Jiggety-jig. Bad flight up and much trouble with the Internet connections at the hotel…but I have nothing but good to say about this year's WonderCon, held this past weekend in that city where Tony Bennett left his heart. Also: Carolyn and I ate almost every meal at the Canton Seafood Restaurant over on Folsom, a few blocks from the Moscone Center, and had great food. (So did all the friends from the convention we dragged along with us.)

The convention itself was so nice that I especially regretted missing Day One. I won't list all the folks I talked with because that gets boring but it was the kind of con where every time you turned around, there was someone you wanted to meet. And if you were just there to shop, the exhibit hall probably didn't let you down. I never made it to some aisles but the ones I walked were teeming with goodies. (Hey, here's a free thought that might make someone a nice piece of cash: Has anyone at a large con ever set up a booth for shipping? It would be like, "Make your purchases elsewhere, bring 'em to us and for the cost of postage/FedEx plus a small fee, we'll take care of shipping them to your home." I saw lots of stuff I might have bought but I didn't want to deal with lugging it all around the convention all day, then back to the hotel — in the rain, no less — and cramming it into my already-crammed suitcase, which was already near the airline weight limit.)

Mood of the con? Hard to say. As usual these days, there may be more interest in upcoming movies about comic books than in the comic books, themselves.

Hey, I'll make a prediction here and you can check back in a year or so and see if I'm right. My prediction is that very soon, the major companies — the ones that own or control characters of which a lot of folks would say "I loved that when I was a kid" — are going to experience a very real, impossible-to-ignore revulsion at some of the more warped interpretations. There was a time when DC, Marvel and others that took their leads from those companies were probably a little too fierce about the idea that there was one way to draw Superman, that there were certain things that Spider-Man shouldn't do or which shouldn't be done to him. Now, it feels like the pendulum has swung too far towards the notion that uglifying a character or building a mini-series out of some aberrant change in his or her mythos or life is saleable.

I'm not talking about regressing anything back to the way it was in 1964 or whenever. It is certainly possible to rethink an old concept and come up with the 2008 version, and some properties probably should exist in the "now." But what makes a great property great is a certain set of creative choices and constants…and if you make every single one of those subject to interpretation (or just plain inversion for the sake of a "stunt"), you dilute the basic concept down to the point where it loses its impact. Often, it's interesting to wring an interesting variation on the norm but if you wring enough of them, it can sometimes become difficult to even know what the "norm" is.

That's one of the things that struck me as I looked at some displays in the exhibit hall. Another was that I don't have the storage space for all the fine, hardcover art and strip reprint books I'd like to own. Yet another was that some industrious folks are producing some amazing books and art pieces and merchandise that I only see at conventions…which I guess brings me back to my idea about a service that would ship your purchases home for you.

So, all in all, a great WonderCon once we got there. I hope you got there, too. If you didn't, try to get there someday.

WonderCon, once you get to it, is a fun and joyous experience. It's a great con and when I get more time, I'll tell you about Saturday. The hotel's pretty good too, except that the High Speed Internet Connection in our room was apparently installed by United Airlines. It don't work so well so I'm currently in the bar in the lobby, blogging via a wireless connection that only works down here. The bar is packed with folks from the comic book business and every now and then, one comes by and says, "Wow, I read your blog but I never thought I'd see you actually working on it!"

Let's see who's around here. Image co-founder Jim Valentino just ambled past, and Batton Lash (creator of a fine comic called Supernatural Law) is pointing at me and grinning. Master comic book shop operator Joe Ferrara is hovering about and a somewhat tipsy Marvel artist who shall remain nameless, and who seems unaware of how loudly he's speaking, is hitting on a lady who looks about as likely to prance off to his room with him as I am to book my next few flights on United. Over in the corner, I see someone who's either Bruce Timm or the winner of a Bruce Timm look-alike contest and this isn't very interesting, is it?

Okay, so I'll tell you a little more about Saturday. Packed hall. Big stars. Lots of people in great costumes. We had a great Jack Kirby Tribute Panel with Herb Trimpe, Mike Royer, Darwyn Cooke, Kurt Busiek and Paul Dini. Then later, I did a one-on-one with Herb…a fascinating, gifted man who talked about working at Marvel "in the days when it was fun." I sometimes get the feeling it hasn't been that way at very many comic companies for a long time.

