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*  We’ve won!  Politicians officially open Comic-Con!

On Thursday, to mark the official opening of Comic-Con International 2014, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and San Diego City Council President Todd Gloria harnessed their inner superheroes and flew through the air on a zip-line near the downtown Convention Center.

Gloria was the interim Mayor after the Filner scandal.  Faulconer won the special election.  Faulconer has strong ties to Comic-Con: he worked PR on the second convention center expansion before he ran for public office, and supports the expansion of the convention center.  His hobbies: yachting and biking.

* Google Glass banned from Comic-Con screenings.

 Not that surprising.

*For the wrestling fans out there… Sting appears at the WWE panel. [No, not the musician.]

Is this bigger than JR Jr. working for DC?

 * SYNERGY!

Well, yes; corporate synergy is another explanation—ESPN, like Marvel, is owned by Disney. The three spots feature former SportsCenter anchor Kenny Mayne introducing Marvel’s latest super team as new ESPN employees brought in to ensure the safety of the new SportsCenter set.

How soon before we see “ESPN: The Sports Comic Magazine”?  What?  Sports fans are geeks, too!  T-shirts, who-would-win fantasy leagues, arcane statistics and knowledge, objectified athletes and cheerleaders…

 * This year’s economic profile of Comic-Con.

 *  We discover Stan Lee’s one weakness…  Get well soon, Stan!   

*  OH NOES!  Girls are ruining Peanuts too!

“With their youthful, ingenious, and fashion-savvy sensibility, Snoopy and Belle are a perfect fit with the We Heart It community, and we’re looking forward to a terrifically successful partnership,” said Dave Williams, President of We Heart It. “Peanuts has always offered a fresh and original world view, which is exactly what We Heart It fans crave. This will provide an outstanding opportunity for our fans to find inspiration and engagement with this legendary brand.”

It’s like an electronic greeting card.  You can like and share pictures online.

* A Comic-Con Virgin, from Japan:

* The Boston Herald profiles how Wired used their “Wired Café” to best effect.

* Reed Elsevier, owner of NYCC, announces earnings.

 * Some Star Wars VII tidbits.

Movie Wars

DC wins on a quiet day (so far, as of 7 PM EDT/4 PM PDT), getting great publicity for their “All Hat, No Battle” Batsuit reveal. 

* MTV plots how DC can beat Marvel in Hall H.

Ahead of the film's teaser trailer premiere later today, we've got our first look at the bigscreen CGI adaptation of "Peanuts" that is being produced by Blue Sky Studios.

When the universe asks you if you would like to interview someone along the lines of Jean Schulz, wife of Peanuts creator Charles “Sparky” Schulz, the correct answer is somewhere along the lines of , “YES YES YES YES YES!”  And so it was that by some complete quirk of fate, I found myself speaking with Ms. Schulz recently.  What follows is a conversation covering everything from Sparky’s own interpretations of whether his work could be considered “art” to the recent pairing of Peanuts with ALA to the role of libraries in the world.

Betsy Bird: Just to recap, Peanuts, as I understand it, is pairing with ALA for library card sign-up month. At the same time Andrew McNeel the publishing company, is publishing Snoopy Cowabunga, now with a range of parenting reading tips (I think they’re even calling it Core Curriculum aligned).  So what has been your role with all of this?

Jean Schulz: Actually, I haven’t had any particular role except to say, “Yes, please pursue this.” It was actually Craig Herman who worked for Peanuts, Worldwide who pursued it. We’re the board members and we said yes go ahead. We said this is terrific. I think Peanuts is perfect.  Anyway it’s a perfect marriage.

BB: What is your personal take on libraries?

JS: I don’t remember going to the library as a kid because it was way out in the country.  But school libraries, yes.  We didn’t have computers so all of us used school libraries, all of us learned the Dewey Decimal System.  The library was just part of your life when I grew up.  And when I had kids in the 60s we went to the library all the time.  I’ve never been on the library commission board but we live in such a small community that the library, and donating your books to the library, and going to the library booksale, being a part of that whole community of the library and its fundraising and its storytelling, has been just part of my life.  I mean I don’t know if libraries are going the way of supposedly the newspapers but I don’t think so.  I still see families lined up to get into the library when it opens.

