I recently did a post here about what happens when, as occasionally happens, the artwork for a comic book gets lost in the mail. Right after I posted that, I noticed that the Comic Book Resources site had this post up about a time back in 1978 when by a strange twist of fate, I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel super-hero, The Falcon. [CORRECTION: No, I didn't.]

As you'll see, it was another example of artwork getting (sorta) lost in the mail so I figured I oughta tell the whole story. This may take a while so I'm going to include this cautionary note…

Now then: My friend Steve Gerber was living out here in Burbank, working for Marvel and serving as writer-editor of his beloved Howard the Duck comic. They'd just assigned him a similar post on the Captain America comic and when he got it, the book was several months behind schedule, probably through no fault of whoever had preceded him.

The way to get it on-schedule — the only way, really — would have been to do two or three issues a month until he was caught up. I had that problem once on the first comic book on which I was editor and in this case, it was my fault. I stupidly let my "lead" slip away so I sat down and wrote full scripts for three issues in one week. Then I hired a couple of different artists to draw them and before long, I was not only on schedule but ahead.

Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't find a couple of different artists who were acceptable and immediately available. He couldn't find one. He made a number of calls and at that moment, anyone he knew who was good enough to draw Captain America was also good enough to have a full schedule of work.

The only artist he had was the book's regular artist, Sal Buscema. And the problem there was that Sal was drawing, I believe, four comics a month for Marvel at the time…doing rough layouts or rough pencils, true, but he couldn't do more than one issue a month for Steve.

Steve spent a lot of time talking to various folks in the New York office and it was finally decided that there would be a fill-in issue that spotlighted The Falcon, The Falcon then being Captain America's sidekick and co-star of their comic. Marvel was then somewhat fussy about how their superstar characters like Captain America were drawn but The Falcon was not then a superstar character. There was less concern about who would draw him…and someone other than Steve could write that issue so Steve could focus on getting ahead on the regular Captain America storyline, which was going to be neglecting The Falcon for a while.

He then called me and asked me to write that Falcon story. It had to be a one-issue standalone story and it had to be out-of-continuity because they weren't sure exactly which month it would run. Also, it could have a brief cameo of Captain America but for no more than a few panels. I asked who was going to draw it. He said, "Whoever's wandering around the Marvel offices tomorrow who needs work."

I shrieked, "Tomorrow?" and he said, "Yes! I need you to drop everything and write a plot outline we can get in the mail to New York tonight so it can go to an artist tomorrow. I'd do it but I have to finish dialoguing Howard the Duck pages and get them in the mail tonight."

(I should explain: Like most Marvel comics then, Howard the Duck and Captain America were being done "Marvel Method," meaning that the writer wrote a plot outline, it was sent to an artist to draw in pencil and then those pages were sent to the writer to compose the dialogue.)

I said okay, fine, I'll do it. You could then send overnight packages to New York via Express Mail if you got them to the big post office near Los Angeles International Airport by 10 PM. I sat down and wrote a plot. Around 9 PM, Steve arrived at my house with his Howard the Duck pages and we went over my hastily-written Falcon storyline. He okayed it — like he had much of a choice — then we packed it and his pages up in an Express Mail package and drove out to the airport, getting there with seconds (but not minutes) to spare.

We then drove to Canter's Delicatessen for chow since neither one of us had had dinner. Steve was confident it would all work out and get the book ahead. I asked him who he thought would draw the Falcon story from my plot and he said, "I asked them to give it to anyone…well, anyone except Sal Buscema." He said that because as soon as he finished the next Captain America plot in a day or two, that would be going to Sal Buscema. It wouldn't get the Captain America book ahead if they sent my plot to Sal.

And of course, the next day, whoever assigned such things in the Marvel office then sent my plot to Sal Buscema.

There was some question as to whether whoever did that did it because they didn't pay attention to Steve's request or because they were trying to sabotage him or because at that moment, Sal needed something to work on and there was no plot to send him from Steve or the folks writing the other books Sal worked on. I have no idea which was the case; just that my plot went to Sal so the fill-in to get the book ahead was not going to get the book ahead. (I also have no idea who sent it to Sal. In the Comic Book Resources piece, author Brian Cronin speculates it was Jim Shooter. I see no reason to assume this.)

