A bit of a fuss — much more than is warranted — is being made over that New Yorker cartoon that was based on an old Jack Kirby drawing. As you may recall, (we mentioned it here) cartoonist Harry Bliss did a drawing that readers were invited to caption. He used a monster from an old issue of Tales to Astonish and a number of folks recognized it and, as reported in this newspaper article, are expressing some level of outrage.

I cannot speak for Mr. Kirby but I seriously doubt Jack would have considered this to be plagiarism. It's one drawing put into a new, funny context. It's also an obvious and famous drawing (I included it in my book) and it's not like Mr. Bliss could have expected everyone would have thought it was his design. The joke in the visual is that it contrasts so totally with his own style.

On the other hand, I think someone at the New Yorker is guilty of a bit of bad sportsmanship. Readers were invited to submit captions for the Bliss cartoon and quite a few entrants wrote to me that they'd submitted lines like, "What's that? You say you're the lawyer for the Jack Kirby estate?" Someone at the magazine must have noticed the name of Kirby popping up in many entries…and if they didn't know who that was or get the connection, they should have researched it and found out. Then they should have realized that one of the Kirby reference submissions would have been funnier than any of those they picked, and it would have carried Bliss's joke to a logical, honest punchline. So that's where I think the "wrong" lies…and let's be honest. It's a pretty trivial "wrong."

One of the quiet joys of David Letterman's show is the Paul Shaffer play-on. Mr. Shaffer always selects an appropriate song to perform for a few bars as a guest enters…and "appropriate" can mean a groan-inducing pun or a nugget of musical trivia.

The other night, Letterman's guest was Senator Jim Webb, who's touring the nation to promote his new book and to hint that he'd make a dandy running mate for Barack Obama. (I think he would, by the way.) Shaffer played him on with "Macarthur Park." I wonder how many people made the connection.

You don't have to write me and cite it to prove to me you did. I assume you did because you're smart enough to read this site. I'm just wondering how many other people got it.

I don't know quite how this stuff works but Tom Wolper sent me a link to listen to today's installment of Fresh Air straight to your computer. On most systems, if you right-click on that link, you should be able to save it to your harddisk for later listening. That will give you the entire hour, including the Nixon guy. I come in at about 25 minutes and 20 seconds into the show…

This is funny. I was the second guest today on Fresh Air. The first was Rick Perlstein, the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. I don't know Mr. Perlstein or his book but apparently, those who burnish and defend the name of Richard M. Nixon are not happy with what Mr. Perlstein has written.

Over at the weblog of The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, Frank Gannon — a longtime historian and defender of R.M.N. — writes the following…

At least on the basis of this radio interview, the author and historian and author turns out to be an effective and engaging author and polemicist. Fresh Air itself — inadvertently to be sure — provides an editorial comment by pairing Mr. Perlstein and Nixonland with another author and his book: Mark Evanier's King of Comics — a book about the comic book artist who created such Marvel superheroes as the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and X-men.

So it turns out that Fresh Air had a theme today: comic book renderings of superheroes and supervillans.

It might interest Mr. Gannon to know that my book is actually titled Kirby: King of Comics and that it's about a man named Jack Kirby. When I recorded the interview on Monday, we taped way more than was aired…and one of the exchanges that was dropped was a discussion of how when Mr. Kirby created one of his great master villains, Darkseid, he based much of the character on the man he thought was then the most dangerous and sinister human being alive…Richard Nixon.

I don't know if that section of the discussion was dropped because they decided to have the Perlstein interview occupy the other half of the hour. But if they'd left it in, we could have had a real theme show.

Here's a link to the Fresh Air segment today featuring an interview with me about Kirby. It runs a little under twenty minutes.

American Airlines has announced that, as of June 15, it's an extra $15 to check a suitcase on one of their flights. That's for your first suitcase. They already charge $25 for a second suitcase. This does not apply to international flights or to full fare coach, business and first-class customers and AAdvantage Gold, Platinum and Executive Platinum members. But it applies to most of our tickets. One can assume that most other airlines will follow the model.

