If you can get past the endless teases in and out of commercials, the E! True Hollywood Story shows are sometimes interesting. And sometimes not. The "nots" are when the subject is of little importance and/or access to the subject is from afar. The folks of little importance are generally selected because their stories have a lot of celebrity embarrassment and tragedy attached to them. The episodes about superstars are more watchable but often, neither the star nor anyone close to them agrees to participate, so you get a lot of commentary from witnesses whose connection to the subject is questionable.

Neither of these is the case with the E! True Hollywood Story of Jerry Lewis, which I TiVoed the other day and just watched. Jerry not only gave it his full cooperation but he sat for what obviously amounted to hours of interviews…to the point where, though there's the usual E! announcer doing play-by-play, you have Jer providing color commentary.

Some of the details presented of Jerry's career are skipped over. If there was a mention of the legendary The Day the Clown Cried, I missed it. Some accounts of key moments in Jerry's life were, to put it nicely, at odds with what others have said. I'm not saying he's wrong and they're right because certainly, Jerry's occasional lapses of public ego have almost invited others to come forth and spin his life as a negative, perhaps distorting the truth a bit. He also sometimes tells stories that are impossible to believe. One that he recounts in the documentary and has said on other occasions is that he knew his main career as a Hollywood filmmaker was over, and that he didn't even want it to continue, when one day he drove by a theater "in the Valley" (meaning Los Angeles). There on the marquee, he claims, he saw his latest movie — Which Way to the Front? — double-billed with Deep Throat.

I don't believe that pairing ever existed. First off, Which Way to the Front? was released in July of 1970 and Deep Throat didn't come out until 1972. The latter played exclusively for years at the Pussycat Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard which is not in the Valley and which did not even double-bill another sex film, let alone a Jerry Lewis movie, for something like ten years. I can't even imagine a theater anywhere throwing together a pairing of that sort; of a movie that could only be shown to horny adults and another that couldn't possibly interest that crowd. (By the way, as one of those parenthetical notes of trivia for which this site is justly famous, one of the main producers of Deep Throat was a man named Lou Perry. Many years earlier, when Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first teamed up, Lou Perry was Dean's manager, and ever after claimed to have been responsible for pairing the two men, only to get cheated out of representation. He also, legend has it, got cheated out of the millions and millions of dollars that Deep Throat brought in.)

All of that aside, the E! documentary — which runs again on Thursday (4 AM), Sunday (5 AM) and next Monday the ninth (10 AM) — is a very rich portrait of Lewis and, because of his frequent comments, almost a video autobiography. The show is sparse on clips of actual Jerry Lewis movies. (Like most TV documentaries, they grab scenes from public domain trailers, rather than pay for footage.) And Jerry's godhood overseas and tireless work for Muscular Dystrophy are oversold, plus I'm not sure I wanted to know quite that much about Jerry's medical problems. Still, there's a lot of insight and info, plus they ran the clip of Dean Martin walking out onto the telethon in 1976 and apparently surprising the hell out of his former partner. That alone is worth sitting through the two hours. There's also a rerun of a different profile of Lewis next week on the Biography Channel but, if I'm remembering it correctly, it didn't have nearly the access or data that E! did.

My DirecTV satellite dish gets CSpan and CSpan2. But their channel line-up doesn't include CSpan3, which seems to be airing the shows I most want to view.

Every so often, I drop an e-mail to the DirecTV people and ask about this. I find it hard to believe that it would cost them much, if anything, to add in that other channel. But all I get back is one of those form e-mails that says, "Thank you for your comments, we'll look into it, yadda yadda yadda…"

I don't know that I have the energy to get up a petition or a letter-writing campaign on this. But maybe I can encourage someone out there to do something.

The late Mort Meskin was an amazing artist — the kind who caused his colleagues to look at his work and ask, "How does he do that?" He was especially amazing in terms of his control of lighting and white areas on a page. Most comic artists work from white to black; that is, they draw their compositions and then figure out where to spot shadows and large black areas. Meskin, some said, worked the other way: He thought from dark to light and would design his pages by spotting the white areas. However he arrived at it, he did some arresting work over the years, mostly for DC and the Simon-Kirby Studio. His heirs have set up a website to remember this innovative man.

Bernard Krigstein didn't work in comics as much as some other influential artists. Still, on many (not all) of his jobs, he managed to bring a brilliant graphic approach to often-mundane material. Like an actor who's so special that he can rise above the script, Krigstein was never not interesting. You can see some example of his ground-breaking work at The Krigstein Archives.

…a mess of us will convene in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International. Last year, they had more than 63,000 lovers of comics, science fiction, fantasy, animation and other allied fields in attendance. I hazard to guesstimate the total this year but it'll probably be even more crowded, especially when I'm waiting in line to eat. And of course, the ever-expanding exhibit hall (now over 400,000 square feet) will be too big to tour. So instead, come upstairs where I'll be hosting my usual array of panels and events relating to comics (mostly old ones) and animation. At the moment, we're still juggling schedules and time slots so everything I'm about to mention is tentative and subject to change. But I thought a little preview was more or less in order…

