Every time I post an obit for someone like Martin Nodell, as I had to do the other day, I read messages from people lamenting how our heritage is slipping away…how the founders of the comic book industry are almost all gone. This is true and, of course, there's nothing that can be done about it, and we need to honor and interview these folks while they're still with us. This requires that we remember which ones are. This morning in an obit for his father in the L.A. Times, Marty Nodell's son Spencer says, "My dad is one of the last of the Golden Age artists. Guys like [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster, [Batman creator] Bob Kane, they've all passed. Jerry Robinson [co-creator of the Joker] and [Batman artist] Sheldon Moldoff are still with us, but otherwise they're all gone."

Well, not quite. Paul Norris, who co-created Aquaman, is still with us at the age of 92. George Tuska, who was drawing for Will Eisner's shop in 1939 would certainly fit anyone's definition of a Golden Age artist. He's still around at the age of 90. Nick Cardy, who started with Eisner at the same time, is a much younger man of 85.

Creig Flessel, who was drawing the covers of Detective Comics before Batman was in the book is alive at age 94. Jim Mooney, who drew his first comic book in 1941, is a mere 87 years of age. Joe Simon, who has a pretty impressive list of co-creations to his credit including Captain America, is 93. He started in comics in 1938. Joe Kubert, who's 80 years old, did his first comic book work in 1942.

Irwin Hasen is 88 and he started drawing comics in 1940. His occasional partner Bob Oksner is two years older and he started doing comics about the same time. So did Bob Fujitani, who's 86. Bob Lubbers (age 84) was illustrating for funnybooks in 1942. Carmine Infantino is 81 and he was drawing comics before 1941.

There are others I could add to the list…not many, sad to say, but there are others. Stan Lee wasn't an artist but he was an important figure of that era and he's not only going strong…at his current rate, he's going to outlive all of us.

Then you have a number of folks who are still with us who did their first comic book work later in the forties. Here are ten names and the years in which they first worked in comics: Russ Heath (1947), Gene Colan (1944), Dick Ayers (1947), Al Plastino (1948), Murphy Anderson (1947), Lew Sayre Schwartz (1948), John Romita (1949), Joe Sinnott (1949), John Severin (1947) and Will Elder (1947).

The point, of course, is not that we have a whole lot of these guys left…and Spencer Nodell, mourning his dad, can hardly be faulted for a bit of exaggeration at our collective loss. It's just that we need to treasure the pioneers of comics now, while we can, and not forget that they're here. It also still amazes me when someone suggests to a convention organizer that they invite some 91-year-old comic book legend as a guest and the organizer says, "Oh, my list is kinda full this year. I'll invite him next year…or maybe the year after." Let's not bury an entire generation before we have to.

And it's a special bonus because I didn't write any of it. It's another thirteen minutes of old cereal commercials for those of us who usually liked the commercials more than the cereal. (Warning: This package contains some repeats from others to which we've recently linked.) Among those in this collection, you'll find a couple of Alpha Bits spots with Jack E. Leonard voicing his mailman character, a Crispy Critters commercial with Sheldon Leonard as the voice of Linus the Lion-Hearted, Ex-pugilist Rocky Graziano as a sea captain selling Post Raisin Bran, a Sugar Bear ad with Gerry Matthews as the voice of the bear and Ruth Buzzi as Granny Goodwitch, Tony the Tiger as voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft, and a lot of commercials that suggest that if you eat Post Sugar Crisp, you can beat up anyone you want to beat up.

Somewhere in there, there's a spot with Euell Gibbons, a "naturalist" who was very famous for a brief time, mostly in jokes that appeared in Johnny Carson monologues. Mr. Gibbons used to advocate the eating of odd (to some) plants and berries that could be found in the wild and was known to take lunch by nibbling away in public parks. For some reason, some ad agency thought he'd be a dandy person to be the spokesperson for Post Grape Nuts…and he may have been, I don't know. All I know is that I thought it made the notion of eating that cereal sound like eating tree bark and I always wondered why they thought that was a good idea.

Chris Kelly on how George W. Bush ruined the movie, Stalag 17.

There are a lot of polls out about potential presidential nominees in 2008, telling you that Hillary Clinton has X% support while Barack Obama has Y% and John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are battling for Z%. I not only think these polls are meaningless this early, I think they're especially meaningless with candidates who haven't indicated they're likely to run. A lot of people don't want to fall in love with someone they can't have. I think if Al Gore came out and said, "I'm running for president and I'm going to do everything I can to take back the White House for the Democrats," his numbers among Democrats would go way up.

