I enjoyed watching Frazetta: Painting With Fire, a documentary on the great illustrator, Frank Frazetta, which is now turning up on the Indepedent Film Channel. (Next airings: September 7) The 105-minute film features interviews with a couple dozen artists and Frazetta friends and families, including Neal Adams, Dave Stevens, John Buscema, Bill Stout, Al Williamson and Ralph Bakshi. They all talk at length about how great Frazetta is. There are a lot of chats with Frazetta himself. He talks at length about how great Frazetta is. I've always been a bit dubious at the suggestion that painting barbarians, even as well as Frazetta has, represents some high water mark of 20th century art…but once the film gets past that, it's an engrossing, sometimes touching portrait of an amazing artist. Of particular interest is the segment on Frazetta's struggle to keep creating art after a series of strokes robbed him of motor control in his right hand. He switched to his left and went on being Frazetta…and he's still better at it than all the others who've tried being Frazetta.

Last Friday evening, police in Toronto swooped down on a comic book convention, closed down one booth and arrested its operators…and not, like you might imagine, for selling Groo. Here are the details.

Comic book Superheroes can survive all sorts of attempts on their lives when in magazines and graphic novels but they often don't fare so well when someone tries to adapt them into animation. One notable exception — maybe the best attempt ever in television — has been the several (six, I think) shows from Warner Animation featuring Batman. Many folks deserve a hunk of the credit for this excellent conversion but high on the list would be my pal, writer-producer Paul Dini. Tonight, a new episode of Justice League Unlimited airs on Cartoon Network. The script by Paul spotlights the Caped Crusader and his relationship with the lovely Zatanna. More importantly, it represents Paul's last work on that incarnation of Batman, at least for now. After twelve years of fine work, I thought this was worth noting.

It won't do you a bit of good to know this since there are zero tickets left for the last few performances this weekend…but I had a wonderful time last night visiting Brigadoon. This is the Reprise! revival up at the Freud Playhouse up at U.C.L.A., which like all Reprise! revivals, re-creates some great musical with minimal sets and rehearsal but maximum talent. The show in this case is the 1947 Broadway offering by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe all about a mysterious city in Scotland that pops into existence every hundred years. A glorious cast (including Jason Danieley, Marin Mazzie, Larry Cedar, Deborah Gibson and Orson Bean) more than did justice to the wonderful Lerner-Loewe score. Danieley and Mazzie stopped the show with "Almost Like Being in Love" and it was one of those thrilling moments when the audience is clapping its fool head off, thanking the actors for an unexpected tingle. If this production ran a few more weeks, I'd probably go back to see it again, if only for that one number.

'Twas especially nice to see Orson Bean trodding the boards again. He played Ben Franklin a year or three ago in the Reprise! version of 1776 but this time, he actually looked like Orson Bean. If you get past the silly stage name, Orson Bean is one of the great treasures of show business — an extremely witty man who's had a long, successful career. It would have been even more successful if not for the Blacklist but he overcame that by merely surviving and continuing to do fine work. (It just this moment dawned on me that maybe there was a subtle joke to them casting him as Franklin. That role in 1776 was originated by Howard da Silva, one of the more notoriously blacklisted actors. Funny I never made that connection until just now.)

Everyone else in the show was good, too. Wish you could see it. Heck, I wish I could see it again.

A fine comic artist named Stuart Immonen offers 50 Reasons To Stop Sketching At Conventions.

Speaking of spending money on DVDs of cartoons from the Warner vault — as I did, just the other day here — I neglected to mention the second volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, which comes out at the beginning of November. Not much hard sell needed here: More than 60 well-chosen, well-restored vintage WB cartoons, accompanied by appropriate commentary and documentary material. It doesn't get much better than that. Click right here to pre-order a copy from Amazon.

I would hate to think John Kerry would lose the election but I'd really hate to think he'd lose the election because of the "Swift Boat Veterans" campaign. Just as I hated the thought that Michael Dukakis lost because a lot of Americans believed he would give prison furloughs to convicted murderers or that Al Gore lost because folks thought he was a liar who claimed to have invented the Internet. I'd have a lot less problem with George W. Bush winning if it seemed like voters knew exactly what each man was all about and preferred him.

This is not to say I think Kerry is going to lose. I think it's going to be up and down for a month or two, in the press if not the polls, and we seem to be entering a "down" time for the Democrats. This will change when the campaign gets back to issues of the economy and Iraq. (It will have to. There's too much airtime to fill before Election Day.)

The thing that bothers me most about the Swift Boat Veterans campaign is the blurring of the line on two separate matters. There is the question of whether Kerry deserved those medals…and it seems to me the evidence is pretty overwhelming that he did. Then there's the question of whether his activities after he left the service honored or dishonored the war effort. I think he was pretty heroic and more accurate than will ever be admitted by some who've never come to terms with how the Vietnam war turned out, and who was to blame for that. But certainly, I can understand that there's another, deeply-held opinion on that point.

