I used to go to Las Vegas a lot. I liked exploring the city and all its attractions. I liked going to shows — occasionally two the same night — and I liked hanging out with friends who were in those shows. I liked the 24 hour nature of the city. When I went alone, as I did much of the time, I could eat when I wanted to, work when I wanted to, sleep when I wanted to, be alone in my room when I wanted to, etc.

I liked some of the unique fast food options…like Lobster Me, which can be found in the food courts of a couple of hotels. They run it like a McDonald's but what they serve is very yummy lobster rolls. I liked the cheaper buffets for two reasons, both having to do with my many food allergies. Cheap buffets usually offer very simple food — carved roast beef, mashed potatoes, baked chicken, etc. So I get to see my food before I commit to it and at a buffet, I rarely have to ask, "What's in that?" And if I do, there's usually an attendant standing right nearby who can tell me.

Also, I really like freshly-roasted turkey sliced right off the freshly-roasted bird. Most Vegas buffets offer that and most other places I eat don't.

And the rooms were cheap and I used to play a mean game of Blackjack and…well, I had a lot of reasons to like Vegas. Almost none of them apply any more. The shows are beastly expensive and very few of them these days interest me. And I'm not talking about shows like Adele's upcoming 24-show residency where the cheapest tickets are now close to $1000 and ones up front are going for $30,000 each. And no, I did not mistype the number of zeroes in those amounts.

I'm talking about shows like Carrot Top (tickets start at $53.10 and go up to $91.25) or Rich Little ($62.18 to $83.98) or no one you've ever heard of (the same range). The cheapest Cirque du Soleil show in town wants almost $100 for its cheapest seats and then the prices go higher than the trapeze artists. And I don't know anyone in the current shows so no hanging-out backstage.

I gave up gambling and I ain't going back. I don't want to relearn Blackjack, especially in light of certain rule changes that increase the house advantage. There are a lot fewer buffets now and none of them are cheap.

And the room prices may seem reasonable at first glance but then they add on "Resort Fees" that can double or triple the price that lures you in. Here's a list of these fees.

Because of COVID — which is soaring in that town — I haven't been thinking of going there. But I'm now thinking that even when COVID is no longer a threat, I don't think I want to go to that city. Even if they will have a Peter Luger Steak House by then.

If you never read Ian Frazier's 1990 article in The New Yorker about Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Company, it's back online.

Mike B. follows up with this article that appeared in advance of the special we're discussing here.  It gives us more info including the name of the producer, Bill Stierwalt, who IMDB tells me was involved with The Lohman and Barkley, a locally-produced (and wonderful) TV comedy show I've written about here before — here, for instance..  It also tells us that The Golden Age of Comic Books originally aired on Wednesday, March 9 at 8:30 PM.

Again, we welcome any further information on this program…or for that matter, on Misty the Prettiest Go-Go Gal…

This took twelve minutes and it's from 5/18/66 and is, as you'll note, a rerun. Thank you, Mike B. Anyone else find anything?

All this talk here about the Catman & Reuben pilot here got my pal Scott Shaw! to thinking about another local-in-Los-Angeles TV special we both remember from the same period. In 1966 (we think), KCOP Channel 13 (we're pretty sure) ran a special about the then-new fad of collecting and treasuring old comic books.

The show was hosted by Gary Owens who — since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was not yet in existence — was best known as a local radio personality on KMPC 719. The show included tours of the Hollywood book shops like Cherokee Books and Collectors Book Shop. In those stores, amazingly, kids of all ages paid as much as twenty whole dollars for a copy of Superman #1 that originally sold for — get this! — ten cents.

I was already hanging out at such places…though I was wise enough not to spend that kind of money for old comic books. Scott first learned of those stores and about this thing called "comic book fandom" from the special. It did a lot to legitimize our hobby, promote the notion that comics weren't just for kids…and I think it even drove the price of a Superman #1 all the way up to twenty-five or thirty bucks.

For years, Gary searched for a copy of that special and I helped him search. We both became satisfied that KCOP no longer had one. They kept almost nothing. And this was well before the days when one could record a TV show off the air so it's doubtful any video still exists. But some of you folks did wonders to search archives and find info on Catman & Reuben so Scott was wondering — and he got me to wondering — what could be found about this special.

We think it was 1966. We're sure it was Gary Owens and Channel 13 and I think it aired more than once…but not much more than that. We don't remember what it was called (neither did Gary) but I wouldn't be surprised if there were Batman-style sound effects in the name. A genuine-but-intangible newsfromme no-prize will go to anyone who can come up with any info on the program.

Here's the latest Sergio/Mark video. I play Mark…

• I just saw this headline — "Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion" — and I thought, "Damn! I should have bid 68.8." Too late.