Polls say that Clinton and McCain are the front-runners for their respective parties' nominations. Okay, that makes sense. They're also the two people perceived as most likely to make the effort, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Maybe this is all stating the obvious on my part because I keep reading polls that say that, to cite one recent one, Hillary is favored by 28% of self-identified Democrats, whereas Gore is only favored by 13%. Uh, maybe that's because Gore keeps acting like he isn't running and Hillary keeps acting like she is. And maybe that's all it means.

The Fox Home Video people have already issued all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends in five volumes of DVDs. Now, they're going back and issuing single DVDs, each holding a batch of selected episodes. The first one is out now, I'm told. It's called Garfield and Friends: Behind the Scenes and it spotlights cartoons in which the lasagna-gorging cat explained to viewers how a cartoon show is assembled, or otherwise lectured on the vital issues of the day. There are fifteen of them included. These were among the episodes that the crew on the show liked the most and certain folks at CBS liked the least, so that says something for them.

You can order it two ways, assuming you want to order it at all. There's the plain, old fashioned DVD for thirteen bucks at Amazon, and they also have the deluxe model for eighteen bucks. The deluxe model is the same DVD but it includes a Garfield "mini beanie" plush toy that I just know you can't live without. A similar DVD package featuring Odie will follow shortly…and maybe someday, Mark will get his royalty payments, although I fear they're going to pay me off in those little dolls.

What do you do if you backed the Iraq War and things aren't turning out there the way you confidently predicted? Why, you blame the media, of course. They're the ones spreading all those questionable stories about car bombings in Baghdad and killings in the streets. Eric Boehlert discusses this spin on reality.

We're hearing that it's finally going to happen: A DVD release of WKRP in Cincinnati. But as we've warned here before, they will not be as the shows originally aired. The disc jockeys in the popular sitcom often played records and at the time the shows were produced, it didn't cost that much for the producers to use real records. So they did. Then later, when the shows got to the land of syndicated reruns, the rates had changed and it cost more to leave those real records in. So they didn't. Other, generic songs were substituted…and where there were lines of dialogue referencing the now-excised tunes, they either (a) left the lines in so they made no sense or (b) had someone try to imitate the actors and redub new dialogue. Neither worked all that well.

I'm told a first season DVD set will be out next Spring and that a number of songs will be changed. I'm not sure if that means these are the syndicated prints or if they're redoing the replacements. Either way, it's something of a shame…though I suppose an altered collection is better than no collection at all.

The last time we discussed this here, it sent another blogging friend into a tirade, the jist of which was, "How dare those greedy record owners try to hold up the DVD company for money, thereby making it impossible for the folks who made the WKRP shows to market them in their original form?" That may be the case or it may be that the company that now controls WKRP in Cincinnati (which is not the company that made them in the first place) is just being penurious. That has been known to happen, too. Unless you're privvy to the negotiations, you don't know.

If you've been watching Late Night With Conan O'Brien, you're already familiar with their great new website. If you're not, here's the story of how it came to be…and a direct link to www.hornymanatee.com.

This is another Garfield cartoon that I wrote and which shouldn't be up on YouTube. It's called Skyway Robbery and it features a recurring conman character named Mr. Swindler who was in four or five episodes.

Interesting story how we cast his voice. I decided to introduce a larcenous scam artist who'd pop up every few weeks to try and cheat Garfield's owner Jon out of his hard-earned mazuma. To play the role, I cast a wonderful character actor named Jesse White. Most people remember him as the Maytag Repairman in the commercials but most of the jobs Jesse got during his long, rich career had him playing agents and con-artists and crooked salesmen, and I thought he'd be perfect. And if we'd gotten him five years earlier, he probably would have been.

But Jesse was old and Jesse was ill, and it just broke your heart. He simply wasn't up to the job. The recording session took a long time and even then, what resulted was barely satisfactory. I decided then and there that that particular conman character wasn't coming back and that I'd create a new one and find a different actor to play him. About two minutes after Jesse White left, I was walking into the waiting room at the recording studio, wondering who I might get for the job when I noticed an actor sitting there. It was Carl Ballantine and he was waiting to do a radio commercial in one of the other studios.

