It's one of those sad double-obit days at newsfromme.com — and they were both mainstays of Marvel Comics from the sixties onward.

One of the world's great cartoonists, Marie Severin, has died at the age of 89. She had been in poor health for some time and only days ago, suffered a stroke which put her in hospice care. So this was not surprising but it's still a bit of a shocker. Let me say this clearly up top: This lady was one of the most delightful, funny and talented people who ever worked in comics. You will find no one who ever knew her who will disagree with that statement.

Marie was born in Rockaway, New York on August 21, 1929, the younger sister of John Severin…so, two great comic book artists in one family. Their father was an artist, working mostly in fashion design but Marie, at first, did not pursue a career as an artist. She had talent but, she thought, not enough. She was working for a bank in 1949 when John tagged her to do some coloring on work he was doing for the E.C. company. The folks at E.C. liked what she did and liked the idea of having an in-house colorist, as opposed to jobbing the work out to strangers. So she joined the E.C. crew and also did production art and other tasks.

She was also at times, an in-house censor. The E.C. books sometimes featured gore and a wee bit of sex and when Marie was called upon to color such scenes, she made her disapproval felt by coloring those panels dark blue or dark red, minimizing what was seen. Some called her "The Conscience of E.C."

When E.C. folded its comic line and concentrated on the (then) black-and-white MAD magazine, John helped her get a job at the company we now know as Marvel. But then they had major cutbacks and she went back into the banking industry for a time. As Marvel rebuilt, there was eventually a time when her services were needed again. Some sources say this happened in 1959 but I believe it was closer to 1964. In any case, she rejoined the firm, working there until another cutback around 1998. After that, she freelanced all across the business until her health failed.

While at Marvel, she headed up their coloring division and colored hundreds of comics and covers herself. She did production art and corrections, and you can often spot her popping up for a few panels or faces in comics drawn by almost anyone else. She did cover designs and drew many comics including notable runs rendering Dr. Strange, The Hulk, King Kull, Sub-Mariner and so many others. On a few joyous stories, her pencil art was inked by her brother John — and she also secretly assisted him on some of his non-Marvel jobs, such as his work for Cracked magazine. She also did a lot of work on merchandise art for Marvel.

As good as her super-hero work was, I'll betcha a lot of her fans prefer her "funny" work for comics like Not Brand Echh and Crazy. Even better, though it did not reach a wide audience, was her skill at drawing hilarious (and insulting) cartoons that were posted on walls around the Marvel offices. She had a wonderful, scathing sense of humor and a terrific eye for caricature. Among the many cosmic injustices of the comic book industry is that while the E.C. staff occasionally called on her coloring skills for some MAD project, they never hired her to do the kind of actual drawing jobs that went to guys like Mort Drucker and Jack Davis. This may just be my opinion but I thought she had the necessary talent; just not the right gender for that company back then.

There's a photo that I took at a New York Comic Con in either '75 or '76. The gent with Marie is my great friend Tony Isabella.  We had a wonderful time at that convention.  At one point, an extremely rude (and unshowered) fan shambled up to Marie and demanded (not "asked" — demanded)  a free sketch.  Marie told him to get lost.  Five minutes later, a polite fan asked in a charming way if Marie could draw a little something in an autograph book he was carrying around.  Marie asked, "What would you like me to draw?" and the kid replied, "Anything you like.  Maybe a silly monster?"  Marie, in about eight seconds, drew a great likeness of the rude, unshowered comic fan.

Everyone loved this woman and those who never got to know her loved her work.  Never mind that she was one of the first great female comic artists.  She was one of the great comic artists, period.

• I think there should be a 24-hour news channel that just runs video of the Trump Administration while the theme from The Benny Hill Show endlessly repeats.

Fred Kaplan explains why Donald Trump's current efforts at the disarmament of North Korea cannot collapse. It's because they only exist in the mind of Donald Trump and, I suppose, the minds of those who believe that everything he does is as much a success as he claims.

Here's a flashback to earlier this year and the song stylings of Mr. Randy Rainbow…

I was born in 1952. That makes me 66 but I don't feel 66. Matter of fact, I don't even know what 66 feels like. I only know I haven't experienced it yet…except maybe first thing in the morning when I've been up half the night working. Then I sometimes feel 166 until I wake all the way up, down my morning protein drink and — most importantly — write something. When I'm writing and it's going reasonably well, it feels exactly like it did when I was 18 except I'm not working on a typewriter these days.

