Fatburger and I got started the same year ('52) and in the same city.  One of us became a TV and comic book writer; the other became a chain of (currently) around 50 fast food outlets in California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington.  The first was down on Western Avenue but for most folks, the "real" Fatburger was a tiny shack erected on a small island where La Cienega Boulevard crosses San Vicente.  It marked one end of a stretch of La Cienega known as Restaurant Row — theoretically, an assemblage of the best places to dine in Los Angeles.  That was truly not the case.  Apart from Lawry's and — before it burned down — Ollie Hammond's Steak House, the line-up along the street was one failed enterprise after another.  So many went down (or up) in flames that Restaurant Row came to lose its meaning.  There are still tiny signs up that denote it but I'll bet if you said to most folks who've moved to L.A. in the last twenty years, "Let's go to Restaurant Row," they'd say, "Where's that?"

Before the boulevard lost its status, it used to amuse me that the steadiest, most popular enterprise of Restaurant Row was not some plush gourmet dining room but the run-down, falling-apart, frequented-by-junkies Fatburger shack.  It was open 24 hours and I'd sometimes find myself there at 4 AM, always having to wait in line to wolf down a juicy, hard-to-handle burger.  Sometimes, I'd get there at Onion Time. Once or twice a day, the newest employee would get stuck chopping up onions and, if the wind was whipping west-to-east through the shed and you approached the ordering window on the east side, it was like a faceful of tear gas.

But you know what?  A Fatburger was still worth the risk.

Today, I've cut my beef consumption down to around the volume of one cocktail frank per week.  An investment group fronted by Earvin "Magic" Johnson has acquired the whole Fatburger chain, with plans to make it as ubiquitous as McDonald's.  And the outlet at La Cienega and San Vicente has been shut down tighter than the latest Ellen DeGeneres sitcom.  I find it sad, in a way.  I wasn't going to that or any other Fatburger any longer…but, like the playground of your childhood, it was somehow comforting to see it there.

Marvel Comics has recently pulled out of the Comics Code, that "self-regulatory body" formed by most of the comic publishers back in the fifties.  One wonders why it took until this century for a major publisher to do so.  The Code perhaps had its purpose at the time.  Comic books were under fire with distributors and newsstands souring on the very format, and even laws being proposed which would have imposed government banning or regulation of "those awful books."  Self-regulation is always better than having it imposed from outside…but the union of ostensible competitors had its moral shortcomings, as well.

John Goldwater, who was the head of Archie Comics, was the main champion of the effort and some — well, Jack Kirby, for one — called it "…a way of letting Goldwater approve whatever was published.  If he didn't like it, it didn't get on the stands." It has also been noted that, from the day the Code was established, newsstand comic racks were controlled by the publishers who founded the Code.

Western Publishing and Dell Comics split their cooperative venture into two separate lines…but otherwise, not one single "new" comic book company ever had a prayer of getting decent distribution, Code or no Code. This persisted until decades later when direct sales marketing emerged, by-passing traditional independent distribution.

Whatever, the Code outlived its usefulness long ago.  A lot of folks think it did enormous damage to the content of comic books.  I'm not sure it did.  I think the real harm was in killing competition on the newsstands…which, in turn, may have been one of the things that killed the newsstands.

The TV Biz is buzzing with word that Fox wants a piece of the late night moola and is hoping to steal Conan O'Brien from NBC.  And if they can't get Conan, they'll settle for either Jon Stewart or Bill Maher.  As it happens, all three are under contracts soon to run out.

What's going on?  The fact that this story is out is probably an indicator that one of those guys wants to put some pressure on his current employer.  The goal is not to move, but to get a much better deal to stay put…and they all probably will.  Of the three, Maher is the most likely to leave his current situation, but it's not very likely and it's not because of any Fox offer, if indeed there would even be one.  I'm not sure this whole story isn't a media exaggeration and that the only true part is that Fox has had a few conversations with Mr. O'Brien's people.  My guess is that, when the dust settles, all three hosts will be right where they are…but Stewart and Maher will be a little richer and O'Brien will be a lot richer.  (He deserves it, too.  His show is terrific…)

Speaking of scandal-ridden stories: At the aforementioned memorial service, I fell into a conversation with comedians and comedy writers about the whole Enron saga — a chat that was interesting because it was utterly non-partisan and not even about whether laws were broken.  It was about whether the Bush Administration has mismanaged things with regard to allowing the scandal to become a topic for comic fodder.  The unanimous consensus was that they have.