You may know Carl Ballantine from his role on McHale's Navy. You may know him from one of his hundreds of other TV and motion picture appearances. You may even know him as The Amazing Ballantine, performer of the lamest, funniest magic act in the world. I know him from all those and from appearing in the 1971 stage revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. It was the most hysterical, magical thing I've ever seen in a theater and Ballantine was one of the reasons. (I wrote about this production here and here.)

So that day at Buzzy's Recording Studio, I saw Carl sitting there, said the word "perfect" aloud…and he soon became Mr. Swindler. I thought he was quite wonderful in the role and he was a joy to work with. One of the reasons I kept bringing Swindler back was so that I could keep bringing Ballantine back.

Our cartoon today was his second appearance. In addition to Carl, the voice cast consisted of Lorenzo Music as the cat, Thom Huge as Jon, and Gregg Berger as Odie and everyone else. You may click when ready. It runs about six and a half minutes.

Congrats and sighs of relief to my longtime friend (and one of the best artists in the realm of fantasy), Bill Stout. Bill has just come through a nasty brush with cancer and he reports on his weblog that they got it all. In fact, his weblog has a very candid, chilling diary of his experiences. The accounts may be too raw for some people but if you want to brave it, go to this page, locate the entry for November 16 and then read sequentially upwards to the happy ending. I'm horrified by what he's been through but glad we'll have Stout around for a long time.

And good thoughts go out to a great veteran comic book writer — the man who gave us The Doom Patrol, Deadman, Stanley and His Monster and so many more. Arnold Drake has been hospitalized with a couple of broken bones and I'm told he's doing well. I'll call him tomorrow and try to get you all a more complete report, as well as an address for Get Well wishes.

My Congressman at work. I don't know why more people aren't outraged at evidence that some companies have taken tax money for war-related work, gouged us on the amounts and then either not done the work or done a slipshod job. Shouldn't these be the kind of scandals that unite us all? Is there anyone who doesn't think this kind of thing is shameful?

Here's a new CBS poll on Bush and Iraq, and here's Mark baffled about something.

21% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush has done handling Iraq, as opposed to 75% who disapprove.

31% of Americans approve of Bush's overall job performance, as opposed to 63% who disapprove.

So, uh, what's on the minds of those people who think he's done a rotten job with Iraq but still think he's been a good president?

I'm serious with this question…well, sort of serious. I can understand thinking Bush has botched the war badly. Actually, I can understand that from two fronts: I can understand thinking he made a colossal mistake taking us to war in the first place and I can understand believing the war was the right move but that it's been lost by bad strategizing and/or not committing sufficient troop strength and/or mishandling the occupation. I can even understand (again, sort of) believing that Bush has made all (or mostly) the right decisions and that he's been a good Chief Exec. I don't agree, of course, but

But this presidency has become all about the war. It overwhelmingly dominates every poll about what Americans think is important and it impacts the runner-up answers like The Economy and Immigration and Combatting Terrorism, and probably not in a good way. How does someone disapprove of the war but approve of the guy who started it and ran it? I mean, even if you think Donald Rumsfeld's the one who screwed up, Bush is the guy who picked Rumsfeld, okayed everything he did and insisted, long after members of their own party were calling for the man's head, in keeping him on.

Now, it may be that the poll is just full of manure…but I don't think that's it because there's a similar gap in all the polls. My suspicion is roughly as follows: There are, of course, a lot of people out there who believe in the over-all, non-Iraq goals of the Republican Party. They've lost faith in Bush himself and they wish we'd never invaded Iraq and could get out without it helping the Democrats. When they're asked about the war, they don't want to encourage its continuance so they say no, they don't approve of the handling of the war. But when they're asked about Bush, they don't want to repudiate the domestic issues he seemed to stand for. They still think a G.O.P. in the White House is the ticket to lower taxes, banning abortion, more God in public settings, no gay marriages, etc., so they answer that they approve of Bush. But it's not him they like. They just don't want to have him seen as a failed president because some of that failure will rub off on their non-Iraq agenda.

Does that make any sense? Or is there some other explanation I'm missing here?

Are there people reading this who disapprove of Bush's handling of the war but approve of his over-all presidency? Would one of them like to send me a message I can post here explaining this? I'm really curious.

The New York Times has corrected its obit on Sid Raymond. They now quote his favorite joke in a way that makes sense. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this earlier item on this site.) Naturally, we would like to take credit for this…so we will.

