This ran here on Father's Day of 2010. Nothing in it has changed since except that Tom Luth no longer colors the Groo comic books…

In recognition of what day it is…

I have written here many times of how my father hated his job. He spent twenty-five years working for the Internal Revenue Service, loathing every nano-second of it. He was bothered by the grief he sometimes had to bring upon people who were in serious financial trouble. He was annoyed at the way his superiors sometimes treated him.

He was frustrated at how there seemed to be two sets of rules as to who had to pay delinquent taxes. Rich folks with "friends in Washington" (i.e., Richard Nixon) or sometimes "friends in Sacramento" (i.e., Ronald Reagan) often did not. Poor folks with no "connections," of course, always did. They were treated like criminals whereas the Friends of Dick and/or Ron had to be coddled like royalty and remain unthreatened. On several occasions, after my father made a routine call on a Friend of Dick and/or Ron about owing vast amounts to Uncle Sam, the bill would be torn up and my father would be ordered to apologize to the Rich Guy for upsetting him so. But the Poor Mother always had to pay…or else.

You'd have to be a bit of a psychopath not to hate being in his position…but it had to be done and my father had to earn a living. Before that, he had an array of short-term jobs that weren't as stable — the I.R.S. was nothing if not stable — and which he didn't like a whole lot more. He'd worked for a time in the administrative office of a hospital and couldn't stand having to take paperwork to people who were injured and suffering.

None of them were the kind of careers you dream of having. They were all the kind of jobs you take because you can't get one of the kind you dream of having.

And I think the thing he liked least about them were that they all had a firm, concrete ceiling. When you fantasize about what you want to do with your life, you usually pick something that could, at least in theory, make you very, very wealthy. My father never had one of those jobs. He had ones that by their very nature excluded that possibility. They were jobs where if you did them better than anyone else had ever done them, you might at best be able to get a $10 raise next year. Might. It was tough to accept that limitation on your life.

None of this should suggest that he was not, on balance, a happy man. He loved — not necessarily in this order — his home, his wife, his son and our cat. He had a life that was largely free of tragedy and disaster. Once he signed on with the I.R.S., he never had to worry about paying the mortgage, buying food and clothing, affording a car, etc. He had a wonderful health insurance plan that covered him, his spouse and his kid and the only thing wrong with it was that it didn't cover the cat. Apart from paying off the house — and for a time, my orthodonture — he was free of debt.

There's a lot to be said for all that.

In the early seventies, he hit retirement age with the I.R.S., grabbed his pension and got the hell out, just in time to spend all day watching the Senate Watergate hearings. I have vivid memories of him sitting in front of the TV watching the Dodgers or the Lakers, yelling at the screen like he was managing from afar. He was very happy doing that but he was even happier watching the Senate investigate the Nixon Administration.

After it all ended, he missed it. If they'd rerun the hearings like old Star Trek episodes, he'd never have missed one. A lot of I.R.S. abuses were exposed for all the world to see. Years later when I met John Dean, the former Nixon aide who blew the whistle on much of that, I thanked him. On behalf of my father.

Once the hearings were over though, my father had a problem: What to do all day?

It was a small problem at first. He had my mother around. I still lived at home. He had his friend who still worked at the I.R.S. to lunch with, once a week. Then the friend went to prison for accepting bribes. Then my mother took a part-time job at a local gourmet grocery shop. Then I moved out. Then my mother's part-time job turned into a full-time job.

For a while, my father had a portfolio of stocks — nothing that was likely to ever make him wealthy. Following them was more a spectator sport than an investment. They'd go up a dime or two. They'd go down a dime or two. It was not unlike following the Dodgers or the Lakers but without Vin Scully or Chick Hearn.

It was also a place to go. Once a week, he'd go to his brokers' office where there was an entire wall covered with a stock-tracking scoreboard and a gallery where you could just sit and watch. You might sit for hours before you saw any activity on one of your stocks…and then it might only be up or down a penny or so. But it was a pleasant place to sit, read the newspaper, sip the free coffee and maybe chat with other investors and your personal broker if he wasn't busy, which he always was.

