The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show was on CBS Saturday morning for three seasons starting in September of 1983. I had a lot to do with selling it to the network including writing the pilot and working out the format and characters. Then I went on to other things and left it to others, some of whom did some very fine work on it.

Whenever I mention it here, someone always writes in to ask me if it's true that it ended after three seasons because parents' groups were protesting its violent content and/on demonic imagery. No, that is not true. The protests were mild and the program ended, as most shows do, because the folks at the network did not think its ratings justified another season.

Someone also usually writes to ask if there was ever a "last" episode where the kids escaped the D&D world and got back to their own…and occasionally, someone writes to swear they saw such an episode on CBS. No, no such episode was ever produced. One of the writers on the series later wrote a script for such an episode but it was not produced until years later as a fan-funded venture. I do not endorse it and I wish they hadn't done that…but if you like it, fine.

The show is still fondly remembered and is rerun a lot in some countries. It's popular enough in Brazil that the folks who sell Renault automobiles down there spent a lot of money to make this commercial with actors (and CGI) bringing the animated characters to life. It probably had a larger budget than was spent making one or more seasons of the cartoon show and it's very well done. In fact, it's a better "ending" for the series than the fan-funded one…

Like you (I hope/assume) I believe in Free Speech and Freedom of the Press. I do think folks sometimes carry those principles to self-serving, ridiculous extremes — like claiming they're being censored if their TV show gets canceled — but the principles themselves are important. I also think that defense of Free Speech is kinda meaningless except when you defend the right of others to say things that you, yourself do not like.

It would not be courageous of me to defend the right of someone to praise Barack Obama. I would be placing principle over self-interest if I defended the right of someone to say Donald Trump was a great man. I'll have to do that one of these days.

Anyway, this brings us to Julian Assange, who has now been indicted not so much for stealing secret documents but for sharing them with the world. A prosecution of him could put in place a new order of punishing or at least intimidating journalists who do much better, fairer leaking than he does. As little as I like the way Assange selectively and manipulatively leaks, the stifling of real journalists would do much more damage. Fred Kaplan explains in more detail why this is.

• A phrase we will hear a lot, probably before this year is over: "No wonder he fought so hard to keep his taxes secret!"

I've received lots of favorable comments about the selection of E. Nelson Bridwell for this year's posthumous Bill Finger Award. This one is from Jack Lechner…

I'm very happy to see Mike Friedrich and E. Nelson Bridwell being honored, even though no one on the unanimous Finger Award panel seems to have gone for my own choice, Denny O'Neil.

I'm especially happy because Mr. Bridwell was once very kind to me. In the summer of 1971, I was 8 years old, and a big fan of DC Comics in general — and Kirby's Fourth World in particular (including the chatty missives written by you and Steve Sherman). I was visiting my grandmother in the Bronx, and on a total whim I called up the DC office and asked if they gave tours. Somehow, I got handed to E. Nelson Bridwell, who said they didn't, but that I could come by anyway. So I did, accompanied by my long-suffering mother. Mr. Bridwell greeted me, and actually did tour me around the office. I peppered him with questions about various books and characters, which he answered graciously, while my mother quietly gave up on having any idea what we were talking about.

There were three high points of the tour. The first was when I mentioned that besides Jack Kirby, I was devoted to the work of — naturally — Denny O'Neil, who was then writing both Green Lantern/Green Arrow and World's Finest. Bridwell smiled and opened a door to a small office…and there was Denny O'Neil himself, with an impressive head of bushy 1971 hair. (I was too awestruck to say anything to my hero.) The second was when Bridwell showed me page proofs on the as-yet-unpublished Forever People #5, featuring Sonny Sumo, possessor of the Anti-Life Equation. This felt like being able to read next month's newspaper today, and my mind was suitably blown. The third was when, before we left, Bridwell gave me brand-new copies of issue #4 in each of the Kirby titles, the first of the 25¢ "bigger and better" comics.

I don't think I came down from the high of that visit for months. I've never forgotten E. Nelson Bridwell's generosity, considering that there was absolutely nothing in it for him — except making a little boy very happy.