The Times credits Sid as having provided the voices of the Terrytoons magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, and several folks have written to ask me if this was so. Yes, it is was…briefly. There are one or two cartoons in which Raymond appears to have done the voice of Heckle and/or Jeckle.

I say "appears" because those of us who profess to know a lot about animation voice work are all still a bit puzzled by the credits for many films that came out of Paul Terry's studio. A gentleman named Tom Morrison, who also worked there as a storyman, did an awful lot of voices. So did a New York based singer named Roy Halee. The two of them swapped off certain voices from time to time. Both were Mighty Mouse at different times, occasionally in the same cartoon — Halee singing, Morrison speaking. Sometimes, one of them did Heckle and Jeckle, sometimes the other did the magpies and sometimes they split the chores. There are also other, unidentifiable voices in Terrytoons, some of which sound like the director grabbed a janitor and stuck him in front of a microphone.

I'm glad someone was skeptical about Sid Raymond's credit. There's a lot of misinformation out there about the voices on these cartoons. Many sources say that character actor Ned Sparks was the voice of Heckle and Jeckle at one point. As far as I know, this is wrong. Impressions of Mr. Sparks turn up in a lot of cartoons produced in this country in the thirties and forties but I don't think he ever actually did animation voice work. Comedian Dayton Allen voiced the magpies a few times in the fifties, including redubbing old footage to serve as interstitial segments on the CBS TV series, but he's often credited as if he did all the voices in all their cartoons. Also, some sources say that Roy Halee went from voicing Mighty Mouse and the magpies to producing records by popular recording artists, including Simon and Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful and Bob Dylan. Actually, Roy Halee Senior was a singer and cartoon voice and his son, Roy Halee Junior, became a top record producer.

Incidentally — getting back to the first topic for a moment — isn't it interesting that the Times, which published many assertions about Whitewater, and later about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, has never corrected those stories…but someone there was conscientious enough to fix Sid Raymond's joke?

Here's another cartoon I wrote which should not be on YouTube and which the legal folks will soon have removed. But in the meantime, I wrote it. I can link to it. I can even tell you a little story about it.

I don't think it happens as much these days but those of us who do cartoons have been occasionally pressured, in much the same way a guy with a gun pressures you to hand over your wallet, to include certain "social messages" into our work. There's nothing wrong with trying to include a benevolent moral in a cartoon if — and here come a couple of big IFs — it doesn't despoil the entertainment value and it can be done without a condescending, lecturing tone…and especially IF the message is a sound one.

For a time in the eighties, a lot of us had to include a message with which I did not agree. It was, basically, that the group was always right; that one should avoid the anti-social behavior of not going along with what everyone else thought. This was embedded in many cartoon shows in many ways. On a show I launched called Dungeons and Dragons (the DVD of which is just now being released), I had to make one of the kids a sour presence who always wanted to go in a different direction from all the others. The same network also had a show called The Get-Along Gang, which was about a batch of cute, furry animals who always had to be reminded to get along with the gang. There were other examples.

I thought this was a foolish value to be teaching children. So did the programming folks at the network but it was forced upon them by outside interests. Later, when I did the Garfield and Friends show, things had changed and I not only didn't have to include that message, I could attack it…as we did in this U.S. Acres cartoon. U.S. Acres was Jim Davis's other newspaper strip — the one he retired because it was "only" in 300 papers…an impressive number for anyone but the creator of Garfield. In some other countries, the strip was called Orson's Farm so the cartoons we did were filmed with both title cards, and today's video clip has an Orson's Farm logo on it.

They all took place on a farm where Orson the Pig, Roy Rooster, Wade the Cowardly Duck and others cavorted. In the episode you're about to view (assuming the link is still good and you click on it), the voices of Orson and the agent were done by Gregg Berger, who I should mention also had a small role in the movie I saw last night. Thom Huge was Roy Rooster and the late, great Howie Morris supplied the sound of Wade Duck. All three, with their voices sped a la Bagdasarian, spoke for The Buddy Bears, three extremely annoying characters who popped up every now and then on the Garfield show singing their little tune which was written by Yours Truly and Ed Bogas. Which brings us to the cartoon entitled Big Bad Buddy Bird…

Joe Galloway, who covered an awful lot of wars and military interventions in his days as a reporter, calls for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.