Yesterday in this post, I gave you a photo taken at the Inkpot Awards Ceremony at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con. Back then, the awards ceremony consisted only of the Inkpot Awards, which were bestowed by the convention committee. Later on, they added in the Eisner Awards and eventually, the Eisners squeezed the Inkpots out of their own ceremony. The Inkpots are now presented at daytime panels and other events. Also, in case anyone's puzzled about this: The Comic-Con International used to be called the San Diego Comic-Con, among other names.

Yesterday's photo was interesting because one rarely sees so many important, creative people in one snapshot and I was able to identify all but two of them. One, we've subsequently fingered as Jim Starlin…but there's another person in the photo whose face is blocked from the photographer's angle by Richard Butner, the convention chairperson. That's Richard you see with the beard in the above detail from the photo. A lot of my correspondents are now trying to guess who that person is behind Richard.

Many of them tried to guess by looking at the list of that year's Inkpot recipients. That year, the convention presented them to a couple of the convention committee members…but I can recognize all those people and I'm pretty sure it's not them. There were also Inkpots presented posthumously…to Vaughn Bode, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rod Serling and Larry "Seymour" Vincent. It's none of them, obviously. (Larry Vincent was a great horror movie host, by the way. Here's an article I wrote about him.)

The professional recipients in '75 were Brad Anderson, Robert Bloch, Daws Butler, Will Eisner, me, Gil Kane, Dick Moores, George Pal, Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Starlin, Jim Steranko and Theodore Sturgeon…and no, I don't know what I was doing in a list like that, either. I think someone had been watching them play "One of these things is not like the others" on Sesame Street. We've already identified Anderson, Butler, Eisner, Kane, Moores, Siegel, Starlin and Steranko in the photo so it's none of them. I don't think George Pal or Barry Windsor-Smith were at the convention. Windsor-Smith might have been but anyway, it doesn't look like him. It also doesn't look like Shuster or Sturgeon.

It's not me. I'm taller than that and never had hair or a jacket like that and anyway, I didn't go to the award ceremony that year because I found out in advance that I was getting one. (They were badly-kept secrets back then. I think Alberto Gonzales's staff was in charge of security.) Anyway, I'll tell you some time why I didn't attend but for now, you just need to know it isn't me.

I thought it could be Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, among other works…and I'm not 100% certain it isn't. But then Bob Foster sent me an e-mail and he's sure it's Russ Manning. I'm not positive but that's a much better guess. True, Manning didn't win an Inkpot that year but then neither did Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Bob Clampett and June Foray, all of whom are in the photo. All of them, like Russ, received Inkpots in 1974, which was the first year of those awards. I think in '75, the convention got all the past winners who were present up there to pose with the new recipients and I'm pretty sure Russ was present. In fact, I believe he accepted the Inkpot for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Russ was then drawing the Tarzan newspaper strip.

So in the absence of more or better evidence, I'll say it's Russ Manning. Anyone got a better deduction? If it's Russ and if you could see that, it would make the photo even more impressive.

I remember one of the many times I attended the taping of what turned out to be an unsold pilot. The Big Network Guys sat through the whole thing and then (I heard later) went to the producer and said, "There's a good show here but you haven't found it yet."

I felt that way about the first two episodes of Thank God You're Here, which aired last night on NBC. If you didn't see it, here's the premise: An actor is dressed in a costume and then shoved into a sketch with no preparation. It's not exactly improv because the other actors in the scene have rehearsed and been provided with what I assume is a loose script, configured to force the unprepped actor to furiously ad-lib. Dave Foley, formerly of Kids in the Hall, sits as a kind of judge and at the end, he awards a trophy to whichever of the four actors in that hour has done the best job of making up his or her part on the spot. David Alan Grier is the host.

The "game" here is not new. It's played often in improv classes, though usually the scene isn't as structured and no one (not just one actor) has had any rehearsal or prep. I also, oddly enough, recall this was a recurring feature on the 1963 Jerry Lewis talk show where Jerry showed uncommon courage in being the unprepared actor in a weekly sketch that was broadcast live. The sketches on Thank God You're Here are not live, of course, and I had the sense that they were taped long and edited. I hope I'm wrong.

So how'd I like the show? I liked some of each episode. I thought Edie McClurg and Wayne Knight were the best improvisers in the two hours though neither got the trophy from Dave Foley. (I'm not sure what qualifies Foley to judge. Then again, what qualifies Simon Cowell?) But my main problem was that the games were overexplained and overhyped and then underperformed. Most of the scenes just didn't live up to the created expectation. To tell the truth, I was most impressed with the skills of the "ensemble cast" — the other actors in the scenes: Nyima Funk, Maribeth Monroe, Brian Palermo and Chris Tallman.

I have the TiVo set and I'll watch, at least for a while because I love good improv and this has the potential to turn into it. But it's going to have to be more than just a show about clueless actors struggling to get to the end of a sketch. We've had enough of that on Saturday Night Live.

By the way: The show makes a big deal about the fact that there's no script…and indeed, no writers are credited, nor did I see any job descriptions there like "program consultants" or "creative consultants" that are traditionally used to disguise a writing staff. But the end credits did list a Script Supervisor, two Script Coordinators and two Script Assistants. So, uh, why do you need those five people if there's no script?

