I will be the guest live this evening at 6:30 PM (West Coast time) on the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog Podcast. If the show's in progress as you read this, it'll appear in the window below. After the show's over, it'll replay in the window below. Ain't modern technology amazing?

My old pal Pat O'Neill sent me this the day after this year's Tony nominations were announced…

The Tony nominations were announced yesterday and the ceremony is scheduled for June 11, to be broadcast by CBS. If the WGA strike is still going on that date (as most seem to be predicting), I assume there will be pickets outside the theater.

This leads to a question: Most of the actors who will be on stage for this show are not only members of Actors Equity, but of SAG-AFTRA. The latter has announced it is supporting the WGA and will honor its picket lines. (For that matter, so has IATSE, representing the technical people who would be involved in the broadcast.) So, what's the likelihood that the Tony presentation broadcast will be canceled or postponed? It's an important question for the theater community, because the Tony broadcast is a big "commercial" for Broadway.

Well, first of all, I question that "most" are predicting the strike will last that long. Writers Guild strikes do tend to last long but a settlement in the near future is not impossible. In truth, no one knows. In the past, they've lasted a long time for two reasons, one being that the producers sometimes have a hard time agreeing among themselves about a new offer.

Secondly, Writers Guild negotiations tend to be the battleground for issues that may eventually lead to increases or rollbacks for some or all of the other Hollywood unions. This is one thing it helps to keep in mind to understand Hollywood strikes. To you, it may look like it's an intermittent battle between The Producers and The Writers Guild. But from the viewpoint of the AMPTP, it's one long never-ending series of battles between them and 58 (that's right — I said FIFTY-EIGHT) guilds and unions. What they give us or take back from us impacts what happens with the other labor organizations.

It's like if you have a big family and you give one kid a bicycle, you're probably on the hook for more bicycles. It's called Pattern Bargaining and they can sometimes manipulate things to their advantage but it can also sometimes work against them.

In past strikes, we did not have the unusual timing of this one. The Directors Guild is commencing negotiations on its new contract tomorrow and the actors begin formal contract negotiations on June 7. I'm not saying this will cause the WGA strike to end sooner or later; merely that you can't look at past years and figure out how that will impact any of the bargaining for any of these guilds.

In the past, there was almost zero chance of all three being on strike at the same time. It's still unlikely but it's not impossible. The current DGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts both expire on June 30. The AMPTP may feel the need to get our deal wrapped-up before dealing with possible strikes from those guilds. Note my use of the word "may." Nothing is certain.

Also, past Writers Guild strikes were at a time when the broadcast networks were frantic to get things settled so as not to disrupt their Fall Seasons. Nowadays, the Fall Season isn't a major "thing" at those networks and those networks are not driving the AMPTP bus the way they used to. So we're really in uncharted territory.

So…as for how the work stoppage may affect The Tonys, this is one of my biggest "I dunno" answers. I dunno…and it's not just about The Tonys. There are a lot of shows that have to decide what they're going to do. And if there is a picket line outside whatever theater will be the location for the Tony Awards telecast, it may be up to individuals to make a difficult choice. Maybe the show will be postponed.

The DGA and SAG-AFTRA can't strike until their contracts expire at the end of that month but a general labor unrest could start well before then. Might it make a difference? It might…but I have no friggin' idea how. No friggin' idea.

I feel the way most of you probably do about the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll matter.  And it's educational in a way.  If you're the kind of guy who likes to to grab women by their private parts against their will — and I sure hope for everyone's sake, you aren't — it's probably not a good idea to get recorded bragging about how you can grab women by their private parts against their will. It's almost as bad as getting recorded saying you want someone to find you 11,780 votes — one more than your margin of defeat.

If we're going to mention newspaper strip guys who drew a lot of strips, it's only fair to mention Mell Lazarus, a very funny man who had two long-running strips…

Miss Peach (eventually renamed Ms. Peach) started on February 4, 1957 and ran until September 8, 2002. That's 16,652 days.

