Whatever happened to...?

William Messner-Loebs' run on the Comico version of Jonny Quest was without equal. His version of Jonny's departed mother was far better than Hanna-Barbera's own, when they got around to telling the tale. His other work (Journey, The Flash, Wonder Woman) wasn't half bad, either. It's a shame that, after a whopping four years away from the comic-book biz, the editors seem to have forgotten his name.

Whatever happened to Bill Messner-Loebs?

LATER: There's more, from Newsarama.

I love the web

And now, for your amuseuemt and edification: Six of the best known motion pictures of the last half century (plus three iconic slasher films)... Condensed to thirty seconds and re-enacted by bunnies.

Darth Tater

Once a potato, always a potato.

It's getting easier to spot these things

You know, it really doesn't bother me that the Democrats are making a concerted effort to take over the "Letters to the Editor" section of every newspaper in the country. I've seen plenty of letter-writing campaigns before, and every one of them warns participants to write their own letter and not to copy the sample. And many ignore that advice. What surprises me is that newspapers are falling for it.

I saw it in the Wall Street Journal, and at Boortz' Nealz Nuze. Considering the sources, I was prepared to believe the phenomenon wasn't as widespread as they made it sound. So I conducted an experiment, which I encourage you to duplicate. Do a Google search for the first few words of the letter: "President Bush is endangering my retirement and the retirements of millions..." (No need to go beyond that: Google limits its search queries to ten words.)

The WSJ reports five nearly-identically-worded letters. I get seventeen, although the further you read, the more they begin to paraphrase. Nobody bothers to change that first sentence, though. (But then, my sample is skewed: That's what I searched for.) And that's only the papers whose letter columns are web-searchable.

Here's someone who claims to have actually written the letter, and of course I've no reason to doubt it--other than those other sixteen results. (Scroll down to the fourth post, from "LNAB".)

Great casting

I don't want to get into the various reasons why I (unlike so many people I know) am not utterly enthralled by the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and am not counting the days until the release of the big-screen movie, but I have to say it was a stroke of genius to cast Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android. Can't you just hear that lovely, contemptuous voice saying:

Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust or just fall apart where I'm standing?