Featuring Mara Junot, Maurice LaMarche, Anna Brisbin and Brock Powell…

Featuring Jonathan Ross and Neil Gaiman…

An acquaintance of mine who doesn't believe in wearing masks, Donald Trump losing elections or — probably — the Earth being round is mad he isn't at the Anaheim Convention Center right now. The Pandemic ain't over (new cases are still being reported) but he thinks there's not only light at the tunnel but us, too. We're there, it's over and why the hell can't he have everything back right this minute?

I like WonderCon as much as he does but I'm glad they went virtual with it and I'm glad the same folks aren't trying to have a real Comic-Con International in July. He thinks they're being too cautious. I think they aren't. If they're erring, at least they're erring on the side of Safety instead of erring on the side of Maybe Killing Grandma.

So I'm at home where, at least, the food's better and when I need to use the toilet, I rarely have to wait in line behind a guy in a Chewbacca suit. And I'm enjoying some of the online panels. The three I did will be on this site before the day is out. We're making the best of it.

In an alternate universe where COVID-19 was stopped at the borders — preferably not our borders — WonderCon 2021 would be convening tomorrow in Anaheim, not far from where Disneyland is (and has been) in full operation. But we can all attend it virtually this weekend from wherever we're sequestered.

Tune in tomorrow and enjoy the many great panels that will be available online including the three of mine that will go online tomorrow. They will also be linked here at some point. You can find the whole schedule posted here. I will, as usual, be cosplaying as Harley Quinn for much of the event…

All of these are tomorrow, Friday, March 26, all times are Pacific and all panels run an hour, give or take a few minutes…

10 AM – The Jack Kirby Tribute Panel
Mark Evanier (Kirby: King of Comics) talks about the man some call "The King of the Comics" with author Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and TV host and mega-Kirby fan Jonathan Ross. They will attempt to discuss what was special about the work of Jack Kirby and why, long after we lost him, he seems to be more popular than ever.

1 PM – Cartoon Voices
Mark Evanier (supervising producer of The Garfield Show) welcomes four of the best actors today supplying the words and sounds of animated superstars and the strange beings who inhabit videogames. They are Maurice LaMarche (Pinky and the Brain), Mara Junot (Mortal Combat 11), Brock Powell (Phineas and Ferb: Candace against the Universe) and Anna Brisbin (Final Fantasy VII Remake). There will be a script reading of a script they've never seen before and plenty of talk about their craft.

5 PM – The Groo Crew
The four guys responsible for the comic book Groo the Wanderer — Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth — talk about how and why they create the adventures of the stupidest character in all of comics, and maybe we'll get Sergio to talk about his 55 years with MAD magazine and Stan to discuss new and exciting news about his creation, Usagi Yojimbo.

Dana Carvey was on with Stephen Colbert not last night but the night before. Mr. Carvey did impressions of Dr. Fauci and President Biden — the first good ones I've heard of either gent. When I heard them, I had two thoughts, one being that Saturday Night Live has had a lot of folks who try to do impressions but very few as good as Dana Carvey.

And my second thought it that we're going to see a lot of good Fauci and Biden impressions now…but they won't be done by folks imitating Fauci and Biden. What we'll be hearing is impressions of Dana Carvey doing Fauci and Biden

This is a ten minute excerpt from Colbert's show but I've set it to start playing at the 4:30 mark where the impressions begin. If you want to watch the whole thing, just move the slider all the way to the left…

Our pal Stu Shostak found this on YouTube. It's thirteen minutes of the 1956 Broadway musical The Most Happy Fella as presented that year on Ed Sullivan's show. The Most Happy Fella was a modest hit when it debuted. It ran 676 performances, probably because of its bouncy songs by Frank Loesser (who also penned the book) and a lot of good promotion.

A lot of it was on Ed's show that night — Sunday, October 28, 1956 — and that episode got a whopping tune-in thanks to it also featuring the second appearance of Mr. Elvis Presley. There was also an episode of I Love Lucy that was practically a commercial for The Most Happy Fella…and yes, Lucy and Desi had invested in the musical.

But Most Happy Fella isn't performed much. There was one major attempt to revive it on Broadway in 1979 but it closed in about six weeks, and there've been a few scattered revivals here and there. I've never seen a production of it. A friend of mine who did said it was a lot of great songs, not a lot of great stuff between them.

Here's what may be the best of those great songs as performed by Robert Weede, Jo Sullivan and the Company…

Here's the first part of a story I just read online…

Late-night host and comedian Jay Leno has issued an apology for a series of jokes told over his career targeting Asian communities. The apology comes after a nearly 15-year campaign from the activist group Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) for remarks as recent as Variety's 2020 report that Leno cracked about Koreans eating dog meat — a complaint that offended numerous players on the set of NBC's America's Got Talent.

I suspect some will be citing this as an example of comedy being damaged by "political correctness" and/or Leno lacking guts. If there's going to be a discussion about this, it oughta include a couple of other considerations, starting with the recognition that not everything that was ever funny is funny forever. We can all cite past comedy about various racial groups that no one would do today.

