Another photo from my new stash. This one was taken at the first banquet of the group I co-founded (with Don Rico and Sergio Aragonés), the Comic Art Professional Society. The date on the slide is 1979.

The man on the left is Mike Sekowsky, who drew the early issues of Justice League of America and who handled Wonder Woman during the only period I ever found it readable. Mike did countless other comics of all varieties. He was one of the fastest, most dynamic comic artists of all time and he had a wicked sense of humor. Like many comic artists of his generation, he fell into the niche of drawing the kinds of things that publishers wanted (or thought they wanted), rather than what his muse told him to draw. If he'd listened to her, he might have been a great black humorist in the mold of Charles Addams. Or something.

And on the right, we have Rick Hoberg, another artist I've enjoyed working with and just having as a friend. I worked with Rick when he was just starting out, which was a few years before this picture was taken. It was fun watching him just get better and better.

This dinner was held at the Sportsmen's Lodge, a place in Studio City that recently shut down its formidable banquet facilities. I was in charge of the arrangements and when it came time to decide on an entree, I made the mistake of bringing the menu in to a meeting so everyone could vote on what we'd eat. Believe me…you don't want to ever do this. If you're ever arranging a banquet, just pick something you think most people will like and go with it. You don't want to go through the arguments and debates.

Our wealthier members wanted the most expensive dinner and proclaimed it demeaning to our field to have anything less. Having filet mignon made the statement that we thought cartoonists and comic book artists were worthy of filet mignon. Meanwhile, our poorer members said, in effect, "If you have filet mignon, we won't be able to attend…so you're saying that you don't want us." One member who was allergic to asparagus felt that if we picked that as the side dish, it was our way of saying that all his hard work for the organization was unappreciated. Another member started lecturing everyone on the inhumanity of veal.

On and on it went, way longer than the topic deserved, which should have been in the ten minute range. I don't remember how long it took or what we wound up with but it was a bad compromise. We'd made it to the stage where it was obvious we couldn't please everyone so to keep the peace, we opted for something that pleased no one. It was the first time in my life I was acutely aware that, yes, there is such a thing as Too Much Democracy.

I'm very pleased today. I've always dreamed of going to work for my government and torturing people. Waterboarding. Sleep deprivation. Food deprivation. Making human beings wallow in filth. Forced nudity. Mocking their religions. Whatever. I have a special dream of taking people who have a neurotic fear of insects and locking them in little boxes full of bugs.

Yeah, I know torture almost never yields any useful information and often causes prisoners to say any stupid thing just to make it stop. I don't care. I also don't care if the people I torture are guilty of anything. If they just arrest you at random or have you confused with someone else, I'll torture you. I may not even pretend it has any value for national security or come up with bad spy novel stories about nuclear bombs that are about to go off and can only be prevented if I torture you. I just like the idea of torture and I know there are Americans out there who'll cheer me on. Even if it harms America's standing in the world and invites all sorts of comparisons with barbaric regimes.

So today I'm happy. Because I know now that if someone writes a memo rationalizing all this…if I can just say I was following orders "in good faith" — that's right, torturing people in "good faith" — I won't be prosecuted. If I shoplift a pack of gum, I'll go to jail…but inflicting pain on someone and bringing them as close as possible to death? What, you got a problem with that? Torture's not illegal if someone tells you what you're doing isn't really torture.

And I'm not stopping there. I'm going to find me a lawyer who'll write me a memo saying that if I walk into a bank with a gun, demand cash and flee with it, that doesn't constitute bank robbery. It won't be difficult to get that brief. You can find a lawyer who'll say anything. Then just as soon as a bank somewhere gets some money, I'll be set.

So it's a great day for those of us with no conscience, no bothersome notions about any "wrongness" in inflicting pain or death on another human being. This makes up for the killing spree I didn't get to go on because Phil Spector was acquitted. That verdict scared me because for a minute there, it looked like it might start a trend of punishing crimes of violence. Good to know we can still make exceptions, especially if it might embarrass someone.

The weekend of April 25-26, my partner Sergio Aragonés and I will be in another country…guests at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. Sergio will be sitting at a little table, selling books and artwork and doing sketches for those who bring the proper amount of cash. I will be most often found on the dais of one panel or another. I'm doing five in two days, as you can see from the programming schedule. If you're there, come say hello or howdy or whatever those foreigners up there say.

Then I don't think I'm doing another convention until July and the spectacular Comic-Con International in San Diego. This is the fortieth one of these and it'll be the fortieth one I've attended — a boast that only three or four people can make. If you intend to be there and you've yet to purchase your membership, you're woefully negligent. Four-day memberships are sold out, Saturday passes are gone…and any day now, Friday will also be off the menu. It's frightening to think how big this thing would be if the convention center could magically expand to handle everyone who wanted to attend. I'm guessing the number would be about as many as Nate Silver estimates attended those silly "teabagging" protests yesterday. And the crowd in San Diego might even get something accomplished.

On the whole matter of protests about taxation, I think I agree with Andrew Sullivan. Here's most of what he had to say. (The reference to "Reynolds" is to Glenn Reynolds, a popular Conservative blogmeister.)

…it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's. The tea-parties are as post-partisan as Reynolds, one of the most relentlessly partisan bloggers on the web. When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.

But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you'd cut.

If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they are against.

All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

One of the ten-or-so things that caused me to lose respect for John McCain was his repeated promise that he could slash zillions from the budget…but his refusal to say what would go. That attitude leads to only two possible conclusions, as I see it: That he had no idea where to cut…or did and knew that too much of the nation wouldn't like losing whatever he'd kill. Instead, he kept saying, "This is not a good time to raise taxes on anyone," as if he ever thought there was a good time for that. If that's what someone means when they say that, I wish they'd say that, too.

A dozen or more of you have told me about Paul Kelly, who killed a man in a fight in 1927. He was convicted of manslaughter, served two years in prison, then returned to acting with some success.

Tom Neal, the actor who starred in the film noir classic Detour, shot and killed his third wife in 1965. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served six years of a ten-year sentence before he was paroled.

There's also Christian Brando, if you want to call him a celebrity. I'm not sure any of these men quite live up to that title. I guess it depends how you to define it. I don't think it's just a matter of having appeared on stage or screen. I think it has something to do with being famous and successful. The fact that these are all we've been able to identify makes the point that "celebrities" (by the successful/famous definition) do not get convicted of murder.

So now I guess the question is: Is it that such people are way less likely than the average joe to commit capital crimes? Or less likely to get caught or convicted if they do?

Don Murphy reminds me that John Wilkes Booth wasn't put on trial for shooting Abe Lincoln. Booth was tracked down and killed by Union soldiers twelve days after his foul deed.

So we're left with Spade Cooley and Phil Spector as the only two known celebrities to be convicted of murder. I suppose one could argue that neither was that much of a celebrity at the moment of their respective killings. Then again, neither was O.J.