Jack Shafer proposes an important journalistic reform.

This is about the time every year I start to fantasize that they'll announce the Comic-Con in San Diego is being postponed for two weeks. Everything and everyone in my life revolves around getting this or that done "before the con" and you start to look at everything on your To Do List in terms of, "Can this wait until after the con?" My list is pretty long, they're not likely to delay the con, and yesterday's power outage made things worse…so posting here will be light for the next week or so. Forgive me. If you have nothing better to do, just poke around. There's gotta be stuff here you haven't read.

The full schedule of events for the convention is up, by the way. You might think you don't need to consult it since you'll be going to all my panels. But there are a few moments when I'm not running some great, fascinating event…so take a look over there and figure out what you want to do with that time.

I'm not putting up the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom right now because I will be posting for the next week. Just not as often as I like. Normal content should resume after I get back from S.D.

Back on! Yay!

And while I'm at it, I thought I'd see if I could post via an even less sophisticated connection. I am currently typing on a Targus collapsible keyboard which has been uncollapsed and connected to my little Jornada 540 handheld palmtop into which I have inserted a Targus flashcard modem which is then connected to the telephone line and a very slow dial-up connection. This is probably how they connected to the Internet in Ben Franklin's day. Which reminds me: The way things are going here, I may have to get a kite and wait for a thunderstorm to see electricity around here again.

This message is kind of a test. The electricity is out for about ten blocks around me, rendering my desktop computer and cable modem about as useful as Nigerian yellowcake uranium. So I'm on the laptop and a dial-up connection and I thought I'd see what it felt like to post to my weblog this way. It feels rather prehistoric — about on a par with pounding laundry on a rock by the river to wash it. But if you're reading this, it works.

Richard Roeper debunks the claim that celebrities always die in threes. Seems to me the belief has always been pretty silly. Several people die each week who could arguably be called famous. When a real biggie goes, some folks suddenly look around, pick two others and say, "Well, they always go in threes." But you could make it work for twos, fours, fives, even higher groupings depending on how you defined the rules.

Once upon a time, most comic book inkers were guys who inked others' drawings because they weren't good enough to draw it on their own. Over the years, a few outstanding talents elevated inking to a genuinely creative job — none more so than Joe Sinnott. Joe was always more than competent to do it all by himself but when he was assigned to ink Jack Kirby or John Buscema or any other artist, the sum of the parts actually seemed greater than the individual contributions. He still has that wonderful eye that allows him to interpret another artist's work, bringing out all that the penciller intended and maximizing its impact. Put simply, he's improved everything he's ever touched in comics, and he's one of the nicest men in our business. And now, he even has his own website!

I just took another look at that window card for Springtime for Hitler and my respect for Max Bialystock plunged: No author credit!

The same auction I mentioned a moment ago is also selling this copy of the class photo taken when Marilyn Monroe graduated (as Norma Jean Baker) from Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. I didn't know she went to Emerson. Guess this makes me the second-most famous graduate of the place…

I haven't seen a copy yet but The Groo Odyssey is out now. It's another collection of old Groo stories by Sergio Aragonés and Yours Truly — four of them, done back when we were published by Marvel/Epic. (We did ten solid years of monthly issues for them — all produced on schedule by Sergio, letterer Stan Sakai and myself, almost all colored by Tom Luth — and I still sometimes hear people say, "Creator-owned comics never come out on time.") Anyway, if you like what we do, you can buy this book from Amazon by clicking here. If you've never tried Groo, you can buy this book from Amazon by clicking in the same place. And if you have tried Groo and don't like it…well, what can I say? You're young. You'll learn. Meanwhile, over at his webpage, Bill Sherman gives us a nice review and wonders why this volume doesn't contain the traditional silly text page by me. I'm kinda wondering the same thing at the moment.

And to answer a Frequently-Asked Question: There is no announced release date for the next Groo mini-series, but we're starting to work on it now. Once I know when it's coming out, you'll know. Thank you.

