A Lesson To Be Learned: All the pundits and law professors I heard said it might take weeks to select the twelve jurors and six alternates for the Donald Trump Hush Moola Trial. They started today, the third day of this trial, with six selected…then they lost two…but by the end of the day, they had all twelve regular jurors and one alternate. In spite of what the experts said.

A lot of folks are sending me their lists of what should have been on that list of important comedy albums…and some of their lists have thirty or forty entries. If the folks who picked the 13 had been able to pick that many, I'm sure many or most of those additional names would be on it. My trouble with the list is not that So-and-So was left off. It's that it's only thirteen records. No matter who makes the selections, if they can only pick thirteen, they're going to leave off a lot of deserving So-and-So's.

This weekend, the streaming/cable channel Catchy Comedy is going to run something like forty hours of Looney Tunes. If you have kids and a DVR with room for all those shows, you could probably record all those cartoons and from then on, your children could watch nothing else. More on this Bugs Binge over at the Catchy Comedy website.

People keep writing to ask if Sergio Aragonés and I will be at Comic-Con International in San Diego this coming July. Here's my answer: My ankle is healing nicely and it'll take another accident of that severity to keep me away. Sergio hasn't decided yet. When he does, you'll read about it here.

I saw an item on the news about how the Red Lobster restaurant chain is in serious financial trouble. The guy saying this launched into a long explanation about finances that I didn't fully understand but he seemed to be saying that the chain was losing money because they were offering Endless Shrimp and people kept coming in and eating Endless Shrimp. If that is indeed the problem, I just might have a solution for it.

I guess I knew about this somewhere in the rarely-visited recesses of my mind but the Library of Congress has this thing called the National Recording Registry which — well, it'll be simpler if I just steal a description off its website…

Each year, the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress chooses 25 recordings showcasing the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage in order to increase preservation awareness. The diversity of nominations received highlights the richness of the nation's audio legacy and underscores the importance of assuring the long-term preservation of that legacy for future generations. Currently, there are 600 works/titles on the National Recording Registry.

I'm not sure if some of the million-selling records in it are in any danger of not being available for future generations but I guess it's a noble program. Today, they added another batch of records to the list and one of them is This is a Recording, Lily Tomlin's first record. It's the thirteenth comedy album to be inducted (I guess that's the right word) and the first one by a female.

There are 650 records in the National Recording Registry and it strikes me that there oughta be more than 13 comedy records in there but the other twelve aren't bad choices. There are records by Tom Lehrer, Mort Sahl, Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks, Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg, Vaughn Meader, Bill Cosby, The Firesign Theater, George Carlin, Groucho Marx, Richard Pryor and Steve Martin. If it were up to me, I'd add in records by Robert Klein, Mike Nichols & Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, Allan Sherman, Monty Python and about forty others.

But if I had to pick just thirteen, it's not a bad thirteen…though I don't think Groucho's record is there because it's a great record but because it's Groucho. The whole list of 13 is here for your inspection and the link above will show you all 650 honored records.

You'll like this. It's a Pontiac commercial from 1969 and it features a great lineup of character actors: Mike Mazurki, Elisha Cook Jr, Lon Chaney Jr, J. Carroll Naish, Robert Strauss, Leo Gorcey and Broderick Crawford. Apparently, Jack Elam was busy that day…

Nice to have a day off from wondering what's going on in the Donald Trump trial. I'm fairly convinced he's going to be found guilty of something even if it's only the misdemeanor charge. Either that or the jury will deadlock and there will be a lot of screaming and delaying about trying him again. Right now, I think the big suspense is what kind of misbehavior he's going to commit in the courtroom, especially when Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels testifies. They may have to strap Donald down like Hannibal Lecter.

In the previous item, I said that Drew Carey owned the two restaurants in which Writers Guild members could dine for free during the recent strike. Someone told me that and they were wrong…so I was wrong. My pal Jeff Abraham set me straight. Carey is just a frequent diner at the two eateries and he arranged to pick up the tabs for WGA diners. I have corrected the item.

During the last two Writers Guild strikes, a lot of very wealthy performers donated in various ways to support the Guild. One was Drew Carey who's a steady customer of two local restaurants. As long as we were on strike, WGA members could eat at either one and he'd pay, plus I believe he also sent food to the picket lines. (During the previous strike, he had something like twenty-five pizzas sent to the WGA members protesting outside CBS and one of them responded with a sign that said, "Thanks, Drew, for sharing half your lunch with us!")

