I'm back in the fortress, at least for a few days.  Yesterday, I went in for my twice-weekly physical therapy session for my knees.  Throughout the session, my trainer and I were both masked and he wore gloves.  This morning, I got the call that he'd just tested positive for COVID.

I took a home test but it, of course, was negative.  If you have it, it takes a while for it to be detectable.  I am feeling fine and I'm optimistic that when I test again several days from now, I will still be negative.  Until then, I'm not going to venture near anyone.

Just playing it safe.  There's a lot of it going around again and I don't want to be responsible for it going around to anyone else.

A follower of this site who goes by "Joe Five-Oh" — please leave me real names, people — wrote to ask…

Like you, I love the work that Jack Kirby did for Marvel in the sixties but I wince at a lot of the inking it got. Because of the good inkers he got, we know how good his artwork was but I don't understand why he had some of the bad inkers he had.

I especially weep when I look at Avengers #4, the iconic issue that brought Captain America back from the dead. The only thing that stops this from being an absolutely perfect comic book is the inking which looks to me as sloppy and amateurish. How could anyone think that was good? For years, I thought it was inked by Jack Kirby himself because he is the only artist credited on it but I found out a few years ago that the inker was George Roussos, who went by the name of George Bell on many other Marvels he inked at the time.

I don't blame him for not putting his real name on that amateurish work but why did the editor hire such a person who obviously had no experience? Why couldn't that issue have been inked by Joe Sinnott, Wally Wood, Frank Giacoia or even Chic Stone?

Taking your last question first: At the time Avengers #4 had to be inked, Joe Sinnott, Wally Wood, Frank Giacoia and even Chic Stone were not working for Marvel, though Stone started a month or so later. Stan Lee, who with Production Manager Sol Brodsky made such decisions, had the following inkers available to him: George Roussos, Paul Reinman and then Dick Ayers, Don Heck and Brodsky could occasionally ink something but all three of them were pretty busy doing other things for the company. In a rare moment, Steve Ditko might also ink a job penciled by someone else but he was especially swamped with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.

And before you ask why Stan didn't hire some other guys, the answer was that Marvel didn't pay very well then. In the book I'm working on about Jack — yes, I'm still working on it — I have a long quote from Brodsky about how difficult it was then to find anyone to ink for Marvel for those rates. This had a lot to do with the budget the publisher, Martin Goodman, set for the comics but, Sol said, it also had something to do with how Stan allocated that money — this much to the penciler, this much to the letterer, this much to himself, etc.

I also asked Sol why after a certain point, his own inking was confined to occasional covers or stories for books like Millie the Model. He didn't hesitate in telling me he was not a fast inker and with his other duties, he would never have had time to ink a whole issue of one of the super-hero books. He also told me he really liked what Roussos did.

So did Jack Kirby. So did Steve Ditko, who was the person who recommended Roussos to Stan. They were friends and Ditko had called on Roussos to assist him with some uncredited inking on some of the early Dr. Strange stories. Later on at DC, there was a time when Carmine Infantino had Roussos inking Curt Swan on Superman and quite a few other artists' work. Carmine even selected Roussos to ink stories that he [Carmine] drew for the company.

George Roussos (aka "George Bell," aka "Inky Roussos") was in no way an amateur when he inked for Marvel in the sixties. He started in comic books in 1939, which was not long after comic books themselves started. In 1940, he was assisting on the art for Batman and in that decade, he penciled, inked and sometimes even lettered and colored some memorable stories and covers not just of the Caped Crusader but other comics, as well. In the fifties, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby considered him one of the key men in their operation and in the sixties, he worked constantly for DC…but moonlighted elsewhere under his pen name or without credit.

His career in comics was actually one of the longest ones ever — from 1939 until his death in 2000. He spent the last twenty years as one of the main colorists for Marvel, handling most of their covers.

For some reason on Facebook, there's a lot of hatred directed at artists on long-ago comics and with inkers, it often sounds like, "How dare you ink that comic since you weren't Joe Sinnott!" If you don't like a given artist's work, okay. Fine. I might even agree with you about certain people.