There it is: The window card for the greatest Broadway musical that never really existed…at least not with Lorenzo Saint DuBois in the lead. This is a prop created for the 1968 movie, The Producers, and the credits for music, choreography and art direction on it are for men who actually filled those functions on the film. The designer listed there, Charles Rosen, has put a number of items from his personal collection up for auction with a firm called Profiles in History. They, in turn, are offering them for purchase via eBay. One is the card seen at left. Another is a page that purports to be Mel Brooks's original lyric sheet for the song, "Springtime for Hitler." There's also a bound copy of the script, a fake Playbill, a poster and a bunch of set design sketches. I'm not going to be bidding but if you'd like to — or if you'd like to window-shop and browse some of the interesting information accompanying these items — here's a link to the auction.

Also up for grabs are props and costumes from a number of science-fiction films and TV shows, including a Superman costume worn by George Reeves, a head of E.T., the robot from the Buck Rogers TV series and other things you can't afford.

But getting back to The Producers: The most interesting item (to me) is this one, which is the original screenplay, dictated by Mel to his assistant, Alfa-Betty Olsen, and studded with hand-written changes by both of them. Ms. Olsen's name may be familiar to you since she later had a decent career as a comedy writer, often teamed with Marshall Efron, and also did some acting…plus, there was a character named after her once on Get Smart. A lot of folks hailed her as the unsung hero of The Producers since she not only helped Brooks assemble the screenplay but did a lot of the casting, as well. This original of the screenplay is apparently from her files, and I hope it doesn't disappear into someone's private collection. It would be nice to see an arrangement made with Brooks and other interested parties to reprint it in a big book, complete with all the cross-outs and altered lines. Flaunt it, baby. Flaunt it.

As is common knowledge in the comic book business, Bob Kane did not draw all the hundreds of Batman comic book stories adorned with his signature. He did illustrate the early stories, albeit with increasing assistance — but early on, the character caught on big and DC wanted to publish more material than Kane could produce, even with folks like Jerry Robinson and George Roussos helping him. So an arrangement was made with Kane and DC's editors began hiring others (like Dick Sprang) to draw Batman stories that Kane had nothing to do with, even though they were usually signed with his name. Later on, Kane decided he didn't want to spend his days slaving away at a drawing table so, as part of a settlement with DC regarding the rights to Batman, he worked out a deal that made this possible.

They negotiated a contract whereby Kane agreed to produce a specified number of pages for DC each month, and to receive a high-enough page rate that he could hire someone else to ghost the work and live very well off the balance. He engaged a wonderful man named Sheldon Moldoff and thereafter, DC sent scripts to Kane, Kane sent them to Moldoff, Moldoff drew the pages and sent them to Kane, and Kane delivered them to DC and picked up the check. Once in a while, especially at the outset, Kane seems to have done a smidgen of art correction on Moldoff's pages — but for a decade or two, the work Kane handed in to DC was 90% Moldoff.

DC often reprints stories that originally appeared with incomplete or erroneous credits. They can usually manage to figure out the writer credits on material that originally appeared without any and to identify uncredited artists. In the past, they have sometimes credited Moldoff on the material he ghosted for Kane…but recently collections do not do this. A hardcover anthology released in the last month lists Bob Kane as the artist on stories that no one disputes are primarily or wholly the work for Sheldon Moldoff. People are writing me to ask why.

I have spoken to no one at DC about this but I'll bet I can guess. DC paid Kane to do that work in the first place. That he subcontracted to someone else is one of those cans of worms that no one is eager to open, and not just because of Bob Kane. A lot of comic book artists over the years have employed assistants or ghosts. To just cite a few examples here, there were a number of artists like Frank Giacoia, Vince Colletta and Sal Trapani who were primarily inkers. When someone gave them an assignment to pencil a story, they would often hire a friend to do the pencilling for them — for example, stories that were obviously pencilled by Steve Ditko and inked by Sal Trapani appeared in Strange Adventures #188 and 189. Sometimes, artists would share assignments: A lot of stories inked by Giacoia or Joe Giella feature pages by the other. Gil Kane, when he got behind, would sometimes have Mike Sekowsky pencil a few pages of Green Lantern or Atom. Plenty of guys have employed assistants who could come forward to argue credits, demand royalties, dispute copyrights, etc.

As students of the art form, we can and should identify credits and let nothing stand in our way but certainty. But DC probably has to recognize the legal realities, which is that their business relationship on any given story was with a certain person. Lawyers are probably getting nervous that it could lead to a lot of headaches and perhaps it already has. My guess is that it's neater and safer for them to not get into it. So it's up to us independent historians to identify who done what.

