Richard Harris on Johnny Carson's show. A great anecdote…

From Billy Suratt…

Ka-Zar #1 (1970) reprinted Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's original story from X-Men #10, along with some other stories and a new cover by Marie Severin and either Herb Trimpe or John Verpoorten (depending on what source you believe).

Somewhere along the line, it became somewhat infamous for allegedly having profanity snuck into the background of the cover, above Zabu's posterior. Some say it was unintentional. Some say it's an urban legend. Some say it was Verpoorten trying to stick it to the Comics Code. Some say they can't even make out the alleged profanity.

Any insights, contemporaneous or otherwise? I'm curious when this alleged shenanigan first came to light and what kind of reaction (if any) it might have generated at Marvel. I'd also love to know if you have any favorite examples of artists legitimately sneaking things into backgrounds, as many have been known to do from time to time.

I happen to have an actual contemporaneous insight into this one. In the summer of 1970, my then-partner Steve Sherman and I went back to New York to visit the offices of DC Comics and Marvel Comics for the first time. (We also spent some time in the offices of MAD magazine, in the office of Steve Ditko and at that year's Comic Art Convention.  See badge below.)

The issue of Ka-Zar you ask about came out in April of that year and the alleged dirty word was spotted by many in fanzines and at our old comic book club.  Marvel got a fair amount of mail about it and when we were up at the Marvel offices not long after it came out, Steve couldn't resist asking Marie Severin about it.  Marie was a very nice and honest lady so I believed her anger was genuine when she complained about people seeing things that weren't there.  Even though she hadn't inked the cover and done those particular brush strokes, she'd drawn it in pencil and colored it and she caught some flak from "the people upstairs" at Marvel.

She was undoubtedly referring to the business-type managers who actually weren't upstairs.  The official address of Marvel then was 625 Madison Avenue and that's where the "suits" worked — but the comic book editorial offices were squirreled away in a surprisingly-tiny office in a building at 635 Madison Avenue.  And here's an interesting By-the-Way: The offices of National Lampoon, which was a pretty popular magazine at the time, were then at 635 Madison.

So I think it was just one of those things that wasn't intended.  I also think John Verpoorten, who inked it and who was then Marvel's Production Manager, had enough sense to not put something like that in intentionally.  Because of his position in the company, he would have been held somewhat responsible for anything offensive that got into a Marvel comic even if he hadn't put it there.

I don't have any "favorites" of people sneaking that kind of thing into a comic book because they're pretty sophomoric.  But there have been a lot of witty things in the margins and backgrounds of different comics, absolutely none of which come to mind at the moment.

Hey, let's watch one of my favorite musical movie moments. Here from The Harvey Girls (1946) is "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe." It's a big, overproduced ode to a railroad line performed by Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Marjorie Main, Virginia O'Brien and anyone else who set foot on the MGM lot that week, even though they didn't film most or maybe any of this on the lot. Note that from the 4:50 minutes mark in this clip through the moment when the conductor shouts "All aboard!," this is one continuous take of two minutes and twenty-five seconds during which Ms. Garland and a whole lot of people hit their marks at precisely the right moment. Pretty impressive, I think…

Three Little Beers is another of the better Three Stooges shorts…in my opinion.  And since this is my blog, I'm linking you to it here.  Enjoy the film, you knuckleheads…

We continue to watch what's happening in Las Vegas with great interest and horrified expressions. There's also a little sense of "It was obvious this was going to happen." Grosses are down everywhere, an awful lot of hotel rooms that should be filled this time of year are not, and rumors abound of existing hotels closing or planned ones being unplanned. This will surely drive the Unemployment Numbers — already the highest in the nation — further into pain-filled levels and banking agencies have reported a record number of residents behind on their rent or mortgage payments.

Perhaps the best indicator that something is wrong is that all the airlines that fly to and from Vegas are cutting back on flights. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the rest of 2025 will see an average of 95,000 fewer seats to Vegas each day than there were at this time last year. For a town whose industry is built around The Tourist Trade, that's just devastating.

