I will be a guest at the Baltimore Comic Convention, which happens September 22-24 at the Baltimore Convention Center in, of all places, Baltimore. This will be the first time I've been to a convention on the east coast since 2008. I'm not sure what I'm doing there yet but a panel or two about Jack Kirby seems likely.

There was no Trump Dump today and I'm going to see if I can hold off all weekend. I find myself trapped between my duty as a citizen to remain informed and my increasing desire, every time I read what that administration is doing, to block all internet sites except mine and the ones that just display baby panda videos.

Wasn't Richard Turner great on Penn & Teller: Fool Us last night? It reruns many times this week so try and catch it if you haven't yet. He was the first act.

Hey, does anyone in or around the Los Angeles area want a few crates of old Penthouse magazines? They sent me the thing to me for free for like a decade and a half and I need to clear them out of my storage space.

Lastly for now: I continue to get ready for Comic-Con in the hope that Comic-Con is getting ready for me. I urge you if you are attending to take the time to visit the convention website and do a little prep work. Jot down the program items you want to see. Figure out where you're going to eat and where, apart from the main hall, you're going to wander. Make note of the booth numbers of exhibitors you want to visit and get a sense of which portions of the hall are mostly likely to have the exhibitors who interest you. If you care mainly about old comics, you shouldn't be wandering around amidst the videogame companies looking for antique funnybooks. A lot of the complaints I hear about Comic-Con flow, it seems to me, by not knowing where to find what you want. You should especially download the Quick Guide. The convention you want to attend is probably in that building someplace. You just have to do a little planning to find it.

When Sam Glanzman died earlier this week — at the age of 92, not 93 like I initially said — I hope he knew how many fans he had. Judging by my e-mail and the reaction on the Internet, he sure had a lot of them — an impressive feat for a guy who never, in more than five decades in comics, drew Superman or Batman or Spider-Man or any of the classic super-heroes. I think people liked the power in his work. He drew mostly strips we might think of as "manly" and he never prettied things up. His soldiers looked like they were actually fighting a war.

Of course, he knew what that was like. Been there, done that. His autobiographical combat tales were some of the best "war comics" ever, even the stories that in no way touched on weaponry or killing.

One of Sam's friends and benefactors, Drew Ford, has brought a lot of that work back into print or at least Kindle. I highly recommend U.S.S. Stevens: The Collected Stories and that link will not only get you a copy of the book but you can click on Sam's name and find your way to other books of his work. I favor his wartime experiences over his fantasy heroes but it's all fine, fine work.

You can tell how hard he labored over his pages even when, as was not uncommon, the pay rate was way low compared to the value of what he did. This was true of most of the men of his generation when they worked in comics. Some of today's readers, when they come across a comic they don't like, leap to the unfortunate insult that the work was "knocked out for a paycheck" and that the artist was a hack. ("Hack" is one of those words that is used with so many varying definitions that it's practically worthless as a descriptor. I often am not sure what people are trying to say when they use it.)

It has been my observation upon meeting so many comic creators of that era that it was true of amazingly few of them. There were a number of artists whose work I didn't like who, I came to realize, worked like hell on what they did and cared passionately about what they handed in, regardless of the paycheck. That did not always result in comics that I thought were good but it would have been wrong to dismiss the material as something that some guy just banged out for the money. I learned to respect the effort even if I couldn't always respect the output.

With Sam, it wasn't necessary to separate the two. Every panel showed a lot of thought and a lot of time. It wasn't always pretty…but then when you're drawing stories of life and death and brutality and battle, "not pretty" is utterly appropriate. I never had the pleasure of having one of my scripts illustrated by Sam but he was exactly the kind of artist I liked to have get those assignments. People sometimes speak of great comedians who get every possible laugh out of a script. Sam got every possible moment of emotion and drama and humor.

He was also the kind of creative talent adored by his editors, and not just because the pages arrived on time. The other day, I received this e-mail from Don J. Arneson…

I was the Comic Book Editor at Dell Publishing in the '60s. Sam was arguably the best illustrator I had the privilege to work with. His historical accuracy and personal commitment to his art produced exquisitely detailed illustrations that are the most memorable of all the artists I worked with. I am deeply saddened by his death. I wish to extend my condolences to Mrs. Glanzman. I no longer have any of Sam's art, but their memory remains locked in my own life and mind as simply the best.

Don included his phone number in the e-mail so since I'd never met him, I rang him up and we had a lovely, long conversation, much of it about how terrific Sam Glanzman was. Mr. Arneson worked with some superb illustrators at Dell so his evaluation of Sam as the best he had is no small praise. I thought it was important that I share that with you.

