2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 24: And, unto us, a Superman is born!

Yeah, he has super vision but not in the back of his head!

We all know that Superman is Jesus, right? So much has already been written about the parallels between the Lamb of God and the Man of Steel that I don't really have to rehash it all for you here. Suffice it to say, many people have seen the Superman mythos as a Christian allegory, even though the character's creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) were Jewish. I've gotta admit, the theory makes sense. John and Martha Kent, for instance, make pretty plausible stand-ins for Joseph and Mary. Superman even died and came back to life, just like Whatshisname.

Anyway, I couldn't think of a better way of ending this 2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar than a whole bunch of Superman parodies, again mostly drawn from Comics Outta Context. Enjoy and have a lovely holiday season!

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 23: Even more Batman ones

"No jellybeans? But isn't this Easter Island?"

Batman. The Dark Knight. The Caped Crusader. The World's Greatest Detective. Whatever you may call him, he's been appearing in comics since 1939 and has crossed over to every possible medium since then. After so many decades of TV shows, movies, video games, and merchandise, is there anything left to say about this character? Probably not. But that hasn't stopped me from trying. I have a bunch of old, unposted Batman comics and cartoons left over on my computer, so I thought we'd just blitz through all of them in one post.

Ready? Then let's proceed. You wanna get nuts? Come on! Let's get nuts!

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 22: A whole bunch of Nancys

How does Nancy get her hair to do... that?

The beloved Comics Outta Context may be gone forever, but there is still at least one comics account on Twitter that has continued to delight me throughout 2024. Obviously, I'm referring to Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller, maintained by the indispensable Johnny Callicutt. Each day, he will post panels or even full comic strips from the super-long-lived comic strip Nancy. What's great about the account is that it pulls from different eras -- from the early days when the strip was known as Fritzi Ritz and focused on Nancy's adult caretaker to the more recent strips written and drawn by Olivia James. But, as the name indicates, the focus is on Nancy's peak decades when the strip was done by the great Ernie Bushmiller (1905-1982).

The simplicity of Nancy makes it perfect for the kind of parodies I do, so here are a bunch of those all at once.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 20: The biggest traffic ticket I ever got

"I hope nobody notices my missing door!" is a weird thing to say out loud.

Let me tell you about the most expensive traffic ticket I ever received. 

It was the early 2000s and my sister Catherine had just moved to a small town outside Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I live a few hours away in Illinois, and I decided to make the journey to her house for Christmas by car even though I hate to drive and have zero sense of direction. Sure enough, I got badly lost several times on the way but finally arrived in Indiana, shaken but intact. I stayed (in a motel) for a couple days and tried to enjoy the holiday festivities, but I was dreading the trip back.

My fears were justified. When I got back on the highway and had been driving for maybe 30 or 40 minutes, I suddenly realized that it had been a while since I'd seen a posted speed limit sign. I had no idea what the speed limit was, so I just tried to keep pace with traffic. Well, around that time, I noticed a police car nearby and decided to slow down to 55 just to be on the safe side. The officer who ticketed me later said this was my big mistake, the thing that told him I was up to no good. He tailed me for several miles but then pulled off to the side of the highway. I thought he'd given up on me and was relieved. I should not have been.

I kept driving, still going about 55. A few minutes later, this cop came roaring back into traffic with his lights flashing and (to my memory) siren wailing. In my rearview mirror, I could see he was weaving through the cars trying to catch up to somebody. I assumed there was an emergency somewhere. Turns out, the emergency was me. When I pulled over, the police officer stepped out of his vehicle and approached my car, citation book in hand. He seemed to be in a bad mood. I knew I couldn't have been speeding, so what was my big crime? Expired tags.

Now, here is where my version of the story diverges from the cop's version of the story. According to the cop, I knew perfectly well that my tags were expired, and I had sneakily tried to avoid him so he wouldn't notice. He'd known from the start that I was doing something underhanded, but it had taken him a few minutes to figure out exactly what. That's why he'd pulled over the first time. Eventually, he cracked the case: I was a fiendish criminal mastermind who had knowingly tried to drive though the great state of Indiana with Illinois tags that had expired a few weeks previously.

