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.

Taylor Ramsey read here about the passing of Ron Goulart and sent me this question…

I was surprised to hear of Mr. Goulart's passing, though Wiki still has not heard of it apparently. I have some of his non-fiction works on my shelf. It raises a question both specific and in broader terms, why did he write under so many different names or why would any modern writer?

I know of cases where someone felt that one form of writing or another was "slumming" or the style was so different from what they were known for they would chose a different name, but this seems less obvious. He was so prolific that there really couldn't be much he didn't dabble in and the broadness and strength of his work would have surely benefited from prospective editors (or at least the ones you might want to work for) knowing the full breadth of his work.

Well, I never discussed this with Ron but I know a lot of writers who write under different names and there are a lot of different reasons for using a pseudonym on a book. You might have a contract to do a certain number of books for a certain publisher and you don't want them to know you're cheating on the contract and squeezing in a book for someone else.

Or they might know and not care as long as you don't disrupt their marketing plans. Let's say they're promoting you as a mystery author who brings out two gripping murder dramas a year. You have a sudden urge to write a treacly romance novel and they don't want to disrupt the image they're painting of you as a dedicated writer of whodunnits. So they ask that you not put your real name on the romance novel..or maybe you make that decision for that reason.

Or maybe someone's worried you have too much product hitting the market at the same time. Or maybe you knocked out a quick book for a quick buck and this one's not up to the standards you want associated with your name. Or maybe this one is porn.

But the most frequent reason is this: You couldn't pass up the deal.

You got an offer to write a certain book of a certain length for a certain fee and you think, "Hmm…that's decent money and it would be nice to add that money to my bank account." And maybe it's a book for a series that has a house name…for instance, the Tom Swift books were written by a lot of different people all under the name of "Victor Appleton." The Nancy Drew books were all by "Carolyn Keene." The Doc Savage and Avenger novels were all written by "Kenneth Robeson."

If you're a professional writer with any visible ability, you will almost certainly be offered ghost-writing jobs or jobs where your name will not appear…or if it does, it will be in real tiny type or you'll be credited for "research" or something and another name will be featured prominently on the cover. You may decide that that guaranteed money is better than waiting until you can sell a novel you're working on that might be more "you." You may decide to save your real name for books that are more "you."

And often, ghosting jobs are because someone putting together the book deal wants to involve someone with a bigger name and list them as the author. Their name might sell more books than yours. I've turned down a number of such offers and not necessarily because of the anonymity. I don't think I really considered that because, at the time those offers were offered, I just plain didn't have the time to take on those assignments. If I had, I might have taken one or two of 'em if I was low on other options.

On top of all that, it can be somewhat liberating to write something that you know won't have your name on it. You get paid and you'll never have to read a review that says "[YOUR NAME HERE] is a lousy writer."  I have no idea if that was ever Ron Goulart's motive but I know one writer who was quite shy and he wrote at least a dozen novels with his name appearing on zero of them.

I'll close off this answer with a quick story. A few decades ago, I read the autobiography of a Fairly Big TV Star. In it, he said that these were his words and he had refused the publisher's suggestion of a ghost-writer. I was a bit suspicious because it was pretty well-written and this gentleman, when I'd seen him interviewed, had never seemed that erudite to me. Then one day, I met the agent who'd handled that book.

I told him, "I find it hard to believe your client didn't have a ghost-writer."  The agent grinned, obviously proud of himself and said, "My client didn't know he had a ghost-writer."

He went on to explain that he'd arranged with the publisher to secretly hire one and he told the F.B.T.S., "You just dictate your book into a tape recorder. This guy I've hired will transcribe your words, clean up the punctuation and such, then chapter by chapter, we'll send the manuscript to you for your approval."  The ghost-writer completely wrote the book based on the tapes and when the chapters went to the Fairly Big TV Star, he read them and said, "Yeah, that's what I dictated all right."

The "ghost-writer" was paid well for his work (and his anonymity) and that money enabled him to spend plenty of time on a book that he did want to have his name on…and when that one came out, it did.

More bad/sad news: My buddy Ron Goulart — author of more books than most people have read — died this morning, the day after his 89th birthday. I don't know how many books Ron wrote and I wonder if even he did. A lot of them had other folks' names on them as author, sometimes even William Shatner's.

Of the many I could have stuck in the above graphic, I picked After Things Fell Apart because I liked it a lot and the title seems sadly apropos today.  His Wikipedia page has a partial (partial!) list of books that came from his typewriter and his glorious imagination…and as you'll see if you take a peek, other names were on a lot of them.