Then Channel 22 happened. Today, that UHF station runs programming in Spanish but back then, it ran stock market reports all day. Two lines of crawl ran across the bottom of the screen and my father would sit and stare at both for hours, hoping to spot one of his stocks and learn it was up a half a cent. He missed the camaraderie of the brokers' office but thanks to Channel 22, he could follow his investments without shaving and while wearing his pajamas.

One day when he did shave, dress and go to the broker's office, his broker gave him some advice: "This would be a good time to sell." My father's stocks were all of a kind that had peaked, the broker told him. "Get rid of them all now," he said. "And if you want to stay in the market, I'll advise you on others you should purchase with what you get for them." My father got out and didn't get back in. He couldn't bring himself to follow a new team. He did make some money but he didn't have that to help fill his days.

What he hoped for was Jury Duty. Jury Duty, he was sure, was the remedy for his boredom.

He kept waiting for it, longing for it. He thought it would be interesting and would give him a feeling of accomplishment — having a place to go each day, hearing the cases, pondering them, rendering a just and rational verdict. If you could have signed up to be a full-time juror, he would have done it, no pay necessary. He may even have called up and asked if there was anything he could do that would make him more likely to be called.

He was a few times but it was disappointing. He was never picked to serve on a jury…not once. It was because of his background. Lawyers would ask him his profession and when they heard he'd worked for the I.R.S., they didn't want him. I guess they figured he'd naturally side with the government.

So no jury duty, no stocks to follow, no friends to lunch with…my mother was at work and I was living somewhere else, busy with my career. What could he do all day? Well, he could come visit me from time to time. And he could ask me to send him on errands. I don't know how many times he offered to do things for me.

I understood why, of course. He'd feel useful and he'd feel more a part of my life…so I gave him what I could but I simply didn't have many things I could send him to do. And with some of them, things didn't work out well.

He loved to shop. When it was time for him to buy a new (used) car, he would take weeks. When I bought a new (new) car, I'd decide what I wanted, go to a showroom or two, haggle a bit and buy it. My first new car purchase took, I think, three hours.

My father would spend three weeks or more trading in his ten-year-old Buick for a five-year-old Oldsmobile. He would make charts and consult Consumer Reports and he'd visit ten or more lots, often several times each. Then he'd narrow it down to three possibles and go around and test-drive the potential acquisitions and see if this salesman would come down twenty bucks or that one would come down fifty…

He enjoyed the hell out of it. I think he even looked forward to things going wrong with whatever he was driving because they would hasten the moment when he got to say, "I think I need to trade it in for something newer." (He never bought an absolutely-new car in his life and that first time I did, he was so proud of me…and also disappointed that I bought it in, like I said, three hours. He would have loved it if he and I could have driven from dealer to dealer for months, making a joint decision, negotiating in tandem, etc.)

One day, I decided I needed a new TV so I decided to let him find it for me. I decided on the brand I wanted, the screen size and certain features. I wrote them all down and sent him off to find me the right set at the right price. What I would have done was to walk into ABC Premiums a few blocks away, bought the set there and just carted it home, in and out in under an hour…but this gave him something to do.

He made it take weeks. He consulted ads in the newspaper. He drove to stores all over the city. He called others. After the eighth time I told him I needed the set sooner rather than later, he came to me with the results of all his research and scientific inquiry. A set that filled all my requirements could be purchased, he proudly revealed, at Frandsen Electronics for $139.50. I asked, "Where is Frandsen Electronics?"

He said it was in Downey. Downey was — and as far as I know still is — 22 miles away.

I asked if, uh, there might possibly be a closer place? "Yes," he said, consulting his lists. "But it's more expensive and I'm trying to save you money." I asked what the next cheapest place was.

Answer: ABC Premiums, a few blocks away from me. The exact same TV for $139.95.

When I told him I'd decided to buy it from ABC Premiums, he registered a letdown, then bravely said, "Well, son…it's your money." (Yes, it was…all forty-five cents of it.) I could see he was worried about what would happen to me if I went through life indulging in such reckless extravagances.