Steve meanwhile had a similar but not-as-severe deadline problem with Howard the Duck which was being drawn by Gene Colan — again, one of several books (like Tomb of Dracula) that Gene was doing for Marvel then. Gene's schedule was similarly tight so he could only do one issue of Howard per month at best. Fortunately, Steve didn't have to get anyone's okay to assign an issue of Howard the Duck to another artist so again, I quickly wrote a plot and our mutual friend Will Meugniot began drawing it.

He continued battling with Marvel over deadlines and before the penciling was completed on either of the stories, Steve was fired. I don't know to what extent that was because of lateness and to what extent it was because he was making noises about how he should own all or part of Howard the Duck. I'm not sure Steve knew, either. In any case, he still owed Marvel a certain number of pages for which he'd been paid in advance and his lawyer suggested that it would be good if Steve finished them, a.s.a.p. before everyone plunged into the murky area of lawsuits relating to his termination.

Will had just finished penciling the Howard story and turned its pages over to Steve to give to me to dialogue. I suggested that Steve do it instead of me, which would help him whittle down the number of pages he owed Marvel. This was done. Meanwhile, Sal Buscema had sent Marvel the pages for the story with The Falcon and they were reportedly being forwarded on to me to dialogue. I was going to turn them over to Steve to dialogue, again so he could get even with Marvel on pages owed.

But that didn't happen. Well past the date when they should have arrived at my home, I hadn't received them. I called Marvel to tell them and someone there — Roger Stern, I think — told me to just keep waiting. (These were the original art pages Sal had penciled. And no one in New York had made copies of them.)

The folks back there were worried about lost pages but not about deadlines. I was told they weren't going to use the story in the Captain America comic because, once it was drawn, they saw that it didn't have more than a few panels of Captain America in it. That is, of course, exactly what I'd been told to do. Not using it in the Captain America comic would put that book even farther behind for whoever took over as editor from Steve…but, hey, that wasn't my problem. It was also no longer Steve's.

They weren't sure where, when or even if it was going to be published so we could just give the mail time. If the pages never showed up, they would just scrub the whole story. If the pages did turn up, I could dialogue them at my leisure and send them in whenever.

Weeks passed. The pages did not arrive. We gave up on them.

Now all this time, I was editing and writing most of the Hanna-Barbera comics that Marvel was then publishing. The original art pages for those comics were returned to H-B after publication in packages that were not addressed to me — just to the studio. A guy in the mailroom there would look at the return address and think, "Marvel Comics? I guess this goes to the office where they're doing the comic books!" And he'd then throw the packages in the corner of my office where they usually remained unopened for some time. For me, it was one of those "I'll get around to it one of these days" tasks.

One of those days, I had a rare spot of Nothing To Do so I opened a half dozen of them and in one package, there it was, nestled in amongst a batch of returned Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear pages: The missing Sal Buscema artwork! It had arrived when it was supposed to arrive. I just didn't know or imagine it was in one of those packages.

I don't know why whoever shipped art out from Marvel did that. Clipped to the pages was a note with my home address and instructions to send the art there but whoever sent them hadn't done that. He or she had no way of knowing that package would wind up in my office instead of going to some H-B warehouse. Even if they had known that, I could have gone several more months without opening that particular package and finding Sal's pages in it.

Anyway, I called Marvel to report that I'd found the missing story. They said fine, just get it done whenever you get it done. I got it done, sent it in, got paid, assumed I'd never see it published…and many months later, was surprised to see it turn up as an issue of Marvel Premiere. What did I think of the finished product? Well, it had a real nice Frank Miller cover on it.

(More detailed answer: If I'd known it was going to run as a standalone — and if I'd had more than about three hours to plot it — I would have done a very different story.)

Before I end this, I don't want to give anyone the impression that Steve Gerber — a friend I still miss an awful lot — was always late with his work. When he worked for me on several projects, he was always on time or close enough. But we all go through periods where we have problems — sometimes of our own making, sometimes because we find ourselves in a less-than-ideal work situation, occasionally both.

Steve was not one of those writers who could sit down every day at 9 AM and have X number of pages completed by quitting time and that is not a criticism of the man. I've known good and bad writers who could do that and good and bad writers who couldn't. And sometimes, the guys who can are the guys who are satisfied with whatever they produce, whether it's any good or not.

And sometimes, work comes in late due to circumstances beyond our control…like when someone mails pages to the wrong address in a package they weren't supposed to be in.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by pianist Vinheteiro…

This may be of interest to you if you live in California. It's the California Unclaimed Property Search, a database of assets (mostly money) that the state is holding for people. A lot of the friends I've looked up in it are still at the addresses the database has for them so I don't know why the state doesn't just mail them a check. I do though see a lot of actors and writers in there who are listed at being at the address of a former agent who's no longer in business.

Take a moment to look yourself up…and also look up any deceased relatives whose unclaimed funds you may be able to claim. You may find nothing and if you do find something, it may be an amount not worth the hassle. It's especially complex — though not insurmountable — if you're claiming money that's owed to one of those deceased relatives…and I speak from experience. But maybe you'll find they have a sum for you that's worth wading through the red tape to claim it. Maybe…but not likely.

I'm not kidding with that subject line. If you feel at home in a kitchen and really know how to prepare foods, don't read this item. It's for guys like me who are terrible at it and are searching for the simplest, idiot-proof recipes they can find — something that doesn't involve difficult words like "sauté" or "roux." This is one…

Ever since the Souplantation chain went under, I've been searching for a simple Creamy Tomato Soup. Some of you recommended store-bought brands in cans or boxes. I tried every one I could find and didn't find what I was seeking. Then I tried a few simple recipes and they were okay but not ideal either in terms of taste or simplicity. Finally though, I found this.

I am not saying this yields great soup but it's great enough for me. It's real quick…which matters because I'm real lazy when it comes to cooking, which is some (not all) of the reason I'm real bad at it. And it basically only requires these three ingredients…

I take a jar of my favorite marinara sauce (Rao's) and I blend it in a blender until it has the texture of soup instead of sauce. Then I add a certain amount of chicken stock and a certain amount of heavy whipping cream and then I stir a lot as I heat it on the stove 'til it's warm.  And then I put some of it into a bowl, toss in some croutons and serve it…so far, only to myself.

What are these "certain amounts?"  I'm still experimenting.  My most recent batch involved an entire 28 oz. jar of Rao's (the size they sell real cheap in a two-pack at Costco), a cup-and-a-half of chicken stock, a half-cup of the whipping cream…and I'm also playing around with onion powder and garlic salt and such. If/when I settle on exact amounts, I'll post them here…but anything around those proportions is quite edible. Or at least, it's better than any Creamy Tomato Soup I bought in a store.

I make this on Wednesdays and Saturdays. That's because my cleaning lady comes on Thursdays and Sundays and I want her to wash the pan and the blender and everything. I told you I was lazy when it comes to cooking.

All the time we've been in lockdown, Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley have been doing episodes of Stars in the House, an online talk/variety show about Broadway which occasionally detours into television. I defy you to look over the list of episodes they've done and not find several you want to watch…but tonight's was a must-see.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the musical of The Producers, they gathered together director Susan Stroman and members of the original cast — Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Cady Huffman and Brad Oscar. If you love this show anywhere near as much as I did, you'll want to watch this.

The webcast begins, as many episodes of Stars in the House do, with a brief interview with Dr. Jon LaPook, the CBS Medical Correspondent who gives very good, lucid reports on The Pandemic. Stars in the House is worth watching just for his briefings. He starts at 6:45 in. The discussion of The Producers starts at 13:30 and a surprise guest star joins the show at the midpoint, shortly after the 39-minute mark.

This is all a benefit for The Actors Fund, which is probably misnamed because it helps everyone in show biz — not just actors — with rent, insurance, groceries, etc. when they need it. If you enjoy this video, donate here…

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by the Hungarian Border Guard Orchestra…

There's a lot of criticism circulating of the Centers for Disease Control, mainly that they said at first masks were not necessary when COVID-19 came along and then switched and said they were. I don't quite get why this was so horrendous. I just thought, "Okay…so it's turning out to be worse than they first thought." Lots of problems do.

Kevin Drum has a post up which some would probably think makes him an apologist for CDC mistakes but I think he's just trying to explain why they weren't as outrageous as some think.

What prompted the decision by the owners of the Pacific Theater chain in Southern California to announce the closure of all their theaters including the beloved Cinerama Dome? This article in the L.A. Times says it's accumulated rent debt. And that's almost certainly it.

But I continue to be optimistic that some if not all of the theaters will resume operation, probably under different ownership. Indeed, the article says, "While most industry insiders expect prime locations such as the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to eventually return under new operators…"

I see many articles online about how wonderful it was that Joye Murchison Kelly and her husband came out to Comic-Con in 2018 to be honored with the Bill Finger Award and lots and lots of loving applause. I agree with that but I feel like I'm getting too much credit for making that happen.

That we knew at all of Ms. Kelly is due to the detective work of Jill Lepore, author of the book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. Several different folks suggested Joye for the Bill Finger Award, then the Blue Ribbon committee that decides on the award — Jim Amash, Scott Shaw!, Kurt Busiek, Charles Kochman, Marv Wolfman and Yours Truly voted that she should have it and comic historian Richard Arndt got me in touch with her.

Jackie Estrada, who supervises the Eisner Awards for Comic-Con, expedited all this. The major sponsor for the 2018 awards was DC Comics, our supporting sponsors were Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson, and I persuaded Dan DiDio (who was then running DC Comics) to raise their contribution so Joye and her husband Jack could be flown first-class. Once Joye was here, many folks helped take care of her and Jack, and made their trip wonderful but I have to mention Trina Robbins, Anina Bennett and (again) Maggie Thompson. And of course, the Bill Finger Award has a lot to do with the late Jerry Robinson (who invented it) and the lovely Athena Finger, granddaughter of Bill…

…I'm probably leaving someone out. If you met Joye at that convention and made her feel honored and welcome, I'm leaving you out. The point is that the credit for that presentation should be divided up — as the credit for creating Batman wasn't for far too long.

Mark Rouleau sent me this question…

Ok, so as the kids these days say, "unpopular opinion!" I don't care for any of the inkers who inked Kirby, including Kirby. I've come to this conclusion after seeing so many of his uninked pencils in various locations. 10 out of 10 times I prefer the uninked pencils. There's so much detail, texture, and finesse in the pencils that I cringe whenever I see it compared to the final, inked versions. Also, it seems like any inker who inked Kirby always used a heavy hand. Not sure if it was just the style of the time, or if something else was going on.

So I guess my question is, is it even possible for DC or Marvel or whomever to publish uninked Kirby issues? I'd love to see (for example) The Demon done entirely in pencil, especially as the hardcover version has several teaser pages of just that. I realize that, the comic book biz being the way it is, my odds of seeing such a thing are about the same as you appearing in a nationwide cole slaw ad, but is it possible? Thanks for any insights you have, thanks for the blog.

Yes, it's possible but not with a whole lot of stuff. Most of the work that Jack did prior to around March of 1971 was never copied in the pencil stage. He did not own a copier and even if he'd wanted to spring for one, it was nigh impossible (or maybe even just impossible) to find one that could copy pages the size of comic book original art.

DC and Marvel had big photostat cameras and with great trouble and expense, they could make copies of artwork if, for example, Jack needed a copy of a page from one issue as reference before he could draw the next issue. Any time you see a copy of a pencil page by Kirby or anyone from this period, it was probably made on one of those stat cameras for such a reason. And it was a rare survivor because most of those stats were thrown away when they'd served their immediate purpose.

So when Jack (or anyone) mailed pages into the office, if those pages were lost in the mail, there was no backup. Or if the office mailed them to an inker. Or if the inker mailed them back. It was a source of constant worry for publishers and every so often, something did disappear.

When I was working for Gold Key Comics, an entire completed issue of Bugs Bunny that I wrote vanished en route to the printer because, I suspect, some mailman should have turned left at Albuquerque. Fortunately, the company then worked so far ahead of publication that there was time enough to wait a few weeks to see if it would turn up.

And then when it didn't, I had Xeroxes of my scripts and they were able to have the whole thing redrawn. Interestingly, the artist who'd drawn those scripts the first time asked if someone else could do the redrawing, even though he'd be paid in full again. He just thought it would be too boring to draw the same scripts twice. I was kinda flattered by the implication that it wasn't boring to draw my scripts once.

Anyway, I'm rambling here. The fear of something getting lost in the mail lessened a bit for Kirby in early 1971 when his son Neal was working for a company that sold copiers that could copy pages up to 11" by 17", which was the size DC and Marvel comics were drawn then. It would not have worked before 1968 when the art was larger.