Everyone in government does dumb things but some do not gain eternal life by becoming punch-lines and some do.  "I never inhaled" was not the least ingenuous thing a presidential candidate every said…not even the least candid thing Bill Clinton said that year.  But it became monologue legend, whereas Ronald Reagan, claiming that scenes from war movies had actually happened, did not.  George W. Bush mispronouncing "subliminal" is eternally enshrined, whereas dozens of verbal gaffes by all candidates are not.  (Anyone remember Paul Tsongas getting his wife's name wrong?  I didn't think so.  For that matter, anyone remember Paul Tsongas?  But his misidentification of Mrs. Tsongas somehow didn't inspire comedy, even during that week Americans knew who he was.)

Dick Cheney being eternally in an "undisclosed location" and/or having weekly heart attacks is funny.  So is Bush fainting from eating a pretzel.  So is Bush's sidestep from "Kenny Boy" to "Who is Kenneth Lay?"  It isn't that these are scandals; just that they end the honeymoon and wound Bush's ability to claim that his administration is any different from the preceding one.  Has any president in our memory not had a couple of close friends who got mixed up in crooked money deals?  Has any administration not had to stonewall over some Congressional inquiry and then give in and tell all?  Neil Bush even shows signs of surfacing and carrying on in the grand tradition of Billy Carter, Roger Clinton and other embarrassing presidential brothers.

The Enron scandal may or may not lead to actual charges of illegal action within the Bush administration.  That will hinge on smoking guns, if any, yet to be found and perhaps on whether it was the first of many to plunge.  (Anyone taken a look lately at the stock price of Cheney's beloved Halliburton Industries?  Makes K-Mart look like a hot ticket.)  But it has certainly helped us to fill out the full complement of running gags about the Bush-Cheney White House.  Some things just don't change.

The entire Clinton/Monica impeachment mess is, of course, ancient history.  I recently stumbled across an article that Anthony Lewis wrote about it all a few years ago, summarizing what I guess you'd call the pro-Clinton view on it all.  It happens to be mine, as well…so here's a link.

John Buscema's obit finally turned up in The New York Times.  Click here to read it.  (If you're not registered with the Times, you'll have to sign up but it's free.)

While You're Surfing: Joshua Micah Marshall has a good, common sense view of Dick Cheney's stonewalling over on Talking Points Memo.  Click here to read it.  Does anyone doubt that Cheney will eventually have to turn over the materials that he is now refusing to turn over?

Thought I'd answer an e-mail in public here: I said in an earlier post that, on the Internet, when someone says, "I've been flooded with messages," it means three or four e-mails.  (If they say, "I've been flooded with messages that agree with my position," it means two.)  Someone wrote to ask, "Can you give ONE concrete example?"

Well, it's not exactly on the Internet and it's not concrete…but I used to run a couple of phone-up bulletin boards, and I don't see why the mindset would have evolved.  Most bulletin boards ran on software that showed the System Operator all sorts of user data that was invisible to most callers.  For instance, on one of the systems I set up, when you posted a public message and I read it, I also saw a little window that told me when you'd last called, how many times you'd called, how many private e-mails you had in your mailbox, etc., and also how many callers the system had had in the last few hours.  (This was not me snooping; the software automatically displayed this stuff.)  I couldn't help but notice that it was not uncommon for John Doe to post a message at, say, 1:00, then at 3:30, he'd call back in and post, "My mailbox is flooded with messages agreeing with me" — only it wasn't.  I knew, but never said aloud, that in those 2.5 hours, he'd only received one e-mail.  Some flood.

Once, a fellow posted a message attacking someone at Noon, logged off and then I had to take the system off-line for some maintenance work.  I actually sat there at the computer, waiting for the guy to finish and disconnect, before I shut it down.  It was down around three hours and, when I put it back up, this same guy was the first caller to get in.  He immediately posted one of those, "I'm being swamped with support" messages even though absolutely no one (including me) had read his 12:00 posting, let alone responded to it.

