Why in the name of Perry White would I want that job? I've known a number of people who were publisher of DC and it's hard…and not completely in a creative way. It's very corporate, very entrenched in the business side of things. There are folks who enjoy that kind of work but I never have. I don't even like having the power to hire and fire anyone. The last time I had to get rid of my gardener, I had a stomach ache for three days.

Yeah, it probably pays well…but you're being paid a lot for the stress and the long hours and for making decisions that affect human lives. I like to sit home and write all day and all night. There wouldn't be a whole lotta time to do that as publisher of DC. Besides, while I think I know a lot about how a comic book company works, there's a helluva lot I don't know. And what I do know includes the fact that the business is constantly changing and that the right course of action this month may be the worst possible one next month.

I'm thinking now of a couple of times when I've given a suggestion to whoever was then publisher of DC. Once in a while, they act upon them but more often, they tell me politely why it wouldn't work…and the reason is something I never would have imagined. It's within the realm of the stuff I don't know about…and you really can't from outside. Almost anything can seem like a good idea if you don't have to apply total reality to it.

True, there are lots of people in this world who get jobs for which they are not qualified. That doesn't mean I have to be one of them.

I'm starting to think that when they call in the next day or two to offer me the job, I just might turn it down. Or maybe I'll take it, change the look of Aquaman back so he looks like Aquaman, and then quit. See? I haven't even started functioning as a senior executive yet and I'm already having trouble making decisions.

Google just notified me I was mentioned on this webpage. The article says, in part…

This year's WonderCon will be held from March 29 to 31 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Attendees can look forward to seeing special guests such as DC Comics publisher Mark Evanier and Kendare Blake, author of Three Dark Crowns series and Goddess War trilogy. Other confirmed guests include Tom King, Tula Lotay, Greg Pak, Dana Simpson, Scott Snyder, Brian Stelfreeze, Peter J. Tomasi and Lee Weeks.

Wow. I'm publisher of DC Comics! This is very exciting and what a way to find out. I would have thought someone there would call me and offer me the job or something but instead, they just told whoever wrote that page. I guess I'll get the formal offer and maybe a contract in the next few days so I'd better get busy deciding how I'm going to completely rearrange the company and what books I'm going to cancel and how I'm going to give everyone huge raises and…

Hold on. Could this possibly be a typo or a mistake of some sort?

No, that's not possible. Everything on the Internet is true, right?

That's Joe Sinnott in an old photo. (The other guy is me in hairier days.) The Spider-Man newspaper strip just ended and that was the last thing Joe was working on so the 92-year-old artist is officially retired.

He actually retired from full-time work for Marvel in 1992 but put in an extra 27 years inking the Spider-Man feature. That caps a 69 year career in comic books. I will retype that sentence so you can read it again: That caps a 69 year career in comic books. That would be impressive even if the work was mediocre and the artist was often late turning it in. As it happens, Joe was never late and the work was never anything but excellent.

Joe Sinnott started in comics in 1950. At first, he was mostly an assistant helping out other artists, mainly Tom Gill. Within two years though, he was drawing whole stories on his own as well, though he occasionally teamed with others. His work was clean, precise and when necessary, meticulously researched. In the sixties though, he turned more often to inking the pencil art of other artists, most famously on Jack Kirby's work for Fantastic Four. He would eventually ink almost every major Marvel artist and work on almost every major Marvel title.

In so doing, he redefined what it meant to be an inker in comic books, setting a new standard and causing new artists — and even many of his contemporaries — to study and ape his work. He made poor artists look good and good artists look spectacular. I don't like superlatives like "Joe Sinnott was the best inker in comics" but if you said that in a hall filled with professional artists, you wouldn't hear much disagreement. You might not even hear any.

So he was brilliant at what he did and he always met deadlines. Is there anything else I can say about the man? Oh, yes: He was and still is one of the nicest people to ever work in the industry. Such a gentleman. Congratulations, Joe, on one of the great careers ever in comics. Now, take it easy and please show up at more conventions so we can all tell you how much we love you and all that wonderful artwork you gave us.

A brief conversation about the funnies with my friend of fifty years…

J. Martinez writes to ask…

I see where Trump is demanding an "investigation" of Saturday Night Live. What do you think this investigation will reveal?

