In my earlier post on comic books based on Broadway plays, I said others might write in with examples which hadn't occurred to me.  So far, nine of you have written to remind me that in 1987, DC issued an adaptation of the then-forthcoming movie version of the musical, Little Shop of Horrors.  That's not really an example because the stage version was (then) only an off-Broadway show.  Little Shop didn't play on Broadway until a production in 2003.

Still, it's close…and I should have remembered it because I was (I believe) the first writer assigned to do the adaptation.  Legendary DC editor Julius Schwartz called me up one day and offered me the job, I accepted and then, a day or three later, he called me back and apologized profusely.  He'd jumped the gun, he said, and someone at the company was forcing him to use another writer.  No, I was not angry.  This kind of thing has happened so often that I've learned to expect it occasionally and to just shrug.  It's healthier.

I also should have remembered that I did adapt a movie based on a Broadway musical for DC Comics.  Dan Spiegle and I worked on an adaptation of The Wiz but it was halted in the midst of the drawing stage and never published.  I wrote about it here.

And since we're mentioning the off-Broadway Little Shop, let's mention Starstruck.  John M. Vohlidka wrote to remind me that Elaine Lee wrote and starred in that play and that artist Mike Kaluta did design work for it.  It ran off-Broadway in 1980 and again in '83.  Lee and Kaluta turned it into comic book format for Comix International and Heavy Metal and later for series and graphic novels at Marvel, Comico, Dark Horse Comics and other publishers.

Okay, what else did I miss?

Micki St. James has today's question…

Just occurred to me so I thought I'd ask — has there ever been a good comic based on a Broadway show? There have been great comics based on movies of course (Sword in the Stone) and TV shows (Zorro) but I don't remember any My Fair Lady or Damn Yankees comic book.

I can think of Broadway shows based on comic books but no comic books based on Broadway shows unless you count these two…

In 1973, Charlton put out a comic book based on the movie of the Broadway show 1776. I wrote about it here. It was adapted by writer Joe Gill and drawn by Tony Tallarico.

Before that — in 1963 — Dell put out an adaptation of the movie based on the Broadway show The Music Man. As with the adaptation of 1776, it's rather odd to see the story told without the songs and it doesn't fare well. I don't know how anyone could fall in love with Professor Harold Hill if you didn't see him sing and dance…and what's The Music Man without a rousing performance of "The Shipoopi?"

Just who wrote the comic is unknown and for a long time, the identity of the artist was a maddening blank to those of us who obsess over such mysteries. Then a year or three ago, comic book scholar Martin O'Hearn figured it out and we all sighed, "Of course!" The rest of us can perhaps be forgiven because John Forte usually inked his own pencil art and here, someone else did the honors. We aren't sure who that "someone else" is.

John Forte (pronounced "fort") was a prolific comic book artist who "broke in" around 1945 working for, as so many beginners did then, the Iger shop. By 1950, he was working for almost every publisher in town but mainly for Quality Comics — on Blackhawk, among other features. When Quality shut down, he worked primarily for Atlas (aka Marvel) on just about all their non-funny funnybooks and then mainly for ACG. ACG was kind of a "farm team" for DC Comics and while working for them, he began getting jobs from DC, working for them until his death in 1966. He was then primarily drawing Jimmy Olsen for DC and when he passed, he was replaced by another ACG mainstay, Pete Costanza.

At DC, he inked a lot of stories penciled by Curt Swan and did well-remembered stints as penciler-inker of two features in particular. He was the artist on "Tales of the Bizarro World" in Adventure Comics and some have suggested he was the ideal artist to draw an imperfect version of Superman because he was an imperfect version of Curt Swan. When the Bizarros left Adventure Comics, their spot in the book was taken up by "Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes" drawn by…John Forte. It was the first regular feature of The Legion and Mr. Forte designed a lot of the characters who formed that team. Reportedly, he struggled to draw those stories every month with their crowded panels but still somehow found time to draw the Music Man comic and a couple of others for Dell.