Momma started on October 26, 1970 and ended July 10, 2016. That's 16,694 days.

Together, they add up to 33,346 strips…and Mell also wrote but did not draw a couple of other short-lived strips. There seems to be some argument among cartoonists and Friends of Mell as to whether or not he ever had assistants. I seem to recall him telling me that he did at times but that may have been with gags, not drawing. Others say he did it all himself so I'm not sure. Both looked like strips that one guy could draw several of in a day.

But in any case, the record for launching one newspaper strip and drawing it day after day after day, still belongs to Russell Myers on Broom-Hilda. Today's Broom-Hilda strip is #19,378. But it should be noted that Mell Lazarus came close…twice!

On this blog, I often tell you about talented people I know…and I know a lot of them. One of my more interesting friends is the international performance artist, Ptychka…a person who does so many things, it's hard to put them into any one category. Ptychka writes, she acts, she models, she dances, she performs amazing aerial choreography, she makes music, she sings…and she does all these things in English and Spanish and French and Russian and Japanese…

One time when she dropped by, my partner Sergio Aragonés was here and the two of them began talking in several of those languages. I didn't even understand the occasional parts of the conversation that were in English. You can read more about her at this link. It discusses her newly-released Japanese-inspired song, "Ichi" — which you can listen to in the embed below. You're going to hear a lot about this lady…

My Great Interrogator, Brian Dreger, writes to interrogate me thusly…

I am re-reading the DC Archive editions of the Legion of Superheroes (I find these old stories charming with their simplistic storylines, and I love this eras artwork). But on the inside page with the copyright info, I noticed this credit: "black-and-white reconstruction on selected interior pages by Rick Keene." What does that mean (all the stories printed inside are in color)? And why would they need to be reconstructed? As far as I can tell, these stories are from the late 1950s & early 1960s.

Okay. At some point in our history, the coloring of comic books switched from what were sometimes called "hand-cut" color separations to digital color separations. "Hand-cut seps" were done by hand with people cutting multiple overlays for each page and it was a tedious, labor-intensive and not all-that-good process. The digital kind are done on computers.

Reprinting the latter merely involves using the original digital files again and those are almost always available. Digital files are a lot easier to store than the old film was. They don't rot and it's easy and basically free to make plenty of back-up copies.

Reprinting comics from the earlier era can be way more complicated depending on what source material is available. This would be the case with anything from the seventies or earlier and some comics from the eighties. The absolute best thing would be if you had access to the film or negatives from which the original printing plates were made.  That material though is almost always long-destroyed or thrown away…and even if it is around, it's probably decomposed.  If you do locate good film, it may be difficult to adapt it for certain modern-day printing techniques.

In the absence of that, you have two choices. You could scan copies of the printed comics in color and have someone do a lot of computer clean-ups and adjustments on the scanned images. This is a form of reconstruction but often, it yields a product that looks a bit muddy and has all or most of the flaws of the cheap, original printing.

Or you could do reconstruction starting with the original black-and-white image that the artist(s) drew. This work would have to be recolored and you would then have the option to copy the original coloring or to do new coloring. Since the work would now be printed with better printing on better paper, and since coloring techniques have improved since then, you would probably opt to have someone do new coloring that didn't slavishly follow the original coloring.

But to reconstruct, you need that good black-and-white image of the page. Once in a while, the original art is available and that can be scanned but usually those pages are hard if not impossible to find.

Publishers usually (not always) kept good black-and-white photostats of their published material in case they wanted to reprint it later or some company overseas wanted to buy the rights to reprint that material in their country. Those stats would enable you to begin reconstructing the work but sometimes, they just plain don't have any. They were lost. They were thrown away. In a few cases, a publisher somewhere — let's say in the Republic of Botswana — purchased reprint rights so someone at the company shipped a set of stats to Botswana not realizing it was the company's last set.

Also, comic book publishers have sometimes been some of the cheapest people on this planet and they didn't bother to make good stats. That is an example of a widespread problem that many businesses in this country face. The folks running the company at one point didn't want to spend the dough to preserve certain assets which could now yield revenue.