He was a great lover of comic books and a fine historian of the form.  He dabbled now and then in writing for comics and at one point, collaborated with artist Gil Kane on an ahead-of-its-time newspaper strip called Star Hawks.  The last time Ron and I were together — which I now sadly realize was too long ago — we had a long talk about how he wished he fit in better with the comic book field but kept finding more comfort in prose writing.

He was awfully good at it. He was awfully good at everything he did.

Veteran gag cartoonist Orlando Busino has left us at the age of 95. I don't write these about a lot of magazine cartoonists but Mr. Busino did exceptional work for magazines like McCalls, Reader's Digest, Good Housekeeping and Saturday Evening Post, and many other magazines. His series Gus — cartoons about a large shaggy dog — ran for years in Boys' Life.

I first became familiar with his work, as did my pal Scott Shaw!, during a brief period when Busino worked for the Archie people. His work appeared in Archie's Madhouse and a wonderful, not-sufficiently-recognized comic book called Tales Calculated to Drive You…BATS. It was kind of like "What if Charles Addams had produced MAD?" Scott and I both remember exactly which newsstand we were patronizing in December of 1961 when we glimpsed the cover of Bats #3 (above) and grabbed up our respective copies.

Alas, Busino's time in comic books did not last long and he soon joined the ranks of talented writers and artists who were driven from the industry by its parsimonious business practices. But he did not suffer because magazines eagerly welcomed his work. He just plain drew funny. As Scott noted on Facebook, "He was a member of the National Cartoonists Society and a 3-time recipient of the NCS' Reuben Division Gag Cartoonist of the Year Award and several other awards."

Scott and I just spent some time on the phone talking about how cleverly Mr. Busino designed that Bats cover. I don't want to oversell it because it's just another comic book cover…but it's a real good comic book cover. Artists who draw covers today could learn from Busino's placement of all the elements and the way he leads one's eye around the drawing. If you want to get a better look at it, click here. I was nine and Scott was ten and it did everything a good cover does. It got us to buy the comic and never forget it.

Jordan Klepper revisits 1/6/21…

I know the Don Rickles drawing by Jack Davis — the one I posted earlier — was for some Friars Roast. I thought that was so obvious I didn't think to mention it. I just don't know which Friars Roast it was for. The Friars roasted Don Rickles about as often as Henny Youngman asked people to please take his wife. There were public Friars Roasts of Don Rickles, private roasts of Don Rickles, televised roasts of Don Rickles, members-only roasts of Don Rickles…

The Friars roasted Don Rickles more than the Lawry's restaurants have roasted standing rib primals. I just don't know which Friars Roast of Don Rickles this was for and whether the drawing was used in advertising. That's all.

Here's your chance to own a piece of Mr. Warmth. An auction house is selling off items from the estate of Don and Barbara Rickles — awards, paintings, books, photos, original comic strips…even a hockey puck or two. Because I've never seen it anywhere else, I grabbed and cleaned-up the image of a Jack Davis drawing of Rickles done, I would guess, for an ad or maybe just a private commission. You can see it larger above by clicking on it.

I haven't been through it all yet so if you see anything really interesting, let me know. Here's the link to browse and even bid on Part 1. Here's the link to Part 2. And they're bidding even as I post this.

Oh, how I hate having to write obits for people I knew, especially someone as nice as Dana Gabbard.  If you have an interest in old Disney comics or any funny animal comics or animation, you owe a special nod to Dana.  He did a lot to uncover the names of folks who wrote and drew that kind of material.  He published a great fanzine, The Duckburg Times, which I'm sure cost him a lot of time and money but he was proud of it as well he should have been.

Dana was around sixty, give or take a year or two, and he worked a lot in the rapid transit business and for a time, for DirecTV.  He'd been sick for quite a while and we don't yet know the cause of death other than it occurred when he was being transported to a hospital emergency room via ambulance due to respiratory distress.  His health problems had reportedly prevented him from getting vaccinated against you-know-what but we don't know if that awful disease was a factor.

I met Dana at some San Diego Con or other a long time ago when he approached me for help in identifying unknown artists who drew Disney Comics for Western Publishing…for Dell or Gold Key publications.  There was no money for him in this; just the satisfaction of doing something he felt should be done.  Thereafter, I saw him at every comic convention in Southern California that he was physically able to attend.  A lot of the photos I have of the audiences for panels at Comic-Con are like "Where's Waldo?"  If you look hard enough, you can almost always find Dana somewhere in them.

We're talking here about a really great guy with a great sense of humor and a true love of funny comic books and the folks who made them.  We need more people like Dana Gabbard, not less.