A baby and a dog. Sent to me by Peter Cunningham…

Links? We got 'em…

• William Saletan examines what was on the mind of Donald Trump Jr. when he agreed to the meetings that have confirmed collusion. The answer basically is "nothing."
• Fred Kaplan on how easily Trump is manipulated. When Donald was elected, a lot of us thought, "Well at least he's a skilled negotiator." He's proving to be even worse at that than I was at age 10 when I traded away my beloved Sandy Koufax baseball card for five of unknown Philadelphia Phillies.
• Kevin Drum notes that the infamous towering, impregnable 2,000 mile wall Trump swore he'd build is being scaled back. It may turn out to be a few yards of side-by-side croquet wickets.
• Sarah Kliff explains the latest version of the Republican Health Care Plan. It's another attempt to simultaneously please G.O.P. senators who want to cover as few Americans as possible and G.O.P. senators who are afraid they won't get re-elected if that happens.
• Amy Davidson Sorkin on the problems that Republican senators and congressfolks have in opposing Donald Trump. They can't get re-elected if they lose Trump supporters and they sure don't want to have a solid Republican challenger.

Nate Silver's website says Trump now has 55.0% disapproval and 39.3% support. I wonder how many on each side will never budge, no matter what happens.

Just what we needed: A new controversy in this country. Steve Whitmire, who has played Kermit the Frog since the death of Jim Henson in 1990, is being replaced. Mr. Whitmire is not happy about this and says that the folks who have the power to make such a decision had two issues with his work, though he does not say what those two issues are. He also suggests that he was blind-sided by their decision and that he did not have a chance to discuss remedies prior to their decision.

I know nothing more about this than you do. I thought Whitmire did as fine a job in the role as anyone possibly could. The few times I've met him, he seemed like a nice fellow who was very, very happy to have the job and one who was well aware of the awesome responsibility that came with it. The fact that he has gone public with his side of the matter suggests to me he is not afraid to have the two reasons become public knowledge, though unwilling to reveal them himself. So I dunno what to make of it…

Recently, Senator Al Franken did a six-part mini-show for the Funny or Die people called Boiling the Frog with special guest Dave Letterman. I embedded Part One a few days ago and Part Two last night and was going to embed Part Three today and so on…but instead I've set them up so if you click below, all six should play in sequence. I think…

A thought keeps nagging at me: As long as Donald Trump is president, it's going to be like this. No matter how long he occupies the Oval Office, he is never going to become Presidential. He is never going to be a unifying force. He is never not going to be under the shadow of scandal, criminal wrongdoing and deeds that Republicans would insist were impeachable offenses had they been done by a Democrat. That's just who the guy is.

Maybe you already figured this out but I'm just now starting to feel foolish at being shocked by any of it. It's like being upset when a dog takes a crap on your lawn. That's what they do. Here are some links…

• Kevin Drum summarizes a newly-emerging alleged abuse of power: Did Trump or his aides make a deal to settle a $200 million dollar money laundering crime for a measly six million in exchange for possible dirt on Hillary Clinton? You know that song, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"? I keep hearing it playing in my head, only it's "It's beginning to look a lot like Nixon."
• As Ed Kilgore notes, Obamacare is a lot more popular than anything Republicans have offered up to replace it. And most voters — including a surprising number of Republicans — don't want to see it repealed. They want Republicans to work with Democrats to make it work better. But you know, the crazies will explode if it isn't repealed so it has to be repealed. (By the way: I don't quite get polls about how many people want it to be "repealed and replaced." Doesn't it matter to any sane human what you replace it with? I'll bet I could design a health care plan that even the most Obama-hating politician would think was worse than keeping Obamacare.)
• Frank Rich thinks that Republicans will abandon Trump in droves as we near the next big Election Day; that the new Republican Health Care plan is in a death spiral; and that we have a new "Saturday Night Massacre" in our future when Robert Mueller gets close to indicting members of the Trump administration.
• Dylan Matthews describes for us what Trump's idea of a tax cut is. Guess what kind of people get almost all of the benefits. Guess real hard.
• As Heather Long notes, people who used to be optimistic about the U.S. economy are scaling back their expectations. If Trump can't make businesses feel better about the future, he's really not good for much of anything, is he?

If you were wondering if Trump-bashing was the reason Stephen Colbert's ratings are up, know this: Last night's guest appearance by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave the show its best ratings in two months. Wonder how many of those viewers stuck around for the musical appearance at the end by Scarborough's rock band. Hard to believe the man could be worse at anything in show business than he is at hosting a morning show.

Sam Glanzman, whose career in comics spanned more than 75 years, died early this morning at the age of 92. He had been in hospice care since he took a bad fall and his friend Drew Ford was running a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to cover medical bills for Sam and for Mrs. Glanzman. I'll direct you to that page after I tell you a little more about Sam.

