Here's a message from Robert Rose which reminds me of a story I don't think I've told much…

With respect to the DC Comics Presents title, and how it (and the similar The Brave and the Bold title, featuring team-ups with Batman) often featured some pretty obscure characters: I wondered if one of the purposes of the title was to give the company a chance to keep such characters in a kind of "active" status, for copyright/trademark purposes. (Which of course wouldn't have been necessary for Blackhawk at the time since it had its own title running.) Is that a correct impression?

Yes. The editors of those two team-up comics would sometimes be informed by someone down the hall that they wanted a certain property in print again and not just for copyright or trademark reasons. Sometimes, it was just to test the waters of interest out there and I think occasionally, it was to show someone who might be interested in an old DC property for new merchandising reasons that the company considered it current.

I mentioned that Julius Schwartz asked me to write a Superman-Kamandi crossover for DC Comics Presents. I should have mentioned that he told me he "had to" do one and that I suspected he'd never read the comic and was counting on me to know it well enough so that he wouldn't have to. And the funny thing about that is that I didn't know the property that well…then.

When I was working for Jack Kirby, I did a lot of work on Kamandi #1. The ideas in that comic were almost all his but he had to go through some outlines and presentations to "sell" DC on the book…which at that point, he thought/hoped would be a comic he'd edit, supervising another writer and another artist, hopefully both local. The writer probably would have been me and the artist we had in mind was Dan Spiegle, who at that point, I had neither met nor worked with. But I suggested him — he was close to "local" — and Mike Royer got us his phone number. Jack called him and one day when I was not there, Dan came to Jack's home and they really hit it off.

At the time, Dan was the guy who drew Korak, Son of Tarzan and Space Family Robinson for Gold Key Comics…and when you think about it, Kamandi was kind of like those two comics put together, though Jack had never seen either of them when he came up with it. Dan never drew anything to show how he'd handle the new comic but when he showed Jack those books that day, Jack loved what he saw.

So I wrote up those "selling" pages and Jack did some presentation art, some of which I haven't seen since back then. Carmine Infantino at DC loved the concept, though they spent a little time going back and forth with Carmine throwing in what we all thought were bad ideas. I think the only one that got in was to prominently display a semi-destroyed Statue of Liberty in the first issue to somehow make it more like Planet of the Apes. Jack wound up doing the first issue of The Demon before he wrote and drew the first issue of Kamandi.

Infantino vetoed Spiegle with kind of an "Well, I've never heard of him so he can't be very good" attitude. At that point, he wanted each book, after Jack drew the first few of each, to be drawn by one of the Filipino artists who were just beginning to work for DC. Then after Jack actually did those first few, Carmine decided he wanted to "suspend" (cancel) New Gods and Forever People so Jack could stay on the new books. Jack was devastated by this decision but he complied.

I left Jack's employ about the time he was finishing the third issue of Kamandi and I didn't read the comic — or The Demon for that matter. Purchased them all but never got around to reading them. The concepts just didn't appeal to me at the time and I guess it felt wrong to me that Jack was doing those rather than the books they displaced on his schedule.

Before someone asks: I stopped working with Jack because it had become obvious that he didn't need me; not that he ever really had. But he kept thinking DC was going to allow him to edit books he didn't write or draw and he might have had some use for me if that had happened. Since it clearly wasn't going to, and since Gold Key was offering me as much work as I could handle, I quietly absented myself from Jack's employ but not his life. And soon after, my editor at Gold Key asked me if I'd like to write the Scooby Doo comic book, which was drawn by Dan Spiegle. So that's how that relationship started.

Ten years later when Julius Schwartz asked me to write a Superman-Kamandi story, I said yes because…well, it was Julie asking and because I thought, "Hey, maybe this would be a good time to read all those Kamandi comics I have." So I devoured Jack's entire run over about three days and really, really enjoyed it. I understood why some people still think that was one of the best things he ever did and I later understood that about The Demon when I finally read those. I guess enough time had passed since they replaced The Fourth World that I didn't resent them as I once had.