I've written here about visitors staying away due to the ghastly price-gouging…and Vegas experts have taken to referring to what's happened to prices there as "The Gouge." I should have also mentioned what The Man Called Trump is doing to tourism in this country, especially driving away tourists from Canada. That's one of the reason all the economic indicators are way, way down. Unfortunately, while prices in Vegas are dropping, they've got long way to go before they'll make things more attractive.

One other interesting trend in Vegas: A lot of casinos are cutting back on — and a few are eliminating altogether — table games. Those are the games like Blackjack, Roulette, Craps and others that depend on the presence on a casino employee who must be paid. I'm sure those games will never disappear from the city but they're disappearing from some smaller casinos and the big ones are opting for more poker and slot machines.

There was a time not so long ago when going to Dealer School and getting your diploma to preside over those games was about as close to a "guaranteed to always have a good job" job as you could have in the state of Nevada. Not so these days. Can the robot Elvis Impersonators and hookers be far behind?

A few days ago, I linked you to a TV special that one of my heroes, Stan Freberg, produced and wrote and starred in in 1962. Its goal, you may recall, was to sell canned Chinese Food. Well, here's a special he did for Public Television in 1980 with some of the same actors. The goal of this one was to sell the idea that the U.S. Government spends too much money…and Freberg, being Freberg, appropriately spent way too much money to make the special.

It's called The Federal Budget Revue and all the numbers cited in it about how much the government spends are all laughably low today — but the principle is pretty much the same. The budget for the year 1980 was, as Stan notes in the show, $600 billion dollars. The budget for 2024 was $6.75 trillion. Trump will probably spend $600 billion playing golf, building his silly ballroom and refurbishing that "free" airplane he was given…

CNN Keeper-of-the-Facts Daniel Dale corrects much of what Trump presents as the history of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. How does one help settle a war — in twenty-four hours or even more — when one has no real understanding of what has occurred so far?

And Daniel Dale also notes that crime in Washington, D.C. is declining — or at least it was before Trump declared it was so on-the-rise that he had to step in and take over. The Associated Press and FactCheck.org both run through the real statistics for us.

FactCheck.org summarizes of the things Trump has said about tariffs that just plain aren't true.

Trump says his approval ratings have never been better. He always says that, no matter how bad they are. Ed Kilgore shows us how bad they are.

And Steve Benen fact-checks some of the things the White House is saying these days about Social Security and — surprise, surprise! — they aren't true.

A number of folks — thank you, all of you — have sent me this link to an online copy of the new issue of Emmy Magazine. This is the one with the article I mentioned here by Gabe Kaplan about Welcome Back, Kotter. It starts on page 42. And while you're paging through it, there's an interview with Mel Brooks about Get Smart on page 24.

In case you're not familiar with this magazine, it tends to carry a lot of advertising from powerful forces craving Emmy Awards…especially this time of year. (And yes, I really am working all night on a script. It's a skill I learned in 1976 working on Welcome Back, Kotter.)

It's getting really hard to tell the real Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom tweets from the parody Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom tweets.

Seth Meyers is, as usual, right on target…

Because a lot of you will write to tell me about this if I don't mention it here first…

The newest issue of Emmy Magazine — the official publication of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the people who give out the Emmy Awards — has a great article in it. I don't think the issue is out yet or in subscribers' mailboxes or e-mailboxes but the author of that piece wanted to know if I thought it was funny and fair. I told him it was.

The author is Gabe Kaplan, who I worked with thousands of years ago on the TV series, Welcome Back, Kotter. He told, in not enough words to do the subject full justice, how the show was created, how it got on the air and how it got off. What he wrote matched what I observed — or at least, they matched what I witnessed while I was a Story Editor/Writer on the show…and it's a funny article because Gabe is still a funny man. If anything, he's a little too modest about his own contribution and a little nicer towards some folks than I might have been. If you see a copy of the magazine, read the article. And if you see an online link which I can share here, please let me know.

