into the late 1940s into the 1970s and 1980s.

So, the general range for the time is the 1920s to 1990s.

I also have to guess the ages of some of these characters, such as Camilla. I have read an article online that stated that Camilla Cream was a girl in her early teens, so she would be about twelve, thirteen, possibly even fourteen years old.

Along with "A Bad Case of Stripes", I have read "No, David", "David Goes to School" and "Too Many Toys". The illustration difference between "David" and "A Bad Case of Stripes" is quite startling. I know what Mr. Shannon is trying to accomplish in "No David", as I have read in an interview that the "David" books were based on the stories that he had written when he was a young boy. As an adult, he tried to draw the illustrations as if he was a 5-year-old again, which can make a being quite disproportionate. David has a round head, beady eyes, a huge mouth, sharp teeth and a triangular nose, which is rather unsettling for me. "A Bad Case of Stripes", on the other hand, has a more friendly feel to it. The illustrations look less "sketchy and disproportionate" than "David", the characters appear to be more realistic, yet still have that David Shannon style to it. In the first illustration of "A Bad Case of Stripes", the one I remember the most, depicts Camilla looking in a mirror, trying to find something decent to wear for the first day of school. Her face says it all, " So many things to wear, but none of it looks right on me."

David Shannon and I have several things in common, we love art, but we hate lima beans. I have tried lima beans. They were so awful that I had to drink pickle juice with them! Camilla Cream will always be the most popular character in my opinion and David Shannon will always be my favorite author from my childhood. I thank him for writing these wonderful books and for making them so memorable. David Shannon was a huge part of my early childhood. If it wasn't for him, " A Bad Case of Stripes" wouldn't have existed. He truly made it so wonderful and magical, to find a little bit of good in the world, to believe in the power of imagination, and his main purpose; to send powerful messages through his books.

I wish that Shannon can write another book about Camilla. She is one of my most favorite storybook characters of all time. I have tried to draw this character, but it turns out kind of messy; I just can't get her eyes or nose right. I suppose that no one can draw Camilla as well as David Shannon.

I asked myself, "What was Camilla's life after A Bad Case of Stripes?" So, I decided to write my own story. With the information listed above, I am currently writing my own sequel to "A Bad Case of Stripes"; it is titled "When Time Flies". By studying the storyline, character traits, and clues to the time (decade) of which the story takes place in the original book, I could write my own version of Camilla's life but still give credit to David Shannon.

CHARACTERS:

The characters includes Camilla, her parents Frank (Mr. Cream) and Shirley (Mrs. Cream), her classmates Daniel Fuller (blond boy to the right of Camilla on pg. 4 of the book), Martha Turner (blond-haired girl on Camilla's left on pg. 4), Christopher Sampson (boy on the very left of pg. 4), Jordan Bond (African American boy on pg. 4) Helen Dillard, Amelia Cunningham (Haley Mills) and Lynda Cartwright (Susan Gordon). In the story, Camilla has a boyfriend named Alfred Mitchell and they get married when they were 19; and they had five children, Karen, Susan, Franklin, Carlotta, and Mary. It is currently a work-in-progress.

#davidshannon #camillacream #childhood #abadcaseofstripes

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TOP 10 WRITERS OF 2019′s REVIEWS

It is very hard to pick the best artists of the year, especially when you know in advance, they will not match anyone else’s list. And I say this because this list is based in all the reviews that scored a perfect 10 during 2019. And these reviews go from 1935 to 2020, so it is definitely not going to match anyone else’s.

There were other writers I would have loved to include in this list but they weren’t as prominent in my reviews as the one here. Those writers that are worth mentioning are: Bub Burden, Carl Potts, Denny O’Neil, Grant Morrison, Harlan Ellison, Jim Lawson, Jim Starlin, John Ostrander, Paul Dini, Peter Laird, Sam Humphries, Stan Sakai, Steve Darnall, Steve Murphy and Tom Taylor. To all of them, thank you for your work!

NUMBER TEN JAMES ROBINSON / JAMES TYNION IV

James Robinson (1963 - present) has been writing for three decades, with an early comics work, "Grendel: The Devil's Whisper", appearing in the 1989 series of the British anthology A1. The series for which he is arguably most renowned is the DC Comics series Starman, where he took the aging Golden Age character of the same name and revitalized both the character and all those who had used the name over the decades, weaving them into an interconnected whole. In 1997, Robinson's work on the title garnered him an Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story".

He is also known for his The Golden Age limited series, which, despite being an Elseworlds story, established much of the backstory he would later use in Starman. He has written the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series, and served as a consultant and co-writer in the first year of JSA and its subsequent spin-off Hawkman.

James Tynion IV was born December 14, 1987, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Marquette University High School. While studying creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Tynion met and began studying under Scott Snyder, in the nascent years of his comic book writing career. Following school, he became an intern for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics, working under Editor Shelly Bond, among others.

After a few years working in advertising, Scott Snyder asked Tynion to co-write the back-up features for the New 52 relaunch of Batman, in the midst of the acclaimed "Night of the Owls" comic book storyline, starting with Batman #8. In this comic, he tied the Court of Owls mythology to Alfred Pennyworth's father, Jarvis Pennyworth, working with noted American Vampire artist, Rafael Albuquerque.

James Tynion IV is openly bisexual.

These two writers are sharing the number ten spot because they have pretty much the same “rank” in the list of the year. Robinson made it in the list because of his work in “Starman”, and Tynion IV made it because of his work with the “Witching Hour” crossover.

NUMBER NINE SEAN MURPHY (1980 - PRESENT)

Sean Gordon Murphy is an American comic book creator known for work on books such as Joe the Barbarian with Grant Morrison, Chrononauts with Mark Millar, American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest and The Wake with Scott Snyder, and Tokyo Ghost with Rick Remender. He has also written and drawn the miniseries Punk Rock Jesus, as well as Batman: White Knight and its sequel Curse of the White Knight.

Sean Gordon Murphy was born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1980. He showed an interest in comics during grade school. In Salem he apprenticed to local painter and cartoonist, Leslie Swank. He graduated from Pinkerton Academy high school in 1999, and attended Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and then Savannah College of Art and Design.

Murphy lives in Portland, Maine with his wife Colleen, having moved there from Brooklyn in 2016. Murphy was raised a Catholic, but is now an atheist.

The reason Sean Murphy made it into the list was “Batman: White Knight”, which is an elseworld story loosely based in the Batman Animated Series.

NUMBER EIGHT FRANK MILLER (1957 - PRESENT)

Frank Miller (born January 27, 1957) is an American comic book writer, penciller and inker, novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer best known for his comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Sin City, and 300.

He also directed the film version of The Spirit, shared directing duties with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and produced the film 300. His film Sin City earned a Palme d'Or nomination, and he has received every major comic book industry award. In 2015, Miller was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

He created the comic book characters Elektra for Marvel Comics' Daredevil series, and a female version of the Robin character, Carrie Kelley, for DC Comics.

Miller is noted for combining film noir and manga influences in his comic art creations. "I realized when I started Sin City that I found American and English comics be too wordy, too constipated, and Japanese comics to be too empty. So I was attempting to do a hybrid".

Miller was raised in Montpelier, Vermont, the fifth of seven children of a nurse mother and a carpenter/electrician father. His family was Irish Catholic.

Miller was married to colorist Lynn Varley from 1986 to 2005; she colored many of his most acclaimed works (from Ronin in 1984 through 300 in 1998), and the backgrounds to the 2007 movie 300.

Miller has since been romantically linked to New York-based Shakespearean scholar Kimberly Halliburton Cox, who had a cameo in The Spirit (2008).

