Science-fiction author Harry Harrison has died at the age of 87. He wrote many books but was probably best-known for Make Room, Make Room!, which was turned into the movie, Soylent Green. The one time I met and interviewed Mr. Harrison, I believe he told me that once you factored in the movie money, that book had made him more money than any ten others combined and given him a thousand times the recognition.

Tom Spurgeon has a full obit but I did want to clarify and expand upon what I understand about Harrison's career in comics. It was more or less the failure of that which made him, to his eventual delight, a novelist. When he got out of the service in 1946, he used his G.I. access to higher education and attended what was later called the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York. There, he met and learned alongside dozens of students who later became well-known, successful comic book artists. One of them was Wally Wood.

Wood was shy and withdrawn and quite terrified about approaching editors with his work. Harrison was nowhere near as good an artist as Wood but he was a lot better at "selling" and talking to buyers. For obvious and mutual reasons, they decided to team up and they modeled their partnership more or less on how Joe Simon and Jack Kirby operated. Both Joe and Jack did everything — writing, penciling, inking, editing, etc. — but Simon spent more of his time writing, editing and dealing with publishers while Kirby spent more time writing and drawing. In the Harrison-Wood parlay, Harrison would be approximately Simon while Wood was roughly Kirby.

Around late 1947, they began approaching comic book companies and what they were looking for at each was a "packaging" arrangement, which was what Simon 'n' Kirby did. In effect, packagers became editors for the company on an outside basis. They would write and draw comics and when necessary, hire others to work with them. This was a fairly common arrangement in comics in the early forties when Simon and Kirby were starting out together but by '48, publishers were less inclined to make such deals. They preferred to have an in-house editor do all the buying and to not lavish editorial money (or meaningful creative control) on outsiders.

And even if a publisher might have been inclined to engage Harrison-Wood as an outside packager, there was this problem: Despite Harry's fine salesmanship, he couldn't really get to those publishers themselves. He could only "sell" himself and Wally to their in-house editors…and the in-house editors all hated outside packagers. In an employment context, outside packagers were their competition.

So Harrison and Wood couldn't secure a packaging deal. If they had, it's likely Harrison would have cut his drawing way back and done mostly editing and writing, leaving most of the art to Wood. But Wood, who proved himself to be a pretty good writer, would also have had opportunities to write that he generally did not get in his real career.

That might have worked very well. But they not only couldn't get packaging work but there was then a surplus of writers in comics, the decline of the pulp magazines having brought a flood of writing talent into the field. So all Harry and Wally could land was plain old art jobs. Harrison did half the art, Wood did half the art…and half the art was pretty good: Wally's half. On most stories, they collaborated but the more the work was Wood's, the better it was.

As Harrison and Wood drew for various publishers, editors began to note the obvious swings in quality and to realize out that one guy was a lot better than the other…and they wanted work by that one guy. Wood told me that they figured out it was him largely because he was the shy one who didn't talk. In most teams when one guy was quiet, he was the one doing the vital work.

Editors began to hint to Wood that they'd have more work and perhaps better rates for work that looked like certain Harrison-Wood jobs that, Wood knew, were all or mostly by him. Harrison was smart enough to know exactly what was happening and that's why he abandoned his aspirations as an artist and segued to writing work, mostly outside of comics. (He did write the Flash Gordon newspaper strip for an extended period.)

Harrison was such a good writer (and a real sharp businessman) and Wood on his own was such a great artist that I can sure imagine an Alternate Universe here. In it, someone hired Harrison-Wood to create and package new comics and they're wonderful and successful. And Harry Harrison doesn't become a top writer of fantasy novels. He and Wood attain the success and stature of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby…or of any of comics' great creative teams. Could have happened.

I am told there are still tickets available — not many but some — for Friday evening's "live" (if you're there) podcast of Rob Paulsen's Talking Toons. Rob is, of course, one of the top voiceover artists in the business and he usually does his weekly podcasts, sans audience. But this coming Friday night, he's recording it live at the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club up at Universal CityWalk here in Los Angeles.