My version of the story was that I'd recently changed apartments and had forgotten to forward my mail to my new place. Therefore, I hadn't gotten a reminder from the state of Illinois that my tags had expired at the end of November. Besides, it's not like I was hurting the state of Indiana. The officer did not believe my story at all and wrote me a substantial ticket, the largest I'd ever received. I was really strapped for cash in those days, so it stung. For the next decade and a half, I vowed never to drive in the state of Indiana again. When I wanted to visit my sister, I did so by Amtrak.

But that's a whole other story.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 19: Meanwhile on 'Three's Company'

She zinged you pretty good there, Stanley.

I was alive for the entire run of Three's Company from 1976 to 1984, but I didn't really watch the show until it was in syndicated reruns. It was one of those sitcoms that would be on every weekday after school. That puts it in the same basic category as The Brady Bunch and Happy Days. I didn't necessarily seek these shows out; I simply watched them because they were on TV. That's how it was in the pre-internet, pre-streaming days. Choice was barely a factor in entertainment. 

Looking back, I wonder what percentage of the jokes on Three's Company went sailing over my head. I'm pretty sure one episode was about a "call girl," and I had no idea what that term meant. I certainly could not have understood the many, many impotence jokes directed at poor, beleaguered Stanley Roper (Norman Fell) by his wife Helen (Audra Lindley). It's possible that Three's Company introduced me to a lot of risque topics.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 17: The Elf on the Shelf Isn't Fun at Parties!

Don't be that guy.

Each family has its own Christmas traditions. Was The Elf in the Shelf a tradition in your home growing up? The book didn't come out until 2005, so it was way past my time. On the other hand, the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated special premiered in 1964, so it should have been a major part of my childhood. But my dad didn't approve of that one for some reason. He didn't like the special's depiction of Santa Claus, I believe. So we rarely watched it. It doesn't pay to antagonize your parents at Christmas.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas were welcome in the Blevins household, however, as were such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and various versions of A Christmas Carol. Again, though, my dad couldn't tolerate the musical version, Scrooge! (1970), so that one was was verboten. Even today, I'd feel guilty about watching it.

As for today's comic, it was another one written especially for this project. I don't really know much about The Elf on the Shelf, so I wrote him as a petty, pedantic jerk.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 14: CHEESE!

Show those pearly... uh, grays.

How's your Advent going? Mine's going okay, I guess. I haven't been religious in years. Maybe I never was. I went to church a lot as a kid, but it wasn't my idea. My mother was Catholic, which meant we were all Catholic. My dad didn't grow up in any particular religion, but he converted to Catholicism to marry my mom. Took classes and everything. I remember spending some of the most boring hours of my life at a church in Flushing called St. Robert Bellarmine. Mostly these were Sunday masses. But there are a few extra holy days scattered throughout the year when you have to go to church on, like, a Tuesday night or something.  

I remember that one of these extra masses happened the very same night the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol was airing on TV. I didn't want to miss any of it, so I was extremely anxious for that mass to end. If I recall correctly, we got home just as the movie was starting, so I didn't miss much or any of it, thank God. The ghoulish looking fellow in today's comic reminds me a bit of the ghost of Jacob Marley. This is yet another comic panel I found through Comics Outta Context and repurposed.

P.S. Has a professional photographer ever told you to say "cheese"? Is that something that happens in real life?

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 13: The unpleasant side of my personality (WARNING: SKIP THIS ONE)

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 12: Another Batman one already? Yes!

What can I say? I watch a lot of Batman.

Most of the comics and cartoons I've used in this series have been oldies. I've had them saved to my hard drive for a while and just wanted to post them to this blog for posterity before deleting them from my computer. But today's cartoon is brand new and written especially for this project. A couple of days ago, I saw an ad for a Batman Unmasked action figure and thought, "What if Bruce Wayne walked around looking like that? Would Commissioner Gordon finally figure it out?" Honestly, he might not figure it out even then. Neil Hamilton's version of the character is a pretty dim bulb.

2024 Fun Comics Advent Calendar, Day 11: Tina and the Comedy Factory

I just noticed that I never actually mentioned Tina Fey's last name in this comic. Whoops!

This was originally going to be a much longer piece. I had planned to do the complete ending scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Lorne Michaels as Willy Wonka and Tina Fey as Charlie Bucket. I even had dreams of selling it to a humor website for $50 or so. But as I got further into it, I realized my plan wouldn't be practical and that no editor would buy it anyway. So I just kind of bailed on it after a few panels. Those panels are visible above. I think this is about as good as it was ever going to be. Sorry or you're welcome, I don't know which.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 10: Elsewhere in the Green Lantern-verse

You know Green Lantern, right? The muscly, masked dude in green who flies around and wears a power ring that he has to charge occasionally? Yeah, that guy. I'd say he's up there in the pantheon of superheroes. He's not in Superman or Batman territory, though. Like, Superman and Batman were on Super Friends right from the beginning, but it took a few seasons before GL joined. And he did eventually get a movie, but it didn't do well, and they didn't make any more. He had a TV show, too, but it only lasted 26 episodes.

Just like Superman and Batman have their own supporting characters, some of whom are popular enough to merit spinoffs across multiple media, Green Lantern has his own colorful repertory company. Today's comic spotlights the Guardians of the Universe, a council of wise, immortal aliens who (I think) mainly sit around in a semi-circle and have meetings. I saw a picture of them somewhere on social media and decided to turn it into a little slapstick adventure. Oh, and the sound effects panel is yellow because... well, if you know, you know.

 

Before we leave the topic of Green Lantern, here's a picture of him just lounging on a pile of pillows in Stewie Griffin's room.

Welcome to pillow world, Bri!

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 9: Joy to the world! Your God is dead!

Did you find all six differences?

What's the holiday season without a little harmless blasphemy, huh? Relax. God's got a sense of humor about these things, I'm sure of it.

Today, we pay backhanded tribute to cartoonist Henry Boltinoff (1914-2001), who worked for decades in both comic strips and books. He's what you'd call a journeyman. His magnum opus, however, may be a long-running newspaper feature called Hocus Focus in which he would present two seemingly identical versions of a cartoon and ask us, the readers, to spot six obscure differences between them. I used to pore over such puzzles as a kid, though I never got good at finding the differences.

"Find all six differences" cartoons are still fairly common even today. You'll see them in Slylock Fox on a regular basis, for instance, and they're still used as filler in newspapers, newsletters, and fliers. Recently, at the office complex where I work, there was a cartoon like this projected on a monitor across from the elevators. I suppose it was there to keep people entertained while they waited.

I decided to take one of Henry's rather innocent cartoons from 1959 (plucked from Comics Outta Context) and take it in a darker direction. Or maybe Henry's cartoon wasn't so innocent! Obviously, these college students from 1959 are pretty square looking, but one of them is concerned enough about the state of the world that he worries the new year will not arrive. Can you sympathize with him? I can.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 8: In the Malph of Madness

Here, we see how comedy is subjective.

What, you thought we were getting through this without some Happy Days content? If you've been following this blog at all for the last few years, you know that I've been the co-host of a Happy Days podcast since 2018. We're currently making our way through an early '80s animated spinoff of the long-running sitcom called The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang. 

On the cartoon version of Happy Days, Don Most reprises his role as Ralph Malph and is there to serve a few basic functions, namely to be the show's resident coward (a la Shaggy from Scooby-Doo) and to crack corny jokes. Rest assured, he does plenty of both. His "comedy" tends to provoke groans from his friends and outright anger from his enemies. The latter is depicted above. The angry fellow in the middle is again something I found through Comics Outta Context. Anyone know who he was or where he originally appeared?

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 7: In which I get annoyingly artsy

Any minute now.

Like I said at the beginning of this series, I've been a comics fan almost my entire life. I was introduced to the medium at a very early age through newspaper comic strips, with Beetle Bailey, Peanuts, Hagar the Horrible, Hi & Lois, and the formidable Bloom County being among my favorites. My love of "sequential art" deepened as I discovered Marvel and DC, mainly through "spinner racks" of cheap comic books at the local drug store. (Was the original Crisis on Infinite Earths a major part of your childhood, too? How about the Ambush Bug miniseries? Spider-Man's costume change?)

