We promised you more Groo and more Groo is what you're gonna get. The Groo 25th Anniversary Special comes out in August and then the following month, you get the first issue in a new, four-issue mini-series called Groo: Hell on Earth. The drawing above is the cover of the first issue, which goes on sale September 19. Here's what the ad solicitation for this issue says…

Groo is back…and oddly enough, that may not be the biggest disaster looming over the world. It seems to be getting hotter everywhere…that is, in those places where it isn't getting colder than ever before. The usual suspects — Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier — bring you the first chapter of what will eventually be four issues. That is, if the planet in the comic survives that long!

I have nothing to add to that except to say that it feels good to be Grooing again. There will be a special Groo Panel this year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego…one of (at the moment) fourteen panels I'm doing there. Details will be along soon.

Hey, you remember Ray Stevens? That's right: The guy who recorded all those weird, semi-country songs and a couple of more mainstream ones. Ray seems to be pretty much retired now, having spent the last decade or two doing shows in and around Branson, but he sold an amazing number of records in his lifetime. And CDs. And music video tapes. When people talk of the most successful musical performers of the last twenty or thirty years, he seems to be unjustly off the radar. If someone did the math though, they'd probably find him in the Top Fifty, maybe the Top Twenty of the best-selling recording artists. (Not long ago, a reporter called to ask me what the best-selling comedy record of all time was. I wasn't certain but I told him that if one counted Mr. Stevens' tune, "The Streak," as a comedy record, that might well be it.)

If you doubt what I'm telling you, take a look at this discography and see how many records and CDs and tapes this man has had. You don't have a list like that unless you're selling a helluva lot of product.

Here's Ray in a recent performance — on a benefit to raise cash for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Around the same time, he also recorded a new song about the tragedy called "The New Battle of New Orleans," which I haven't heard. As far as I know, these are the last two things he's done.

We know not how many people tuned in last night to watch The Sopranos have a lovely dinner out…but The 61st Annual Tony Awards telecast did a little better than 200-300 viewers. They had 6.24 million of 'em, down a bit from the previous year's 7.79 million and even a bit below the 2005 show, which was seen by 6.5 million. Given how no particular play or musical this year created much buzz out there, I'm guessing some are surprised/relieved that the totals weren't a lot lower.

It's interesting how the dynamic has changed. Not so long ago, each year's Tonyfest was surrounded by press speculations and rumors that CBS would dump what was then a two-hour annual broadcast. Some even voiced the view that the whole show was so cramped in two hours that it should up and move over to PBS, and there were those compromise years when the first hour of it was on PBS, and then the "real show" was the two hours on CBS. At some point, perhaps because overall network shares had fallen and the Tony numbers didn't seem quite as bad, CBS decided to just take the whole thing at three hours as an open-ended commitment…and since then, there's been no talk of the Tonys being moved to The Weather Channel or anything of the sort. But really, the ratings haven't substantially improved. It's the sets that got smaller.

Once upon a time in comic books, a good-selling comic sold over 200,000 copies. A book I wrote was once considered an embarrassing flop for All Concerned because it came in around 170,000. Then came a day when anything over 100,000 was great…and now, if you can move 20,000 copies of a comic, some publishers turn cartwheels. Same with TV. I did shows that were considered disasters because they were "only" watched by an audience that today would put you near the top of the Top Ten.

Moral of the story? If you have a failure and you can wait long enough, eventually expectations will catch up with you. Or down with you, I suppose.

Actually, the Tony Awards ceremony wasn't quite as unspectacular as I'd expected, though I still can't imagine much of America was interested…and not just because they were wagering on who'd get whacked over on HBO. The opening number was terrific…which, of course, it would be. It was the beginning and end of A Chorus Line. Can't do much better than that.

I find these "hostless" shows a bit impersonal and I'm really losing my patience with "presenter banter," where two people come out and talk about what the award means. There were some nice moments, such as the tribute to John Kander, and a few actual surprises in the awards. If you scan theatrical websites, you'll find every last expert fearlessly forecasting that Raul Esparza would win Best Actor in a Musical for his work in the revival of Company. But it went instead to David Hyde Pierce for Curtains. (Here's a link to nineteen predictors' predictions. Everyone got most of them right but no one got 'em all and no one had Pierce.)

Mostly though, it comes down to the samplings of the current fare on Broadway, and I always find myself wondering, "Does this make me want to see the show?" I don't think any of them did, and the Mary Poppins number — gratuitously fiddling with the songs from the movie and darkening the whole tone — made me want to stay far, far away. I'm curious about Spring Awakening but not because of the number presented on the telecast. I'd also like to see Frost/Nixon because of the subject matter and word of mouth about it. Raul Esparza's performance of "Being Alive" from Company was thrilling, and I'll probably go if that show's still running next time I'm in New York…but Company is a show where I usually enjoy the parts but not the whole.