Al Kilgore (1927-1983) was a great cartoonist who is well known to fans of vintage movies for his caricatures of stars, and for his co-founding of the Laurel & Hardy appreciation society, The Sons of the Desert. He also drew the Rocky & Bullwinkle newspaper strip that ran from 1962 to 1965 in not-nearly-enough newspapers. Most fans of Moose and Squirrel agree that it did a superb job of capturing the spirit and humor of the TV cartoons. It has been hard however to locate samples of this strip…

…until now. Someone — I know not who — has assembled what appears to be a complete collection of the daily strip (there was never a Sunday page) and has published them in two paperback volumes which are now available for purchase on Amazon.

Some of the strips in the book have been printed off scans of original art, probably mostly scans that Heritage Auctions did recently when they sold a whole lotta Kilgore art. Some have been printed from newspapers and in some cases, they have been restored adequately with touch-ups. The fellow (I'm assuming it's a fellow) who put the books together made a font of Kilgore's distinctive lettering in order to reletter strips where the lettering was in need of repair. He also wrote a personal essay about the strip and his love for it.

In fact, he put in everything but his name. There's a copyright notice but it doesn't say who is claiming that copyright…which makes one wonder how legitimate this whole enterprise is. I might not have been so quick to order these volumes if I'd known this…and I should also say that I think the books are way overpriced for what you get. So I'm not telling you to buy them, just that they're there and that the strip was wonderful. Because I feel a little weird about these books, I've configured the following Amazon links so I don't get a cut if you order Volume 1 or Volume 2 through this site.

While we're on the subject of Al Kilgore, I want to clear up something that probably bugs me more than it should. A number of Rocky & Bullwinkle comic books were published in the sixties by Western Publishing Company, appearing at first under the Dell logo and later under the Gold Key colophon. (If you don't understand what happened there, read this.)

None of this work was signed or credited and a lot of folks — including some selling the old comics or the art from them — are crediting it to Al Kilgore when, in fact, he did very little of it. Take a look at this little graphic I assembled. The drawing of Bullwinkle on the right was inarguably drawn and inked by Al Kilgore…

The other four drawings were lifted from issues of Dell and Gold Key comics which some credit to Kilgore.  Just look at Bullwinkle's head shape and the design of his antlers.  Does anyone think those were drawn by the same person?  This is, as Alex Jones would put it, my Perry Mason Moment.

Kilgore drew some promotional comics of Jay Ward characters (including our old pals Quisp and Quake) that came with cereal or were for other purposes.  But for the Dell and Gold Key comic books, I only see Kilgore in the first issue of Rocky and His Fiendish Friends (October, 1962) — a comic I remember very fondly from my childhood. It may or may not have been the first comic Western put out with the Gold Key logo, but it was the first I saw on a rack of the new comics…and of course, avidly purchased.

It has an inside front cover by Kilgore and then there's a Rocky & Bullwinkle story serialized throughout the issue that I'm fairly sure he penciled but did not ink.  He did not draw the other stories in that issue or the ones that followed and I doubt he did any covers.

And there's no evidence that he did or didn't write anything in these comics. Alter Ego magazine recently ran an interview with one of the editors at Western in those days and he got all sorts of things wrong and on this topic, he said Kilgore wrote and drew most of those books.  As you can see above, he definitely did not draw most or even much. The editor also said Kilgore did their Hoppity Hooper comic book. I guess it's possible Kilgore wrote and/or drew one that wound up on a shelf somewhere but Western never published a Hoppity Hooper comic book.

Some have speculated that those Dell and Gold Key comics were done by others who worked for Jay Ward then. I sure doubt it. A few of the writers who worked for Jay Ward did work for Western Publishing, especially Lloyd Turner and (briefly) Bill Scott but both did all their work for Western's Los Angeles office which had nothing to do with the the comics in question. They were done out of Western's office in New York City, far from the Jay Ward Studios.