You can think many different things about Frank Miller, especially on his political views. But his work includes some pieces that really changed the industry. In this case, he made it into the list because of “Ronin” and “The Dark Knight Returns”, both have been influencing comics until our days (with “Ronin” being one of the many influences of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”).

NUMBER SEVEN MIKE W. BARR (1952 - PRESENT)

Mike W. Barr (born May 30, 1952) is an American writer of comic books, mystery novels, and science fiction novels.

Barr's debut as a comics professional came in DC Comics' Detective Comics #444 (Dec. 1974-Jan. 1975), for which he wrote an eight-page back-up mystery feature starring the Elongated Man. Another Elongated Man story followed in Detective Comics #453 (Nov. 1975). He wrote text articles and editorial replies in letter columns for the next few years. By mid-1980 he was writing regularly for both DC and Marvel, including stories for Mystery in Space, Green Lantern, The Brave and the Bold, Marvel Team-Up, and a Spider-Man/Scarlet Witch team-up in Marvel Fanfare #6.

Legion of Super-Heroes #277 (July 1981) saw him take on editorial duties at DC, a position he would hold until 1987. In December 1982, he and artist Brian Bolland began Camelot 3000, a 12 issue limited series that was one of DC Comics' first direct market projects. Barr and artist Trevor Von Eeden produced the first Green Arrow limited series in 1983. When the long running The Brave and the Bold series came to its conclusion with issue #200 (July 1983), it featured a preview of a new Batman series, Batman and the Outsiders by Barr and artist Jim Aparo, which would be described by DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz as being "a team series more fashionable to 1980s audiences." The Masters of Disaster were among the supervillains created by Barr and Aparo for the series. Barr wrote every issue of the original series, and its Baxter paper spinoff, The Outsiders that did not include Batman and introduced Looker. After the series' cancellation in February 1988, it was revived in November 1993 by Barr and artist Paul Pelletier.

He was one of the contributors to the DC Challenge limited series in 1986 and wrote the "Batman: Year Two" storyline in Detective Comics #575-578 (June-Sept. 1987) which followed up on Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One". Barr introduced the Reaper in Detective Comics #575 (June 1987) and returned to the character in the Batman: Full Circle one-shot in 1991. Another project from 1987 was the Batman: Son of the Demon graphic novel which was drawn by Jerry Bingham, proceeds from which reputedly "restored DC Comics to first place in sales after fifteen years." This title, and Barr's work on Batman with artist Alan Davis have been cited by Grant Morrison as key inspirations for his own run on the Batman title. Barr's sequel, Batman: Bride of The Demon, was published in 1991.

Mike W. Barr has been only of the earliest comic-book writers I knew about, and he made it into this list because of his work in “Camelot 3000″ and “Batman and the Outsiders”.

NUMBER SIX CHRIS CLAREMONT, WITH JOHN BYRNE (1950 - PRESENT)

Christopher S. Claremont (born November 25, 1950) is a British-born American comic book writer and novelist, known for his 1975–1991 stint on Uncanny X-Men, far longer than that of any other writer, during which he is credited with developing strong female characters as well as introducing complex literary themes into superhero narratives, turning the once underachieving comic into one of Marvel's most popular series.

During his tenure at Marvel, Claremont co-created numerous X-Men characters, such as Rogue, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, Phoenix, The Brood, Lockheed, Shi'ar, Shi'ar Imperial Guard, Mystique, Destiny, Selene, Reverend William Stryker, Lady Mastermind, Emma Frost, Tessa, Siryn, Jubilee, Rachel Summers, Madelyne Pryor, Moira MacTaggert, Lilandra, Shadow King, Cannonball, Warpath, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Karma, Cypher, Sabretooth, Empath, Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, Avalanche, Pyro, Legion, Nimrod, Gateway, Strong Guy, Proteus, Mister Sinister, Marauders, Purifiers, Captain Britain, Sunspot, Forge and Gambit. Claremont scripted many classic stories, including "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past", on which he collaborated with John Byrne. He developed the character of Wolverine into a fan favorite. X-Men #1, the 1991 spinoff series premiere that Claremont co-wrote with Jim Lee, remains the best-selling comic book of all time, according to Guinness World Records. In 2015, Claremont and his X-Men collaborator John Byrne were entered into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Claremont was born in London, England. His father was an internist and his mother was a pilot and caterer. Claremont is Jewish on his mother's side, and lived in a kibbutz in Israel during his youth. His family moved to the United States when he was three, and he was raised primarily on Long Island. Alienated by the sports-oriented suburbs, his grandmother purchased for him a subscription to Eagle when he was a child, and he grew up reading Dan Dare, finding them more exciting than the Batman and Superman comics of the 1950s and early 1960s. He read works by science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein, as well as writers of other genres such as Rudyard Kipling and C. S. Forester.

In the mid-1970s, Claremont was married to Bonnie Wilford. Following the dissolution of that marriage, he married Beth Fleisher, with whom Claremont co-authored Dragon Moon. Fleisher is the cousin (through marriage) of editor Dan Raspler, who was the editor on JLA during the six-issue "Tenth Circle" story arc Claremont and John Byrne wrote in 2004. Claremont and Fleisher have twin sons.

So why not John Byrne? Well, the reason Claremont made it into this list was mostly the Dark Phoenix Saga, but also the Wolverine mini-series. It is hard to separate them from their work in X-Men, but in the end, it is his dialogue that we read. I still think it is worth mentioning Byrne in this spot, as we wouldn’t have one without the other. Perhaps Wolverine solo mini-series wouldn’t be possible without the work of Byrne with the character, but there is more influence from Miller in that one. I am pretty sure Byrne will be in the top 10 next year anyway ;)

NUMBER FIVE NEIL GAIMAN (1960 - PRESENT)

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

Gaiman's family is of Polish Jewish and other Eastern European Jewish origins. His great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp, Belgium, to the UK before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the south of England in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. Gaiman's grandfather changed his original family name of Chaiman to Gaiman. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.

After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's probably a 50/50 chance. It doesn't really matter to me."

Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The Haunting of Toby Jugg made an impact on him. One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two volumes of the novel. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume.

For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." Narnia also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."

Gaiman attended Ardingly College in Ardingly, West Sussex Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.

Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being forced to withdraw from Fonthill School and remain at the school that he had previously been attending. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.

As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of Monty Python's Big Red Book. When he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written. The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.

In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984.

When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".

In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. He refused the offer.

He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact. In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following this he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with fellow English author Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.

After forming a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short Future Shocks for 2000 AD in 1986–87. He wrote three graphic novels with his favourite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him in February 1987, and he wrote the limited series Black Orchid. Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read Black Orchid and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.

The Sandman tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. In the eighth issue of The Sandman, Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who would become as popular as the series' title character. The limited series Death: The High Cost of Living launched DC's Vertigo line in 1993. The 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print. The series became one of DC's top selling titles, eclipsing even Batman and Superman. Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and noted that The Sandman was "a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor such as comic books had never seen before". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "The Sandman became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure."

Gaiman has lived near Menomonie, Wisconsin, since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children. As of 2013, Gaiman also resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2014, he took up a five-year appointment as professor in the arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer, with whom he has an open marriage. The couple announced that they were dating in June 2009, and announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010. On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans. They were legally married on 2 January 2011. The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. On marrying Palmer, he took her middle name, MacKinnon, as one of his names. In September 2015 they had a son.

I am sure Gaiman will make it to next year’s list as well, but in this year in particular, the main reason he made it was “The Sandman”, which had so much quality, almost all the issues I reviewed scored a 10.

NUMBER FOUR MARK MILLAR (1969 - PRESENT)

Mark Millar MBE is a Scottish comic book writer, best known for his work on The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Civil War, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Wanted, Chrononauts, Superior and Kick-Ass, the latter seven of which have been, or are planned to be, adapted into feature films.