When I wrote about the comedy team of Davis & Reese in this post, I had no idea I'd be spending so much blog space on them…but it's my fault. I had to go and mention a TV special/pilot I remembered that they did…perhaps the first-ever spoof of the 1966 Batman TV series. And yes, I know that program was kind of a spoof itself.

Thanks to industrious readers of this site, we have since found out more about the Catman and Reuben show, which as far as I now know consisted of one one-hour pilot that was so poorly-received, it led to no more.  But as you'll see in our new section, its makers apparently thought it was going to turn into a weekly series seen in many of the major markets.

Yes, to remove the topic from this section of newsfromme.com, I've opened a new section as kind of a repository/scrapbook for research and clippings devoted to this silly endeavor…and I even designed a Catman and Reuben title logo for the page.  That logo is not from the original show.  If you're interested in this little nugget of TV/comic book history, go visit our new Catman and Reuben page.

We are aware that in today's installment of the fine newspaper strip Luann, there's a character named "Mr. A" who looks an awful lot like my partner Sergio Aragonés. Thanks to the seventy-three million of you who wrote to tell me.

Back in this post and this post, we were talking about the comedy team of Davis and Reese and I recalled from memory a pilot-type show they did back a long, long time ago. I wrote in the first of the above links…

The most interesting thing I recall about them is that around the time the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) was all the rage, Davis and Reese made a pilot-of-sorts parodying it. This is all from memory and I may be a bit off but I remember it being a five-episode, shot-on-video, low-low budget serial that ran once, Monday-thru-Friday in Los Angeles on Channel 9. I think Davis played the Robin-like character and Reese played the Batman-type guy and that's all I remember about it other than that it wasn't very funny. Does anyone else recall this thing? I don't know if it was local or national or what.

I didn't think there was any way to further research this but David A. Grudt, a reader of this site, prowled around in the L.A. Times archives and found out stuff. It was called Catman and Reuben and indeed, Davis played the Robin-like character and Reese played the Batman-type guy.

I recalled it as five-episodes aired in one week. It was, in fact, one hour which KHJ Channel 9 aired twice — at 10 PM on two successive Monday nights — February 21, 1966 and again on February 28. As a point of reference, the Batman TV show debuted on January 12, 1966.  So someone had to get awfully busy to get the parody written and produced and telecast a mere six weeks later.

David wrote, "It would seem to have been only on Ch. 9, not national" and I think that's probably true.  At this point, a lot of the local channels in Los Angeles were producing shows and pilots with what usually turned to be the following pipe dream: That a network would see what they were doing and grab up the show…or there would be interest such that national syndication would become feasible.  The following year, Channel 9 tried some other short-lived programming including the infamous kids' show that adults watched, Shrimpenstein.

David also found an article which said, "Channel 9 answers the Batman craze with this hour-long spoof, Catman.  In the first thrilling episode, Catman and Reuben are called on to stop the evil Dr. No-Good from smuggling any more whee! into the country.  Stars the comedy team of Tony Reese and Pepper Davis."

I am fairly confident of my almost-56-years-ago recollections that the show was very dull and cheap-looking.  It mostly consisted of Catman and Reuben standing around the Cat-Cave (the main and perhaps only set) talking about a lot of off-stage action.  Catman was very serious and wise.  Reuben — and yes, I noticed his name spelled wrong above — was pretty dumb and always saying, "Gosh, that sure makes sense to me, Catman!"

It struck me that they were trying to turn that line into a catchphrase so he said it about eighty-seven times.  Did we ever see the much-talked-about master villain, Dr. No-Good?  I'm not sure we did but I may not have made it to the end, especially since I had school the next morning.

And that is all we know about this show…and all we may ever know.  We'll probably never even find out what "whee!" is and why it's a bad thing.  Great thanks to David Grudt for finding what he found.

Here's a segment from The Dean Martin Show from (I think) 1970. Dean's there with his regular piano player, Ken Lane. Then in comes "Vladimir," who is actually our friend Leo DeLyon. This should give you an idea of the kind of thing Leo did…obviously, very well.

As you watch Dean's reactions, keep in mind that this was probably done with very little — probably no — rehearsal…

I'm not 100% certain myself of the exact date but many folks out there are telling me that forty (40) years old today, the first issue of Destroyer Duck went on sale. I may be biased but I think this was a very important event in comic book history. My pal Steve Gerber was locked in a lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the ownership of the character, Howard the Duck…and it was also about the terms of his severance from his character and that company.

Lawsuits, as you know, can be very expensive and Marvel Comics, of course, had a lot more money than Steve did. At one point, the judge in the case actually fined Marvel a large amount for certain tactics that, he said, were deliberately intended to drive up Steve's legal bills. Alas, even that amount did not cover his costs so a bunch of us got together and produced a benefit comic book to raise money for the cause.