Glanzman got into comics in 1939, joining his brothers David and Louis who were also artists in the formative years of the industry. Like his brothers, he worked at first for Funnies, Inc., an agency that commissioned comic book stories and art and then sold that material to publishers. Sam's early artwork and some writing he did seem to have appeared first in the pages of comics published by a short-lived firm called Centaur. His drawing can be seen in Amazing-Man Comics, Amazing Man having been created by Bill Everett who would soon be better known for The Sub-Mariner. Glanzman worked for other publishers (especially Harvey) but his career was interrupted by World War II.

He served in the Navy, mainly aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Stevens, before being discharged in 1946. Upon his return to civilian life, he decided there was better money to be made in other fields and pursued them. He worked in aviation yards, lumber mills and other jobs that required manual labor but occasionally detoured in and out of comics, either on his own or assisting his brother Louis, who went by the name, Lew Glanzman. Around 1958, Sam dove back into comics full-time, working for two of the lowest-paying companies around — Charlton and then Dell.

His most notable series for Charlton was probably Jungle Tales of Tarzan, a series unauthorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate which put a quick end to it. Two other well-remembered series were "The Lonely War of Willie Schultz," a well-written (by Willy Franz) series that ran in Fightin' Army. Its human insights stood out among the hundreds of war comics before and after. He also with writer Joe Gill gave us Hercules: Adventures of the Man-God, which put a fresh, distinctive spin on a very old legend.

For Dell, he drew many comics but is best remembered for Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, about a man struggling to survive on a lost island full of dinosaurs. It and other fine works of the sixties finally caught the attention of the better-paying companies and Glanzman began doing most of his work for DC on its war comics. He did long stints on "The Haunted Tank" and other features but his finest work was on a series of short, autobiographical stories he wrote and drew under the banner title, "The U.S.S. Stevens." He later did other stories of his World War II experiences including a superb 1987 graphic novel called A Sailor's Story. Much of this work has been reprinted for an appreciative audience.

I had the pleasure — and believe me, it was — of having Sam on a panel at the 1999 Comic-Con International where he also received its precious Inkpot Award. I saw him at other conventions and he was always glad to talk about his long career; that is, when he wasn't servicing a long line of people who wanted to get his autograph and to tell them how much they loved Kona or Hercules Jonah Hex or any of the other fine, testosterone-loaded comics he drew. He seemed very humble and even a bit amazed that he was able to make a living so long in comics.

As mentioned, Drew Ford is running a GoFundMe page to raise bucks to pay medical bills for the Glanzmans. Though Sam has left us, I'm sure many bills remain and you can show your appreciation for 75+ years of very hard work drawing piles of very good comics by going to that page and participating. And if you're not familiar with that work, see if you can't track down some of it. Here's a tip: Though Sam handed mythic legends like Tarzan and Hercules, his best comics were the ones about the most heroic figure he drew…Sam Glanzman.

I have this friend named Richard Turner who is one of the greatest handlers of playing cards in history. He bills himself as a "Card Mechanic" or sometimes as "The Cheat." Put simply, if he deals cards to you, you will get what he wants you to get and everyone else in the game will get the cards he wants them to get and there's no f'ing way you'll ever catch him controlling the deal. It's an amazing, seemingly-impossible skill and it would be impressive even if he could see what he's doing.

Oh, I guess I forget to mention: My friend Richard is blind.

He wasn't when I met him around 1981. He could see a little, though less with each passing year. Losing his vision completely has only caused one little snag in his act. Every now and then, he has to ask spectators to tell him if the cards are all facing the same way. You can check out Richard's skills in some of the videos I've embedded in this site. Or you can see him next Thursday evening on the Season 4 opener of Penn and Teller: Fool Us.

If you've never seen that show, it's on the CW Network. Each episode, several magicians perform feats and they win a prize of sorts if Penn & Teller are unable to figure out how they did what they did. This mostly means if Teller is unable to figure out how they did what they did.

Penn & Teller: Fool Us was originally a short-lived series produced in Great Britain. I played a part in the decision by the CW to acquire and revive it for American television and right at the start, I told them to get Richard Turner on it. Earlier this year, the folks at CW called and told me it was finally happening and they offered to fly me to Vegas for the "taping" — we still call them that though no tape is involved — which was in early April. Unfortunately, I was then dealing with Carolyn's situation and so I had to pass. You can see what happened when the show is broadcast this Thursday and in umpteen retransmissions after that.

• You know, if Trump had run against Sanders, the whole campaign would have been "Bernie's a commie and he'll sell us out to Russia!"

