Tom Spurgeon decides he likes comic books more than graphic novels. There's something to be said for this view.

Here's a short Q-and-A that explains what the Iraqi elections are all about.

Ron Paul is a Republican congressman with strong Libertarian tendencies. I agree with some things he says and disagree strongly with others, but always find him interesting to read. Here he is asking a bunch of relevant questions about the Iraq War.

Here's a picture of two super-heroes at the 1975 San Diego Comic Convention. The one at right is Stan Lee, and he's quite the super-hero but this posting is not about him. The gent at left is Richard Pesta, who was known to many as Captain Sticky, and I just now found out that he passed away almost a year ago.

Billing himself as the world's only real-life super-hero, Captain Sticky was a fixture of the early San Diego cons. He operated out of that city, driving around in his Stickymobile (a highly-customized Lincoln Continental), functioning as a flamboyant crusader, mostly for consumer rights. For a few years there, he often appeared on the news, battling various injustices that ranged from nursing home abuse to auto mechanic rip-offs. As I understood it, he got results largely by just showing up at the crime scene. He was one of those colorful characters that no reporter could resist. So if he pulled up outside your business, so did the TV cameras…and if you had a lick of sense, you'd just correct whatever he thought needed correction.

That he righted some wrongs is undeniable, but a lot of us were skeptical about this person, who'd named himself based on his love of peanut butter. He sometimes claimed to be independently wealthy and said his heroic exploits were his way of "giving back" to society. Maybe…but he was also constantly trying to get writers and artists to whip up pilot issues of a planned Captain Sticky comic book and blanched at the suggestion that he pony up a bit of cash. Around the time of the above photo, Marvel was interested in publishing his exploits, and a fine writer-artist named Don Rico was engaged to produce the first issue. This lasted until Don discovered that Marvel was expecting the Good Captain to underwrite the costs, while Sticky was expecting Marvel to shower all with currency. Don quit, I turned it down and so did everyone else I knew.

But as I said, the guy did some good…and he had a real flair for self-promotion. The TV series, Real People, briefly made a celebrity of him and he turned up at a lot of public functions all over California in the late seventies and early eighties. I don't recall seeing him anywhere after around 1985. This article fills in the rest of the story and tells us of his death last February.

My thanks to Alan Light for the photo (he took it) and for calling my attention to the obit. Rest in peace, Sticky.

Nick Madigan reports on how Johnny spent his retirement years.

Warren Francke examines Johnny's Nebraska roots.

Former Tonight Show writer Tom Finnigan remembers.

David Letterman will be back from vacation on Monday night and will do a show about Johnny. He has former Tonight Show producer Peter Lassally and former Tonight Show bandleader Doc Severinsen, plus clips from both Johnny's shows and Johnny's appearances on Letterman's old NBC program.

My amigo Fred Hembeck has one of the best comics weblogs out there. He writes about his love of the medium. He offers up historical artifacts. He even prints Fred Hembeck cartoons.

In the middle category, he's currently offering two bits of funnybook history. One is this 1966 article on Will Eisner from the New York Herald-Tribune Sunday magazine section. The author, Marilyn Mercer, knew Eisner pretty well, having worked for him for years.

The other is this 1966 article by Nat Freedland, also from the New York Herald-Tribune Sunday magazine section. It's a profile of Stan Lee and, peripherally, Jack Kirby…and it was one of the dozen-or-so factors that destroyed that partnership. Jack was furious at how little he was mentioned, how unflattering the few mentions were, and most of all at how Stan was depicted as the sole genius of Marvel Comics. Jack's wife Roz read the article early the Sunday morning it came out, woke Jack up to read it…then Jack phoned Stan at home to wake him up and complain. Both men later recalled that the collaboration was never the same after that day, and it was more than just an injured ego at work.