Well, just the demand for it plus today's hysterical attacks on John McCain reveal that Donald Trump has just about the thinnest-skin on the planet. I doubt there will ever be any such investigation. If there were, it would reveal that SNL is continuing its long tradition of mocking whoever's president at the moment. It might reveal that they find a lot more to mock with Trump than they have with a few others but, you know, you probably have more criticisms of one president than another.

My guess is that Trump is trying to set up a conspiracy theory on which his most loyal supporters can feast. It would be something about how the attacks on him on SNL and maybe other late night shows are illegitimate because they're part of some sort of collusion (there's that word) with the Democratic party. He could then denounce the sketches not as satire but as dishonest and possibly illegal treachery. Or something. Many of his followers seem willing to believe that anything they don't like was secretly funded by George Soros and can therefore be written off as phony and part of some Big Lie.

There may not even be that much logic behind it. Trump's just one of those guys who, any time someone says something negative about him, he feels he has to pick up the nearest object and throw it at them. Doesn't care what he throws or who it hits or what the result of his retaliation is. He just has to throw something.

Last week on Stu's Show, my buddy Stu Shostak welcomed Josh Mills, who's the son of the wonderful comedic actress, Edie Adams. As everyone knows, Edie was the widow of the great comic mind, Ernie Kovacs and she controlled all of Ernie's "intellectual property" — and much of it, in addition to being very funny was somewhat intellectual. Ergo, Josh is now the guardian of the Ernie Kovacs Archives and he brought some never-before-seen highlights onto Stu's Show including footage from the brief period in which Ernie Kovacs was the host of Tonight, aka The Tonight Show.

Stu's Show is free to watch when it's transmitted live on Wednesdays in both video and audio versions, and Stu usually charges a modest fee to watch or download it after that. But this week's episode is so special that as a service to Television History, he's making it available for free, at least for a while. So that's our video embed today and I'll warn you that the whole thing runs a bit over four hours. But there's so much good stuff in here it's worth it. Don't blame me if you decide to sample just a little and wind up watching the whole darned thing…

[NOTE, added later: A couple of folks have written me that their browsers will not allow them to view the above video embed. It works on mine but if it doesn't work on yours, go to this page. And consider updating your browser or installing a different one.]

And here's hoping I can get through the next few days without having to write an obit for this site. I'll settle for just today.

I haven't been posting lately on Facebook, which is somehow more time-consuming for me than actually posting on Facebook. From time to time, there are just too many brawls going on there between people I know…friends calling one another assholes and psychotics or — and this insult seems to somehow be more toxic — wrong about something. Some of these are personal squabbles. Some are political. Most of the political ones start political and then effortlessly morph into personal.

Many of those I think are right, I think are like 80% to 90% right…but when arguments get emotional enough, there's no room for nuance, no way to admit that the other side is even slightly not full of crap about anything. This kind of polarization existed in this country B.T. (Before Trump) and it'll exist after he's a trivia question…but it somehow seems worse these days.

Speaking of Trump, as we all do too often: I wish some great, well-credentialed stand-up comedian would write an article explaining — for the few willing to listen to explanations about anything these days — that a surplus of anti-Trump jokes on the late-night shows is not necessarily an indication that the tellers of those jokes are conspiring to bring him down via ridicule. That may be a (nice) by-product but the real product is jokes and there are two reasons why there are so many of them about him…

Reason 1: Audiences laugh at them. Trump oughta get this and maybe he does and is pretending he doesn't. But almost everything in those "rally" speeches he gives is based on the simple premise that he says something and if his audiences cheer, he says it again and says more of it. In some cases, like with "Mexico's gonna pay for the wall," it got such a good reaction and was said so many times that now he's gotta figure out a way to make that happen in some fashion.

Clearly, he never had any idea how to do that; never dreamed he'd even have to when he first promised it. Still, at the time, it brought love and devotion from his crowds and that's all that mattered then. With comedians, all that matters really are laughs and if hammering Trump's going to bring them, that's reason enough for any comic.

Reason 2: They're easy to write. Real easy. Forgive the namedrop but Dick Van Dyke once asked me why people make so many jokes about his not-wonderful English accent in Mary Poppins. I told him the answer was simple: "It's about all they have on you. If I were ever hired to write lines for a Dick Van Dyke Roast, what else am I going to make fun of? You're not fat, you're not rude, you're not dumb, you're old but you don't act old…"

Comedy writers are always looking for the hook. Bill Clinton gave them plenty of hooks with his hornier exploits and his "I didn't inhale" line. George W. Bush gave them hooks aplenty by saying patently dumb things, choking on a pretzel, etc. Barack Obama didn't give them many. Most of the Obama jokes I've heard were based on something he really didn't do like being born in Kenya or allegedly offering to give everyone a free cellphone. That's why they weren't as good.