They might not do it because it's in poor taste or they might not do it because audiences don't laugh at it…or both might be true. I'm curious as to whether Jay has been getting decent reactions to jokes about Koreans eating dogs lately. I know he dropped a lot of material because he thought he was too old for "flirty" kinds of jokes and too wealthy for jokes about eating at McDonald's. A lot of long-time comedians could stand to prune some of their older, outta-date ideas about what's funny.

A friend of mine saw one of the last live appearances that Don Rickles did. I asked how he was and my friend said, "Great…if you could pretend it was 1969." No one probably expected Rickles to change his act at the age of 87, nor would most of them have wanted him to…but he wasn't a topical comic. Leno is and he's also not in his eighties. One of the reasons George Carlin remained at the top of his game until he died was that he dumped bits like the one about the Indian Staff Sergeant. Seems to me this is the same thing.

This is kind of a Note-To-Self to remind me to do this every so often. Yesterday, I spent a little time "canceling" subscriptions I have to certain online services. I have a lot of these subscriptions and I've found, as most of you probably have, that if you cancel them, you get offered a much lower price to stay.

This is especially true of the subscriptions that won't let you cancel online; where you have to call a toll-free number and talk to an alleged human being. Of course, you have to be prepared to actually cancel. You may also have to turn down one lower offer to get an even lower offer.

I think I saved myself about $400 yesterday. Half of that came from one service that wanted to charge me $300 for another year. I said that was too much so they offered a rate of $200. I said that was too much and we wound up at $105. But I did this with five different services. Four of them gave me a better price not to cancel and I decided to live without the fifth…and dropping that saved me another sixty bucks. It was certainly worth the time I spent.

One tip when you do this: Always ask the question, "What is the total price I will pay including all fees and taxes?" A lot of these "lower offers" come with hidden add-on prices. And you have to be real clear on whether the reduced price also takes away some aspect of the service that you want.

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I can't think of anything to say about George Segal, who died the other day at the age of 87 except this: I didn't like every movie the man made but I always liked him. I liked him when he and his banjo showed up on Johnny Carson's show too. And I really liked Where's Poppa?

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Sidney Powell, as we all know, is that lady who was on the news 24/7 for a time claiming that she had incontrovertible proof that Trump won the 2020 election big, that voting machines were rigged, that zillions of Trump votes went uncounted and that she would soon "unleash the Kraken" in court and prove all this and sue people who were behind "The Steal" into oblivion.

And like you, I'm amused that now that a company that made the voting machines is trying to sue her into oblivion, the new line is that what she said was all "opinion" and that "no reasonable person would conclude those were truly statements of fact." In other words: "I had no proof and everyone should have known that."

I do not quite grasp why she and her lawyers think this will get her off the hook in that lawsuit. Doesn't this help the lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems make their case that her statements were untrue and she knew they were untrue when she made them? In any case, it's kinda fun to see her say, in effect, that anyone who believed her was an idiot.

More interesting to me is this paragraph in this piece about Ms. Powell's "defense"…

…there's been a change in [Trump's] approach when talking about the election, and one that was apparent in his Fox News appearance. When the former president has tried to make a case that the election was stolen from him in recent weeks, he's no longer made claims about votes being changed. Instead, he's argued that pandemic-related changes to state election laws were unconstitutional — arguments that were rejected in courtroom after courtroom when Trump's lawyers made them, including by judges he appointed.

Trump has always had this way of shifting his position without admitting that the one he's abandoned wasn't true and wasn't working. So why was he trying to get Georgia election officials to "find" more votes for him if the problem was that they'd changed the rules to allow more people to vote?

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Dr. Anthony Fauci is cautiously optimistic that performance venues like Broadway theaters will be back to full audiences by Fall.

When I mentioned him before on this blog, I got an e-mail from someone asking me, "Do you think Dr. Fauci has been 100% accurate about this pandemic?" No, I don't think anyone who has made public statements about this pandemic had been 100% accurate. Dr. Fauci, at least, seems to be qualified to say the things he's said and unlike most, when he's optimistic, he has the wisdom to be cautiously optimistic.

Since there ain't gonna be no Comic-Con International in San Diego this July, we who select the winner of the annual Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing are going to do what we did last year. We"re going to give out another half-dozen posthumous awards. We have many, many past nominations and we'll wade through all of them but this is the announcement that for about the next five weeks, we're open to more.

This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer…someone who is or was unrecognized and/or unrewarded for that body of work. It is not for your favorite artist. It is not for someone who wrote a few stories. It is not for someone whose talents have been honored over and over. It is not for someone who got very, very rich and/or famous writing comics. And the posthumous one, which is the only kind we're presenting this year, is not for someone who is alive.

It is also not for anyone who has received this award in the past. The full list of such people can be read over on this page.

If you have already nominated someone in years past, you need not nominate them again. You can if you want but either way, they will be considered for this year's awards.

Here's the address for nominations. They will be accepted until April 30 at which time all reasonable suggestions will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee and we'll pick six names to add to the above list. Thank you.