Millar was born 24 December 1969 in Coatbridge, Scotland. His parents were also born in Coatbridge, and Millar spent the first half of his life in the town's Townhead area, attending St Ambrose High. He has four older brothers, and one older sister, who are 22, 20, 18, 16 and 14 years older than him, respectively. His brother Bobby, who today works at a special needs school, introduced him to comics at age 4 while attending university by taking him to shops and purchasing them for him. Still learning to read, Millar's first comic was the seminal The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), which featured the death of Gwen Stacy. He purchased a Superman comic that day as well. Black and white reprinted comics purchased by his brothers for him would follow, cementing his interest in the medium so much that Millar drew a spider web across his face with indelible marker that his parents were unable to scrub off in time for his First Communion photo a week later. Millar has named Alan Moore and Frank Miller as the two biggest influences on his career, characterizing them as "my Mum and Dad." Other writers he names as influences include Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis. More recent writers that have impressed him include Jason Aaron and Scott Snyder.

Millar's mother died of a heart attack at age 64, when Millar was 14, and his father died four years later, aged 65. Although Millar enjoyed drawing comics, he was not permitted to go to art school because his family frowned upon such endeavours as a waste of time for the academic Millar, who studied subjects like chemistry, physics and advanced maths. He initially planned to be a doctor, and subsequently decided that becoming an economist would be a viable alternate plan, but later decided that he "couldn't quite hack it" in that occupation. He attended Glasgow University to study politics and economics, but dropped out after his father's death left him without the money to pay his living expenses.

When Millar was 18, he interviewed writer Grant Morrison, who was doing his first major American work on Animal Man, for a fanzine. When he told Morrison that he wanted to be both a writer and an artist, Morrison suggested that he focus on one of those career paths, as it was very hard to be successful at both, which Millar cites as the best advice he has received.

Millar's first job as a comic book writer came when he was still in high school, writing Trident's Saviour with Daniel Vallely providing art. Saviour combined elements of religion, satire and superhero action. During the 1990s, Millar worked on titles such as 2000 AD, Sonic the Comic and Crisis. In 1993, Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith created a controversial eight-week run on 2000 AD called The Summer Offensive. It was during this run that Millar and Morrison wrote their first major story together, Big Dave.

Millar's British work brought him to the attention of DC Comics, and in 1994 he started working on his first American comic, Swamp Thing. The first four issues of Millar's run were co-written by Grant Morrison, allowing Millar to settle into the title. Although his work brought some critical acclaim to the ailing title, the book's sales were still low enough to warrant cancellation by the publisher. From there, Millar spent time working on various DC titles, often co-writing with or under the patronage of Morrison as in the cases of his work on JLA, The Flash and Aztek: The Ultimate Man, and working on unsuccessful pitches for the publisher.

In 2000, Millar replaced Warren Ellis on The Authority for DC's Wildstorm imprint. Millar announced his resignation from DC in 2001, though his miniseries Superman: Red Son was printed in 2003.

In 2001, Millar launched Ultimate X-Men for Marvel Comics' Ultimate Marvel imprint. The following year he collaborated with illustrator Bryan Hitch on The Ultimates, the Ultimate imprint's equivalent of The Avengers. Millar's work on The Ultimates was later adapted into two Marvel Animated Features and the subsequent 2012 Hollywood box office smash Marvel's The Avengers.

In 2006, Millar, joined by artist Steve McNiven, began writing the Marvel miniseries Civil War a seven-issue limited series revolving around the passing of Superhuman Registration Act as a result of the death and destruction unintentionally caused by superheroes and turned Captain America and Iron Man onto opposing sides, the book formed the basis for the film Captain America: Civil War. In 2009 Millar wrote the dystopian "Old Man Logan" storyline, which appeared in the Wolverine series, and was set in a possible future in which Wolverine, having been traumatized by his murder of the X-Men (an event prompted by Mysterio's illusions), became a recluse, after which the United States government collapsed, and the country fell under the control of various supervillain enclaves. Needing rent money for his family's farm, Wolverine comes out of retirement when called upon by Hawkeye.

Millar supports British withdrawal from the European Union.

While Millar is usually not my cup of tea, mostly because of his toxic depictions of masculinity in his stories (this may or may not be on purpose), he did write a lot of sophisticated comics in the reviews I did this year (”The Ultimates” and “Marvel Knights: Spider-man”).

NUMBER THREE GEOFF JOHNS (1973 - PRESENT)

Geoffrey Johns (born January 25, 1973) is an American comic book writer, screenwriter and film and television producer. He served as the President and Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of DC Entertainment from 2016 to 2018 after his initial appointment as CCO in 2010. Some of his most notable work has used the DC Comics characters Green Lantern, Aquaman, Flash and Superman.

In 2018, he stepped down from his executive role at DC Entertainment to open a production company, Mad Ghost Productions, to focus on writing and producing film, television and comic book titles based on DC properties. Some of his work in television includes the series Blade, Smallville, Arrow and The Flash. He was a co-producer on the film Green Lantern (2011) and a producer on Justice League (2017). He co-wrote the story for Aquaman (2018) and the screenplay for Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).

Geoff Johns was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Barbara and Fred Johns. He is of half Lebanese ancestry and grew up in the suburbs of Grosse Pointe and Clarkston. As a child, Johns and his brother first discovered comics through an old box of comics they found in their grandmother's attic, which included copies of The Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, and Batman from the 1960s and 1970s. Johns eventually began to patronize a comics shop in Traverse City, recalling that the first new comics he bought were Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 or 4 and The Flash #348 or 349, as the latter was his favorite character. As Johns continued collecting comics, he gravitated toward DC Comics and later Vertigo, and drew comics. After graduating from Clarkston High School in 1991, he studied media arts, screenwriting, film production and film theory at Michigan State University. He graduated from Michigan State in 1995, and then moved to Los Angeles, California.

In Los Angeles, Johns cold-called the office of director Richard Donner looking for an internship, and while Johns was being transferred to various people, Donner picked up the phone by accident, leading to a conversation and the internship. Johns started off copying scripts, and after about two months, was hired as a production assistant for Donner, whom Johns regards as his mentor.

While working on production of Donner's 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Johns visited New York City, where he met DC Comics personnel such as Eddie Berganza, reigniting his childhood interest in comics.

Berganza invited Johns to tour the DC Comics offices, and offered Johns the opportunity to suggest ideas, which led to Johns pitching Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a series based on the second Star-Spangled Kid and her stepfather, to editor Chuck Kim a year later. Johns expected to write comics "on the side", until he met David Goyer and James Robinson, who were working on JSA. After looking at Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Robinson offered Johns co-writing duties on JSA in 2000, and Johns credits both him and Mike Carlin with shepherding him into the comics industry. That same year, Johns became the regular writer on The Flash ongoing series with issue 164. John's work on The Flash represents one example of his modeling of various elements in his stories after aspects of his birth town, explaining, "When I wrote The Flash, I turned Keystone City into Detroit, made it a car town. I make a lot of my characters from Detroit. I think self-made, blue-collar heroes represent Detroit. Wally West's Flash was like that. I took the inspiration of the city and the people there and used it in the books." John's Flash run concluded with #225.

His younger sister, Courtney, was a victim of the TWA Flight 800 crash. The DC Comics character Courtney Whitmore, whom Johns created, is based on her.

In a 2010 interview, Johns named Steve McNiven as an artist he would like to collaborate with, J. Michael Straczynski's run on Thor as his then-favorite ongoing comic book, and The Flash as his favorite of all time, stating that he owns every issue of it. He credits reading James Robinson's The Golden Age as the book responsible for his love of the characters featured in the book, and for his decision to accept writing duties on JSA. He is also a comic book retailer who co-owns Earth-2 Comics in Northridge, California, with Carr D'Angelo and Jud Meyers.