We have here a terrific concert performance of "A Little Priest," the Act One closer of the musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I guess most of you know that this is the play with a book by Hugh Wheeler and songs by Stephen Sondheim. The next paragraph is just for those of you unfamiliar with the plot…

Sweeney Todd is a man who has returned to his home town after fifteen years in a penal colony on bogus charges. Having lost everything, he now lives only for revenge on humanity in general and more specifically on those he blames for his ordeal. In this scene, he's making a pact with a lady named Mrs. Lovett who operates a store that bakes and sells meat pies. Their partnership will be based on him killing people and her using their remains to make pies. A lovely arrangement.

Mrs. Lovett is played here by Patti LuPone, one of the great stars of the musical stage. Mr. Todd is played by George Hearn, one of my favorite musical performers. I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Hearn years ago and told that story here. This clip may give you a little idea of why I was so enthused about writing something that he'd be performing…

My friend Marv Wolfman has been watching his TiVo. What's so remarkable about that?, you may wonder. Well, the TiVo is in Marv's home in Southern California and Marv is in Australia. That's kind of remarkable. If you don't know about the Slingbox — the only piece of video, audio or computer equipment on this planet that I do not own yet — read this weblog posting to find out how it works for Marv.

Here's another chance to hear Yours Truly talk about Yours Truly. I'll be the guest this coming Friday on Time Travel, a fine radio program hosted by Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle, and heard on WRNJ, which is an oldies station. The program airs at 4 PM East Coast Time and you can find out more about it over on this website. [Warning: Music that plays automatically.]

Listen online at the WRNJ site or you can wait until they archive the show and make it available for downloading on their Archive Page [Same Warning!]. While you're waiting for it to show up there, you might like to enjoy some of the past programs, which have included interviews with Lee Mendelson, Marty Krofft and other people who've been foolish enough to hire me.

Fred Kaplan on what can actually be done to solve The Iraq Problem and why George W. Bush won't do it.

A lot of people on the web today are posting their favorite B.C. and Wizard of Id gags in honor of Johnny Hart. Here's mine and it wasn't in a strip. It was the ever-changing title of one of his many paperback collections. In 1975, Fawcett Books brought out Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback.

A few years later when it was reprinted, the series had gone up to 95 cents per book so they changed the title to Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and in tiny text at the bottom of the cover, it said "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback."

A year or three after that, the books were up to a buck and a quarter each so when they reissued this same volume, it was Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and the text at the bottom said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback."

That was the last one but you just know that if the paperbacks had kept going, we'd eventually have seen Life is a Nine Dollar Paperback and at the bottom, it would have said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two and a Half Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar and Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Three Dollar and a Twenty Cent Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar and Thirty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Five Dollar and Fifty Cent Paperback and Life is a Six Dollar Paperback and Life is a Seven Dollar Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and No Cent Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and Sixty Cent Paperback."

You also know that he planned it that way. Notice how he left plenty of space in that word balloon.

He also did this with the British edition. Somewhere here, I have a copy of Life is a Fifty Pence Paperback. Funny man, that Johnny Hart…especially when he wasn't telling my people that we'd burn in Hell for all eternity. Although come to think of it, that's not a bad gag, either.

Johnny Achiziger and Alan Kupperberg both say that the unidentified person in the photo I just posted is comic book writer-artist Jim Starlin. They must know.

As most of you know, I'm currently assembling a big art book and bio of Jack Kirby which will be out later this year from the Harry N. Abrams Company. (If you don't know about it, here are some details.) I'm spending today going over a file of hundreds of photographs from Jack's personal files and collection, selecting some to be included in the book.

I came across the above pic and decided to share it with you all here. It's from the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con's award ceremony and if the above version of it is too small for you, you can see or download a much, much larger version of it here. Let me see if I can identify all the talented folks in this photograph for you because you may never see an assemblage like this anywhere else. I'm going to go right to left…

At far right, partially cut off, is Russell Myers, creator of the wonderful comic strip, Broom Hilda. To the left of Russell is Dick Moores, famed Disney artist who took over the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip. To the left of Dick is Bob Clampett, the great director of Warner Brothers cartoons and the man behind Beany and Cecil.

The man holding an award to the left of Bob is Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman. To the left of Jerry is Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit. The gentleman in the flowery shirt to the left of Jerry is the popular comic innovator, Jim Steranko. Right behind Steranko is the guru of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee. Immediately to the left of Steranko is Jack Kirby and right behind Jack, towering over him in fact, is comic artist Gil Kane.

Helluva photo, right? Wait. We're not through yet…

To the left of Jack is the brilliant cartoon voice actor, Daws Butler. To the right of Daws is the brilliant cartoon voice actress, June Foray. I thought I'd taken the only photo ever with Daws and Bob Clampett in it after their 1954 "parting of the ways" but here's another one, even if they aren't together in it.

Standing right behind June is…uh, I don't know. Anyone have any idea who that is?