This kind of thing happened often enough for me to assume it's just human nature and probably has not changed.  I've certainly seen enough newsgroup or chat board postings on the Internet that struck me as suspicious in this regard.  But then, I'm also skeptical when a public figure says they've been inundated with positive paper mail.  My own experiences, working in comic books and TV, have yielded numerous examples of folks grotesquely exaggerating their fan mail — or of protesters grossly overstating how many complaints they delivered to someone.  (Remember when CBS dumped Pee-Wee Herman's show and his fans claimed the network was "waist-deep" with letters of protest?  CBS received something like six letters.  Imagine the exaggerations possible with e-mail, the existence of which is even harder to verify than physical letters.)

So you may not consider this "concrete" but that's why I believe what I believe.  And most of you do, too.  Why, I've received thousands of e-mails agreeing with me…

Avery Schreiber was a funny man.  This afternoon, an overflow crowd of funny people filled the Improv on Melrose in West Hollywood to swap Avery stories.  The tales were all different and yet they were all the same.  In each, Avery was very nice and Avery was very funny.  Especially moving were the closing speech, delivered by one of Avery's sons, and the opening and hosting by his long-time friend and partner, Jack Burns.  (Mr. Burns is, by the way, very much alive and well, in spite of what a couple of Muppet Show websites seem to believe.)

Jack opened by saying, "My name is Jack Burns and I'm a Schreiberholic."  He spoke of having become addicted to Avery when they were both in one of the legendary Second City troupes in Chicago.  They teamed up and became rather successful but — and this is no secret — things went awry and they broke up due to Burns's fondness for alcohol.  Later, when Jack had reformed, he went to apologize to his ex-partner and everyone present today was moved by (and totally believed) how forgiving and non-judgmental Avery was about it all.

That was a recurring theme in the stories.  Avery was an eternal (but not naïve) optimist, always finding the good in everyone and everything, never speaking ill of anyone.  It may seem like a hopeless cliché to say that he was loved and respected by all who knew him and, in this case, it happens to be true.  But any cliché at all flies in the face of some words of advice that Avery always gave to students in his classes on improv acting.  He said, and I quote…

"If you are going to lay an egg, make it brightly colored and fresh…for God's sake, FRESH!"

I've received around three dozen e-mails asking why I'm discontinuing my column for the Comics Buyer's Guide…and I really have received at least that many.  Usually on the Internet, when someone says, "I've been flooded with messages," it means three or four e-mails.  (If they say, "I've been flooded with messages that agree with my position," it means two.)

Thank you all for saying you'll miss it and I wish I could answer your questions with some juicy, scandal-ridden story about why I quit.  The truth is that I was having some unremarkable contractual problems with the publisher that killed my interest in continuing with them.  The details are of no consequence.  At some point, I'm going to start looking for a venue where I can resume the column…perhaps somewhere I can write about a wider range of subjects with a wider range of language.  Until that happens — assuming it ever does — I'll be posting silly stuff on this website.  If you're grateful, the "tipping box" is elsewhere on this page.

Three quick comments before I return to something that pays money and is due…

1. Thanks for all the nice comments about my announcement that I'm terminating my Comics Buyer's Guide column.  I'll explain a bit (not a lot) about my reasons in a day or two.  There isn't that much to explain…

2. Nice obit on Ron Taylor in The Los Angeles Times the other day.  Here's a link.  And here's a link to one that ran a few days ago about John Buscema.

3. Hey, wasn't an "apparent suicide" just what the whole Enron scandal needed?  Between the shredding and the death, a large portion of America will never believe that someone hasn't destroyed evidence or a witness that would prove Bush and Cheney planned the whole thing and maybe the 9/11 disasters as a diversion.  Now, if only some photogenic woman will turn up who figures into it all, we'll never hear the end of this one.

A fine artist and a fine gentleman, Kurt Schaffenberger, died earlier this evening at the Shorrock Garden Nursing Home in Brick, New Jersey.  Kurt was 81 and had been ill for some time with an array of ailments including diabetes and heart trouble, so his passing was not unexpected.  Still, it comes as a blow to lose the man who will forever be "the" Lois Lane artist to those of us who grew up on his comics.  Kurt was born in Germany but grew up in Hartford, Connecticut where — here's a coincidence — he dated my mother's best friend in high school.  Even drew in my mother's yearbook!  Shortly after getting out of school and to the surprise of no one who knew him, Kurt got into comics, soon becoming one of the most important artists at Fawcett, ranking third among the Captain Marvel artists after C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza.  Many fans felt that Schaffenberger was the best of a good lot.