There are plenty of reasons for Geoff Johns to be in this list, this year. But the main ones are his Justice League and Shazam Origin. At the moment of this writing, Doomsday Clock is not included in these reviews, but his writing there is also very, very good.

NUMBER TWO MARV WOLFMAN, WITH GEORGE PEREZ (1946 - PRESENT)

Marvin Arthur Wolfman (born May 13, 1946) is an American comic book and novelization writer. He worked on Marvel Comics's The Tomb of Dracula, for which he and artist Gene Colan created the vampire-slayer Blade, and DC Comics's The New Teen Titans and the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series with George Pérez.

Marv Wolfman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of police officer Abe and housewife Fay. He has a sister, Harriet, 12 years older. When Wolfman was 13, his family moved to Flushing, Queens, in New York City, where he attended junior high school. He went on to New York's High School of Art and Design, in Manhattan, hoping to become a cartoonist. Wolfman is Jewish.

Marvin Wolfman was active in fandom before he began his professional comics career at DC Comics in 1968. Wolfman was one of the first to publish Stephen King, with "In A Half-World of Terror" in Wolfman's horror fanzine Stories of Suspense No. 2 (1965). This was a revised version of King's first published story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which had been serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of the fanzine Comics Review that same year.

Wolfman's first published work for DC Comics appeared in Blackhawk No. 242 (Aug.–Sept. 1968). He and longtime friend Len Wein created the character Jonny Double in Showcase No. 78 (Nov. 1968) scripted by Wolfman. The two co-wrote "Eye of the Beholder" in Teen Titans No. 18 (Dec. 1968), which would be Wein's first professional comics credit. Neal Adams was called upon to rewrite and redraw a Teen Titans story which had been written by Wein and Wolfman. The story, titled "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho!", would have introduced DC's first African American superhero, but was rejected by publisher Carmine Infantino. The revised story appeared in Teen Titans No. 20 (March–April 1969). Wolfman and Gil Kane created an origin for Wonder Girl in Teen Titans No. 22 (July–Aug. 1969) which introduced the character's new costume.

Wolfman is married to Noel Watkins. Wolfman was previously married to Michele Wolfman, for many years a colorist in the comics industry. They have a daughter, Jessica Morgan.

There are also many reasons for Wolfman to be in this list. Among them there is: “Man and Superman”, “New Teen Titans”, “Tales of the Teen Titans”, “The Judas Contract”, “Vigilante” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. Many of these, were collaborations with George Pérez and that is why he gets a mention in this space (don’t worry, he is in another TOP 10 this year). Not only he destroyed a multiverse and created one of the most stable runs of DC Continuity ever, he also “created” Nightwing and Vigilante and finally published “Man and Superman” this year.

NUMBER ONE ALAN MOORE (1953 - PRESENT)

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke and From Hell. Regarded by some as the best comics writer in the English language, he is widely recognized among his peers and critics. He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", he worked on major characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea. In 2016, he published Jerusalem: a 1266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his own personal objections, his works have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture, and has been recognized as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Damon Lindelof. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Abandoning his office job, he decided to instead take up both writing and illustrating his own comics. He had already produced a couple of strips for several alternative fanzines and magazines, such as Anon E. Mouse for the local paper Anon, and St. Pancras Panda, a parody of Paddington Bear, for the Oxford-based Back Street Bugle. His first paid work was for a few drawings that were printed in NME, and not long after he succeeded in getting a series about a private detective known as Roscoe Moscow published using the pseudonym of Curt Vile (a pun on the name of composer Kurt Weill) in the weekly music magazine Sounds, earning £35 a week. Alongside this, he and Phyllis, with their newborn daughter Leah, began claiming unemployment benefit to supplement this income. Not long after this, in 1979 he also began publishing a new comic strip known as Maxwell the Magic Cat in the Northants Post, under the pseudonym of Jill de Ray (a pun on the Medieval child murderer Gilles de Rais, something he found to be a "sardonic joke"). Earning a further £10 a week from this, he decided to sign off of social security, and would continue writing Maxwell the Magic Cat until 1986. Moore has stated that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely, but ended the strip after the newspaper ran a negative editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community. Meanwhile, Moore decided to focus more fully on writing comics rather than both writing and drawing them, stating that "After I'd been doing [it] for a couple of years, I realised that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

To learn more about how to write a successful comic-book script, he asked advice from his friend, comic-book writer Steve Moore, whom he had known since he was fourteen. Interested in writing for 2000AD, one of Britain's most prominent comic magazines, Alan Moore then submitted a script for their long running and successful series Judge Dredd. While having no need for another writer on Judge Dredd, which was already being written by John Wagner, 2000AD's editor Alan Grant saw promise in Moore's work – later remarking that "this guy's a really fucking good writer" – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's Future Shocks series. While the first few were rejected, Grant advised Moore on improvements, and eventually accepted the first of many. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for Doctor Who Weekly, and later commented that "I really, really wanted a regular strip. I didn't want to do short stories ... But that wasn't what was being offered. I was being offered short four or five-page stories where everything had to be done in those five pages. And, looking back, it was the best possible education that I could have had in how to construct a story."

From 1980 through to 1984, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer, and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, namely Marvel UK, and the publishers of 2000AD and Warrior. He later remarked that "I remember that what was generally happening was that everybody wanted to give me work, for fear that I would just be given other work by their rivals. So everybody was offering me things." It was an era when comic books were increasing in popularity in Britain, and according to Lance Parkin, "the British comics scene was cohering as never before, and it was clear that the audience was sticking with the title as they grew up. Comics were no longer just for very small boys: teenagers – even A-level and university students – were reading them now."

During this three-year period, 2000AD would accept and publish over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their Future Shocks and Time Twisters science fiction series. The editors at the magazine were impressed by Moore's work and decided to offer him a more permanent strip, starting with a story that they wanted to be vaguely based upon the hit film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The result, Skizz, which was illustrated by Jim Baikie, told the story of the titular alien who crashes to Earth and is cared for by a teenager named Roxy, and Moore later noted that in his opinion, this work "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale." Another series he produced for 2000AD was D.R. and Quinch, which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", revolved around two delinquent aliens, and was a science-fiction take on National Lampoon's characters O.C. and Stiggs. The work widely considered to be the highlight of his 2000AD career, and that he himself described as "the one that worked best for me" was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created with artist Ian Gibson, the series was set in the 50th century. The series was discontinued after three books due to a dispute between Moore and Fleetway, the magazine's publishers, over the intellectual property rights of the characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.

Another comic company to employ Moore was Marvel UK, who had formerly purchased a few of his one-off stories for Doctor Who Weekly and Star Wars Weekly. Aiming to get an older audience than 2000AD, their main rival, they employed Moore to write for the regular strip Captain Britain, "halfway through a storyline that he's neither inaugurated nor completely understood." He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe, but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, whom Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression."

Guy Fawkes serves as physical and philosophical inspiration for the titular protagonist of V for Vendetta. The third comic company that Moore worked for in this period was Quality Communications, publishers of a new monthly magazine called Warrior. The magazine was founded by Dez Skinn, a former editor of both IPC (publishers of 2000 AD) and Marvel UK, and was designed to offer writers a greater degree of freedom over their artistic creations than was allowed by pre-existing companies. It was at Warrior that Moore "would start to reach his potential". Moore was initially given two ongoing strips in Warrior: Marvelman and V for Vendetta, both of which debuted in Warrior's first issue in March 1982. V for Vendetta was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. It has been regarded as "among Moore's best work" and has maintained a cult following throughout subsequent decades.

Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic Captain Marvel. Upon resurrecting Marvelman, Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982". The work was drawn primarily by Garry Leach and Alan Davis. The third series that Moore produced for Warrior was The Bojeffries Saga, a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both Miracleman and V for Vendetta were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts – in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD, Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine Arkensword, noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC, "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving mooted future volumes of the Halo Jones story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions and principles, particularly on the subject of creator's rights and ownership, would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers over the course of his career.

Meanwhile, during this same period, he – using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon – became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, March of the Sinister Ducks, with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in V for Vendetta, which was released on the Glass Records label. Moore would write the song "Leopardman at C&A" for David J, and it would be set to music by Mick Collins for the album We Have You Surrounded by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.

Moore's work in 2000 AD brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For Swamp Thing he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting; Constantine later became the protagonist of the series Hellblazer, which became Vertigo's longest running series at 300 issues. Moore would continue writing Swamp Thing for almost four years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and 62. Moore's run on Swamp Thing was successful both critically and commercially, and inspired DC to recruit British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for Vigilante, which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best-known superheroes, Superman, entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. He followed this with another Superman story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", which was published in 1986. Illustrated by Curt Swan, it was designed as the last Superman story in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

The threat of Nuclear war during the Cold War influenced the setting and tone of Watchmen. The limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented Moore's reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the US government or are outlawed, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes highly sophisticated self-references, ironies, and formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second-last of the second, and so on, and in this manner is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It is the only comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form"). It is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written. Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets, Watchmen was part of a late 1980s trend in American comics towards more adult sensibilities. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen "called into question the basic assumptions on which the super hero genre is formulated". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of super heroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim ... and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced." Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

Since his teenage years Moore has had long hair, and since early adulthood has also had a beard. He has taken to wearing a number of large rings on his hands, leading him to be described as a "cross between Hagrid and Danny from Withnail and I" who could be easily mistaken for "the village eccentric". Born and raised in Northampton, he continues to live in the town, and used its history as a basis for his novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem. His "unassuming terraced" Northampton home was described by an interviewer in 2001 as "something like an occult bookshop under permanent renovation, with records, videos, magical artifacts and comic-book figurines strewn among shelves of mystical tomes and piles of paper. The bathroom, with blue-and-gold décor and a generous sunken tub, is palatial; the rest of the house has possibly never seen a vacuum cleaner. This is clearly a man who spends little time on the material plane." He likes to live in his home town, feeling that it affords him a level of obscurity that he enjoys, remarking that "I never signed up to be a celebrity." He has spoken in praise of the town's former Radical MP, Charles Bradlaugh at the annual commemoration. He is also a vegetarian.

With his first wife Phyllis, whom he married in the early 1970s, he has two daughters, Leah and Amber. The couple also had a mutual lover, Deborah, although the relationship between the three ended in the early 1990s as Phyllis and Deborah left Moore, taking his daughters with them. On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics, most notably Lost Girls.

It was pretty clear that Alan Moore was going to end up being in the Top 10 this year. Mostly because I read a lot of his material from DC. The reason he made it into the top 10 is “V for Vendetta” with David Lloyd, “Swamp Thing”, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, “Tom Strong”, Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Watchmen”.

Most of these writers have also done something good, not only for the comic-book industry, but also for the world. And this TOP 10 is a way of celebrating them, because their work really inspired most of the pop-culture we consume today.

#writers #comics #reviews #2019 #alan moore #marv wolfman #geoff johns #mark millar #neil gaiman #chris claremont #mike w barr #frank miller #sean murphy #james robinson #james tynion iv

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blackistory · 5 years

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BIG MAMA THORNTON THE ORIGINATOR OFTHE HOUND DOG SONG

Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama,[5] but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz she claimed Montgomery, Alabama, as her birthplace, probably because Montgomery was better known than Ariton.[6] She was introduced to music in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at early ages.[7] Her mother died young, and Willie Mae left school and got a job washing and cleaning spittoons in a local tavern. In 1940 she left home and, with the help of Diamond Teeth Mary, joined Sammy Green's Hot Harlem Revue and was soon billed as the "New Bessie Smith".[6] Her musical education started in the church but continued through her observation of the rhythm-and-blues singers Bessie Smith and Memphis Minnie, whom she deeply admired.

Early career

Thornton's career began to take off when she moved to Houston in 1948. "A new kind of popular blues was coming out of the clubs in Texas and Los Angeles, full of brass horns, jumpy rhythms, and wisecracking lyrics."[9] In 1951 she signed a recording contract with Peacock Records and performed at the Apollo Theater in 1952. Also in 1952, while working with another Peacock artist Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", the first record produced by its writers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The pair were present at the recording,[10] with Leiber demonstrating the song in the vocal style they had envisioned;[11][12] "We wanted her to growl it," Stoller said, which she did. Otis played drums, after the original drummer was unable to play an adequate part. The record sold more than half a million copies, and went to number one on the R&B chart,[13] helping to bring in the dawn of rock 'n' roll.[14] Although the record made Thornton a star, she saw little of the profits.

On Christmas Day 1954 in a theatre in Houston, Texas, she witnessed fellow performer Johnny Ace, also signed to Duke and Peacock record labels, accidentally shoot and kill himself while playing with a .22 pistol.[16] Thornton continued to record for Peacock until 1957 and performed in R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips.

Thornton's success with "Hound Dog" was followed three years later by Elvis Presleyrecording his hit version of the song.[10] His recording at first annoyed Leiber who wrote, "I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about. The song is not about a dog, it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo."[14] But Elvis' version sold ten million copies, so today few fans know that "Hound Dog" began as "an anthem of black female power."[14] Similarly, Thornton originally recorded her song "Ball 'n' Chain" for Bay-Tone Records in the early 1960s, "and though the label chose not to release the song... they did hold on to the copyright"—which meant that Thornton missed out on the publishing royalties when Janis Joplin recorded the song later in the decade.

Success

As her career began to fade in the late 1950s and early 1960s,[2] she left Houston and relocated to the San Francisco Bay area, "playing clubs in San Francisco and L.A. and recording for a succession of labels",[8]notably the Berkeley-based Arhoolie Records. In 1965, she toured with the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe,[17] where her success was notable "because very few female blues singers at that time had ever enjoyed success across the Atlantic."[18] While in England that year, she recorded her first album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton – In Europe. It featured backing by blues veterans Buddy Guy (guitar), Fred Below (drums), Eddie Boyd (keyboards), Jimmy Lee Robinson (bass), and Walter "Shakey" Horton (harmonica), except for three songs on which Fred McDowell provided acoustic slide guitar.

In 1966, Thornton recorded her second album for Arhoolie, Big Mama Thornton with the Muddy Waters Blues Band – 1966, with Muddy Waters (guitar), Sammy Lawhorn (guitar), James Cotton (harmonica), Otis Spann(piano), Luther Johnson (bass guitar), and Francis Clay (drums). She performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and 1968. Her last album for Arhoolie, Ball n' Chain, was released in 1968. It was made up of tracks from her two previous albums, plus her composition "Ball and Chain" and the standard "Wade in the Water". A small combo, including her frequent guitarist Edward "Bee" Houston, provided backup for the two songs. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's performance of "Ball 'n' Chain" at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and the release of the song on their number one album Cheap Thrills renewed interest in Thornton's career.

By 1969, Thornton had signed with Mercury Records, which released her most successful album, Stronger Than Dirt, which reached number 198 in the Billboard Top 200 record chart. Thornton had now signed a contract with Pentagram Records and could finally fulfill one of her biggest dreams. A blues woman and the daughter of a preacher, Thornton loved the blues and what she called the "good singing" of gospel artists like the Dixie Hummingbirds and Mahalia Jackson. She had always wanted to record a gospel record, and with the album Saved (PE 10005), she achieved that longtime goal. The album includes the gospel classics "Oh, Happy Day," "Down By The Riverside," "Glory, Glory Hallelujah," "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," "Lord Save Me," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "One More River" and "Go Down Moses".