I signed a lot of copies of Kirby: King of Comics for folks and would have sold more but the one dealer who had them, Comic Relief of Berkeley, sold out rather quickly.

I need to get out of this bar and go back upstairs to write in peace 'n' quiet so I'll wrap this up. More later, if and when I get a working Internet connection.

I've decided to start an airline. I'm going to start an airline where we fly people around in the cargo holds of planes that transport steer manure. The flight attendants will be obese bulldykes who pass through the coach every twenty minutes to taser everyone and pass out live gophers as snacks. All flights will depart a minimum of three days late and will arrive under medical quarantine but without your luggage. As an added feature, my pilots will all be chronic alcoholics and they'll select their destinations at random. If you want to go to a certain place, you'll have to just get on some jet and hope it goes where you want to go. That, of course, presupposes you will get there at all, which often will not be the case.

That's the working plan for my new airline and I know…some of you are thinking, "That won't stay in business for long." To which I respond, "Hey, United Airlines is still in business." Given the option of theirs or mine, mine should be your airline of choice.

As you might guess, I had an unpleasant experience with them. Carolyn and I spent most of Friday at L.A. International Airport in the United Terminal…not, as intended, at the WonderCon in San Francisco. What happened was that we missed…well, we didn't exactly miss our flight to S.F. We got to LAX later than advisable but we still should have been on the flight.

Problem #1 in an endless series was that there were long, long lines to check one's baggage if you wanted to do so with an actual human being doing the checking-in. We could not have done that and made the flight, even if we'd arrived when they tell you to arrive. The only alternative was a bank of computer check-in kiosks…all part of United's ongoing and serious campaign to enable them to operate with a minimum of people to whom one can talk and ask questions and complain.

I'm rarely late for flights. Once in a while, it happens…and what usually occurs is that I can make the flight itself but there's some question as to whether my suitcase can. The person who checks my luggage warns me it may not travel when I do, and I elect to take that risk. The worst that can happen (in theory) is that once I arrive at my destination, I sit around at that airport and wait for the next flight, on which will be my bag. That, of course, would waste no more of my life than just waiting for the next flight on the departure end of things and — who knows? — I might get lucky and my Samsonite will get on the same plane. Sometimes, it does.

The computer check-in doesn't work like that. It won't accept luggage less than 45 minutes before the scheduled departure even (apparently) if the plane will be taking off late. By the time we got through the lines and to the computers — and the computers located our reservations, which took longer than it should have — we were 43 or 44 minutes from take-off time.

This should not have mattered. The policy at United, as it states on the ticket folders, is that your seat may be given away if you don't get your Boarding Pass a half hour in advance. We had ours the night before thanks to printing them out online. You also have to be at the departure gate 20 minutes before the flight leaves. We could have made that but we never had the chance.

What happened at the computer is a bit blurry but the computer system announced it could not check our baggage…and the next thing we knew, we were no longer on the 8:25 AM flight at all. We were suddenly flying standby on the 9:33 flight…and that might have been an acceptable alternative had there actually been a 9:33 flight. It was cancelled with an explanation something along the lines of "The plane for this flight from L.A. to San Francisco originates in Uruguay, and it's sleeting in Uruguay." One of those deals.

But it was okay, we were told, because we were automatically "rolled over" (they used that term and I had to admit I did feel "rolled over") to the standby list for the 10:03 flight. The problem with that was that all the folks who'd had confirmed seats on the 9:33 flight went onto that standby list — ahead of us. I think we were #152 and #153, which didn't look promising since the plane only held 138 people in the first place and already had 137 confirmed reservations. One person from the standby list made it on and we weren't among that one. I think this was the flight via which our suitcases travelled but we didn't.

It was like that all day. We didn't get on the 10:50 flight. We didn't get on the 11:57 flight. Flight after flight, we were standing by for a lottery we could not win. The order of the standby list kept changing — apparently, folks with a lot more United Mileage Plus points were given preference — but at no point were we within even the realm of "faint hope." A check of other airlines suggested no workable alternatives and, besides, our luggage had already flown United and would be waiting — we could only pray — at the other end.

