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One more item about the infamous Michael Larsen episodes of Press Your Luck…and yes, I know a lot of you couldn't care less about this. As I mentioned, GSN did a special documentary on the incident, replaying most of the footage with interruptions to tell Larsen's story. It was called Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal and it reruns next Monday night, January 9, on GSN.

I'm watching MSNBC and a reporter just said, "[Jack] Abramoff's plea bargain deal today should keep his prison time down to between nine and eleven years."

How guilty do you have to be to make that kind of deal? The charges could have put him away for thirty years but how often does anyone in a non-violent crime get the maximum? Abramoff and his lawyers had to be pretty sure he was heading for a lot more than fifteen or sixteen.

As mentioned here, the always-festive-shirted Scott Shaw! is commencing his Oddball Comics show this Saturday night at the Acme Comedy Theater at 10 PM. Here, once more, are the details.

Also that same Saturday night, the Totally Looped improv troupe, which ordinarily performs once a month on a weekday, is doing the first of four consecutive Saturday night performances at the Second City Comedy Theater at 8 PM. At this show, which I've plugged unmercifully in the past, several brilliant improvisational comedy performers dub in new dialogue to old films without ever having seen the films before. In my day, I've seen good improv and bad improv and even phony improv. This is the first of those three kinds and here are those details.

And I might point out that it is quite possible to do both shows in the same Saturday night. Totally Looped runs about an hour in a venue which is (I actually looked this up on Mapquest) 1.98 miles from where Scott will be performing his unnatural act. Mapquest figures travel time at five minutes so I'd guess you could make it in a half-hour. I always multiply estimated driving times from such services by six to figure how long it will take if you obey the speed limit, stop for red lights, have other cars on the road and don't run over too many people.

Five of you have sent me links to this webpage which tells the story of Michael Larsen and Press Your Luck. The article has some errors in it, most notably in claiming…

In order for Michael to keep his winnings, he'd have to remain trapped on the stage of Press Your Luck forever. His situation was an infinite loop from which there was no escape: he'd learned how to trigger only plunger-hitting patterns nailing a cash prize and a free spin. According to the game's rules, this "free" spin would eventually have to be spun. In other words, each plunger push would lead to another. Nobody else could play, and Larsen himself could never stop playing. The only way to break this loop would be for Larsen to abandon any pretext of surefire pattern matching. He would literally have to Press His Luck like a regular contestant, plunging the Big Board onto a non-winning square, a non free-spinning square, and one possibly yielding a Whammy capable of draining him of every penny. When he pushed the plunger the last and final time — Michael Larsen won a trip to the Bahamas. He stopped playing, to thunderous applause.

Absolutely wrong. The rules of the game allowed a player to pass his remaining spins at any time, which is exactly what Larsen did as soon as he crossed the $100,000 mark. The trip he won to the Bahamas was won when he slipped and didn't hit one of the two spaces for which he was aiming. At no point was he intentionally out of control of the board.

What always interested me about Press Your Luck (much like Deal or No Deal, recently discussed here) was that its rules were cleverly configured to usually promote an exciting conclusion. Yes, it was largely a game of chance — so is Deal or No Deal — but near the end, the player is forced into increasingly-tough decisions about how far to push that game of chance and must keep making decisions that mean the difference between a big cash win and going home with nada. What Larsen did was to take the rules used to foster those suspenseful conclusions and use them to wring serious dollars out of the show. Landing on a big money square also gives one an extra spin which therefore (usually) gives one another hard decision to pass or play. Larsen just kept using the extra spins to win more until he hit his target goal.

I'm not suggesting Larsen was heroic or admirable. From all reports, he seems to have been something of a creep. I just like the fact that a guy from out of nowhere could, with a little ingenuity, walk into a big time TV studio, make so much money and create so much chaos.

Robert Kuttner on why the new Medicare prescription plan for Seniors gives them terrible coverage but gives the drug companies and HMOs a lot of benefits.

Speaking of pressing one's luck this morning: Super-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff is pleading guilty in exchange for his cooperation in a government investigation. It is expected that his testimony will aid in the filing of charges against quite a few current and recent legislators and their staff members. One report says there may be as many as 20 indictments, which could lead to a fair number of Senators and/or Congresspeople deciding that though they're absolutely innocent, this would be a good time to resign and spend more time with their families.