I believe all the comics we're talking about here were done by East Coast talent. Al Kilgore lived and worked in New York as did Mel Crawford, who drew some covers and maybe some insides. So did Fred Fredericks, who was best known for drawing the Mandrake the Magician newspaper strip. So did (reportedly) Jerry Robinson. Also, Dave Berg (yes, the guy from MAD) said he wrote a few stories but I don't know which ones. The only crossover would be Jack Mendelsohn, who lived in New York and worked for Western on all sorts of comics, including Rocky and His Fiendish Friends and Bullwinkle, before moving out to L.A. He worked for Ward on the George of the Jungle show and then for a lot of other TV producers.

For years now, folks who don't know who drew certain Disney, Warner Brothers or other funny animal comics from Western have just automatically credited the art to Pete Alvarado. Occasionally, they're right because Pete was very prolific but there were more than forty other guys drawing those comics. And once in a rare while, art for a Rocky & Bullwinkle comic credited to Al Kilgore was actually drawn by Al Kilgore. But that happened rarely, not most of the time as too many people insist.

Well, actually he's in the Washington Post today. Big article on my co-conspirator. And don't miss reading the comments section. Whole lotta love there.

In the seventies, ladies who were foolish enough to go out with me would often be treated to a repast at Madame Wu's Garden, a lovely place to dine on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. It closed down in 1998 and there's now a Whole Foods Market where it used to be. Eventually, something owned by Jeff Bezos will replace everything in our world.

There were cheaper places to get good Chinese Food but the ambience was nice, the staff was oh-so-courteous and friendly, and Madame Sylvia Wu herself might just stop by your table and make you feel especially welcome. She was famous for her cookbooks and was delighted one time when I ordered a copy of one "to go," autographed to my mother. My mother loved going there too and at her request, I took her there for a last Madame Wu meal just before the place closed in '98. (Madame Wu later opened another restaurant but it never caught on.)

Her Garden was a lovely place with a celebrity clientele and food which must have been healthier than I imagined. Because Madame Wu just died this past Thursday at the age of 106.

Here's another batch of cereal commercials produced for the Quaker Oats company by Jay Ward's company.  Most are for Quisp and Quake but there are two in there for another cereal, King Vitaman, and the king's voice is Joe Flynn, best known as Captain Binghamton on the McHale's Navy TV show.  Also in these, you'll meet Quake's arch-enemy, Simon LeGreedy, whose voice was supplied by Hans Conried.

Daws Butler is Quisp and a few supporting characters.  William Conrad is Quake, who is remodeled into a slimmer character in these spots.  June Foray is all the ladies and the little boy.  Bill Scott and Paul Frees handle the other roles. Once again, they hired more actors than they absolutely had to…

Several of you have called to my attention the fact that Samantha Bee's show on TBS has been canceled.  I missed the news.  Thank you, Roger Green, for that link.  Does this mean she's in the running for the host job on The Daily Show?  I dunno.  Except in the news business, TV networks don't usually like to pick up a show or star that's just been dropped by the competition but there have been exceptions.  Will Ms. Bee be one?  I have no idea.  I also wasn't predicting that it will be Jordan Klepper.  I just think it should be.

Remember that no one predicted Trevor Noah to succeed Jon Stewart just as no one predicted James Corden to replace Craig Ferguson…or Craig Ferguson to replace Craig Kilborn…or Conan O'Brien to replace David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon to replace Conan O'Brien…

The last part of the Blackhawk article will probably be up here on Monday.  Spoiler Alert: The book gets canceled.

My wise pal Paul Harris tells a story that illustrates a principle that I wish I'd learned earlier in life: There's very little point in arguing over some policy or rule with people who do not have the power to change that policy or rule. Paul's tale is about a poker player at a casino who was outraged by a casino policy…and, of course, argued about it with someone who had zero power to change it.

