I’ll write about this extraordinary talent when I get home from the convention.

Committing to nineteen panels over four days seemed like insanity to many of my friends but I gotta tell you: I think it's one of the smartest things I've done all year. Not that I've had that many smart things competing for First Place.

As I sit here in my hotel room, having completed fifteen of the nineteen, I've been having an awesome amount of fun and I'm really happy about how happy most of these program items seem to have made the folks who came to see 'em. The downsides? Well, my legs hurt more than I wish they did. This blog has been neglected. Computer problems — and my lack of time to maybe fix them — are preventing me from posting the rest of the story of the Ackerman/Schwartz/Bradbury convention panel. But that's okay because I decided it could do with a bit of polishing before it'll be ready for human consumption. It shall resume shortly.

I also can't access Facebook so if you sent me a message there or someone posted scurrilous gossip about me, I can't read it. All this will be rectified but probably not until I'm home and unpacked. Oh — and I also ate something I shouldn't have eaten at a restaurant last night. My cumbersome food allergies are at their most allergic when I'm fatigued. But I'm so pleased with how the panels have been going — especially yesterday's Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices — that it's a more than acceptable trade-off. Wait'll I tell you how yesterday's Cartoon Voices panel went.

Your patience, as Alton Brown says when he tells you how to cook something that takes a lot of time, will be rewarded.

This video has been on this site before but it was a pretty bad copy and anyway, it's been deleted. Someone got a better copy and I think they enhanced it with some A.I. technology. It's not perfect but it's better so I decided to post it.

It's a number from the 1985 special, Night of 100 Stars which was done to benefit the Actors' Fund so they were able to get an incredible number of great performers on it…well more than a hundred. Some of them were in this long dance number.  It's sad to think that today, if you could conscript everyone you wanted, you couldn't possibly put together such a collection of famous hoofers.

You'll see each star's name superimposed when he or she appears…all but Dick Van Dyke. That's because that was not his first appearance on the special. He was in an earlier section of it.

When I first ran this here, it brought a message from my pal, Craig Shemin. I've edited his remarks down but here's the important thing he had to say…

The number is a tribute to Conrad Cantzen, an actor who died in 1945. It was thought that Conrad was down on his luck, but when he died he bequeathed an estate of more than $200,000 (that would be more than 2.3 million bucks today) to the Actors Fund of America.

Here's where the shoes come in. Conrad specified that the money be used to establish a fund for the express purpose of purchasing shoes for actors. This fund continues to operate today, administered by the Actors Fund. Apparently, Conrad thought that actors should not look "down at the heels" while pounding the pavement auditioning.

In case you can't make out what everyone is saying at the end, it's a reprise of the song from the introductory section:

Starting from the bottom up, that's the route to choose.
No one ever feels lowdown at the heels
Shoo away bad news and shoo away the blues
By spending Conrad's Cash on a brand new pair of shoes.

Conrad's tale is such a nice story of an enduring act of generosity that I wanted to share it with you and your readers.

Thanks, Craig…and thanks to whoever fixed it up and put it back on YouTube. It really is an extraordinary piece of work and talent…

Dave Letterman discusses the whole Colbert matter…

Nine panels down.  Ten to go…

We're pre-empting the next chapter of the Ackerman/Schwartz/Bradbury story to bring you this more timely anecdote from my past…

Believe it or don't believe it but I have a story about Terry Gene Bollea, better known as the superstar wrassler, Hulk Hogan. In 1985, CBS debuted a cartoon show on Saturday morning called Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. I had absolutely nothing to do with the show but I was the writer and co-producer of a prime time special CBS ordered to promote the shows on that season's Saturday morn schedule including Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling.

The special was a co-production between Sid and Marty Krofft's company and a new TV production company co-owned by Cyndi Lauper and a gent that Wikipedia describes as "Lauper's boyfriend and manager at the time." The show was to be hosted by another superstar wrestler of the day, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. Ms. Lauper and her boyfriend-manager had some interest in Mr. Piper's career as well as many connections to Vince McMahon and the organization then known as the World Wrestling Federation. Mr. McMahon was not credited on the show but he was on the premises as a kind of shadow producer. (In case you're wondering, I thought he was one of the smartest people I ever met in television and he has the bank account to prove it.)

One of the problems the show had may have been too many people with "producer" in their titles: Sid, Marty, Cyndi, the boyfriend-manager, the shadowy Vince, myself and a wonderful producer (who also directed) named Bob Bowker. We all got along famously except that Cyndi was later very unhappy (justifiably) with a number of things for which she wrongly blamed Bob and me. That still bothers me because I always thought she was a wonderful performer and I am unsurprised that she has become such a wonderful writer.