Congressman Bob Ney is the only cohort identified in the case so far, though Abramoff was known to have close ties to Tom DeLay. Both those men are powerful Republicans so today, we have Liberal websites salivating at the thought that there will be more G.O.P. superstars on the hit list. Meanwhile, Conservative websites are selling the notion that if there is any honesty in the world, this will be viewed as a bi-partisan scandal since Abramoff also gave cash to some Democrats. I'm not sure that's quite accurate since by some reports, few if any Dems got money directly from Abramoff, though a number prospered indirectly.

Either way, it's wrong…and it's about time politicians of all kind saw that there can be accountability (i.e., prison time) for selling out the public trust for lobbyist dollars. I don't care what party they belong to or even which party did more of it in this particular case. I mean, if Democrats took less or took it indirectly, that may just be because Democrats are not in power and therefore not positioned to do as much for donors as Republicans. I also think that if I were a crooked politician — a life's goal that seems less and less attainable with each passing year — I'd feel a lot safer about taking bribes if my party controlled the government. So even if a lot more Republicans get swept up in the Abramoff investigation, that doesn't mean Democrats didn't or wouldn't. Throw all the rascals out, I say.

Aha! As half the known free world informs me this AM, the folks at GSN have changed their schedule. Instead of airing Press Your Luck reruns only on weekends, as I discussed in the previous message, they've now got them on seven days a week, effective this week. This means that the episode before Michael Larsen ran this morning…and sure enough, my beloved TiVo recorded it, even though I didn't know about the change. I therefore deduce, master of logic that I am, that the first of the Larsen episodes should rerun tomorrow morning and the second part on the following day. It's on at 9:30 AM on my satellite dish. Consult, as the saying goes, your local listing.

In 1984, a man named Michael Larsen went on the CBS daytime game show, Press Your Luck, and won $110,237. This was at a time when $10,000 was considered a huge win on a TV quiz program. Mr. Larsen had managed to figure out a loophole in the Press Your Luck game board and exploited it to rack up an amazing total in a game that went so long, it had to be split into two episodes. (Ordinarily, Press Your Luck played one game per day. Larsen's game was the only one in five years that ever ran two days.) A couple years ago, GSN ran a documentary on it all and included most of the footage from those two episodes, though with many interruptions to explain things. I thought it was interesting but not as interesting as watching the original shows as they originally aired.

GSN reruns two episodes of Press Your Luck each weekend — one on Saturday morning, one on Sunday morning. They've been going in sequence and they're nearing the Larsen shows. Next Saturday morn should bring us the episode from Thursday, June 7, 1984, which was the day before Larsen's appearance. On it, you'll see a contestant win $11,516 — an amount that seemed astronomical until they taped the Friday episode. On Sunday morning, unless they pull a switcheroo on us, GSN should be running the 6/8/84 episode in which the previous day's winner faces off against two new contestants, one of whom is Michael Larsen. Then the second part of the Larsen game would air on GSN the following Saturday. This is all assuming GSN doesn't skip over them, which is possible but unlikely.

I've always found this story fascinating. It's one of the few times a network TV show ever went totally out of control in the sense that the producers were sitting there wondering what the hell was going on. The studio audience went crazy and the reactions of host Peter Tomarken are priceless. If you're setting the TiVo and you're not familiar with Press Your Luck, set it to record the one before so you can get the hang of the game before you watch Michael Larsen knock it on its ass.

Rob Stolzer, who knew and interviewed Bud Blake, sends along some info. He also informs me that I accidentally gave Mr. Blake's real first name as Justin, not Julian. I went back and changed it to Julian and let's just pretend that it always said that, okay?

Rob confirms that Blake retired from drawing Tiger in March of 2004. The syndicate planned then to hand the strip over to a new creative team but began rerunning old Blake strips to get some lead time…then never stopped. So everything since then is Blake reprints.

Over on this page, Rob has a nice gallery of Blake's handiwork and a tribute written by Blake's son. It includes the revelation that Blake once worked as an assistant to the flamboyant designer, Cecil Beaton. That must have been quite an experience. No wonder he got into cartooning.