It's fine, and perhaps even a good idea, to register your displeasure with something. If enough people do, their collective disapproval might (might!) lead to the policy or rule being changed by those with the power to do so.  And I've found that being reasonable and polite is way more effective than having the kind of tantrum that causes a cell phone video of you to be uploaded to YouTube with "Karen" in the title.  Don't berate the employee who's just doing what their employer ordered them to…or in some cases, what the law tells them to do.

Paul's post reminded me of the story of the Superstar Performer who was once playing Blackjack in Las Vegas. Because he was so famous, a crowd gathered to watch him play…which in this case meant watching him lose hand after hand after hand. It was apparently entertaining to see the headliner forfeiting large chunks of the money he was making by performing in the casino's showroom. Losing streaks happen to even the best players but not only was he dropping thousands of bucks on each hand but — worse — he felt he was being humiliated. Lots of folks were watching which meant lots o' stories would get around.

The dealer, a young woman, was dealing the cards out of a six-deck shoe. Dealers are supposed to be like friendly robots. They make no decisions. They just deal the cards and enforce the rules they did not make. And in case you don't know what a "shoe" is in this context, they look like this — though the ones in casinos are rarely, if ever, transparent…

That was how it was done at every Blackjack table in this casino and most tables in the state of Nevada. Desperate for something to change his luck — like this would make any sort of difference — the Superstar Performer told the dealer to take the cards out of the shoe and deal the next hand by hand. She said something like, "I'm sorry, Mr. Superstar Performer. We're not allowed to do that."

That should have been the end of it but…well, there are people in this world who go through life with the attitude of "The rules don't apply to me."  They like the idea of norms being waived for them and that when they yell, others will do anything to appease them.  There's a technical term for such people and I believe it starts with "ass" and ends with "hole."

The Superstar Performer used one or two misogynistic terms and told the dealer, "I said 'Take the cards out of the shoe and deal them by hand.'"  There was an "…or else" clearly implied in his tone.

As the story is told, the dealer began to cry…and why wouldn't she cry?  She was in big trouble no matter what she did.  If she did as ordered, she would be fired and might even lose her license to deal Blackjack; i.e., her entire livelihood.  If she didn't…well, she knew the casino couldn't afford to piss off the Superstar Performer who packed their showroom every night with high-rolling, big-betting customers. She would be a small, acceptable sacrifice to placate him.

All dealers in a casino are supervised by suit-wearing staffers called Casino Hosts or sometimes, Pit Bosses. They have no power to change the rules either but they can give out comps and settle disputes between the player and the dealer when any arise. The one for this table stepped in and tried to pacify the Superstar Performer.

This mostly consisted of fawning over him and trying to divert S.P.'s rage away from the trembling dealer. A Casino Host once told me — while telling me this story, in fact — "What I usually try to do, what most of us would do, is get the angry customer to direct that anger at us instead of at the dealer. We're better equipped to deal with it." The Casino Host trying to placate the S.P. sent the dealer to the equivalent of the Dealers' Locker Room and called for a replacement. Once she was gone, he promised the Superstar Performer that she'd be fired for disobedience or rudeness or not properly kissing the butt of a Superstar Performer…or something.

The cards were not removed from the shoe and dealt by hand. That might even have endangered the casino's gaming license. But the Superstar Performer could walk away from the table acting like he'd won. And the fired dealer was not exactly fired. They just felt it would be bad if the S.P. ever saw her dealing Blackjack there again so they transferred her to a different casino owned by the same corporation.

That's that story and I should mention one more thing about it: I have no idea if it's true or not. It sounds true to me but so do a lot of things, like certain friends who are definitely going to pay back the money you owe me but never quite do. I heard the story about the Superstar Performer in my earlier days of hanging out with Vegas people. I met a lot of them backstage or in other informal settings.