• I'll be moderating spotlights (one-on-one interviews) with Larry Lieber, Stan Goldberg and Sal Buscema. Sal's career is probably well-known to anyone who cracked a Marvel comic between about '68 and '88. He drew almost every book in the place at one time or another — and of course we'll also be discussing his brother, the late John Buscema. Larry Lieber was there at the beginning of the Marvel era. He wrote most of those great monster stories that preceded Marvel's entry into super-hero comics — classics like "Fin Fang Foom" and "Grottu." Then he scripted the first stories of several super-hero strips, including Thor and Iron Man before segueing primarily into artwork. He drew westerns for most of the sixties and has been the artist of the syndicated Spider-Man strip for a few decades, making him the most prolific and widely-read illustrator of that character, by far. And I may even ask him about his brother, the legendary Stan Lee. Stan Goldberg's name may not be as familiar to Marvel fans but he was also there at the beginning, drawing comics like Millie the Model and coloring the super-hero books. This is the man who decided what color most of the key Marvel characters' costumes should be, and he's a charming gent with a good memory for that era. I'll also be asking him about his many years of work drawing Archie.
• As per usual, I'll be hosting The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, including (I expect) Larry Lieber, Stan Goldberg, Mike Royer, several members of the Kirby family and a couple of contemporary writers and artists who'll discuss the lasting influence of Mr. Kirby's work.
• Another tradition is the annual Sergio and Mark Panel, with Sergio Aragonés, myself, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth — i.e., the people who bring you Groo the Wanderer and other silliness.
• And yet another is the Annual Golden Age Comics Panel, which I believe will be on Saturday. This year, the emphasis will be on DC Comics and I'm hoping the dais will include Paul Norris, Howie Post, Julius Schwartz, Irwin Donenfeld, Harry Lampert and one or two others.
• 2003 is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, the book by Dr. Fredric Wertham that denounced comic books and helped trigger a wave of repression/responsibility (pick one) in the medium. We're assembling a program of film clips and folks with interesting perspectives on Wertham, his book and what it all meant.
• It's about time we did a program item on Gold Key and Dell Comics, and we're going to have one this year. We're still putting this together but I'm expecting to include Frank Bolle, Paul Norris, Mike Royer, Len Wein and other folks who worked for what was once the best-selling comic book company in the business, Western Publishing.
• Last year, we had a terrific time getting together a bunch of cartoonists — including Scott Shaw! and Sergio — and having me try to stump them with challenges of rapid-fire cartooning. So we're going to do another Quick Draw Panel this year, and if you attend no other program item on this list, this is the one to catch.
• And I think we're going to have a slightly different kind of Cartoon Voice Panel than the one I traditionally host — in a bigger room with a bigger cast. We're going to gather together about a dozen of the best voice actors in the business and demonstrate how they read scripts, inventing the sounds and personalities of your favorite animated superstars. I'll be posting the roster here as folks confirm their participation.

That's ten panels. There are a couple more under discussion, including one that may make me amend the above statement about how the Quick Draw Panel is the one not to miss. But I'll tell you about it — and more about these — as the date draws nearer and plans shake down.

CSPAN2 is now advertising Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken and Molly Ivins at 12:15 AM Eastern time, followed by Franken and Ivins at 1:30 AM. The network is broadcasting a number of panel discussions and interviews from the BookExpo now taking place down at the L.A. Convention Center, where I would have been today if my computer hadn't gone kablooey.

…but several folks e-mailed me to say that Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken got into a real yelling match this afternoon at a discussion that aired this afternoon on C-SPAN2. It apparently replays tonight at 9PM Pacific and Midnight in the East. I don't guarantee those times, or even that it's worth watching.

So what's up with those Weapons of Mass Destruction? Here's Fred Kaplan with a progress report.

Mostly reinstalling software. I had a system crash thanks to (apparently) a usually-reliable program that issued a buggy upgrade. It wiped out my registry and various backups thereof. This is so much fun. Anyway, when you see items begin appearing here on a regular basis, you'll know I have most of my software reinstalled and configured anew.

A few days ago, I posted a question from Rick Phillips about a movie he remembered seeing. I'm not sure if he was the first one in with this but Jeffery Sellers has what seems to be the right answer. The movie was Sky Bandits, directed by Zoran Perisic. I think.

Spinsanity sets the record straight on a number of contradictory press reports. Go here to read.

No, he's not the guy who fell down a lot on Three's Company. He's the former weapons inspector who was all over the newstalk shows a few months ago, arguing that we should not attack Iraq until we had a lot more solid proof of Weapons of Mass Destruction than the Bush administration seemed to be demanding. He also predicted — and it's starting to look like he was right — that none would be found. Most shows did not give Mr. Ritter much time to state his case but our pal Paul Harris — who's heard on KTRS radio in St. Louis — did in an interview you can hear on his website. You'll need to have the obnoxious software known as RealPlayer installed on your computer.

The late John Buscema was one of those people who are/were just born to draw. He was a wonderful talent — often a lot better than what you saw in the printed comic, where he'd be drawing some strip he hated, working on a tight deadline and being inked by Vince Colletta. (Mr. Colletta was kind of like the 99-Cent-Only Store of comic book inkers.) We are happy then that some of John's fans and friends continue to maintain The Official John Buscema Website.

Here, from The Comics Journal's ¡Journalista! weblog, is a more detailed explanation of the problems that Fantagraphics has encountered, and why this would be a good time to direct your patronage their way. It says the same stuff I said earlier but longer and in more complete sentences.

Are we ready for The Lord of the Rings: The Musical? I'm seeing Nathan Lane and Elaine Stritch…