You see that comic book cover at left? That's the second issue of Detective Comics, which came out in early 1937. Detective was one of the first comic books to feature all-new material instead of reprints of newspaper comic strips. This may have been because its publisher-editor, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, was (as he said) dedicated to innovating new kinds of stories in graphic form and could not achieve his vision with old Dick Tracy reprints. Or it may have been, as others suggested, because the Major was a stingy crook who didn't want to pay the cost of reprinting old strips…and anyway, Dick Tracy wasn't available. Either way, it was cheaper to offer bad wages to some of the young cartoonists who then tramped around Depression-era New York in search of an income…and even cheaper when you bounced checks on them.

The drawings on these covers were done by Creig Flessel, who is 93 years old today…and still going strong. I've had the honor to talk with Mr. Flessel, in private and public, a number of times and I'll get to do so again in a few weeks. He'll be on our Golden/Silver Age Panel on Saturday, February 19 at the WonderCon in San Francisco. If you want to hear me ask him about drawing comic books back when F.D.R. was in his first term, or if you just want to wish Mr. Flessel a happy birthday month, you'll be there.

I've been trying to follow the Social Security arguments and I must admit that at some point, the math makes my eyes glaze over much as they did back in Mr. Buck's Geometry class in eleventh grade. The main difference is that I knew Mr. Buck wasn't trying to juggle the numbers to arrive at a certain, desired conclusion. I almost wish I had him back so I could ask him to explain things to me in a non-partisan manner…though, come to think of it, Mr. Buck was never able to explain secants and tangents in a way that I could understand them. So maybe it wouldn't help.

In a way, it's sad that we have no distinguished, apolitical sources that we can go to and get an answer that will be widely regarded as unbiased. There are such folks out there, I'm sure. The trouble is, the minute they say one side is wrong, the other side starts hammering them as partisan hacks and refuses to acknowledge their accuracy or even their sincerity. Can you imagine some think tank or economics authority venturing a view on this issue and having the exponents of the other viewpoint wrong say, "Hmm…maybe we're wrong"? Me neither. So we're all just kinda left here with one side saying the numbers add up, the other saying they don't…and insufficient data and skill to do our own calculations. I get the feeling a lot of pundits think they can say any damn thing they want and if someone disagrees, you just attack their credibility.

The "privatization" side of this issue scares me, first of all because they keep changing the term — it was private accounts, then it became personal accounts…now, it seems to be the "personalization" of Social Security. Well, actually, what really scares me about that is that reporters seem to go along with it…but if the plan is sound, it shouldn't be necessary to dress it up with names that have tested well in focus groups. Secondly, of course, a lot of people who are out there pushing the Bush plan to "save Social Security" are folks who, in the past, have made no secret of the fact that they'd love to see it destroyed. Thirdly, by any estimate the costs of implementing the plan would involve staggering amounts of debt, and they're not addressing that. They just say we'll move it "off the books," which apparently means it isn't a problem. Then, they change the subject, like a couple trillion in new borrowing is no big deal if you're creative in how you keep records.

Those are all things that make me suspicious. But you'll note that none of them involve any math. Before I decide if the plan is good or bad, I'd really like to know if the numbers add up.

Paul Krugman, in this article, says they don't…and he explains it in a pretty simple manner. Says he, those who believe the Bush plan can or will succeed, are presuming that stock investments will yield a rate of return hitting at least 6.5% over the next 75 years. According to Krugman, that's unlikely…but if it does occur, then the current Social Security plan will be in great shape so the changeover isn't necessary.

Is he right? Beats the heck outta me. One can easily find Internet commentators like this guy who will tell you Krugman is wrong. One can also easily find folks like this guy who'll tell you the fellow who says Krugman is wrong is wrong. Both load up their arguments with gobs of personal invective, which also makes me suspicious of their arguments. Then again, it's possible to be rude but right and, once more, we're getting away from the actual arithmetic.

So I don't know what to think, which I guess is okay in some way since others are going to decide this, regardless of what I think. My fear is that it will all pass or not pass, not because of the numbers but because one side did a better selling job on their spin. I certainly don't think the rank-and-file voters will ever really understand it. At best, they'll understand which side they want to trust. Me…I'm going to trust Mr. Buck. He died about twenty years ago but in this debate, that's not necessarily a drawback.