As I said, a Casino Host told it to me. This was at the Imperial Palace. One of the longtime hosts at the Flamingo told it to me. A comedian who performed in the lounge at The Mint told it to me. An off-duty Casino Host at Caesars told it to me. The straight man in the Minsky's Burlesque Revue at the Hacienda told it to me. I probably heard it from a dozen Vegas-based people and while the identity of the Superstar Performer rotated between three men, all deceased, the details and reported assholishness did not.

Paul's story reminded me of it and so did scenes I witnessed a few years ago when I was spending a lot of time at hospitals because my mother, and later my lady friend, were patients. I was there to make sure my loved one was receiving proper care and I saw a lot of other people who were there to help out their loved ones.

There always seemed to be someone screaming at one or more nurses because of a hospital policy or even an actual law. They were screaming despite the fact that the target of their fury — and I don't mean to raise my voice here but I must put this in boldface — did not make the rule and did not have the power to change or ignore it.

Pardon me for yelling there but they were yelling then. Often, it was because their loved one was in pain and the nurse was not allowed to give them medication for that pain. I think I did my best for my mother and for Carolyn by understanding what the nurses could and could not do and occasionally saying to them — in a peaceful and understanding way, I hoped — something like, "I understand you're not allowed to do what she needs but can you point me towards the person who can solve this problem?"

And one time, I said to a guy who was screaming at a nurse, "If you're not going to stop yelling at her because you're waking up all these patients who need their sleep, how about not yelling at someone who's just doing her job because it isn't going to do any good?"

"It doesn't work" is an excellent reason to not do something. Yelling at the dealer in that club in Vegas did not stop the Superstar Performer from losing all that money in front of onlookers. It didn't even stop them all from telling stories, which are repeated to this day, about what a jerk he was.

• I don't know if there's an afterlife but if there is, mine will still include daily, unstoppable text messages from my local CVS Pharmacy offering to refill my prescription for that drug I stopped taking three years ago.

I grew up — to the extent I grew up at all — in West Los Angeles, a few blocks west of the sprawling Twentieth-Century Fox studio. In their golden era, that lot covered an awful lot of real estate but in the early sixties, the movie biz was so screwy and unpredictable, that Fox sold off 180 acres to developers. The result was an also-sprawling area called Century City that was eventually filled with — among other landmarks — office buildings, a huge hotel, a huge entertainment center, a Playboy Club and a big, fancy mostly-outdoor mall. The office buildings and the mall are still there.

They started building it around 1963 and my father decided that all those towering office buildings were part of a deliberate plot to ruin our TV reception. On some channels, we got so much of a double image that whenever the Smothers Brothers appeared, there were four of them.

In spite of that, I came to like Century City in all its incarnations. Since then, they've always seemed to be tearing a building down, putting one up and remodeling all the ones that remain. The mall is still mostly outdoors but it's so oddly-designed now that it reminds me of one of those "escape rooms" that are like a puzzle to find your way out…or in this case, to an escalator down to anywhere near where you left your car.

Alison Martino, who covers the changing face of Los Angeles, assembled a great collection of photos of Century City in past years. It was fun to scroll through it and see so many places where I used to go.

Devin Stone, the "Legal Eagle," breaks down the latest legal woes of Donald Trump — and they are many. A lot of this reminds me of back during Watergate when every day's news brought more headaches for Richard Nixon. One of his supporters complained to columnist Jimmy Breslin that the press was covering the case against Nixon but not presenting the case for the 37th President. And Breslin replied, "That's because there really isn't one."

Trevor Noah announces he's stepping down from his post hosting The Daily Show. I don't know why I don't watch it more often…

Well, I do. With John Oliver and Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee and Randy Rainbow and one or two others, I kind of get my fill of political comedy. But when I do tune in the post-Stewart Daily Show, I always see good, smart comedy. I feel that way about Samantha Bee's show, too.

No word on when Mr. Noah will depart or who'll get the chair. If I were Comedy Central, I'd give Jordan Klepper yet another chance at helming his own show…

• The people of Florida are fortunate they have a president who wouldn't think for a second of withholding federal aid to a state that he didn't carry in the last election.