There were other chores and errands that did not go well…and this brings us to the story of my Leather Sport Coat. I no longer wear things like that but for a time, I was often seen in this great leather sport coat I bought somewhere for around the same price as that TV. Back then, that seemed like a lot of dough to spend on one garment but it was a great addition to my wardrobe. It was more casual than your basic sport coat but it was a little dressier than a windbreaker. Here's a very old photo of me with the folks who still do the Groo comic books. Forget how much younger we looked then and check out the coat…

I wore it often and one day, it was in need of cleaning. My father was quite pleased when I assigned him the task of finding a place that did that kind of thing, taking the coat in and picking it up. What, as they say, could go wrong?

Well, this: When he went to pick it up, he found the laundry closed tight in the middle of a workday. A sign on the door said they were out of business.

Panicked, my father went to other stores on the block to ask if they knew what happened and how one might retrieve a leather sport coat that was being cleaned there. No one could help. The laundry was the subject of lawsuits — partners suing one another, one neighbor had heard. There was some reason to believe it would never reopen.

My father was almost trembling — no, he was trembling — when he came to me and reported what had happened. Near tears, he said, "I lost your leather coat, son. I promise…I'll buy you a new one." He acted like he'd done something horribly, horribly wrong and no matter how many times I assured him it wasn't his fault, he kept repeating his vow to replace the coat.

This went on for a week. At least once a day, sometimes twice, he'd phone to ask if we could go shopping together so I could pick out a replacement coat and he could pay for it. He would not believe that he was not responsible and he did not owe me a new coat. One night, my mother took the phone into their bedroom so he couldn't hear and she called me…

"He's so depressed about this. Isn't there something you can do?" I thought and thought but the only solution seemed to be a good, old-fashioned lie.

I went out and purchased a new leather sport coat. It wasn't exactly the same but it was close enough that I figured he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Then I called him and said I was coming by the house and I had something to show him. When I walked in, I was wearing a leather sport coat though it was ninety degrees out. Here is the lie I then proceeded to tell…

The most amazing thing happened. This afternoon, I was driving by that laundry, the one where you took my leather sport coat. I saw trucks outside…they were loading clothes on hangers into them. I parked and ran up and told them I had a coat in there and they let me go in and search and I found it. There weren't that many leather goods on the racks so it was easy. The tag said "Evanier" on it and I had I.D. that proved I was Evanier and since the coat fit, they let me have it. See? You didn't lose my coat after all.

He was overjoyed…so overjoyed, in fact, that he didn't remember he'd never told me where the laundry was. My father slept well that night and the next night and the next night…

And then someone called him from the laundry to say they were closing the place down for good and he should come in and pick up that leather coat he left there. "Oh, we already got it," he told the caller. The caller said, "No, you didn't. I'm looking at it right this moment." He drove over, picked it up and showed up at my apartment with it.

I felt like Lucy when Ricky Ricardo finds out she hoaxed him. He was angry at me for about as long as Ricky was ever mad at Lucy, which is to say around thirty seconds…maybe less since he understood I'd fibbed for his own good. I asked him if he would forgive me. He said yes…on one condition. I asked what that condition was.

He said, "That you give me something else to do for you."

I said, "Take my new car in to be serviced. And try not to lose it."

There's a newly-made documentary on Disney+ about Stan Lee. I have not seen it yet and judging from some of the online reviews, it might be good for my blood pressure if I didn't watch. I probably will soon but at the moment, the Stan Lee Tribute TV Special which aired on ABC on 12/20/19 has been sitting unviewed on my TiVo for all this time.

My opinion of Stan Lee is complicated and not easy to explain. It falls somewhere between "He did everything" and "He did nothing." It includes massive disappointment with some (not all) of the things he said over the years, some (not all) of the things he did. It became clear to me at times that he did not believe in the phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."

With the exception of one ugly falling-out we had, Stan was very nice to me…as he was nice to almost everybody when his reputation and continued employment were not at stake. He could be a charming man and I absolutely understand why some people love(d) the guy. But I think that the notion that he was the primary creator of those properties is utter…what's the word I'm looking for here? Oh, I know: Bullshit.

