This blog is on lockdown for a few days while I deal with a matter that would be of no interest to any of its readers. I should have known I'd have to break that radio silence to write about a good friend and a good person who left us.

Bill Schelly passed away last Thursday and the cause is being reported as multiple myeloma, which is a cancer of the plasma cells found in the bone marrow. I would imagine he'd been battling this for some time but I sure hadn't heard anything about it. He was 67.

He was a man who did many things well: A writer and an artist and a particularly fine expert on comic books and comic book fandom. I recommend all of his books to you but I'll just mention five of them…

• Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary, which Bill co-authored with Richard Lupoff, is a fine biography of one of the most important comic book writers of comics' first few decades and an important author of prose science-fiction as well.
• John Stanley: Giving Life to Little Lulu is one of those "Gee, I'm glad someone put in the work to do this book" books. John Stanley was the highly-undercredited wit behind the classic Dell Little Lulu comics and some other pretty good ones, too. Before Bill did this book, not a whole lot was known about the man. That is no longer the case.
• Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor is also in that category of books someone was going to write and I'm real glad Bill was the guy to do it. Kurtzman, of course, was one of the most important figures in the history of the American comic book and one of the most misunderstood. When I finished reading this book, I called Bill and told him he couldn't have done a better job.
• James Warren, Empire Of Monsters: The Man Behind Creepy, Vampirella, And Famous Monsters is Bill's latest book and when I read this one, I was impressed with how he dug past all the rumors and stories that have been passed around about Jim Warren and got to what I believe and trust is the truth. Warren was a one-of-a-kind figure in publishing, living by his own rule and building a mini-dynasty the hard way: With big ambitions and very little capital. It's hard to capture someone that unconventional but I think Bill pulled it off.
• And then there's Sense of Wonder: My Life in Comic Fandom — The Whole Story, which is Bill's autobiography. With surprising candor, he writes of his life in comic book fandom and of the conflicts and problems he had of confronting his homosexuality at a time when that was even more dramatic than it is now. Bill found great honesty in telling the stories of other folks but it must have been difficult to achieve it about himself. A very good piece of work.

If books with long titles scare you off, be brave. Be very brave. These and his others are quite good. Bill was quite good…just a lovely, talented man. I'm sure going to miss talking to him on the phone and at conventions, and I'm sorry we aren't going to get all the other books that he would have written. Such a loss.

Fifty years ago today on CBS, the first episode of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? debuted. I didn't care much for the show at first…or at second or at third or fifth or ninth. Somewhere around twenty-seventh, I began to develop an appreciation for it and now I have a fondness for it, at least in its primal form. Some of the variations don't thrill me a whole lot but I think every Scooby fan would say that. Here's Rob Salkowitz with some words about the greatest of Great Danes.

Back in this post, I wrote the following…

I used to like juggling lots of assignments, especially if they were very different from one another. I was never happier as a writer than I was during a few periods when I was simultaneously writing animation scripts, live-action scripts and comic book scripts — and often, more than one in each category. At one point for instance, I recall working at the same time on Blackhawk for DC, DNAgents for Eclipse and Groo for whatever publisher we hadn't put out of business at that moment — three very different comics for three different publishers and drawn by three different artists who required different kinds and formats of input from me.

I got something out of each kind of writing — animation, live-action and comics — that I didn't get out of the other two.

I've received about thirty e-mails asking me to elaborate on what I got out of each kind of writing, and especially what do I get out of comic books that I don't get out of the other two? I could probably do thirty posts here answering the question and maybe I'll do more than one but I'll try to cover a few here.

To understand my first answer, you need to divide what you do on any given writing job into two categories: "Writing" and "Non-Writing." "Writing" is when you're sitting at a keyboard thinking of what to put into the script and you're putting it into a script. It can also include moments when you're in a room with one or more other writers, all pitching out ideas and jointly deciding which one will go into that script.

"Non-Writing" is all the other stuff — dealing with the company that's paying you and/or the person (be it an editor or a producer) who is above you, doing promotional work, sitting around with various folks discussing what you're going to go off and write, sitting around with various folks hearing what they don't like about what you wrote, attending events where you're expected to "network," dealing with the concerns and problems of others on the same project, etc. A lot of "Non-Writing" involves meetings. In comics, I've never had to "pitch" anywhere near as hard as I have in the other categories of work.

With occasional exceptions, I prefer "Writing" to "Non-Writing" and I particularly dislike pitching. If I were to take the three kinds of writing I mentioned — comic books, animation and live-action shows — and put them in order based on the extent to which they involve "Writing," that list would look like this…

1. Comic Books
2. Animation
3. Live-Action

And if I were to reorder that list based on which ones paid me the most, the list would look like this…

1. Live-Action
2. Animation
3. Comic Books

These are how it's generally worked with me. There have been exceptions — a certain cartoon show that paid me more than a certain live-action show — but most of the time, this is how they've stacked up for me. Others' mileage may, as they say, vary.

