From Mark Potash…

Thanks for the tip on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I finally saw it at the Music Box Theater in Chicago last weekend and it was well worth the wait to see it on the big screen. What a great movie to watch with a crowd! I do think it would have tickled me more if I had seen it when I was 11 — I imagine many movies are like that — but still great entertainment.

The Music Box showed what I think is the entire 1963 version of the film, with the overture and the intermission audio, but not the credits. There were credits after that movie, right? With a cast like that, that would be one of the highlights of the film. I couldn't find any film of the credits — though I did find out that Barrie Chase, the last surviving cast member (right?) was born the same day as my mother. (And my dad graduated from the same high school as Mel Tormé).

Thanks again for your passion for that movie that inspired me to see it. It's one of those films I'll have to see again to process the whole movie. I hope I get the chance.

I dunno what the demand for it is like in your neck o' the woods but at least once a year, some theater in Los Angeles runs it and they always get a good crowd. I tell people that even though the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray versions are superb and wonderful for repeat viewings, this film is best experienced for the first time on a big screen with a big crowd. My lady friend Amber has never seen it even though we've been going together for years and she's heard me discuss it, ad infinitum. She's just never been available when it's been screened locally in the ideal presentation.

What you saw in Chicago though could not have been the entire 1963 version of the film just the way it opened. That does not exist. A few weeks after it debuted on November 7, 1963 — and after I first saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on November 23, 1963 — a large chunk was cut out and while pieces of that chunk have been found, not all of them have.

One good indicator is a now-missing scene in the second half of the film in which Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton have a phone conversation. I saw it on 11/23/63 but it was among many that were cut. The version that existed after that is usually referred to as "The General Release Print." The Criterion set contains a beautiful copy of The General Release Print and another, longer copy of the film that restores as much of the original footage as possible even if it means that some of it is a bit fuzzy and some of it is missing audio or video.

The Tracy/Keaton phone conversation is on this version of the film with audio over still photos and on the commentary track, you can hear me explaining all this. (Last I heard, the only known copy of this footage is in such terrible condition that the best restorers-of-film in the world couldn't make it look good enough to include it on the Criterion edition.)

Yes, sadly…Barrie Chase is the only cast member still with us. She occasionally turns up at screenings to tell of her experiences on the film. Well, actually, she was turning up at such events for years but when Mickey Rooney was alive, he was usually present too and he never let anyone else say much.

Glad you enjoyed it. Part of the fun for me of seeing it for the quadrillionth time is hearing the laughter of folks who are present and experiencing it for their first…and you can tell the difference. There's a scene — in fact, it's right after where the Tracy/Keaton scene was — where Phil Silvers is hitchhiking. A car appears in the distance and when it stops for him, we see who's at the wheel. Audience members who've seen the film before laugh when they first see the car appear because they know it's going to turn out to be Don Knotts. First-time viewers don't laugh until they actually see it's Don Knotts.

Last time I saw it at the Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood — a theater built to show this movie, a theater we keep hearing will reopen some day — I took a lady who was thirty-five years old and had never seen the film. When it was over, my pal Mike Schlesinger (sadly, the late Mike Schlesinger) asked her who she recognized from the cast. She said, "The Three Stooges, the rich guy from Gilligan's Island and Barney Fife." But she was also eager to see more of Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, etc. That's one of the things that movie is great for — an introduction to great comedians of another era.

On July 27, while a lot of us were down in San Diego Comic-Conning, there was a celebration at the Shubert Theater in New York.  What they were celebrating was the fiftieth anniversary of A Chorus Line with an amazing number of cast members from the original production.  The one-night-only event featured speeches and scenes and no, I don't know if it was captured professionally on video for some TV special or something but someone in the balcony captured forty minutes of it.  They put it up on YouTube but not in a way that allows me to embed it here.  So go over there and watch a little of it…especially the finale.

Here's the question from from J. Williamson. He (or, I guess, she) is referencing this post here…

I read your piece about uncredited artists doing assistant work on comic books and I know you draw a little so I thought I'd ask did you ever do uncredited art on any comic book?