Note that I am not saying he did nothing. You could not be in his position and contribute nothing even if you tried. But I think the driving force behind those properties was Jack Kirby — in at least some cases by a wide margin — and I think Steve Ditko was the driving force behind Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

Since I haven't seen the documentary, I don't want to say much more than that if it suggests those two artists contributed nothing more than the visuals, it's wrong. (And let's be honest here: Even if all they'd contributed were the visuals, they both deserve more creator credit than they've received at times. All Joe Shuster contributed to the creation of Superman was the visuals and no one ever disputed his full status as the co-creator.)

Marvel finally — too little, too late — agreed to always credit both as co-creators of the properties they helped launch. Actually, it was more Disney than Marvel that agreed to that…so I really don't understand why there's now a documentary that suggests otherwise.

One reason I believe it suggests otherwise is that I read this letter which was released the other day by Jack's son Neal. Neal is a very smart guy and if the documentary says what Neal says it says, the documentary is definitely wrong.

I am still working on my long-promised exhaustive biography on Neal's father. In it, I go into far greater detail about all this than I can on this blog. My conclusions were arrived at by extensive conversations with both men. I think I'm the only person alive who worked — at different times, of course — for both Stan and Jack. Stan could sometimes be surprisingly fair in his recollections of who did what when there wasn't a tape recorder running.

I also talked, often at great length, with Ditko, Don Heck, Stan Goldberg, Bill Everett, Sol Brodsky and others who were around at the time. Not one of them thought all Jack or Steve did was draw what Stan dreamed up. Some felt the credit should just be 50-50 and we should leave it at that. Some felt the artist end of it should be higher. No one felt it should be lower.

Yes, yes…I need to finish and publish this book that I keep talking about. This documentary may be all the push I need to do that. In the meantime, read what Neal Kirby has to say. Here's that link again.

The Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles — affectionately called "The New Bev" by many — is running a 35mm Technicolor print of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the evening of Sunday, July 16. So will I be there to see it for the umpteen gazillionth time? Probably not, since I already bought tickets to see Puppet Up! in Hollywood that evening.

As you may know, I feel this movie should be watched on a big screen with a big, appreciative audience. What the Criterion folks did with their Blu-ray and DVD release was wonderful — the best possible home video version there could be — but I don't recommend it if you haven't seen Mad World the way it should be seen. (Among the many extras and bonus features of the Criterion version is a very long, detailed commentary track by my friends Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo plus me. Listen to it but don't listen to it until you've seen the film a few times the "right" way.)

The absolute best way to see this movie is at the Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood which was — honest-to-Stanley-Kramer — built in 1963 to host the initial release of It's a Mad (Etc.) World. Alas, the place closed for that Pandemic thing and hasn't yet reopened. Instead, we hear, it's undergone extensive renovation and will reopen, we further hear, next Spring with this movie among its first offerings. I'll be there for such a screening but if you're local and you can't wait, info and tickets for the New Bev screening may be located on this page.

I get an awful lot of e-mail from alleged women who want to have sex with me even though they've never seen me and do not live on the same continent. My feeling is that if you are soliciting sexual partners in another country, maybe you aren't among the best-looking individuals in yours. And if I were more cynical, I'd think it was just some predator, male or female, trying to get my attention so they could try various lines to get money out of me, just in case I was really, really desperate and really, really stupid.

For some reason, I'm also now getting messages from country clubs on other continents…like today, I have one here trying to sell me a membership in the Huntswood Golf Club located in Taplow, England. For only £12 per week (marked down from £20) I can become a member and enjoy, among other amenities, my 30 second full screen advert played every 20 minutes on the club's in-house televisions, my banner advert displayed on the club website, full use of the club facilities plus lessons "with the PGA Professional" and many, many complimentary golf balls for me or my clients.

It's a helluva deal and if I played golf and the club wasn't 5,418 miles from me, I might consider it.

Seriously: I get why the folks sending out the sex solicitations don't care about geography but when I get invites to concerts in Connecticut, festivals in Brazil or country clubs in Taplow, I wonder: Isn't there an easy way of filtering a mailing list to not send ads to folks who are more than, say, a thousand miles away?