Knowing Nelson as I did, I believe every word of this account including the selfless motive. He was a very gentle, friendly man who — and this is just my opinion — was not properly respected by some at DC in that period. The guy was absolutely brilliant but folks who weren't as bright treated him the way Alan Brady treated Mel Cooley. If I had his brains and I went on Jeopardy! today, I'd kick James Holzhauer to the curb.

I know what you mean about reading "next month's newspaper today." The first time I visited the DC offices was Monday, June 29, 1970. The most recent DC comics I'd bought off the newsstands were books that had left that office for press three months earlier. So to see the current comics they were working on or had proofs of lying about was like being catapulted three months into the future.

And a lot of changes had happened during those three months. The DC symbol in the upper left hand corner of the covers had changed. Longtime Superman editor Mort Weisinger was retiring. He was there doing some bookkeeping-type work on his last issues but he no longer had an office and no longer had any power. Quite a few comics had changed creative staffs or undergone remodeling. It was somewhat jarring.

I was there with my then-partner and one of the many people we met that day was Nelson Bridwell. Everyone was nice to us but some people were nice to us because they were just nice people and some were nice to us because we were Jack Kirby's assistants. Nelson was definitely in the first grouping.

Did you see the police chase in the San Fernando Valley Tuesday involving a stolen RV? Craziest televised pursuit I ever saw…and one of the most chilling. Happily, no one was killed but several people and a dog were injured, a lot of property was destroyed and boy, was it scary and bizarre.

Before you decide to watch the video I've embedded, remember that a dog was injured — not seriously but for a moment there, it looks pretty awful. If that or automotive collisions will make you squeamish, don't watch this video.

This is the event as covered by the local ABC affiliate, KABC. My favorite coverer of these things, Stu Mundel of KCBS and KCAL, was also there but the KABC camera was better positioned to capture the action and their reporter, whose name I do not know, did a good job thinking fast and treating this potentially-deadly rampage with the right level of seriousness.

I find these fascinating because car chases are among the few times on live TV where no one involved has any idea how things will go. Sporting events, awards shows, concerts…yes, they can be unpredictable but usually, it's a matter of which of eight possible outcomes will occur. Pursuits are real Reality TV. They're also hard not to watch, especially when they're as wild as this one was…

• Sympathies to everyone in Missouri and everywhere that's had devastating and unprecedented bad weather lately. How much of this is it going to take before certain people say "Hmmm…maybe there is something to this Climate Change stuff"?

• Missouri recently passed a restrictive abortion law. Today, it was hit by a devastating tornado. If they'd passed a pro-choice law, some self-proclaimed Evangelical yahoo would be tweeting right now that the hurricane was God's way of punishing them.

Costco is now selling a 27-pound bucket of macaroni and cheese. It sells for $89.99 but it is not, as you might assume, a bucket containing 27 pounds of mac and cheese all mixed together. Instead, the bucket contains six 30-serving zip-sealed pouches of elbow pasta and six 30-serving zip-sealed pouches of cheddar cheese sauce.

Nice to know you don't have to eat the whole bucketful right away. The special packaging has a shelf life of twenty years so you and your family would only have to eat 30 servings every 3.3 years. That doesn't seem too excessive, does it?

When I saw this, I thought at first they must be giving out free samples of this mac 'n' cheese at Costco warehouses across this great land of ours. It would be nice if we could taste it before we commit to that much of it.

But then I thought, "Maybe not." This is the kind of food that people purchase to have available in case there's a catastrophic tragedy and, say, all the Ralphs Markets are nuked or sentient iPads are now running the world and controlling the food supply. (Take a look at the "suggested serving" image above. After a hurricane has wiped out your city, a tiny garnish of parsley would certainly make things more appetizing.)

Whenever I see "Disaster Prep" meals, I remember some guy on TV back in the sixties who sold this kind of thing. Someone asked him how tasty it was and he said something like, "After a nuclear holocaust, you won't care how tasty it is. Your family will be thrilled to be able to eat my products instead of each other!" I thought that was a damn good sales pitch because, you know, nobody really wants to eat Grandma.

The team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis split up in 1956, playing their last engagement together on July 25 of that year, ten years to the day after their first booking as a duo. Over the years, they received many offers to appear again together — if only for one performance — but the offers were never accepted. Many would tell you that the next time the world saw them on the same stage was September 5, 1976 when Dean made a surprise appearance on that year's annual Jerry-hosted telethon to combat Muscular Dystrophy.