From Mark Potash…

Thanks for the tip on It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I finally saw it at the Music Box Theater in Chicago last weekend and it was well worth the wait to see it on the big screen. What a great movie to watch with a crowd! I do think it would have tickled me more if I had seen it when I was 11 — I imagine many movies are like that — but still great entertainment.

The Music Box showed what I think is the entire 1963 version of the film, with the overture and the intermission audio, but not the credits. There were credits after that movie, right? With a cast like that, that would be one of the highlights of the film. I couldn't find any film of the credits — though I did find out that Barrie Chase, the last surviving cast member (right?) was born the same day as my mother. (And my dad graduated from the same high school as Mel Tormé).

Thanks again for your passion for that movie that inspired me to see it. It's one of those films I'll have to see again to process the whole movie. I hope I get the chance.

I dunno what the demand for it is like in your neck o' the woods but at least once a year, some theater in Los Angeles runs it and they always get a good crowd. I tell people that even though the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray versions are superb and wonderful for repeat viewings, this film is best experienced for the first time on a big screen with a big crowd. My lady friend Amber has never seen it even though we've been going together for years and she's heard me discuss it, ad infinitum. She's just never been available when it's been screened locally in the ideal presentation.

What you saw in Chicago though could not have been the entire 1963 version of the film just the way it opened. That does not exist. A few weeks after it debuted on November 7, 1963 — and after I first saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on November 23, 1963 — a large chunk was cut out and while pieces of that chunk have been found, not all of them have.

One good indicator is a now-missing scene in the second half of the film in which Spencer Tracy and Buster Keaton have a phone conversation. I saw it on 11/23/63 but it was among many that were cut. The version that existed after that is usually referred to as "The General Release Print." The Criterion set contains a beautiful copy of The General Release Print and another, longer copy of the film that restores as much of the original footage as possible even if it means that some of it is a bit fuzzy and some of it is missing audio or video.

The Tracy/Keaton phone conversation is on this version of the film with audio over still photos and on the commentary track, you can hear me explaining all this. (Last I heard, the only known copy of this footage is in such terrible condition that the best restorers-of-film in the world couldn't make it look good enough to include it on the Criterion edition.)

Yes, sadly…Barrie Chase is the only cast member still with us. She occasionally turns up at screenings to tell of her experiences on the film. Well, actually, she was turning up at such events for years but when Mickey Rooney was alive, he was usually present too and he never let anyone else say much.

Glad you enjoyed it. Part of the fun for me of seeing it for the quadrillionth time is hearing the laughter of folks who are present and experiencing it for their first…and you can tell the difference. There's a scene — in fact, it's right after where the Tracy/Keaton scene was — where Phil Silvers is hitchhiking. A car appears in the distance and when it stops for him, we see who's at the wheel. Audience members who've seen the film before laugh when they first see the car appear because they know it's going to turn out to be Don Knotts. First-time viewers don't laugh until they actually see it's Don Knotts.

Last time I saw it at the Cinerama Dome Theater in Hollywood — a theater built to show this movie, a theater we keep hearing will reopen some day — I took a lady who was thirty-five years old and had never seen the film. When it was over, my pal Mike Schlesinger (sadly, the late Mike Schlesinger) asked her who she recognized from the cast. She said, "The Three Stooges, the rich guy from Gilligan's Island and Barney Fife." But she was also eager to see more of Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, etc. That's one of the things that movie is great for — an introduction to great comedians of another era.

On July 27, while a lot of us were down in San Diego Comic-Conning, there was a celebration at the Shubert Theater in New York.  What they were celebrating was the fiftieth anniversary of A Chorus Line with an amazing number of cast members from the original production.  The one-night-only event featured speeches and scenes and no, I don't know if it was captured professionally on video for some TV special or something but someone in the balcony captured forty minutes of it.  They put it up on YouTube but not in a way that allows me to embed it here.  So go over there and watch a little of it…especially the finale.