Jack had then been promised he would soon receive a hefty raise and some bonus for the way his art was being used in Marvel merchandising. Shortly after the article came out, things changed. The raise turned out to be minimal and the bonus disappeared because (he said) Marvel's business folks elected to believe the article, or at least to use it as a reason to deny him his due. According to Jack, when he argued his worth to the company, someone there would cite Freedland's piece as independent verification of how things were. It pretty well firmed up Kirby's view that he was being swindled because he was contributing mightily to the creation of the characters and stories but being credited only for artwork. Not long after, in an attempt to appease Jack, the credits on most Marvel books were altered so they didn't say who did what. Instead of saying "Written by Stan Lee, Drawn by Jack Kirby," an issue of Fantastic Four would say something like "by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" or "A Lee-Kirby Production." As far as I could tell, most readers did not appreciate the difference. They just figured it was a different way of saying Stan wrote it and Jack drew it. (The less-specific credit format had been used occasionally before Jack and a few other artists complained, but it became standard for a while in response to those complaints.)

There were other, more serious events that drove Kirby from Marvel a few years later…and I think I describe them all in the bio of Jack I hope to finish in the next year or three. But this had a major impact, and I'm sure we all thank Br'er Hembeck for making it available for us to read.

My buddy Andy Ihnatko has a viewing recommendation. I've found it's wise to just do whatever Andy tells you.

As you probably know, there was a nasty train wreck in Los Angeles the other day. I've never ridden an L.A. Metrolink train but I have friends who do ride them. Maybe that's why I find myself uncommonly chilled and saddened by the news reports, especially by the fact that it was the result of one man's thoughtless stupidity. The events of 9/11 were more horrifying than if the same amount of death and destruction had been caused by a hurricane because they weren't "Acts of God." Somebody actually caused that to happen. To make matters even worse, there are reports that the victims of the train accident may not be able to obtain compensation for their pain and medical expenses. The transit company might not be deemed at fault, and the party that was at fault has no money.

I wrote about the villain of this episode here. Now, I want to write about some heroes. The train wreck occurred right near a Costco store and the other day, The Los Angeles Times said this in an editorial…

Costco workers were the very first responders to the predawn tragedy on their doorstep. They rushed out in the dark and rain, toward flaming, smoking rubble.

I was joking about Costco here the other day but for some reason, I really like those stores. I feel demeaned when I visit my local K-Mart; like they figure I've got to be low class or I wouldn't be there. The two times I've ventured into a Walmart, I felt a mood of "Buy something chintzy and get out!" I've been to a nearby Target store about five times and never bought anything because I could never find the item I wanted, nor could I find someone who could help me locate it. And when I go to a Best Buy, which I did just the other day, I have the sense that every piece of merchandise I look at has been sold to someone else, returned, repackaged and put back on sale. Most of all — and perhaps the primary cause of all these other negative feelings — is that the employees of these other chains seem generally unhappy to be working where they're working. I don't know how pay scales run but the workers at Costco at least act like they're proud of their jobs and have some stake in the operation, whereas the employees at K-Mart act like they're there because Burger King wasn't hiring.

So I like the mood at Costco and I like the fact that they have things in mass quantities. I don't need (and therefore, don't buy) Kikkoman Soy Sauce in the 10-gallon drums they sell, but I always depart with a few hundred bucks worth of something that makes my life easier.

And I had this thought, which I hope doesn't sound too silly or too frivolous or disrespectful of a disaster. I wish the train wreck hadn't happened…but if it had to happen, and it couldn't happen right outside a hospital or fire station, those passengers were fortunate it happened outside a Costco. According to a TV report I saw, the Costco employees were hauling out cartons of first aid products and water and blankets, as well as tools that could be used to pry open doors and windows. A Costco has all that stuff. Someone rolled out a cart full of fire extinguishers which were quickly put to use. When fire fighters arrived, they used the store's oversized shopping carts to haul away debris and transport the injured, and employed equipment such as fork-lifts that Costco normally uses for moving crates around. It was a messy rescue operation but boy, was it well-supplied.