What else should I mention? The award telecast seemed a little less gay than usual to me. That's neither good nor bad as far as I'm concerned but it might matter to somebody. There were too many thanks to agents and lawyers and I guess I should just get used to that. The show seemed to cry out for a truly funny presenter. Eddie Izzard was pretty good but where was Nathan Lane? Mel Brooks? Eric Idle? And I can't be the only person who noticed that the band played people on and off with dozens of songs from great musicals of the past…but the repertoire of such tunes only seems to include one song from the last thirty or so years — "Always Look on the Bright Side" from Spamalot. (And yes, I know it's really from a movie. I just wonder if anything from the last few decades will ever be regarded as a standard.)

I think that's everything. I'll report on the ratings later today. I'm guessing between two and three hundred viewers…and that's including Canada.

Penn and Teller explain the seven basic moves of Sleight of Hand magic…

You should've watched the Tony Awards, instead. Nothing happened there either, but at least it was well-choreographed.

Various folks who wish to be your next President are stopping by the offices of Google in Northern California and being interviewed in a slightly different context than the norm. A month ago, I linked you to a video of the appearance there by John McCain. I won't embed the videos here but you can now view similar chats with John Edwards and Bill Richardson. Each of these runs well over an hour and begins with samples of the candidate's political ads. Thanks (again) to Tom Galloway, who I think is in one of them asking a question.

If you get a chance, you might want to read this piece over at Media Matters, which essentially says that Carl Bernstein's new book about Hillary Clinton is a mess of contradictions and a bad attempt to construct a fictional Hillary and to then force the details of reality to fit that model. I have a friend who, whenever we talk politics, always leaps to the "character issue," discussing each candidate or elected official in terms of what kind of person they are. That would matter to me a lot more if I had any confidence that we really know that.

I tend to think we know a lot less about "the real Hillary" or "the real George W." than we think we do. To the extent we can get a sense of character and personal integrity, I think we only get it from extended conversations like these. We generally don't get it from books that — like many, including apparently Bernstein's — seek to cash in on the eagerness of certain book buyers to read bad things about a candidate they already don't like. And we certainly don't get it from these game show format "debates." I don't want to cast my vote for a guy based on how he can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds. In fact, I'm suspicious of anyone who can summarize what he'd do about Iraq in 45 seconds.

Gary Sassaman reviews a new documentary about Jack Kirby. Which of course raises the question of why he has the DVD and certainly individuals who were interviewed for the documentary have yet to received their promised copies. Ahem.

The Tony Awards are on tonight, not that anyone will be watching. I thought I'd link you over to a memorable moment from the 1990 ceremony. Here's the backstory: An actor named Michael Jeter, whose life had hit rock bottom due to substance abuse, made an amazing personal comeback in that year's Broadway production of The Grand Hotel: The Musical. In it, he played a bookkeeper who was dying but still managed to perform an amazing, energetic dance number. Immediately after that on the telecast came the category for which Mr. Jeter was nominated. Here's the video and you can probably guess who won. But you'll enjoy the audience delight and might be rather moved by the acceptance speech…

What's that you say? You can't find a hotel room in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International? Well, I can't help you with this year or next year or even the year after. But if you attend the 2010 convention down there, you may be able to stay in a room, courtesy of SpongeBob SquarePants. A suite with a view of Bikini Bottom costs extra. (Thanks to Tom Galloway for the link.)

Tomorrow night, I will be one of as many as a hundred people watching the Tony Awards on CBS. The annual celebration of Broadway's best never draws much of an audience and this year's nominees are of uncommon disinterest even to people who usually wouldn't miss the program. There are gay men who won't be watching. That's how little excitement there is over the ceremony this time.

There's also the matter of the Sopranos finale. That might lure away a viewer or two. Or three. Or almost everyone.

My pal Bob Elisberg has some suggestions on how the show could be improved. I'm pretty sure that if they followed everything Bob says, they'd have a much, much better show…and instead of a hundred people tuning in, they'd have two hundred.

The Tony Awards are the Tony Awards…and what's more, they will always be the Tony Awards. Even if someone could arrange for Paris Hilton to host, live and nude from the Correctional Treatment Center at Los Angeles County's "Twin Towers" jail facility and for the show to end with Bob Barker being spayed and neutered, the evening would still be about giving awards to people most of America has never heard of for performances in shows that most of America has never heard of, let alone seen.