At the recent Writers Guild Awards ceremony, Mr. Carey spoke about why he was so generous…

If you're just joining this discussion, you might want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before you proceed.

Now then: I have a slew of e-mails from folks who wrote about the creator credits on The A-Team…a show I must admit was never on my radar or my TiVo. Most are telling me that the basic idea for the show came from NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff. Many of these folks quoted the following from Wikipedia or similar statements from other sources…

Brandon Tartikoff pitched the series to Cannell as a combination of The Dirty Dozen, Mission: Impossible, The Magnificent Seven, Mad Max, and Hill Street Blues, with "Mr. T driving the car."

If that's so — and I don't see anyone claiming it isn't — then Stan Lee was even wronger when he told Roy Thomas, me and probably other people that Stephen Cannell is considered the creator of the show because he had the basic idea.

I wish I'd known about Tartikoff's input when Stan said what he said to me. I would have explained to him that Tartikoff didn't claim a creator credit or any part of a creator credit for starting the process. He understood that doing something like that fell into the job description for the title he held and the salary he was paid. He also doubtlessly knew that if he had insisted on a creator credit on the resultant show, the Writers Guild would have blocked it and NBC probably would have fired him. Network execs have been sacked for things like that.

Other folks wrote me to ask about credits on other shows…and I'm afraid I'm not an expert on every show and whatever credits were negotiated or arbitrated. I believe I heard that H. Richard Hornberger, who wrote the books on which the M*A*S*H movie and TV show were based, declined a "Based on characters created by…" or somesuch credit on the TV series. Being offered that might have been a contractual matter relating to the books and not a Guild matter.

I also wouldn't doubt that the arbitrators sometimes get things wrong just as juries do. My main point — my only one, really — is that in TV and movies, there's a process via which creator credits are determined. You don't just deserve them because you came up with a vague, two-sentence premise that will still require a lot of work. The show or movie isn't really created at that point. At most, you've started the process…and that might be among the duties for which you're being paid.

This may or may not be the last installment of this series of articles. It depends on if further questions or issues are raised.

The Danish National Symphony Orchestra performs one of our favorite songs…

There's this controversy going on regarding writer-editor Roy Thomas being newly named as a co-creator of the Marvel character Wolverine. It's raging on several comic book forums and it's the kind of discussion I don't like — the kind that involves people I like and respect fighting with other people I like and respect. There are folks on the 'net who seem to enjoy watching others fight. They often remind me of the sentiment expressed by the eminent philosopher and hamburger-eater, J. Wellington Wimpy…

I don't like those fights. I said most of what I had to say about the Wolverine matter in Part 1 of this series of articles. Then in Part 2, I talked about how creator credits have often been a problem in the comic book industry. I'm writing this part because in the back-and-forth over Wolverine, someone on Facebook reposted a hunk of an interview Roy did some years ago. Read it and then I'll tell you why it struck a major chord with me. This is Roy…

I remember Stan [Lee] and I got into a good-natured argument ten years ago in L.A. I wasn't even working for Marvel at the time, and we had lunch. He talked about people like Stephen J. Cannell and television, saying if Cannell comes up with a general idea, and wants a few people running around doing this and that, and calls them the A-Team, he's created that. It says "Created by Stephen Cannell."

And I said yes, but that's a function of power, not of creativity. It means Stephen Cannell has the power to say he created that thing alone, and other people buy into that by agreeing to sell their work for work-for-hire, or for other financial deals. But it doesn't mean he really created the whole thing just because it says so on paper. That's a legal thing. It's caused by his power; you either play by his rules or you don't play. It doesn't mean he really created the A-Team all by himself.

I heard that theory from Stan not once, not twice but at least four friggin' times over a couple decades. We'd get to talking about how I felt Jack Kirby (and others) deserved consistent creator credits on Marvel properties — properties for which if anyone had been so credited, it was usually Stan alone.

Stan's position on who first suggested what changed from time to time, at least with me. Sometimes, in private, he could be surprisingly generous about such matters. But when he was in his "everything started with an idea from me" mode, he would say the same thing he said to Roy; that he deserved sole creator credit the same way Stephen J. Cannell got sole credit as the creator of The A-Team (and before that, The Rockford Files) because he had the initial idea.

Each time, I would tell Stan he was wrong. In fact, he was wrong two ways: The creator credits on a TV show are not determined on that basis and Mr. Cannell did not have sole credit as the creator of either show. If I'd been present when Roy told him the above, I would have told Roy that he was wrong too. In many areas, comics sometimes included, someone does exercise power to claim credit for the work of others but not on television shows produced under the Writers Guild contract.