Here's an article about what the Costco employees did and here's another. And I just realized one reason why their actions made such a big impression on me. As I mentioned in this posting, I was in a Costco (a different one) the other day and I saw a small child injured. The kid's parents proceeded to do absolutely nothing, but a couple of Costco workers rushed over to help the boy and administer care. I was impressed with their swift action, their caring and with the fact that there was no hesitation to grab product off the shelves and use it to deal with an emergency. I don't know what it is about Costco's hiring policies but I think they get some real good people, and it makes me more eager to shop at those stores.

A reader who I'm not sure wanted his name used wrote and asked two questions about Johnny…

Since you were there at the taping, I'm wondering how Ed McMahon was able to exit his visit with Leno on Monday in time to be on Larry King's show. If I remember right, Tonight always starts taping at 5:30, which would've given Ed a scant 5 minutes between the end of his appearance with Leno and the start of Larry King's show at 6:00. Did Tonight alter its taping time, or is Larry King's CNN studio astonishingly close to Leno's?

I think Larry King does his show from a CNN building down on Sunset Boulevard, which at that time of day can be a 30-45 minute commute from Burbank, where Leno tapes. But Ed had plenty of time because The Tonight Show no longer tapes at 5:30. They moved to 5:00 and then to 4:00, in part because Mr. Leno sometimes likes to fly off to Vegas or some other city and do his act in the evening. So Ed walked out of the NBC studio around 4:30, and I believe he did a few other interviews there before heading down to see Larry.

I'm wondering if you have any industry insight as to why a few of the older Carson clips we've been seeing were apparently long ago transferred from their original video onto — of all things — film. (Examples: The late 1960s bit with George Gobel, Dean Martin, and Bob Hope, plus the circa 1972 Alpo commercial where Johnny had to stand in for the dog.)

Well, I can guess. As we all know, most of the tapes of Johnny's early shows were destroyed or erased years ago. Some of what remains of that era is because many shows were transferred to 16mm film via the old kinescope process. For those who don't know, back before video tape was perfected, the only way to preserve live TV shows was to have someone point a 16mm camera at a TV monitor and film the image. The procedure became obsolete when tape came in except that there were some foreign markets where the stations weren't equipped for tape, and if you wanted to sell your shows over there, you had to run kinescopes. So throughout the sixties and into the seventies, it was done with a number of live or taped TV shows, including Johnny's, so that they could be shown on U.S. military bases overseas. I suspect those filmed clips were taken from prints made for that purpose which someone found.

Joan Embrey from the San Diego Zoo, which probably means clips of Johnny with animals.

I remember some TV critic once wrote that the difference between Carson and Letterman is best demonstrated when they do animal segments. Carson lets the marmoset climb up on his head and Letterman makes fun of the trainer.

Here's a roundup of editorial cartoons about the passing of J. Carson. You may notice a certain repetition of a couple of ideas.

And here's a link to the cartoon by my pal, Mike Peters.

Richard Corliss of Time writes one of the best pieces I've read on Johnny, even if he does misspell "Slauson cut-off." He also notes that during much of the time Leno guest-hosted for Carson, he got higher ratings and better demographics. This is one of those facts that no one ever dared mention aloud when Johnny was alive.

Nick Clooney, who was the local news anchor whose broadcasts preceded Johnny in L.A. for years, writes about his encounters with Mr. Carson.

Every print interview Johnny Carson ever did seems to be turning up on the Internet these days. Here's one of the earliest — a 1967 chat he did with Alex Haley for Playboy. It's kind of interesting since it was done at a time when he hadn't been doing Tonight for much longer than Jack Paar had hosted and, despite a recent, messy renegotiation of his contract, he still wasn't being paid megabucks.

Frank Rich on what it means to support the troops.

And while we're at it, this article over on Salon [membership or watching ads required] says that wounded soldiers who are being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have to pay for meals. I wish people in this country would get the idea that saying "I support the troops" is, literally, the least you can do. I mean, it's nice but on a list of things that could be done to benefit these people, thinking good thoughts is right at the bottom in terms of usefulness to their lives. Maybe we can change it to "I support giving the troops what they need."

William Saletan on how Democrats can win over pro-choice voters.