66 seems to be when all your friends of roughly the same age (+/-5 years either way) get to talking way too much about age — yours, theirs and the ages of everyone around them. And by "too much," I mean in some cases all the friggin' time. You ask them if they'd like a sandwich and you get "Oh, I remember how good sandwiches were when I was younger." Everything has to be about age and how many of their friends have died and how someone else is really looking their age and, of course, you get unceasing complaints about "These Kids Today" and how the world has changed.

Breaking News: The world changes. Always has, always will. Complaining has yet to stop it.

Now, please understand that I am not saying anyone should hide their age or, worse, lie about their age. Accepting reality is healthy. I'm saying don't obsess about it and surrender to it prematurely. There isn't much you can do to stop the aging process but it seems to me that thinking about it 24/7 is a dandy way to speed it up.

Within the last few years, an obit appeared on this site for a friend of mine whose passing did not come as a shock to me or anyone who knew him. Why? Because he'd been talking about it almost non-stop for the last decade or two. Once he entered what statistics would suggest was roughly the last third of his life, every other sentence he uttered contained some yardage marker like "Well, speaking as an old fart…" or "I probably won't be around to see this but…"

If I mentioned to him I'd just run into a mutual friend, he'd immediately ask, "Oh, how's he looking these days?" Not even "How's he feeling?" but "How's he looking?" In other words, "Does he look his age? Does he look older than I do?" Must we track every wrinkle, every liver spot, every sign of aging on our friends' bodies? This guy did. It got so I couldn't talk to him about almost anything else.

Stop it. Just stop it. Yes, we're all going to die one of these days. Let's not bury each other and ourselves before we have to.

At Comic-Con this past year, I found myself walking down a corridor with an acquaintance who's probably not far from my age. I'm not sure how far. I'm very bad at guesstimating ages of others because I don't obsess on that kind of thing and sometimes clean forget how old I am. Anyway, he started talking to me about how rough it is getting around the con at "our age" and how we were both limping a little.

I know why I was limping a little. I got a new right knee a few years ago and if I don't keep flexing it, it sometimes gets a bit creaky on me. The left knee is also showing signs of soon needing the same upgrade. So yeah, the knees are bad but that doesn't mean I have to feel like all of me is in need of replacement parts.

I don't know for sure why he was limping but I have a hunch. This is another fellow who can connect any subject or any topic to How Old We're All Getting and he just goes on and on about it. And my hunch is that he was limping because he thinks that's how you're supposed to walk when you hit 65.

Jack Kirby was very important to my life and my career but so was a man named Chase Craig, who was also born on August 28. Chase was the senior editor for many, many years at Western Publishing, which was the firm which prepared the contents of Dell Comics for many, many years and also prepared the contents of and published Gold Key Comics. The odd relationship between Dell and Western is explained here.

What you mainly need to know is that Chase edited a lot of Disney comic books and a lot of comics with the Warner Brothers characters and he edited Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter and countless others. He probably supervised as many issues of as many comic books as any man who ever lived. A lot of them were quite wonderful. He also for a brief time ran a comic book division for the Hanna-Barbera Studio.

Chase taught me an awful lot about writing and also about being an editor. When he turned some of his editing duties over to me, one of the things he told me went like this…

The hardest part of this job is prying the work out of the artists' hands. Some of them like to hold onto it and fuss with it and tweak little things here and there. You'll find yourself pleading, "Please, we have deadlines here. I need it now." And they'll say, "Oh, please! Can't I have a few more days on it?" If they're lying about having it done and they're still working on it, you're stuck. But sometimes, they really do stall handing it in, even though it means they'll be paid later. As soon as they hand it in, it's not theirs anymore and they know it's going to get judged, which scares them, even guys who've been doing it forever. So they'll stall and fuss with it and what you need to do is get it away from them because nine times out of ten, they'll ruin it.

That didn't prove to be true with everyone I hired but it was true of enough of them that I'm glad Chase warned me. Just in case you ever edit a comic book, I thought I'd pass it on to you…and tell you about this other man born on 8/28 that I'm glad I got to know and work with.

And we're talking pizza here, folks. As you may know, I'm a fan of Dave Portnoy, the head honcho of Barstool Sports and a man on a mission. That mission is to review every pizzeria in New York…and when he travels outta town, he reviews the pizza there too. For what it's worth, he's reviewed about eight places where I've had the pizza and those reviews are not far off from what I would have said. I might have been nicer to a few passers-by but my pizza ratings would be about the same.