Here's the question from from J. Williamson. He (or, I guess, she) is referencing this post here…

I read your piece about uncredited artists doing assistant work on comic books and I know you draw a little so I thought I'd ask did you ever do uncredited art on any comic book?

Yeah. I drew a few things for the Hanna-Barbera comic book department when that operation was in operation. And any time for any outfit when I wrote a comic book and the original art passed through my hands on its merry way to the editor or printer, I might do some corrections. Usually, they were lettering corrections but occasionally, an art fix was necessary. A couple of times, I was fortunate that someone who drew way better than I ever did was visiting me and I'd arm-twist them into doing it. I recall arm-twisting, at various times, Sergio Aragonés, Dave Stevens, Carol Lay, Scott Shaw! and maybe one or two others — to do small repairs but often, I did them.

When I was the writer of the Blackhawk comic book for DC, even before they made me editor, I did a few things like that. There were a few back-up stories (i.e., not drawn by Dan Spiegle) where I did some of the inking.  There was a short story that Alex Toth penciled and in one place, Alex drew the wrong character and I was afraid to ask him to correct it so I did. There were other examples.

There was a period there where the great artist Alfredo Alcala was living close enough to me that we shared the same Federal Express delivery guys. We were both getting a lot of FedEx packages from DC or Marvel and the drivers, if they saw the DC logo or a drawing of Spider-Man on the mailing label would sometimes just drop the package off on my doorstep even if it was addressed to Alfredo. One time, I got up in the morning, opened one such package before I read the label and found 20 pages of Conan the Barbarian artwork penciled by John Buscema.

This is the original art I'm talking about here, not stats or Xeroxes.  Genuine, fresh, pristine John Buscema pencil art.

I briefly considered just keeping the pages. If you've ever seen what that man put on paper before anyone applied ink, you'd understand why. But I guess all those years of reading comic books about honorable super-heroes doing the right thing ruined me and I instead drove the pages over to Alfredo's apartment. Alfredo didn't drive but if he had, he would have figured out a way to ink an entire comic book while driving to the supermarket.

Another time, I got an entire issue from DC of Batman pencil art by Gene Colan, whose work was, prior to inking, equally stunning. I drove it over to Alfredo's and this time — I think because he was lonely, not because he needed actual help — he told me to pull up a drawing board and ink some backgrounds on the story. So I did…and no, I can't identify which issue.

Alfredo's apartment was dominated by a huge drawing table that two or three people could have worked on. It was scattered with various pages from various projects he was working on and he might ink a few panels on a page of Conan, then leave the ink to dry while he penciled part of a mystery story on a commission drawing he was doing for one of his many fans.

He had four or five TV sets in front of him, all on, each connected to a VCR that was running one of his favorite movies. When he had company, the sound was muted on all of them. When he was alone, which he was most of the time, he would turn on the audio of whichever caught his interest at that moment. When any of the videos reached its end, it was rewound and restarted at the beginning until he got bored with it and switched cassettes.

He didn't do this while I was there but Tom Luth, who occasionally assisted Alfredo, told me he saw Alfredo just doze off in mid-inking, sleeping with a wet brush looming over the page. An hour or two later, Alfredo would wake up and resume what he was drawing or inking. What's more, Tom said, Alfredo was totally unaware that he'd done more than close his eyes for a minute or so.

The day I brought those Batman pages to him, I did about an hour of inking buildings and trees, sitting at a smaller drawing table he had chatting with the man as we both worked.  Alfredo had opinions about everything and a lot of valid (I thought) gripes about how American comic book companies had made use of his services. It was fascinating but eventually, the oppressive odor of his constant cigarettes drove me from the premises.

Come to think of it, I probably have quite a few anecdotes like these. If anyone's really interested, I'll try and excavate them from my memory but this post has gone on long enough.