One can also assume a certain amount of chaos as more people try to go the carry-on route. I don't think I've been on a flight in the last few years where the overhead bins weren't jammed to capacity, and folks had to check their carry-ons because there was no room to carry them on. So here's my question, and the first news reports of the new fee don't address this. Let's say I bring a carry-on and there's no room in the bins for it. What then? If the flight attendant says, "Sorry, sir…we'll have to check that bag," does that mean I have to pony up the fifteen bucks? Because I didn't crush and push and manage to get on the plane ahead of other people?

If the answer is yes, that'll make boarding a more cutthroat competition. If not, then let's all bring carry-ons and just check them for free at the gate. Either way, it sounds like a lot of additional problems getting the planes in the air on time.

And, uh, doesn't more carry-ons mean a longer wait at security screening points? For everyone?

American also announced they'd be cutting a number of flights…and they have some additional new fees for us. It will cost more for traveling with pets, oversized baggage and reservation services, and more to make a reservation if a human being on their payroll is involved — $20 if you use the A.A. call center reservations and $30 if you book at the airport ticket counter.

I have a feeling this will cause so many problems that the airlines will soon announce that — to serve us better — they're going to drop the fee for checked baggage and just raise ticket prices across the board to compensate. Which may be exactly how they intend this to all play out.

Amazing to see news photos this morning of Senator Edward Kennedy walking out of the hospital where he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. To see the non-stop news coverage yesterday, you would have thought he had days (maybe hours) to live and would only depart the doctor place in a horizontal position. Maybe we'll have Teddy around for this election, after all…

As explained on this page, I'm a guest on today's installment of Fresh Air, the popular conversation program on National Public Radio. The subject is Jack Kirby and my new book on him, and that page has an excerpt from the book.

After I mentioned I was doing the show, I received a number of e-mails advising me on how to respond to the interview style of its host, Terry Gross. My correspondents missed the fact that the interview had already been recorded by then, and they didn't know that my interrogator was not Ms. Gross but the program's TV critic, David Bianculli. We conversed for 40-45 minutes (it seemed) and I assume they're going to edit it down by at least half, which is fine with me, especially if they lose the portions where I was incoherent and clumsy of word, and include the occasional moments when I made sense.

I believe the program will be available for listening on this page, beginning around Noon (West Coast Time) and I'll post a more direct link when there is one. And like I said the other day, you can also turn on your radio and hear it. People still do that, I'm told.

Tomorrow on Shokus Internet Radio! Janet Waldo guests on Stu's Show, a live, two hour chat fest that you can listen to, absolutely free! Janet is, of course, the veteran radio-TV-cartoon actress who is best known as the voice of Judy Jetson and Penelope Pitstop. She is a charming, wonderful lady who has been working in show business since she first sounded like a teenage girl. She still sounds like a teenage girl, as you'll hear if you tune in.

Matter of fact, don't be satisfied to just tune in. Call in and ask Janet a question about…oh, maybe about her work on I Love Lucy or about her years on radio as Corliss Archer. You can even ask her if it's true that she's a distant relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man for whom my junior high school was named. (I was the only person on campus, by the way, who knew who Ralph Waldo Emerson was. My English teacher thought he was some guy who made radios.)

My buddy Earl Kress will be co-hosting because interviewing Janet Waldo is a two-man operation. You can hear all this by going to the website of Shokus Internet Radio at the appropriate time, which is 4 PM West Coast time, 7 PM East Coast time. How can you pass up the chance to talk to Judy Jetson?

Tim Russert's getting pissed that Hillary Clinton doesn't realize he's already declared Obama the nominee.

Hey, if it makes Russert mad, that might be reason enough for her to stay in the race.

One of the great features of The Smoking Gun website is their collection of "riders." These are contract add-ons when performers tour…a list of things they'd like in their dressing rooms, on stage, etc. Some of them are quite amazing with their piggish or fussy demands, or revealing about what really matters to the performer(s) in question. The guys who comprise Gnarls Barkley, for instance, insists that their dressing room be equipped with Magnum Condoms. Is that on the list because they need them or because they want everyone to believe they need them?

But they recently posted the all-time champ among such documents. I'm not particularly a fan of Foo Fighters but I would be if their music was as wonderful as their touring rider.