Who are his guests? Well, me but never mind that because he's also welcoming the First Lady of Cartoon Voicing, Ms. June Foray! Fresh from winning her first Emmy at age 94, June will be appearing to talk about more than 70 years of voiceover work including her days as Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Granny, the owner of Tweety and Sylvester. (And she's still playing Granny! Matter of fact, as will be soon announced, she's still playing Rocky, too.)

Anyway, you'll hear all about June's amazing career and she'll do some voices and it should be quite a show. You can be there for it if you get tickets here. If not, I'll let you know when you can hear it over on Rob's website and elsewhere online. That's this Friday night and you just know you wanna be there.

One of my favorite moments at an Academy Awards ceremony: In 2002, the (utter) surprise appearance by Woody Allen…

You may remember that Fred Kaplan wrote a pretty devastating article about how Mitt Romney knows nothing about foreign policy. Here we have Fred's new pretty devastating article about how Paul Ryan knows nothing about foreign policy.

Y'know, I sure get the feeling that the folks backing Romney-Ryan aren't going to waste a lot of breath arguing such assertions. They don't seem to care about this stuff.

And while we're at it: Isn't there still a war going on in Afghanistan? If you see someone running for President or Vice-President, could you ask them about that?

Artist George Freeman wrote to point out, correctly, that I was imprecise in a line I wrote about Joe Kubert here. I wrote, of him and his wife Muriel, "Their sons Adam and Andy both became top comic book illustrators." That's true but it might make some think that they had but two children. They actually had five: David, Danny, Lisa, Adam and Andy. At George's suggestion, I've changed the line to read, "Two of their sons, Adam and Andy, became top comic book illustrators." Thanks, George. You're right.

I'm not sure what to write about Ron Palillo, who died in his sleep from a heart attack this morning. The obits say he was 63 but it wouldn't surprise me if he was actually a few years older than that. When I worked with him on Welcome Back, Kotter in 1976-1977, there were meetings of publicity-type folks about how to conceal the true ages of the four men who were playing high school kids on the series. John Travolta was 22 playing 17. But I kept hearing all this chatter and different birthdates thrown out for Ron and was led to believe he was a lot older than 27 playing 17.

Ron played Arnold Horshack, the goofiest of Mr. Kotter's "Sweathogs" and viewers loved him. The writers on the show did not as Ron was often abrasive and he had (we thought) a tendency to look at every line and ask the question, "How can I take the maximum amount of time and get the maximum amount of attention for saying this?" The shows always ran long so we were always looking for cuts and Ron did not help. If we sliced a long speech of his in half, he would somehow manage to make the remaining half take even longer than the whole. In his defense, you have to remember this: The audiences — at least the ones who came to our tapings — laughed whenever he opened his mouth. They practically gave him a standing o' when he opened it to shout, "Oooh! Oooh!"

He was certainly a major factor in that show's popularity but I did not get along well with the guy…then. Later though, our paths crossed when I was writing for Hanna-Barbera and he was in to do occasional voice work. We had one nice conversation when he apologized for things he'd said and done. I told him I understood but I'm not altogether certain I really did. And then our paths never crossed again.

He did not get a lot of work as an actor, post-Kotter. I can't explain why that was since he was really good in front of a camera. I heard he was on a soap opera for a time…that he had some plastic surgery…that he was doing some teaching and some painting…and this morning, that he'd left us. I did not like the guy I worked with on Welcome Back, Kotter but I have nothing but warm thoughts about the Ron Palillo in the Hanna-Barbera waiting room. I'd like to think that was the real person.

Irving Fein was the longtime personal manager for Jack Benny and George Burns. When one of your clients lives to be 100, it's not easy to outlive them but Irving did. He died a few days ago at the age of 101.