But I think we oughta remember that at the time, that person may have been the editor's best option…and as often as not, when the artist handed in that work you didn't like, the editor told him, "Great job! Here's the next issue!" In the theater when an actor is woefully miscast, people usually blame the person who made that casting decision more than they blame the actor.

There's also often on Facebook and in other forums, a lack of recognition that other people can have other opinions. A guy who writes me from time to time insists that Stan Lee, when he was the head guy at Marvel, could not possibly have liked the work of Don Heck. Well, yes, he did. He hired Don every single time he could. (And if I'd been in his position, I would have, too.)

People seem to get mad when someone likes something they don't. I don't get that.

I liked the inking of "George Bell" on Kirby more than you did, especially on some concurrent issues of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. Roussos told me he thought that the main thing someone inking Jack Kirby had to aim for was keeping all the "power" in the figures and faces. George wasn't my fave but I thought he caught the emotion that Jack put into faces and bodies better than a lot of so-called "better" inkers. I like that he did not try to "fix" Jack's anatomy or other elements of his style.

And maybe I liked Roussos' work more than you because I first read Avengers #4 in January of 1964 when it came out. I had not yet seen Jack's work inked by Frank Giacoia or Chic Stone and some others. Later, when Jack was inked by those guys or certain others and that became the norm, a lot of earlier work looked primitive. It's like how the special effects in a lot of the movies I grew up on looked pretty good at the time but to kids reared on movies with CGI effects work, those older films probably look pretty tame and unconvincing.

In comics, the idea of one person penciling and a different person inking is a concept that was largely invented for the publishers' benefit. Left to their own choices, a few artists might have chosen to work that way but most people who decide to become artists don't think, "Gee, I want to do half the work and have someone else decide who does the other half and what they'll do with it." Splitting it up made things easier for the publisher and editor. If Freelancer #1 produced "A" quality work and Freelancer #2 produced "C" quality work, you could have #2 ink #1 and get a consistent flow of "B" quality work.

It also reduced the artists' proprietary feelings about this work on which the publisher intended to hold the copyright. It made it seem less the work of Freelancer #1 or Freelancer #2 and more the creation of a team that the publisher assembled and on which he held "final cut."

Artists drawing newspaper strips didn't have to work that way and most of them didn't. If they needed help getting their strips drawn every day, they might employ other artists but they would decide who should do what and the creator of the strip would retain "final cut." Guys like Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Walt Kelly and Elzie Segar all employed assistants but the work remained under their control. And none of those artists — and few others — broke it down to one person doing all the penciling and another doing all the inking.

I've long thought that comic books as a whole would have been better off if the artists had retained the control that comic strip artists had and still have. Yes, Jack Kirby might have picked assistants or inkers that you didn't like…but editors also did that. On the whole, I think comic books would have been better off.

I've always liked the musical group called They Might Be Giants. I have no idea why it's taken until now for me to embed this music video of their best song…

This was originally posted to this site on August 4, 2003 and I posted it again on December 19, 2014. I decided it was time to post it again as it's still a very important memory for me. I said in its previous appearances that I thought the events I describe had occurred in 1959 or 1960 but I have since learned that 1961 is the right answer and I have corrected that…and while I was at it, a few other minor things in all the versions of it on this site…

My Fair Lady was the first real musical comedy I ever saw performed live on a stage. This is discounting a couple of "kiddy theater" productions I saw at an earlier age which failed to entertain me or, insofar as I could tell, anyone else on the premises. I remember a probably-unauthorized musical version of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins I saw when I was around seven that was so low-budget, they were short 499 pieces of head gear. A lady was playing Bartholomew and she kept doing inept sleight-of-hand to make it appear as if new chapeaus were magically appearing on her head, but she didn't fool anyone. We all knew she wasn't a boy and that it was the same hat, over and over and over.

A few other such plays failed to get me interested in theater. Fortunately though in 1961 when I was nine, my mother took me to see the touring company of My Fair Lady at the Biltmore Theater in downtown Los Angeles. A gentleman named Michael Evans — who spent much of his career playing Henry Higgins in various productions — played Henry Higgins, while research has suggested that Liza was played by either Caroline Dixon or Anne Rogers.