For the cast of the show — and this was all decided before Bob and I signed on — we would have, in addition to Roddy, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Patti LaBelle, Pee-wee Herman, the rock group New Edition, Captain Lou Albano, Hulk Hogan and Hervé Villechaize. When I appeared on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast, the first questions Gilbert asked me were about working with Hervé Villechaize. Once hired, I added a few other bodies to the stage including Gary Owens.

I have many, many stories about the production of this odd production but this is about Hulk Hogan…

Since he was the "star" of the cartoon series being promoted, he had to be on the special. This created two problems, one being that he was booked solid with wrestling gigs and it would be hard to get him into the studio. The other problem was that when we did get him into the studio, the star of our special could not be in the studio.

The hatred that Hulk and Roddy Piper had for each other in the wrestling ring had somehow bled over into real life. Roddy — who turned out to be a very nice guy, by the way — told me that happened…often. You're hired to feign beating the bejeesus out of some other guy when the TV cameras are on and the crowd is cheering…

…and pretty soon, you really, really do want to beat the bejeesus out of the other guy. Often, like everything else in Pro Wrestling, it has a lot to do with money.

So it was up to me, the writer, to figure out how to have Hulk in the show without Roddy around.  We wound up sending Roddy off the lot to a restaurant while we taped a spot in which Gary Owens did a locker room interview with Hulk.  But there were other problems.  Hulk would be coming to us, literally, between planes.  He had to fly from one city in which he had just wrestled to another city in which he would wrestle that night.  We had him for about an hour…and not a second more.

We were all set up when he arrived but there were all sorts of delays in getting him to the set.  One was that to appear in "character," his muscles had to be glistening and that meant he had to be rubbed with oil.  I have no idea why he couldn't oil his own shoulders but a make-up person had to do that…and when it turned out that our make-up person was male, Hulk refused his services.  We had to wait until a female make-up person could be located, hired and arrived to apply the oil.  We couldn't even get him to rehearse, unoiled.

This is the kind of thing that TV producers have to deal with.  On this show, I also had to handle the problem that every time Hervé Villechaize had a wardrobe change, he was unable to zip up his fly.  He demanded that the wardrobe ladies do it and they (rightfully) refused.

Finally, we got Hulk in front of the cameras and we did Take One of the script. He changed the words a lot and did it without sufficient "Hulk" enthusiasm. I think Vince McMahon ordered another take even before our director could. Hulk then did it again — not my words but more Hulkish — and he headed for the door. We asked him for a Take Three but he said, "I've got a plane to catch" and that was that. He also refused to stay so we could shoot the scene again with the camera focusing on Gary Owens — a shot over Hulk's shoulder as Gary asked the questions.

No, he wouldn't do that either so we needed a Body Double and amazingly, that turned out to be me. I took off my shirt, put on one that matched what Hulk had been wearing and the makeup lady applied bronzer and oil to my shoulder. Then they put me on a box. I'm 6'3" and Hulk was 6'7" but they made me even taller since it made for a funnier shot of Gary. I scrunched up my shoulder trying to make it look more muscular but…well, I'm a pretty bad actor and I was even lousy at that. We ended up cropping the shot in post-production so less of me showed.

And that was how I played Hulk Hogan for a few seconds of screen time. I'm sorry the other man who played that role has left us because he could be awfully entertaining.  And then there was this…

A year or two later, I did a job for the animation studio that produced Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. It was an unhappy project and it ended with one of those awkward situations where I said the equivalent of "I quit!" and they said, roughly, "You can't quit! You're fired!" I've been in a few of those and they sometimes end with my lawyer fighting with their lawyer over what I am to be paid for my truncated services.

My lawyer at the time was Henry W. Holmes, a name which may resonate with those of you who followed the many lawsuits of my friend and his client, Harlan Ellison. Henry is retired now. I had him on last year's Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con International since he helped Jack on some matters. He was a helluva lawyer and we're still good friends. And here's the kind of thing that proves a lawyer is a helluva lawyer: He got the animation studio to agree to pay me every cent my contract specified and they further agreed to deliver the check to him within 48 hours.

After 48 hours passed with no check appearing, Henry called me and said, "Well, we have two choices. I can sue them…"

I asked, "What's the other option?"