There's something to be said for the glory of a job where you spend most of your time writing and very little of it in meetings. I really like to just sit and write, often all day and into the night. Believe it or not, I'm doing just that at this moment. A reason I have this blog is because apart from occasional tech maintenance, the time I spend on it is all spent writing. I don't have to have meetings with folks who outrank me to discuss what I'm going to post tomorrow or when it will be time to plug Frank Ferrante again or curse the evil that is cole slaw.

But I also like to be paid money and I can't very well do the things that don't pay well or at all if something doesn't pay well or at all. Some folks reading this probably won't believe this next part but there have been some comic book projects that I loved writing — I won't mention any by name; I'll just stick an illustration below — that paid me very little (or near the end, nothing) and those were made possible because I was getting decent bucks at the time on some animated or live-action project.

It was the best of both worlds because I like writing comic books. In most (not all, alas) situations, you don't have to deal with lots of different people who alter your work, criticize your work, put their spin on your work, etc. You just do the work. On an animated or live-action TV show, between you and the audience there are hundreds of people who impact what gets to that audience. In a comic book, it's more like five or six…if that many.

Take Groo the Wanderer, which is one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done in my life. I don't mean most enjoyable jobs because it's never felt like a job to me. It's not something produced by a committee. To me, it feels like it's done by me, my best friend and two other friends who letter and color. You cannot do a sitcom or a cartoon show with just three other guys or with only talented people you like. General rule of thumb: Once you have a dozen people involved in a project, at least one of them is going to be an asshole and/or a non-removable incompetent and you just have to live with that.

Also, I like writing comic books because I like comic books. I grew up with comic books. I'm fascinated by the history of the medium. I enjoy being part of that world and not because it's ever paid me huge sums of money…because it hasn't.

And lastly for now — and remember I may write more about this later because there is more — there are the people I've met and known and worked with in each walk of life. I think the ones in comics have meant more to me than the ones in the other two fields. I just can't imagine my silly existence without all three.

Last Friday on his show, Bill Maher did a "New Rules" speech about Fat Shaming. He's in favor of it. Here's James Corden with a rebuttal of sorts. I think they're both right up to a point…

• Trump has denied rumors that he'll name Mike Pompeo his National Security Advisor while keeping him as Secretary of State. That's a mistake. It would have saved Trump the trouble of finding yet another lying incompetent who'll soon be fired.

As I write this, the eleven hundred people seeking the Democratic Nomination are debating on TV and I'm not watching. Here's the reason: Between now and Election Day of 2020 — and come to think of it, even after regardless of the outcome — we're going to be hearing political arguments. We're going to be hearing too many political arguments. Never mind what they're saying…the sheer volume of them will be way too much and we'll all be real sick of them long before we even know who the nominees are. (I'm still only about 75% convinced the Republican one will be Trump.)

So I figure whenever you can avoid any of it, seize the opportunity. I don't know that the debate I'm missing right now matters that much. If by some miracle it does, I'll catch excerpts later. The news coverage in advance seemed to suggest that the big suspense is whether, with no seven-second delay in the telecast, we'll hear one of the candidates say the "f" word.

Me, I'm already sick of it — especially because I have the feeling that once there is a Democratic nominee, we'll be able to look back and see that almost nothing that happened in 2019 had much to do with that selection. Some candidates eliminated themselves and that was all. Enjoy the show and enjoy the tweets from the guy in the White House who sounds like Statler and/or Waldorf except that (a) the characters heckling Fozzie Bear from the balcony were funny and (b) we now have Putin's hand where a Muppeteer's used to be.

An author named Garrett M. Graff has written a book called The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. I just ordered a copy for my Kindle after reading this article. The article is about the sheer randomness in why certain people died on 9/11 — people who were or were not on one of the planes or in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Two people were fleeing the towers. One turned left and one turned right. One made it out alive and the other didn't.

It's an interesting aspect of life to ponder and not just with regard to major catastrophes. Sometimes, the decision on whether you go to the Ralphs Market or the Vons Market can have a major impact on your existence, and not just because one place has fresher produce.

Online, it's pretty easy to find the news footage from The Day America Was Attacked. I downloaded a whole folder of it into my computer and every so often, triggered by nothing in particular, I watch a half-hour or so of it, just to remind myself.

Well, not just for that. I have a good enough memory that I'm not about to forget. Truth to tell, I'm not sure why I watch it but a good guess is that I want to check and make sure it still horrifies me. Another is that it gives me perspective. We're always hearing that some bad thing that happens is the worst thing that's ever happened and it helps to remember one that really and truly was worse.

I don't want to just talk about myself here because that's too…well, presidential. Besides, you have a story about how you felt that day and mine is no more important than yours. I sometimes feel like America is afraid to confront how much damage was done to it that day and how the aftershocks continue. Were it not for those planes flying into those buildings, would we currently have as much anger in this country and so many divisions?