Anyway, I'll tell you what I remember of the experience. I remember my mother briefing me for days about what I was going to see, explaining and perhaps over-explaining the story. I also remember going there with a certain familiarity with the songs, inasmuch as my folks played the cast album over and over and over. I still own their copy of that record and it's a wonder you can even get a sound out of the thing today, so worn down are the grooves. I remember getting dressed up for the event and I remember my father, for God knows what reason, dropping us off at the theater and picking us up later, rather than coming in with us. Most of all though, I remember The Orange Drink.

At the time, it was apparently quite customary for legit theaters to sell orange drink at intermission. I assume they had alcohol and soft drinks but one could also purchase a certain orange-hued beverage that they all sold — or at least, they sold it at the Biltmore. For days before we attended, my mother not only told me about the show but explained that at intermission, she would buy me this terrific orange drink. I realize now she was very worried that I would find My Fair Lady an utter bore but she figured, I guess, that I would at least enjoy the orange drink. I heard so much about it that I began thinking, "This must be some orange drink" and presuming that it was so special, you could only get it if you sat through an entire musical comedy.

Our seats were high in a balcony, several kilometers from the stage and all the way on the left. I sat there in my suit and tie all through the first act, trading off with my mother on using a pair of very old binoculars she owned. I enjoyed the show a lot but my mind kept drifting to thoughts of the wonderful orange drink I would be savoring at intermission. When the moment finally came, my mother took me out to the lobby and bought me a small carton, like a milk carton, of what turned out to be a pretty mediocre orange drink. It was very much like Kool-Aid — sugared water with artificial coloring and flavor, and I didn't particularly want to drink it but figuring it was part of the ritual of the theater, I did. For all I knew, the second act couldn't start until every child in the place finished his or her orange drink.

As it turned out, I liked the show a lot more than the orange drink. And it's funny what you remember from an experience like that. I remember the "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" number with the buskers pushing Liza around stage on a flower cart and whistling. I remember Alfred Doolittle and three other characters singing, "With a Little Bit of Luck." I remember Doolittle doing, "Get Me to the Church on Time" and in it, I vividly recall Doolittle in his tuxedo saying goodbye to someone. He did an elaborate gesture of removing one of his gloves so he could shake hands. Then he shook with the still-gloved hand. Then he put the glove back on the hand from which he'd removed it. Big laugh.

It all added up to my first real memory of the theater. It was many years after that I began attending on an even semi-regular basis but when I did, something connected with that first experience. First time I took in a show on Broadway, I found myself flashing back to that balcony at the Biltmore and thinking, "This is the same wonderful experience." Maybe it was even better. On Broadway, they don't make you drink the rotten orange drink.

I couldn't find the right photo of Carl Kleinschmitt, a fine writer who passed away last Thursday night at the age of 85…so there's his screen credit from one of the best episodes of M*A*S*H. It was called "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" and it was the one in which a friend of Hawkeye's visits the 4077th and it had Ron Howard in it and I won't spoil the story if you've never seen it…but see it.

It was a real good one and it was far from the only great TV show that had Carl's name on it. Among his many other credits were episodes of Hey, Landlord and Good Morning, World and The Joey Bishop Show and The Doris Day Show and That Girl and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Love, American Style and My World and Welcome to It and Karen and Welcome Back, Kotter and The Love Boat and quite a few episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Some of those were written with a partner, Dale McRaven, and some were just Carl.

He also created the show Funny Face and The Sandy Duncan Show and 1st and Ten and he wrote a couple of movies…and this is by no means a complete list of his credits. Go take a look at them on his IMDB page. There are shows on there that you watched.

And I have to mention Pryor's Place, which was a one-season Saturday morning show on CBS produced in 1984. Carl was the Supervising Producer and I wrote a couple of episodes and it was a very good experience because of Carl. If you freelance in this business, you occasionally work with people who don't know what they're doing and/or aren't very nice. Carl was the direct opposite on both counts. A real good guy. You can read more about him in this obit.