Feeling blue? Green? Plaid? Ask your doctor about Panexa.

Here are three more "biography" comics that Dell put out in the sixties. Adlai Stevenson was drawn by Jack Sparling while the life story of Dwight D. Eisenhower was illustrated by Jose Delbo. It wouldn't surprise me if Walter B. Gibson wrote both of them. It also wouldn't surprise me if these and the other political ones were done as part of some deal that involved selling educational materials to schools. They were distributed to regular newsstands but I'm guessing the initial impetus was to hawk them via other channels.

The Dell line was then full of funny animal, ghost comics and a whole lot of monsters…and I somehow can't see the editors who turned Dracula into a super-hero saying, "You know what the kids really want? A comic about the late United Nations ambassador and twice-failed presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson!" It came out in 1966, not long after he passed away and what's odd is that they may have made money off it. The Eisenhower book was done after Ike's death in '69 and it's unlikely they'd have done it if they'd lost a bundle on Adlai.

You'd assume they made tons o' money off their 1964 Beatles book but that might not be so, even though it went into a second printing. The book itself was quite pleasant. The art was by Joe Sinnott with an assist from Dick Giordano who pencilled the chapter on George Harrison. The script by the super-prolific Paul S. Newman told the life stories of John, Paul, George and Ringo in squeaky-clean fashion, making them all sound like Pat Boone with slightly shaggier haircuts.

So how'd it sell? Newman told me once he'd heard, third-hand, that it was the best-selling thing Dell Comics put out after their break with Western Publishing — a traumatic event explained here — and that makes sense until you consider how rare the comic is. Copies in decent shape go for $200 and up…and you usually can't find them at all, making me suspect the press run was not as huge as one might imagine. Also, there's never been a best-selling comic book that didn't spawn a conspicuous gusher of imitations. Dell followed their Adlai book with Ike but they didn't follow their Beatles book with the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits or even more Beatles. In fact, they allowed the Beatles license to get away from them and the few other official Beatles comics of the sixties — adaptations of movies and of the Saturday morning cartoon series — were from Western/Gold Key. (In 1967, Dell did try a superhero group called The Fab Four but it wasn't the Fab Four.)

Its price also makes me skeptical that the Dell Beatles comic sold well. Apart from a few Classics Illustrated oddments, it was (I think) the first American comic book ever priced at more than a quarter. It sold for an unprecedented thirty-five cents. In the sixties, when comics were ten, then twelve, then fifteen cents, paying a few more pennies mattered a lot to buyers. With few exceptions, kids bought the lowest-priced comic on the racks, regardless of page count. Even if a 25-cent comic gave you more for your money, you still just got one comic book for your quarter. If you bought the twelve-centers, you could get two comic books plus a piece of Double Bubble Bubble Gum. At least, that's the way most of the kids in my neighborhood thought. (I bought the 25-cent books but I bought everything.) Even with Beatlemania at some merchandising apogee in '64, I have a hard time imagining a 35-cent Beatles comic book overcoming that mindset…or being noticed on the comic racks by hardcore Beatles fans who might have gone for it.

Still, most of this is just speculation on my part. I have no solid info on how it fared. What I think I'm most curious to know is if the Adlai Stevenson comic sold better than the Beatles comic. That would amuse me greatly.

For more on the Beatles comic, take a look at this article by the always-entertaining Fred Hembeck. And you can see some pages from it on this website.

Neil Gaiman writes to alert me to the passing of Maurice Dodd, who wrote The Perishers, a long-running and popular comic strip that appears in The Daily Mirror over in the United Kingdom. I have to admit I only had a passing familiarity with the feature but you could tell it was much loved, not only as a good read but as a treasured part of many childhoods. Here's a link to an obit and a link to the Perishers website where you (like me) can learn more about it.

…is not like the others. The newspaper strip Slylock Fox, distributed far and wide by King Features, offers puzzles and games and even the occasional trivia test. Doug Pratt, who reads this site, was nice enough to send me yesterday's Sunday page, which I am unable to locate on the Internet. The little pink box above is one of several puzzles in it…and I'm embarrassed to say it took me three guesses. Thanks to Bob Weber, Jr. who's responsible for this delightful creation.