If you're interested in either of his clients (but mainly Benny), do yourself a favor and track down the book he wrote in 1977 entitled Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography. It's a good bio but a lot of it could be subtitled, "What it was like to be Jack's manager." He has some pretty interesting stories in there about repping Benny and handling his business dealings.

Here's an obit for Mr. Fein.

The photo I ran of Joe Kubert was kinda old but the only other one I had made him look kinda old…or at least a lot older than he really was when I took it at the 2010 WonderCon. Fortunately, Athos Bousvaros sent me the above photo which he took at the Boston Comicon in October of 2010. That's a lot more how I remember the recent Joe. Thanks, Athos.

The New York Times has an obit up for Joe. This is kind of a macabre way of looking at things but one indicator of how comics have become mainstream is that newspapers routinely acknowledge the passing of someone like Joe…and in this case, the Times did it pretty darn fast. Back when Bill Everett died in 1973, there was nothing in the paper about it. I don't recall any obits when Wally Wood died in 1981. But now it's presumed that a large section of the population knows of and cares about guys like Joe. And they do.

Also, an online column for the Washington Post solicited thoughts on Joe from a number of his friends and admirers.

I don't have much to add to what I wrote on Sunday. I do keep thinking about the ease with which Joe drew. There are some very fine artists who labor hard…who sweat each panel and erase and redraw and when they finish a story, they feel like they spent eight days pouring concrete in the hot sun. Ross Andru, working often on much the same comics as Joe, used to erase panels over and over and was never quite satisfied. Joe just sat down and drew and it came out pretty much the way he wanted it to look.

And he loved doing it. If I'm still writing when I'm 85, I hope I'm enjoying it as much as Joe enjoyed drawing. I'll be satisfied with enjoying it half as much.

Someone asked me to explain the foreign and domestic business-type problems that ended his acclaimed run on Tarzan. I was working for the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate at the time and also for DC Comics so I had good seats for both sides. I'll try to get to this next week when deadlines are easier around here. Basically, though many of us loved what Joe did, the sales in the U.S. were not up there and the interest of foreign publishers (who were then the primary market as far as the E.R.B. folks were concerned) wasn't there either. But Joe did a number of amazing issues as you can see in the printed pages and as you can especially see in a new hardcover, large format book coming from IDW.

But I did want to take another look at one line in the N.Y. Times obit. It's the one where they said…

In addition, Mr. Kubert was considered one of the definitive interpreters of Tarzan.

This really has nothing do with Joe but is that a proper use of the word, "definitive?" Flipping through my dictionaries here and online, I don't find a real definitive definition of "definitive" but I get the sense that it's supposed to suggest the one complete version, the one that defines the subject matter for all others. Can you have multiple definitive examples of something? I'm just askin'.

In any case, I thought Joe's interpretation was interesting because it was one of many. I didn't like everything he did with the character but the things he did well, I thought he did better than all the other guys who ever drew Lord Greystoke.

And now, right here on our stage before we bring out Kate Smith and the Marquis Chimps, here's Myron Cohen with a couple of his Jew jokes…

Before you start discussing or evaluating what the Obama-Biden ticket would do about Medicare as opposed to the Romney-Ryan ticket, you need to read Ezra Klein on the two sides' basic approaches. Preview: On some aspects, they're quite similar…but that doesn't stop them from fighting over those parts of their respective packages.

Recently here, some of you looked like the audience watching Springtime for Hitler (minus the formal dress) when you watched this video clip of Mary Tyler Moore's variety show and later, this clip. I have this in the e-mailbox from my pal Arnie Kogen, who is and for many years has been one of the top comedy writer folks in the business…

Thanks for running the Mary Tyler Moore variety show piece. Brought back some memories. The series was called Mary. I was head writer on that show. The Exec Producer/Creators were Patchett & Tarses, two very funny, very gifted guys who had recently run The Bob Newhart Show. We also had a strong writing staff including Merrill Markoe who was writing for and dating David Letterman at that time. (The hyphenate term "writer/producer" was used frequently in that decade. The phrase "writer/main squeeze" was less common).