From the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 1/23/1974: Jack Benny was the first guest and then they brought out Mel Blanc. Johnny was under the impression that the cartoons were animated first and then the actors did the voices to the picture. A few studios like Max Fleischer's did it that way but Mel never worked for those studios…

All of the dehumidifiers and other drying machines have been removed from my house. It now looks kinda like it did before if you ignore the lack of drywall, plaster and paint on some walls and ceilings and holes in others — functional but not pretty. I may wait a month or two before I bring in the crews to repair all that. My insurance agent and my business manager both think there may be financial advantages to leaving it at least 'til after the first of the year.

I am amazed at the number of my friends who think Donald Trump is "getting away" with his various felonies, misdemeanors and moral wrongdoings. The guy's surrounded by investigations and grand juries and now a special prosecutor…and every weekday, there's a headline about a new loss in court, often presided over by one or more Trump appointees. The man's gotta be sweating hair dye a la Giuliani, especially since he knows of the misdeeds they haven't found out about yet. Still, people I know say, "He's never been convicted before," as if that means it's impossible in the coming months. These same people once said, "Barack Obama can't win because this country has never elected a black man president before." First time for everything. (Well, not everything but lots of things…)

Every year around this time, websites start posting lists of notable folks who've died during the year…and every year, I am rattled to spot a name of someone I knew but didn't know had left us. In this case, it's my old office-mate and pal, Hank Saroyan.

I first met Hank when he was a programming exec at ABC, mostly in Saturday morning. He was smart and sharp and funny…and those are not things I say about everyone at a network who, among his many other functions, has to give me notes and comments on my scripts. An understanding of story was somewhere in his lineage as he was the nephew of the author William Saroyan.

When he left the network, he turned up as a story editor for Hanna-Barbera and that's where we shared an office. He was working full-time, night and day, on the Laverne & Shirley cartoon show and I was coming on one day a week to work on Richie Rich. He had a much harder job as his show had to appease the network folks plus Garry Marshall plus the then-feuding Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams who, in the program's first season, were doing the voices of their characters.

I remember him sitting there, counting the lines of dialogue in the recording scripts to make sure Laverne and Shirley each had the exact same number. It didn't matter if a line was one word or fifty. It didn't even matter if some lines were cut out right after the recording session. It only mattered that when Ms. Marshall and Ms. Williams came in to record their parts — separately, of course — they each had the exact same number of speeches to read. The whole show was a struggle because of things like that.

I worked with Hank on a Hanna-Barbera series called The Trollkins for which he was story editor and also a voice actor. He then switched over to Marvel Productions where he worked on the scripts for Dungeons & Dragons after I left the series and he also cast it and directed the voices…quite well, I thought. He was especially valuable to that studio serving the same functions on Muppet Babies, and he worked on many other shows for them.

Real nice guy. Real smart guy. He died September 23 from cancer at the age of 75 and I totally missed obits like this one that ran at the time. Sigh.

The Broadway musical based on Billy Crystal's movie Mr. Saturday Night opened April 27, 2022 at the Nederlander Theater in New York and closed the following September 4th after playing 28 previews and 116 performances. It would have played a few more between those dates but Mr. Crystal was out a couple times due to flu or COVID. He had no understudy because no one would have wanted to see it with someone else in the role. (I'm curious if anyone ever tries producing this show with another actor in the lead…and if so, if there's anyone in the audience when they do.)

I dunno what kind of run its producers were hoping for on Broadway but I bet it was a lot more than 116. As far as I know, there have been no plans of reviving it anywhere. I was hoping Crystal would do at least a brief run of it out here because I couldn't get back to New York when it was there and I wanted to see it. As far as I know, there are no such plans.

Fortunately for me and maybe for you, it was recorded on video and that video just debuted on the BroadwayHD Channel. Not a subscriber? Well, you can see it as I did last night — as part of the free seven-day trial they're offering through Amazon Prime. I may cancel when the week is out because there isn't a whole lot on this channel that I haven't seen (or can't see) elsewhere but before I do, I'll probably watch Mr. Saturday Night again. I enjoyed it that much.

