Today I was delighted to have lunch with the well-known photographer Harry Langdon. Go to his website and you’ll see that Harry has a long and legendary career as a celebrity photographer. He’s done sessions for people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx, Ronald Reagan, Stevie Nicks, B.B. King, and so forth. But when a mutual friend told me some months ago that her photographer was Harry Langdon, I said:

“Is he related to the Harry Langdon?”

She thought he was “the” Harry Langdon. But I was thinking of the great silent-film comedian often ranked with Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd:  Harry Langdon, the gifted clown who had run away to join the circus as a boy, became (briefly) one of the highest-paid stars of his era, wound down his career writing jokes for Laurel and Hardy (and, once, substituted for Laurel in an “& Hardy” film), and made a total of 96 films. That Harry Langdon.

She didn’t know. She’d never heard of that Harry Langdon.

A  few days later she emailed to say that yes, he was the son of that Harry Langdon, and would I like to have lunch with Harry Langdon, Jr?  So, today, there I was in Beverly Hills pulling mussels from their shells while discussing senior with Harry Langdon, Jr.   Lunch today was on a near par with the evening 15 years ago I spent in the company of Eleanor Keaton.   I may not care about what Tiger Woods or Lady Gaga are up to, but summoning the distant celebrity past of the silent comedy era is something I can get into.

We talked for a bit and Harry Langdon, Jr. said, “You do seem very well informed about my father.” I told him how much I love silent film comedy; how it represents a specific style of comedy that cannot be done since the introduction of sound; how I grew to love it when watching it as a small boy with my own father; how thrilled I was in college to learn of the connection between silent film comedy, vaudeville, theatre of the absurd, and existentialism (Beckett, who grew up admiring vaudevillians and clowns, based Didi and Gogo on Laurel & Hardy; Keaton’s deadpan comedy of menace is purely existential; Beckett made just one film — and it was with Keaton as the star); and how wonderful and funny an actor I thought his father was. Finally I let the subject wind down because I was afraid I was starting to come across as an obsessive. But then Harry told me where he was last night:

“I was a holiday party. At Stan Lee’s.”

“You were at Stan Lee’s holiday party?” I asked.

“You know him? He made a lot of money in comic books.”

Trying not to do a spit take, and worried again about how I was going to come off, I said, “Um… the other thing you should know about me is that I’m a huge, huge comic-book fan.”

And then that topic went on for at least several minutes.

I hope the nation’s employers are finished with layoffs. But for those who, sadly, aren’t, here’s some good advice for HR managers, especially if they’re doing business in Gotham City.

Thanks to Brendan Carter for letting me know about this.

Imagine my surprise in learning that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is considering reopening the Hall of Justice. Judging by what I was reading just the other night, the place seems to be haunted by people coming back from the dead.

Reed Richards is on Facebook.

I owe an enormous debt to Stan Lee, and I know it. The Marvel comics line was hugely important to me growing up and is perhaps only slightly less important now because I’ve got things like dependents and employees. Even with that, there are moments that I get completely caught up in Reed Richards’ quest to solve everything. But Stan’s latest profile, in Inc. magazine, is puzzling to me.

Firstly, Inc. is a magazine aimed at entrepreneurs, i.e., people who start their own companies. That isn’t really Stan Lee. He was an employee at Marvel, and even at his own companies (Stan Lee Media and Pow!) I believe he was a  figurehead for other people. He’s a gifted storyteller of a certain sort, and God knows he’s a marketing genius, but an entrepreneur he isn’t.

Secondly,  I’m disturbed by this quote in the profile:

All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas, but the ideas meant nothing unless I had somebody who could illustrate it. For Spider-Man, I called Jack Kirby, and he did a few pages that weren’t right. Jack drew everything so heroically, and I wanted Peter Parker to look more like an average, schlumpy kid. So I got Steve Ditko to do it. Whenever I would discuss the strip, I would say that Steve Ditko and I created Spider-Man. I certainly don’t own the Marvel characters. I’ve never owned them. If I did, I’d be too wealthy to be talking to you.