My buddy Charlie Frye does stuff like this. I can't do this. You can't do this. But Charlie can do this…

There's a bit of self-advice I've occasionally heard from folks who are in positions that require them to make a lot of important decisions. It's about the power of "no" and it goes something like this: Every time you have to say "yes" or "no," say "no." You'll be right 90+% of the time and in most of those jobs, to be right 90+% of the time is quite an achievement.

I don't necessarily endorse that position for all matters but when it comes to talking about Gun Control, you'll be right an acceptable percentage of the time if you always say "Nothing meaningful will be done." It's one of those hills which too many people are prepared to die on. And it doesn't even matter what's in the bill or proposal. The mere fact that it controls one or more guns anywhere is reason enough for some people to oppose it.

So that's my view after the most recent mass shootings: Nothing meaningful will be done. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong but I bet I won't be.

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Whatever else you may think about Bernie Sanders — and I think he's a good man who could never have beaten Donald Trump — he is a staunch defender of Freedom of Speech. I say this as a firm believer that you are not any kind of defender of Freedom of Speech when you are defending someone's right to say what you believe. Anyone could and would do that. You're only a defender of the staunch kind when you defend the kind of speech you'd rather someone wasn't saying.

Bernie is not comfortable with a private company with the reach of Twitter banning Donald Trump. There are two sides to this issue and I'm not sure which side I'm on…but I do admire anyone who does what Senator Sanders is doing here, even if I ultimately decide he's wrong.

The complete run of Thundarr the Barbarian — a cartoon show I worked on 41 years ago — is coming out on Blu Ray and the hero is also receiving that highest of dubious honors. He and his co-stars are appearing as Funko Pop figurines that, of course, look exactly like the original Alex Toth designs.

(People get confused about this so here it is once again: When Steve Gerber and Joe Ruby created Thundarr, Alex Toth did the initial designs, including the models for the three lead characters. This was all pitched to the folks at ABC. They were hesitant to buy the show. More written material was generated and more artwork was drawn. By this point, Alex was unavailable so I suggested Jack Kirby be engaged. He was…and he did the additional presentation art and when ABC then bought the show, Jack did most of the additional designing.)

I don't make anything off the Blu Ray just as I didn't make anything off the DVD.  I just enjoy pointing out the longevity of this property which was only on ABC for two seasons and 21 episodes.  That's usually considered a failure in TV but those episodes keep being rerun and rerun, and there is now more Thundarr merchandise than there was when the show was a current network TV program.  I wish my buddy Steve was around to see that.

You can pre-order the Blu Ray at this link you can order your Thundarr Funko Pop figure on this page and also find links to the Funko versions of Ookla and Princess Ariel.

I don't watch The Masked Singer or The Masked Dancer because, among other reasons, whenever one of their mystery performers unmasks, there's about a 75% chance I've never heard of them. But the true identity of "The Snail" was recently revealed on The Masked Singer and it turned out to be someone familiar to me…and to you, as well. If you didn't see this and didn't hear who it was, you might enjoy watching this great unmasking…

The news feeds I follow contain much debate about that man who went on the murder rampage in Atlanta last week and whether he was motivated by anti-Asian racism. It was a pretty horrible thing to do, no matter what drove that guy and it's curious to me that some people seem to think it can or should be narrowed down to one reason. Misogyny and racism would certainly seem high on the list of factors but a person that screwed-up might have a pretty long list.

I think back to a college-type course I took back in the seventies about Criminology. The instructor, who seemed overwhelmingly qualified to teach that subject, got to talking about a kind of novel or movie that was prevalent then. They were stories in which the crime-solver caught the serial murderer by studying what little was known about that serial murderer — his actions, his modus operandi — and achieving some sort of mental connection.

The premise was that to catch someone who was criminally-insane, the Good Guy had to go to the darkest of places and think like the criminally-insane…and my instructor said that was largely hokum. You couldn't think like a crazy person any more than you could think like a cocker spaniel or a grizzly bear. The serial killer might as well have been of a different species and he — assuming it was a he — might have no conscious thought as to why they were doing what they were doing.

There was a limit, my teacher said, to the usefulness of applying rational reasoning to irrational thinking; of trying to put yourself in the place of someone who would do something you would never in a million years do. He said, "A truly crazy person might kill someone because he didn't like the color of their socks or because the Mind-Masters of Saturn told him to."

I don't think it's quite as pointless as that and I certainly don't think any of the motives ascribed to the Atlanta killer — hatred of a race, hatred of a gender, sex addiction, et al — can be ruled out. I just think maybe we sometimes try too hard to boil these things down to a one-sentence explanation when it might take a book the length of one of Stephen King's to really explain it. A lot of that book might very well be in the language of the Mind-Masters of Saturn.

We should fight racism and misogyny and all other kinds of hate in every way possible. We just shouldn't think they explain everything.

Here's some really sharp footage of Las Vegas in 1954, though there aren't many marquee signs to see. Nelson Eddy is at the Flamingo with Gale Sherwood and George DeWitt. Ms. Sherwood was the person Nelson sang with when he wasn't singing with Jeanette MacDonald, and Mr. DeWitt was the singing host of the game show, Name That Tune.

Patti Page was headlining at the Desert Inn which in this video probably looks just like it looked when my parents were married there in 1951.