Trump is the Niagara Falls of joke hooks. You can do them about his hair, about his gut, about his contradictory statements, about his unpresidential insults, about his hands-off marriage to Melania, about his nepotism, about how often his staff members leave him, about how often they get indicted, about how his earlier wives left him, about his verbal gaffes, about all his failed businesses, about his bragging, about his narcissism, about inheriting money from his daddy, about his denials of things he was recorded saying, about his getting advice from Fox News, about his playing golf or watching TV all day, about his bragging about grabbing women, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

He may be the easiest public figure in history to write jokes about. And since so much of this country hates him, it's hard for anyone in the comedy business to resist. Look at Mr. Colbert's ratings since he started making his opening monologues 85% Trump-bashing. If Sean Hannity had to deliver a nightly monologue that would make a studio audience laugh, even he'd start ridiculing Trump.

I saw someone on some webpage say that in the interest of fairness — a thing people think is vital only when they feel someone's being unfair to them — there should be "balance." For every anti-Trump joke, there should be one joke trashing one of the Democratic candidates out to unseat him. That's a new rule being demanded by some who don't understand how comedy works.

First of all, not everyone is equally susceptible to mockery. If a politician is making a speech and he says something really stupid or his pants fall down, there are going to be more jokes about him the next day than there will be about some other politician who maintained his or her dignity. Secondly, every time you try to count jokes to gauge balance, you're going to be wrong. Not all jokes are equally demeaning to their subject. A joke about one candidate's ugly ties is not the same as a joke another candidate's tendency to lie, steal and/or molest.

But really it comes down to hooks — aspects of the subject on which to build jokes. Just try and write me a funny joke about Marianne Williamson or John Delaney right now. Most people don't know who they are, let alone what's funny about them, whereas everyone knows Trump's shortcomings. Eventually, we'll get to know one or two of the Democratic contenders well enough to write or appreciate jokes about them. But none of them will ever be as ripe for joking about as Donald Trump is. In our lifetimes, no public figure may ever lend him- or herself to that.

It's sadly a three-obit day here at newsfromme.com. Let me tell you about Tom Hatten and why he mattered to me…a lot.

I'm the right age to have grown up (sort of) on local kid show hosts — folks on local TV stations like KTLA, KHJ, KTTV and KCOP who hosted shows seen just in my city…live people who talked to me. They'd play games and talk about things that were of interest to kids and, of course, they showed cartoons. The kid show hosts of my childhood — the ones I watched when my age was in single digits and maybe a year or two after — were "Skipper Frank" Herman, Chucko the Birthday Clown, "Engineer Bill" Stulla, "Sheriff John" Rovick, Jimmy Weldon (and his puppet Webster Webfoot), Walker Edmiston, Vance Colvig (our local Bozo the Clown), Chuck Jones the Magic Man…and Tom Hatten.

Tom Hatten hosted the Popeye cartoons on Channel 5 from 1956 (when I was four) until 1964 (I was twelve) and he did this every afternoon, five days a week. A former announcer and newsman at the station, he dressed like a sailor and did his show from a cheap set that looked like an old ship. He was an actor who often appeared in local theatrical productions but he was also something of a cartoonist and on almost every show, he'd draw Popeye or Olive Oyl or Wimpy and he often gave little cartooning lessons.

He worked at an easel with a piece of charcoal. I'd sit at home with a pad of paper and a pencil and try to duplicate what he did. I think it actually helped me that he wasn't an incredibly good cartoonist. I'm serious about this. If they'd had someone like Sergio Aragonés drawing for us, I'd have given up drawing then and there. But Mr. Hatten made it look humanly possible and what I was able to reproduce on my pad didn't look that much worse than what he did on his easel.

So I kept at it. I never learned to draw as well as I would have liked but the fact that I could do it at all, I owe largely to Tom Hatten.