I linked to a pretty good video of that reunion in this message and then we had a more detailed discussion of the moment in this message.

Ah, but was that really the first time the two had appeared together since the split? No, there were a couple of other encounters, one reportedly on an Eddie Fisher Show in 1958. The word was that Eddie and guest Jerry were screwing around and then Dean and Bing Crosby did a brief walk-on. The stories of this alleged moment made it sound like it wasn't planned; like Dean just happened to be in the studio while Eddie and Jerry were doing a live show and Dino decided to poke his head in for a sec.

I never saw this video and the people I heard about it from had never seen it, either. Some of us kinda doubted its existence but it has now turned up and you can watch a not-great clip of it below. A couple of points: The clip is twelve minutes long and not very funny except for the few seconds when Dean pops in, about six minutes into it. There's time code on the video and Dean enters at 03:24:53:05 but if you're going to watch just for that moment, start watching a minute or so earlier so you get the context.

Secondly, it's obviously a planned bit which Jerry was expecting. I think the closest thing to a real surprise was that it looks like Dean was supposed to enter earlier so Eddie and Jerry had to ad-lib and stall until he could actually make his entrance. Bing Crosby, who then might well have been the biggest star of the four, goes mostly unnoticed. Thanks to Dan O'Shannon for alerting me to this…

Two of the nicest, most wonderful people it was ever my privilege to know were Daws and Myrtis Butler.  Daws was, of course, the great cartoon voice actor who spoke for countless characters but the best-known would include Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Mr. Jinks, Hokey Wolf, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie, Captain Crunch, Elroy Jetson, Wally Gator, Lippy Lion, Peter Potamus and the list goes on and on and on.  He was also one of the nicest men I ever met…the kind of person you feel privileged just to meet once, let alone really know.  Daws died in 1988.

Equally wonderful even if she didn't do a zillion voices was his wife of 45 years, Myrtis.  They met during World War II in Washington D.C.  He was serving in the Navy.  She was working at the Pentagon.  They wed and moved to Los Angeles in 1945 where Daws quickly became a much-employed actor in radio, animation, records and other fields where one is heard but not seen.  Daws teamed with Stan Freberg in 1949 for Bob Clampett's pioneering TV show, Time for Beany, and Myrtis reportedly helped make some of the puppets.

She and Daws had one of those perfect marriages where each is obsessed with caring for the other.  She supported his career and later in his life when Daws taught his amazing Voice Workshops in the guest house behind their Beverly Hills home, she played Den Mother to his students.  They included many who went on to become top voice actors of the generation after Daws.

I have just learned (thank you, Georgi Mihailov) that Myrtis passed away last November 15 at the age of 101.  I wish I'd known at the time so I could have attended the services and posted this more timely.  One of Daws' students, the late Earl Kress and I used to go over and take her to dinner occasionally but after Earl left us in 2011, I only did that once and then it became one of those things you keep meaning to do but never quite get around to doing.  We did invite her to the June Foray Memorial in September of 2017 but were told she was not well enough to attend.  I had to say something here, better late than never.  She was a great, great lady.

The fine folks who run Comic-Con International today announced…

Mike Friedrich, E. Nelson Bridwell to Receive 2019 Bill Finger Award

SAN DIEGO – Mike Friedrich and E. Nelson Bridwell have been selected to receive the 2019 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

"Once again, we have two winners who are way past-due for some rightful recognition," Evanier says. "Both were among the first human beings who went from reading comics to writing letters-to-the-editor that were published in comics and then on to writing the comics themselves. And both wrote some very fine comics that were appreciated at the time and appreciated in reprints — but, we think, not enough."

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 thanks to a proposal by the late comic book legend Jerry Robinson, who knew and worked with Finger. As Evanier explains, "We need to point out those wonderful bodies of work by writers who have not received their rightful reward and/or recognition," "When this award began, the late Bill Finger received almost no credit for his role in the creation of Batman. He does now, but there are still plenty of writers who have not received their proper rewards and/or recognition."