Granted, airlines sometimes have to cancel flights but you'd think they'd have a better grasp of this situation since it only happens every hour or three. At any given time, the terminal is full of lost souls who arrived there thinking they had confirmed seats. There were a couple hundred of us trying to get to San Francisco via United and what I think annoyed me most was the utter disinterest in our predicament and the startling lack of anyone to talk to about it. I meant what I typed earlier about a conscious plan to limit the number of human beings with whom we get to interface. It's seemed to me quite deliberate, like someone at United said to someone else, "Hey, you know what wastes a lot of money? Having to deal with passenger problems! Let's stop doing that!"

I tried talking to various employees at various gates and encountered one or both of two problems. One was how every one of those folks seemed to be doing the job of about eight people. They were all frantic, rushing to get other people onto and off flights. One harried lady who looked like Cloris Leachman practically yelled at me, "I don't have time to deal with your situation." But the ones who might have had time didn't deal with my situation, either. The subtext was like, "Well, we're not responsible for the weather and we certainly aren't responsible if you were late…so you'll get there when you get there and it really isn't our problem!" The most I could get out of any of them was a directive to go to Customer Service, a misnamed department if ever there was one.

The line at Customer Service was not short and it was difficult to stand in it long enough to get to the front and to simultaneously be at the various gates where standby passengers were being called for possible openings. When I did get to speak with someone there, I got a lot of that "it's not our problem" attitude from a person who seemed to know less about the workings of United than I did, and who seemed to have picked up their brains at the Duty-Free Shop. Cloris Leachman had told me that if I didn't get satisfaction there, I should demand to speak with a Supervisor. When I didn't get satisfaction, I told the lady who wasn't satisfying me that I'd like to speak to a Supervisor, to which she replied, "He's just going to tell you what I told you." I said, "Well, I'd like to hear it from his lips." So a Supervisor was called over and before I said anything, before he even knew what the problem was, he announced, "Whatever she said is how it is." I asked to speak to the Supervisor's Supervisor but apparently, the Supervisors at United are all unsupervised.

What that woman told me there was confusing and useless. It pretty much came down to, "Just hang around until you get on a flight." I asked if there was anything I could do to make that a reality and she said something about buying First Class tickets if any became available (she couldn't be bothered to check and see if any were) and $700. I'm not sure if it was $700 each or $700 for the both of them but I was not inclined to give United Airlines that kind of money for any reason.

Thinking I was cleverer than I actually was, I tried phoning United Customer Service. This is not easy to do because no one at the airport would tell me the number and it was just about the only United number that wasn't on the ticket folder. I finally called the number for reservations and wormed it out of someone there. Upon dialing, I reached a fellow with a thick accent whose only interest seemed to be in repeating talking points that extolled the glories of the United Mileage Plus card. He had no idea what happens to passengers stuck in Standby Hell and no clue what to do about it. Finally, I asked him, "Where are you located?" and he told me he was in New Delhi. I asked him what he could possibly do for me from there and he said, "I could fill out a complaint and send an e-mail to someone in Chicago." Obviously, that wasn't going to change anything and I guess that's the whole point of it. You don't have your Customer Service phones answered by some guy in India if you want to actually provide Customer Service.

After way too many approaches to United staffers who hadn't the time or interest in our dilemma, one semi-sympathetic employee (there are always a few) told me that if I went back to Customer Service (yet again), I could pay an extra $50 per ticket and we'd be guaranteed seats on the next flight that had openings. Why no one had told me this earlier is a mystery but it may have something to do with the fact that so few people would even talk with me at all.

It was, in effect, buying our way to the top of the standby list and it seemed unfair but this was no time for contemplations of that variety. I waited another half-hour at Customer Service and paid $100 and they told us that we'd definitely be on the 5:15 flight. (When they told me that, I asked, "5:15 PM?" Because the way it had been going, you couldn't assume anything.) That was, of course, assuming that there even was a 5:15 PM flight. Carolyn and I spent a few more hours sitting in the food court eating Wheat Thins and Bugles and chasing them with that delicious $2.50 airport Aquafina water. And we actually — wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles — did get out on the 5:15 flight.