There's a nugget of "advice" that I've come to dislike in most cases…the admonition to "Get over it," whatever "it" is. This has its applications. There are folks who obsess on certain issues long after the stage it's constructive, to the point where the obsession does more damage than the original issue. But too often, "Get over it" is a way of saying, "Yes, we know you have concerns about something and they may be legitimate, but we're just not going to deal with them so shut up." I'm not sure which this is. All I know is that there's no way to get even a significant section of America to watch the Tony Awards…so the people doing the telecast might just as well put on whatever kind of show they want. I'm thinking three hours of baton-twirling might be nice.

Roger Armstrong, a giant in the world of cartooning and a teacher to countless art students, passed away in his sleep on Thursday at the age of 89.

This is a very difficult obit to write because Roger did so much and meant so much to so many people. I want to underscore, so it doesn't get lost in the career details, that while he had an amazing life as a cartoonist, he had an equally important — perhaps more important — life as an art teacher and watercolor artist. His landscapes were exhibited in every major gallery in Southern California and hundreds of accomplished artists cite him as a great tutor and source of inspiration. He encouraged so many to paint and draw, and led by example.

Roger Joseph Armstrong was born in Los Angeles on October 12, 1917. His father was a writer and a gagman for silent comedies at Mack Sennett and later a screenwriter for Twentieth-Century Fox. Roger began drawing about the time he started walking and by age sixteen was selling cartoons to local advertising agencies. His first drawings adorned the walls of the Pacific Electric Streetcar Depot in downtown Los Angeles. He attended Chouniard Art Institute for two years (1938-1939) but when the family hit a bleak financial period, Roger was forced to quit art school and take a job at Lockheed working on airplanes. Soon after, through a mutual friend, he met Chase Craig, who was editing the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic book for Western Publishing, and Chase hired him away from Lockheed to draw Bugs Bunny comics.

A quick aside. Roger always told people he was in the first issue of Looney Tunes. One San Diego Con, I bought a copy of that rare book, took it over to him and asked him to point out his work in it, since I couldn't seem to find it. Roger hadn't seen the issue in thirty-some-odd years but he paged through it…and couldn't find anything he'd drawn. With semi-mock horror, he wailed, "I'm ashamed! I wasn't in the first issue of Looney Tunes!"

But he was in most of the ones that followed…for years after. Eleanor Packer, the senior editor at Western Publishing, hired him to draw other comics for the company, including many of their Disney and Walter Lantz comics. Packer also recommended him personally to Lantz, who hired Roger to work at his studio for several years as a layout artist and animator. He worked intermittently in animation but preferred the comic strip and book format. He drew several newspaper strips for long runs but somehow managed to never get his name on any of them. They included Napoleon and Uncle Elby, Ella Cinders and Little Lulu, plus he drew the Disney Scamp strip from 1978 to 1988. For Western, he drew most of the Disney comic books at one time or another, most notably those featuring Scamp, Pluto, Goofy (or Super Goof)…and he seemed to have a special affinity for the Seven Dwarfs whenever they needed to be drawn. He did all the Warner Brothers comics but often specialized in Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig. He even dabbled occasionally in adventure-style comics and was pretty good at them, though he said they took so long he couldn't make any money in that style.

I worked with Roger a number of times, writing Super Goof during a period when he drew it, and on The Flintstones for a time. In the seventies, we were hired to whip up a few weeks of a Woodsy Owl comic strip but it failed to sell. He was also one of the first members of the Comic Art Professionals Society when we formed it. I have a very vivid memory of him arriving at the first meeting and being introduced to another charter member, Don R. Christensen. Roger had been drawing Don's scripts for comic books for over twenty years and this was the first time they'd met.

Roger was everything you'd want a cartoonist to be. He was funny and he loved to draw. He sure did it well…and for a long time. I haven't heard any details yet about a memorial service but I can guarantee you that if there is one, it'll be packed with artists who'll credit him as a champion, as a role model and most of all, as a good and glorious friend.

Speaking of Laurel and Hardy, as we just were: Very early Monday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Utopia, their last feature. I am not necessarily recommending you watch this, as great comedians' last features tend to be very sad, and this one runs true to form. It was made in Europe by a crew that lacked certain basics, like proper financing and a common language. Both Stan and Ollie (but especially Stan) were sick during the filming, which was supposed to take two months but stretched over much of one year. As a result, you can notice Laurel's weight fluctuate from scene to scene and in some, he looks pretty awful. The film has some clever moments when it almost seems like genuine Laurel and Hardy…but for the most part, it's rough going.

(If you want to watch it on your computer, by the way, Utopia can be downloaded here.)

To redeem itself, TCM is also running two Robert Youngson compilation films later that morning. Mr. Youngson was a filmmaker who liked to take vintage silent movies and cut 'n' paste them into feature films that showcased the great moments. His work was criticized for truncating scenes…or even going in and rearranging or trimming shots…and some faulted the music, sound effects and narration he added. Still, he did preserve and promote what otherwise might have become lost treasures, and his movies are wonderful introductory samplers to that era. If you or someone you know needs that kind of intro to the material, you might enjoy his creations.