The book, like the movie, was written by Billy Crystal, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. I'm a fan of the movie and while there are some changes in the plot, they're mostly improvements or at least right for the conversion. They include some good opportunities for Buddy Young Jr. (Crystal's character) to interact with the live audience and a somewhat happier ending.

The songs were by Jason Robert Brown and Amanda Green and I think they had a thankless mission. I can't cite a particularly outstanding musical number. The songs service the material fine but the material did not cry out for musicalization and singing is not what Billy Crystal does best. Still, what's happening on that stage was enormously fun to watch.

David Paymer, who deservedly got an Oscar nomination for supporting Crystal in the movie, is back in the same role and, again, he provides the glue for most of the proceedings, as well as a dose of humanity when Buddy Young Jr. isn't acting very human. The part of Buddy's daughter has been fleshed out and given some great lines, played well by Shoshana Bean; likewise for Buddy's wife played by Randy Graff. Chasten Harmon is great as his agent — the role played in the movie by Helen Hunt — and everyone else in his life is played by either Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales or Mylinda Hull.

I thought everyone on stage was great. Mostly, I just felt the show was funny enough and "fun-spirited" enough to keep my attention for all two hours and 34 minutes. You might also. I'm sorry I didn't get to see it in person.

In the coming months, you're going to be hearing a lot about Special Prosecutors. You're probably going to be hearing more about Hunter Biden's laptop but you'll be hearing a lot about Special Prosecutors.

So what the heck is a Special Prosecutor, what's so special about them and what do they do? Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone is here with an explainer which you may want to watch. I would post more of his videos here if he ended them by singing a few choruses of "Sweet Caroline"…

Eric Idle was recently on a TV show and he was asked about "cancel culture"…

Asked about Dave Chappelle's complaints that he is being silenced for his controversial jokes, Idle responded: "Where does he say it? On SNL? Well, you're not being that much cancelled, are you? If you were in your room complaining, I'd have a lot more sympathy.

"I didn't like it when Bill Maher complains about the audience for not laughing. They're telling you they don't find it funny. You shouldn't moan about the audience. There's nothing wrong with the audience. If they don't laugh at your jokes, there's something wrong with your jokes. I'm not terribly sympathetic to that sort of attitude, to be honest."

Chappelle and Maher are both hit-'n'-miss with me…sometimes brilliant, sometimes not. I don't buy that the "not" times are all because the audience (of which I'm a member) is not hip enough, too uptight on certain subjects, too "woke," whatever. It is possible for even the best comedian to aim, fire and miss; for the material to just not strike that particular audience as funny. A lot of comedians don't like to admit fallibility so they blame the audience.

I remember a comedian I saw once at the Improv and spoke with later out in the street as we were leaving. No, let me correct that: I remember his act, not his name, and I don't think I've seen the guy since. I suspect no one has.

This was around the time Obama was newly-installed as Prez and the comic's jokes, which did not go over well in the room, were all based on the premise that Obama was stupid. So many were built on that premise that I suspect the guy was trying to recycle his old George W. Bush jokes by just changing the name. If you're going to be a topical comedian, you need to pay careful attention to the expiration dates on your material.

The audience didn't laugh. They just didn't buy the basic premise…didn't hear any underlying truth coming from the stage. I don't think even most of those who hated the Obama presidency thought the guy was dumb. Barack Obama was a tough guy to make jokes about, especially compared to the guys before and after him…and it's never been a matter of Democrat vs. Republican. The first of the two President George Bushes was a tough guy to make jokes about, whereas Bill Clinton was the easiest ever until Trump came along.

Still, this comedian's excuse for the non-laughter during his set that night was that the audience was too "tightass" about their beloved Barack. It couldn't possibly have been that the jokes misfired…or even that he simply did a bad job of reading the room. If you were hired to entertain a roomful of octogenarians at a retirement home and you bombed with 20 minutes of dick jokes, whose fault is that?

And like I said, I haven't seen that comedian since that night at the Improv and, honest-to-Lenny-Bruce, I don't recall his name. If he's still on this planet, he's probably working tiny clubs or maybe a whole other profession, bitching constantly that he's not getting work as a comedian because he's too controversial and he's been "canceled."