He'd often do things he called "Squiggles." A squiggle was a quick doodle — some lines that didn't look like anything in particular. The idea was to incorporate those lines into a drawing that did look like something. He had kids my age on his program and sometimes, they'd do a squiggle on his pad on his easel and he'd turn it into something. And sometimes, he'd replicate the same squiggle on three pads on three easels and each kid would have to turn it into a drawing of something with a prize going to the best squiggler. (We occasionally do this in the "Quick Draw" game I host at comic book conventions…a direct lift from my childhood watching Tom Hatten.)

He would even talk about the history of Popeye and of Elzie Segar and the Fleischer Brothers whose studio made the best Popeye cartoons. My interest in the background of such enterprises probably started with his little lessons. In 1960, his show began featuring some of the newer (cheaper) Popeye cartoons that were made expressly for television and released that year. I recall Hatten announcing the new Popeye adventures he was showing and, with great diplomacy and tact, explaining why they weren't quite as wonderful as the made-for-movie-theaters classics he also had on his show.

Hatten left KTLA in 1964 to pursue more acting and he always seemed to be doing something. There was one episode of the original Hawaii Five-O in which he played a comic strip artist whose strip was inspiring a serial killer. In the seventies, he returned to KTLA and, dressed more like a TV host and less like a sailor, revived his Popeye show. He also did something called the Family Film Festival — a weekly show where he'd host family-friendly films and discuss their history, often with in-studio guests who'd been involved with that week's film. He frequently turned up elsewhere on KTLA and/or on KNX radio as an entertainment reporter.

It was a big deal for me that I got to meet Tom Hatten on several occasions and repeatedly thank him for what his show meant to me. He was a charming gentleman who was always turning up at local animation-themed events…and yes, I have a Popeye that he drew for me. He probably tossed it out long ago but at one point, he had a Popeye that I drew for him, just to show what a mediocre student I'd been. Of the names on the above list, Chuck Jones (the magician, not the animation director) and Jimmy Weldon are now the only ones still with us. Losing Tom Hatten today at the age of 92 really feels like losing a big chunk of my childhood.

I wonder if a kid of six today can possibly feel the connection to anyone on TV that I once felt for Skipper Frank, Sheriff John all those others…and Tom Hatten. If not, I feel bad for them.

• I'm annoyed at California governor Gavin Newsom. He declared a moratorium on the Death Penalty but somehow neglected to specify an exception for people who make cole slaw.

Oh, this is a sad one. Writer Larry DiTillio has left us at the age of…well, I never knew how old Larry was. Online sources say he was 71 and that may be right but I would have guessed closer to 60. Until the last time I saw him, he was energetic and funny and quite excited about the many things he was working on. They included a couple of cartoon shows, a novel and several videogames.

Larry did a lot of work in all those categories. Much of his cartoon work was for Filmation where he started (I believe) on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and wrote for many of that studio's shows until he became one of the main writers behind He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Among his other credits in animation writing were She-Ra: Princess of Power, Hulk Hogan's Rock n' Wrestling, The Real Ghostbusters and The Transformers. He worked in live-action, as well including Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, Babylon 5, The Hitchhiker and Murder, She Wrote.

He was also a very loyal member of the Writers Guild of America and a guy who donated plenty of his time and energy to Guild causes. A few years ago, they awarded him the Morgan Cox Award, which is what they give members who give of themselves that way. He was a fierce player of games and a very nice man. Every writer who knew him would attest how he was always willing to help anyone he could help in any way.

I think that last time I saw him was for lunch about a year and a half ago. He seemed older and slower, and his speech was a bit off…like he still had great, witty things to say but somehow couldn't get the words out of his mouth in the right order. Something clearly was wrong and I hoped it was temporary. Later, I heard it was not and the last few months, folks told me he was in hospice though not why.

Like I said, this is a sad one — a very sad one. And you won't find anyone who was fortunate enough to be this guy's friend who isn't depressed by the news. I sure am.

[UPDATE, 10:09 PM: When I originally posted this, I quoted online sources that said Larry was 79 and said I would have thought he was much younger. He was. It turns out he was 71. He didn't strike me as that old, either.]

Cartoonist Tom K. Ryan, who gave us the syndicated strip Tumbleweeds has passed at the age of 92…actually, about 92.8. His popular western-themed comic made its debut in September of 1965 and lasted until the end of 2007 when Ryan decided he was getting too old to continue it. A run of 42+ years is pretty impressive in any industry. Like most cartoonists, Ryan was aided by occasional assistants, one of whom — a fellow named Jim Davis — did okay for himself when he struck out on his own and created Garfield.