That's my pal Keith Scott and that's the front cover of Volume 1 of a two-volume set of books you must have if you're interested in animation history…especially the history of cartoon voices.

Keith knows a lot about cartoon voices because he has one. Actually, he has many. He's one of the busiest voiceover actors in Australia, heard on plenty of cartoons. He does many original voices and also is called on to replicate the voices originally performed by guys like Mel Blanc, Daws Butler and Bill Scott (no relation) who have left us. He's also an impressionist and entertainer and as if that weren't enough, he's also an accomplished historian.

He wrote The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose, which is the definitive book on Jay Ward's animation empire. And the reason it's the definitive book is because Keith did such a thorough job that there hasn't been much room for many other books about the studio that brought us Rocky & Bullwinkle. In the unlikely event you're interested in that topic and don't have that book, you can order a copy here.

And now Keith has two new books out — Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, 1930-70. The Golden Age of which he writes spans the years when cartoons were made to be shown in theaters…made by Disney Studios, Warner Brothers, Max Fleischer, MGM, Walter Lantz and many others. Keith has researched this topic so well that he identifies…

…well not every cartoon that every American studio made for theatrical release in those years. There are a few mysteries and a few educated guesses but I think he nails down about 98% of them. Volume 1 is mostly narrative text and in it, Keith goes through every studio and discusses what they made and who they employed to speak for their characters. Volume 2 is mostly lists, going studio by studio, cartoon by cartoon.

I get lots of e-mails asking me if I know who did such-and-such a voice in such-and-such a cartoon. Well, those correspondents can stop asking me and look it up in Keith's indispensable reference books. I am so happy to have these, I can't tell you.

Before you read this, I order you to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 and Part 10. Only one more to go after this…I think. I hope.

I've been telling you a number of things that went wrong during my brief period as writer (sometimes, writer-editor) of Blackhawk. I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that it was a bad experience or that I regretted signing on. Absolutely not. The things that went wrong simply make for more interesting and generally funnier anecdotes. Most of it went very right.

The majority of my delight came from Dan Spiegle, who drew most of the pages and drew them better than I would ever have imagined. He was not flashy. He was just a solid storyteller who was an expert at setting the mood of every scene and putting the proper expression on every face. He also drew the airplanes and other military hardware with a flawless precision. I loved working with all those guest artists we had doing the Detached Service Diary stories but I think — no, I know I enjoyed working with Dan even more.

As I mentioned, when he finished the artwork to an issue, he did not send it off to DC in New York. He sent it to me and I was like a little kid unwrapping a Christmas present I knew would be splendid.

During the period I worked on Blackhawk, I was also usually working on two other comic books each month — with Sergio Aragonés on Groo the Wanderer and with Will Meugniot on DNAgents. Those were three very different comic books from three very different publishers, and the way in which I worked with each artist was completely different. But there were a few things they had in common, starting with the fact that those three artists were all good friends of mine and we talked all the time.

I have done comic books where I had little to no contact with the artist. I wrote a script, handed it in to an editor and the editor then sent it to the artist. Often, I did not see the finished art before publication. If I wanted to suggest a change, even in my own dialogue, it was too late. In some cases, I did not know the artist personally and/or when I wrote the script, I didn't even know who the artist would be. I could not tailor my script to the strengths of the artist nor could we work out a means of collaboration that took his strengths (or even mine, if any) into consideration. Sometimes, the results were good but I think the odds were better when I knew the artist and we weren't doing something sneaky behind an editor's back if we communicated or, God forbid, had lunch together.

Will Meugniot, being a solid professional and a real smart guy, could have drawn the kind of script I gave Dan Spiegle — a full script with every panel described, every line of dialogue already written — but it would not have been the best way for the two of us to work together. Will liked to have more input into the story and had lots of very good ideas. With him — and most of the other artists who drew DNAgents later — I would discuss the story ahead (usually) and then provide a pretty detailed outline, including panel-by-panel breakdowns; i.e., what I thought should happen in each panel.