BB: So I grew up with Peanuts.  My parents grew up with Peanuts.  And now with Snoopy Cowabunga and the kids still reading newspaper comics we have children today growing up with Peanuts.  How do you account for its longevity?  What has kept it going all these years?

JS: I think that it deals with the real issues of life.  It deals with love, it deals with sadness, it deals with bossy people, it deals with shy people, it deals with success.  You know Charlie Brown is known for his failure but he never gives up.  It is a small microcosm of life, and then there is Snoopy who is everybody’s alter ego.  Sparky, my husband, used to say (I’ll refer to him as Sparky), “Snoopy is everything I would like to be and am not.“ 

BB:  Ah.  Like Walter Mitty.

JS:  Yes. Exactly.  And it really speaks to you.  When you’re a child and read comic strips it’s speaking to you.  You take seriously Charlie Brown’s heartache.  You take seriously Sally’s dislike of school trips.  You know you don’t want to go on the school trips either.  But when you get older you relate to those same things in an adult way.  And that is the secret of the comic strip is that it speaks to people on their own level.  I don’t know how Sparky did that.  That is a small miracle.  That by encapsulating it with humor he could make it acceptable to all levels, probably all educations, all cultures!  

BB:  That’s true.  I think that the great comics that came after Peanuts did similar things and followed in its footsteps, in that adults would get as much of a kick out of them as kids.  They would sort of cross generational lines.  It’s funny, I never thought of it that way. 

Now what is your take on kids and comics?  In the past comics were seen as throwaway literature. You know, no one would have given them any literary merit.  But these days you know libraries and teachers and parents are embracing them.  What’s your take on all that?

JS: Well, there are two things.  One is that my mother used to give comic books credit for teaching my brother to read.   Kids learned to read all the time with comics.  And obviously the comics in the paper come and go so fast, four seconds maybe, that by the time you put them in a book, which is what Andrews McNeel has done, you have given it a continuity.  And if you don’t know a word, the pictures help you.  Although I have to say in Peanuts it’s probably a little more subtle.  If you read the little early readers it’ll say “She saw the dog.”  Peanuts is more subtle than that, but still, the pictures are fun to look at and make you want to read the words, want to learn the words.  And, of course, because now they call them graphic novels they now have an acceptability in the marketplace.  Some of the people who do graphic novels don’t want them to be called “novels”.  They really like the term “comics!” And they think that people calling them graphic novels is so that they can sell them in the bookstores.

BB: Well, kids never ask for graphic novels.  Kids ask for comics.

JS:  That’s a good point.  Anyway, Sparky used to say “I am a cartoonist.  That’s what I want to be, that’s what I do, it’s my profession.  I don’t need to be an artist”, which of course he was because his drawings spoke to people.  “And I don’t need to be a writer.”  He said, “Don’t flatter me by saying” (and I’m not saying these are his exact words) “oh you’re a great writer, oh you’re a great artist.  I’m a cartoonist.“  And his point was, that was sufficient because that was a time honored way of communicating with people.  And you know people say the first cartoons were the ones on the walls of the caves. 

BB:  The original visual storytelling.

JS: Exactly.

So you asked what is my association with libraries.  My father loved reading, so when he died in 1973, (he lived in a small town in Noe Valley and he lived there all his life) his wife asked for donations to be made to the library.  Somewhere I had a list of the 50 books that they had bought with the money that came in, which was really nice to know.  Of course those books don’t last forever.  Back in 1973 we had given the money to the library or asked that people forward their money to the library and about ten or twelve or fifteen years later, probably late 80s, I wanted to do something additional.  I asked the library how they could use an endowment which would produce about maybe $2500 a year.  And they said storytelling.  And so with the money they hire storytellers, I think they have three or four a year, and it’s to keep the people in the library.  Because, you know, moms bring their children, dads bring their children, but when they get to be about 13 maybe they don’t want necessarily to come because they associate that with being younger. They developed the storytelling program that would bring in moms and 13, 14, 15 year-olds.  I haven’t been to any because Noe Valley is still an hour drive from me, but their late afternoons, early evenings, invite parents and slightly older children back into the library for adventurous stories that they can all enjoy.  So libraries have always been important.

And when you look at the comic strips, Sparky was a storyteller.  That’s what he was doing.

For the best children’s biography of Mr. Schulz of all time, please be sure to check out Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz.  Many thanks to Alison Hill for arranging for the interview and to Ms. Schulz herself for taking time out of her day to speak with me.