This is not something new. The Writers Guild won the right to determine credits back in 1942 and it was a long, hard-fought battle but one the Screen Writers Guild (as it was then called) felt was necessary. Before that, you could write a script and the head of the studio could award the screen credit to his idiot nephew or himself or anyone. The actress Mae West famously, as a deal point in some of the contracts for films in which she starred, demanded that she receive the "Written by…" credit no matter who actually wrote the movie.

That's the kind of thing Roy was talking about when he mentioned credits being awarded as power plays…and it has happened in comics. But since '42, creator credits and writing credits on TV shows have been determined via a strict credits manual and principles established by the Guild. The rules have sometimes been refined and changed but there are rules…rules Mr. Cannell, by virtue of his long experience writing television, understood and played by. I'm going to simplify the rules way down here for you. On a TV series, they almost always have to do with who wrote the first episode, sometimes referred to as "the pilot."

If the show is based on existing material, the proper credit for the resultant series is usually not "Created by" but "Developed for Television by…" Example: The TV series M*A*S*H was based on a book and a movie. Larry Gelbart wrote the pilot that launched the series. Therefore, every episode of the series had the following credit…

This does not mean no one else contributed anything and Mr. Gelbart often spoke of how much input he got from Gene Reynolds, who was the guy who hired him. Somewhere in there, I'd wager, there were ideas and suggestions from Alan Alda and various folks at the studio and the network. It was not even Larry's idea to base a sitcom on the book and/or movie.

If the show is not based on existing material, the proper credit is "Created by…" For instance, the pilot for The A-Team was written by Frank Lupo and Stephen J. Cannell. Ergo, the creator credits on the series read as follows…

So Stan was wrong that Stephen Cannell is the creator of the A-Team because he had the original idea. Cannell may have had the original idea or maybe Frank Lupo had it or maybe they had it together or maybe someone at NBC said to one or both of them, "Y'know, we might be interested in a show about a bunch of people running around doing this and that." The creator credit doesn't tell us who had the idea. It tells us who took that idea and fleshed it out into a workable script for a first episode — one on which others could later build.

Like I said, I told Stan this over and over…and each time, he'd say, "Oh, that's interesting" and then a year or two or five later, I'd be telling him how I thought Jack should be credited as the co-creator of Fantastic Four and Hulk and X-Men and about eighty million other comics 'n' characters that many of us could itemize…

…and Stan would tell me that if Stephen Cannell comes up with a general idea, and wants a few people running around doing this and that, and calls them the A-Team, he's created that and it says "Created by Stephen Cannell" and then I had to explain it to him again. And meanwhile, Roy was wrong that the credit was a function of power. Cannell didn't own the studio for which he and Roy Huggins wrote the pilot for The Rockford Files. But since they did write the pilot, the "Created by" credits on that show looked like this…

As I understand it — and I don't think Huggins and Cannell had differing versions of this — it was Huggins who came up with the basic idea after James Garner said something like "I'd like to do a TV series where I play a detective." Huggins then wrote an outline and then Cannell wrote the teleplay. You'll notice that no part of the "Created by…" credit goes to James Garner. He was not a writer of the pilot.

The Guild bases all its determinations on "literary material." A lot of people have thought that they were entitled to a writer or creator credit on a TV show or movie because they claimed to have verbally tossed out an idea somewhere at some point. They may indeed have come up with an idea but they didn't write it down. It was never turned into "literary material," which the Guild defines thusly…

Literary material is written material and shall include stories, adaptations, treatments, original treatments, scenarios, continuities, teleplays, screenplays, dialogue, scripts, sketches, plots, outlines, narrative synopses, routines, and narrations, and, for use in the production of television film, formats.

Note the phrase: Written material. If you'd like to read the whole credits manual, it's available to read online or download here.

I am not bringing all this up to suggest that these rules should be applied to comic book creations of the past or even the present. No one ever agreed to that and I have a hard time believing that there will ever be a universally-accepted credits manual for comic books.

Still, if anyone ever wants to try assembling one, the Writers Guild model might be a good starting place. It's one of those "not a perfect system but it's the best we've got" things. It doesn't completely do away with arguments. It just cuts down on them and provides some standards for those discussions. There are still people who get furious and even litigious when they think they have been robbed of their rightful credit on a TV show or movie.

