• At this very moment, Trump probably has his staff crafting an Executive Order that says mail-in ballots will be restricted to registered Republicans…and everyone else if they want to vote has to stand in the line at the one polling place in their state, no masks allowed.

Several people — including some I thought were my friends — have sent me info on a new Frankenstein's Monster of a candy from the Brach's company. I shall quote from that company's website…

NEW to store shelves: A full course meal presented in a unique mix of candy corn flavors. BRACH'S Turkey Dinner includes all of the traditional Thanksgiving favorites. From roasted turkey, green beans and stuffing to ginger glazed carrots, cranberry sauce and sweet potato pie. Flavors include Green Beans, Roasted Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Ginger Glazed Carrot, Sweet Potato Pie & Stuffing.

It has been a long time since I ate candy corn and instantly wised-up to the fact that it tasted like neither candy nor corn. Given that it can't taste like what it's named for, I have a hard time imagining it ever tasting like roast turkey, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, etc. But if you want to try it, go ahead. Don't let me stop you. Just understand that everyone you know will assume you're also one of those people who injected themselves with Lysol or bleach when Trump suggested that might be a cure for the coronavirus.

Here's a quick interview with me about the boxed set of Marvel Mini-Books that comes out any day now — reproductions of the six that came out in the sixties plus a seventh with an intro/foreword by me. You can order a set of them here. They're cute and they're silly and for some of us, they bring back memories of a happier time in our lives and/or comic book reading. How many comics today can manage any, let alone all of that?

And I don't know if it was a transcribing error or, more likely, me misspeaking but I am aware that the first official Superman-Spider-Man comic book crossover was in the seventies, not the eighties. It took place in a comic book about eighty times the size of a Marvel mini-book. As they say at Weight Watchers, bigger is not always better.

The reaction to Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris has been…well, let's say "interesting." And maybe "utterly predictable." Obviously, there is no Democrat alive he could have named who would not evoke instant charges of corruption, dishonesty, far-left fanaticism, mental impairment and, probably before we get to Election Day, pedophilia. That's how we roll now in elections: There's no such thing as a Worthy Opponent. Being an Opponent automatically makes you unWorthy, not just of public office but of walking the land freely.

Unless the person is white, there's also the inevitable Birtherism. It's sometimes hard to tell how much of that is pure racism or just an appeal to racism but all of it is one or the other.

What I'm hearing from both camps now is a recognition that Good Cop has found his Bad Cop. There was always the feeling that Joe Biden was too nice to take on Donald Trump; that he was not a good hurler of mud, willing to abandon all dignity and hurl every conceivable accusation and insult at the other side. Trump's desperation shows in how he's already pressing it to the max. If in August, you claim your opponent will destroy all religion and "hurt God," how do you ramp up the invective the last week of October?

Anyway, there seems to be a general consensus that Senator Harris is a fighter who will answer the Trump attacks with equal fervor, only with some dignity. She will also eviscerate Mike Pence on a debate stage. Sadly for Pence, they'll probably be in separate locations for that match-up. He won't be able to get the debate canceled by saying his wife won't allow him to be alone in a room or on a stage with a woman.

So Democrats are energized that there's now someone capable of being firmer/nastier (take your pick) with Trump and Republicans are annoyed because there's now another fighter in the ring and she comes out swinging. I guess that means Joe made a good choice.

Lots of e-mails are asking me what's coming up in terms of webcasts. Next Tuesday, August 18 at 7 PM Pacific Time, I resume my one-on-one Conversations with friends. The fine writer of comic books, Kurt Busiek, and I will be chatting about many aspects of that field. One will be popular misconceptions that some folks seem to have about how comic books are (or were) made. This will be a very fine place to ask your questions about how the industry works when it works, which is not all the time.

On Saturday, August 22nd at 4 PM (also Pacific Time), I will host an online version of the Business of Cartoon Voices panels that I do every year at Comic-Con International in San Diego. These are not like the panels where I get a bunch of great cartoon voice actors together to demonstrate their craft, read a script aloud and, generally, be very funny. This is a panel for those who want to know how one gets into the field. It's all about agents and demos and training and unions and auditions and the basic professionalism one needs to have to be a professional.

I will be joined by two top voice actors who also teach — Bob Bergen and Debi Derryberry — and two of the best voice agents. One of the agents will be Cynthia McLean, who covers the areas of Animation, Interactive/Games, Motion Capture, and Commercial Voiceovers for SBV Talent. The other will be Paul Doherty, who is Secretary-Treasurer of the Cunningham-Escott-Slevin-Doherty Talent Agency.

You can find hundreds of folks on the web who will explain to you how the business works. You will not find a grouping of four people who are more involved in the actual workings of that business.

There will be another Cartoon Voices Panel with five great cartoon actors demonstrating their talents, reading a script and, generally, being very funny but I don't know when.

My pal Paul Harris takes issue with some "Fawlty" logic from John Cleese. I agree with Paul on most issues and this one especially.

Actually, this one's more of an audio link. It's almost ten minutes of an interview that Stan Laurel gave in 1959. It's interesting to me for many reasons, one being that there's nothing in his voice or what he says that would give you any hint you're listening to one of the greatest comic minds of the previous century…

Working all day on a script and staying pretty much off the web, I missed the news that Joe Biden had announced Kamala Harris would be his running mate. I figured it out when I looked at my iPhone and a message popped up that Tucker Carlson had delivered a scathing attack on the personal integrity of Kamala Harris.

So natch, I thought, "Biden must have announced she's his running mate." It could have just been a rumor at that point but I didn't think Tucker Carlson would waste a perfectly-good scathing attack on someone's personal integrity on a rumor. He might then have to deliver another scathing attack on the personal integrity of the real choice.