Edward Levitt, an unsung hero of the Golden Age of animation, has died. He was 96. Levitt died on Tuesday, April 2, in Palmdale, California.

Levitt worked as a production designer, storyboard and layout artist, and background painter for thirty-five years in the animation industry. His superb skills as a designer made him a key figure during the Cartoon Modern era of the 1950s.

Ed Levitt was born in New York City on April 17, 1916 and grew up in Somers, Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York. His family moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1930s and following graduation from high school, Levitt applied to the Disney Studios in 1937. He was hired at $16.50 per week and did rotoscape tracing on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The Disney studio recognized his talent as a painter, and by the end of production on Snow White, he had switched to painting backgrounds. He worked as a background artist on Pinocchio, the “Rite of Spring” segment in Fantasia and Bambi. Levitt picketed during the Disney strike of 1941. He returned after the strike was settled to work on Victory Through Air Power, but left again to enlist in the Marines in 1943. During the war, he made training films while a member of the Marine Corps Photographic Section in Quantico, Virginia.

Here are a couple examples of his paintings from Fantasia and Bambi:

After the war, Levitt became a partner in a Los Angeles-based production company called Cinemette, which was formed with ex-Marines (and Disney artists) John Chadwick, Jack Whitaker, and Keith Robinson. The studio operated between 1946-1950, and they created a number of industrial films, as well as entertainment short subjects and early TV commercials.

Levitt’s liberal politics led him to direct Grass Roots (1948), which called for establishing a world government through a revision of the United Nations charter and was partly funded by the United World Federalists. He also produced a popular anti-nuclear film Where Will You Hide? (1948), which attracted the attention of no less than Albert Einstein, who commented, “Somebody, after having seen this film, may say to you: This representation of our situation may be right, but the idea of world government is not realistic. You may answer him: If the idea of world government is not realistic, there there is only onerealistic view of our future: wholesale destruction of man by man.”

Levitt’s star rose during the 1950s when commercials and commissioned films were produced at an increasingly frenetic pace. His graphically accessible yet sophisticated style made him much sought after as a designer, storyboard and layout artist. “He was a great artist,” said animator Bill Littlejohn. “And his layouts were the best. He could animate, too. I sure liked working with him. He was so damn good at what he did. He knew the problems that the animators would face and he would design things with that in mind.”

These are a few examples of commercials and films designed and laid out by Levitt:

Through the 1950s, Levitt worked as a freelancer at more than a dozen studios including Graphic Films, Cascade Pictures, Raphael G. Wolff, Quartet Films, John Sutherland Productions, Eames Office, ERA Productions, United Productions of America, Ray Patin Productions, Academy Pictures, Churchill/Wexler Film Productions, Storyboard Inc., and Fred A. Niles Productions.

At Playhouse Pictures, Levitt worked closely with director Bill Melendez on many of the Ford spots starring the cast from the Peanuts comics. When Melendez opened his own studio in 1964, Levitt was one of the first artists he hired. “I remember Ed as being reliable, steady, pragmatic, kind and generous,” said Melendez’s son Steve, who also worked at the studio. “I know that he helped Bill in the early days not only artistically but also financially. Bill always considered Ed to be ‘The Best’, a title he did not bestow easily or often. Ed could draw anything and had a great grasp of how a film is made. He was the best layout person I have ever met.”

Levitt played a key role in designing the first Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas with backgrounds like this:

He also coined the famous credit used for many years at the end of the Peanuts specials—Graphic Blandishment. “Blandishment” is defined as “something that tends to coax or cajole,” which speaks to Levitt’s modesty and his view of the role he played in the filmmaking process.

Steve Melendez recalled that Levitt was proud of A Charlie Brown Christmas even during times of uncertainty and doubt:

“When we completed A Charlie Brown Christmas, and we all had a chance to look at the answer-print, Bill, Lee [Mendelson] and everyone else thought we were the authors of a great disaster and we would probably never make a film again. Ed was the sole voice who said, ‘Don’t be silly, this film will be shown for a hundred years!’ And he was right. I don’t know if he believed it or not, but his calm confidence gave everyone hope that perhaps things were not as bad as they seemed.”

By the early-1960s, Ed identified himself as a Cartoonist-Rancher on his income tax returns. He had begun taking animal husbandry classes at Pierce College, and had purchased a ranch in Lake Hughes, an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles, near Gorman, California. There, he planted cherry and apple orchards, and began to raise cattle.