Yeah. I drew a few things for the Hanna-Barbera comic book department when that operation was in operation. And any time for any outfit when I wrote a comic book and the original art passed through my hands on its merry way to the editor or printer, I might do some corrections. Usually, they were lettering corrections but occasionally, an art fix was necessary. A couple of times, I was fortunate that someone who drew way better than I ever did was visiting me and I'd arm-twist them into doing it. I recall arm-twisting, at various times, Sergio Aragonés, Dave Stevens, Carol Lay, Scott Shaw! and maybe one or two others — to do small repairs but often, I did them.

When I was the writer of the Blackhawk comic book for DC, even before they made me editor, I did a few things like that. There were a few back-up stories (i.e., not drawn by Dan Spiegle) where I did some of the inking.  There was a short story that Alex Toth penciled and in one place, Alex drew the wrong character and I was afraid to ask him to correct it so I did. There were other examples.

There was a period there where the great artist Alfredo Alcala was living close enough to me that we shared the same Federal Express delivery guys. We were both getting a lot of FedEx packages from DC or Marvel and the drivers, if they saw the DC logo or a drawing of Spider-Man on the mailing label would sometimes just drop the package off on my doorstep even if it was addressed to Alfredo. One time, I got up in the morning, opened one such package before I read the label and found 20 pages of Conan the Barbarian artwork penciled by John Buscema.

This is the original art I'm talking about here, not stats or Xeroxes.  Genuine, fresh, pristine John Buscema pencil art.

I briefly considered just keeping the pages. If you've ever seen what that man put on paper before anyone applied ink, you'd understand why. But I guess all those years of reading comic books about honorable super-heroes doing the right thing ruined me and I instead drove the pages over to Alfredo's apartment. Alfredo didn't drive but if he had, he would have figured out a way to ink an entire comic book while driving to the supermarket.

Another time, I got an entire issue from DC of Batman pencil art by Gene Colan, whose work was, prior to inking, equally stunning. I drove it over to Alfredo's and this time — I think because he was lonely, not because he needed actual help — he told me to pull up a drawing board and ink some backgrounds on the story. So I did…and no, I can't identify which issue.

Alfredo's apartment was dominated by a huge drawing table that two or three people could have worked on. It was scattered with various pages from various projects he was working on and he might ink a few panels on a page of Conan, then leave the ink to dry while he penciled part of a mystery story on a commission drawing he was doing for one of his many fans.

He had four or five TV sets in front of him, all on, each connected to a VCR that was running one of his favorite movies. When he had company, the sound was muted on all of them. When he was alone, which he was most of the time, he would turn on the audio of whichever caught his interest at that moment. When any of the videos reached its end, it was rewound and restarted at the beginning until he got bored with it and switched cassettes.

He didn't do this while I was there but Tom Luth, who occasionally assisted Alfredo, told me he saw Alfredo just doze off in mid-inking, sleeping with a wet brush looming over the page. An hour or two later, Alfredo would wake up and resume what he was drawing or inking. What's more, Tom said, Alfredo was totally unaware that he'd done more than close his eyes for a minute or so.

The day I brought those Batman pages to him, I did about an hour of inking buildings and trees, sitting at a smaller drawing table he had chatting with the man as we both worked.  Alfredo had opinions about everything and a lot of valid (I thought) gripes about how American comic book companies had made use of his services. It was fascinating but eventually, the oppressive odor of his constant cigarettes drove me from the premises.

Come to think of it, I probably have quite a few anecdotes like these. If anyone's really interested, I'll try and excavate them from my memory but this post has gone on long enough.

This is the last one of these posts featuring photos from Comic-Con International 2025 — which I'll say one more time might have been my favorite of all the Comic-Cons I've attended in San Diego the last few decades. There was something magical about the first ones because (a) everything was new to me, (b) they were small enough that you could meet everyone and attend everything and (c) present were so many people who'd created the comic books of my childhood and I had the opportunity to meet all of them. None of these reasons apply now but I've found new joys in hosting and/or appearing on panels.

This was one that I appeared on but did not host. It was called The Many Hands of Bill Finger and the folks on it were, left to right above, Alex Grand (moderator), Athena Finger, Bill Field, Lenny Schwartz and me.  We all spoke at length about Athena's grandfather, the late Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman and a lot of other things that don't get mentioned as often.  We talked a lot about those other things and I could tell you what was said or I could direct you to an audio recording of the panel online.  I think I'll direct you to an audio recording of the panel online.

I don't know why I look so glum in many of these photos.  I was having a great time every minute of that convention with the exceptions of one bad meal and one way-longer-than-I-expected walk.  This was the Friday afternoon Pogo Panel and I love doing a Pogo Panel, interacting with the kind of smart panelists and attendees who love Walt Kelly's great newspaper strip.  Above, I'm seen with five of the former.  My way-longer-than-I-expected friend Paul Dini is next to me and in the back, we have the cartoonist Liniers, Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, Fantagraphics co-publisher Eric Reynolds and the immortal and wonderful Maggie Thompson.

We talked about Pogo and why it and darn near everything Mr. Kelly did was so funny and fascinating.  Jane put together a great slide show of treasures from the Walt Kelly archives we're still compiling and sorting through.  Oh — and let me tell you something else about Jane…

I introduce her sometimes as "my assistant" and that's true, though it may trivialize how much she has helped me.  It started when my lovely friend Carolyn Kelly (daughter of W.K.) was dying and I couldn't handle all I had to do.  It persists to this day when I need to be driven to doctor appointments or have someone utterly trustworthy to send on some urgent mission.  I have a very good support team in my life and if you ever break your ankle (as I did) or have any other need for assistance, I hope you can find an assistant who assists as well as Jane assists.

I did three other panels at the Comic-Con that aren't depicted in this series of posts.  On Thursday afternoon, I appeared on a panel for Abrams ComicArts, the fine company releasing this new book I wrote about Charles M. Schulz and that comic strip he created seventy-five years ago.  The panel was about all the amazing books AbramsComicArts is releasing soon and they graciously allowed me to go first, talk about my book and then scurry off to appear on another panel that had been programmed against it.

The other panel was about Jack Kirby's Fourth World, and as (I believe) the lone surviving witness to its creation, I feel great responsibility to share what I know and what I saw.  It is a body of work that many loved at the time and which sold better than a lot of people think…and with the passage of time, it seems to be more loved and more profitable for its publishers.  You have no idea how much this pleases me.

And there's one other panel I hosted but I have no photos for it.  A very large room filled up so quickly that my photo-obsessed friend Bruce Guthrie couldn't get a seat for it.  It was me spending a delightful hour interrogating, interviewing and occasionally cross-examining one of the most important creative talents among my generation of comic book creators, Frank Miller.  I'd like to think Frank enjoyed it too.  We talked about his takeover of the Daredevil comic and his makeover of Batman after that.  But I also made sure to leave time — the hour went by very fast — to discuss upcoming projects which are now being announced across the web.  I hope someone recorded it somewhere.

And that brings this review of my 2025 Comic-Con to a close, at least until I think of some other moment I want to write about.  I hope you were there, in spirit if not in person, because it was one of those cons that I left thinking, "I wanna go back and do more of it."  I see that later this month, the San Diego Convention Center is hosting a meeting of the National Association of Chain Drug Stories.  I'm thinking of showing up there and seeing if they'll let me host some panels about "Flosspick Design," selecting the proper shade of hair dye when you don't have any hair, "Engineering Child-Proof Prescription Bottles So Anyone Under the Age of 13 Can Open Them But Older Than That, You Have To Use Your Teeth If You Have Any" and, of course, Jack Kirby.

I wrote here about the new super-charged, artificially-intelligenced version of The Wizard of Oz debuting soon in Las Vegas.  Jim Van Hise wrote to tell me something I hadn't heard; that among the "improvements" they've made to the movie is to cut thirty minutes out of it.

Great idea!  Because when I shell out hundreds of bucks to see a classic movie that millions have loved in its original form, the last thing I want is to have to sit through the entire thing.  I certainly wouldn't want them to not be able to sell tickets to one more screening of the film each day.

This is really emblematic of so many things in Vegas and elsewhere these days.  It's the idea that if we make something seem important, you won't care how much you spend to experience it.

I received an awful lot of answers to the question I posed about the membership of the Legion of Super-Heroes at various times and what that might tell us about the origin date of that DC Comics form letter I shared with you. So I now have a mailbox full of messages telling me, for the most part, all the same things.

It comes down to the inclusion of Ferro Lad in the then-current Legion roster. He joined in Adventure Comics #346, published in May of 1966 and died in Adventure Comics #353, published in December of 1966. But of course, those comics had about a four-month lead time in going to the printer and anyone working on the comic in the DC offices would have known months before that of what was going to happen in the continuity.

So I'm going to say that the mailer was probably printed around January of 1966…which tracks well with the mention that a Superman cartoon show would be debuting later that year. That's about the time the network would have firmed-up its Fall schedule and production on the show commenced.

My pal Tom Galloway noted a mistake in the mailer: "It lists only five types of Kryptonite, and doesn't include Jewel Kryptonite, which was introduced in Action #310, cover dated March 1964." And I think whoever wrote the little note to me was wrong when he or she — and I'm pretty sure it was a "he," Nelson Bridwell — wrote that the inking on their comics was usually done before the lettering. I think he meant to write that the other way around.

Meanwhile, Steve Thompson wrote to inform me that he had a different version of that mailer and he featured it on his blog. This one was done after the one I posted but not too long…but I'm not going to get into how long. Thanks to all who sent in info!

Knowing of my love of a cappella singing groups — but perhaps not knowing how much I like this song — my pal Douglass Abramson sent me the link to this entry in the 2025 Quartet Quarterfinals of a competition run by the Barbershop Harmony Society. I think this group is named Primer and otherwise, I don't know a blamed thing about them except that they more than do this song justice…

I'm reading 'n' hearing a lot about the A.I.-assisted retooling of The Wizard of Oz into a cinematic thrill ride that will play at The Sphere in Las Vegas…and maybe nowhere else. I have no idea how I feel about it and probably won't until I go see the film which I have no intention of doing. Part of that is, as I've been writing here, Las Vegas has become a very overpriced place to be. This is not just my opinion. Tourists are staying away in droves, grosses are falling everywhere and the crash is so real that it's been given a name. Everyone's referring to it as "The Gouge."

Would you plan a vacation in a city experiencing what everyone is calling "The Gouge?"

So I have no interest in going to Las Vegas. The city was my second home for a few decades to the point where I seriously considered buying a condo there and living half the time there, half the time in Los Angeles. The hotels there are dropping prices and offering discounts but not enough and not with a lot of sincerity.

Will the shunning of the city affect this new, expensive refry of the classic movie? I dunno but all the stories about the new version seem to be omitting one very important face about it: The price. Ticket prices for a Saturday matinee start at $138 a seat and go up to $349. If you need to pay for parking or you want refreshments, you'll find similar pricing…and that's just part of what's wrong with Vegas these days.

I came across this in my files a few years ago and thought, "I oughta scan this and post the scans on my blog so everyone can see them."  I've finally gotten around to doing this.

At some point in the sixties — we'll discuss what point in a moment — if you sent a letter to the DC Comics featuring Superman, you sometimes got back a "thank you" postcard and you sometimes got back one of these green pieces of paper filled with answers to the most-asked questions they received.  I'm about 98% certain that the page was written by Nelson Bridwell, who was the overworked, underpaid and often mistreated assistant to Mort Weisinger, editor of those particular DC Comics.

I'm going to guess DC sent out a ton of these.  Someone else must have one or more of them…but the ones I received are the only ones I've ever seen anywhere.  I got about two dozen of them in response to letters I sent in and I recall sometimes receiving two or three of them the same day…but I only seem to have this one copy in my files.  Most of them came folded-in-thirds with a little round sticker keeping them closed and with the mailing address scrawled or typed on the outside.

This one though doesn't have my name and address on it.  The others I received did but this one came in an envelope with a stamp on it.  Why?  My theory then was that it couldn't go third class mail since someone at the DC office wrote in the answers to some questions I had.  And I'm pretty sure that's the handwriting of Nelson Bridwell.

So when was this printed and when did they stop sending these out?  I'm guessing it was written in early-to-mid 1966.  There's a plug in there for a forthcoming new Superman cartoon show debuting in the Fall of 1966.  They couldn't have known that much earlier than then.  (Before you ask about the Aurora model kits of Superman and Superboy mentioned in the mailer: The Superman model came out in 1963 and the Superboy model came out in 1965.  And Zip Codes — which appear in the mailer but not everywhere — started in '63.)

Someone who knows more about the Legion of Super-Heroes than I do could probably figure out exactly when that team's membership roster matched the one listed in the mailer.  How about it, Mark Waid?