Remember when elections were about explaining why your opponent's plans for the country were wrong? Now you just say that their plans would completely destroy America (and maybe the planet) and every single thing folks care about — motherhood, religion, free speech, Netflix, chocolate fudge sundaes, etc. — and you spend the rest of the time talking about how corrupt and dishonest they are.

Senator Harris seems like a decent choice to me. So did most of the other names that were mentioned. I think this election is going to come down to whether voters want Trump or Not Trump and the Democratic ticket is just as Not Trump as it was without her. But she's a good speaker and because she's from California, her seat would remain with the party. Frankly, I can't think of anyone Biden could have picked who would have moved many votes.  Maybe Dr. Fauci.

I wonder if there even are many left that are movable. The press keeps posting these comparisons of where Biden is in the polls as compared to Hillary Clinton four years ago. It just feels to me like it's a different kind of election. The people who are dead-set on voting for Trump are deader-set this time than last time. The folks who think he's been the worst president ever are surer of that than the ones four years ago who thought he would be.

One thought about the debates: It looks like they're going to be with the candidates and questioners in separate locations all on-screen in little boxes like a Cable News roundtable. They'll probably have to draw up special rules to cover this format and wouldn't it be interesting if it went like this…?

• Candidate A is asked a question by the interrogators. Candidate A gets two minutes to respond during which Candidate B's microphone is shut off so he can't interrupt or talk over his opponent.
• Candidate B then gets two minutes to rebut, during which Candidate A's mike is muted.
• Then there's two minutes when both microphones are on and they can talk back and forth as much as they like.

In the Trump/Hillary debates, Trump liked to talk over her, say things like "Wrong!" before she'd finished the sentence, and just generally try to knock her off each message. Might be interesting to see neither guy be allowed to do that and the other allowed to finish a complete thought. This is even assuming there even are debates and that either man has a complete thought. With these guys, who knows?

George T. Conway on what you have to believe in order to believe Donald Trump deserves four more years in the White House instead of a longer stretch in prison.

A stunning number of "layoffs" (nicer word than "firings") was announced today at DC Comics. I've received a number of calls and e-mails asking if I know what happened and what the company will be like in the future. No, I don't know and I wonder if anyone does, especially about that second part.

I don't even know that I care except, of course, that I hope the folks I know there land somewhere safely…hopefully on more secure terra firma than DC has been lately. The last time I was up there, it felt peopled with folks who were temps, whether they knew that or not. I also had a hard time holding it in my brain that I was in the DC offices because absolutely nothing about that company, apart from the trademarked names of some of the characters they publish, connected for me to the DC Comics I read in the fifties and sixties and worked for in the seventies and a few decades after.

I understand that companies change. They have to. And among the folks who've worked there in this century we've clearly seen great talent and some real good ideas. It's just been too long since I felt it all coalesced into a firm with a firm direction and a unified idea of what comic books should be. I'm not sure any two people on the payroll even agreed on who Superman or Batman were.

Once upon a time, an explosion of this sort at DC Comics would have shaken my world, even if it came at a time (like now) when I wasn't working for them. DC was always there and relatively stable. It was my old neighborhood, a place that gave me a certain comfort, an institution with a fascinating lineage and history. Maybe it will be again but I stopped recognizing it long ago.

Randy Rainbow continues with his Man Crush…

Kevin Drum looks at Trump's new "executive orders" and explains why "the stuff that's legal is unimportant and the stuff that's important is illegal."

The Paley Center for Media used to hold these great festivals to celebrate and discuss great television shows of the past — night after night for a couple of weeks. I attended some wonderful ones with pioneers and show creators of programs that had endured a test of time.

But at some point — one suspects a need for the kind of funding that would come with promoting current product — they turned into festivals about shows that were still on the air. In some cases, they were saluting shows that had just debuted and had only generated the kind of interest that might cause the tickets to those events to sell out quickly. I don't fault them for this so much as I miss the events about shows that weren't currently in production.

This year's PaleyFest is being held, for obvious reasons, online. Here's a chat with Seth Meyers and the folks behind Late Night with Seth Meyers, a show I think is very well-written. This qualifies, by PaleyFest standards, as saluting an older series…

…read William Saletan's meticulously-researched-and-footnoted history of the way Donald Trump has dealt with the novel coronavirus. It's a mind-boggling account of, at every juncture, making the decision to lie, deny and do whatever was best for business (as opposed to The People) and his reelection prospects. He was wrong every friggin' time…and for that, we are paying dearly.

We had a great Cartoon Voices Panel last night. It should be watchable in full just below this message and you can find it on YouTube if you rummage around among the piano-playing cat videos…and all my webcasts can be viewed on this page. They're in chronological order with the newest at the top.

Two things happened that took matters out of my control. We had a lot of enthusiastic folks in the chat room who kept posting the same questions over and over and over and over and repeat that about forty more times. I finally had to use the "time out" function to block some of them from posting for five minutes. As a result, a lot of people who had legit questions that they asked once or twice went unnoticed amidst the deluge.

Something that I think needs to be explained to some Internet users — especially younger ones — is that enthusiasm is great but often, less is more. If you keep screaming, what you're saying goes unheard. People just notice that you're screaming. Anyway, I apologize to those of you who sent great questions that I didn't see until the show was over because…well, I have a lot of things to pay attention to during these webcasts. It's easy to miss something.

Meanwhile, the Steve Sherman interview was briefly taken offline due to a comment thread, wholly unrelated to anything in the video, that violated rules or common decency. That's all gone and the video is back.