Bill Melendez made this drawing of “cartoonist-rancher Ed”:

He spent most of the 1960s working on the Charlie Brown TV specials, and also directed a couple of Babar specials for Melendez. Other Sixties projects included the titles of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and the features Gay Purr-ee and The Incredible Mr. Limpet.

Levitt retired from animation in 1973 to become a full-time rancher and orchard owner. “As you get older,” Levitt told a newspaper reporter, “it just seems a lot nicer to sit up here in the forest and listen to the trees grow.”

Levitt is predeceased by his wife, Dorothy. He is survived by his brother, Julius Levitt; sister, Annette Priemer; his four children, Alan Cyders; Geoffrey, Dan and Paul Levitt, along with numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made in his name to the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital.

Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang have been spokestoons for the insurance giant MetLife for nearly 30 years. The ads are rarely anything beyond the ordinary, but this latest one has an inventive conceptual approach that I liked.

Ogilvy & Mather-owned Redworks produced the spot, and Polish studio Platige Image provided visual effects/post work.

CREDITS
Director: Sam Tootal
Agency: Ogilvy + Mather
Production house: Redworks
Postproduction house: Platige Image
Producer: Kasia Chodak

(Thanks, Michael Blake)

TweetHello and welcome! We are starting a weekly art thingy and have -rather thoughtfully- set it for Friday, that interminable day where the weekend is within touching distance and yet you still have to be at work. Hence, pretty and cool stuff that will help tide you over- forget words, just feast your eyes. This [...]

You’re a bad man, Charlie Brown! Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown in animated specials like A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, was arrested last Sunday on an outstanding felony warrant and held on $550,000 bail. The charges: four felony counts of making a threat to cause death or great bodily injury and a single felony count of stalking. More details in the San Diego Union-Tribune

On an upbeat note, Robbins seems like a fun guy when he’s not stalking people and sports a cool Peanuts tattoo on his arm:

I’ll be posting a Holiday Gift Guide next month, but one book leapt out of the pack and I want to give you the heads-up right now. I just received a copy of Charles Solomon’s The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation (Chronicle Books) and found it a wonderful surprise.

Not only a visual delight – original cels, backgrounds, storyboards, animation drawings, Schulz model sheets and scripts, behind the scenes photos, television station publicity materials – but Solomon’s text is goes deep into the making of these landmark specials (and theatrical features) with new information and interviews with noted participants, including Lee Mendelsohn, Phil Roman, the late Bill Melendez and Bill Littlejohn – and many others including the voice actors. The text is loaded with great inside information and I particularly appreciated how Solomon tied the influences of UPA and earlier animation to the Peanuts specials – and how these Charlie Brown specials have influenced important directors and creators of animation working today.

The bottom line: the book is great fun and highly informative. I never thought a book about Peanuts specials could be so enlightening and entertaining. Bravo, Mr. Solomon, the Schulz estate and the editor/designers at Chronicle for a job well done. You’ve done Mr. Schulz and Mr. Brown proud. The book goes on sale Nov. 14th.

In conjunction with the publication of this book, the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa California is hosting an exhibition of rare animation art over this holiday season. Don’t miss an appearance and panel with Producer Lee Mendelsohn and author Charles Solomon on Saturday December 1st to discuss the films. Here’s the Museum’s Press release:

The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center is highlighting the artifacts that made this possible with an exhibition featuring 16 original never-before-displayed Peanuts animation drawings and cels, including five cels rescued from Schulz’s 1966 studio fire.

The Art of Peanuts Animation: Production Cels from the Museum’s Collection runs now through Sunday, February 3, 2013. Timed to coincide with the November 7, 2012 launch of the new Chronicle book The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation by Charles Solomon, this exhibit includes rare original production cels from animated Peanuts classics: A Charlie Brown Christmas; It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Visitors will also see cels from numerous other animated specials from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and view selected full-length animated specials in the Museum’s theater.

Rare Cels Survive Fire at Schulz’s Studio
Several of the animation cels in the Museum’s collection survived a fire at Schulz’s Coffee Grounds Studio in 1966. These original cels from the animated television specials It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas were donated to the Museum by a childhood friend of Schulz’s son, Craig, who recovered the cels from the studio after the fire.