Mike Friedrich began his writing career as a teenager, incessantly writing letters of comment to comics publishers. Over 50 of them appeared in print, and by the age of 18 he was writing professionally, at first for DC with scripts for Batman, The Flash, The Spectre, Challengers of the Unknown, Green Lantern, Teen Titans, House of Mystery, The Phantom Stranger, and many others, including an extended run as writer of Justice League of America. In 1972 he moved to Marvel, where he served as writer of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, Warlock, Ka-Zar, and many more. He assisted artist Jim Starlin in introducing the characters of Thanos and Drax, featured in the Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. He then shifted to the business side of comics. He was one of the first alternative comics publishers (Star*Reach, 1974¬1979), then created the Marvel Comics Direct Sales department (1980–1982), and then founded the first business management company for comics artists and writers (Star*Reach, 1982–2002). Along the way, he also co-founded WonderCon, ran retailer trade shows, and became a union representative for research scientists and research technicians at the University of California Berkeley. More recently, he attended the Pacific School of Religion, where he obtained a Master of Theological Studies degree, then was ordained by the United Methodist Church. As Mike describes it, he started out writing stories about men who put on costumes to bring justice into the world, now he puts on his own (religious) costume to bring justice into the world.

Edward Nelson Bridwell (1931–1987) grew up in Oklahoma City reading comic books, science fiction, and practically everything else he could get his hands on. His first published work was a text story in Adventures into the Unknown #9 (Feb–March 1950), and as comics began to feature letter pages, the name of E. Nelson Bridwell was often seen in them. He had a letter published in MAD #27 in 1956 and began writing for the magazine with MAD #34 the following year. He freelanced for MAD and other magazines before landing a job with DC Comics in 1965 as an assistant to editor Mort Weisinger. In addition to proofreading and handling mail, Bridwell rewrote scripts (often extensively) and wrote scripts his own for almost all the major DC features, including Superman, Batman, Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. He also wrote his own co-creations including The Inferior Five, The Secret Six and The Angel and the Ape, and did notable runs on Shazam! and Super-Friends. His writing was marked by a wicked sense of humor and a strong devotion to depicting others' characters faithfully and always in accord with their established histories. All of this was in addition to serving as editor for the firm and the house expert on DC history and continuity, as well as selecting most of the stories for reprinting during his time there. When Bill Finger's (and other writers') names started appearing on reprints of their work, it was because Nelson Bridwell made sure they were added. He cut back his work for DC in the early eighties and died from lung cancer in January of 1987.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first — and, some say, most important — writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The major sponsor for the 2019 awards is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented by Evanier along with Bill Finger's granddaughter Athena Finger during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con International on Friday, July 19.

Additional information on the Finger Award can be found on this page.

I'm following my own advice and not paying a lot of attention to Donald Trump at the moment. I don't know how much longer he'll be in office — somewhere between 48 hours and Forever, I imagine — but I'm pretty sure that for the balance of his occupancy, they'll be a possibly-significant announcement every three hours we're all awake. At 10 AM, a court will find against him. At 1 PM, he'll proclaim his defiance of it. At 4 PM, there'll be some new revelation of financial impropriety. At 7 that night, Bill Barr will clear him…

I never cared much for watching tennis matches or badminton competitions or Ping-Pong and I can't really follow this, either.

The other day, he came out firmly against requiring employers to use E-Verify to make sure whoever they hire is not in this country illegally. So I guess his position is that we don't want those undocumented immigrants here but we sure don't want to stop any business from being able to use them as cheap labor.

It's kinda like how he doesn't want to go to war with Iran but he still has great faith in his national security advisor, John Bolton, who really wants us to go to Iran…and just about every other country larger than Luxembourg.

This concludes my thinking about Donald Trump for today. The announcement of this year's recipients of the Bill Finger Awards should be out shortly. You still have time to get a bet down.

If you leave aside joints that ache or are in need of replacement, I've been a pretty healthy person all my life. Oh — and you also have to leave out my first twelve years. Back then, I was sick an awful lot of the time, including missing an entire semester of elementary school due to Scarlet Fever. Scarlet Fever is, as its very name would suggest, a very nasty thing to have.

So are chronic, crippling stomach cramps often accompanied by violent seizures and vomiting. Quite apart from the Scarlet Fever, I had a fair amount of them in my early years and in some sense, the stomach problems were even worse. At least my pediatrician was able to identify the Scarlet Fever so he knew how to treat it. The tummy cramps mystified everyone. I went through test after test and at one point, they even took out my appendix. It was somewhat inflamed and they thought that might be the cause. As it turned out, my appendix did need to be removed but doing that did nothing to stop the occasional explosions of my belly.

My pediatrician was a fine, wonderful man named Dr. Arthur Grossman. He got me through the Scarlet Fever and other childhood diseases…like when I had the measles. This was back before skillful vaccinations had pretty much eliminated measles as a deadly communicable disease in our world. That was sure a great thing. I'm so glad parents today are all wise enough to get their kids vaccinated.

The only thing wrong with Dr. Grossman was that he wasn't part of the in-house network of the Kaiser Permanente Health Insurance plan. My father worked for the Internal Revenue Service and when I was nine or so, they offered a super bargain deal to the families of federal employees.

It was too good not to grab and my parents were both on it for the rest of their lives, paying a lot less and getting more for their money than if they'd switched to any other health insurance available, including plans Kaiser has offered since.  When my mother had her cataract surgery at age 85, she got a flawless operation for a $5 co-pay.  I had to pay seven bucks in the parking lot to pick her up after it.

So it was a great health plan…but it meant I could no longer go see Dr. Grossman. Then again, I was getting a bit old to be going to a pediatrician.

What I thought would be my last visit to him occurred a week before our Kaiser plan kicked in. That was when he suggested that my appendix might have to go. Two weeks later on my first visit to a Kaiser physician, I got a second opinion that was in agreement and the surgery was scheduled. My father saved a bundle over what it would have cost to remove that pesky vestigial organ a few weeks earlier.

But as good as the Kaiser doctors were, the stomach cramps mystified them too. I was having one or two small attacks a week and about every three months, I had one that was so awful, my folks would rush me back to Kaiser where some baffled medico would wrack his board-certified brain for what it might be. After a year or two of tests there failed to identify the problem, my mother had a wise longshot idea. Even though it would mean paying for a visit, she wanted to take me back to Dr. Grossman. Why? Because she didn't know what else to do and he was the wisest doctor she'd ever met.

He was also the nicest as proven by the fact that he never sent us a bill for that visit but, bless him, he did give us the solution. My mother had obtained a copy of my medical records from Kaiser and my former pediatrician reviewed all the tests they'd done. Some stray comment one of the examiners had written caused Doc Grossman's stethoscope or something to light up.  "I should have thought of this years ago," he said.  "We need to have Mark tested for food allergies." Kaiser had such experts but on his recommendation, we paid outta-pocket to go to an esteemed Beverly Hills specialist he knew.

I don't recall the exact numbers but they went something like this: They tested me for 40 common foods and I had a bad reaction to around twenty-eight of them. In some cases, it was not an allergy but an intolerance and if you want to know the difference between them, read this. From the standpoint of me telling people I can't eat certain things, it's pretty much the same thing so I say "I'm allergic to that" when a more correct statement might be "I have a food intolerance to that."

Further tests were done and at some point, I was handed off to the Kaiser experts.  But I immediately began limiting my consumption to foods the tests indicated I could eat…and the stomach aches went away. Or at least when they happened, I knew why. My well-known aversion to cole slaw comes from the fact that it does real, real bad things to me.

In the (roughly) 55 years since I was properly diagnosed, I've had — this is a guess — about thirty tiny episodes and ten modest ones. I've also had — this is the actual count — four serious ones, none of them lately.

This article is the first of at least two parts, maybe more. The next part will will tell you how I learned to handle the problem most of the time and what caused the thirty tiny episodes, the ten modest ones and the four serious ones. In a number of cases, it was Mark Being Stupid, which has also been the cause of any number of calamities that did not involve food.

By the way: The visit to Dr. Grossman wherein he figured out my problem might be food allergies was not the last time I saw the man. I told that story a number of years ago on this blog. It's here just in case you weren't already a huge fan of The Legendary Dr. Grossman.

One of my favorite musical groups performing one of their hits! Ladies and gentlemen…Manhattan Transfer! Let's really hear it for them!