The artist was then free to introduce his own ideas into the plot, rearrange or combine panels, improve on my pacing or even call me up and say, "I have a whole different idea for this sequence" and I'd write the dialogue after he'd penciled the story.  That would not have worked with Dan. It was the best way to work with Will. And the way I worked with Sergio — the way I still work with Sergio — would not work with any other artist because no other artist has precisely the same skill set as Sergio. Someday, I shall write here about that.

And at the same time I was working on Blackhawk, DNAgents and Groo, I was also writing variety shows and cartoon shows for TV. Those jobs meant collaborating with a lot of different people, sometimes dozens. On some shows, there were six or seven people who had some form of the word "producer" in their titles. There were network people. There were sometimes other writers. There were directors and art directors and Standards and Practices representatives and film editors and composers and arrangers and if it was a cartoon, loads of artists, some of whom were in faraway countries and didn't speak English.

There were also actors. One of the great thing about writing for a comic book like Groo is that Groo doesn't come up to you and say, "I don't like this line you wrote for me!" Comic book characters do what they're told.

After a hard day of dealing with umpteen zillion people on a TV show, I can't tell you the joy I had of opening a package from Dan Spiegle where whatever I wrote was fully realized, just the way I imagined it…or better. My collaborators on the stories I did for Blackhawk with Dan numbered as follows: (1) Dan, (2) his daughter Carrie, who lettered, (3) whoever colored the comic and (4) really no one else.

No, the money wasn't as good as in TV but if you're a professional writer, I don't think you can be happy if there are no other considerations in your work besides what you're paid.

On Blackhawk, DC left me largely alone…something that wouldn't have happened if I'd been doing a book with Superman or Batman or any other top-selling feature that others were also writing or wanted to write. But there are, of course, downsides to being on the book no one else cares about. Those comics don't sell great. We were selling better than DC had initially expected a new Blackhawk series to sell but there was an ever-so-slight downward tilt to those sales.  We all know where that leads.

I'll write more about this in the next and probably-final chapter but I'll close this one by telling you about one of the few things I came up with to maybe, just maybe nudge the sales of the comic up a bit…

One day, I found myself writing a three-part ABC Weekend Special for guess-which-network. They flew me back to New York for two-or-three meetings over four-or-five days so I had plenty of time to go see friends and shows and hang around the DC offices. I talked a bit to the sales folks about what could be done to boost Blackhawk sales but their answer was, basically, nothing. Those who were reading the comic said they really liked it but most said it was going to sell what it was going to sell and that was it.

I had one tiny thought…which is one more tiny one than I usually have.  I went to see Julius Schwartz, who was then editing the Superman comics. I knew Julie very well — too well at times — and he'd often asked me to write for his books. They mostly featured the kind of characters, as noted above, where everyone in the company has firm ideas about how the character should be depicted and you had to coordinate with six other writers who were writing their versions of the character so he'd be the same guy in your stories.

Or you'd write a scene where the character eats prunes and you'd get a call from Nelson Bridwell, the in-house authority on continuity.  Nelson would tell you, "No, no…we did an issue nine years ago where that character specifically said he doesn't eat prunes."

I'd also found Julie to be a little intimidating. He was editing a book called DC Comics Presents and in every issue, Superman appeared with a different DC property. Almost every DC character who'd ever had their own comic (and many that didn't) had guest-starred in it — everyone except the guys from Blackhawk. Thinking a Superman-Blackhawk crossover might make someone think my comic was actually part of the DC line, I went in and suggested it. Julie said, "Let me think about it. Come back in a little while."

In a little while, he told me, "I just ran it past the sales folks and they said your book's not selling all that well." I said, "You just did a crossover with The Atomic Knights, who haven't appeared in new stories since 1964. How's their comic selling these days?" (Note to those who'll otherwise write in: I know the history is a little off. But the line worked at the time and that's all I cared about.)