I call your attention to his reviews, which are posted to YouTube almost daily. I also call your attention to a new free app his company has put out. It's called One Bite and the first official release of it is now available for the iPhone. (An Android version is in Beta at the moment.) It's a "must get" for fans of pizza. Basically, it will show you darn near every single place to get a slice of pizza near where you are and if Dave's reviewed it, it'll show you his review. It may also show you the opinion of some fellow user of the app who, a la Yelp, has posted their own review…and you can add your own. It's free but with advertising.

Here's a review Dave did a few months ago with a stellar list of guest stars — Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress and Jake Johnson, all promoting a new movie of theirs which I think disappeared in about the time it takes to eat a slice of pizza. Check out Dave's other reviews and note that even though he's about as New York as they come and has eaten more New York Pizza than you have, he sometimes finds great merit in pizza in other states…

Donald Trump reportedly expressed an upset that the country was mourning John McCain too much. I might agree with that, though not for the same reasons. Unlike Trump, I am not bothered that all that love and respect is not going to me and is instead directed to a guy, albeit a dead one, who I didn't like because he wouldn't kiss my ass. I get the feeling some people are over-saluting McCain because it's yet another way to show one's contempt for Trump…and if you're a Democrat, you can even look fair-minded and non-partisan in the process.

As I already wrote here, I think Senator McCain did some good things. Did I also mention that it's hard to dislike a guy who could go on a talk show and be so funny and self-effacing and even at times, a little self-deprecating? McCain was that way at times and it was a skill that more politicians should have but which less seem to want. These days, especially if you're a Republican, "tough" is what it's all about…and tough guys never laugh at themselves. They're too insecure to do that.

But there were plenty of times when his votes in the Senate were the same as those of his right-wing colleagues…and the thing that really made it impossible for me to be more positive about him was his undying support for The War.

Which war? Just about any war — any time, any place, any reason. As Matt Taibbi notes: "Wherever America had a foreign policy problem, [his] solution was always to bomb the fuck out of someone."

Read this piece by Taibbi. That kind of thing cancels out for me a lot of charming, friendly spots with Letterman or Stewart.

• I have the feeling that at some point today, Donald Trump said the words, "How about if we just take it down to 75%?"

• At my funeral, I want half of the folks who are going to speak at John McCain's and all of the people who are going to perform at Aretha's.

The latest from Randy Rainbow…

In addition to his 18,522 plays and his 7,001 screenplays, Neil Simon wrote two books which are essentially Volumes 1 and 2 of his autobiography. Rewrites starts with his first Broadway play Come Blow Your Horn (with a few flashbacks to what preceded it) and goes through The Sunshine Boys and the death of his first wife, Joan. The Play Goes On starts with The Good Doctor and Simon working to get over his loss. It covers his second marriage and ends with Play #30 — Proposals — and the dissolution of his third marriage.

Both books are filled with great anecdotes and insight into his process. What neither one is filled with, inexplicably, is much of anything about his days on Your Show of Shows or other TV shows starring Sid Caesar. He does write about working with Caesar on the Broadway show, Little Me…but he writes more about working on one Jerry Lewis TV special than he does about his time in the most famous Writers Room in TV history. He also quietly skips over the Play #28, Laughter on the 23rd Floor — the play he wrote about his days working in television for Mr. Caesar.

This could not have been an unintentional oversight. It's like if Neil Armstrong wrote his autobiography and left out the little matter of walking on The Moon.

Why? My guess — and this is only my guess — is that Mr. Simon had plenty to say about those years but he wanted to wait until Mr. Caesar and perhaps others were deceased and incapable of offense. Simon may even have written those chapters and decided to omit them for now and maybe expand them later into an entire book. Then again, he did not hesitate to write Laughter on the 23rd Floor which was a roman a clef of the Caesar Years and I'm not sure if that suggests my guess is wrong. Maybe you've got a guess that's better.

Somewhere, Neil Simon's files presumably exist. They would contain dozens, if not hundreds of unfinished plays and I believe there may be around a half-dozen plays that he "completed" and never surrendered to production. I put that word in quotes because Simon famously didn't consider a play as done until its formal opening and critical evaluation. He rewrote and rewrote and rewrote during rehearsals and previews, and if you pulled one of those finished, unproduced plays now from his filing cabinets and put it on stage, it would be lacking all he would have done to perfect and polish.

I wonder what's going to happen with all that leftover material now. And I wonder if in that filing cabinet somewhere, there isn't at least part of a book on how he and his brother got hired to write for Sid Caesar.