I'm going to embed a video here. It's the group Voctave singing the Star-Spangled Banner…and I agree with those who say it was a poor choice for our National Anthem. It's too much about war. It's too hard for the average American to sing. It attaches too much importance to a piece of cloth and not nearly enough to the spirit of those who salute it. And yet, it carries with it so much history and it has a way of feeling very, very appropriate at times. I can't sing this thing. You probably can't sing this thing. But folks with great voices sure can make it work…

Not so long ago in this message, I said some negative things about Knott's Berry Farm, an amusement park which is in Buena Park, about a Dwarf's throw from Disneyland. They should be viewed in the context of admitting that I haven't been there since 1979 when we shot some footage there with the Bay City Rollers for a TV show I was doing for Sid and Marty Krofft. A place can change a lot in forty years. Steve Bacher wrote…

Could you elaborate a bit more on your lack of enthusiasm for Knott's Berry Farm? Back in the 1980's my family visited my wife's brother's family in LA and we (kids and adults) all went to Knott's. I personally found it more fun than Disneyland. I'm also aware that some folks (like my late mother) disdained the place for political reasons, something about the folks who owned it. Would that have anything to do with your opinion? Though I know you usually don't let such things influence you.

You're right. As I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog a few times, I don't think most boycotts accomplish a lot…though if it'll make you feel better to not eat at Chick-Fil-A, by all means don't eat there. Discomfort is a perfectly valid reason for not doing anything that's optional.

But no, I've never had any desire to go to Knott's since '79 because, first of all, if I'm going to drive that far to go to a theme park, I'll go the extra seven miles and go to Disneyland…and I don't even do that very often. I've been averaging about once a decade. (Note to Amber: I'm about due.)

I actually went to Knott's twice in '79 — once to scout locations for the film shoot. The other time was the actual shoot. The first time was more interesting since we had three hours of walking around the park with Berry Farm officials before the gates opened. They actually turned on some of the rides so members of our party could ride a few of them. I didn't get on because I don't like "thrill rides." To me, a roller coaster is where you pay someone to do to you what would cause you to sue a bus company if it happened on one of their buses.

At the time we were there, "thrill rides" seemed to be the main thing Knott's had to offer. So there's a big reason for me not to go there. The other was that I found its inauthentic re-creations of western streets pretty boring. I'd recently had the run of the backlots at Universal Studios and Warner Brothers…and their western streets were a lot more exciting. So there's my answer, Steve.

Another correspondent and friend of this blog, Tommy Donovan, wrote that he used to work at Knott's Berry Farm. He looked around and found this video of still photos taken from the one-day shoot we did at Knott's with the Rollers. It says the filming was 1978 but that's wrong. Tommy asked if I am visible in this video and the answer is that parts of me are in one or two shots but you can't really see me. In a few photos, you do see an older man with white hair. That is Jack Regas, who directed the Bay City Rollers show and countless others. I'll tell you about Jack in a video link in the next few days. Here's the montage of the Rollers, years before the fantastic success they enjoy today…

• Imagining John Bolton saying to Trump, "You can't fire me! There are still countries we aren't at war with!"

So what's the deal with this "invite the Taliban to Camp David" idea and why is there no deal? Fred Kaplan has the whole story. Every time I hear what a "great negotiator" Trump is, I think of a guy who couldn't get laid in a prison with a fistful of pardons.

As you may be aware, the Writers Guild of America — an organization to which I have proudly belonged since April Fool's Day of 1976 — is on strike against agencies that specialize in "packaging" deals. If you need to know about the issues at hand, this article will clue you in.

I get a message or two a day asking me how I feel about the whole matter. I held off writing a piece because I'm lazy and I knew my pal Ken Levine would write it for me and I could just link to his…and indeed, he has. I agree with every syllable.

Back in this message, I told you about a book by friends of mine…The Show Won't Go On by Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns. This is the book about performers who died on a stage with an audience looking on.

Jeff and Burt will be signing it at 4 PM on Saturday, September 21 at the Dark Delicacies book store in Burbank, California. There will also be an interview of the two of them and that interview will be conducted by me. If you want to hear the interview of them and/or buy a copy signed by them, show up. I believe you can also order a signed copy from the Dark Delicacies shop.

Thanks to the dozen-or-so of you who've written to let me know that the Souplantation chain has its Classic Creamy Tomato Soup on the menu now as a "Limited September Offering." I know not whether it's limited to all of September or part of September but I do know it's great soup and I'll be chugging down many bowls of it before, like Brigadoon, it fades from this land of ours to reappear as a thing of beauty at a later date.

WARNING: "Traditional Cole Slaw" is also listed as a "Limited September Offering" so if you go to a Souplantation (or a Sweet Tomatoes, as they're called in some regions), be on your guard at all times. I wouldn't put it past cole slaw to disguise itself as Classic Creamy Tomato Soup to fool some unsuspecting person into putting it into their mouths. The vile treachery of cole slaw knows no limits. It still has much of the world fooled into thinking its food.

I will also warn you that I've cooled a bit on the glories of the Souplantation chain…at least the three I used to frequent in or around Los Angeles. In honor of C.C.T.S., I'll go try one of them again in the next few days but my last visits there were a bit disappointing. The food didn't seem as fresh, the serving areas didn't feel as clean and they seemed to have troubles keeping the buffet serving areas stocked. They were all in or near L.A. Last year, I went to one in San Diego that was phenomenal — great service, great food, great decor, everything. It reminded me of how good the ones I patronize used to be. I suppose it's just a coincidence that the corporate offices of the Souplantation company are in San Diego…