As you may have heard, United has announced that beginning later this year — in May, I think — passengers will have to pay to check more than one suitcase. A lot of people I know have announced that because of it, they will never fly United Airlines again. I think they have the right idea but for the wrong reason.

The Horrors of Yesterday: How United Airlines can get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about the time it would take you to hop there on one foot.

Today, Saturday and Sunday, I will be at the WonderCon in San Francisco. I'll be hosting some terrific panels…and you can see a list of them here. Find out all about the WonderCon over on this website and show up there. It's going to be quite rainy in S.F. this weekend so the event might not be as crowded as you'd expect and dealers might be more willing to give bargains. If nothing else, you can enjoy the pungent aroma of Wet Fans.

I'll be signing copies of my new book, Kirby: King of Comics. Yes, it's out and I'm told most major dealers should have their supplies next week…but they may not have 'em for long. My publisher says that every last copy of the first printing has been ordered by merchants or distributors, and they're hurrying to get a second printing on the presses. We'll be fixing a few teensy typos for it…and I should mention that in a week or so, I'll be opening a section of this website devoted to corrections and amplifications on the book.

I'll also probably be signing copies of the new issue of Will Eisner's The Spirit which came out this week from DC Comics. It's the first to be written by the awe-inspiring team of Sergio Aragonés and Your Obedient Weblogmaster, trodding in very large footprints. Mike Ploog and Mike Farmer did a superb job with the illustration and there's a wonderful cover by Jordi Bernet. Next issue is drawn (and drawn well) by Paul Smith. Also at some point during the con, Sergio and I will be over at the Dark Horse booth signing copies of the current Groo mini-series. (By the way: I'm currently assembling the letter column for the last issue of that mini-series and I'm short a few letters. Here's your chance, people.)

On Monday, I will be teaching a half-day class in Animation Voiceover Acting at Voice One, which is a respected school and recording studio. If you're in that area and interested in doing cartoon voices, you might want to check it out. Here's a link with all the info.

End of advertisements. We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.

Duke Haring makes two points and I'm going to respond to them one at a time. Here's the first one…

First, the subtle but salient point Mr. Morris fails to distinguish is that Bill Clinton was not impeached for having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. He was impeached for lying about it under oath. Certainly, I don't live in John McCain's head, but I believe that was the basis for his impeachment vote.

I don't live in McCain's head either but after hearing him discuss it a few times in interviews, I got the feeling that the basis for his impeachment vote was that if you want the Republican nomination for president, you'd better not cross the extreme right wing of that party. Maybe it's just me projecting my viewpoint but McCain sure seemed to think the whole accusation against Clinton was nonsense and I remember him saying several times a conviction was impossible. But he still voted to let the process go forward and supported it and I guess I was disappointed that he went along with it. I'd like to think the John McCain of an earlier time would have parted company with the Republican mainstream on this. He used to do that once in a while when he thought they were wrong.

In one sense, you're right that it was about alleged lying, not alleged infidelity. But I think in a larger sense, it was about seeing how much they could embarrass Clinton and lower public opinion of him by trotting out as many details of salacious conduct as possible. And if Democrats applied the same sleazy manuever, they'd gin up some investigation of McCain's contacts with lobbyists and use that as an excuse to dig up and publicize every detail of the man's supposed affair. That would be wrong but it would be quite comparable to the process McCain endorsed in the Clinton/Lewinsky matter.

Here's the other part of Duke's message…

Secondly, while I am no fan of Sen. McCain — my vote went to Ron Paul — I find it interesting that the New York Times sat on this diddling the lobbyist story until after its endorsement helped McCain to effectively lock up the nomination. If the Times had run the story when it first had it, we might now be talking about the possibilities of Obama vs. Romney — not that this is any improvement in my mind. I'm just sayin'.

I doubt the story, at least in the tepid version the Times published, is going to do any harm to McCain's chances. It may even help him win over the kind of voter who thought the Times endorsement was a good reason not to vote for McCain. But it is odd that the Times endorsed the guy while it sat on this story and then released it now. The whole thing seems puzzling to me. What I'd like to know is: Do they think he had this affair? If so, why publish the story if you're going to tap dance around that? If not, why publish the story at all? If you aren't sure, why publish it now?

