Last year, I was lucky enough to meet Martha Sigall, the 96-year-young former inker and painter who worked in what some consider the golden age of cartoonmaking in Hollywood. You name it, she worked on it, over the past eighty years.
I had the opportunity to sit in on a Q&A with her, and then had the pleasure of chatting with her afterward, and she couldn’t have been nicer.
Martha Sigall, courtesy of the culvercityhistoricalsociety.org
We talked about living in New York, where she was born and lived until age seven, and the brutal winters that can be had in the Northeast. She told me her family moved her out West after a relative out there became ill, and they went out to California to take care of them.
As a young teenager Mrs. Sigall ran errands for the workers at the ink and paint department at the Leon Schlesinger studio, the home of Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies. While there, she one night secretly finished the inking of a series of cels that a coworker hadn’t finished before the weekend. Monday morning, when that worker went to finish her inking, she realized that all her work had in fact been submitted the Friday night before. Within hours it had gotten around what had happened, and Mr. Schlesinger personally asked Sigall to his office and asked her if she had indeed finished the leftover cels. He told her she’d done a wonderful job and when she turned 18 if she wanted a job at the studios, she’d find one waiting.
Dion is out this week, which means that J steers the TARDIS back to “Doctor Who” again for the appendix to our 
Dion and contributor J. Blake are back and ready to kick 2014 off with a duesy of a topic: Before you had the DVD, VCR, or even the Multiplex, how else could fans continue to digest their favorite films after seeing them in the theater? Well the duo discuss the short-lived 1970’s genre called the 
Now that Doctor Who‘s big 50th anniversary year is over, and it left fans with rather a lot to chew over—a proper new companion, the first big multi-Doctor anniversary story in thirty years (we don’t talk about Dimensions in Time, thankyewverymuch), and of course a regeneration. The Podwits’ lifelong Whovians, J. Marcus and Brian, are here to go through it all. Join them as they delve down into the joys and disappointments of what was an eventful year in Doctor Who in our third annual “Year in Re-vWho” podcast!
The Podwits themselves are god-knows-where, celebrating whatever bizarre holidays that get celebrated ’round this time of year in Podwits-land. It’s probably best we don’t ask too many questions about that. But while they’re away, here for your holiday listening enjoyment is one of our favorite podcasts from the past, our second cartoon special from February 2013! Enjoy a second helping of this yummy podcast and happy holidays to you all!
Hello there! J. Marcus here. So, my friends did the best thing possible and got me “Man Of Steel” for Christmas. This means I finally get to see it, and bring my critique to the world.
Dion and contributor J. Blake are back for what is probably their BIGGEST (and LONGEST) Side Cast yet! After an extended intro of probably the duo’s worst college drinking story, they ease into the Christmas Spirit by way of Whittier Alaska, the