It wasn't really until my late teens, however, that I discovered the weirder, edgier, darker side of comics. First, there was the documentary Crumb (1994). Then there were the graphic novels I discovered in the college library. I would spend hours poring over those, plus Art Spiegelman's anthology RAW. And my trusty guidebook was Scott McCloud's seminal Understanding Comics (1993). I think the comic strip above is my attempt at doing something McCloud-ish that plays with the medium of comics, using repeated panels to suggest the passage of time. The artwork is again cribbed from the much-missed Comics Outta Context Twitter account.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 6: Alice in Somethingland

They totally ripped off that Tom Petty video.

Have you ever heard a good answer to the Mad Hatter's famous riddle about why a raven is like a writing desk? Of the explanations I've heard, the one I like best is that Poe wrote on both of them. (He wrote about a raven while literally writing on a desk. Get it?) But even that didn't satisfy me, so I scripted the vignette you see above. Actually, this little comic was my way of reusing some famous artwork by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914). In particular, I like the expression he gave Alice here. You can tell she's just about had it with the Hatter.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 5: The Silver Surfer crossover you didn't know you needed!

Filmed not too far from where I live!

There used to be a great Twitter account called Comics Outta Context that would regularly post random panels from old comic books, mainly DC and Marvel. I'd often use these tweets as the basis for comics of my own. That account is long gone, but I held on to some of the parodies I did, like the one you see above. I think a lot of the comics I'm going to post this month with come from that same stash.

By the way, if you happen to run into the person who ran the Comics Outta Context account, tell him (or her) to drop me a line.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 4: The Adventures of Batman & Robin

What, you think superheroes are oblivious to name-calling?

For the first few years of my life (1975-1981), my family lived in a little ranch-style house in a cozy little neighborhood in Flint, Michigan, right down the street from my rambunctious Uncle John and his family. I've retained quite a few memories from those days, and some of the fondest revolve around Channel 20, a local independent UHF station we used to watch quite a lot. It showed mostly (or all?) reruns back then. Typical offerings included Lost in Space, The Adventures of Superman, The Abbott & Costello Show, and, best of all, Batman.

Thanks to MeTV, I've gotten to revisit Batman in recent years, and the series and its characters have again taken up residence in my imagination. Hence the terribly-drawn comic above. Please forgive me for it.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 2: "The Next Ten Commandments"

I liked the detail of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I grew up Catholic and spent many hours of my life (through no choice of my own) at a church called St. Robert Bellarmine in Flushing, Michigan. It was a very plain, almost barn-like structure when my family started going there in the early 1980s, but the parishioners raised money and made improvements to it over the years. Eventually, it became a pretty impressive place of worship. I mean, it won't put any cathedrals to shame, but for a church in a smallish Midwestern town, it's not bad.

One of the most prominent additions to the main sacristy was a series of stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible. I generally didn't have much interest in what the priest was saying, so I'd stare at those windows, one of which depicted Moses reading the Ten Commandments. I suppose that memory stayed with me and eventually inspired today's comic.

The last time I ever set foot in St. Robert Bellarmine was in August 2018 for my father's funeral. The place looked better than ever.

2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 1: Meanwhile, on the Starship Enterprise...

Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (both Jewish!)

Two Decembers ago, I posted a series on this blog called The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar. It was 25 continuous days of brief, bite-size articles about Ed Wood, his life, and his films. The idea was to do the blogging equivalent of an advent calendar: lots of little presents instead of one big one. I think my modest experiment yielded some fun results, and I wanted to try something similar but not exactly the same this year.

A Heathcliff parody.

Many people think that this blog is only about Ed Wood, and that's admittedly a fair conclusion to draw. There is a lot of content about Eddie on this site. But it's not the only thing I do! If you go to the Dead 2 Rights main page, for instance, you'll see the logo at the top, and underneath it are several clickable labels: Ed Wood Wednesdays, Happy Days, Comedy Classics, Comics Fun!, and Best of D2R. Notice how Eddie is only one of those.