So it looks like it's coming down to the folks who don't like Trump becoming pretty certain that crimes, perhaps of the impeachable variety, were committed…and the folks who do like Trump saying, "Everything's a lie but even if it isn't, we don't care." And from there on, it becomes a question of how many Republicans in the House and Senate think they'd be better off with President Pence. Right now, it's probably not many but that could change. Here come the links…

• Ezra Klein expands on the above theme. One of the maddening things about all this is that no one is outraged over principles or morals. It's all "When our side does it, it's fine. When their side does the same thing, it's a scandal and everyone should be removed from office and/or jailed."
• Andrew Prokop summarizes what Donald Trump Jr. did wrong, above and beyond the fact that he's Donald Trump Jr.
• And David Corn is one of the main journalists breaking stories about what's going on with Russia. If you're interested in the whole mess, keep your eye on his reporting.
• Ed Kilgore says that Trump's biggest asset is the number of his supporters who will forever insist that any negative news about him is "fake news." This comes from the same place as folks who refuse to listen to scientists about anything scientific. We don't like people who know more than us telling us we're wrong.
• Trump says he's working hard to get the Olympics for Los Angeles. As Kevin Drum notes, they'll get it because few other cities are stupid enough to want it.
• And if Trump in the White House feels like a disaster with no end, read Ronald Brownstein, who explains why one-party rule never lasts.

The fine illustrator Drew Friedman has dug up a lot of Playbills and photos from Woody Allen's 1966 play, Don't Drink the Water. There's a play that oughta be revived.

A little while ago, Joe Scarborough tweeted…

Unfortunately, the infection has spread throughout the party. I became a Republican because of Ronald Reagan. This is no longer his party.

A littler while ago, Matt Ygelsias tweeted in response…

Reagan never would have made a shady deal with a hostile foreign power except that one time when he needed a slush fund for Nicaragua.

Wally Burr was an actor and producer but mostly he was a voice director for animated cartoons.  He directed thousands of them over the years and for just about every studio in Hollywood.  Here's a very partial list of shows on which he directed actors: Akira, Bucky O'Hare, The Transformers, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Clue Club, Valley of the Dinosaurs, Conan the Adventurer, Dino-Riders, Dynomutt, G.I. Joe, Godzilla, Wheelies and the Chopper Bunch, Exosquad, Hong Kong Phooey, Inhumanoids, Inspector Gadget, Jem, Mumbly, My Little Pony Tales, Rainbow Brite, The Skatebirds and a couple of the many Spider-Man shows.

That's maybe a sixteenth of all the programs he did. He was also occasionally heard as an actor on them…and I wouldn't want to venture a guess on how many commercials he directed. He started out in the business as a writer, producer, performer and director for the Leo Burnett ad agency.

I knew Wally and had him on a few convention panels. I think we got along well though there were times when I wasn't certain. He was a strange man, viewed by some as a stern taskmaster because he would make actors do lines over and over and over. There are voice directors in this business who figure that the actors are being paid for a four-hour session so you keep them there for the full time, no matter what. If you get the show done in three hours, you spend that last hour doing lines again and again, just in case it's possible to improve upon the performances.

Then there are directors who think that shows are better when they're recorded with more spontaneity and that you reach a point of diminishing returns; that after so many takes, the actors can only get worse. Wally was unabashedly of the first school and he sometimes clashed with actors who objected to doing Take #25 of a scene when they knew Take #2 was better. His long career and the success of so many shows he worked on would suggest that he was not wrong.

He died earlier today at the age of 93. I liked the guy and I think most of the folks who worked with him did, too.

I paid no attention to him this last weekend and it was a nice weekend because of it. But it's back to work now and back to reading stuff like this…

• Brian Resnick says that people who support Donald Trump don't care if he's lying. Gee, that's odd. I know a number of them and they sure cared like hell when they thought Barack Obama was lying about something.
• Jonathan Chait rebuts someone's claim that Donald Trump could have run as a Democrat and been elected. I think Chait's right that the person claiming that is wrong but for different reasons. I think that if Republicans were opposing Trump, they could have done a much better job that Democrats did of selling his lies and gaffes and uncouth statements and talk of pussy-grabbing as proof that the man was utterly unfit for public office.
• Fred Kaplan on what happened when Trump sat down with Putin. And guess what! Trump accepted Putin's denials that the Russians did anything to impact the outcome of the presidential election. Well, I guess that settles it.
• Andrew Kahn discusses how the Trump-Putin relationship keeps being described like a gay relationship. Is that homophobia? Is it insulting to gays? I dunno. It does seem like in some circles, the worst thing you can say about someone is that they're gay, especially when they probably aren't.  I don't much like that.
• John Cassidy on what Trump is doing to America's standing in the international community. It's a lot like what happens to your plumbing when you call in Larry, Moe and Curly to fix it.

A lot of people think Stephen Colbert owes his bump in the ratings to Donald Trump. Jonathan Merritt wonders if maybe it might be someone else…like, say, God. Me, I think it's Trump.