If you are hesitant about getting vaccinated for COVID-19 or trying to help someone who is, listen to one of the smarter guys I've come across on the Internet, John Green…

• When I read that Chris Christie is running for president in 2024, I think how ridiculous it is that an ex-governor who left office with a 14% approval rating could even get his party's nomination. And then I think how unlikely it once was that Donald Trump could do that.

Jim Shegas writes that neither I nor Scott Edelman wrote the first solo Falcon story…

Actually, the first Falcon solo story was by Gary Friedrich and Gray Morrow in Captain America #144. It was produced during Marvel's brief flirtation with 25-cent double-sized comics. They changed their minds after only one month and went back to the regular format. This story had its start as a backup story to an extra-long Captain America lead story. While the double-sized story was being produced for issue #144 they found they needed to chop it into two parts with the rest going into #145. John Romita was enlisted to make some alterations to the Falcon story's first and last pages to make it fit to insert into the (now-shortened) Captain America story in #144 as a "Chapter 2" instead. But it is to all intents and purposes a separate Falcon story.

I remember that story. John Romita did more than "some alterations" to the first and last pages. And I remember it because I met Gray Morrow at a comic convention shortly after it came out and he was still quite upset that someone had ordered so many redraws, not to alter the story but because they just didn't like the way he'd drawn so many of the faces and figures.

He was not angry so much as hurt and puzzled that they felt they had to do that to a guy who'd been in the business for so long. He was another one of those artists — I could make a lengthy list — who was brimming with talent and had so much to offer…but the business never knew quite what to do with him.

Okay, I hereby remove myself from any position of authority on what the first Falcon solo story was. If anyone wants to know for sure, don't ask me.

Frank Balkin wrote me to say…

I can't speak for other comics fans, but I started reading at 8 years old in 1976, and I enjoyed back-up features. I didn't feel like "Well, I bought Detective Comics for Batman, why am I not getting 17 pages of Batman?" I thought, "Wow, this Elongated Man character isn't as interesting to me as Batman but he's fun to read about, too."

Yeah, that was how it was when I started reading comics. My first super-hero comic was Action Comics #250. Half the comic was Superman, a fourth was Tommy Tomorrow and the rest was Congorilla. I enjoyed them all and I think I enjoyed the sheer variety…but that was long ago. Folks who've analyzed sales figures more closely than I ever did came to the conclusion in the seventies that readers didn't feel that way about their comics.

They likened back-up features to if you bought a can of corn, got it home and opened it and discovered it was two-thirds corn, one-third peas. I'm not sure they were right but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

Meanwhile, Michael Grabowski wrote about some back-up stories from my past…

Funny you mention back-ups in comics featuring other than title characters. I was still a single-digit aged comics reader when Hanna-Barbera comics stopped coming from Charlton and started coming from Marvel, and it was in one or more of those that I first noticed your name, and I believe I even wrote you a fan letter then! I may never have sent it, but I loved the line "Elbow macaroni sits on a poodle's nose" in what I think was a Fred Flintstone spy adventure. (My thinking was that they would never run a letter from me in The Amazing Spider-Man, but there couldn't be nearly as much competition to get in an H-B comic.)

I bought several of those Marvel/H-B comics from 7-Eleven, but rarely in consecutive order. But what really bugged me was the way each comic had a back-up story featuring other characters that set up the lead story in that other character's next comic. For instance, the Fred Flintstone spy story was probably set up in the back of Yogi Bear or Dynomutt. Thankfully, the lead stories never seemed to depend on the other comic's back-up intro, (Nice editing, there!) but it was always frustrating getting a little hook to find another comic the next month, which I never quite made happen. (I don't know why that never bugged me when hero comics had regular cliff-hangers if I never found their part 2s on the spinner rack.)

Yeah, the guy who set up that deal — who knew as much about comic books as I do about Evolutionary Culturology — had this brainstorm. Each issue of the Yogi Bear comic and the Flintstones comic would have a three-page back-up story of the other, teasing the next issue coming out. Same deal with the Scooby Doo and the Dynomutt comics. It was a bad idea, I thought, but we were stuck with it.