This December, I wanted to shine some light on the oft-neglected Comics Fun! part of the blog. What is this? Well, I've been obsessed with comics and cartoons from early childhood, and I've been making them since I was able to hold a crayon. In junior high and high school, I used to draw silly little cartoons on notebook paper and pass them around in class, much to the annoyance of my teachers. My characters included Iffy the Troll, The Apple Scruffs, Margin Man, and an unfortunate family called The Melties who were all made from wax and yet who insisted on going outside on sunny days.

Unfortunately, I've had basically no art training apart from what I got in elementary school, and my drawing skills are minimal to nonexistent. My handwriting is a complete disgrace, and it's rare for me to draw anything with pens or pencils on actual paper these days. But I still want to make comics and cartoons. So my usual method is to patch it together from photos and artwork I've found on the internet. Occasionally, I'll take an existing comic strip and merely change the dialogue or the caption. If the artwork I want simply doesn't exist, I'll "draw" it very crudely in Microsoft Paint. (Yes, Microsoft Paint!)

After years of posting this material on the internet, I've learned that people do not enjoy my comics very much. Their typical reactions range from total indifference to mild dislike. A few years ago, I submitted some of what I considered my "best stuff" to an editor once and received a swift but polite rejection. And yet, I keep creating this material. Why? Because I find it funny. This is stuff that amuses me. These dumb, poorly-made comics and cartoons keep accumulating on my hard drive, and I can't bring myself to throw them away.

And so, until Christmas 2024 finally arrives, I will be sharing some homemade comics each day with my readers. That comic strip at the top is the first example. Basically, I saw a screenshot of a Star Trek video game that had been posted to Facebook, and I turned it into a little tragicomic saga about Kirk and Spock's working relationship. Enjoy or don't. Totally up to you.

The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar, Day 25: Seinfeld, "The Postponement" (1995)

Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Richards, and an unknown extra on Seinfeld.

Some advent calendars last 24 days, others 25. Technically, the season of advent ends on Christmas Eve, so my obligation to this verkakte series ended yesterday. However, as it happens, the weather this Christmas weekend has stranded me in my apartment with little to do, so you're getting a 25th day of Ed-Vent. Lucky you.

On the third day of this series, I reviewed "The Chinese Restaurant," a 1991 episode of NBC's Seinfeld in which the characters attempt to attend a one-night-only showing of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) but do not succeed. Unfolding in real time in one location, this highly unusual episode proved to be a turning point in the sitcom's history. It also gave Ed's most famous film some of its most mainstream exposure ever. That Seinfeld has been seen by millions of people for over 30 years. Surely, at least some of those viewers must have been curious enough to track down Plan 9.

Running gags and callbacks were the lifeblood of Seinfeld, so it's not surprising that the show eventually returned to Plan 9 in an episode called "The Postponement." It took four and a half years, though, and those were four and a half eventful years. When "The Chinese Restaurant" debuted, Seinfeld was struggling through its second season, barely avoiding cancellation. By the time "The Postponement" aired on September 28, 1995, Seinfeld was in its seventh season and one of the most popular shows on television, airing as part of NBC's powerhouse Thursday night lineup alongside other smash hits like Friends and E/R.

In some ways, "The Postponement" shows how Seinfeld had evolved from its primitive early days. The iconic wraparound segments with Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) performing standup comedy had mostly been jettisoned, for instance. Starting with the 1994 episode "The Big Salad," the show started filming more outdoor scenes on the famed New York Street set at CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles. Now, instead of showing Jerry doing standup, Seinfeld preferred to show its characters walking down that gloriously fake New York street, chatting about trivial matters. "The Postponement" has numerous little moments like that. In fact, it's one of those New York walk-and-talk scenes that leads to the Ed Wood/Plan 9 content in "The Postponement." 

Jerry and Kramer spot a Plan 9 flyer on a lamppost.

