David Letterman, who rarely ventures out of his own studio these days to do remotes, sprinted off to Iraq the other day to entertain troops there. Here's a nice report with lots of photos and such.

Comedians who work comedy clubs in New York are threatening to go on strike. Time to haul out the picket signs that popped up back in 1979 (?) when comics in Los Angeles picketed The Comedy Store, The Improv and other such establishments not for better pay but for any pay. The placards said things like…

• No bucks, no yucks
• No money, no funny
• Use a pun, go to prison (I never quite understood that one, even though I carried it one evening)
• Catch a rising scab
• Stand up for your rights

And so on. In hindsight, it seems amazing that human beings had to go on strike to establish that they should be paid when they performed the most important job at some very profitable operations. Even more amazing was that there were those who said, "It'll spoil the business if the comedians are paid." They even called it a "business," forgetting that in a "business," people get paid. Eventually, the comedians were paid — not a lot, but it was a nice precedent — and the dire predictions did not come true. I assume the current New York squabble will be settled with the comedians getting more, no matter how much the club owners may plead ruination.

Fred Hembeck invites comic art lovers to gaze upon The Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, MANY Faces of Santa Claus!

Here are some facts about Social Security. Or at least, the authors claim they're facts. If anyone sees a substantive argument for the "other side," please let me know and I'll post a link to it.

Hey, here's a nice website devoted wholly to A Night at the Opera. Great film, great site.

Okay, here's a tech-type question that someone here may be able to answer for me. It concerns the minidisc format, about which I know very little other than that Sony has made it less than simple to transfer recordings off a minidisc and onto another format. A friend has several dozen songs on minidisc which he would like to convert to MP3 format, playable on a PC. Alas, his minidisc player doesn't even have an audio out jack. Music can go in but it can't come out. Is there something cheap he can purchase that will export and convert the recordings without going through an analog capture?

Movies are currently in the work for all but one of the original members of the Justice League of America. The one exception is J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter From Mars. Why is he being discriminated against? I dunno…but when a reporter for E! Online called me this morning, I gave the best answers I could. Here's the report she filed.

The power wound up going out here two more times last night after I posted the previous message. I think the crisis is over but I haven't yet been bold enough to go around and reset clocks and VCR timers.

Several folks have written to inform me that their local Walmart (or other retail outlet) has "the Li'l Abner DVD" for sale, perhaps for a dollar or so. This is almost certainly a DVD of the 1940 Li'l Abner black-and-white non-musical movie, not the 1959 color movie musical. I was never able to make it through the '40 version but for a buck, you might want to take a crack at it.

In his latest round of Tony Polls, my pal Tony Isabella asked his constituents to rate various comic books and people as "naughty" or "nice." I was judged overwhelmingly nice, which I guess is a compliment. In any case, fond birthday wishes to Mr. Isabella, and since I'm so nice, I guess I can't add in some quasi-friendly cheapshot insult. Drat the luck.

Busy day ahead. I'll try to post something later. That's assuming I have electricity.

I'm not posting any more than this one message this evening. Reason: My power keeps going on and off. I just had the sixth incident in the last five hours where the electricity goes out for about two minutes, then comes back on.

After the fourth, I called the Department of Water and Power. A nice lady there explained that they're "trying to locate a problem."

I said, "I've got one right here. My power keeps going on and off."

"No," she said. "We know what's causing that. The crews are turning the power on and off in your area, trying to locate the problem."

"Has it dawned on any of them that they're creating some problems with this? My TiVo has now been recycled more often than Jackie Mason's act."

"We need to fix the problem, sir. There should only be one more outage…two at most."

Right after I got off the line with her, we had Blackout #5 and about twenty minutes later, we had another…so I guess that's it. I'm taking her at her word that there will be no more tonight becaus

…for shopping and gift-wrapping and people outside stores who ring bells at you and inedible fruit cakes and wondering what you're going to get your stupid Uncle Hiram and getting cards from people you don't remember and all sorts of things…

But most of all, 'tis the season to click on this link and go over to the Official Pogo Possum Website to read some of the brilliant Christmas strips done in years past by the great Walt Kelly. Ain't been nobody better, then or since. And while you're over there, you might wanna brush up on the lyrics to "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie," just in case a band of merry Boston Charlie carollers happens past your house and invites you to join them. These are the real lyrics we've posted there. Accept no substitutes.

As the world's foremost authority on the 1959 Li'l Abner movie (and author of this article about the Broadway show it was based on, as well as this one about the movie, itself), I am often asked, "What's the deal with the video?" Many moons ago, Paramount Home Video brought it out on VHS and then it suddenly disappeared, going out of print and remaining that way. No DVD release seems to be in the immediate offing, either. And as the world's foremost authority on this motion picture, I can only answer, "I dunno. I guess there was some sort of problem with the rights. This is not an uncommon situation with movies based on material from another other medium, especially when songs are involved. Quite a few movies based on Broadway shows have been slow in making it to home video because the contract for the source material either didn't allow such sale or seemed ambiguous.

Or in at least one case I know of, the songwriters' royalty specified in the contract a certain percentage of the gross of a soundtrack album and the home video company's lawyers feared that would apply to a videotape. Sometimes, it isn't a matter of not being able to release the thing on home video…it's a matter of not wanting to share.

