I've been derelict in my duty. I get a lot of fine books that are about comic book history or which feature reprints of classic comic books or strips…and I keep meaning to recommend them to you. Somehow, I keep not getting around to it…but since I have my own comic book book coming out before the end of the year, the least I can do is make the effort. So for the next few days/weeks/months — however long it takes before I get too busy or I start forgetting — I'm going to suggest one each day to you.

These are not reviews so much as recommendations so I should declare here that I'm not fond of everything I've seen in this area lately. Some of the reprint books have had very weak reproduction…or in a few cases, have been "restored" to death by some guy who has Photoshop but no idea of how conspicuous his presence is on pages that should represent the work of someone else. Some of the history books have been born of good intention…but done by someone who didn't have access to the proper sources. That's assuming those sources are still available, which is not always the case. I'm going to move those books to the bottom of the pile and deal from the top.

Today, I'd like to point you towards Wally's World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World's Second Best Comic Book Artist — and yes, that's an Amazon buying link — by Steve Starger and J. David Spurlock. I'm not sure I'd say Mr. Wood was the second best comic book artist, nor am I sure who they think is/was Numero Uno. Then again, I wouldn't waste time arguing the point, either. He was a tremendous talent whose life and career (though rarely his art) were tinged with stress, pain and despair. This biography starts with his 1981 suicide, then flashes back through his life to see him struggle, producing wonderful work for employers who often were not grateful or generous.

I didn't know Wood that well…met him three or four times, spoke with him for maybe two hours total over ten years. He was an angry man but with a veneer of despair that made you wonder how life and the industry could be so harsh to someone who drew so well. But of course, he did a lot of it to himself. Other fine artists lived in the same system and usually made it work for them. The book by Starger and Spurlock tracks Wood's life at the drawing table and away from it, giving us some insight into why his life went the way it did. Not that it's completely understandable but I felt I learned something about the guy…plus there are a lot of nice pictures to look at. Get yourself a copy.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are both on vacation for two weeks.

I just heard that George W. Bush has commuted the sentence (but not the fine or probation) of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Seems to me this is a decision that will make everyone happy. The pro-Bush crowd gets the thrill of seeing Bush acting decisive and knowing that he'll protect his own. The anti-Bush crowd gets to see him drop another point or two in the polls among Independents.

I haven't seen Michael Moore's Sicko…but then I haven't been to any movie for quite some time. I doubt I'll catch up with that one before it catches up with me on HBO, but I am intrigued by the reaction to it among reviewers and bloggers. Some, who are predisposed to wish Moore would die a painful death, are having an awfully hard time faulting him for this one. It usually comes down to a slam on his "methods" with a few gratuitous jabs at his weight and wardrobe. I suspect they're overlooking that one of Moore's methods is to deliberately piss off people like them to generate controversy and, therefore, notoriety. Moore got a rave review from someone on Fox News and there's probably an element of truth in his jests about, "What are they trying to do? Ruin me?"

As longtime readers of this here blog are aware, I think health care is a disaster in this country. If a terrorist did that much damage to human life, we'd be on quadruple-red alert and never pass through any doorway without a metal detector and having our shoes x-rayed. As I understand it, the film speaks only briefly of people who have no health insurance at all and spends most of its time detailing how you can have health insurance and still not have your needs covered. A catastrophic illness or accident can still wipe out your savings, your home and your body. If that's his premise, great. Because that's my premise…and I haven't even seen his most outraged detractors do much to argue that point. Whether his solutions are the right ones, I don't know — but he's got people talking about an important problem, and that's about all you can expect a muckraking documentary to do. It's certainly more than most do.

Joel Achenbach explains how, in Washington these days, being certain you're right is just as good as actually being right. In fact, I'm beginning to think some people don't realize that there's any difference between those two things.

And now, Bullwinkle is selling Cocoa Puffs. That moose will sell anything…

Hey, wanna hear an interview with this Mort Sahl guy I keep talking about here? Robin Diane Goldstein has this podcast thing called Schnauzer Logic or something of the sort. I don't understand it. But Robin has a nice Mort Sahl interview on this page. It cuts out now and then (Mort was on a cell phone) but there's some good stuff in there.

