Wednesday, January 28, 2009

No Fan is a (Fantasy) Island

The recent passing of Ricardo Montalban -- and a nugget of info about the man that I gleaned from NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE -- completed a most astonishing "daily double" of sorts for me. According to the NR piece, Montalban -- whose wonderful turn as the Kim Possible villain Senor Senior Senior meant far more to me, in a fannish sense, than any appearance as a eugenic superman and would-be world dictator or shill for cars with "Corinthian leather" ever will -- was a longtime supporter of NATIONAL REVIEW and even did subscription promotions for the magazine. So what, you say. Well, this comes on the heels of learning that, prior to hitting it big in the role of Christopher Lee's sidekick Nick Nack in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, Herve Villechaize spent a period of time in the early 1970s doing inking for, would you believe, Harvey Comics. (No, I'm not able to definitely recognize his work, though some of the RICHIE RICH stories of the period feature unpleasantly "thin" inking that is unlike any other inking ever done on the character. The fact that this individual was apparently employed for only a short time -- and the additional fact that Villechaize is known to have worked for Harvey for only a couple of months -- suggests that this unusual inking might actually be Villechaize's work.)

Two of my personal interests -- conservatism and Harvey Comics -- bound together in this unlikely duo. Ain't fandom great?

Check back this weekend for new reviews, including some extensive comments on IDW Publishing's new COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE collection, the first volume of which I've just completed.

No comments: