Here's a link to a news photo which will instill great confidence in you regarding the future of American business.

…which may be over. DC Comics has won the latest and probably final round in their legal battle with a freelance cartoonist, Marcel Walker. Walker charged that he was owed compensation for a Superman graphic novel they published in the year 2000. This article summarizes the situation as it stood before the latest decision, which was to deny Walker's appeal.

So it looks like he's lost. As an admittedly-biased layman with no more knowledge of the situation that I've read in a few articles, I have an opinion. It's that he deserved to lose, but may have lost for the wrong reason.

First, an admission of prejudice: Steve Gerber, who wrote the comic Walker charged was cribbed from his, is a good friend of mine and one of the most ethical people I know. I could believe plagiarism from some people who work in comics, but not Gerber. Secondly, from what I know of the submission and the comic that Walker thought was based on his work, the similarities seem too slight. As everyone who deals in any area of fiction is aware, there's such a thing as two people independently coming up with the same idea. I've seen it happen in cases where the premise was a lot less generic and obvious than the idea that was supposedly burgled here.

It is on that basis that DC should have won — and I must say, I'm glad they fought it. Cases of this sort are sometimes settled not on their merits but because someone decides it's easier to give in than stand on principle. Years ago, a friend of mine wrote a TV script for a series at Universal. My friend's idea was wholly original but after the show aired, a lawsuit was filed by a disgruntled (and very angry) writer who had pitched ideas to the show a season before and failed to sell anything. He charged that my friend's script was obviously derived from his premise.

The charge was high on the malarkey scale. The show had undergone a complete change of creative staff between seasons and no one who had heard the disgruntled guy's pitch had been there when my friend came up with and wrote the similar idea. Nevertheless, someone in the Universal legal department decided it would be cheaper to pay the guy off, and they did. Which was fine for them but my friend is still angry. He still runs into people who think the studio admitted that he committed an act of plagiarism.

So good for DC for fighting this one instead of giving in…but I'm uncomfy with how they won, even if the judge said, as I understand, that this was a non-precedential decision. The verdict was that since the underlying work (i.e., the Superman mythos) was owned by DC, Walker could claim no proprietary interest in his idea. If that's the case, it's a short leap to the company claiming that it automatically owns any idea utilizing its copyrighted materials. They don't. Their ownership only extends to controlling the publication and dissemination of such works. If I want to sit here and write Superman stories for my own enjoyment, DC has no proprietary interest in them, nor can they publish them without making a deal with me. I don't think DC would do that but some copyright proprietors have actually taken that position. I don't like seeing it gain even a smidgen more credibility.

Here's Joshua Micah Marshall on the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. I think I agree with his position.

Here's a nice article about Tom Kenny — who among other honors is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.

I'm under the weather today but I had to drag myself to the keyboard to post this: Today is the 88th birthday of Julius Schwartz. If you don't know who that is, you obviously know little about science fiction or comics — two fields in which he distinguished himself. He co-published the first s-f fanzine. He was an agent for many important s-f authors, including a young kid named Ray Bradbury. He then went into comics where he worked for DC for something like half a century, bringing us some of the best books to ever come out of that company, including Batman, Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League of America and Strange Adventures.

The entire Silver Age of Comics — the revitalization of the industry in the late fifties — flowed directly from his work, and I'm too ill to write much more than this. So for now I'll just wish him a happy birthday and hope for 88 more just like it.

The New Republic has published this article about how the Iraq War was sold to the American people with a certain amount of lying.

Every time I mention It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, it brings a couple of e-mails from folks asking where the famed Big "W" is, as well as other locations, and can they visit them? Forty years after the movie was made, not many of the filming locales look anything like they did then. The only one I know of that is easy to access and which looks pretty much as it did then is the area on Pacific Coast Highway where something called the "California Incline" leads down from Ocean Avenue. Several scenes in the film were shot there, most memorably the one where Jonathan Winters's stuntman is hanging out of a taxicab as it makes a couple of wild U-turns. Every time I've seen the movie in a Southern California screening, the audience gasps in recognition of the location — because it never changes much. (If you want to know precisely where it is, go to Mapquest or one of those sites and search for 1000 Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica.) Otherwise, this website has a pretty good summary — with then/now photos — of just about all the filming locations that fans have identified.

As for the Big "W" itself…no, you can't go see it, and it's no longer a "W." As trees fall, it turns into lower and lower digit Roman Numerals. My pal Earl Kress did gain access once, and I got him to write up this report for us.

Richard Starkings, who practically invented the lettering of comic books via computer, has created a short autobiographical comic telling how this happened. Here's where you go to read it.

The saga of Peter Paul, former business head of Stan Lee Media, continues.

