Kirb Your Enthusiasm (17)

What do you think?

1. Did the ‘Doh’ migrate from Finlayson to William Bendix on ‘Life of Riley’? I know that Matt G got ‘Doh’ from Byron ‘space-age bachelor pad’ Werner saying it all the time and assumed it was from Bendix, but likely you and Byron have greater knowledge of the history of ‘Doh’.

2. Gary- Yup, Bendix follows Finlayson by way of Spanky and Charlie McCarthy et al. Good to hear that Byron Werner is a key man in the meme chain.

3. Really, Byron Werner was a link in the chain? That is amazing intel.

4. Mark, I think the genesis of both the Finlayson and Rickles appearances can be traced back to Jack’s assistants at the time, Steve Sherman and Mark Evanier. Essentially assistants with not much to do, due to Jack’s single-minded creativity, they prepared letter columns, some mostly ignored or changed plots for stories and such. But, one thing Jack, Steve and Mark shared was a love for classic comedy and comedians and i believe it was with their influence and encouragement that these weird but ultimately unforgettable cameos came to be.

5. Fascinating! Thanks, Bruce.

6. This was really interesting, Mark. I bought those Kirby DC’s too, trying to discover what the fuss was about, having never read Kirby’s Marvel Comics. Am I crazy, or didn’t Edgar “Slow Burn” Kennedy, another Hal Roach regular, also say “D’oh!” I could be so wrong; in my defense, I have had three brain surgeries.

7. Andy: “D’oh!” became a Roach studio trademark but my money is on Finalyson as the first to use it (on film anyway).

   Bruce: Any idea why this particular weirdness ended so suddenly?

8. Well, these hijinks were toward the end of Jack’s run on Jimmy Olsen, a book he regarded much more lightly than his own ‘Fourth World’ books. I think he was more inclined to be lighter and just throw things against the wall and see if they stuck on Olsen than on his more ‘serious’ books. After all, look at what he was working with here, characters not his own like Superman and Jimmy Olsen, with redrawn faces, yet. He never liked working with other people’s characters if he could avoid it and the revived Newsboy Legion staffed with the likes of Scrapper Jr. and Flippa Dippa was no prize. Jack would never slap a slogan like ‘Kirby says: “Don’t Ask, Just Buy It!” on The New Gods, you could be sure of that.

9. So –belatedly — a few thoughts:

   I think Bruce is on the money when he talks about the influence of Evanier. There’s a period, running roughly from 1964 to 1972, where Silent and 30s Comedy were considered particularly hip, thanks to re-packaged Harold Lloyd shorts (the most accessible of the Big Three) and re-runs of Laurel and Hardy, and others. I remember having a poster in my bedroom of Stan and Ollie smiling down benignly upon me (long before I even understood the possibility that they were not alive in an eternal present.) Around this time, L+H had their own comic book and cartoon show (based on Larry Harmon’s characters.) The Marx Brothers has also been rediscovered, thanks to the elderly Groucho’s chat show appearances, whose irreverence chimed with the late 60s zeitgeist.

   I also dimly recall a Batman comic where the Joker was making people die laughing with poor puns or something. Batman countered this effect by recalling the funniest scenes from the Marx Brothers movies — which he said were authentically funny, as opposed to the Joker’s banal comedy.

   But I really need say no more than the fact that Laurel and Hardy are featured on the cover of Sgt Pepper.

   However this is all entirely irrelevant. Kirby was not concerned with being hip. He had Paul McCartney worshipping at his feet in 1972, and was, it seemed bemused and mildly embarrassed.

   Meanwhile, the Kirby imagery that can be read as psychedelic is, I think, more of a logical aesthetic response to the concepts he wished to convey, rather than anything to do with what was happening in contemporary graphics. Indeed, we can safely argue that Ditko was ‘trippy’ before Jack — and pretty much everyone else. (Though Kirby had teenage kids at the time, so would have been vaguely aware, through a haze of cigar, rather than marijuana smoke, that he could spread his wings in that direction.)

   Finlayson? Rickles? RIckles wasn’t hip. Finlayson was, in that way that George Harrison was sort of hipper than John or Paul. That was probably the appeal to Mark Evanier. (We should ask him, I think he’d like this series.) His range (Finn, not Evanier) was far less extensive, but he played that pop-eyed angry baldie with great effect. They should CGI him into Curb Your Enthusiasm some day.

   A couple of other points: Most of us know that Superman’s face was often re-drawn by Curt Swan in the Kirby books. Perhaps Jack was strutting his stuff here. It’s often overlooked that he was a superb realist caricaturist. If you look at the gangsters portrayed in FF 91 – 92, for example, you see that they’re given an intriguing and grotesque depth of facial detail. Kirby does this for fishermen, and other blue collar types too. Indeed, if you came from Mars and were presented with these head shots compared to a more generic face (such as Reed Richards) you might be tempted to say that Kirby was technically ‘better’ at drawing character faces. I’ll settle on the basis that he employed a different aesthetic sensibility for appropriate roles, like a 1930s casting director. It’s another fascinating part of the Kirby Universe.

   Finally, Finlayson had an interesting face. He was a living cartoon. His resemblance to Popeye is rather striking. Now I am pretty sure that Kirby would have enjoyed and admired Popeye. But I think he would have liked the second Segar in Thimble Theatre feature a lot more: the wild and nutty Science Fiction presented in Sappo.

   Have a look:

   http://www.comicbookbrain.com/large-sappo-segar-1934.php

   It’s perhaps where influences on Kirby and Crumb collide with force, and provides a neat consulsion to this rambling and overlong comment (which reminds me of one of one Kirby’s text pieces in terms of coherence…)

10. PS. I’ve always heard Groening attribute Homer’s ‘D’oh’ directly to Finalyson. I have no truck with this revisionist version of events alluded to above.

11. Just a slight correction to Greg’s cogent comment above. The Superman and Jimmy faces were redrawn at different times by Al Plastino
    and Murphy Anderson not Swan.

12. Evanier responds: http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2011_03_05.html#020320

13. Holy cow, that is so gratifying, to read Evanier’s account of the Finlayson cameo in Jimmy Olsen. Wow. “I’m pretty sure it was Steve who came up with the idea of doing something around the Loch Ness Monster, just as I’m sure it was my idea to use Jimmy Finlayson as a character. ‘Fin,’ of course, was the foil in many a Laurel and Hardy film and I was a huge fan of Stan and Ollie. Steve and I worked out a plot and when we took it to Jack one Saturday, I took along a still from my collection. It was from one of the best Laurel and Hardy silent movies, Big Business, and it was the best shot I had of Finlayson.” Etc. Everyone, go read that post!

14. Bruce — thank-you for the correction.

    Mark Evanier is so impressive. Either he wrote down or recorded every moment he was with Jack, or he has genuine total recall. He’s done more than anyone to keep the Kirby flame burning. I’m so glad he’s engaged with this.

    Evanier hath spoken, and his words ring true.

    And two last things on The FIn: one character reference photo was entirely sufficient, as this was pretty much the only face that he used on camera. You got one pop-eyed squint, you got yourself a Jimmy FInn.

    Jimmy has been merchandised, at least once: http://www.laurelandhardy.org/FinNC.html

    But I am not sure that this bust has outsold any Toy Story 3 merchandise.

    Overall. I just want to say what an amazing piece, and series of posts, this has been.

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