There was a glorious silly air about the feature which was peopled by cowboys and indians in the old west. I don't recall hearing of any objections to the way the indians were depicted even though the strip lasted into the era when people became more sensitive about that kind of thing. There probably were some complaints but they weren't so numerous that I heard about any.

Tumbleweeds was reprinted in many paperback collections and there was a brief appearance on the 1978 Saturday morn cartoon series on NBC, The Fantastic Funnies. To explain that brevity, we go to my pal Buzz Dixon who worked on the show for the Filmation cartoon studio…

Just one Tumbleweeds segment appeared on the air, then it was blotted from the series and memory.

It seems Filmation's lawyer, when told to acquire the rights to the strip, approached Mr Ryan who said he was interested but wanted to see a storyboard first before granting permissions.

The lawyer came back and told [Executive Producer] Lou Scheimer "He said it's okay" and so we plunged ahead with production on the segments with yrs trly scripting them (and why not? I was a huge 'Weeds fan then and now and figured out a cost saving workaround re the show for Lou so of course he let me write 'em).

Tumbleweeds was part of the opening credits and either the first or second segment the week the show aired. The following Monday we got a call from Mr Ryan's lawyer saying Mr. Ryan liked the show just fine but wondered why nobody ever bothered to offer him a contract…

A few of my friends didn't like Mary Poppins Returns, in a few cases because "It wasn't the equal of the first one." Which surprised me because, well, if the new criteria to make movies is that they have to be as good as the original Mary Poppins, we can shut down all the movie studios and theaters right now. Ain't gonna happen.

I liked the long-awaited sequel and my favorite part of it was probably the song, "The Cover Is Not the Book." If you liked it as much as I did, you probably want to see it again…

As we all know, Congress voted to cancel Donald Trump's declaration of a border emergency and Trump has vetoed that cancellation. So the will of the Congress — not to mention the American people if the polls are to be believed — is being overridden. I'd write an essay here on why this is so troubling but William Saletan has penned a much better one than I could muster.

I'll just add that what's so distressing about this is the total lack of principle involved here…unless you think "I've gotta save my political ass" is a principle. Anyone think the Senators and Congressfolks who sided with Trump on this one would have supported Obama or Clinton if they'd done the same thing? Of course not. The laws don't apply to our guy.

Each A.M. these days, I awake to the latest news stories that don't make Donald Trump look good. In the last twenty-four hours, we've had new evidence that a pardon was dangled before Michael Cohen to maybe get him to clam up, sentencing for Paul Manafort, new indictments of Paul Manafort, misquoting of the judge in the Manafort case who didn't actually say there was no proof of Russian collusion, and doubts about the sworn testimony of former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, plus we're still learning more about this "Mar-a-Lago massage parlor mogul" who was allegedly selling access to Trump and his aides.

That last matter all alone would have some raising the specter of impeachment for any other president…but with Trump, it's like "Add it to the pile." And I'm probably leaving a couple of things out or there's been a new one since I checked the news ten minutes ago.

This constant drip of accusations and revelations can't be pleasing anyone. If you dislike Trump, it's more evidence of his criminal (or sometimes, just plain stupid) doings, coupled with the frustration that they don't seem to be moving him towards the exit doors, at least not yet. If you like Trump, it's one more thing — followed by one more thing and one more thing and one more thing — that's hard to defend. And you've probably figured out by now that this is never going to stop. Every single day this man is in office, and even after he leaves, there's going to be at least one more of these.

My friends who like Trump seem to like him mainly because he isn't Hillary Clinton or someone with her policies. I don't get that they really think he's a good man, an honest man, a brilliant businessguy, a great negotiator — any of those — though they might tell a pollster otherwise. None of them think he's read one of those Bibles he keeps signing as if he were its author. None of them think he's read it or cares about any principle taught in its pages. They just like the direction in which he seems to be steering the country and deep down wish there was someone at the wheel who didn't make so many gaffes, didn't say so many things that are provably false, hadn't talked about grabbing women and moving on them like a bitch, etc.

For the time though, we're all just stuck with him. In that sense, I guess he's bringing us together. It's mainly to fight but at least we're together.

I don't think they make the "Shout Elmo" toy anymore, which is a shame. When I saw this commercial, all I could think of is that if I knew an adult with a small child and I wanted to make that adult's life a living hell and drive them to the point of self-immolation, all I'd have to do is give one of these to the kid…