Baseball great Yogi Berra is suing the makers of the TV series, Sex and the City, for an ad that uses his name. The Smoking Gun has the details and no, I don't know why he never sued over Yogi Bear. If attractive women wanted to talk about having sex with me, I wouldn't mind…but I sure wouldn't want to be a highly-merchandised talking bear.

David Letterman's tribute to Johnny Carson the other evening neatly bookended the official mourning period for The King of Late Night. I liked Jay Leno's a bit more, in part because it was so immediate (Dave was on vacation at the time) and in part because lately, I've enjoyed Leno's show more than Letterman's…though, truth to tell, I think both programs have gotten way too repetitive. Maybe it's because they do more shows per year than Johnny did, but neither man strikes me as possessing the Carson flair for keeping the show fresh.

Johnny's death, of course, reminded us of how much we miss not just him but another generation of show business. A lot of folks wrote me how wonderful it was to see Don Rickles and Bob Newhart on Jay's show. They were appropriate not just because they were friends and frequent guests of Johnny but because they were part of his era…an era that is becoming painfully shy on practitioners. We lost Buddy Hackett, we lost Alan King, we lost Rodney Dangerfield, we've lost Johnny…how long before the elder statesman of comedy is Pauly Shore?

Those of us in the comic book field have been experiencing something similar with our "legends," most notably the recent passing of Will Eisner. And just a few weeks ago, I sat with a group of animation buffs and ticked off a very short list of the greats of that art form who are still with us. Since I dwell in all these areas, I've written a painful number of obituaries here.

Losing Johnny was a special jolt because he was such a part of our lives for so long. At the same time, I think it reminded us how much we missed him, and it finally made a lot of folks realize he wasn't coming back.

Some folks talking about him last week on TV seemed to think that when Johnny left The Tonight Show, he took some sort of blood oath to never again appear in public. Not exactly, as I understand it. On his last show, his next-to-last words suggested the opposite…

…I can only tell you that its been an honor and a privilege coming into your homes all these years to entertain you. And I hope when I find something I want to do and think you would like, I can come back and [you will be] as gracious in inviting me into your homes as you have been.

As far as I know, Johnny's subsequent TV appearances consisted of two silent cameos with Letterman, a couple of phone calls to Dave, a voice role on The Simpsons, an appearance on the American Teacher Awards, a bit on a Bob Hope anniversary special, plus the Kennedy Center honors. Most of these were within the first year or so of his leaving Tonight. There was apparently some talk that he would become like Hope, doing the occasional special, but he ultimately decided to not even do that.

Which meant that the Absence of Johnny pretty much snuck up on most Americans. There was never a moment when it became official…not until it was announced he'd died. Much admiration has been expressed for how "classy" it was for him to leave when he was at the top of his game, and I certainly admire that. But I think the part I admire the most is that he did it without really announcing it or calling attention to it. He just left and let us figure it out for ourselves. Another example of the masterful Carson timing.

Not only will Stan Lee be the subject of a piece on 60 Minutes Wednesday tomorrow night but he will also be a guest on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, several hours later.

My favorite actress, June Foray, tells us all about a recent excursion to Tokyo.

The full programming schedule for this year's WonderCon is up on this page. However, you're only going to attend the panels I'm moderating, which are all listed on this page.

Well, I'm not sure how many were actually on the cake, but that's how many veteran character actor Charles Lane should have blown out at his party earlier this evening. Lane, who turned 100 last Wednesday, was toasted by friends and other Hollywood professionals in what my friend Stu Shostak reports was a very big event. Here's some of what he wrote to me…

Mr. Lane is one of the nicest, most gracious people I have ever met. I was expecting a carbon copy of the characters he's played over the years, but he's just like Gale Gordon — very much the opposite, and with an incredible memory, to boot! He didn't miss a beat all day long and was very entertaining, too. I didn't get to spend all that much time talking with him, but after I told him who I was, he thanked me for all the films I gave the party committee to use for the clip reels, and he's looking forward to seeing the shows in their entirety…if he can figure out how to work his DVD player. I asked him if his VCR still flashes "12:00, 12:00, 12:00", and he joked back that he didn't know how to get it to do that!