And I've started getting mailings again from the Trump organization (or what purports to be the Trump organization) trying to get me to donate to stop the witch hunt that's trying to send Donald J. to prison and all of America into total ruin. Couldn't they have some way to filter out those of us who have I.Q.s higher than the freezing point of water? Because frankly, there's more chance of me sending all my money to "Helga" in Sweden or signing up for lifetime membership in that golf club than there is of Mr. "They're my boxes" getting a dime outta me.

We are 33 days from the opening of this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Yes, I know you can't believe it because you just got back from last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and haven't even unpacked yet but it's true. I have a calendar that proves it.

I will be hosting or appearing on 13 panels this year. None of them will have my partner Sergio Aragonés because he is not attending the convention this time around. He's in fine health. He just isn't attending the convention.

I cannot help you if you're searching desperately for lodging during the convention but perhaps this page can be of assistance.

I cannot help you if you're searching desperately for badges for the convention but if you're willing to shell out Big Bucks, there are these auctions on eBay. They are legit but they will be over soon so don't dawdle.

---

The San Diego Convention Center is located on Harbor Drive in that town. This year, as they have done with the last few cons, the city will be closing Harbor Drive between First Avenue and Park Boulevard during convention hours and for a few hours before and after each day. If you have purchased parking at the convention center — or I guess if you're driving an ambulance with the siren blaring and someone bleeding in the back — you can get in but otherwise, no cars, bikes, scooters, skateboards, etc.

I suppose this is a wise idea but last year, it made it very tough for my lady friend and myself to get from our hotel to the Bayfront Hilton where I was a presenter for the Eisner Awards. We took an Uber and even with the driver's GPS and me consulting Waze on my phone, we could not figure out a route from Point A to Point B. I even suggested he drive us to the airport on the assumption that once you were there, a GPS had to be able to find a path between the airport and a Hilton.

We didn't try that but we should have. As it was, the best our driver could do was drop us off almost (it felt) as far from the Bayfront Hilton as I am now, sitting in my home in Los Angeles. Ubering back was easy later since they reopened Harbor Drive after 10 PM. But getting there was such a long walk that I was considering turning back to our hotel and presenting the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing to one of the parking valets there. Don't laugh. It would have been cheaper than tipping.

I really like Jon Stewart's show, The Problem with Jon Stewart, which runs on Apple TV. I think it alone is worth the price of Apple TV. Here's a a video they threw together to try and snag an Emmy or two…

Back in the Fall of 1969 — back when there were three TV networks and they had actual seasons — 23 TV shows made their debut. Some lasted a while, some didn't. But here's a look at all 23 shows and I think there were some pretty interesting offerings that year…

Boy, that was fast.

Another busy day for Mark…maybe not a lot of posting. And I seem to be doing a very poor job of not paying attention to the man who was our 45th president and is looking like he'll be the first to do hard time.

I keep seeing articles wondering why, in spite of so many folks advising him to return the classified documents, he insisted on keeping them. I don't see this as hard to figure out. He felt they would represent in some way future power and/or money…and he didn't have to have a specific plan as to how either of those goals might happen. Why is that not the answer?

I was talking with my pal Shelly Goldstein the other day and I think I was the one who made this point: Back when it turned out that Bill Clinton had actually had the rumored affair and said what he said about it in a deposition, a lot of us who thought he was a good president were deeply disappointed in the man. We didn't say this to pollsters but to each other, we said things like, "Gee, I thought he was smarter than that." You can fault someone for their moral transgressions and also fault them for the poor judgement they showed by making those transgressions when (a) there was a strong possibility they'd be caught and (b) they'd be letting down an awful lot of people who supported them.

What Clinton did was way, way less of a crime than what Trump's being charged with but I've got to think that Donald's supporters — the ones who really, really, really want to see him back in office — are feeling the same way. They want to slap the guy and scream, "How could you let us down like that!!!?" They won't tell pollsters that either. Most of 'em will cling to the idea that he's being railroaded, witch-hunted, personally prosecuted by the evil mastermind/senile Joe Biden, etc. But deep down, no matter what else they feel about Their President, they've got to think he was really, really, really stupid to let it come to this.

I mentioned W.C. Fields here the other day.  Here's a nice little 11-minute overview of the man and his career.  I often found him to be very, very funny…

If you're not sick of reading different "takes" on Donald Trump — and at times, I sure am — you might think that Matthew Yglesias makes some good points in this article.