Even a lot of cartoon and comic book buffs don't know the name of Gene Hazelton, but he was one of the top guys in the animation business and he later drew the Flintstones newspaper strip when it was at its peak. Today, another fine Flintstone-drawer, Scott Shaw!, tells us all about the one comic book Gene ever drew. [Warning: The locale to which you'll be redirected sometimes has some very annoying pop-up ads. But Scott's piece is worth braving them.]

The op-ed section of The Christian Science Monitor just ran this article that says, in essence, that it matters very much that the U.S. has been unable to locate the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, and that we must not allow the President (any of them) to be able to send us to war simply because he thinks it's a dandy idea. The author of this commentary is a leading conservative spokesguy working for a leading conservative organization but the argument is almost identical to many advanced by liberals, and I believe it to be correct.

MSNBC just fired Michael Savage, a gent whose on-air "political commentary" lived up to his assumed surname. The official reason was that he had crossed some line of propriety when he told an abusive caller to "get AIDS and die." But of course, the real reason he was sacked was that his ratings were in the toilet…far lower than those of the show that had been axed to make room for him. His "act" was always what it was, the network knew the kind of remarks he always made, and that's what they bought in the first place.

The thing I never see discussed with regard to folks like Savage is this: It is an act, at least to some extent. Talk radio, from whence he came, is full of people who realized one day that a certain kind of hysterical ranting, especially keyed to certain issues, was the way to attain fame and fortune. The few times I heard Savage, he struck me as a guy who was well aware that if he didn't fill the airwaves with crazed invective, he'd probably be assistant manager at a Wendy's somewhere. There is a marketplace mentality to almost every kind of entertainment, whereby suppliers imitate what seems to be selling. Right-wing bigotry and trashing liberals is often quite commercial, and Savage has done quite well for himself in the bookstores and on radio with that routine. (When people ask why there's no significant liberal talk radio, I think the answer is simple: No one's gotten rich doing it. As soon as someone does, there'll be dozens more.)

Whether Savage or any of those folks really believe what they spew is almost beside the point. Probably to some extent, they do. It is not uncommon in the world to start believing your own hyperbole. Years ago, I produced a TV special which involved Vince McMahon and a couple of the top W.W.F. wrestlers. The main thing I learned about wrestling was that even though the feuds are scripted, they tend to become true in some ways. We had Hulk Hogan and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper on the show and we literally could not have them in the studio at the same time. The real human beings had grown to detest each other in much the same way that their ring characters then did. I guess if I were being paid to scream at you, call you names and body-slam you to the canvas, you might not become too fond of me.

Tomorrow, if I were lusting for cash and recognition and all the things people get into broadcasting for, I might decide talk radio was my easiest point of access. And I might look at recent success stories and emulate what's working, perhaps kicking it up a notch or three to get attention. It might only mean exaggerating my own viewpoints a bit but it might also mean inverting them. Either way, if I went on the air and had to fill a lot of hours flogging my worldview, keeping it interesting and getting attention, my opinions would change. I'd get reinforcement from those who phoned up to cheer me on, and another kind of reinforcement from the jerks who called up to tell me off. If attacking Hillary Clinton (to pick an easy target) got me better ratings, better money, book deals, etc., I might spend a lot of time attacking her and finding reasons to attack her. And since I didn't want to feel like a complete hypocrite when I went to bed each night, I'd probably decide that, yes, I might be exaggerating occasionally in order to keep it interesting but that I really believed what I was spending my life yelling about.

This kind of thinking — the motive of success over sense — seems so obvious to me when I see a Michael Savage, an Ann Coulter, a Bob Grant, etc. I even see it in liberal pundits and performers, though there's still more money in demonizing Clintons than there is in Bush-bashing, so there's less of that at the moment. But it will change. Do we really think that Arianna Huffington experienced a sudden catharsis that moved her from all the way from the right-wing to the left? Or did she maybe realize that the conservative punditry was getting overpopulated, that she could not compete with the Coulters of the world and that it might be smart to stake out the "attractive female activist" side of that street before it got too crowded? Pendulums do swing and there will soon be a liberal Michael Savage and — who knows? — it might even be Michael Savage.