Despite a powerful supporting cast of Dick Shawn, David Letterman, Michael Keaton, Swoosie Kurtz, Jim Hampton and Judy Kahan, the show didn't work. Mary was uncomfortable doing variety, the viewers were uncomfortable with Mary Tyler Moore doing anything but "Mary Richards" and CBS was uncomfortable with this series. We taped thirteen shows, they cancelled us after three. We tried some off beat stuff. We had a musical salute to "driftwood," We had Mary singing, "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road," I came up with that idea of the "Ed Asner Dancers" — a bunch of paunchy middle-aged Ed Asner look-alikes in shirts and ties doing disco moves. We thought all this was pretty ground breaking for Variety. CBS had other thoughts. It's a tough town.

It is. And here's an odd, fuzzy memory I have. I recall that when this show was staffing up, my agent — it was Stu Robinson back then — called me up and said someone over there wanted to meet me with me about working on it and that I should go in and meet with Arnie Rosen about that. Not Arnie Kogen. He said Arnie Rosen. I guess Stu got the names confused…but that doesn't make sense because I think he was representing Arnie Rosen at the time. He may even have been representing you at the time, too. Stu and Bernie had a lot of clients.

Anyway, I didn't go…partly because I was more-or-less committed to write a variety pilot for Sid and Marty Krofft and partly because I'd worked with Arnie Rosen and didn't get along with him. I probably would have at least taken the meeting if I'd known it was Arnie Kogen, one of my favorite writers from MAD magazine. Did either of you ever work on the TV series Arnie with Herschel Bernardi?

R.J.'s for Ribs was one of many restaurants opened in Southern California by a man named Bob Morris who was kind of the Johnny Appleseed of restaurants. Mr. Morris made his fame with Gladstone's, the venerable seafood eatery out by the beach.  Folks who went there when he ran it still talk about how great it was when it was wholly under his control. The current Gladstone's bears little resemblance to that fine eatery but Morris now owns and operates the Paradise Cove Beach Cafe up in Malibu that more or less combines what was great about the old Gladstone's with what was great about R.J.'s, which he operated in Beverly Hills at 252 N. Beverly Drive until 2006.

R.J.'s was a fun place with reasonable prices and the emphasis was, of course, on ribs. Whereas most rib joints specialize in pork, Gladstone's did special things with the largest beef ribs I'd ever seen. Their pork ribs were fine — no complaints there — but the beef ribs were meaty and tender and large enough to tip over Fred Flintstone's car.

I usually opted for a combo of beef ribs and chicken.  Their chicken was very, very good.  Everything there was and so R.J.'s was very successful…and imitated.  I'm not sure if Mr. Morris was involved in it but out on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, there was a restaurant for a while called Adam's Ribs that was a near-clone.  It was not quite as good but it came close.