Programming Events:
Saturday, December 1 at 1:00 pm
Join Lee Mendelson, executive producer of the classic Peanuts animated specials, and Charles Solomon, internationally respected animation historian and author of the new Chronicle book The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation, as they talk about the making of Peanuts animated specials.

ABOUT THE CHARLES M. SCHULZ MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTER
The Charles M.SchulzMuseum opened in August 2002 to fulfill its mission of preserving, displaying, and interpreting the art of Charles M. Schulz. The museum carries out this mission through changing exhibitions and programming that: build an understanding of cartoonists andcartoon art; illustrate the scope of Schulz’s multi-faceted career; communicate the stories, inspirations and influences of Charles Schulz; and celebrate the life of Charles Schulz and the Peanuts characters.

LOCATION
The Charles M. Schulz Museum is located 50 minutes north of San Francisco by car on Highway 101. The Museum is located at 2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa, California, 95403.

HOURS
Weekdays Monday thru Friday (except Tuesdays*) 11am – 5pm
Saturday & Sunday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays*
*Open every day throughout the summer (Memorial Day through Labor Day)

ADMISSION FEES
Free – Museum Members, Children 3 and under
$5.00 – Children 4-18, college students with valid I.D. card, and Seniors 62+
$10.00 – Adults

Charles M. Schulz Museum & Research Center • 2301 Hardies Lane Santa Rosa, CA 95403

Here’s a trio of original cels in the book – and now on display at the Schulz Museum (click to enlarge):

Deadline Hollywood broke the news this morning that 20th Century-Fox and Blue Sky Studios will produce a new feature length movie starring Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. The film is targeted for release on November 25, 2015, a date that commemorates the 65th anniversary of the comic strip by Charles Schulz (which began Oct. 2nd 1950), and the 50th anniversary of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas (which first aired December 9th, 1965). It’ll also be 35 years since the last theatrical Peanuts animated feature, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!), from Paramount in 1980.

Steve Martino (Horton Hears A Who!, Ice Age: Continental Drift) will direct from a screenplay is by Craig Schulz and the writing team of Bryan Schulz & Cornelius Uliano. Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz, who are Schulz’s son and grandson, will produce with Uliano.

Since Schulz death in 2000, I’ve been impressed how well the Schulz family has managed the Peanuts characters and brand. Unlike the Dr. Suess estate, the Schulz team has produced a wonderful direct-to-video film, a new comic book (from KaBoom) and merchandising that honors Charles Schulz and his legacy. Let us hope that this move into CG territory is handled with the same good taste.

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Boom! Studios celebrates it’s seventh year of amazing comics with panels! exclusives! sketch covers! and a public party on Thursday!  Of course, there’s stuff for kids of all ages from their Kaboom! imprint!

For Immediate Release:

BOOM! STUDIOS at
COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL 2012
BOOTH #2743

BOOM! STUDIOS GUESTS INCLUDE:
HYPERNATURALS Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
FANBOYS VS ZOMBIES & HIGHER EARTH’s Sam Humphries
ELRIC: THE BALANCE LOST &  STARBORN’s Chris Roberson
PLANET OF THE APES’ Gabriel Hardman & Corrina Beckho
28 DAYS LATER & VALEN THE OUTCAST’s Michael Alan Nelson
SUPURBIA’s Grace Randolph & Russell Dauterman
I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE FUNNIER’s Shannon Wheeler
FANBOYS VS ZOMBIES’s Jerry Gaylord

along with KABOOM! GUESTS:
ADVENTURE TIME’s Pen Ward
MARCELINE AND THE SCREAM QUEENS’ Meredith Gran
ADVENTURE TIME MINI COMIC’s Jon Chad
SNARKED’s Roger Langridge
PEANUTS’ Shane Houghton, Vicki Scott, Matt Whitlock, Paige Braddock & Justin Thompson
Travis Hill
Mike Holmes
Braden Lamb
Shelli Paroline

CCI EXCLUSIVES!

EXTERMINATION #1
CCI EXCLUSIVE
ART BY PAUL AZACETA (DAREDEVIL, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN)
(ONLY 500 AVAILABLE!)
$10

HIGHER EARTH #1
CCI EXCLUSIVE
ART BY DALTON ROSE (SACRIFICE)
(ONLY 500 AVAILABLE)
$10

HYPERNATURALS #1
CCI EXCLUSIVE