I'm sorry I wasn't there. Stuart sent other photos that included shots of guests Shirley Mitchell, Cara Williams, Johnny Grant, Peggy Rea, Jay Sandrich, Bill Asher, Jimmy Garrett and Candy Moore (who played Lucille Ball's kids on The Lucy Show, which featured Charles Lane), William Schallert and others. Here's a shot of Mr. Lane thanking the attendees at the end…

Stu supplied film clips out of his massive collection of vintage television shows, many of which can be ordered from his company, Shokus Video. I have been ordering from him since the days when everything he sold was on Beta, so that should give you some idea of his reliability. A glance through his catalog will show you that he has a lot of great old TV programs that you'll want to purchase. His reels of old commercials are special treasures and if you order anything at all from him, do yourself a favor and add a couple of them to your shopping cart. Thanks, Stuart, for the report and pics.

As you all know, Stan Lee recently won (though Marvel is appealing) a lawsuit that says he is entitled to millions of bucks for the motion pictures being made of Marvel characters. In this article, the nephew and daughter of Jack Kirby note that neither Kirby nor his estate have ever received any sort of real money from characters he co-created with Stan. I'll write more about this in a day or so.

It doesn't seem to have made the press reports yet but writer-director-producer Phil De Guere passed away last week from cancer. He was best known for his work on the shows Simon and Simon, Max Headroom, and the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone. In fact, he can be heard on the commentary track of the recently-released Twilight Zone DVDs. Comic fans will also recall that he wrote and directed the 1978 TV-Movie of Dr. Strange.

I did not know Phil well, but I could see he was well-liked and respected by the folks he worked with. Let's hope we've gotten the deaths of all the real good, talented people who are going to die this year out of the way in January.

Dave Barry (no relation to the humor columnist of the same name) was one of the great stand-up comedians and also a terrific cartoon voice actor. Among many other roles, he's the guy who did Humphrey Bogart so well in the Bugs Bunny cartoons that people always try to tell me it really was Bogey. No, it wasn't.

For a guy who did The Ed Sullivan Show and other top programs so many times, Dave Barry is amazingly forgotten. His Internet Movie Database listing has a tiny fraction of his on-camera and voiceover credits, frustrating many folks (including cartoon voice buffs) who are interested in him. I was privileged to meet Mr. Barry on two occasions, and to see what was probably his last Vegas engagement, which was at the old Mint Hotel, just before it closed in 1988…so I get occasional questions about him. I also get a lot of hits on this page where I posted an obit for him back in 2001. Jerry Beck, over at Cartoon Brew, recently responded to a reader inquiry by digging up these old photos of the man. Art Binninger recently discovered that Barry played himself (a nightclub comedian) in a fourth season episode of the Barbara Eden sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie, and I clicked off the above screen grab. That's Dave, sporting one of the toupees that he used to admit to and joke about in his act.

It's Episode #111 entitled "Jeannie-Go-Round."  If you watch I Dream of Jeannie reruns, keep your eye out for it.  Because I can't think of anywhere else you can see Barry at work these days. He was a pretty funny fellow and deserves a little remembrance.

As you may have heard, a couple of DVD consumers have filed a class-action lawsuit against MGM's home video division and they're inviting others to join them. The assertion is that MGM is marketing "widescreen" versions of their movies that do not really show the entire, wide frame. Instead, they claim, MGM is taking the standard non-widescreen images, chopping off the tops and bottoms, and passing this off as a widescreen presentation. What these guys are alleging struck me as unfounded but I didn't fully realize why until I read this article.

William Messner-Loebs is a very talented comic book writer-artist. I barely know him but when I read articles like this one, I simultaneously wince in sympathy and smile in admiration of his courage. Talk about having your share of bad luck and several other folks' shares, as well. The industry and the comic art community need to do something for this guy.

I have had a sudden avalanche of e-mails, just at a time when I'm struggling to finish a script…plus, of course, I have to get ready for the big day tomorrow. So if you sent me something in the last week or so and I haven't responded, my apologies. I am not usually that rude. When things clear up, I will try to catch up.

This week on 60 Minutes Wednesday: A report on Stan Lee and his lawsuit against Marvel Comics. Hope someone fact-checks the documents.