Jeremy Morris reads my little comment on the McCain "affair" story (item before last here) and writes…

…under normal circumstances I'd agree with you. But there are two points that I think are salient here in the case of John McCain that make this event actually worth considering:

1. McCain's reputation is for "Straight Talking" and for "Campaign Finance Reform". He's the one who made these two things the centerpieces of his run for office and his Senate career respectively. Cheating on your wife puts a lie to his whole "Straight Talking" persona that he's wrapped himself in. Now, granted he probably only got into Campaign Finance Reform as a cause after his participation in the "Keating Five" scandal, but still – Campaign Finance Reform is one of his hobbyhorses. If he's having an illicit affair with a lobbyist, that shows that his championing of Campaign Finance Reform is a sham. Which you may be expecting, but there are still many people in this country who expect their politicians to actually believe the things that they say. The more examples of this sort of thing, the more that expectation can be lowered and the more people will hopefully pay attention to what the politician actually does instead of just the words they say.

2. McCain voted to impeach President Clinton based on Clinton's sexual conduct while in office. Had McCain stood up and called out his own party for the stupidity of it all, I'd have more respect and more sympathy for the Senator. As it is, this is a classic example of one being "hoisted by his own petard" – if he didn't want to play by these rules he shouldn't have put them on the table when the board was setup. Any Republican who voted to impeach Clinton in the Lewinsky matter deserves to have their sexual closet thrown open and have all of the moths shaken out. And if they didn't realize the Pandora's Box they were opening when they cast that vote then they are fools who doubly deserve what they get. (Personal bias note – I considered myself a Republican up until the whole impeachment circus. So I may still be a little bit bitter that the party that I supported at the time turned out to be a bunch of corrupt little children intent on scoring political points about trivial issues instead of actually governing like adults.)

I don't know that I can disagree with most of that. McCain's support for the impeachment of Clinton was, for me, the moment he vaulted the proverbial shark. It was when he stopped being a Republican I could see myself voting for and entered the phylum of "He's just like all the others." Where I guess I differ a bit with you is that I think the part of this story that obviously interests most people — Ooh, John McCain was cheating on his wife! — doesn't seem to have been nailed down with sufficient evidence, nor would it be the real wrong. If he's doing improper things to help out lobbyists, that's the sin, whether he's in bed with one financially or literally. I suppose one could argue that the sex angle to the story is a good thing because a story that just said McCain lets lobbyists manipulate him like he's Topo Gigio would not get as much attention…but you kind of hate to see it work that way. I do, at least.

From Chris Dosevski…

Your announcement of a surprise birthday party for Larry Storch gives me a great opportunity to notify you and your readers that the Encore Westerns Channel is playing this month a 1957 movie called Gun Fever which features Larry Storch in the role of a vicious Mexican outlaw named Amigo. It's hard to reconcile Larry's comedic role in F Troop with the serious role he plays in this adult violent Western. I was amazed to see Larry shoot down a man in cold blood, beat another man nearly to death, and get into fistfights. Larry affects a Spanish accent in this movie which is so indescribably bad that it's good. For Larry Storch fans, this movie is not to be missed.

And you can "not miss it" on Sunday, February 24 at (on my satellite dish) 10:40 AM. Consult some listing to tell you when it's on in your area. That's assuming you even get that channel.

Well, I think I can give up on Deal or No Deal again…and after last night's show, it wouldn't surprise me if much of America did, as well. As you may recall, they've never had a million dollar winner in this game, the whole point of which is to see if someone can win a million dollars. To coincide with sweeps, they launched the "Million Dollar Mission" during which more and more of those cute little briefcases contained the yearned-for amount…the idea being to weigh the odds to make a million buck win likely. Didn't happen, as we all knew going into last night's show. (How did we know it? Because if it had, the producers and network would have made darned sure we knew in advance so more folks would tune in to watch.) Even with half the cases on the board containing $1,000,000.00, the contestant wound up with less than half that.

Still, you could tell the producers thought it would all end with the Big Win. The show has gotten way too manipulative for its own good, trotting out deserving contestants and reminding us over and over how deserving they are, bringing on their friends and family members to say it every three minutes. They even had the prize models saying "You're my favorite contestant ever" and getting emotional about it. Last night's contestant — the one who was picked to play in a game calculated to make her a millionaire — needed the loot in order to have more children and to continue all her fine charity work, and you certainly wanted her to succeed. The producers sure expected it.

