Here's the Sunday Programming Schedule. If you're a regular attendee at my Sunday Cartoon Voices panel, please note that it has moved from 11:30 to Noon. Gonna be a good one this year with some special surprise guests not mentioned in the listing.

Also: Someone told me that the Amtrak train to San Diego — the Pacific Surfliner — is filling up. If you were thinking of taking the train down there and back and you don't book soon, you're going to need to think of another mode of conveyance…like skateboarding or teleportation.

I will post the whole list of my panels and tell you a little more about them when I get two scripts done.

The power failure in my neighborhood — it lasted over 24 hours — kept me mostly off the Internet for much of Friday and Saturday. Now, being behinder (is that a word?) in my work will keep me at minimal presence here for much of Sunday and probably Monday. I also have to read all these messages from people who think I have some magical way to secure hotel rooms in San Diego during Comic-Con. I do not. Sorry. No help. Try somewhere else. Not me.

At the moment, I think I owe you three things. One is an add-on to a recent post about the TV show, That Was the Week That Was. Turns out that the episodes from the U.S. version of that show are not quite as totally lost as I've been told.

I also need to write what may turn out to be a pretty long post about Steve Ditko, whose passing now seems sufficiently confirmed. I loved the man's work up to a point and it still may be "Too Soon!" to write about that point. I had, like many folks who met him, some awkward moments trying to deal with his unique ways of treating (or not treating) others. When I can, I'll try to tell you what I mean. 'Til then, there are plenty of eulogies and remembrances of the man and I'll just direct you now to what my friend Joe Brancatelli wrote about him.

And I still have a couple of Harlan Ellison stories to relate. In the case of both men, I didn't respect everything about them but I respected more than enough to salute them…and it takes unhurried writing to thread that difficult needle. It takes time…and electricity.

Yesterday while I waited for my power to come back on, the good folks at Comic-Con posted the Saturday Programming Schedule. Go over it and note what you want to see there. The double feature of Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices I. both hosted by Yours Truly, should be on the list.

Another thing worth studying: The schedule and map of shuttle bus routes is available on the con website. Even if you know (or don't need to know) how to get from your hotel to the convention and back, those shuttles can be very handy just getting around the city. A lot of streets will be blocked off during the convention but not where the shuttles go.

I got a message from someone asking me for my booth number at the con so he can come get things signed by me. I don't have a booth number because I don't have a booth. I don't sell anything at conventions and the few times a con has made me sit at a designated booth or table, I was bored out of my cranium.

A fellow writer of funnybooks once told me that he gets a special tingle each time he's requested to sign his name. This is a feeling I have yet to experience and in an odd way, I'm proud of that. If you want something signed, fine. Unless it's a promissory note or a confession to a felony, I'll be glad to oblige. But I am not going to construct my convention around the presumption that anyone wants my scrawl.

I'm actually very easy to find at the convention since I'm on so many panels. A search of the schedule tells you where I'll be at those times and I have been known to hover near the absolute epicenter of the convention hall which, of course, is Sergio Aragonés' booth, I-07. I'm also hard to miss when I roam the hall. I'm the one not dressed as a Klingon, a zombie, The Joker, Harley Quinn, a barbarian, a Star Wars stormtrooper or Stan Lee.

Our friend John Fugelsang talks on his radio show with a Trump supporter…

Finally.

Sitting here with no power. I never felt more like a Democrat.

Still no electricity and it's a couple hundred degrees in Los Angeles. I think when Scott Pruitt left, he took the last of the ozone layer with him.

So you're racing to finish your script and you're maybe ten minutes from sending it off to the folks who really wanted it before they went home for the weekend and you're going to make it…

And then the power goes out. Across the whole neighborhood.

So I'm sitting here with my iPad which I foolishly let get down to 18% charged (Whoops! 17!) and it's zillions of degrees here. My neighbor has a brand-new baby and he just texted me that it's too hot in their house for the kid so they're driving around with the A.C. on and he wants me to text him when power is restored.

This wouldn't have happened if I didn't have a script due.

Let's see if I can get through an entire game of Sudoku with my remaining 16%.