Someone else may come up with a comic book based on a Broadway show but…oh, wait! In 1971, there was a science-fiction play called Warp! from the Organic Theatre Company of Chicago. It was actually a trilogy and it ran there for a year before a brief, unsuccessful move to Broadway in 1973, closing after seven previews and eight performances. Ten years later, First Comics — which was based in Evanston, Illinois near Chicago — published a Warp! comic book based on the play. Does that count? Maybe someone else will come up with one that doesn't occur to me right now.

I have, like just about everyone, become an enormous fan of Simone Biles. Here she is when she was even shorter than she is now…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
…and there's plenty of it, starting with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, flipping his previous testimony to say that, by golly, he suddenly remembers that there was a clear quid pro quo in the Ukraine deal. It's getting harder and harder for Trump and his supporters to deny, though they'll find a way. You also have reporters and others diving into the newly-released testimony in the impeachment probe and to top it all off…election results! Trump campaigned hard for Matt Bevin, the Repub governor of Kentucky and even beseeched the crowd, "You can't let it [Bevin's defeat] happen to me!" They did and meanwhile, Democrats now control both the House and Senate in Virginia.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
We don't know for sure Trump's behind it but an awful lot of Republicans are suddenly demanding that everyone ignore a certain law.  It's the one that protects the anonymity of whistleblowers like the one who blew the whistle on The Great Ukrainian Quid Pro Quo.  You know…that unfair law written by Republicans and passed with Republican votes.  They don't like their own handiwork when the whistle that's blown is blown for thee…

• When I walk into an Apple Store and I have last year's iPhone, I feel positively Amish.

Folks keep asking me which Democrat I'd support for President if the primary election were held today. Since it's unlikely it will be, it doesn't matter. They're all better than what we have now and my opinions about the individual candidates are likely to change a lot in the 119 days until California goes to the polls. Would anyone like to bet that at least one or two of them won't say or do something in that time that will alter our views of them?

I'm not even sure to what extent I should vote for the candidate who I think would make the best President as opposed to the one who stands the best chance of becoming President. Those will probably not be the same person and the "electability" factor can change on a moment's notice. (At this point in the last election, the Republican leading the pack was Ben Carson.)

Bernie could have another heart episode. Joe, who's only two years younger, could have some medical problems that will raise concerns about his age. I really like Joe Biden but he does have the capacity to occasionally say something really clumsy and awkward…and he will. It'll be no worse than a half-dozen things Trump says every day and we'll have to watch as his mental health is questioned by folks who pretend Donald makes sense. But make no mistake: He will.

I know, I know. We all want this election to be over with. Democrats are eager to throw Trump out of office before he does more Trump-like deeds. Republican are eager to get him re-elected before more scandals erupt. But we're stuck with a calendar that says we have another year of this. Even by March 3 when my state votes, there will be all-different issues and all-different reasons to support this candidate over that candidate. And I can't help but think that by November, there could be some other candidates.

In the meantime, go read Kevin Drum's comments about Elizabeth Warren's proposal for Universal Health Care. He's right. We can pass laws that will make health insurance in this country cheaper and more available but we can't pass what Ms. Warren is proposing, at least not in one fell swoop. It may take a lot of little swoops over a lot of years.

Hey, remember this video?  It was a report on a poll about the worst Halloween candies and I said I didn't know who'd conducted the poll and who the guy was in the video.  A reader of this site, Jeff Peterson, tells me the survey was done by candystore.com (and it's right there on the video) and the newsman in the report is Steve Atkinson from 10News in San Diego. Thanks, Jeff.

Last evening, Buzzr ran the second of five episodes of The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour with the great Stan Freberg as a celebrity panelist. The third should be on tonight and so forth.