By then the American blues revival had come to an end. While the original blues acts like Thornton mostly played smaller venues, younger people played their versions of blues in massive arenas for big money. Since the blues had seeped into other genres of music, the blues musician no longer needed impoverishment or geography for substantiation; the style was enough. While at home the offers became fewer and smaller, things changed for good in 1972, when Thornton was asked to rejoin the American Folk Blues Festival tour. She thought of Europe as a good place for herself, and, with the lack of engagements in the United States, she agreed happily. The tour, beginning on March 2, took Thornton to Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, where it ended on March 27 in Stockholm. With her on the bill were Eddie Boyd, Big Joe Williams, Robert Pete Williams, T- Bone Walker, Paul Lenart, Hartley Severns, Edward Taylor and Vinton Johnson. As in 1965, they garnered recognition and respect from other musicians who wanted to see them.

Late career and death

In the 1970s, years of heavy drinking began to damage Thornton's health. She was in a serious auto accident but recovered to perform at the 1973 Newport Jazz Festivalwith Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson (a recording of this performance, The Blues—A Real Summit Meeting, was released by Buddha Records). Thornton's last albums were Jail and Sassy Mama for Vanguard Records in 1975. Other songs from the recording session were released in 2000 on Big Mama Swings. Jailcaptured her performances during mid-1970s concerts at two prisons in the northwestern United States.[6] She was backed by a blues ensemble that featured sustained jams by George "Harmonica" Smith and included the guitarists Doug Macleod, Bee Houston and Steve Wachsman; the drummer Todd Nelson; the saxophonist Bill Potter; the bassist Bruce Sieverson; and the pianist J. D. Nicholson. She toured extensively through the United States and Canada, played at the Juneteenth Blues Fest in Houston and shared the bill with John Lee Hooker.[6] She performed at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1979 and the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980. In the early 1970s, Thornton's sexual proclivities became a question among blues fans.[9] Big Mama also performed in the "Blues Is a Woman" concert that year, alongside classic blues legend Sippie Wallace, sporting a man's three-piece suit, straw hat, and gold watch. She sat at center stage and played pieces she wanted to play, which were not on the program.[20]Thornton took part in the Tribal Stomp at Monterey Fairgrounds, the Third Annual Sacramento Blues Festival, and the Los Angeles Bicentennial Blues with BB King and Muddy Waters. She was a guest on an ABC-TV special hosted by actor Hal Holbrook and was joined by Aretha Franklin and toured through the club scene. She was also part of the award-winning PBS television special Three Generations of the blues with Sippie Wallace and Jeannie Cheatham.[6]

Thornton was found dead at age 57 by medical personnel in a Los Angeles boarding house[21] on July 25, 1984. She died of heart and liver disorders due to her longstanding alcohol abuse. She had lost 355 pounds (161 kg) in a short time as a result of illness, her weight dropping from 450 to 95 pounds (204–43 kg).

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connorrichardson-bth-blog · 5 years

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Stop Motion Animation-History

The magic lantern was made in 1603, it is an image projector using pictures on the sheets of glass, some sheets contain moving parts. It is considered the first example of project animation.

In 1824, the Thaumatrope housed a rotating mechanism with different picture on each side. When rotated, you saw a combined picture. The Thaumatrope is a Victorian toy constructed from a simple disk or card featuring a different picture on each side and attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled rapidly the card rotates on its axis and the two images appear to combine. Invented by John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), an English physician, in 1825, the Thaumatrope was the first instrument to exploit the persistence of images on the retina. Paris’s Philosophy in sport made science in earnest, first published in 1827, expounded his belief that scientific learning in children could be stimulated through a combination of amusement and instruction, using demonstrational toys such as the Thaumatrope.

In 1831, the phenakitoscope feature spinning disks reflected in mirrors that made it seem like the pictures were moving.

The optical toy, the phenakistoscope, was an early animation device that used the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion. It was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1841.The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. A variant of it had two discs, one with slits and one with pictures; this was slightly more unwieldy but needed no mirror. Unlike the zoetrope and its successors, the phenakistoscope could only practically be used by one person at a time.

In 1834, the zoetrope was a hollow drum that housed images on long interchangeable strips that spin and made the images appear to move.

The zoetrope , invented in 1834 by William George Horner, was an early form of motion picture projector that consisted of a drum containing a set of still images, that was turned in a circular fashion in order to create the illusion of motion. Horner originally called it the Daedatelum, but Pierre Desvignes, a French inventor, renamed his version of it the zoetrope (from Greek word root zoo for animal life and trope for "things that turn.")

A zoetrope is relatively easy to build. It can be turned at a variable rate to create slow-motion or speeded-up effects. Like other motion simulation devices, the zoetrope depends on the fact that the human retina retains an image for about a tenth-of-a-second so that if a new image appears in that time, the sequence was seem to be uninterrupted and continuous. It also depends on what is referred to as the Phi phenomenon, which observes that we try to make sense out of any sequence of impressions, continuously relating them to each other.

In 1868 the flip-book, also known as the kineograph, reached a wise audience and it credited with inspiring early animators more than the machines developed in this era.

A flip book is a collection of combined pictures intended to be flipped over to give the illusion of movement and create an animated sequence from a simple small book without machine.

Very popular at the end of 19 th century and the beginning of 20 th century, but still produced today, flip book is the American name even used in France, more often than its French name folioscope. British people call it flick book or flicker book; in Germany Abblätterbuch (books to be flipped through) in the 19 th century and then Daumenkino : “thumb cinema”, name that we also find sometimes in the US at the beginning of 20 th century (also called thumb book) as well as less usual names such as flip movie, fingertip movie, riffle book, living picture book or hand cinema.

Some authors compared the flip book to the Magic Book or Blow Book, a fashionable kind of books in 19 th century that allowed animations or optical illusions. Actually, the only common point is that they both use the principle of animation. The actor and historian of magic, Ricky Jay, is the author of a great work devoted to these small books

In 1877, the praxinoscopre expanded on the zoetrope, using multiple wheels to rotate images. It is considered to have shown the first prototypes of the animated cartoon.

The Praxinoscope is a typical optical toy from the 19th century. It consists of a cylinder and a strip of paper showing twelve frames for animation. As the cylinder rotates, stationary mirrors in the centre reveal a ‘single image’ in motion. The Praxinoscope was invented in 1876 by Charles-Émile Reynaud (1844-1918), a Paris science teacher, who marked all his examples ‘E.R.’. The toy became a great commercial success and won recognition at the great exhibitions of the period.

The Silent Era, 1900-1930:

The Silent era happened in the early 20th century. This was the marks of the beginning of cartoons. Many animators form studios , with bray studios in New York proving the most successful of this era. Bray helped lunch the careers of the cartoonists that created Mighty Mouse, Betty Boop and Woody Woodpecker. In 1906, was the first entirely animated film, Using stop-motion photography to create action. In 1908, the first animated film using hand drawn animation, and is considered by film historians to be the first animated cartoon. In 1919 Musical Mews and Feline Follies introduces Felix the Cat- Often considered the first animated star.

in 1928, Steamboat Willie made a cartoon which was the first cartoon with sound printed on the film, and is the first noble success for Walt Disney Studios.

The Golden Age of American Animation, 1930-1950s:

During what many consider to be the “Golden Age” of animation, theoretical cartoons became integral part of popular culture. These years are defined by the rise of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, MGM and Fleischer.