The mainstream media is reporting that the New York Police Department has confirmed the death of comic book creator Steve Ditko at the age of 90. That's about all I know about his passing…if indeed it is true. It probably is but since right now, I am buried in a deadline and unable to write anything about the man, I'm going to hold off. I will say now that he was an extraordinary talent and the work he did when he was in his prime will be most admired. More when I have a bit more time.

That's right: And they've posted the Friday schedule of events and panels! If you're going to Comic-Con, check it out and pick some things to go see on Friday! (If you're not attending, you can check it out, see what you're missing and heave some long, remorseful sighs.)

As you'll see there, there are plenty of events about comic books. Those of us who organize and stage the panels and events about comic books are getting a little tired of people saying, "There's nothing there about comics!" It's like going to Disneyland and whining, "There are no mice, ducks or dwarfs here!"

Here's my favorite one-man singing group Julien Neel with the song I would have posted on Independence Day if I'd noticed this video before then…

A lot of folks out there who don't like Trump are yearning for the political figure who can fight just as dirty as he can, including all the personal insults and nastiness. Matthew Yglesias is toying with the idea that that person could be Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti. And yeah, it's a remote notion but so was Donald Trump in the White House.

The Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has agreed unanimously that the government of Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to help elect Donald Trump. The response from Trump supporters ranges from "No, no matter what anyone finds, there is no evidence to indicate that" to "So what if they did?" and in a few cases to "Well, if that's true, let's tell them not to do that again." Heather Digby Parton has more.

Meanwhile back in North Korea, Trump's squad is demanding that the government there give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program but doesn't seem to be offering any reason why it should. One wonders if this kind of "negotiation" ever worked for Trump when it was just about condominiums and not the entire future of a nation. Read Daniel Larison about this.

And read him here about how Trump had to be talked out of his idea that we should go to war with Venezuela. How close did this great land of ours come to doing that?

Ezra Klein on Donald Trump's poll numbers. They're not as bad as some think nor as good as others insist.

And lastly for now: Donald Trump believes 100% in Jim Jordan's innocence against the charges that Jordan ignored or looked the other way in a massive string of sexual crimes. Well, of course. Donald Trump believes 100% in anyone who believes 100% in Donald Trump and he believes 0% in anyone's claims of having been molested by anyone who isn't an enemy of Donald Trump. And as Ed Kilgore notes, that's just how it works with Donald.

…and they've posted the programming schedules for Preview Night and for Thursday. I suggest everyone who's setting foot in that place take the time to look over the schedules and notate what they want to see and what they'll go see instead if/when they can't get into their first choices. The schedules for that Friday, that Saturday and that Sunday will be up this Friday, this Saturday and this Sunday.

And then I'll post the list of just the panels I'm on so you can know the real important ones to attend.

• How ironic that Scott Pruitt felt he had to resign because of the toxic environment in Washington these days.

The other day, Fox Newsguy Brit Hume — who you'd think would know better — tweeted that Democrats don't love America. Based on the backlash — some of it presumably from folks whose opinions he respects — he has deleted the tweet and claimed he was misinterpreting a poll that said that a high number of Democrats are not proud of their country at the moment.

At other times when such polls showed a high number of Republicans feeling that way — say, when a Democrat was in the White House — Fox talking heads have spun that as an indicator that the president was doing bad things. And of course, this was the Gallup Poll which they rarely believe on that channel when it tells them something they don't want to believe is so.

If an individual were to say "I hate America" or even "I wish America would go out of business and be replaced by the biggest Walmart in the world" then it would be a fair comment to say that someone hates America — but only then. And it is certainly never true as a blanket statement about millions of people who have expressed no such thoughts. As many a tweet pointed out in response to Mr. Hume, it's a helluva thing to say about Americans who served with honor in the military, lost loved ones or limbs in wars, distinguished themselves in other ways, etc.

It's really an assholish thing to say, right up there with likening someone to Hitler (especially if that person is not committing or advocating mass genocide) or the insistence that God is on the side of your political party. Discourse in this country is sinking low enough without grown men — particularly grown men with vast audiences and great influence — sinking to those levels.