Like most Bob Morris restaurants, R.J.'s had…

• A very, very long salad bar with items you usually don't see in a salad bar.  I brought vegetarian friends there and they were very happy to graze while I gnawed on animal flesh.
• Sawdust on the floor.  And interesting things on the walls, mainly photos of old Los Angeles.  Once, I spotted a photo I liked so much (it was of a fave childhood haunt) that I called Mr. Morris's office and they gave me the name of the photographer/archivist they got them from.  Then I called him and ordered a print.
• The Bob Morris Clam Chowder.  Folks raised in New England would sometimes say, "That's not how clam chowder's supposed to be.  It's too thick."  And it was thick.  But not having been raised in New England, I thought it was the best white clam chowder I ever had.  You can still get it at his current establishment.
• Monster-sized desserts.  People would order the chocolate cake and be stunned at what they got: A slice big enough to carve up and share with six people, with gobs of whipped cream on the side.  It was also unbelievably rich and moist.  Once when I was there with one person, we didn't want to order the cake because we weren't going home after.  The people at the next table heard us and handed us the unconsumed cake they were left with after stuffing themselves.  We ate all we could and then handed it off to strangers at yet another table.  I have a feeling they weren't the last in that food chain.
• Decorative "to go" wrappings.  It wasn't just the cake that most folks took home to eat the next day (and maybe the next and the next…)  I always took home ribs and/or chicken from my colossal-sized entree.  R.J.'s was known for huge portions and few could finish them on the premises.  The bus boys were all trained to wrap your overage in gold aluminum foil and then to sculpt the package into a swan or other artistic creation.  It was like making balloon animals with your leftovers.  I used to challenge them: "Hey, how about an aardvark?  Or a puma?"
• New items.  I went to R.J.'s about twice a month and there always seemed to be something on the menu that hadn't been there before.  Once, it was something called The 1,000 Year Old Baked Potato.  It was a huge potato that was served at your table in a crockery shell.  Allegedly, it had been encased like a mummy in a shell of brick that was stamped and numbered, then baked underground in a pit for ten centuries or something.  Your server broke open the shell with a little hammer and then served you your potato with a tray of about a dozen condiments including caviar and real, just-cooked bacon bits.
• Other little touches.  Coffee was served with a side cup of whipped cream and another of chocolate morsels.  The chowder came with a soup mandel, which is kind of like a big Jewish crouton.  Sometimes, there was a little appetizer bar of cheese and crackers and other goodies to munch on. and there were always open bins of free peanuts while you waited for your table.  On a Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening (sometimes on a weeknight), that could be a long wait.

That was the main downside of R.J.'s, at least at the peak of its popularity: The wait.  That was a problem out at the old Gladstone's, too.  An 8 PM reservation meant you started waiting for a table at 8 PM and were fortunate to be seated by, say, 8:45.  Even though they provided snacks, it could be frustrating and there was the clear and present feeling that it was deliberate; that they wanted you to spend heavily at the bar before they'd seat you.

The bar, like everything else there except the prices, was huge.  They'd boast of having 600 different beers or 800 different beers…the number kept changing but it was always believable, given what you saw there.  There were as many non-beer alcoholic beverages, as well.  Eventually though, you'd get your table and about the time your clam chowder arrived, you'd start feeling it was worth the wait.  In case you can't tell, I really liked this place.

And there was a way around the wait, sort of.  I had this friend named Stanley Ralph Ross, a prolific TV writer and occasional restaurant critic.  Stanley was a friend of Bob Morris…one who claimed to have suggested the name of Gladstone's.  (Given Stanley's tendency to exaggerate, it wouldn't surprise me if Mr. Morris did not agree.)  When I told him of an excruciatingly long wait at R.J.'s one night, Stanley said, "You need a Farkleberry Card," and before I could ask what the hell that was, Stanley was on the phone to Bob Morris's office, convincing some nice lady there to send me one.

It turned out to be a blue plastic card not unlike a credit card in look and feel but it didn't buy anything.   Instead, you flashed it quietly to the hostess to tell her you were some sort of privileged friend of R.J.'s…I guess.  It was supposed to get you a table swiftly (or even sans reservation) but I'm not sure it ever sped the seating process and I never dared go there without a reservation.  Still, I told myself after waiting just under an hour for a table, "Just think how long it would take without the card."  And I did feel privileged in some odd way.

Eventually, R.J.'s went away in stages.  Morris sold it to others and they took it downhill farther and faster than the folks who'd ruined Gladstone's.  The last time I was there, they had notices up that they were moving, location unspecified.  On the sly, the hostess told me the owners had just signed a lease on a place on Santa Monica Boulevard near La Cienega and that they'd be up and running there in less than two months.  This was in 2006 and I'm starting to get the feeling that ain't gonna happen.

One of comics' most prolific and respected comic book creators, Joe Kubert, died this morning at the age of 85. This probably comes as a special jolt to those who knew him and thought of him as a healthy, vital individual. Joe drew stories of strong, rugged men and unlike so many who do those, seemed like a strong, rugged man himself. Whether it was a war comic, a super-hero comic, a comic about a caveman or his acclaimed run on Tarzan, Joe had a way of imbuing the work with a kind of four-color testosterone. No one did male better.