Here's Bob Saget appearing with Johnny Carson back on January 4, 1989. When he comes out, he talks about but does not identify the previous guest. It was Jimmy Stewart…

Back in this post about the comedy team of Davis & Reese, I said that among the throngs of teams formed to try and emulate the success of Martin & Lewis, they were probably in third place after Rowan & Martin and Allen & Rossi. I got a number of e-mails from people asking about other teams like Stiller & Meara, Burns & Schreiber and even Skiles & Henderson. Those were all successful teams but (a) they came a bit later, after the rush of Dean/Jerry imitators and (b) they didn't fit the template of the handsome straight man (usually a singer) and a monkey.

Someone even asked me how I'd rank the team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who were closer to Martin & Lewis than a couple of acts currently touring who bill themselves openly as Martin & Lewis impersonators. I dunno. About all that survives for inspection of Mitchell & Petrillo is the movie Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, a film I've heard folks describe as "so bad it's good." In May of 2019, I took a lady who still hasn't forgiven me to a screening of it and about fifteen minutes in, we decided it was "so bad it's bad" and got the hell outta there. But maybe on stage doing their own material — if indeed they ever had their own material to do — Duke and Sammy were terrific.

I did see Marty Allen and Steve Rossi in what I think may have been their last-ever engagement in Las Vegas. It was at the Sands Hotel about a year before there was no more Sands Hotel. I always found Marty Allen pretty funny on TV but that night at the Sands, there was only one person in the showroom laughing at him and it wasn't me. It was Steve Rossi.  He acted as if every syllable out of Marty's mouth was hysterical and he kept telling us how his partner was the funniest man who ever lived.  If any of that had been true, it might not have been their last engagement.

"Winchester Cathedral" by a British group called The New Vaudeville Band somehow got onto my 1972 mixtape. The song came out in late 1966 and it was one of those "I can't believe this was a hit" hits…by a band nobody cared much about when they weren't singing this song. KHJ was still playing it occasionally when I taped tunes off the air and I stuck it on my mixtape.

It was a pleasant enough tune but not one I wanted to hear too often. On the tape, I remember it followed "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits and as that song ended, I'd reach for the fast-forward control on my tape player and zip past "Winchester Cathedral." One day in the eighties, I was in a Sizzler restaurant and they were playing "No Milk Today" and I caught myself instinctively reaching for a tape player that wasn't there to fast-forward through a song that would not follow.

And that's about all I have to say about this song. Here they are…The New Vaudeville Band on a 1966 Hollywood Palace hosted by Kate Smith, lip-syncing to a song that is not "Winchester Cathedral," followed by them lip-syncing to a short version of "Winchester Cathedral." You may want to fast-forward through the first one…

And since we've been talking about Allan Sherman here lately, here's his parody of the song…

Len Webb wrote…

I'm curious as to why you have not mentioned the passing of Sidney Poitier on your blog. I was actually looking forward to reading your opinion of his legacy.

While it's quite possible that you've never met the man, I've noticed that hasn't stopped you from offering your thoughts on other significant industry deaths. I am and will continue to be a daily fan of your writings, but this was an absence I was moved to comment on.

My opinion on his legacy is the same as everyone else's: Good actor…in a great many fine films…did a lot to break though racial barriers. But I think one of the first rules of doing a blog like this is to never forget that anyone reading your site is probably reading dozens of others before and after they get to yours.

When anyone important passes, I ask myself the question, "Do I have anything to say about the person that dozens of others aren't saying?" In this case, the answer was no. I never met the man. I haven't seen that many of his movies and I'm no authority on any of them or his career. There were hundreds of articles and tributes all over the 'net before I could have posted one. If I had, I would have just been repeating what you read elsewhere.

It's official. It was a rumor when we reported it back here but now it's been announced that a Peter Luger Steak House will open at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas around the end of 2022. That's fine for me because I doubt I'll be in Las Vegas before then. The Peter Luger in Brooklyn is probably my favorite restaurant…though I must admit I haven't been to it in a long time.

Why? Because it's in Brooklyn…and even when I'm in New York, it's a difficult place to get to. First off, you have to make reservations way in advance. Secondly, to get out there, have dinner and get back to Manhattan means giving up the idea of going to a Broadway show that evening. So it comes down to: Do I want to have dinner at my favorite restaurant? Or do I want to have dinner at a really good restaurant closer to the theater district and see a show? I usually opt for the latter.

Here's an excerpt from the press release…

Operating for nearly 135 years, Peter Luger is New York's top-rated steak house and a favorite among locals and tourists alike. The iconic German beer-hall setting has become a world-famous choice for family gatherings, deal-making, and special occasion celebrations. With its notoriously gruff, bow-tied waitstaff, old-world charm, and on-site dry-aging of legendary USDA-Prime steaks, dining at Peter Luger has become a culinary rite of passage.

A Peter Luger in Vegas will be so much more convenient. I'm just hoping they can properly replicate what makes it special. The meat shouldn't be a problem but where are they going to find sufficiently-gruff waiters?