I was part of the Guild's Arbitration Committee on a couple of disputes where someone didn't like how we'd decided the credits should read and I was once…well, "furious" is way too strong a word. Let's say I was "disappointed" with the way the credits were decided on one project on which I worked. But I accepted the verdict and respected the process. I was glad we had a process because, like I said, it cuts down on situations where people I like and respect are fighting with other people I like and respect…like we have now over Wolverine, soon to be a major motion picture.

I have no idea who wrote the screenplay but the name (or names) you'll see on the screen will have been determined by a process developed over the years and employed on thousands of TV shows and movies. The process has been refined over the years and it's administered by neutral parties after studying all available written material and (probably) statements by participating writers at the time the movie is completed.

Meanwhile, the names you'll see credited as the creators of Wolverine will be there because one or more people in current management — people who weren't involved when the character was invented a half-century ago — made that decision. I wish comics didn't do it like that but, alas, they do.

TO READ THE NEXT PART IN THIS SERIES, CLICK HERE.

Here from a 1954 Jack Benny Program is a commercial for Lucky Strike cigarettes — with Mel Blanc and the Sportsmen Quartet…

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday and (possibly) only this today. It has nothing to do with the Donald Trump trial…which I am not trying to follow and certainly not in real time. Just busy. A long post about "creator" credits in television will be here as soon as I finish it, which I will do after I finish something else, which I will do after I finish something else. Your patience, as Alton Brown says, will be rewarded.

Livio Sellone, who sends me way too many questions, sent one I decided to answer here…

We all have heard of Jim Davis, right? The creator of the Garfield franchise! Ah…Good ol' Jim Davis. He gave birth to one of the greatest and most charismatic characters ever, Garfield, and his seemingly stupid pal Odie, whose purpose is to accompany Garfield on his many adventures and he's usually the victim of Garfield's nasty pranks. Jon Arbuckle is just a loser (just like you portrayed him in the Garfield and Friends cartoon), and I find him boring, so I don't feel the need to compliment Jim Davis for creating Jon Arbuckle.

So anyway…let's get to the point, old chap! I'm gonna ask you a very personal question: but how is Jim Davis as a person? Is he a nice and kind person? Just wanted to know. Is he../uhm.. (I don't want to be offensive) greedy as some people in the internet say? Cus, you know, he created Garfield with the sole purpose of making money. He knew Garfield would be a very marketable character.

How is Jim Davis as a person? You must have worked with him when you were writing episodes for Garfield and Friends and The Garfield Show.

Those two shows were by far the happiest experiences I ever had in the animation business and that would not have happened if Jim was not a very nice and very wise human being. I can't give him all the credit. Our other two Executive Producers — Lee Mendelson and Phil Roman — had a lot to do with it as did others. But all the benevolent, smart people in the world can't do much if the guy with Ultimate Veto Power is going to be non-benevolent and non-smart.

Yes, I worked a lot with Jim but he also gave me and others a lot of freedom and trust. I wish certain people I'd worked with in the cartoon biz could have seen the results and understood the correlation. The whole success story that is Garfield is not just because Jim hit on a great character. It's because he worked his tail off and also hired good people to assist and advise him and because — and this was key — he understood the appeal of his creation.

At other cartoon studios and in comics, I have worked with folks who owned or were in creative control of great characters and were clueless as to why people loved those characters. Just in the upper echelons of Hanna-Barbera — I'm talking now about people who had power there but weren't Bill or Joe — I worked for and with folks who viewed the output just as "product" and it was "product" they didn't (and probably couldn't ever) understand.

You often saw the results of this attitude in the cartoons but a better example of it was in the merchandising of Yogi, Scooby, Huck, Fred and Barney, and all the rest.  75% of it was badly-made, badly-designed, badly-drawn and often creatively wrong for the characters.  By contrast (and to my joy), there was no bad Garfield merchandise.  It was all well-made, well-designed, etc.  I watched Jim reject offers that the guys in that division of H-B would have grabbed.  There was a little closet in Jim's office building that held boxes of proposed Garfield toys and other merchandise that he'd rejected because its designers didn't meet the standards he demanded.  At Hanna-Barbera and a few other studios I worked for, they never rejected anything if the money was right.