This is the last one of these posts featuring photos from Comic-Con International 2025 — which I'll say one more time might have been my favorite of all the Comic-Cons I've attended in San Diego the last few decades. There was something magical about the first ones because (a) everything was new to me, (b) they were small enough that you could meet everyone and attend everything and (c) present were so many people who'd created the comic books of my childhood and I had the opportunity to meet all of them. None of these reasons apply now but I've found new joys in hosting and/or appearing on panels.

This was one that I appeared on but did not host. It was called The Many Hands of Bill Finger and the folks on it were, left to right above, Alex Grand (moderator), Athena Finger, Bill Field, Lenny Schwartz and me.  We all spoke at length about Athena's grandfather, the late Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman and a lot of other things that don't get mentioned as often.  We talked a lot about those other things and I could tell you what was said or I could direct you to an audio recording of the panel online.  I think I'll direct you to an audio recording of the panel online.

I don't know why I look so glum in many of these photos.  I was having a great time every minute of that convention with the exceptions of one bad meal and one way-longer-than-I-expected walk.  This was the Friday afternoon Pogo Panel and I love doing a Pogo Panel, interacting with the kind of smart panelists and attendees who love Walt Kelly's great newspaper strip.  Above, I'm seen with five of the former.  My way-longer-than-I-expected friend Paul Dini is next to me and in the back, we have the cartoonist Liniers, Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, Fantagraphics co-publisher Eric Reynolds and the immortal and wonderful Maggie Thompson.

We talked about Pogo and why it and darn near everything Mr. Kelly did was so funny and fascinating.  Jane put together a great slide show of treasures from the Walt Kelly archives we're still compiling and sorting through.  Oh — and let me tell you something else about Jane…

I introduce her sometimes as "my assistant" and that's true, though it may trivialize how much she has helped me.  It started when my lovely friend Carolyn Kelly (daughter of W.K.) was dying and I couldn't handle all I had to do.  It persists to this day when I need to be driven to doctor appointments or have someone utterly trustworthy to send on some urgent mission.  I have a very good support team in my life and if you ever break your ankle (as I did) or have any other need for assistance, I hope you can find an assistant who assists as well as Jane assists.

I did three other panels at the Comic-Con that aren't depicted in this series of posts.  On Thursday afternoon, I appeared on a panel for Abrams ComicArts, the fine company releasing this new book I wrote about Charles M. Schulz and that comic strip he created seventy-five years ago.  The panel was about all the amazing books AbramsComicArts is releasing soon and they graciously allowed me to go first, talk about my book and then scurry off to appear on another panel that had been programmed against it.

The other panel was about Jack Kirby's Fourth World, and as (I believe) the lone surviving witness to its creation, I feel great responsibility to share what I know and what I saw.  It is a body of work that many loved at the time and which sold better than a lot of people think…and with the passage of time, it seems to be more loved and more profitable for its publishers.  You have no idea how much this pleases me.

And there's one other panel I hosted but I have no photos for it.  A very large room filled up so quickly that my photo-obsessed friend Bruce Guthrie couldn't get a seat for it.  It was me spending a delightful hour interrogating, interviewing and occasionally cross-examining one of the most important creative talents among my generation of comic book creators, Frank Miller.  I'd like to think Frank enjoyed it too.  We talked about his takeover of the Daredevil comic and his makeover of Batman after that.  But I also made sure to leave time — the hour went by very fast — to discuss upcoming projects which are now being announced across the web.  I hope someone recorded it somewhere.

And that brings this review of my 2025 Comic-Con to a close, at least until I think of some other moment I want to write about.  I hope you were there, in spirit if not in person, because it was one of those cons that I left thinking, "I wanna go back and do more of it."  I see that later this month, the San Diego Convention Center is hosting a meeting of the National Association of Chain Drug Stories.  I'm thinking of showing up there and seeing if they'll let me host some panels about "Flosspick Design," selecting the proper shade of hair dye when you don't have any hair, "Engineering Child-Proof Prescription Bottles So Anyone Under the Age of 13 Can Open Them But Older Than That, You Have To Use Your Teeth If You Have Any" and, of course, Jack Kirby.