In 1930, Warner Brother Cartoons was funded and created the Merrie Melodies series.

In 1937, Walt Disney releases Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first animated feature to use hand-drawn animation.

The American Television Era, 1960-1980s:

The animation industry began to adapt to the fact that television continued its rise as the entertainment medium of choice for American families. Studios created many cartoons for TV, using a “limited animation” style. By the mid 80s, with help from cable channels such as The Disney Channel and Nickolodeon.

In 1960, Hanna Berbera releases The Flintstones, the first animated series on prime time television.

In 1961, The Yogi bear Show, a spin off of huckleberry hound debuts on national TV.

In 1963, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises wins the Academy Award for Best Short Film for The PinkPhink and continues to create shorts for theoretical release.

In 1964, Flitz the Cat is release- the fist animated adult feature film

Modern American Era, 1980-2014

The CGI (computer generated imagery) revolutionized animation. A principal difference of CGI animation compared to traditional animation is that drawing is replaced by 3D modeling, almost like a virtual version of stop-motion. A form of animation that combines the two and uses 2D computer drawing can be considered computer aided animation.

In 1984, The Adventues of Andre and Wally B was the first fully CGI animated film, created by The Graphics Group, the precursor to Pixar.

In 1987 The Simpsons was Made, The Simpsons is an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and in 2009 it surpassed Gunsmoke as the longest-running American scripted primetime television series.

In 1995, Toy Story was the first fully computer animated feature film, was released.

In 2014, Big Hero 6 is the fist Disney animated film to feature Marvel Comic characters.

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beyondthecosmicvoid · 5 years

Text

Afterword of First Book of Dune, "Dune"