Also: I noted in this post that Wikipedia says there were 191 episodes of the series, which is a strange number for a five-a-week program. I got a lot of e-mailed theories and the most likely seems to be that the show was pre-empted four times, meaning that they sometimes didn't do five a week. Several folks told me they skipped Thanksgiving, January 2 for College Bowl games, and two days in July for Wimbledon coverage.

Sunday evening, my fave musical group Big Daddy put on their usual great show out in Santa Monica. A bonus of the evening was that I met Daniel Faigin, who reads this blog and has his own blog, Observations Along the Road, at this address. The topics he covers are highways, Judaism, history, off-beat news and the one that interests me the most, which is live theater mainly in the Southern California area. I've been reading some of his reviews of shows we both saw and he's a good, perceptive observer.

And speaking of live theater around here: In the past, I posted some raves for productions staged at the Cupcake Theater, an underfunded storefront operation out in North Hollywood. It's run by an energetic gent named Michael Pettenato, who's real good at producing musicals without a lot of money or stage space. Last April, Cupcake lost its location out on Magnolia Boulevard so we've been without their fine stagings…but it's just been announced that they found a new place to live. Sometime in January, they reopen out near Melrose and Vermont in what I guess would be called East Hollywood. No word yet on exactly when or what they'll be performing there so I'll let you know as soon as I hear.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
From New York magazine: "A federal appeals court ruled on Monday morning that President Trump must turn over eight years of personal and corporate tax returns, financial information that he has thus far successfully shielded from the public since he entered political life." Actually, I think that's a tiny bit wrong. The forms were subpoenaed from Mazars USA, Trump's accounting firm and it's they who would turn over the forms, not Trump. As I understand it, Trump's argument is that he is immune from prosecution so he is therefore immune from investigation. The whole matter's destined to wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court whose members will rule however they want to rule. As I look at how bad Supreme Court watchers have been doing the last few years in predicting how votes will go, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
From Vox: "The Trump administration on Monday started the official process of pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. The U.S., currently the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and responsible for the largest share of historical emissions, is now the only country in the world to back out of the accord." I still don't understand the reason for this except for Trump's insistence that any agreement not negotiated by Donald Trump is a terrible, lousy, bad, stinky deal and that any agreement negotiated by Donald Trump will be a great, wonderful, perfect deal.

If you think the Christmas decorations are going up early this year, get this: We're planning now for Comic-Con International in San Diego next July! It's July 23-26 to be exact, with a Preview Night on the 22nd.

Last month, they had Returning Registration where folks who were there last year could compete in the lottery for a certain number of the tickets for the 2020 event. This month — on November 16, there will be Open Registration where anyone who already has a Comic-Con Member ID can vie for another certain number of tickets. Many of them will not succeed because there's a lot more people who want to be in that convention center than the convention center can hold. But if you're going to try, read this page well before 11/16. And if you need more prep, my friends at the The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog (not affiliated with the con itself) have prepared this page which will tell you more.

Also, if you'd like to know more about the history of the convention, the con has posted some highly informative articles on this website.  These were written for the souvenir book last year and even I, a person who's attended every last one of these kosmic kaffeeklatsches, learned much from them.  If you haven't read Bill Schelly's massive overview of the con's history, which I recommended here before, make sure you do.  It's the first of the links on this page.

Lastly, if you can't wait for Comic-Con (and/or can't get a badge), WonderCon is April 10-12, 2020 at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Run by the same fine con-runners, it's kind of like Comic-Con Lite.  That means that instead of being twenty-five times too big to see and do everything you want to see and do, it's only about ten times too big to see and do everything you want to do.  Some folks prefer it to Comic-Con because it isn't quite as overwhelming.  And some folks prefer it because it's fairly easy to get a badge for it if you act when they first go on sale.

They haven't yet.  I'll try to let you know when that date is announced but you might want to keep an eye on the website, most of which still displays info on the 2019 show.    I think that's everything for now.