“All of the characters at Marvel were my ideas”…? I guess it depends upon the definitions of the words “all” and “ideas.” The pre-eminent Marvel way of scripting was thus:  a plotting session between writer and artist; the penciller  would render the pages; the writer would then script in balloons and captions. The first time Stan Lee thought of the Silver Surfer, for example, was after seeing him drawn into a Fantastic Four storyline about Galactus. Stan asked Jack Kirby who that was, and Kirby said he figured that someone as important as Galactus would have a herald — and that was the herald. Stan has agreed in interviews that this was the origin of the character. Here’s the relevant snippet from Wikipedia:

The Silver Surfer debuted as an unplanned addition to the superhero-team comic Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966). The comic’s writer-editor, Stan Lee, and its penciller and co-plotter, Jack Kirby, had by the mid-1960s developed using a three-collaborative technique known as the “Marvel Method“: the two would discuss story ideas, Kirby would work from a brief synopsis to draw the individual scenes and plot details, and Lee would finally add the dialog and captions. When Kirby turned in his pencil art for the story, he included a new character he and Lee had not discussed.^[5] As Lee recalled in 1995, “There, in the middle of the story we had so carefully worked out, was a nut on some sort of flying surfboard”.^[6] He later expanded on this, recalling, “I thought, ‘Jack, this time you’ve gone too far'”.^[7] Kirby explained that the story’s agreed-upon antagonist, a god-like cosmic predator of planets named Galactus should have some sort of herald, and that he created the surfboard “because I’m tired of drawing spaceships!”^[8] Taken by the noble features of the new character, who turned on his master to help defend Earth, Lee overcame his initial skepticism and began adding characterization. The Silver Surfer soon became a key part of the unfolding story.^[5]

The Silver Surfer, therefore, was not solely the idea of Stan Lee. Taking Stan’s definition of “idea” as I believe he’s using it, the Surfer wasn’t his idea at all. So clearly, by this one example alone, “all” isn’t accurate.

I’m not an intellectual property attorney, but doesn’t the “idea” of Spider-Man expand to include the character as conceived? Stan Lee partially got the “idea” for Spider-Man by watching a spider crawl up the wall, but our understanding of Spider-Man redounds largely from the costume as well, which was designed and drawn by Steve Ditko. In Stan’s version, Ditko is an “illustrator” whom he also recognizes as a “creator.” Fair enough. But can you “create” if you’re not part of generating the “idea”? I do a lot of collaboration in all sorts of arenas, especially in the theatre, and part of that is the exchange of ideas. You want people to bring their ideas. (Unless you’re Bertolt Brecht. But that’s another story.)

Throughout the years, Stan Lee has been attacked for taking too much credit. I’m not interested in joining in on that and I’m not trying to. Reading this interview in Inc., though, I see again the sort of interview he gives that lends the impression that he’s edging others out of the spotlight, or minimizing their contribution.  I also like to think that since he’s 86 years old we should pray for his continued good health and look the other way when something he says comes out the wrong way.

And once again, all of this would feel better if Marvel and its various corporate entities over the years had done more to acknowledge the genius of Jack Kirby with tribute, and with money. He was co-creator of a multi-billion-dollar universe of characters and he couldn’t even get his art returned to him.

In reviewing Forbes’ latest list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, I came across this:

Newcomers to the list include Marvel Entertainment chief Isaac Perlmutter, whose net worth soared to $1.55 billion after Disney agreed to buy the superhero outfit in August for $4 billion in cash and stock.

Neither Jack Kirby nor his heirs seem to have made the list.

The LA Times’ Geoff Boucher on Jack Kirby’s legacy and the inevitable forthcoming lawsuit.

His heirs are filing claims to many of the characters co-created by Jack Kirby.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a meeting when someone said that a design looked “really powerful, really Marvel Comics.” I turned to the woman next to me, an executive with Warner Brothers, and whispered, “Should I say it looks really ‘DC Comics?’ ” Because after all, Warner Brothers owns DC, and is located right here in beautiful downtown Burbank.