On the first question, the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" have a handful of witnesses with no physical evidence and very dubious accounts. On the second question, they have a few hundred folks who say they "served with John Kerry" (many, only in the sense that they were in the same war at roughly the same time) and they're only really relevant to the second question. I wonder how many Americans — because the campaign seems calculated to induce this impression — think the few hundred had personal experiences with Kerry in combat and therefore can attest that he was a craven, lying leader who didn't deserve those medals. It would be interesting to see a poll on that number…because if the Swift Boat Vets are doing any real damage to Kerry, I think it's predicated on that bit of misdirection.

This evening around 8:00 Eastern time, C-Span will be running John Kerry's 1971 testimony before Congress with regard to the Vietnam War. I recall watching this when it first aired, which was at a time when I was making a difficult transition. I had been a supporter of that war, or at least a person who felt the protesters were misguided and not helping things. By '72, I was one of those protesters, even working with the leadership of a group that was more or less behind all the marches and demonstrations within a few miles of U.C.L.A. I don't recall Kerry's speeches or his appearance before the committee having any impact on my conversion but when I saw excerpts of it a few weeks ago on some channel (probably C-Span), what struck me was his restraint and maturity. Since it is now divorced from all the other Vietnam rhetoric of 1972, it may seem exaggerated and excessive. My sense is that on the topic of that war, darn near everything said on either side in 1972 was drenched in hyperbole and overstatement, and that Kerry was calmer than most. I also suspect that he was more accurate than will ever be admitted by those who are still angry at how Vietnam ended and somehow want to blame it more on Jane Fonda than Robert McNamara.

I think some people have forgotten — or are in denial — as to how much government wrongdoing has been uncovered and even admitted. McNamara started his book, In Retrospect, by saying, "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." It was a stunning confession when he made it, as were many in that volume, but almost no one wanted to hear McNamara cleanse his conscience and "explain why." Everyone on both sides had long since made up their minds about the history of that unfortunate war and there was no room in anyone's version for new evidence. I wish more folks would follow the example of Kerry and John McCain when they worked together to try and put Vietnam behind them. In fact, I wish they'd do more to follow their own example.

In a way, I'm sorry C-Span is running Kerry's testimony now since it won't be viewed as an important part of history, nor will it be judged against things like McNamara's confessions of ineptness and deceit. It's just there so the anti-Kerry voters can use it to promote the notion that it was treasonous to say what he said, and so Kerry's backers can see what it is they have to defend. I believe Kerry's testimony is completely defensible and depending on your definition, maybe even heroic. But in the current environment, it will just be a question of whether sound bites are being taken out of context or whether what actually occurred is being accurately summarized. So far this year, the past has just been something that can be judiciously excerpted and spun, one way or another, to maybe win an election.

December 7 may turn out to be a date that shall live in infamy for animation buffs trying to not spend money on DVDs from the Warner TV animation library. That's when they plan to release boxed sets of the complete run of Top Cat, the second season of The Flintstones, Volume 1 of Superman: The Animated Series, Volume 2 of Batman: The Animated Series and a one-disc release of the movie, A Man Called Flintstone. How much will all these run you? Well, let's do some math. If you pay the manufacturers' suggested retail price for Top Cat, The Flintstones and Batman (which you won't), you'll spend $44.98 apiece. The Superman set is $26.99 and the Flintstones movie is $19.99. So right there, you have $221.90 if you pay sticker price which, like we said, you're not going to do. Not unless you're a dum-dum. Based on usual discountings, I'd say these six releases will run around $130…and there's a special rebate coupon where you can get five to ten bucks back if purchasing multiple volumes.

Should these sets sound expensive, let's note that the Time-Warner video folks have lowered their price structure. The Jetsons collection released a few months ago contained 24 episodes and a few extras for a list price of $64.98. The Top Cat set has 30 episodes and more special features for twenty bucks less.

Now, the bad news: You may remember appeals on this website to locate prints of the original Top Cat end titles. A number of you responded and the people assembling the DVD located and received a few nuggets of the lost footage. For reasons I'm not sure I can explain, this material will not appear on the set. It has something to do with lawyers and legal problems and I'm just as annoyed about it as you are. But there will be some other wonderful bonus goodies, including interviews with all the surviving members of the voice cast and a look at a storyboard drawn by the late, great Harvey Eisenberg.

Lastly, I should note that the second volume of Garfield and Friends is also scheduled for a 12/7/04 release. This will give DVD patrons an ample chance to get sick of yours truly. A Superman episode that I wrote is on the Superman set, I'm heard on the commentary track of the Top Cat set, and I wrote or co-wrote everything on the Garfield collection. Last few times I've been with Leonard Maltin, I've razzed him about how he is now on more DVDs than Jimmy Stewart. If this keeps up, he'll be able to use my own line on me.