I occasionally catch the current Family Feud show, which is hosted by Steve Harvey.  This is not the kind of television we put in time capsules and show at the Paley but it's fun and I think Mr. Harvey does as good a job as anyone these days does hosting a game show.  The exhibit below shows you that he's a secure man, willing to let one of the contestants actually be funnier than he is.  Most of them would not have allowed it to go on as long as this one did…

Louis C.K. is now selling tickets for what I guess you'd call a comeback tour.  He'll go from North Carolina to Illinois and then to Iowa and then to Israel, then to Italy, then back to Israel, then to Slovokia, then back here to Michigan and other spots in the U.S.  Some of these concerts are already sold out.

At least for the shows in this country, Yondr cases are a condition of attendance…

This event will be a phone-free experience. Use of cellphones, smart watches, smart accessories, cameras or recording devices will not be permitted in the performance space.

Upon arrival at the venue, all phones and smart watches will be secured in Yondr cases that will be opened at the end of the event. Guests maintain possession of their phones at all times, and can access their phones throughout the show at designated Phone Use Areas in the venue. All phones will be re-secured in Yondr cases before returning to the performance space.

Anyone seen using a cellphone during the performance will be escorted out of the venue. We appreciate your cooperation in creating a phone-free viewing experience.

And that's not the only rule.  According to this piece in the New York Times…

…attendees will not be allowed to take notes, even on paper. "Recording of any kind, including note taking," is not permitted, the rules say. And no part of Louis C.K.'s "materials" — a.k.a. his jokes and sketches — are allowed to be "copied, translated, transmitted, displayed, distributed or reproduced verbatim," in any form. Those who violate these rules are subject to legal repercussions, it reads.

So we have two issues here, one being whether this man should be out touring and performing. I say sure. He hasn't been charged or convicted of any crime. He admitted to doing some bad things and I really don't know what the penalty should be for them, nor would I want to sit on a jury deciding that penalty. In the absence of legal proceedings, it becomes a matter of whether theaters want to book him and people want to see him…and I assume if enough people want to see him and there are no mass demonstrations or reprisals — any maybe even if they are — most theaters will be only too happy to book him.

Not all that long ago, I might have been in one of those audiences because I admired his work but even before his sex scandal, I was done with the guy. He became (to me) one of those comics who says shocking, offensive things not because he believes them but because he thinks a reputation for being shocking and offensive is very commercial…and maybe easier than writing smart, perceptive jokes. I'm not against shocking and offensive in a comedian. Jim Jefferies is one of my current favorite comics but unlike what I began hearing from Louis C.K. before his exile, Jefferies is funny and he either means what he says or does it with a kind of verbal wink that lets you know he doesn't.

So if and when Louis C.K. comes my way, I won't be buying tickets for that reason and also because of the Yondr case requirement. I already discussed those things here and came to the conclusion that they'd probably keep me away from most shows. I don't question any performer's right to require them but I don't think I want to attend most shows — maybe any — if that's a condition. Then add in the threat of litigation if I come back here and review the show on my blog and you know what you get? Well, it's not my ticket money.

I always thought of stand-up comedy as the purest form of Free Speech we have in this country. Louis C.K.'s entire career is built on this freedom and here he is trying to restrict it for others. Is he really going to sue reviewers who quote a line or two of what he does on stage? I can understand why he might want to try having it both ways — the money plus jumpstarting his career while making it harder to criticize him. It just seems to me that if you're trying to prevent people from reviewing your act, the way to achieve that is to not go out and do your act.

It reminds me of something and to tell you about it, I have to go back to a post here from 2003. Dennis Miller was on a barely-watched MSNBC show that Phil Donahue was hosting back when no one watched MSNBC. The audience for it may have been just me and Marlo…

At one point on the broadcast, Miller made a reference to having sex with sheep, complete with the "f" word, and then remembering he was on live TV, he turned to Donahue and asked, "We're on a delay, right? They're bleeping me, right?" They weren't, at least insofar as the East Coast was concerned. During the next commercial, someone informed Miller that he'd just said what he'd said on live, non-HBO TV and when they came back from the break, he muttered a slight apology and told his host that it was stupid not to have a tape delay on a show of that sort.