So I got along great with Jim. Here's a very old photo of us together and — believe it or not — the person wearing the Garfield mask was Lorenzo Music. Honest…

I see Biden backers celebrating that he's even or slightly ahead in the latest polls. Calm down, everyone. I thought it was meaningless when those polls showed Trump a little ahead and it's just as meaningless now. Lots of things can and will happen before Election Day. If one of those guys was suddenly fifteen points ahead…okay, that might (might!) mean something. But that's unlikely to happen and we can still think of all sorts of game changing events that could swing the electorate wildly in one direction or another. It's too early to strap yourself into that roller coaster.

I'm sorry to hear that the Boston Market chain is teetering on extinction. Once upon a time, they were my favorite places to grab a quick meal, especially when I was in unfamiliar territory. This article by Emily Heil discusses the sad downfall of the brand but I can explain the decline even quicker: They just plain went from being good places to eat to being terrible places to eat.

I described my own "last straw" experience with them in this post and if you read that, make sure you read this follow-up. The nearest Boston Market to me now seems to be the one in Downey — a city that's 22 miles away and one which I never have any reason to visit. I'm not driving at the moment but if I was and if I had a reason to go to Downey, I don't think I'd count on that Boston Market even being there…or being worth patronizing.

This is the second part of at least three, probably) four. If you didn't read Part 1, read Part 1 first…

The current controversy over creator credits for the Marvel character Wolverine exists because the industry has always had a "thing" about creator credits. In the early days of comics, it wasn't a huge problem because the publishers kind of wanted their books to look like the strips that appeared in the newspapers. On the funny pages, Dick Tracy was inarguably "by Chester Gould" and Blondie was inarguably "by Chic Young," even if/when those two men employed assistants. Mutt & Jeff in the papers was "by Bud Fisher" even after Mr. Fisher had turned all the daily duties over to ghosts.

So in the then-new comic books, Superman was inarguably "by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster" and Batman was "by Bob Kane" even though both features were heavily assisted. Eventually though — maybe even around the time Jerry, Joe and Bob began asking for more money — most publishers got rid of creator credits. They were worried about having to pay more to someone whose name was linked to a popular feature. They were concerned about such a person demanding creative control or some say about the merchandising and exploitation of the property. They were frightened of a named "creator" being able to screw up or demand a chunk of the proceeds if the company and/or its intellectual property was sold…

…and they were especially panicked over the prospect of someone with a creator credit being able to make claims on the copyrights. Most of those creators were not legal employees but were regarded as pieceworkers and independent contractors. In some cases, their legal status vis-à-vis the publisher was kept vague, undefined and uncommitted to paper.

One of the dirty little secrets of the comic book business was — and this is largely past-tense — how little paperwork some publishers had to prove they owned what they claimed to own. You probably have more proof that you own your car than some putative owners of million-dollar comic book properties had at some point to prove they owned those properties.

Also in some cases, the guy who owned the company wanted himself listed as the creator of a hit property — for legal protection or maybe even just as a matter of ego.

Even as late as 1970 when Jack Kirby defected from Marvel to DC, he was unable to get a clause in his DC contract that said a new property created wholly by Jack Kirby would say "Created by Jack Kirby" on it. He was told they would never in a million/billion/zillion years ever allow that for anyone…but of course they eventually did. I got into comics in 1970 and heard even the great Mr. Kirby — who in hindsight, may have made his publishers more money than any other "independent contractor" ever in the field — told many, many things which could and would never be done for comic book writers or artists…

…but I can't think of one that they haven't since done. The business evolved to a point where creators got more rights and their names had value in selling the product. And also some of those properties became very, very valuable and the rights holders couldn't not share; not if they wished to attract the "name" talent that the customers were seeking.

But too many things were still kept ambiguous or explained not as contractual agreements but as "industry custom." There are properties that are obviously the creation of one person or one team. The books Jack Kirby created for DC in the seventies are a fine example…though even there, the gent who was then running DC tried occasionally to claim he was a (or even the) creator.

At one point, this exec claimed he was really the creator of Kamandi. I've said this before — even once under oath, I believe — but I worked on the first issue of Kamandi and I had more to do with it than that exec did. Still, I do not believe I am entitled to even a smidgen of creator credit on Kamandi. I had input and others had input but that comic book was created, right before my very eyes, by Mr. Jack Kirby.

One reason I feel this way is because I've worked in the television industry where a lot more money is riding on making this kind of determination. We'll be discussing how that works in the next part of this series.

TO READ THE NEXT PART IN THIS SERIES, CLICK HERE.

Comix journalist Heidi MacDonald did a three-part oral history with Trina Robbins. I haven't listened to it myself yet but I will. It's a way of spending a little more time with the late, lovely Trina.