Hundreds of years ago, I wrote a pilot for a situation comedy built around Tom Dreesen. CBS loved the script (one of the executives at CBS at the time was Dwayne "Dobie Gillis" Hickman, if you can believe it) but our producer somehow managed to kill the project. I'm still not sure what happened but the pilot never got made, which was a shame for reasons that went beyond the obviously-financial. Tom Dreesen turned out to be a very nice, very funny gentleman, and I'd have enjoyed working with him. As it is, I have to settle for seeing him perform from time to time, and visiting his website.

Here's another really good artist: Steve Lieber. Nice guy, too. His website will tell you all about him. (I'm a little crushed for time tonight…)

I have a "thing" for great Vegas-type acts and it's time I wrote about one of my favorites. Ever since singing impressionist Danny Gans began selling out showrooms in Sin City (@ $100+ per ticket), the town has been filled to overflowing with guys who get up there and try to warble like Frank, Dino, Sammy, Tom, Elvis and others, one after the other. Gans is very good, though not as good as his ticket prices would indicate. For years, the best of them — playing intermittently in lounges and smaller rooms up and down The Strip — has been a long-time practitioner of the art, Bob Anderson. He's an amazing talent and he's one of those impressionists who teaches others.

You see this on the comedy circuit a lot: No one is doing a certain celebrity…and then someone with a good "ear" figures out how to do the person; how to caricature the voice and maybe the gestures, as well. Then suddenly, everyone's doing the celebrity…because the first guy showed them all how to do it, what to emphasize. Bob Anderson is such a pioneer. A lot of folks believe that when you see Billy Crystal doing Sammy Davis, what you're seeing is Crystal doing Bob Anderson doing Sammy. There are also voices that Anderson does that almost no one else does — The Righteous Brothers, Mel Tormé, Otis Redding, etc.

There's a 2-and-a-half minute video demo over on the Official Bob Anderson Website that will give you a little taste of what this man does. Unfortunately, it doesn't include some of his more obscure impressions (which are the most amazing) and the brief snippets don't adequately convey how Anderson captures not just the pitch of his subjects but their manner and presence with an audience. He doesn't just manage to sound like Frank…he really transforms himself into Ol' Blue Eyes for a few minutes there, then does a sudden left turn and becomes Neil Diamond.

So where you can see this man? Amazingly (and sadly), not in Vegas anymore. He recently announced that following an upcoming booking in Laughlin, he's abandoning Nevada and taking up residence in Branson, MO where he has a new and permanent gig. I don't know where or when he'll be performing but to those who've followed the Vegas entertainment scene, this is a stunner. He told The Las Vegas Sun, "There is a changing entertainment scene in Las Vegas, and for whatever reason, there is no place anymore for some acts that may have thrived here in the past, and may one day thrive here again." This is bad news for the town…and worse news for those of us who loved going to Vegas and seeing Bob Anderson, especially in a late night lounge performance. I never get to Branson — though maybe I will, someday. I now have one more reason to go.

My e-mail buddy (and fellow It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World expert) Paul Scrabo works up at NBC in New York. He writes…

I see Don Monday thru Wednesday when I do Last Call with Carson Daly (he hangs around to get some coffee) and also on every live SNL show. He comes to see me to rehearse the live opening. When Darryl replaced Don that time, it was because Don was ill. One other time, Don was sick and before he went home, we pre-taped his opening. He is still the SNL announcer and does it live.

Amazing that here is the guy who introduced not only Caesar's Hour, but Abbott & Costello on the Colgate Comedy Hour!

Amazing, indeed. Now, the next question for announcer fans is one that Dave Mackey also asked on his site. Is Jackson Beck still working? He'd be 91 by my count and just a few years ago, was still doing commercials for Little Caesar's Pizzas, among others. (By the way, here's a link to Paul Scrabo's fine site, with much stuff on Mad World and on Paul's own productions.)

Former Senator Max Cleland gives it to the Bush administration — and good. Here's the link.

Had an interesting e-mail exchange this morn with a writer-friend who complained that I keep linking to interesting-sounding articles (like the one about the Rosenbergs) that are on sites that require registration. Even though it's free, he says, he refuses to register anywhere because he fears it will only contribute to the flow of spam to an e-mailbox that is already crammed full of offers of guaranteed loans, Russian brides and larger tallywhackers. I don't think The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times sell e-mail addresses — at least not to vendors of herbal viagra — but I made a suggestion that hadn't occurred to my friend: Get a junk mail address.

No law says you have to have but one e-mail address. Your I.S.P. (Internet Service Provider) probably provides you with the opportunity to register several other Screen Names for the same fee. If not, there are always services like Hotmail which can give you another, wholly-separate e-mail identity. Use your "junkmail address" whenever you need to register for something and let its mailbox fill with spam. You can then check it every so often to see if anything in there matters to you, or when you need to confirm an address to complete some sign-up. If you haven't considered this, maybe you should.