Now, I don't think saying that word on MSNBC is going to matter one bit in the world. It wouldn't even matter if it was uttered on a show that someone besides me was watching. But Dennis Miller was live on Saturday Night Live. Dennis Miller was live on Monday Night Football. Dennis Miller was even live on Dennis Miller Live. The man understands the concept of live television and has usually appeared on it without a tape delay. He has also spent an awful lot of airtime blasting people who don't accept personal responsibility for their actions. But apparently, it's the Donahue show's fault that he was heard saying something he said but didn't mean to have heard.

And it's also the first time I've ever seen a professional comedian complain about not being censored.

If I thought for a while, I might be able to think of another time that a professional comedian wanted to try and limit the Free Speech of others…or at least others who weren't in the audience and heckling him. Right now, only Louis C.K. comes to mind.

I have already decided I'm not leaving my house on Halloween 2020. No matter what parties invite me, no matter how near or far they are to me, no matter who throws them or what temptations there might be to lure me to them, I am not leaving my home on Halloween 2020. Here are some reasons why and I may come up with others…

1. I don't like to go out on Halloween anyway…
2. …and next year, Halloween falls on a Saturday so it will be rowdier with more parties and people partying 'til late in the night…
3. …and it's a Leap Year and they're always a little weird…
4. …and there will be a full moon that night so there will be real werewolves prowling about…
5. …and it'll be a night when we set the clocks back so the debauchery and mayhem will last for an extra hour…
6. …and most frightening of all, it will be only three days until this country votes for President so there will be last-minute rallies and much screaming and yelling and charges and counter-charges and predictions that we will all die if the wrong person is elected and everyone will be crazy anyway.

So plan on joining me and not going anywhere on October 31, 2020. If you need me that day, I'll be under my bed shivering.

Here are four toy commercials from the sixties. First up is one for Slinky, which was one of those toys that was just fun to have around to keep your hands busy. In the commercial, which is from around sixty years ago, it says you can buy a Slinky for "under a dollar" — which, as I learned at a very young age means 99 cents and no less. I was curious as to what they sell for today and was impressed to find that you can order a Slinky from Amazon (here's the link) for only $3.39. I can't think of too many things that have gone up so little in price over that time period.

Next is Mr. Machine, an Ideal toy which encouraged you to take it apart and put it back together. Two different friends of mine back in my youth managed the first part, were unable to accomplish the second and had to call me in it show them how it was done. In both cases, I did this by trying something that had apparently not occurred to either of them: Reading and following the instructions. Danny watched me put it back together and thought, "If Mark can do it, I can do it," whereupon he immediately took it apart again…and discovered he couldn't do what Mark had done. That was around 1964 and as far as I know, he's still working on it.

Third, we have a spot with a couple of Hasbro products with a cartoon kid whose voice was done by Mae Questel, best known as the voice of Olive Oyl and Betty Boop. And then we have everyone's favorite plastic pugilists, the Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. You can still buy the robots for $18 and I just discovered there's a version of the game where Superman and Batman try to knock each other's block off…

Buzzr didn't run the episode of the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour that was scheduled today. They reran one they ran last week. So I don't know when they'll be running one that Stan Freberg is on.

I'm not in the mood to look at political news this weekend. The Trump Dumps will be back when I am.

The fine actor Hal Holbrook has retired from performing his famous show as Mark Twain. I am so glad I got to see him do it and I'm looking forward to a new documentary about him and the show he did for a staggering 63 years, needing less and less make-up with each year. Here's an article about that documentary.

You're all familiar with the game shows Match Game and Hollywood Squares, right? Well, in 1983 there was a brief, shining moment when neither of those two shows was on the air in either its original form or one of the umpteen revivals. Someone at NBC decided that America could not be without them a moment longer and brought them back as a combined hour.

A two-game game show, they felt, needed two hosts. They hired Gene Rayburn, who'd hosted the first two incarnations of Match Game but they did not hire Peter Marshall, who'd been the host of the original Hollywood Squares. Reportedly, he was not even approached and I have no idea why. To handle the game he'd launched, they brought in Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, the breakout star of the rock 'n' roll group Sha Na Na.

For the first half of that hour, Rayburn would host Match Game with six celebrities, one of whom would be Bauman. Halfway through, they'd add three more celebrities, slap another tier of seats on the set and Gene and Jon would switch places. They'd then play Hollywood Squares with Mr. Bauman hosting. At the end, Rayburn would take back the host microphone as the winning contestant for the day played the Match Game bonus round for serious bucks.

It must have sounded good in the meetings but it didn't attract a huge audience and ended after — if we are to believe Wikipedia and we shouldn't always — 191 episodes. I have no idea how a Monday-thru-Friday show could have an episode count that wasn't a multiple of five but that's what it says. In any case, there were probably a number of reasons why the combined might of two hugely-powerful game shows didn't run anywhere near as long as either had individually, one being that the shows were too similar so each made the other look unremarkable.

Also, I don't think they always got stars who were up to the challenge of being amusing in quick spurts. The hired a lot of folks who were there not because they were entertaining panelists but because they were on a hit prime time show and some weren't all that funny. Years later in a Twitter post, Jon Bauman wrote, "Understand that this was the only completely honest version of Hwd Squares ever where no Squares were sitting there with the punch lines of the jokes in front of them." Maybe that was part of the problem.

I worked with Bauman on another show soon after — he was a very nice, smart guy by the way — and we got to talking about the MG-HS Hour and why it didn't succeed. He told me about that honesty and also about one slight bit of dishonesty that did sneak in a few times. ..

The way Match Game was played, questions would be asked of the stars and they'd each write down one response, then display it when called upon. In Round 1 of a two-round game, the contestant would try to match all six stars. In Round 2, only the stars who'd gone unmatched in Round 1 would play. According to Jon, there was one recurring panelist who craved the extra screen time that would be his if he played in both rounds…so in Round 1, he'd quickly write down two responses. When called upon to display his answer, he would show one that didn't match the contestant. Ergo, the star got to play in Round 2. Jon said he wouldn't tell me who the star was but I guessed and he said I was right. He would not like it if I told you.

And there may have been other reasons why the show didn't fly. Both game shows in their original forms had developed a family of regular "stars" (as is common, the noun was used hopefully) but the hour amalgam didn't really even try to do that. And it didn't have a great time slot and maybe it was too much of the same thing…

In any case: It went off and for a long time, those episodes weren't rerun anywhere because one company owned Match Game and another company owned Hollywood Squares. They'd forged some sort of partnership alliance to do the original hours but were unable to come to terms for a syndication deal. That finally got solved and now they're rerunning on the Buzzr cable network which features all game shows, all the time.

And here's what prompted me to write about it. Right now, they're running episodes from a week in which one of the panelists was a hero of mine…the great satirist, Stan Freberg! I knew Stan quite well and thought I knew just about everything he'd ever done but I never knew about this.

How he got on this show, I have no idea. Maybe — and this is a reach — it had something to do with the producer, who was Robert Sherman, son of Allan Sherman. Robert and I went to high school together but we've only talked twice in the last fifty years so I may not be able to ask him. But his father, of course, was a great performer of song parodies, most notably "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." People were often getting Allan's repertoire confused with Stan's and telling Stan how much they loved "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh."

I believe the first episode with Stan aired last night so you have four more chances to catch one and see him in one of his few game show appearances. If you watch, keep in mind he may not come on until the middle of the show. The other guests in the week include Willie Tyler & Lester, Marcia Wallace, Bruce Baum and Bill Rafferty.