“I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply. Nonetheless, a son’s journey to understand the legendary author was not always a smooth one, as I described in my biography of him, Dreamer of Dune. Growing up in Frank Herbert’s household, I did not understand his need for absolute silence so that he could concentrate, the intense desire he had to complete his important writing projects, or the confidence he had that one day his writing would be a success, despite the steady stream of rejections that he received. To my young eyes, the characters he created in Dune and his other stories were the children of his mind, and they competed with me for his affections. In the years it took him to write his magnum opus, he spent more time with Paul Atreides than he did with me. Dad’s study was off-limits to me, to my sister Penny, and to my brother Bruce. In those days, only my mother Beverly really understood Dad’s complexities. Ultimately, it was through her love for him, and the love he gave back to her, that I came to see the nurturing, loving side of the man. By that time I was in my mid-twenties, having rebelled against his exacting ways for years. When I finally saw the soul of my father and began to appreciate him for the care he gave my mother when she was terminally ill, he and I became the best of friends. He helped me with my own writing career by showing me what editors wanted to see in books; he taught me how to construct interesting characters, how to build suspense, how to keep readers turning the pages. After perusing an early draft of Sidney’s Comet (which would become my first published novel), he marked up several pages and then wrote me this note: “These pages…show how editing tightens the story. Go now and do likewise.” It was his way of telling me that he could open the door for me and let me peek through, but I would have to complete the immense labors involved with writing myself. Beverly Herbert was the window into Frank Herbert’s soul. He shared that reality with millions of readers when he wrote a loving, three-page tribute to her at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune, describing their life together. His writing companion and intellectual equal, she suggested the title for that book, and she died in 1984 while he was writing it. Earlier in Dune, Frank Herbert had modeled Lady Jessica Atreides after Beverly Herbert, with her dignified, gentle ways of influence, and even her prescient abilities, which my mother actually possessed. He also wrote of “Lady Jessica’s latent (prophetic) abilities,” and in this he was describing my mother, thinking of all the amazing paranormal feats she had accomplished in her lifetime. In an endearing tone, he often referred to her as his “white witch,” or good witch. Similarly, throughout the Dune series, he described the heroic Bene Gesserit women as “witches.” Dune is the most admired science fiction novel ever written and has sold tens of millions of copies all over the world, in more than twenty languages. It is to science fiction what the Lord of the Rings trilogy is to fantasy, the most highly regarded, respected works in their respective genres. Of course, Dune is not just science fiction. It includes strong elements of fantasy and contains so many important layers beneath the story line that it has become a mainstream classic. As one dimension of this, just look at the cover on the book in your hands, the quiet dignity expressed in the artwork. The novel was first published in hardcover in 1965 by Chilton Books, best known for their immense auto-repair novels. No other publisher would touch the book, in part because of the length of the manuscript. They felt it was far too long at 215,000 words, when most novels of the day were only a quarter to a third that length. Dune would require immense printing costs and a high hardcover price for the time, in excess of five dollars. No science fiction novel had ever commanded a retail price that high. Publishers also expressed concern about the complexity of the novel and all of the new, exotic words that the author introduced in the beginning, which tended to slow the story down. One editor said that he could not get through the first hundred pages without becoming confused and irritated. Another said that he might be making a huge mistake in turning the book down, but he did so anyway. Initial sales of the book were slow, but Frank Herbert’s science fiction–writing peers and readers recognized the genius of the work from the beginning, awarding it the coveted Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel of the year. It was featured in The Whole Earth Catalog and began to receive excellent reviews, including one from the New York Times. A groundswell of support was building. In 1969, Frank Herbert published the first sequel, Dune Messiah, in which he warned about the dangers of following a charismatic leader and showed the dark side of Paul Atreides. Many fans didn’t understand this message, because they didn’t want to see their superhero brought down from his pedestal. Still, the book sold well, and so did its predecessor. Looking back at Dune, it is clear that Dad laid the seeds of the troublesome direction he intended to take with his hero, but a lot of readers didn’t want to see it. John W. Campbell, the editor of Analog who made many useful suggestions when Dune was being serialized, did not like Dune Messiah because of this Paul Atreides issue. Having studied politics carefully, my father believed that heroes made mistakes…mistakes that were simplified by the number of people who followed such leaders slavishly. In a foreshadowing epigraph, Frank Herbert wrote in Dune: “Remember, we speak now of the Muad’Dib who ordered battle drums made from his enemies’ skins, the Muad’Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: ‘I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough.’” And in a dramatic scene, as Liet-Kynes lay dying in the desert, he remembered the long-ago words of his own father: “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.” By the early 1970s, sales of Dune began to accelerate, largely because the novel was heralded as an environmental handbook, warning about the dangers of destroying the Earth’s finite resources. Frank Herbert spoke to more than 30,000 people at the first Earth Day in Philadelphia, and he toured the country, speaking to enthusiastic college audiences. The environmental movement was sweeping the nation, and Dad rode the crest of the wave, a breathtaking trip. When he published Children of Dune in 1976, it became a runaway bestseller, hitting every important list in the country. Children of Dune was the first science fiction novel to become a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback, and sales reached into the millions. After that, other science fiction writers began to have their own bestsellers, but Frank Herbert was the first to obtain such a high level of readership; he brought science fiction out of the ghetto of literature. By 1979, Dune itself had sold more than 10 million copies, and sales kept climbing. In early 1985, shortly after David Lynch’s movie Dune was released, the paperback version of the novel reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This was a phenomenal accomplishment, occurring twenty years after its first publication, and sales remain brisk today. * * * In 1957, Dad flew to the Oregon coast to write a magazine article about a U.S. Department of Agriculture project there, in which the government had successfully planted poverty grasses on the crests of sand dunes, to keep them from inundating highways. He intended to call the article “They Stopped the Moving Sands,” but soon realized that he had a much bigger story on his hands. Frank Herbert’s life experiences are layered into the pages of the Dune series, combined with an eclectic assortment of fascinating ideas that sprang from his researches. Among other things, the Dune universe is a spiritual melting pot, a far future in which religious beliefs have combined into interesting forms. Discerning readers will recognize Buddhism, Sufi Mysticism and other Islamic belief systems, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Hinduism. In the San Francisco Bay Area, my father even knew Zen Master Alan Watts, who lived on an old ferryboat. Dad drew on a variety of religious influences, without adhering to any one of them. Consistent with this, the stated purpose of the Commission of Ecumenical Translators, as described in an appendix to Dune, was to eliminate arguments between religions, each of which claimed to have “the one and only revelation.” When he was a boy, eight of Dad’s Irish Catholic aunts tried to force Catholicism on him, but he resisted. Instead, this became the genesis of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. This fictional organization would claim it did not believe in organized religion, but the sisters were spiritual nonetheless. Both my father and mother were like that as well. During the 1950s, Frank Herbert was a political speechwriter and publicity writer for U.S. senatorial and congressional candidates. In that decade, he also journeyed twice to Mexico with his family, where he studied desert conditions and crop cycles, and was subjected unwittingly to the effects of a hallucinogenic drug. All of those experiences, and a great deal from his childhood, found their way onto the pages of Dune. The novel became as complex and multilayered as Frank Herbert himself. As I said in Dreamer of Dune, the characters in Dune fit mythological archetypes. Paul is the hero prince on a quest who weds the daughter of a “king” (he marries Princess Irulan, whose father is the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV). Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam is a witch mother archetype, while Paul’s sister Alia is a virgin witch, and Pardot Kynes is the wise old man of Dune mythology. Beast Rabban Harkonnen, though evil and aggressive, is essentially a fool. For the names of heroes, Frank Herbert selected from Greek mythology and other mythological bases. The Greek House Atreus, upon which House Atreides in Dune was based, was the ill-fated family of kings Menelaus and Agamemnon. A heroic family, it was beset by tragic flaws and burdened with a curse pronounced against it by Thyestes. This foreshadows the troubles Frank Herbert had in mind for the Atreides family. The evil Harkonnens of Dune are related to the Atreides by blood, so when they assassinate Paul’s father Duke Leto, it is kinsmen against kinsmen, similar to what occurred in the household of Agamemnon when he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Dune is a modern-day conglomeration of familiar myths, a tale in which great sandworms guard a precious treasure of melange, the geriatric spice that represents, among other things, the finite resource of oil. The planet Arrakis features immense, ferocious worms that are like dragons of lore, with “great teeth” and a “bellows breath of cinnamon.” This resembles the myth described by an unknown English poet in Beowulf, the compelling tale of a fearsome fire dragon who guarded a great treasure hoard in a lair under cliffs, at the edge of the sea. The desert of Frank Herbert’s classic novel is a vast ocean of sand, with giant worms diving into the depths, the mysterious and unrevealed domain of Shai-hulud. Dune tops are like the crests of waves, and there are powerful sandstorms out there, creating extreme danger. On Arrakis, life is said to emanate from the Maker (Shai-hulud) in the desert-sea; similarly all life on Earth is believed to have evolved from our oceans. Frank Herbert drew parallels, used spectacular metaphors, and extrapolated present conditions into world systems that seem entirely alien at first blush. But close examination reveals they aren’t so different from systems we know…and the book characters of his imagination are not so different from people familiar to us. Paul Atreides (who is the messianic “Muad’Dib” to the Fremen) resembles Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence), a British citizen who led Arab forces in a successful desert revolt against the Turks during World War I. Lawrence employed guerrilla tactics to destroy enemy forces and communication lines, and came close to becoming a messiah figure for the Arabs. This historical event led Frank Herbert to consider the possibility of an outsider leading native forces against the morally corrupt occupiers of a desert world, in the process becoming a godlike figure to them. One time I asked my father if he identified with any of the characters in his stories, and to my surprise he said it was Stilgar, the rugged leader of the Fremen. I had been thinking of Dad more as the dignified, honorable Duke Leto, or the heroic, swashbuckling Paul, or the loyal Duncan Idaho. Mulling this over, I realized Stilgar was the equivalent of a Native American chief in Dune—a person who represented and defended time-honored ways that did not harm the ecology of the planet. Frank Herbert was that, and a great deal more. As a child, he had known a Native American who hinted that he had been banished from his tribe, a man named Indian Henry who taught my father some of the ways of his people, including fishing, the identification of edible and medicinal plants in the forest, and how to find red ants and protein-rich grub worms for food. When he set up the desert planet of Arrakis and the galactic empire encompassing it, Frank Herbert pitted western culture against primitive culture and gave the nod to the latter. In Dune he wrote, “Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.” (Later, in his mainstream novel Soul Catcher, he would do something similar and would favor old ways over modern ways). Like the nomadic Bedouins of the Arabian plateau, the Fremen live an admirable, isolated existence, separated from civilization by vast stretches of desert. The Fremen take psychedelic drugs during religious rites, like the Navajo Indians of North America. And like the Jews, the Fremen have been persecuted, driven to hide from authorities and survive away from their homeland. Both Jews and Fremen expect to be led to the promised land by a messiah. The words and names in Dune are from many tongues, including Navajo, Latin, Chakobsa (a language found in the Caucasus), the Nahuatl dialect of the Aztecs, Greek, Persian, East Indian, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Old English, and, of course, Arabic. In Children of Dune, Leto II allowed sandtrout to attach themselves to his body, and this was based in part upon my father’s own experiences as a boy growing up in Washington State, when he rolled up his trousers and waded into a stream or lake, permitting leeches to attach themselves to his legs. The legendary life of the divine superhero Muad’Dib is based on themes found in a variety of religious faiths. Frank Herbert even used lore and bits of information from the people of the Gobi Desert in Asia, the Kalahari Desert in Southwest Africa, and the aborigines of the Australian Outback. For centuries such people have survived on very small amounts of water, in environments where water is a more precious resource than gold. The Butlerian Jihad, occurring ten thousand years before the events described in Dune, was a war against thinking machines who at one time had cruelly enslaved humans. For this reason, computers were eventually made illegal by humans, as decreed in the Orange Catholic Bible: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.” The roots of the jihad went back to individuals my parents knew, to my mother’s grandfather Cooper Landis and to our family friend Ralph Slattery, both of whom abhorred machines. Still, there are computers in the Dune universe, long after the jihad. As the series unfolds, it is revealed that the Bene Gesserits have secret computers to keep track of their breeding records. And the Mentats of Dune, capable of supreme logic, are “human computers.” In large part these human calculators were based upon my father’s paternal grandmother, Mary Stanley, an illiterate Kentucky hill-woman who performed incredible mathematical calculations in her head. Mentats were the precursors of Star Trek’s Spock, First Officer of the starship Enterprise…and Frank Herbert described the dangers of thinking machines back in the 1960s, years before Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator movies ...

By the time we complete those stories, there will be a wealth of Dune novels, along with the 1984 movie directed by David Lynch and two television miniseries—“Frank Herbert’s Dune” and “Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune”—both produced by Richard Rubinstein. We envision other projects in the future, but all of them must measure up to the lofty standard that my father established with his own novels. When all of the good stories have been told, the series will end. But that will not really be a conclusion, because we can always go back to Dune itself and read it again and again, ” -Brian Herbert

This shows the appreciation that Brian had for his father. Many fans are still on the fence regarding Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson continuation of Frank’s work. Some think some of their sequels and prequels are good while others think their attempt to expand on the Dune lore is a failed attempt and don’t believe they have based their works on Frank Herbert’s alleged unfinished manuscripts. I fall somewhere in the middle. There are things I like from the Dune Expanded Universe and other things that I could care less about. Nevertheless, I love that Brian Herbert has continued with his father’s passion and is currently working with director Denis Villeneuve and others to bring his father’s vision on the big and small screens and stay loyal to it.

#frank herbert #dune #brian herbert

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