Throughout the episode, Jerry and his neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards) squabble over a couple of very silly issues. First, Jerry is shocked when Kramer says he'd turn Jerry in to the police if he committed a murder. ("Who's to say I wouldn't be next?" Kramer reasons.) Secondly, Jerry is annoyed that Kramer has been drinking so many café lattes recently. They're walking down the street one day, debating that second issue, when Jerry spies a flyer for another one-night-only showing of Plan 9. Kramer agrees to go with him, but when they get to the theater, Kramer tries to sneak in a café latte—a direct violation of the venue's strictly-enforced "no outside drinks" rule. When Kramer spills his latte and is caught by an usher, Jerry is only too happy to rat him out. In classic Seinfeld fashion, Jerry and Kramer's two seemingly unrelated problems have intersected.

I had a strong memory of the Plan 9 references in "The Chinese Restaurant," but I had no recollection of the Plan 9 material in "The Postponement." Revisiting the latter, I understand why. The Jerry/Kramer story, while quite funny, is a minor subplot. The main plot has a panicked George (Jason Alexander) using emotional manipulation to delay his upcoming marriage to his sensible girlfriend Susan (Heidi Swedberg). There's also a related story in which Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) confesses her romantic problems to the seemingly friendly Rabbi Glickman (Bruce Mahler), only to be mortified when he blabs Elaine's secrets to everyone he knows. (To make matters worse, Rabbi Glickman has a cable TV show where he embarrasses both Elaine and George.)

While screening "The Postponement," written by Larry David and directed by Andy Ackerman, I realized how serialized and insular Seinfeld had become by its seventh season, almost like a soap opera. Most obviously, George and Susan's rocky romantic relationship is a sprawling, tragicomic saga that spans several seasons. This "postponement" kerfuffle is just one of many, many problems they had over the years. Meanwhile, the café latte incident at the movie theater sets up a Kramer story in a future episode. And Elaine and Kramer discuss the events of a previous Seinfeld in which they team up to kill an annoying dog. While "The Postponement" pretty much works as a standalone story, it's more enjoyable to viewers who are very familiar with Seinfeld's characters and ongoing plotlines. It's like the middle movie in a trilogy.

Arguably, "The Postponement" features as much or even more Plan 9 content than "The Chinese Restaurant." First, there is the flyer that Jerry spies on a lamp post while talking about lattes with Kramer. It leads to this dialogue:

JERRY: Hey, look at this! Plan 9 from Outer Space is playing tomorrow night! One show only!

KRAMER: I've always wanted to see this.

JERRY: Y'know, I was supposed to see this five years ago. I was in a Chinese restaurant with George and Elaine, and we got all screwed up trying to get a table, and we missed it.

KRAMER: Yeah, well, let's do it, huh?

JERRY: All right.

The flyer itself is kind of neat. Plan 9 is said to be playing at the Paragon Theater for "one evening only" on September 22, 1995. (That would have been a Friday, which makes sense.) The title of the movie is printed in what appears to be Hobby Headline font in a pinkish-purplish hue with a picture of the planet Saturn in the background. We see at least three copies of the flyer in the episode, so presumably there must be more copies in the vast Seinfeld archives somewhere.

A few scenes later, Kramer and Jerry are waiting in line outside the Paragon Theater, still debating the café latte matter, and we get to see the iconic Plan 9 from Outer Space poster on the wall behind them. This particular Paragon must be a repertory house, since the other posters we can see are all for classic movies, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Long, Long Trailer (1953). I suppose the other extras waiting in line are all there to see Plan 9, which is nice. The movie has garnered a decent turnout, probably due to the interest stirred in Ed by the Oscar-winning biopic Ed Wood (1994), which had only been released on VHS a few months before this episode.

These newly-converted Ed Wood fans are a sedate-looking bunch. The only potential weirdo among them is an intense-looking guy who wears his shoulder-length blonde hair combed straight back and carries a paperback book in the pocket of his sport coat. I've definitely seen guys like this at Ed Wood marathons. Good thing the Paragon doesn't have a policy against bringing in outside literature.

An intense extra (far right) attends Plan 9 on Seinfeld.