You're probably aware that certain movies or TV shows cannot now be shown or monetized via home video because no decent copies of them exist. The same thing happened with some comic books. Someone didn't want to spend money on preservation. If they made stats at all, they made them on really cheap paper and the images have faded or the paper has turned brown and moldy.

So what they do in this case is to locate a printed copy of the comic, scan it and then have someone filter the color out of the page leaving the black-and-white line art. But the process that takes out the darker colors will probably take some of the black lines with it so the pages may need serious retouching. This is what they mean when they say "restoration." It's doing a digital re-inking of the pages to repair damaged linework.

So that's what they're talking about when they mention "reconstruction."  Someone had to fix up bad source material so that the comic book could be reprinted.  Sometimes, minor surgery is necessary.  Sometimes, major.  Sometimes, it's done so well that it's hard to detect.  At other times, it's obvious and collectors have been known to complain.  My own observation is that it's getting better and better…with occasional exceptions.

I love websites that provide valuable services and ask little or nothing in return. One such is The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog, run by a couple of enthusiastic folks who love Comic-Con (the one in San Diego) and WonderCon (the one in Anaheim) and make a great effort to help others enjoy those cons as much as they do. Their enterprise is totally unaffiliated with the conventions themselves but it offers valuable information and suggestions to make your con-going experience easier, safer, less expensive and just plain happier.

If you are thinking of attending either con any year, you should keep an eye on the SDCCBlog. Among other things, they'll tell you how to perhaps get badges for the San Diego one when it is possible to perhaps get badges for the San Diego one. It's pert near impossible now, 72 Days before the event, but it was sorta/maybe possible several months ago. You'd have known when that was if you followed the SDCCBlog. (You should also keep an eye on the official Comic-Con website, which is also very good. The SDCCBlog provides supplemental info.)

You should also listen to their fine podcasts which commence in May each year. The first one leading up to this year's Comic-Con will be live online tomorrow night, May 9, at 6:30 PM West Coast Time, which of course is 9:30 PM back east. As has become customary, their first guest of the year will be me. I will be talking about my history with the con and the thousand-and-one panels I'll be hosting there this year. (SPOILER ALERT: It's most of the same ones I host every year but with some different people on them.) Tune in. Ask questions. I'll embed the video on this site after the fact but you'll enjoy it more if you watch live.

Following yesterday's mass shooting, we have the usual Internet Discussions. "It's too soon after the tragedy to be discussing this" doesn't work when we have one of these every day or so…so here's a thought: Why don't we try some of the things that over 75% of the American population thinks we should try?

And I'll bet if you change "Ban Assault Weapons" to "Limit Access to Assault Weapons," it would be over 75% too.

I've been asking here if anyone could come up with a newspaper strip that's been drawn by one person, unassisted, longer than Russell Myers has been drawing Broom-Hilda. Someone finally wrote in to suggest Tank McNamara as a likely runner-up. While it hasn't been around as long as Russell's witch, Tank McNamara has had a pretty impressive run and is still running.

The Tank McNamara newspaper strip debuted on August 5, 1974 and I think it was daily and Sunday from the start. It was then written by Jeff Millar while Bill Hinds did the drawing. Hinds took over writing it when Millar passed away in 2012.

Broom-Hilda started Monday, April 20, 1970 so Myers' strip is 1,568 days ahead of Tank McNamara and always will be as long as the two strips' makers are still making 'em. But as of today, Tank McNamara has appeared for 17,807 consecutive days and as far as I know, they've all been drawn by Mr. Hinds. I may be wrong but I don't think he's employed any assistants or reprints.

17,807 strips means he's 90 strips shy of Charles Schulz's run on Peanuts. If my numbers are correct, that means that in about three months, Tank McNamara will be in second place among newspaper strips drawn by their original artist. But it's also worth noting that for a time, Hinds also originated and drew a strip called Cleats that ran from 2001 to 2010…so maybe he's drawn more strips total than Myers.