I'm against shunning people just because they say something that rubs people the wrong way…but people do have the right to feel rubbed the wrong way. They even have the right to decide they don't think you're funny and that they don't want to pay money to see you.

Comic books from the company called Charlton graced American newsstands from (roughly) 1945 to 1986. Based in Derby, Connecticut where they owned a printing plant, Charlton was an unusual operation that usually paid its writers and artists the lowest rates in the business…and occasionally managed to put forth a product that didn't look it. There were some very fine comics now and then out of that outfit, possibly more than they deserved.

The story of the company itself is fascinating and historian Jon B. Cooke has recently given us an exhaustive and amazing book that recounts that history. To put it simply: I am stunned by how much he was able to uncover, especially this long after Charlton is out of business and most of the folks involved in it have passed. I would not have thought it was humanly possible to amass as much information as he gives in The Charlton Companion, which has just been released by my friends at TwoMorrows Books.

He covers how the company was founded behind bars in a jail cell…all its business dealings of questionable legality…how it grew out of the sheet music business…how it survived a major flood…how it made Larry Flynt rich and powerful…how it managed to do comics cheaper than just about anyone…

If you have the slightest interest in the subject matter, you need a copy of this one…the best book on comic book history I've seen in a long time.  Order yours right here and count the days 'til it arrives.

I still have industrial-strength dehumidifiers running 24/7 in my home to fully dry out the interior of walls that were flooded more than ten days ago…but portions of the house are returning to some semblance of reality. I actually have running water (hot and cold) in all the places that are supposed to have running water and none in spots where they're not. The place is becoming functional again, which is not to say it won't take months before all the repairs are made.

Volume 8 of The Complete Pogo is now reaching retailers and the folks at Amazon expect to be shipping copies next Tuesday. Since almost all of the credit goes to others, I can say it's a beautiful book collecting two prime years of what I've long thought was the best newspaper strip ever done. You can order it here or you can order it and the previous volume in a neat slipcase here. I highly recommend you do one or the other.

Here's another look at the curtain call from the opening of the Broadway musical, A Beautiful Noise. And there's Neil Diamond himself leading the cast and audience in guess-what-song…

Corey Klemow read this post then sent me this…

Minor question about the "Mouse That Roared" pilot — it runs for 32 minutes and 33 seconds. Most hour-long shows in 1966 had approximately 50 minutes of actual content and ten minutes of commercials. Most sitcoms had about 25 minutes of content and 5 minutes of commercials.

So what's up with a 32.5 minute pilot? Presuming this was going to be a half-hour sitcom, is it a rough cut they were planning on hacking about 7.5 minutes out of before broadcast if it was picked up? It seems to me that in those days before streaming you'd want to demonstrate to a network that you could turn in a product that was the proper length. Then again, maybe that's part of why this didn't get picked up…?

Networks sometimes (note the italics) will tell the producers of pilots that it's not necessary to make them broadcast-ready because they may never be broadcast…and you'll notice that The Mouse That Roared video says on it, "Not for broadcast." They just want to see the concept and the show and the cast and what the thing looks like…and if it's longer, it might give them more of a sense of the program.

I don't think this ever aired. If it did, they probably went back in and did some editing to get it down to the right length for a thirty-minute time slot. But it probably didn't. This is not unusual.

The last live-action pilot that I worked on — I think I was co-producer — was a science-fantasy thing for Fox and we were explicitly told that we didn't have to — and shouldn't even try to — deliver it in broadcast-ready format. So among the many things we did differently was that we didn't spend any money recording a soundtrack or buying the rights to existing music. We just plugged in records — some pretty great stuff, as I recall — and if they'd decided to air the show, we would have gone back in and replaced that music or bought the rights to use it.

I think that pilot, which was for an hour series, ran about an hour without commercials. Again, had they decided to air it, it would have been altered. The networks don't always allow this. Sometimes, they want a pilot delivered in a form that could air if they so chose. But sometimes, they don't.