In the meantime, I was going to set up Amazon links here in case any of you wanted to order Rewrites or The Play Goes On…and you can, of course. But I see that prices on them have gone up somewhat and it would be far cheaper to order a new book called Neil Simon's Memoirs. It collects the entirety of both books plus has a new intro by Nathan Lane. If like me, you already have both books and don't want to buy this new amalgam just to read Lane's intro, you can read it online at that Amazon link. End of plug.

Another day, another obit. Neil Simon — arguably the most successful playwright of the last century or two — died early this morning in New York. The cause is being given as complications from pneumonia but Mr. Simon had been in failing health for some time…since 2004 when he wrote an update on his most famous play and gave us Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple. It ran briefly at a playhouse in Westwood and he never wrote another play. If he wasn't writing plays, you know he had to be sick.

The man's output was staggering. If you read all the obits, you'll see a lot of different counts as to how many stage plays, how many screenplays, etc. That's how prolific the man was. His byline appeared on countless scripts…and he even "doctored" hit shows without credit, including A Chorus Line. My favorite would be The Odd Couple, of course, but I remember many wonderful times in the theater because of him. I never laughed as hard in my life as I did at a production of The Last of the Red Hot Lovers that starred Jack Weston…and that's not even considered one of Simon's best works.

And if you read all those obits, you don't need me to tell you the details of his extraordinary life. Here are links to ones at Playbill, in the Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times. All tell the tale of this amazing man who first distinguished himself writing for Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows. And almost all of the obits on the 'net will give you inaccurate lists of the other writers who worked on that TV program.

What none of them can possibly convey is how many productions there have been around the world of Simon plays…how many actors learned and earned being in Simon plays…how many people learned to love live theater at Simon plays. These all will continue for centuries to come.

I had two encounters with Mr. Simon, neither of which will mean a lot to you but they meant a lot to me.  One was after an outta-town tryout of his Broadway-bound play, Chapter Two.  It was down at the Ahmanson and my date and I were exiting the theater after the performance, long after the rest of the audience had departed.  I think she had a problem that necessitated an extra-long stay in the Ladies Room.  Anyway, we're walking out and there's Neil Simon, who at this stage was attending all or most performances, deciding what to change.  As he explained in almost every interview, his plays weren't written.  They were rewritten…again and again in tryouts until he was satisfied.

I saw him there and had to say something to just, you know, "connect."  I said, allegedly to my date but for his ears, "You know, the guy who wrote this might have a career some day."  Knowing I'd said that to get his attention, he stopped, extended his hand for shaking purposes and asked me, "What did you really think of it?"  And I suddenly found myself in one of the scariest moments of my life.

I said — and this was not at all a fib — "If I paid top dollar to see this on Broadway, which I probably will, I'd be happy I'd spent the money."

He said, "Good. Now, tell me something you didn't like about it."

Consider that for a moment. Here's the most successful playwright in the world asking a total stranger — and he didn't even know I was a writer, albeit one way, way down on the food chain from him — to criticize his work. There were hints to his success sprinkled all throughout him asking me that.

Thinking as fast as I could, I said something like, "There were moments here and there where I felt Anita Gillette's character was a little too clever and funny. She's supposed to be aware that she's not as quick-witted as her new husband and now and then, she seemed very quick-witted."

Mr. Simon thought for a second and said, "You're probably right. I don't think I'm going to change it but you're probably right." Then he thanked me, shook hands again and turned to go in a way that I think was intended to say politely that he was done with me and had no interest in a continuing conversation. Okay, fine. I was happy. My date wasn't.

As we turned to go, she said, "You didn't introduce me!" I replied, "I didn't introduce me, either." I heard a snicker and glanced over to see it had come from Simon, who gave me a look of amusement. I kept waiting for our exchange to turn up in something he wrote later but I guess it didn't make the cut.

In my other encounter with him, I was actually introduced. It was in 1996 at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills — an event taped for TV called Caesar's Writers. Sid was there and so were a bevy of men (all men) who'd written for his TV shows and all gone on to great success. Along with The Great Caesar, the dais was Mel Tolkin, Carl Reiner, Aaron Ruben, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks, Danny Simon, Sheldon Keller, Gary Belkin and Neil, and it was hosted by a pal of mine, Bob Claster. This was a sold-out-immediately event and I think Bob got me in because I'd persuaded Belkin to participate and because I'd brought as my date, Sid's old sidekick, Howard Morris.