I haven't gotten into figuring out who might be the leader if we add up multiple strips. (Myers had another newspaper strip for a time and both men did a lot of work not in daily comic strip format.) Mort Walker was probably involved in the production of more individual strips than anyone but after the first few years of Beetle Bailey, they were all team efforts.

A few folks who wrote in asked about artists like Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Mell Lazarus, Johnny Hart, Chester Gould, Walt Kelly and Chic Young. Yes, they all had long runs signing their names to newspaper strips but all of them used assistants — sometimes sparingly, sometimes a lot. Al Smith ghosted Mutt & Jeff for centuries (it seemed) but he didn't start it just as Bud Sagendorf didn't start Popeye or the guys who drew the bulk of Gasoline Alley or The Katzenjammer Kids didn't start them.

And a couple of readers — who could easily have looked up this information — seemed certain that Doonesbury has been around longer than Broom-Hilda. Nope. Broom-Hilda, as mentioned, started 4/20/1970 and Doonesbury started 10/26/1970. It's a great, ground-breaking strip but Garry Trudeau has taken many a hiatus and had a lot of help and the daily strip is now reprints. Broom-Hilda has been in papers for a longer time without its artist taking vacations or having someone else do much of the drawing.

You can catch up on Tank McNamara on this page. If, like me, you didn't follow it often when the place to do that was in something called a newspaper — which ran it in something called a "Sports Section" which you had no interest in opening — you might be delightfully surprised. And you can sample Cleats over on this page.

You've probably seen the news about how certain Supreme Court Justices have not been reticent about accepting what some might call bribes. The bribes come from wealthy folks who have perhaps profited mightily from certain Supreme Court decisions. Here's Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone breaking down the controversy for us…

Brian Dreger, who sends me a lot of good questions, sent this one…

I've always wondered: what would happen if some producer or someone not in the Writers Guild wrote a script during a strike, and it was produced (never mind about the quality being crappy, etc.). It seems obvious someone will find out and report it…but what are the real penalties involved? I don't mean what would happen down the road after the strike, when no writers would ever work for those people again. Is there some sort of standing, official penalty to prevent this sort of thing? If scabs break a union line in other types of strikes, there is often violence and name-calling, etc., but I'm not aware of any penalties that ever happen.

People who are members have been brought up on charges of scabbing and people who were not members have been banned from ever joining the Guild, at least for a while. The Guild is not the police. It can't throw people in prison but it has enforced the penalties it could enforce. In the past, there was some anger over incidents where someone was or was not "prosecuted" (that's not precisely the right word) because they were so famous but I don't know enough about those to be more specific. Yes, people have been penalized.

It isn't that no writers would ever work for the employer again. It's more often that no writers would ever work again with people they thought were scabs. I do not know of any violence that has ever resulted but there maybe has been a bit of name-calling.

Generally speaking, scabbing usually turns out to be a bad career move. During the '88 strike, a gent I later knew as a researcher did some writing on one of the daytime dramas. He went back to being a researcher after the strike was over because the show for which he wrote didn't want him around after the strike ended and the "real writers" (that's what he called them) came back.

Daniel Klos writes…

In most industries, when union employees go on strike, they strike against their specific employer. My understanding is that most (all?) screenwriters are not employees in the traditional sense but rather independent contractors, and the strike is not against a specific employer. So who exactly is the WGA striking against? The studios? The networks? Producers? If it's against producers, does that put certain people who are both producers and writers in a conflict of interest situation (where they are both labor and management)? And if it's a strike against the studios and/or networks, is it against each entity individually? Or is it a strike against a collective organization that they all belong to? And if it's the latter, does that mean that no studio or network is allowed to craft their own independent agreement with the WGA?

A labor organization like the Writers Guild (or the Directors Guild or SAG-AFTRA or others) makes a contract with this group called the AMPTP. That contract is called the Minimum Basic Agreement (the MBA) and it specifies, for example, the minimum amount each member studio will pay a writer for a certain kind of script. It sets down all sorts of terms and working conditions and promises that we won't do these things to them and they won't do these other things to us. My agent or lawyer or I can negotiate for better terms on a given job but not for less favorable terms.