Also: On this page, Robin has some photos from the Sahl Tribute. And over here is the program booklet.

That's the dust jacket (front and back) of my forthcoming book on Jack Kirby. It's called Kirby: King of Comics and it'll be out well before Christmas, they tell me. It can be ordered from Amazon by clicking on this link. Please click on that link.

My e-mail suggests I've confused a few folks about something so let me explain…and in so doing, probably confuse the matter even more. I am involved with two (2) books about the great comic book creator, Jack Kirby. The second, which has no firm publication date or plans at present, is an exhaustive, long, trivia-laden, full-of-hitherto-undisclosed info biography. I'm still working intermittently on that one. Don't ask me when it'll be done. I don't know.

This year's book, which I hope will tide Kirby fans over for now, is an art book with a much briefer biography. The text in this one is around 40,000 words as opposed to the other book, which should easily top 250,000, thereby making Vince Bugliosi's J.F.K. volume look like a pamphlet.

Kirby: King of Comics is 224 pages in a 9" by 12" hardcover format, published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. which is arguably the leading publisher of art-type books in the United States and maybe anywhere. The book is filled with illustrations from Jack's life, ranging from things he did as a kid (signed with his real name, Kurtzberg) to work as an adult. Many of the items have been seen before, though never with this quality of printing. Many have never been published. I have, for instance, a couple of unused Marvel covers from the sixties, one still in pencil, and a number of pencil commissions he did for people late in life. We're printing Jack's autobiographical story, "Street Code," right off the original negatives. We're printing a Fighting American story right off the original art. We have some of Jack's famous collages and a couple of pages where he took the art to some comic he'd done and hand-colored the original art. There are some amazing pieces.

I'm not going to do a lot of "selling" here because I figure if you're interested in Kirby, you're going to buy it and if you're not, okay, fine. Be like that. I just wanted to clarify the difference between the two books. I hope you enjoy one or both of them.

The last few days, I've been discussing the Mort Sahl event with friends, especially the hilarious appearance by Albert Brooks. I was privileged to see one of the last stand-up dates Mr. Brooks had before he abandoned that stage of his career and I don't think I've laughed more at anything in my life. I understand that he wanted to do other things and that for some, "stand-up" is merely a means to an end. Still, the other night reminded me of how good he was on a stage in front of a live audience and made me wish he was still doing it. There was a time when we eagerly watched for him to turn up on a talk show because he was always funny and, amazingly, he usually had something that was utterly fresh and original. I described my favorite in this posting some time ago here.

The last few days also got me to thinking: There's a videotape that makes the rounds of most of Brooks's talk show appearances when he used to do the rough equivalent of stand-up comedy. The original source of this tape is said to be Albert's own personal copy which he dubbed for friends who pestered him into it. All the copies I've ever seen are copies of copies of copies of copies, etc. They're so fuzzy that you can't even be sure it's Albert Brooks in there. It could be Myron Cohen.

Does anyone reading this have a decent videotape or DVD or anything of those appearances?

This one will take eleven minutes of your life but you may think it's worth it. It's a clip from a 1960 Sid Caesar special with Howie Morris, Audrey Meadows, Charlton Heston and frequent cameo appearances by the boom mike. The gent who introduces the sketch and plays the judge is Paul Reed, who many of you may recall as the Captain on Car 54, Where Are You? Enjoy.

Johann Hari is a columnist for The Independent in London. Recently, he signed aboard a "Conservative" boat trip run by The National Review, which does not practice his kind of politics. You might enjoy his report on that trip.

I'm not getting one.

This is an overdue update on my relationship with Henrietta, which is what I've named the voice that emanates from my Magellan Roadmate 2000 Global Positioning System. Since I wrote this report, I've had her officially installed on a bracket on my dashboard, and I've experimented further. Here is what I've learned…

Basically, it's that she works great if you don't use her as a substitute for knowing roughly where you're going. You can't follow her instructions mindlessly but she sure helps me get around, even on semi-familiar turf. I'm learning the names of local streets I only vaguely knew and every so often, even when I know how to get where I'm going, I ask her to plot a route and it's sometimes a clever suggestion.