A few items ago, I posted the cover to an actual Barry Goldwater comic book that came out from the same company, Dell, in 1964. There was, of course, a Lyndon B. Johnson issue…and gee, doesn't L.B.J. look unhappy to be on a comic book cover? It's like he's thinking, "Geez…first, the Gulf of Tonkin and now this!" I have no idea where my copies are but as I recall, both books were drawn by Jack Sparling. Sparling, who was enormously prolific in comic books and strips, actually started his career with a political comic. He illustrated a newspaper strip called Hap Hopper, all about a reporter, and the strip was allegedly created and written by Washington columnist Drew Pearson.

To answer a question I often get here, I'm told Mr. Sparling passed away a few years ago. He struck me as a pretty good illustrator who rarely did comics that let him be as good as he could be. From all reports, he was very fast and in comics back then, if you were fast, you often got into the rut of only getting assignments that paid poorly and had to be drawn at lightning speed. We can argue some other time to what extent that's the fault of the publisher (for paying so poorly) or of the artist (for accepting such assignments) but clearly, Sparling was banging it out pretty rapidly for most of his career. In the sixties, he did a lot of 32-page books for Dell that were reportedly pencilled and inked in about four days each, which is about how long some artists would take to sharpen their pencils. I suspect that on these "biography" comics he did for Dell — there were others, as well — they knew how difficult it was to do all those likenesses and research so they paid him a few bucks more a page. And instead of doing an issue in four days, he took five.

Until about an hour ago, I had not known who wrote these comics. That's when I received an e-mail from my pal Anthony Tollin…

I'm pretty sure that my late friend Walter B. Gibson wrote both this [the Goldwater comic] and a corresponding LBJ biographical comic book. Walter had a major, largely unchronicled comic book career, including tons of commercial and industrial giveaway comics. I do recall that Walter was quite amused that he had written biographical comic books for both candidates in the 1964 presidential election.

For those of you unfamiliar with the career of Mr. Gibson, he was a giant in the fields of pulp magazine writing and in magic. He wrote hundreds of Shadow novels under the pen name of Maxwell Grant. That's his photo above next to one of them. He also authored a couple of shelves full of non-Shadow books, including many on the principles and art of prestidigitation. I had not known he ever wrote comics but it makes sense: He was writing mystery novels for Dell at the time and he was known to be an expert on U.S. history and its major figures. He passed away in 1985. I only met him once, ever so briefly at a comic convention but he seemed so bright and clever that I envy folks like Tony who knew him well.

By the way: Tony also reminds me that Harry Langdon, who was mentioned in the previous item, was a cartoonist. So were a couple of other popular silent comedians, including Larry Semon. Some of the gagmen who fashioned their material were also cartoonists. Ernie Bushmiller, the renowned artist of Nancy, for example, wrote for Harold Lloyd and some others. Someone ought to research this topic further and see what kind of correlations can be found between visual physical comedy and gag cartooning. I get around ten e-mails a month from folks who want to write scholarly papers on Jack Kirby and the religious underpinnings in his work. Maybe I can divert one of those authors to this topic.

I'm watching Dick Clark hosting a bit of his annual Rockin' New Year's Eve Special on ABC…his first real public appearance since his stroke a little more than a year ago. As I start writing this, I'm a little puzzled as to how to react.

I could feel sad. I worked with Dick a few times — I wrote on a series he produced and later, he hosted a special I produced — and I liked him a lot. Actually, I liked him before that from years of watching American Bandstand and various game shows. He was all energy with a great sense of humor, and it's heartbreaking to see him with slurred speech, struggling (but succeeding) to get his dialogue out.

Or I could feel happy. The rumor mill, including word from a friend who saw him last March, suggested he might not make it to New Year's Eve, let alone be well enough to return to work. But there he is, not letting a little thing like partial paralysis stop him from doing what he's always done so well. There's something inspirational there. This has been a year where a lot of people had to claw their way back from disasters, big and small. Dick isn't doing the show tonight because he needs the money. He already has all the money. He's doing it to tell the world, "Hey, I'm not dead and I'm coming back."

And looking at it that way, I'm deciding I'll feel happy about it. Welcome back, Dick. May we all have that kind of strength in '06 and not let anything stop us.