He said, "Well, Hulk Hogan is also a client of mine and we had problems with that studio paying him, too. I mentioned to him the problem I was having on your case and he volunteered to go over there, smash in the door, shatter a desk or two and demand your check.  Do you have a preference?"

I said, "I like the second option best, especially if I can be there and watch!" We decided Henry would call them and threaten that but — and this was a real disappointment for Henry and me — my check arrived before he could even make that call, let alone unleash The Hulkster.

A couple years later, I was at the Licensing Show, a gathering where people sell and buy the rights to put out merchandise based on the intellectual property of the sellers. I ran into Hulk Hogan, told him my name and reminded him about the show we met on. He didn't remember me or the show — the result perhaps of some drugs ingested in the dressing room — but he did stare at me for a long minute…

…and then he said, "Are you the dude I was going to go over to that fucking cartoon studio and get the money for?"

I actually found this history of the Orange Julius drink and fast food chain interesting.  You might not but I did — and I don't think I've ever even had an Orange Julius…

Comic-Con International starts tonight and I've added one more stop in my relentless campaign to have more panels than Steve Harvey has TV programs. I will now be appearing on this panel…

Thursday, July 24 – 4 PM to 5 PM in Room 4
JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD
Rand Hoppe (Kirby Museum director), Tom Kraft (Kirby Museum president), Bruce Simon (underground cartoonist), Mark Badger (comic artist and educator), and Tracy Kirby (Jack Kirby's granddaughter) discuss the themes of Kirby's Fourth World and how they reflect on his work before (Fantastic Four and Thor) and after (Eternals and 2001).

Those of you tracking me the way the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks whale migrations may note that this puts me on two panels in the same hour — to which I reply, "So?" I've done this before. In fact, I did it one year with two simultaneous panels when I was the moderator of both of them. Fortunately, they were directly across the hall from each other.

Here — and this'll be the last time I post this — is what I believe is my full schedule unless I go out to the sidewalk and do an interview with that guy who's usually there with the yellow sign telling us Jesus will be back any day now and this is our last chance to repent. We've been getting those last chances for at least the past fifteen Comic-Cons and I keep thinking Jesus keeps getting shut out of the con because he can't score a badge each year. Anyway, here's this…

This morning on Facebook, I saw a rant from someone about how Comic-Con is not a Comic-Con because there's nothing there about comic books. This complaint usually translates to there being nothing at Comic-Con about the specific comic books that the complainer favors. But just by way of rebuttal…

This year, I'm hosting or appearing on three panels about the works of Jack Kirby. I think those are about comic books. I'm doing panels in which I interview long-time comic book letterer Todd Klein, long-time comic book writer Don Glut and there's another one with Frank Miller, who's among the most important writer-artists of the last few decades. Also, long-time comic book writer Mark Waid and I will be doing a panel where we answer questions about how the comic book world operates or did in the past. I have a panel about a comic book I work on called Groo the Wanderer and another panel about Walt Kelly's Pogo, which was a comic book and a comic strip. So was Charles Schulz's Peanuts and I'm on a panel about that, too.

I'm on a panel about Bill Finger, whose involvement in comic book history included co-creating (arguably) the most popular comic book character ever and that wasn't all he did. I'm hosting a panel in which comic book artists discuss how they design covers for comic books and I'm playing quizmaster on a game show (sorta) in which cartoonists, some of whom draw comic books, compete to draw funny things in a hurry. I'm speaking at a memorial for the late writer of comic books, Peter David, and I'm presenting awards at a ceremony that is all about honoring the best work in comic books.

And that's just me. As I scan the full schedule, I see plenty of programming items about comic books…and yes, there are other things there. Three of my panels are about animation, which is not that far off the topic of comics.

But we now live in a world where a lot of related fields — comics, movies, cartoons, videogames and others, are becoming not only more closely related but are all merging almost seamlessly into one another. The major publishers of comic books are no longer comic book companies. They're multi-media companies that dabble in all those fields and market the properties they control in every possible venue. Superman and Spider-Man are no longer comic book characters. That just happens to be the medium in which they first appeared and a decreasing number of people know or care.

This is the fifty-fourth one of these summer gatherings in San Diego — and I know because it's also my fifty-fourth. They were never exclusively about comic books or even comic books and comic strips. You have no idea how much I'd love it if these get-togethers were still mostly about the men (and occasional women) who created the comic books I read in my youth but I can't seem to get them on any of my panels anymore. Maybe if I did them with a ouija board.