They started this running theme with The Banker (the show's unseen Bad Guy, who's somehow regarded as evil for offering players a guaranteed, often huge amount if they elect not to gamble) proclaiming that he was going to beat her and that he'd consider anything less than a million dollar win for her as a loss for her. The lady kept saying, "I always win," which was clearly untrue. A person who always wins would not be poor enough to be an appropriate contestant on Deal or No Deal. Anyway, it came down to this silly dramatic undercurrent: If she won the million, it would prove that she was, indeed, one who always wins. If she went home with anything less — say, a measly $800,000 — she was a loser. That was the premise the producers felt they had to lay in there to ratchet up the suspense…since it seemed so obvious going in that she'd win the mill.

Plus, they added this out of left field: Her husband was afraid of heights..so The Banker added a new, one-time rule to the game. Hubby was strapped onto a platform and incrementally raised into the air on wires. Each time she opened a case containing a million, thereby dropping the odds of her winning that amount, he'd be hoisted another level. Why? Just to add more drama to a show that seemed to have a foregone conclusion.

But at some point in the taping, the producers must have realized it wasn't going as expected; that they'd configured the game around an expected finale that might not be achieved. With no explanation, they called off the stunt with the husband and started back-pedalling on this lame insistence that she was a loser if she didn't head homeward with all the marbles. And indeed, it finally came down to this: She had two cases left. One contained a million smackers. The other held $200. There was an offer on the table of a little less than half a million.

Therein lies the problem with this game. To be interesting, it has to be played by contestants who are somewhat needy and for whom a million dollar win is life-changing, allowing them to buy that new house they need, send their kids to college, help out those less fortunate than even themselves, etc. That kind of person should not and (if they have a lick of sense) will not turn down half a million on a 50-50 chance of either winning twice that amount or going home with bupkiss. You'd hate them if they did. You'd hate them and you'd hate the show and you'd even hate yourself for watching the show for an entire hour, rooting for that person. Even if they won, the player would have won after being foolish and reckless with their family's future.

The lady last night didn't, of course, do that. She went home with a nice piece of change. It turned out she did have the million dollar amount in her case so even though she won big, the conventions of the show treated her as a bit of a loser. I sure felt like one for investing any of my time in the whole enterprise. Even recording the show on TiVo and fast-forwarding through all the padding, I still felt like I'd listened to a long, long joke without a punchline…and not because the lady didn't win a million dollars. But because of all the contrived dramatics it took to get there.

Earlier this evening, I attended a terrific surprise birthday party for the great comic actor, Larry Storch. That's Larry at right in the above photo, posing with his F Troop co-star, Ken Berry, who was among the friends of Larry's in attendance. There were a lot of great comic actors present, including Chuck McCann, Jackie Joseph, Marty Ingels, Hank Garrett, Warren Berlinger and Ron Masak. There were also top cartoon voice actors like Wally Wingert (who threw the shindig) and Katie Leigh, plus I got a hug from Stella Stevens. That alone was worth the drive out to the valley.

Among many others who were present was Lou Scheimer, who used to co-own and run Filmation Studios. Lou often hired Larry as a voice actor (The Groovie Ghoolies, for instance) and for on-camera live-action (The Ghostbusters). And I got to meet one of my favorite composers, Neal Hefti, who expressed disbelief that I knew the obscure lyrics to the title song from a movie he scored, How to Murder Your Wife. He quickly learned otherwise, and the look on his face was almost as good as a hug from Stella Stevens.

Larry Storch has, of course, been doing wonderful work for most of his 85 years on this planet. I probably first knew him as a recurring character on Car 54, Where Are You?, one of my favorite shows. (Hank Garrett was a regular on that series. He may be the last person alive who was.) I always thought Larry was screamingly funny as Corporal Agarn on F Troop, which is one of those rare shows that looks better with each passing year. He was also on a short-lived, unjustly-forgotten series called The Queen and I, which I would love to see again.

Not much else to report except to again wish Larry a happy birthday last month. One reason he was so surprised by the surprise party is that his birthday was in January. But no one cared. It was just nice to see him and to get all those people together in one room.