Howie introduced me to everyone and when we got to Neil Simon, it was…well, for me, on a par with meeting Stan Freberg or Jack Kirby or Groucho or anyone else whose work I'd incessantly admired. Nothing particularly quotable was said. It was just important to me and I felt that Mr. Simon knew it was important to me (Howie had introduced me as a writer) and…well, what I remember is a warm feeling that I was standing there for maybe five minutes talking with the guy who wrote some of my favorite things in the world. For a half-second there, I wanted to say but didn't, "Oh, thank you for treating me like I belong on the same planet as you and for not being an asshole. That means a lot to me."

Howie Morris was also my ticket for hanging around with those guys a lot before and a little bit after the event…though Neil hurried out right after, concerned for his brother. In the midst of the on-camera conversation, Danny took sick and walked off the stage. The video was skillfully edited to remove his exit and to call no attention to his sudden disappearance…and it turned out he was okay.

Before the show, I don't think I've ever been in a room with such sharp, witty people — especially Larry Gelbart, who said something brilliant and hilarious with each breath. I said almost nothing…and I couldn't help noticing that Neil Simon said almost nothing. Like me, he just happily played audience for the others.

Comedy writers sometimes don't like to laugh at the quips of others. They don't like admitting that even for a moment, someone thought of something funny that didn't occur to them. Not Neil Simon. He laughed as much as anyone…maybe more than me, even. I didn't say anything because I had absolutely nothing to add. He didn't say anything because he had absolutely nothing to prove. Nothing at all.

I picked out an old photo of John McCain to run here. It's from the period when I kinda admired him…a period when he actually was a "maverick" at times, bucking his party more than once every two-or-so years. You can probably chart the disintegration of bi-partisanship and country-over-party in these United States by tracking how it disappeared from John McCain's repertoire. It was pretty much gone by the time he made his last serious run at the presidency and tried to turn himself into what he thought he had to be to nail the Republican nomination.

I vividly recall the last time he was on with Jon Stewart. They'd had a good relationship before then — at least good by the standards of ten-minute TV appearances. McCain was going to go after his party's nomination with all he had and Stewart seemed to know, during the exchange if not before, that it was their last on-camera chat.

In one of McCain's maverick moments years earlier, he'd denounced Reverend Jerry Falwell was an "agent of intolerance." Now that he was seeking the G.O.P. nod, McCain retracted and distanced himself from that remark. He even agreed to deliver the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University that year, which meant buddy-buddy pics and bonding with the former Agent of Intolerance. He was on his way to that event when he went on Stewart's show and the following was said…

STEWART: I feel like it's a condoning of Falwell's kind of crazymaking to some extent to have you go down there, and it strikes me as something you wouldn't normally do. Am I wrong about that?

McCAIN: Jon, I've spoken at a lot of schools. I've spoken to schools whose specific policies I may disagree with — Ivy League schools don't allow military recruiters. I don't agree with that. I'm going there to speak to the students at his invitation, and I can assure you that the message will be the same that I give everywhere.

STEWART: You don't think that it helps to sort of reassert Falwell as the voice for a certain group of people, say Evangelicals or the Christian Right? Isn't it the kind of thing that maybe if you don't go there, it helps to keep marginalizing guys like that, or do I misunderstand politics? No? Maybe I misunderstand things.

McCAIN: Jon, I try to, as I said —

STEWART: Why do I feel like I'm about to get grounded?

McCAIN: Listen, I love coming on your show. Young people all over America watch it. I love to travel around the country and speak at colleges and universities. Look, they're all parts of the Republican Party. I respect them. I may disagree and I'm sure that I've had disagreements with them. I 'm not going to change —

STEWART: You're not freaking out on us? Are you freaking out on us? Because if you're freaking out and you're going into the crazy base world…are you going into crazy base world?

McCAIN: I'm afraid so.

STEWART: All right, sir. You know we have great regard for you here and I hope you know what you're doing there. I trust that you do. When you see Falwell, do you feel nervous, do you have vomit in the back of your throat? What does it feel like?

McCAIN: No, but I'll give him your love.

I don't know how you read that but I read it as McCain saying, in effect, "I want to be president so badly, I'll even do what I know to be morally wrong." He probably thought the same way when he picked Sarah Palin and when he said certain things on the campaign trail that I don't think he'd have said if he wasn't trying to follow his party to the Barack-Bashing Right.

Honest. I admired this guy at one point, partly for his war heroism — and yes, I know some part of the legend are in dispute. I admired him even more for a lot of speeches and his reaching out to Vietnam War protesters after the war to try and heal some of the fractures. I'm thinking a lot about that kind of thing tonight. He was a good man…sometimes.