In the fifties, after the Good Captain folded his tent, writer Otto Binder got Kurt a try-out at DC and he became the main artist on Lois Lane while also working occasionally on Superman.  (He also worked for other publishers, including A.C.G., where he signed most of his work "Lou Wahl," since DC frowned on the notion of their freelancers freelancing.)

In the late sixties, Kurt was moved over, against his will, to draw Supergirl.  Then he got into trouble with DC management when he became the only artist to join what has been termed "The Writers' Rebellion" — a move by several DC writers to band together and demand things like reprint fees and a health plan.  When the writers were tossed out, so was Kurt, who did a few romance comics for Marvel, then got out of comics and into commercial illustration for a time.  Finally though, DC lured him back and he again drew Superman, as well as Super-Friends, Wonder Woman, Superboy and many other books.  Some editors thought his style was "old-fashioned" and, for a time, they had him inking other artists, especially the other great Superman artist of his generation, Curt Swan.  To others, he was a classic comic artist and they treasured the consistency of his work.  (Offhand, I can't think of another comic artist whose work changed less over the years.  1960 Schaffenberger art was virtually identical to 1990 Schaffenberger art.)

Kurt himself was a charming gentleman who reminded you of a classic character actor of the forties.  He was handsome, gallant and impossible to dislike.  My most vivid memory of him is from a convention in the mid-seventies when he started doing freebee sketches for fans.  Instantly, he was mobbed and, fearing someone would be trampled, he announced that he would stay until everyone around him got a drawing…and he did.  He stayed there for at least three hours, whipping out the neatest-looking Lois doodles you ever saw, complete with her classic pillbox hat and the famous Schaffenberger smile.  If you knew Kurt, you knew where that smile came from.

(My thanks to a fine artist of a younger generation, Howard Bender, for spreading the sad word about one of our faves…)

I just sent in my 382nd column for the Comics Buyer's Guide.  It is also my last.  Ought to appear in a couple of weeks.

Okay, so it looks like we don't get another O.J. Murder Trial…yet.  I still can't get past the hunch that, one of these days, that man is going to do something that all the Johnnie Cochrans in the world can't save him from.  Daniel Petrocelli, the lawyer who won the huge judgment against Simpson on behalf of the Goldman family, has said that he thinks O.J. will someday confess.  Out of some mixture of pride, guilt and pure insanity, he has been "confessing incrementally," letting little things slip, says Petrocelli.  Maybe that's it…but the story feels like it needs a more ironic Third Act.  (Petrocelli, by the way, is the lawyer currently representing Disney in the Winnie the Pooh case.  Looks like this time, it's Petrocelli who's on the indefensible side.)

Enron question: Didn't I read somewhere that, back in Texas, George W. Bush was involved in several business deals where the company went under, investors and employees lost a bundle, but the guys at the top (i.e., Bush) made out like bandits?  If this is so, how long before Democrats and/or reporters start dredging up such stories, suggesting that, even in our President didn't do anything wrong vis-a-vis Enron, the company was only following his business model?

Had another lovely evening at The Magic Castle, which is still the only good reason I've ever found to put on a tie.  Featured this week in the Close-Up Gallery is maybe the best close-up magician I've ever seen…a gent named Johnny Ace Palmer, who is kind of the Picasso of Misdirection.  I love it when you see a guy who (a) has obviously practiced for zillions of hours and does what he does to perfection and (b) genuinely enjoys performing.  You know how great it is when you take friends to a terrific restaurant you've found and they love it so much, you feel as proud as if you'd cooked the meal?  Carolyn and I took our friends Gordon and Donna to see Johnny and received some of that "contact pride."  We sat in the front row and watched the guy make things appear out of the oxygen, right before our orbs.  Even when you know where they come from, he's pretty amazing.

Everyone says they want us to get back to normal in this country.  Well, what could be more normal than ANOTHER O.J. MURDER TRIAL?