The AMPTP is made up of the major employers. Employers who are not voting members of the AMPTP can employ WGA writers on the same terms by signing onto what are sometimes called "Me Too" contracts. That term has nothing to do with the current "Me Too" movement and if I had more time, I could probably come up with some ironic remark about producers like Harvey Weinstein who signed onto one and was brought to justice by the other.

A strike of both major and minor employers results when the old MBA expires and no new one has been agreed-upon to take its place. So we are striking against a collective organization but also the other employers who piggyback on whatever contract the AMPTP and the WGA agree upon.

Yes, there are people who are both writers and producers and they are often caught in a conflict of interest situation. Some studios are now demanding that writer-producers cross WGA picket lines to produce. The fact though that the membership of the WGA authorized the strike action by almost 98% should suggest that very few of those folks have trouble deciding that the writing part of their two job descriptions is of great importance to them. And a lot of the remaining 2% are probably not writer-producers but actor-producers or maybe something else along with being a producer.

During a strike, the Guild may (note the italics for emphasis) decide whether to offer interim contracts. An interim contract specifies the new terms but it can be replaced by the new MBA once there is one. If such contracts are offered, a given company may (emphasis again) elect to sign one, in which case writers can work for that company while the strike continues elsewhere.

For instance: During the last strike, David Letterman's show went back to work while the competing Tonight Show with Jay Leno remained shut down. Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, owned his show and when the WGA offered interim contracts, it signed on. Leno's show though was owned by NBC and NBC was not about to sign any interim agreement.

There are pro and con arguments within the Guild about whether it's good strategy to offer interim deals just as there are pro and con arguments within the studios as to whether signing them is a wise strategy for them. If this strike lasts a while, both parties will be having internal debates about all this but so far, the subject probably hasn't come up.

And I think I covered everything. Thank you, Brian and Daniel.

I said that the next few video embeds here would feature a few of the amazing people I've met in my life. When I wrote that, I didn't realize I'd be posting an obit and video for Bill Saluga, a great comic talent who I just learned passed away last March 28 at the age of 85. But he qualifies. It was wonderful that his "Raymond Jay Johnson" character caught on and brought him fame and fortune…but it would be a shame if anyone thought that was all he did.

Bill was a brilliant improv performer with a lightning-fast mind and a knack for finding the funny in any situation. I first saw him, as many of you probably did, working with George Memmoli, Michael Mislove, Fred Willard and (sometimes) Patti Deutsch in a troupe called the Ace Trucking Company. They appeared at a lot of clubs in the Los Angeles area and the audience could throw any suggestion or thought their way and something wonderful would magically appear. Sometimes, it was the infamous R.J. Johnson but Bill could be a lot of different people.

At one point, a lot of his employment was as a shill in "hidden camera" shows…setting up the unsuspecting victim in some situation. I never cared much for those shows but they sure tapped into what Bill was good at — thinking fast and being funny. Every time I ran into him anywhere, he was thinking fast and being funny. The time he guested on Garfield and Friends, he was thinking fast and being funny.

Here's a video of a record he made as his signature character. Please forgive the disco…

The next few of these video embeds will feature a few of the amazing people I've met in my life. This one is an hour and 23 minutes of my buddy Richard Turner, one of the greatest handlers of playing cards in the world. He would be worthy of the word "amazing" even if he could see but he can't…

Phil Zeman writes…

I appreciate you answering questions about the WGA strike even though you aren't as in the know as you were in previous strikes. However, something I've been wondering about is what we, meaning those of us who aren't in the WGA or SAG-AFTRA or the Director's Guild or any of the other unions involved in Hollywood, can do to support the WGA?

I don't think there's a lot you can do apart maybe from backing us on social media and helping us tamp down some of the more ridiculous assertions that we're being greedy or that the most important writers are not solidly behind the strike. And of course, it would help if you didn't start writing all the shows that we're not writing.