…so I didn't watch much of the news coverage of Trump's arraignment at the federal courthouse in Miami. I guess I figured I could miss this one because there'll be a couple more before long.

What I guess I find fascinating about this story is how unsupported "his side" of the story is, yet he knows that a certain not-small number of his fans will not only gobble it down but donate money because of it. You have all these legal authorities saying The Indictment is a long, detailed, open-and-shut case. You have his former Attorney General saying "he's toast" and his former national security adviser saying of The Indictment, "This really is a rifle shot and I think it should be the end of Donald Trump's political career."

And after the arraignment, he goes and gives this speech about why he's innocent and how the Presidential Records Acts says he had every right to take the documents at issue…and it doesn't. Here's a fact check by CNN. Here's a fact check by Politifact. Here's a fact check by USA Today. Here's a fact check by The New York Times. Here's a fact check by Factcheck.Org.

There are others around and they all say pretty much the same thing.  You have to assume what he's saying now is something he believes will resound with his supporters and bring in more donations, and that when it comes time to go to court, he and his lawyers (whoever they are at that moment) will have something better.  I'm real curious as to what that could be.

One of the all-time great comic artists, John Romita, has died at the age of 93. The son of a banker, he grew up in Brooklyn and broke into the comic book field in 1949, working primarily for the company now known as Marvel. Heavily influenced by Milton Caniff and a half-dozen other artists, he drew westerns and war comics and romance comics and a brief revival of Captain America. In 1958 when the company underwent major cutbacks, Romita landed at DC Comics where he drew almost exclusively for their romance comics, often rendering the covers and lead stories.

A quarrel there with one of the editors there sent him back to Marvel in 1965. After all those years of love comics, "Jazzy Johnny" (as Stan Lee would eventually dub him) feared he could not capture the new dynamic style at the company best formed in the work of another of his idols, Jack Kirby. Romita asked to just ink other artists for a while until he caught on…and he did for one issue of The Avengers. But the resignation of Wally Wood had left Daredevil with no artist and Stan persuaded John to take a crack at drawing the comic.

At first, he needed layouts by Kirby but he quickly caught on…and the following year when Steve Ditko departed Spider-Man, Romita was the obvious (and really only) choice to succeed him. Even John himself was skeptical he could fill those shoes but he soon was doing it so well that many came to see him as the guy who drew Spider-Man "the best." Working in the Marvel office, as opposed to at home like most artists, Romita became a valuable staff member, designing covers, correcting the work of others and eventually becoming Art Director. His influence was all over the artwork in Marvel books in the late sixties and for several decades thereafter.

I loved the guy's work and he had just about as many fans as anyone drawing comics in those days. He was also a very nice man and a great encourager of new talent. Tonight, we send our condolences to his family — including artist John Romita, Junior who sure learned a lot from his father — to the man Jack Kirby called "The man who saved Spider-Man."

"Legal Eagle" Devin Stone goes through the Trump indictment for us. There are about eighty videos online where alleged legal authorities do this for us and at least as many articles. Still, I like the way Mr. Stone explains things and he does make a few points I hadn't heard in the two or three other explainers I read or heard.

But really all you need to know is that the indictment is very detailed and full of testimony from Trump, his aides and lawyers that builds a strong case against him. And you already know that but if you want to hear it from Counselor Stone, here he is. Or you can wait for the inevitable Randy Rainbow video which will say much the same thing but set to the melody of a great show tune…

Comic-Con is 36 days away. During those 36 days, please don't write or call to ask me if I can get you into the con, get a panel promoting your latest project on the convention schedule, tell you where to park, help you find a hotel room…anything of that nature. I hate disappointing anyone.

Many, many year ago I spent some lovely time with Carlotta Monti, an actress who proudly described herself as "the mistress of W.C. Fields." I wrote about that brief time here. In yet another of the many "Wish-I'd-Had-a-Tape-Recorder" moments of my life, she told me about living with that man at 2015 DeMille Drive, which is located sort of in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.

Wanna see the place? You can in the video below. A couple years ago, you could have bought it for $10,500,000 before someone else did…