The scribbled note talks about DC changing the size of their original artwork and they did that around the middle of 1967.  So that may give us a hint as to when this particular one was sent.  DC went through so many changes beginning around then that this mailer would have been pretty obsolete soon after that.  (And notice what I asked.  Even in '67 when I was 15 years old, I was more interested in how the comics were done than I was in the characters or their adventures.)

Okay, so here's your chance to download scans of both sides of what came to me as one 8-1/2" by 11" page — and lemme warn you: I made these scans pretty large since the typeface on them was so tiny.  Don't even try it if you're going to attempt to read it on your phone.  You'll need a big monitor and you'll probably have to zoom in on the text.  You can download the front of the page here and the back of the page here.  And don't say I never gave you anything.

Here's the latest episode of The Barbara Gaines Show with her Special Usual Guest Star David Letterman…

Up for sale in Wyoming is a 916,076-acre ranch and grazing empire. The entire spread is four times the size of New York City and it all can be yours for a measly $79.5 million dollars — but I have a hunch they'd take $79.4 mil.

Step into the Wabac Machines, Sherman, and set the dial for just two weeks ago…Sunday, July 27, 2025. It's the final day of the 54th Comic-Con in Summer in San Diego, California and I'm hosting my 64th Cartoon Voices panel.  Let's see who was on it…

That's Abby Trott — lovely lady, great talent.  You heard her in Demon Slayer, Barbie Mysteries, X-Men '97. a whole lotta video games and many more…

That's Vincent Martella.  He's Phineas Flynn in Phineas and Ferb and he was Jason Todd in Batman: Under the Red Hood and Death in the Family, and like everyone else on this panel, he has way more credits than I am capable of listing here. 

Meet Gabe Kunda, a busy voice actor from Dallas and he can also be heard singing bass for the Grammy-nominated a cappella group Kings Return…and if you read this blog, you know how much I love a cappella singing groups.

I wrote about Kaitlyn Robrock a few posts ago here.  She's one of those people who worked hard to break into the field and once she did, everyone wanted to cast her in whatever they were doing.  On the panel when the actors read a hoary fairy tale script, I cast her as the Evil Witch and Michael Scott Action (below) as the Handsome Prince and somehow — don't ask me how — he wound up beatboxing with his mouth and Kait was suddenly rapping to it in perfect rhyme and rhythm.  It was not planned but it was hilarious.

And that's David Errigo Jr., who showed up for the panel thinking he was just going to sit in the audience and watch his friends…but he's now Ferb on Phineas and Ferb among his many roles and I got to thinking, "We have Phineas up here…we might as well have Ferb, especially since I had this extra nameplate made up with David's name so…"

Maurice LaMarche has been on ten of my Cartoon Voice panels and I'd have him on every one if I could.  He certainly has enough different voices.  I first saw this guy as a stand-up comic/impressionist on TV and was real impressed at his ability to "do" people no one else did or two put his own spin on the celebs that others did.  I am thoroughly unsurprised he became a top cartoon voice person.

And this gent calls himself Michael Scott Action.  He used to be Michael Scott but there were a lot of other Michael Scotts around, some even in the actors' union.  An actor named Joe Lane had to rename himself Nathan Lane for the same reason.  Michael slapped an "Action" onto his name so his name would be as unique as his talents.  This was his first Cartoon Voices panel but far from his last.

I think I have one more page of convention pics to post. I'll try to have it up here tomorrow.

People magazine offers you a little preview of my forthcoming (first week in October) book celebrating the 75th anniversary of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and all the kids 'n' creatures who made up the comic strip Peanuts.  If you're a steady reader of this blog, you're going to get real sick of reading about this book here.

Greg Gutfeld on Fox News is being called The King of Late Night by those who note that his Nielsen Ratings are higher than Stephen Colbert's — and that's true but it's not the whole story. As Sophia A. McClennen — a Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at the Pennsylvania State University — writes, there are other metrics and other aspects of this to consider. I would think a big one is that Colbert is way more popular on social media and among people who know what a joke is.

In The New Yorker, Jon Allsop suggests an interesting way to look at one of the aspects of this Trump presidency. Basically — and these are my words, not his — Trump won the election by convincing enough voters that the American economy was much, much worse than it was. And now, his task is to convince them it's much, much better than it is.