Phil also asked me about things like not crossing a WGA picket line to take the Universal City Tour. Not crossing a picket line is another way to show support. So is not watching reruns of shows that would be airing new episodes right now if the studios had offered us a decent contract. I wish I could suggest more substantial ways.

Robert Forman wrote to ask…

Do you know if one of the things being negotiated is A.I.? Do you think it should be?

As I understand it, we (the writers) want to negotiate on the topic and they (the producers) don't want to. They've proposed we have occasional meetings to discuss it…which is so meaningless that I think the response was A.I.-generated.

Yes, I think it should be addressed and we should start establishing rules about how it can be used as an adjunct to our work and even — gulp! — as a replacement in some instances, especially when the A.I. in question has been "trained" with our work.

And lastly for now, Jeff George asks…

What's it like out there on the picket lines? Is there any part of it that's fun?

Some picketers will tell you that they appreciate the exercise and the chance to see (and march with) some old friends. If so, that's fun for about fifteen minutes and it's really just a viewpoint that moves your mind off the more serious side of the whole thing. My knees have not made it possible for me to go out and picket yet in this strike but I'm going to try to do it early next week.

In past strikes, I usually volunteered to do things like help make signs and man the check-in tables. But I marched a lot and all of that made me feel like I was helping my union, helping our cause. So I guess you'd call that a plus. We also do a lot to buoy each others' spirits and to reassure our fellow/sister writers that our cause is righteous and that a fair deal is necessary and attainable. We don't do it just to send a message to Management.

I'm getting a lot of questions about the Writers Guild strike and I need to emphasize that I have no real "inside" info on the negotiations or the lack thereof. But having been through WGA labor stoppages before this one, I may be able to answer general questions like these. Brendan Murphy asks…

Will the Writers Guild strike affect your participation in panels at Comic-Con, either in what you can do or guests you might have lined up?

I can't imagine how. None of my panels have anything to do with the kind of work the Writers Guild covers. The only impact I can think of on Comic-Con would involve panels which feature the cast and/or crew of some TV series or movie. If a TV series or movie is delayed due to the strike, its makers might choose not to do a presentation they might otherwise have done. Or maybe they'll do it and not invite the writers.

And Matthew Wecksell asks…

Shows with finished scripts, like season 2 of House of the Dragon remain in production. There is online commentary that these shows will have problems without writers on set to do last minute rewrites.

So I ask, outside of the context of the strike: Why is this a problem? Some shows may have rushed production schedules that require filming before the words are written, but why is the idea of a script being "finished" so anathema to the act of filming it? Surely no one filming yet another A Doll's House or Hamlet would insist that the process requires rewriting after the start of principal photography?

No…but the actor starring in Hamlet is not going to walk onto the set and tell the producer or someone in charge, "This speech which starts 'To be or not to be, that is the question' really sucks. We need a rewrite on this!" That kind of thing has been known to happen on a script not by William Shakespeare or me.

Or due to budget or schedule problems, the scene at the football game has to be shot in a bowling alley and some of the lines in the script need to be altered to fit the new setting.

Or what looked fine on the page doesn't play well when the actors read it in context or costume. On situation comedies, the writers do rewrites throughout the rehearsal process and sometimes even after a dress rehearsal in front of a live audience. I worked on a sitcom once where, after the audience response at the dress rehearsal told us they weren't understanding the ending. We had about three hours to rewrite Act Two and have the cast learn it before the second audience came in for the final taping.

Time on a stage with a full crew costs a lot of money per hour. If you were producing a show, you might want to have someone present who can do a speedy and professional rewrite if problems arise. It might not be the script's original writer but you might feel you need someone. The costumes are almost always completed before the day of filming but there are always a couple of wardrobe folks around in case of emergency.

By the way: Our series here on panel borders and Western Publishing Company will resume when I don't have strike questions to answer. But don't let that stop you from sending in ones you think I might be able to field.