For good or bad, Comic-cons — all of them, not just the one that starts tonight in S.D. — are mainly about what comics are today. And comics today are not just things with drawings and word balloons printed on paper. The definition has expanded considerably and you can accept it and then seek out the parts of the convention that interest you or you can…well, you understand the alternative. One reason I do all these panels is to make sure than for most of the con, there's not only something that interests me but that I'm guaranteed a good seat for it.

So far, we haven't seen any official statement from David Letterman about the termination of The Late Show for alleged "financial reasons." I think though that we can all guess what he will say if and when he does say something. It also wouldn't surprise me to see him say it with a surprise cameo on that program soon. I'll bet they've invited him.

Or maybe Dave's statement is this just-released video of times on his Late Show when he ridiculed the folks at the network. He slammed NBC a lot when he was there too, and that probably was one of the lesser reasons — nowhere near as significant as others — that he did not get The Tonight Show after Mr. Carson decamped.

An exec with NBC years ago told me he thought that when Dave insulted his employers there, he was right about two-thirds of the time and dead wrong the other third. But he also said that calling his bosses pinheads and incompetents was one of the reasons — again, nowhere as significant as others — that Dave was as popular as he was. Most people hate their bosses and they love it when someone insults his (on national television, no less) and gets away with it…

Hey, do you love the Marx Brothers? Of course you do. How could anyone not love the Marx Brothers? Well, here's a recent radio show that spent ninety minutes talking about Groucho, Harpo, Chico and even at times, Zeppo. Heck, there's even info in there about Gummo, courtesy of his grandson, who's among the guests. Several other members of the Marx family are interviewed along with some of my pals including Steve Stoliar and Frank Ferrante. If the little player I've embedded below doesn't work, try this link.

In case you didn't see Stephen Colbert last night…

He may be going down but he's going down swinging. It oughta be an amazing ten months — if they keep him on the air that long. Wonder what would happen if his ratings went way, way up because of so many people rallying to his cause. Would it still be a "financial decision" to take him off the air? Would it be a "financial decision" to take him off the air if someone among the new — or even the old owners if the merger somehow doesn't go through — just got pissed at what he was saying on his show?

In this video, watch for Anderson Cooper, Andy Cohen, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog — all of whom, I'm guessing, dropped by The Ed Sullivan Theater briefly in the last day or so to tape quick, supportive cameos, probably all when Colbert's audience was not present. The show probably grabbed staff members or someone to surround the cameo guest stars for audience shots. I have a feeling Colbert and his crew are going to do a lot more things like this…

In 1983, Johnny Carson did a two-hour special on NBC to celebrate his 21st year as host of The Tonight Show.  To promote the special, he sat for an interview with Bryan Gumbel that was serialized across several days of The Today Show…

Those of you who were shocked that I was appearing on and/or hosting seventeen panels at Comic-Con can be further shocked. I'm now appearing on and/or hosting nineteen. I have joined this one…

Saturday, July 26 – 10 AM to 11 AM in Room 4
THE MANY HANDS OF BILL FINGER
Before Gotham had shadows, writer Bill Finger cast them. Comics scholar Dr. Alex Grand (Understanding Superhero Comic Books) moderates a lively conversation with Athena Finger (Bill's granddaughter and advocate), historian Bill Field (Field of Comics), playwright/filmmaker Lenny Schwartz (Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat) and Mark Evanier (administrator of the Bill Finger Award). Together they trace Finger's unseen influence across comics, television, and film and show why crediting Batman's co-creator still matters to today's storytellers and fans.

And I've also agreed to appear on another one but I'm going to wait and let its panel moderator announce my participation. Yes, I am well aware of how stupid this is of me.

That's Dr. Z — "Z" as in "Zaius" — the talk show host no one dares cancel. If you're going to be in San Diego this Saturday night, as I expect some of you will be, you can catch Dr. Zaius doing his brilliant, improvised, different-every-time show at The American Comedy Company over on Sixth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. There are two shows — one at 7:30 PM and one at 9:30 PM — and you can get tickets at this link.

While you're over on that site, you might notice that on Thursday and Friday evenings, the American Comedy Company is featuring three of the best stand-up comedians working today — Natasha Leggero, Moshe Kasher and Dana Gould. There are rumors that Dana Gould has something to do with Dr. Z and I may ask him about this connection when he appears on my Cartoon Voices I panel at Comic-Con, which takes place Saturday afternoon at 1 PM in Room 6BCF. And then again, I may not. Wouldn't want to get on the bad side of Dr. Z.