To the left of June and holding an award is Richard Butner, who was one of the main operators of the convention in its first decade or so of existence. I can't see who's standing behind Richard but I think the gentleman to the left of him is Brad Anderson, who did the comic strip, Marmaduke.

Nothing much to add to this. The photo kinda speaks for itself and when it does, it says something about how you rarely see so many talented human beings on one stage.

Why is the use of cell phones banned on airplanes while in flight? If this article is correct — and I'd be interested in hearing if it isn't — it's not for the reasons you might think.

Here's a nice obit in The Los Angeles Times on Mr. Hart. It quotes him as saying, "The end of the world is approaching, maybe by the year 2010." If he's right, then he's only missing out on about three years.

And here's the Associated Press obituary, which says that both his strips will continue. According to the article, "Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart's drawings to work with." If they said that about some strips, I'd be skeptical. But Hart often reused old drawings and just altered the lettering on them. So B.C. may not change much without him.

Lastly, this obit from the Gannett Service is the longest I've seen and it covers many of Hart's more admirable, unheralded deeds. If you only read one of the three, read this one.

You've occasionally seen me mention the name of Dave Mackey, who among his many skills is an authority on some animation studios of the past. He also, for some reason, knows facts that are not about old cartoons and recently proved it by being a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. When you do the show, you're sworn to secrecy about how you fared and even about how other games you witnessed at the taping came out. But Dave's episode ran last week so he is now free to discuss the experience. Here's Part One of his story and here's Part Two.

This is Part Two of our two-part series on the startling displacement of Little Lulu with Little Audrey. In Part One (which you can read here), we learned that Famous Studios was making very popular cartoons featuring Little Lulu, a character created by cartoonist Marjorie Henderson Buell. Lulu went from appearing weekly in The Saturday Evening Post to appearing in ads for Pepsi-Cola and Kleenex, as well as these animated cartoons that ran from 1943 to 1948.

Famous Studios watched Lulu become a very profitable and merchandised property during that period and decided that the character's popularity flowed from their animated cartoons, not the magazine cartoons. When their license to make the films neared its expiration date, Paramount approached Buell about a renewal…but instead of offering more money or even the same amount, they said in effect, "Give us part ownership of the character or we won't make the cartoons any longer." Buell refused and Paramount went about creating their own mischievious little girl character…and that was Little Audrey.

They made her look quite different but otherwise followed the same template, including a not-dissimilar theme song and pretty much the same kind of stories. In fact, the first few Little Audrey cartoons, it is said, were originally written for Little Lulu and switched. The last Little Lulu cartoon, The Dog Show-Off, was released January 30, 1948. Little Audrey appeared briefly in a 1947 Christmas cartoon for Paramount (Santa's Surprise) and then they put her in a Popeye cartoon, Olive Oyl for President, which came out the same day as that last Little Lulu short. The first official Little Audrey cartoon, Butterscotch and Soda, was released in June of 1948.

The one that's our video link today is called Tarts and Flowers and it came out May 26, 1950. The voices are by Mae Questel and Jackson Beck, who seem to have been in well over half of all the cartoon shorts made in New York. What you'll see when you click in a TV print released by a company called U.M. & M., which was a partnership of three companies — United Film Service, MTA TV of New Orleans, and Minot T.V. The combine was formed in the fifties to buy up the rights to old movies (cheaply, they hoped) and to syndicate them to the then-new television stations that were popping up around the country.

In the mid-fifties, someone at Paramount decided to unload much of their library to television in a sale they later regretted. Various films were purchased by different companies but U.M. & M. got a lot of it, including many of the studio's live-action shorts and most of the cartoons released before June 30, 1950 with the exception of the Popeye and Superman films. A condition of the sale was that all references to Paramount had to be removed from the films so the titles were replaced with the bland, generic ones you see here.

Audrey was fairly popular. Paramount made cartoons of her until 1959 and she also starred in a couple of comic books published by the Harvey company. In 1961 when Paramount's cartoon studio fell on hard times, they reached back to their past and made another deal with Marge to do Little Lulu cartoons again. One came out that year and one the following year but no one cared by that time.

Here's Little Audrey in one of her better starring performances…

I said in this message that the movie Going My Way was released for Christmas, 1944. B. Baker informs me that it came out in May of '44. A small point but it's worth getting right.

This kind of thing mystifies me. This is Michael Isikoff writing about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepping to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee…

…even his own closest advisers are nervous about whether he is up to the task. At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers — including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan — about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: "This was the first session of this kind that we'd done."

What mystifies me is not how could Gonzales be so bad. What mystifies me is how does he bring in people to prep him who then turn around and tell Newsweek how bad he was? Shouldn't the Attorney General of the United States of America be able to surround himself with aides who can keep a secret and won't go off and make him look bad in the press for no obvious reason? I suppose it's possible Isikoff made it up but I doubt that since Gonzales's public-affairs chief seems to have been asked to comment and didn't deny anything. I suppose it's also possible that Gonzales did great in the sessions and this is a lie to try and lower expectations for his appearance…but then why isn't he making any live appearances before that?

Seriously. Can't the Attorney General of the U.S. control leaks from his own private rehearsals?