Steve and I edited the book and he wrote the lead story which was drawn by Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala with the aid of Tom Orzechowski and Steve Leialoha. Jack drew the cover which was inked by Neal Adams with a title logo by Tom O. Other stories were contributed by Shary Flenniken, Dan Spiegle, Gordon Kent, Martin Pasko, Joe Staton, Scott Shaw!, Carol Lay, Sergio Aragonés and me. The comic was published through the good offices of Eclipse Comics — Dean and Jan Mullaney and Cat Yronwode.

None of us took a cent for our contributions. The money all went to Steve…or rather to the law firm representing Steve. His lawyer, Henry W. Holmes, knocked a big chunk of dough off the bill in exchange for appearing as a character in the Destroyer Duck story.

I can't help but note that a person then on staff at Marvel Comics — and not even at a particularly high level — took the comic as some sort of hydrogen bomb aimed at the company that issued his paychecks, loudly declaring that no one who worked on it would ever in a million years work for Marvel again. And of course, any of us who wanted to, did…in some cases, quite a lot.

How this comic impacted the changes that occurred within the industry, moving to a more creator-friendly approach, is a discussion for another time. I just wanted to note that the 40th anniversary of Destroyer Duck #1 is also the 40th anniversary of the debut-in-print of Groo the Wanderer.

That was Sergio's contribution…and I hasten to point out that it was not mine. I talked him into letting us print the first Groo story in the book — and it took him all of three seconds to say, "Certainly!" But I did not work on that first Groo story. Attention all who refer to me as the co-creator of Groo: I am not. Give Sergio all the credit or blame. (Or maybe divert a smidgen to the late Gordon Kent, who did the coloring.)

That short story spawned a demand for more and that's when Sergio asked me to join him in what has now been a four-decade adventure which shows no sign of letting up. We have another mini-series coming soon and a bunch of other projects. I'll tell you more about them in due time.

I have a flurry of e-mails from people asking me questions about COVID. Do not ask me questions about COVID. I am not a doctor. I'm a guy who works on the Groo the Wanderer comic books. Could there be a profession — apart from whatever the hell it is Joe Rogan does — that makes one less qualified to give out medical advice? This is like if you need your appendix taken out and you go to Jiffy Lube and have them do it there.

I do know this much: In this world, you need to have a good doctor — someone you admit knows way more about medicine than you do and someone you trust. That doesn't mean trusting them blindly. Doctors can be wrong. You just need to trust them more than you trust what you read on The Internet.

In the meantime, there is one COVID-related question I feel qualified to answer: "When are you [meaning m.e.] going to appear again at a comic convention?" Real simple: When I feel it's safe. I've told the folks at WonderCon Anaheim that I'll be there April 1-3 if I feel it's safe…and I'll decide that closer to those dates. As I've said before here, I've found that the wisest thing for me is to not believe any predictions about when it will be over.

Even experts, let's remember, can be wrong. At this very moment, the AccuWeather app is telling me there's zero chance of precipitation in my area. And it's raining outside.

Another danged obit but this one is a belated one. Comic Leo DeLyon died last September 21 at the age of 96. Leo (whose real name was Irving Levin) had a long career as a comedian and a musical sidekick. For a long time, whenever Phil Silvers played Vegas or any night club, Leo was the guy at the piano, playing for him and bantering and getting his own laughs. He performed similar duties at times for Sandler and Young, Dean Martin and others.

We are especially interested in him because he occasionally did voices for cartoons. In the original Top Cat series in 1961, he did the voices of the characters Spook and Brain. That's them above with Leo between them. He did other voices now and then for Hanna-Barbera…on The Smurfs and Paw Paws, and on a few specials when they needed voice actors who could sing. He was also the voice of Flunkey the baboon in the Disney version of The Jungle Book.

He was a sweet, funny guy and I'm sorry I missed the news when he left us. He had one of those careers that lasted a long, long time but it was usually in supporting roles so I think a lot of the press missed his passing.

I only found out about it because Georgi Mihailov, a loyal reader of this site, wrote to ask me who else remains of the voice casts of early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Georgi wrote, "I can only think of three people — Tim Matheson, Jimmy Weldon and Danny Bravo, who voiced Hadji on Jonny Quest." Since we lost Julie Bennett to COVID in April of 2020, that's about it, I'm afraid. Of course, that depends on what you consider "early."

If you are interested in knowing more about my friend Dana Gabbard, I refer you to this fine article by Joe Linton.  Note that this does not appear on a comic book themed weblog but on one focusing on Dana's other big interest…local transit.