But like the man (me) said, I'm not sure what happened here…only that Paramount got rid of the VHS release in a hurry. If you want to purchase a copy of the tape, your best bet is eBay, though you have to be careful not to accidentally purchase the 1940 Li'l Abner movie which I, for one, have never managed to make it through, Buster Keaton or no Buster Keaton. The collectibles wing of Amazon has copies of our beloved '59 version, currently ranging from $35 to $126, but these pricetags seem high to me, given that Paramount will probably clear up the problems one of these days and issue a nice, spanking DVD, maybe even with extras and/or a better transfer. Just about every major movie musical is either available on DVD now or someone is trying to clear up rights or negotiate terms to bring it out. (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which is also from Paramount, is finally coming out at the end of February.) Does anyone reading this have any additional information?

Michael Kinsley explains why Social Security privatization cannot possibly work. [Los Angeles Times, might expect you to register]

Time Magazine has named George W. Bush its "Man of the Year." This is not necessarily an honor. The stated criteria is that it denotes the person who, in the view of the magazine's editors, "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year." Past recipients include a lot of great men who made the world better but on the list, you will also find the names of Hitler, Stalin, Krushchev, Ayatollah Khomeini and many more.

At the moment, Drudge and many Conservative sites have up a picture of Bush flanked by Roosevelt and Churchill, as if to suggest he has been voted as in their league. That's kinda dishonest. For that matter, these are all sites that never thought the opinion of Time Magazine was worth a tin nickel.

But never mind that. I am a little puzzled by this paragraph in the Time announcement…

Interview with Former President and First Lady: "Michael Moore's got to be the worst for me," former President George H.W. Bush tells Time's Hugh Sidey when asked about the low point of this last term. "I mean, he's such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter's box (at the Democratic Convention) again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy Carter at the Clinton thing (the opening of Bill Clinton's library), 'How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours, Michael Moore?' and I didn't dare do it."

Did the former president actually say this? The low point of the last four years was that someone put out a movie criticizing his son? That was a lower point than the 9/11 attacks where so many people died and so many more were affected for the worse? That was a lower point than his son having to send American soldiers to die in a war? Gosh. I'd like to think that quote is way outta context.

This is the kind of thing only I would notice. In fact, it covers two of my many aberrant fields of interest. One is the way in which the influence of comic books has crept into mass culture. The other is the art of comic book lettering, a craft which has had many distinguished practitioners. My favorite may be the late Ben Oda who, for decades, held the world's record for the most pages of comic books lettered and probably also the trophy for lettering the most newspaper strips. (I believe John Costanza has since passed him in the comic book division.) Oda was the letterer for Simon and Kirby for many years and also for Harvey Kurtzman on the books he did for EC and for the early issues of Creepy and Eerie and for thousands of comics for Western Publishing and DC and for…

Well, you get the idea. The two pages above are pages from the very first issue of MAD, which was published in 1952. For the story titles in most of the stories that ran in the early, Kurtzman-edited comic book version of MAD, Oda used a distinctive style that he'd developed. He'd used it before in Kurtzman's war comics for EC, Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, and Harvey apparently liked it. For MAD, Oda made it a little looser but it was the same basic style, and he also did a slight variation on it for the cover logo. He later employed it on many other comic art projects he lettered over the years…and I'm not going to suggest he invented it. Odds are that he adapted it from something he's seen on a poster or in a calligraphy book or somewhere. But it became an integral part of his lettering repertoire and when I see it anywhere, I associate it with Ben, especially on the early MAD.

Above, we have a poster for a forthcoming movie called Racing Stripes, which I gather is about a zebra that runs horse races. I saw the poster go by on a bus yesterday and I instantly thought, "Ben Oda!" But I'm guessing it didn't come directly from someone who'd seen his work. Before I tell you where I think they got it from, here's a closer look at some of the lettering on one of the posters for this movie…

As you can see, the "A" and the "S" are a little different, but these are both variants that Ben sometimes used. It's represented both ways in a font set that has been designed and marketed by Richard Starkings over at Comicraft. Richard is the undisputed king of lettering comic books via computer and many of the styles he employs (and sometimes sells) are inspired by great hand lettering of the past. His "That's All, Folks" font conveys the essence of this particular style that Oda used so well. Here's a sample of the Comicraft version…

It's really a great font, and I'm guessing that it was used by whoever designed the key art for Racing Stripes…though I wish they'd chosen the "I" that doesn't have serifs on it instead of the one that's only supposed to only be used when the "I" stands alone and not as part of a word. At least, they got it right in Joe Pantoliano's name.

That's really all I have to say about this and I apologize if you read this far, thinking there was more to it than there is. I just thought it was neat that the penwork of Ben Oda inspired a computer font and is now, in turn, part of the ad campaign for a major motion picture. It's impressive enough when a comic book story becomes a movie…but for its lettering to make it to Hollywood is quite an achievement.

Speaking of the First Amendment, as I think I just was, The Sundance Channel has a nice film festival going on lately. It's called "The First Amendment Project" and it's a series of films about the lead-off clause in the Bill of Rights. At the moment, I'm watching and enjoying No Joking, a too-short-but-sweet documentary by Bob Balaban (right…the guy who used to make his living playing Warren Littlefield) about Lenny Bruce and The Smothers Brothers and other comedians who got in trouble for saying things. Among those who bat around the topic are Eric Bogosian, Richard Dreyfuss, Ed Begley Jr…and Jules Feiffer, whose name is unfortunately misspelled when they superimpose it. (My TiVo listing also says Mort Sahl and Janeane Garofolo are supposed to be in it but I didn't see them.) Still, it's a nice little look at the topic and it airs again later today and tomorrow. Well worth a tune-in, especially if you're one of the ninety people in America who get The Sundance Channel.