Julie admitted I had a point, then asked, "But who could draw a story like that?" I was prepared with an answer for just that question. DC was somewhat fussy about who drew Superman back then. Certain artists weren't preferred for such an assignment but among the guys who were, you had Ross Andru and Irv Novick. Both drew Superman to the company's satisfaction…and both had a background in war comics so there was no question they could handle that aspect of the Blackhawk content. I mentioned those names to Julie and he practically leaped out of his chair.

"Omigod!" cried the editor. "I have to have a script for Irv Novick next Monday!" As I mentioned here several parts ago, certain DC artists had contracts that guaranteed them steady work and Irv Novick was one of those guys. In fact, I believe Irv was the first freelance artist who'd ever had one of those contracts with the company. Julie asked, "How fast could you get me a script? Have you got a plot?"

I told him I could have a finished script for him in three days. "And yes, I have a terrific plot," I fibbed. "I'll tell it to you as soon as I get back from the men's room!" Then I went to the DC men's room and quickly thought up what I hoped he'd think was a terrific plot.

He did. We talked through it, he okayed it and I went to work. For the next three days, whenever I wasn't in a meeting at ABC or going to Broadway shows or eating at Peter Luger's Steak House in Brooklyn — all of these, of course, being of greater importance — I was poaching at whatever vacant desk I could find at the DC offices. Wandering like a nomad from workspace to workspace, I wrote the script on these things they had there back then called typewriters.

The first day I was back in Los Angeles, I got a call from him saying he was very happy with it and would make only minor changes.  That pleased me greatly.  He also talked me into writing another script for DC Comics Presents, this one teaming Superman with Kamandi.  After that, he offered assignments interfacing Superman with DC characters I either didn't like or had never read so I begged off further jobs. In hindsight, I wish I'd done a few more for him. He was much easier to work with than I'd expected.

As things turned out, he unintentionally double-crossed me a little. Irv Novick drew the Superman-Blackhawk script right away but Julie didn't schedule its publication in DC Comics Presents for eight or nine months, putting everything else he had in the works, including the Kamandi story, ahead of it. By the time it came out, sales on Blackhawk had slipped another notch and one other thing had happened that I'll tell you about in the next and final part. If crossing over with The Man of Steel had any sales impact on Blackhawk, it was way too little/way too late.

Click here to, at long last, jump to the final chapter.

It's hard today to think about much beyond those poor folks in Florida, which is being battered and/or submerged by Hurricane Ian. It's going to be sunny and 90° in Southern California today and I really hope I don't hear anyone complaining about the weather. Since this blog can do nothing to help Tampa and the surrounding communities — except suggest donations to Operation USA — we shall try to be a place to get your mind off that. But don't pretend it isn't happening.

If you're interested in attending Comic-Con International in San Diego next July (the 20th through the 23rd to be exact), keep an eye on their website and pages like this one. They're making some changes in the procedure via which folks can obtain badges and it certainly won't hurt for you to understand the process and to keep aware of key dates.

Because I get this question a few times a week in e-mail: I have absolutely no plans to attend any conventions anywhere the rest of this year, nor does my partner Sergio Aragonés. The Pandemic has instilled in me a great love of not being far away from home for very long. I expect that attitude to fade but it'll take time. Also, the invites I've received lately from conventions all expect me to go to a lot of trouble and expense to get there…and then they'll give me a table where I'll sell so much merchandise and so many autographs that it'll be well worth my investment. Trouble is: I don't sell merchandise or charge for autographs and the current business model for convention appearances presumes I do. Which is fine, especially when I don't want to travel. The next con at which Sergio and/or I may appear might be WonderCon Anaheim, next March 24-26.

The next part of the Blackhawk and me series — probably the next-to-last installment in that series — will be posted here later today. Hope you like it. I honestly didn't expect it to run half this long.