Now, it turns out, Marvel too is owned by a studio headquartered in my hometown. That studio is named Disney.

Although I hadn’t heard anything about this deal in advance — and evidently, just about no one else did either — I’m not surprised. In a world of entertainment agglomeration, where radio stations and television stations and movie studios and newspapers and digital providers and satellites and publishing houses and so forth are all owned ultimately by one company, and that one company is owned by Rupert Murdoch or Steve Jobs or Barry Diller or some combination thereof, it had come to seem increasingly strange that there Marvel was, all by its lonesome, an attractive bauble sitting neglected at the billionaires’ ball. I don’t know how well Ariel, the Little Mermaid, has been feeling lately, but Iron Man and Spider-Man and friends have never been more powerful at the cash register.

While I don’t pine for the moment I spy the Hulk waving glumly alongside Goofy in the Main Street parade, I’m glad the characters have a well-furnished new home backed by unimpeachable credit. Too many characters, and comic-book companies, have found themselves in foreclosure. As Mark Evanier noted on his own blog, I do wish that Jack Kirby were alive to see this day — and, somehow, to financially benefit from it. Although Kirby’s plight pales against that of the creators of Superman (in his declining years, Joe Shuster worked as a deliveryman to make ends meet), he never saw the sort of payday given recently to, say, the creators of RockBand, which has been a persistent money loser but which recently netted a $150 million performance bonus for its creators. For Marvel (or its predecessor, Timely), Kirby co-created Captain America, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Doctor Doom, the Black Panther, the Silver Surfer, and indeed almost all the major characters in the Marvel pantheon. (Spider-Man and Wolverine being the most notable exceptions.) Without Jack Kirby, Marvel wouldn’t have been worth half its $2 billion purchase price today. Just how much would a fair performance bonus have equaled?

There are two games coming out next month that I’m eagerly awaiting. One is, of course, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. In which, finally, I will have to choose sides in the Marvel superhero civil war. Until now I had been an innocent bystander. One of the differences between video games and comics:  the former makes you an active participant.

That, naturally, is the main lure of video games, which takes me to the other game I’m anticipating,  The Beatles: Rock Band. I play Rock Band often. Just last week my adult niece Lisa was in town, and she and I and my three kids formed The All-Wochner Band. We broke up even faster than Milli Vanilli, and were about as talented (especially when I was on drums). The highlight was watching my 6-year-old son, microphone in hand, unhesitatingly belt out “Eye of the Tiger.” The lowlight was me crashing and burning on one of my beloved Nirvana songs. My failure was so complete that after three abortive attempts I blamed the song. I carry the shame with me. This is all great fun, but in no way compares with the vicarious thrill of reimagining yourself as one of the Beatles. This is as close as almost all of us will get (some others of us form Beatles cover bands, sentencing themselves to a lifetime of out-of-date haircuts). I long to sing “I Am the Walrus,” a song that I once theorized, in a paper I presented to the right-wing evangelical religious high school I attended, was an indictment of God. I’m also interested in taking a whack at “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road.” I hope they’re both in the game. (Kinda doubt it about the latter.)

If the main attraction to this game is the idea of sitting in as a faux fab four, I have to wonder two things:  1) Who would choose to be Ringo? On its face, this seems unanswerable. It’s almost a twist on the old Groucho Marx line:  You wouldn’t want to play with anyone who would want to be Ringo. And 2) Given that these remain almost assuredly the most famous four faces of the past 50 years, why aren’t their avatars a better resemblance? George looks close, but Paul and John don’t. Judge for yourself. Here’s the “Ticket to Ride” video from the game, coming out on the cute release date of 9/9/09.

And here are the human versions lip-synching to the same hit video. You’ll note how much more like the real Beatles they look here. And by the way, check out John’s mug to the camera at 1:39, as he lets us in on the little secret that they’re lip-synching, or George’s knowing look later on. That sort of clowning was essential to the Beatles, and I hope it made it into the game too.