TCM is offering two — The Golden Age of Comedy (1958), followed by When Comedy Was King (1960). Both are filled with scenes of Ben Turpin, Will Rogers, Harry Langdon and others, and both derive their best moments from Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Golden Age of Comedy is especially loaded with Stan and Ollie, though it has an unfortunate emphasis on scenes films where they're among large crowds having big, destructive fights in the street. You see them ripping up cars in Two Tars, ripping off folks' pants in You're Darn Tootin', hurling pies in Battle of the Century, etc. It's a bit repetitive but the footage is hilarious.

(An interesting sidelight: The 1927 Battle of the Century features a spectacular pie fight — the biggest one ever filmed until the 1965 film, The Great Race, which wasn't a twentieth as funny. The Laurel and Hardy custard brawl may only exist today because Youngson duped the decomposing negative to include that scene in his compilation. Shortly after that, it was either lost or decayed to the point where the rest of the film was considered "lost." A copy of the first reel eventually turned up but there's no known copy of the second reel in its entirety. All that exists of it is the last few minutes — the pie fight — because Youngson grabbed it for his movie.)

Among the joys in When Comedy Was King are large chunks of several shorts. One is Laurel and Hardy in Big Business, arguably their funniest silent comedy. Another is Buster Keaton's Cops, with Buster being chased all over 1922 Los Angeles by hundreds of policemen. But a special "find" is A Pair of Tights, a 1929 short made by the Hal Roach Studio and starring Edgar Kennedy and Stu Erwin. It's basically a Laurel and Hardy comedy without Laurel and Hardy, and it demonstrates how infectious their style of comedy had become.

And then next Saturday, a week from today, Fox Movie Channel is running The Dancing Masters and The Bullfighters. These are for those of you who watch Utopia and then wonder if you've seen the worst movie Laurel and Hardy ever made. No, sadly, you haven't.

Here's a Laurel and Hardy film you probably haven't seen. It was made in 1943 for the United States Department of Agriculture and The Boys shot it over their lunch hour during the time they were making films on the Twentieth-Century Fox lot. In fact, last time I was over in that part of the backlot — must be fifteen, twenty years ago — that street area looked pretty much the same as it does in this film.

This short is called The Tree in a Test Tube and this is the first half of it, which runs around five and a half minutes. The rest, which you don't want to see, is more boring educational stuff and doesn't involve Stan and Ollie. The voiceover is by a gent named Pete Smith, who produced and narrated comedy short subjects for MGM for more than twenty years.

The most interesting thing about this film, apart from the sheer fact that it's obscure Laurel and Hardy, is that it was shot in color. In their long careers, Stan and Oliver only made two films that were shot in color and the other one, the 1930 feature The Rogue Song, is largely lost today. So this is pretty much it for Laurel and Hardy in color. Have a look, why don'tcha?

In the early seventies, I worked briefly for a firm that published teen and gossip magazines. I never worked on the gossip ones but I knew the editor. She used to sit in her office, look over photos of all the people who were currently considered gossip-worthy and try to imagine the perfect headline story. This had nothing to do with reality. It was just fantasizing: What could possibly happen to one of these people that I could put on my cover and sell a lot of magazines?

Sometimes, she'd dream up a headline and assign it to a writer. She'd call someone in and say, "The title's going to be 'The secret love nest of Elizabeth Taylor and John Lennon!' Go write me a story to go with it." And then the writer would have to figure out some way to justify the headline. Sometimes, they could do it via half-truths…like writing about some great hotel that both Liz and John had visited at separate times. Sometimes, they'd just plain lie, citing spurious anonymous "close friends of the couple" about the torrid Taylor/Lennon affair. But either way, it started with this editor asking herself what could happen that would sell a lot of magazines to those who loved gossip. I remember her saying that every now and then, she'd imagine up a headline and — well, whadda ya know? — it would turn out to be true.

Paris Hilton going to jail. That's the kind of thing she'd think of. And to make the story even better, Ms. Hilton would get sprung after a few days due to some secret, life-threatening medical condition…and then she'd be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the pokey.

Yeah, that's just the kind of thing this editor would think of, were she still at it. It's just too perfect.

Meanwhile, Channel Four here in Los Angeles broke into scheduled programming to cover a press conference being held by a senior official in the Sheriff's Department about Ms. Hilton's back-behind-bars drama today. They preempted Martha Stewart's show for this, which was only fitting. The last time Channel Four did this was when Martha, another much-despised "rich bitch," was convicted. They wouldn't do that to bring us the capture of Osama Bin Laden…unless, of course, it was at the end of a high-speed chase.