If you sent that letter, you wasted your time. The only address in the comics was Marvel's address in New York and they did not forward any mail to us so we did not do letter columns. A person who worked back there told me they got some and threw them away. Perhaps the thrower-awayer was the low-level individual then on staff at Marvel who let me know in no uncertain terms that he was very upset the Hanna-Barbera comics were being produced out of the Hanna-Barbera studio in Hollywood instead of out of the Marvel office back east. That meant he couldn't work on them and that bothered him a lot. He also told me that the day would come when he would run Marvel Comics…and he got about as close to that goal as I did to sleeping with all the Golddiggers on The Dean Martin Show.

Lastly, my buddy Phil Geiger was the only person who wrote to tell me…

You've probably had dozens of people tell you by now, but yeah, DC just started doing back-up stories in a lot of their books again. For example, Bibbo in Superman and Midnighter in Action Comics.

Duly noted. Hey, is anyone doing letter columns these days? I don't see a lot of current comics but the ones I see don't have them. I'm about to compose a letters page for an upcoming Groo comic, the on-sale date of which will be announced in the next week or so. How alone am I in taking the time to do these?

I have received two e-mails practically begging me to stop with the Flintstones theme videos. I have received a few dozen messages from people who love them.

I do not understand why a person is bothered by an easily-skippable item on a blog, especially one which cannot harm you even if you do somehow feel compelled to click and play it. 95% of the Internet is of no interest to me and I have no trouble avoiding it, nor do I want to take it away from those who might enjoy it.

So here we have another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by the Big Band Waidhofen…

In this post the other day, I told the story of how I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel Comics hero, The Falcon. Well, I thought I had. Turns out it was the first book-length story to feature the character. My pal Scott Edelman wrote, as one of his first jobs in comics, a short Falcon tale that appeared in Captain America #220, four months before mine saw print. Scott notes in an e-mail to me that…

My story was created as part of a different initiative to solving the lateness issue than yours. Rather than slotting in an entire fill-in issue to allow a title's regular creative team to catch up, back-ups allowed that team to deliver a shorter lead story, with the issue filled out by a back-up, giving that team some breathing space, though not as much as a full fill-in issue would have.

These back-ups gave many beginners the chance to show what they could do, and I wrote 5- and 6-page stories not only about The Falcon, but about The Vision, Nick Fury, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, and many others as well.

Do comics even do back-up stories anymore? I know they went outta fashion in the seventies. Folks like Len Wein and Dick Giordano occasionally theorized that readers resented them; that if you bought an issue of Batman, you wanted an issue of Batman and would feel cheated if you got two-thirds of an issue of Batman and then there was a Batgirl story in the back. Even worse was a back-up story that in no way connected with the lead feature…

…although when I did the Blackhawk comic for DC in the early eighties, Len (my first editor on it) and Dick (then the Exec Editor at DC) wanted there to be an occasional back-up feature called "Detached Service Diary." It was a recurring feature of previous Blackhawk runs and it consisted of solo stories of the members of the Blackhawk squadron.

We did not do it for deadline reasons. In a way, we did it to please a couple of artists who loved Blackhawk and wanted to draw some stories of it. For much of the time I did that comic, it was not only the only DC comic with back-up stories, it was the only DC comic with stories under book-length. This led to an interesting situation where the back-up stories in Blackhawk were solving deadline problems for other DC comics. I'll have to tell that story here one of these days.

Anyway, Scott Edelman wrote the first solo story of The Falcon. I am pleased to pass that distinction on to him.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Simon Åkesson and Evan Sanders, with the help of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty…

I don't seem to have much to say about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial that others aren't saying. Viewed from afar as most of us viewed it, it seemed like an open-and-shut case of police wrongdoing…and it's nice to see one of those not go the cop's way for a change. I saw someone on CNN (I think it was) say that police would be outraged at the jury's actions. I think they should be outraged at the crime.

Naturally, I'm curious as to how long ex-officer Chauvin will serve…and where he'll serve it. I'd really love to know what he was thinking as that verdict was read. We could only see his eyes but they looked like they were saying, "Yeah, just about what I expected." What I saw of the closing argument from The Defense looked to me like the attorney was just going through the motions, already resigned to the outcome.

And I wonder how the jury's ten hours of deliberations went. Were there ever any votes to let Chauvin walk out of there a free man? Or did they spend the the time reviewing the case carefully and then debating which of the three counts applied?

Here's a solid explainer about today's verdict. It doesn't answer any of my questions but it will remind you what today was all about. It's about all that and working towards a justice system that doesn't treat minorities as guilty until proven innocent.

The Palace Theatre, a restored art deco-style 1940s theater in Dallas-Fort Worth runs classic/vintage movies. This Saturday at 4 PM, they're running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on what I'm told is a big screen. That's one of my two requirements for enjoying this film at its maximum strength. The other is a large, enthusiastic audience.

The Palace is currently operating at 75% capacity so people don't have to sit so close to strangers. Their website also says "While masks are no longer a requirement, they are highly recommended. Staff will continue to wear masks." Even fully-vaccinated, I don't think I'd take the risk but you do what you want to do. And either way, let's thank Dan Koller for letting me know about it.

Q: What's worse than your Internet service being out?

A: When it goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and g

Not really but it can feel that way when your Internet connection ain't working…as mine isn't. And just as I don't put much stock in anyone's predictions of when The Pandemic will be over, I've learned not to rely on my Internet Service Provider's reassurances as to when service will be restored. "Sometime between now and the turn of the century" is their current forecast and I don't even trust that.

So posting here will be light until it happens (if it happens) because I'm lousy at typing with my thumbs on my iPhone as I'm doing now.

The Daily Show ain't what it used to be but they've had some great material on it in the last year or two. A lot of what I've most enjoyed have been reports filed by Jordan Klepper, a brave man who ventured into Trump rallies and even the 1/6 demonstration/assault. They've just put together a "best of" compilation that includes new material. If you have a half-hour, you might enjoy it. At the very least, you will admire the man's courage…

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Asia's premiere vocal group, The CompanY (that's how they type it) accompanied by the University of the Philippines Jazz Ensemble…

If someone is trying to argue with you that it's wrong for the U.S. to get the hell outta Afghanistan, send them a link to this article by Daniel Larison.

• Can you imagine what the late Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr. would say about a Democrat who had behaved like Jerry Falwell Jr.?

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #1: I want to thank all of you who've written in to tell me of the great Creamy Tomato Soup you've found in some store. I'm not belittling your taste when I tell you that if I tried it — and I'm tried all the ones suggested that are obtainable where I live — it wasn't what I wanted. I really am happy with the kind I now make for myself and will probably try no others. But I appreciate that someone took the time to write and try to help.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #2: I have decided not to post as much on Facebook or to read some of the forums where I find messages that compel me to debate or correct. Some especially nasty/inaccurate postings on the Marvel forums lately have me limiting my participation on them. But if you see something posted on this blog that might be of interest to the folks in any Facebook forum or anywhere, please post a link over there to them. Apart from tipping (hint, hint) it's the best way to show appreciation for this blog.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #3: I've had more than the usual sprinkling of typos on this blog lately. A frighteningly-perceptive reader (and reporter of some typos) named Larry Blair noticed that they almost all involved my left hand because they involved keys on the left side of my keyboard. This is probably because I'm having a fair amount of trouble with my left shoulder.

I am now under the care of a Terrific Shoulder Doctor and I start physical therapy tomorrow for the problem. The Terrific Shoulder Doctor says it will be a few months before the condition is eradicated but it already feels a bit better thanks to him…and I should also thank whoever invented Meloxicam, which also helped a lot back when I had my knee replcement. I would fix the missing letter in "replacement" but it's on the left side of the keyboard.