The following experience pretty well defines for me how one should treat these devices. Carolyn and I were recently in Virginia, whizzing around in a Hertz rental equipped with their Neverlost® System, which is pretty much the same as my Henrietta, voice and all. In Arlington, we were in a section where there is major road construction that includes reversing a great number of one-way streets. There, Henrietta was of no help, as she was constantly telling me to turn left onto a street where I could only go right and vissie-versie. Still, seeing where she was trying to send us helped me a lot to figure out my own path.

Then we drove from Arlington to Warrenton. I printed out Mapquest directions and had them along but allowed Henrietta to chart our course. For about the first 30 miles, the two routes were identical…but then we came to a point where Mapquest said to go straight and our destination would be 15 miles ahead, whereas Henrietta wanted us to turn off that surface street, hop on a freeway and then drive another 25 miles on it to get to Warrenton.

I decided — and I hope you'll someday forgive me for this, Henrietta — not to listen to her. I ignored the turn-off, stayed on the same street…and the minute we crossed the boulevard where she wanted me to turn off and I didn't turn off, Henrietta recalculated the route and agreed with Mapquest. Her estimate of mileage and time remaining instantly dropped from 25 miles and 30 minutes to 15 miles and 20 minutes. So even she didn't really think that freeway was a good idea.

But the point is that would have worked. It would have gotten us there. And if I'd strayed from the Mapquest route or it was unduly congested, I might have been happy to try it her way. That's one of the great things about a Global Positioning System. No matter how you wander or change course, it changes right along with you and shows you the way to go. On several occasions, she's saved me from some time-consuming misdirection…and in strange territory, she's invaluable for letting me know when the turnoff is coming up and reassuring me I'm on the street I think I'm on.

Another handy service: The night we got in to Arlington, it was late, all the restaurants seemed to be closed…and we needed a meal. We stopped in a 24-hour CVS Pharmacy for some items we needed and Carolyn asked the clerk if she knew of anyplace nearby that was open and serving edible food, which is not always what you get at that hour. The lady said, "There's a place called the something-or-other diner that I hear is good." But she couldn't tell us exactly what it was called or how to get to it…which was a job for Henrietta. Henrietta displays Points of Interest and I asked her for the names of restaurants in the vicinity. One had the word "diner" in its name and she showed us how to get there. It was open and pretty decent and we'd never have found it without her.

So I'm glad to have her. She's not perfect and I suspect that the few folks who wrote me that they junked their personal Henriettas made the mistake of expecting them to know everything. She doesn't…but for $219.99 at Costco, she knows enough. I just need to know when not to listen to her.

I am informed that Radioactive Man no longer has his own comic and that the story by Batton Lash and Ramona Fradon will actually be appearing in a Simpsons Super-Spectacular.

Also, my old chum Gary Brown reminds me that Ramona did break her vow once before. She did at least one story for Nick Mag Presents, the Nickelodeon publication, in which SpongeBob SquarePants encountered characters who were not unlike Aquaman and Aqualad.

But other than that, I got everything right.

Ramona Fradon was one of the great DC comic artists in the fifties and sixties. From around 1950 until the early sixties, she drew Aquaman in her colorful and energetic style. Then she launched a new character called Metamorpho. Then she left comics to devote full time to her family. Then for a time in the seventies, she came back to it, and later drew the Brenda Starr newspaper strip for a time.

When she gave up Brenda in '95, she told everyone that she had drawn her last script; that while she still enjoyed drawing, she would only do single illustrations and would never again draw an actual comic book story for anyone for any amount of money. We are happy to report that she has not kept her word. The issue of Bongo's Radioactive Man that comes out next week (I think) has an actual story drawn by Ramona and written by Batton Lash, in which R.M. battles a character who looks suspiciously like Metamorpho. It's a pretty clever tale and if you aren't regularly buying Radioactive Man, you might want to break yourself of that habit. Also, if you see Ramona at the Comic-Con International in San Diego (or anywhere), you might want to tell her what a joy it is to see her back drawing one panel after another. She's really good at it.