As we mentioned not long ago, the Game Show Network is shuffling its Black-and-White Overnight bloc. The only dangling mystery from that report was what would replace the reruns of What's My Line? that they've now been through at least twice.

'Tis a mystery no longer. The replacement for What's My Line? will be…What's My Line? Reruns of Play Your Hunch will be in that slot for a week or two, then GSN will start running What's My Line? again, starting with the very first episode from February of 1950.

That takes care of the second half of the Black-and-White Overnight hour. In the first half, reruns of Password are currently airing weekdays with the world's worst game show, Beat the Clock, airing on weekends. On September 27, Password gets replaced by The Name's the Same, which was a not-bad show that originally aired from 1951 to 1955. It's often a good deal of fun, especially during the period Carl Reiner was on the panel, but it often suffered from very blatant "gambitting." That was the practice on some game shows of the period of setting up the panelists with questions that seemed innocent but were riotously funny if you knew the secret they were trying to guess. Like if they had to guess that the contestant's product was steer manure, the producers would not tell the panelists the answer but they'd have one of them ask, "Is this something I might have all over my living room?" It often got pretty obvious but the shows are worth watching, nonetheless. We're hoping they can dig up some from the season when it was hosted by Bob and Ray.

Dana Milbank offers a list of Kerry quotes and the way Bush seems to have distorted their meaning in response.

Mark Thorson, who is one of my band of loyal readers who instantly catches my every typo, writes to ask…

By the way, I may have failed to notice it, but a few months ago you had some articles on a possible impending Writer's Guild strike, and I don't remember that being followed up by an explanation of how that was resolved. Is it still impending or has the danger passed?

Rather amazingly — because no one in the industry would ever have imagined either side would allow this to occur — the Writers Guild is working without a contract and it has been since the old one expired May 1. Under the old "paradigm" (to use a noun that seems to be in vogue these days), we would have gone on strike soon after the expiration and/or the producers would have threatened to lock us out if we did not accept their "final offer." (I put that in quotes because…well, you know why I put that in quotes.) Neither a strike nor a lockout has happened. In fact, the WGA hasn't even taken a strike authorization vote. The leaders of the WGA decided to just go on, keeping the town and everyone working, waiting to see what would happen. The producers either haven't been able to get a lockout vote among its members — who must agree unanimously if there is to be a lockout — or they've decided to wait and force the issue at a moment that seems more advantageous to them. Smart money has it that they won't wait too long. If it gets around towards the middle of next year, that's when the current contracts expire for the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America.

It has long been presumed that the studios' worst nightmare would be for the three above-the-line guilds to link arms and make joint demands at the same time. It's always seemed easier to beat one union (usually ours) into submission and rollbacks, then go on to the next. The bloody negotiation or strike intimidates the other unions and the producers then argue that "pattern bargaining" dictates that the other unions accept the same rollbacks. So logic and custom would suggest that in the next month or three, at a point where it would no longer disrupt the Fall TV schedule, the producers will press the issue with the WGA. This would, they hope, give them a momentum of union-stomping before they have to face SAG and the DGA. On the other hand, logic and custom would have dictated that we'd never go this long without a contract. So we're all in uncharted waters here and all we can do is hope for the best, brace for the worst and expect something in-between.

Know what today is? Okay, right, Wednesday. But this particular Wednesday marks 91 years since the birthing day of Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. He wasn't much of an artist then but before long, he grew up to become one of the most honored, quoted cartoonists of all time. Those who know Pogo love Pogo and those who don't know Pogo…well, they don't know Pogo. Which is their loss. They've missed out on the best damn comic strip any newspaper ever offered its readers. But don't pity those folks…at least not today. Today, go out and hug a swamp critter, say something witty, sing a happy song and think about Walt Kelly. Even folks who never met him miss him.

Did John Kerry fib about spending Christmas Eve in Cambodia a few decades ago? Since I think all politicians utter the occasional untruth, it wouldn't be a big deal to me if he did lie, particularly about something so relatively unimportant. I certainly can't understand someone getting worked up over that but giving George W. Bush a pass on some of the whoppers he's tossed our way.

However, if it does matter to you whether or not Kerry's anecdote is absolutely accurate…well, here on the news from me page, we like to break precedent on the Internet and showcase two sides to a controversy. Even a small controversy. Here's an article that says Kerry's account doesn't hold up to scrutiny and here's an article that says it does. What I find interesting about the two pieces is not what they say about John F. Kerry but what they tell us about how two apparently bright men could research the same event and come to such different conclusions.

…but nobody does anything about them.