I suppose in private he had other passions but those who knew him professionally knew of two: He loved to draw and he loved to teach. The love of drawing began at early age. He was born in Poland on September 18, 1926 and brought to the U.S. (to Brooklyn) as an infant. Reared as the son of a Kosher butcher, he started doodling on dad's wrapping paper and soon proved to have the kind of flair on which you could build a career.

Joe told several stories about where and when he got his first professional job. In some, he was as young as ten; in others, as old as thirteen. Even the latter would be amazing. But he started young either in the shop of Harry "A" Chesler or at MLJ, now better known as Archie comics, and was quickly promoted from office boy to art apprentice to artist. He was definitely drawing stories under his own signature by 1942 when he was sixteen. That would have been for a company called Holyoke.

The following year, he did his first work for DC Comics. While he would freelance for many publishers — and briefly be a publisher in partnership with his boyhood friend, Norman Maurer — Joe would do about 90% of his work for DC. In the forties, it was mostly super-heroes, with his stint on Hawkman being especially memorable. In the fifties and sixties, he would become the star "war comics" artist, not just at DC but arguably throughout the industry. His collaborations with writer-editor Robert Kanigher won much praise, particularly on Sgt. Rock and Enemy Ace. He also drew an updated Hawkman and hundreds upon hundreds of covers.

In the seventies, he replaced Kanigher as editor of DC's war titles and branched out into other genres.  He also began writing much of what he drew. His version of Tarzan was loved and respected around the world and he later revived Tor, a character he'd done for the line of comics he'd produced with Maurer.  Whatever he did, he was a major presence in DC's line. My favorite work of his during this period was a book that didn't get the recognition it deserved — a series called Firehair about a red-headed white boy raised by Indians.

There were other, non-DC projects. For a time, he drew the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper strip and later did brief runs on other features. He began producing PS Magazine, an Army publication once helmed by Will Eisner. But mostly it's been The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art which he and his wife Muriel ran out of a big house in Dover, New Jersey. Dozens if not hundreds of young artists learned or honed their crafts there, expanding his influence to new generations of comic creators. (He and Muriel also contributed in another way: Two of their sons, Adam and Andy, became top comic book illustrators.)

Everyone loved Joe. Everyone respected Joe. He was among a handful of artists whose speed and natural ability caused others to gape and express their envy. One year at the Comic-Con in San Diego (the same mid-seventies con where I took the above photo), Joe was asked to do a drawing for a charity art auction. He stepped up to an easel with a big, yard-high piece of drawing paper on it. He picked up a box of pastel chalks. He turned to the easel —

— and in under a minute, there was this drawing there of Hawkman. It was an incredible, detailed drawing that might have taken another artist an hour and been a third as good. Other artists working on nearby easels stopped and blinked in amazement.

Moments later, Joe's drawing was auctioned off for hundreds of dollars. Today, it would go for thousands but back then, hundreds seemed steep. The runner-up bidder announced that he would match the winning price — more money for the charity — if Joe would whip out another. Joe took his time on this one. I think he took about a hundred seconds. The buyer of the first drawing complained that this was even better and began trying to negotiate a swap with the fellow who'd commissioned the second.

It didn't always come that easy for Joe. In later years, he worked hard and long on a number of graphic novels, including his award-winning Fax from Sarajevo. He wasn't struggling because of his advanced age. He could draw just as fast as ever, he said. But as he tackled more serious, personal subjects, it became that much more important to get the work right. He always did.

I had the pleasure of knowing Joe Kubert and interviewing him at many conventions. He was thoughtful, sincere and very talented…and very generous when it came to sharing his talents with others. As we've had to do too many times in recent years, our industry mourns a giant, a pioneer and a very wonderful man.