Jack got his copier about the same time Mike Royer took over as his main inker from Vince Colletta, though there was no connection to that change. When Jack finished an issue, his penciled pages would be fed into the copier in his studio, one by one, and copied onto 11" by 17" copier paper. Jack might do it. His wife Roz might do it. One of his kids might do it. Steve Sherman, who assisted Jack along with me might do it. I might do it.

I was always nervous doing it. The pages did not lie on a flatbed for copying. You fed them into a slot and they traveled through the machine, bending around rollers and — 99% of the time — they were ejected from another slot while the copy came out of yet another slot. The penciled pages were curled a bit but they could easily be flattened.

1% of the time, they jammed and it was necessary to open the machine and do delicate surgery to extract the page, hopefully intact. A few times, they were not intact and Jack had to redraw a ruined page. That never happened when I made the copies but that was just dumb luck. I know I would not have been blamed if it had happened but I was still jittery whenever I had to feed Jack's pages into the beast. Some time later, he got another copier that was more reliable.

A lot of those copies no longer exist. Some were thrown away. Some were given away. Some were stolen. No one attached a great value to them at the time because, well, even Jack with the greatest imagination in the world never imagined anyone would want to publish them.

They were just tossed in a box and if Jack later needed to refer to a page, he'd fish around in the box until he found it or have someone else do it. As far as I know, no copies were ever needed to help reconstruct a page that had gotten lost. All the ones we know of have been entrusted to the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center which scans and restores what can be restored.

Some of them have been printed in various places — mainly The Jack Kirby Collector magazine and in two books…

They are Captain Victory: The Graphite Edition from TwoMorrows and Jack Kirby: Pencils and Inks from IDW. There may be others in the future but keep in mind that full books do not exist in pencil of many of the comics Jack drew. When he drew double-page spreads on one sheet of paper, as he usually did, those pieces of paper did not fit into his copier.

Like you, I'm an enormous fan of Jack's art in pencil and have been since I first saw it in his studio in July of 1969. I think most of his inkers have done as fine a job as humanly possible but, yeah, there's something amazing about the raw pencil art. I wish more of it had been preserved but we should be glad we have as much of it as we do.

New York Times obit for Joye Murchison Kelly. I'm so happy we got this woman to Comic-Con to receive the Bill Finger Award.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by the FMU Jazz Ensemble at Francis Marion University in South Carolina…

• I just set up a webcam in an empty room in my home so I can do ZOOM conferences with my imaginary friend.

What the hell has just happened with Afghanistan and why? Read this and Fred Kaplan will tell you what the hell has just happened and why.

And you know who just came out against "endless wars" like the one we've been waging in Afghanistan? The American Legion, that's who.

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Changing Subjects: Not this weekend but next, we're probably going to see something historic…the lowest-rated, least-cared-about Academy Awards ceremony in history. And while this will be blamed on The Pandemic and how few of the nominated movies anyone has seen, I hope Show Business perceives what seems to me another important reason. I think America has finally gotten bored watching wealthy/successful people give awards and excessive praise to each other.

Awards will never cease as long as there are people in the world who dream of winning them. But maybe we can stop acting as if they're really, really important.

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Last Topic: Someone wrote to ask me what I'm watching these days in Late Night. My TiVo captures Bill Maher, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert, though I rarely watch more than the opening and closing of Maher's show and the opening of Colbert's. I may watch more of Colbert if I like a guest, which I do about a third of the time.

I watch highlights of Meyers, Kimmel, Corden and Fallon on YouTube, especially Seth's "A Closer Look" segments. I'm liking Kimmel's monologues more and more…and the other night, he capped his off with an interview with James Adomian doing a hilarious Mike Lindell impression. If Saturday Night Live did that, they would have gotten someone who had a big hit movie out instead of Adomian and it would have been a third as effective.

Back in August of 2010, we wrote here about how the venerable Hotel Pennsylvania in New York might be going away. It didn't. But it might now.

The building, which was once the largest hotel on the planet, opened in 1919. It had a special sentimental attachment for the comic book community because so many comic conventions were held there, including the first one I attended, back in 1970. But it survived and part of it even became a TV studio. Jordan Klepper did one of his short-lived programs for Comedy Central there and many others have, as well.

But it looks like its time has come. This piece will tell you about the current plans for it. Maybe it will survive again.