Boy, this is a tough one. Comic actor Marty Ingels has died at the age of 79 from a massive stroke. He was best known for his starring role on the 1962 situation comedy, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster. He was Fenster. Before that, he was a "discovery" and protégé of Jerry Lewis who stuck Ingels in one or two of his features and then left all his scenes on the cutting room floor.

Briefly, he had a recurring role as Rob Petrie's army buddy Sol on The Dick Van Dyke Show. True story of how he got the part: Ingels was dating a waitress who worked at the International House of Pancakes in West Hollywood. One night, he's sitting there in the wee small hours, waiting for her to get off work. At various times in his life, Ingels had a dread, almost crippling fear of being alone. That was when he didn't have the dread, almost crippling fear of being around other people.

So he was sitting there in the IHOP and who should walk in but Carl Reiner and Sheldon Leonard? He had read in Variety that they were producing a new TV show and that evening, they'd gone to see a play in order to get a look at some actor. Instantly, Ingels — who was then without any show biz prospects — got his lady friend to rustle up a waiter outfit for him. He put it on and waited on their table and was very funny. Either Reiner or Leonard asked him, "Are you an actor?" He said he was. They invited him to come in and audition…and he got the part.

He was in two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show before they got rid of him. He admitted in later interviews that he was impossible to work with, going through massive mood swings and alternately being too friendly to people and then too hostile. When he got cast in I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, he had problems, too. And one time when he guested on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, he had what he later described as an on-air nervous breakdown and he walked off the set during the program.

Eventually, most of his performing career went away, though he did occasionally do voiceovers. In his autobiography, he told the story of how he got his first cartoon job for Hanna-Barbera in 1982 as the voice of Pac-Man. It's a nice story that somehow overlooks the fact that he'd done voices before that for the studio — on The Catanooga Cats in 1969 and on The Great Grape Ape Show in 1975.

Mostly, Ingels acted as an agent and as someone who circumvented agents. Let's say you wanted to hire Orson Welles to do a commercial for your product. You called Mr. Welles' agent and offered $200,000 for his services. The agent might tell you your product was below Mr. Welles' dignity and your offer was below his established price. So you then phoned Ingels who would find a way to get to Welles, talk him into the deal…and of course collect a commission on it. Ingels made a lot of money doing this and made enemies of a lot of agents in the process.

There are a great many other stories about Marty Ingels. Earlier this evening when I first posted this, I told one of them that was not flattering. I just (a few hours later) read it again and decided that it was too soon to tell that story so I've deleted it. My apologies to his friends and family for posting it at a time when they deserve a little peace. I'll see how I feel in a week or two and may or may not repost it.

I watched Joe Biden take a lot more words than necessary to tell us that he's not running for The Big Job and my first thought was "I don't know how I feel about this." Then I read this piece by Josh Marshall and I thought, "Yeah, I guess that's how I feel about this."

That's a photo from The Merv Griffin Show, a very long-running talk show that few talk about today…though many have told me that this boxed set is an incredible array of great guests and great conversation. Today on Stu's Show, Merv's career will be among the topics as we do the second part of a long, long overview of TV talk shows. In the first part, we made it as far as half past Johnny Carson. Today, we pick up with talk of Carson's later shows, of Merv and Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett and I suppose David Frost and some short-lived entries. I dunno how far we'll get but I believe we'll be starting out with an out-of-sequence discussion of how Stephen Colbert's doing. [SPOILER ALERT: I think he's doing just great.]

I say "we" because I'll be participating in the discussion along with your genial host Stu Shostak and his two resident TV critic/experts, Wesley Hyatt and Steve Beverly, and we'll also be answering e-mails from viewers and I don't know what else. All I can promise you is talk about talk shows.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. See if johnnycarson.com will give you that kind of a bargain.

I have deadlines and doctor appointments today so I'm going to take another — probably futile — stab at not posting much more today than this message. I wouldn't bet money on me refraining.

Like you, I have no idea if Joe Biden will vault into the presidential race, nor do I know if I'll be pleased if he does. The more and more I think about this election, the more I think we're in for at least one big moment when someone or something kicks over the chessboard, the pieces fly in all directions and we start over again, almost from scratch. Well before voting day, we'll look back at those moments when Hillary had the nomination in the bag, Trump was way out there in the lead, some guy who's become a contender had single-digit support…and it'll be hard to believe that was all part of the same election. All I know for sure is that Lindsey Graham will still be able to fit all his supporters into a Mazda with room to pick up hitchhikers.

There seems to be a silly controversy raging over the new Captain America story arc in which a black guy dons the costume. Not that anyone seems to care about the character's creators in matters like this but co-creator Jack Kirby proposed long ago that Steve Rogers stop being Captain America and pass the costume on to others…including at times, a black man, a woman, a naturalized citizen and eventually one of every kind of human being that makes up the United States of America. Jack also had an idea that Mr. Rogers should be placed in suspended animation again and should awake in the far future to become the Captain America of a post-America world. I have a page or so about Jack's proposals in the new biography of him that I'm writing and hope to have published by the 100th anniversary of his birth, which is in August of 2017.

In the above paragraph, when I said "Mr. Rogers," I meant Steve, not Fred. But Fred Rogers would have made a great Captain America, too.

I will be a guest tomorrow on Stu's Show as part of a panel discussing the history of Late Night Television. We'll probably spend much of the show discussing the current state of that form, mainly with regards to Stephen Colbert. I'll post more details and a link late tonight.

The above iconic logo was created by the late, great Ira Schnapp. So were most of the other great logos that appeared on the covers of DC Comics from some time in the forties until around 1967. He did almost all of the cover lettering from '50 to '67 and also did the calligraphy for some very effective advertising in the books.

He was a major talent whose work has too long been overlooked but in the last few years, it has been rightly celebrated. The website Dial B for Blog did a long feature on his work that contained a lot of biographical information. Recently, Todd Klein (himself, a superb letterer) recently completed a more in-depth look at Schnapp's life and work, aided by access to the Schnapp family. To read Todd's superb report, start with Part 1, then read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

The last part of Todd's series will also give you a look at a recent art show staged by my buddy Arlen Schumer, a graphic designer who has been among the greatest champions of Ira Schnapp. Like Arlen, I believe Schnapp is a major figure in the history of comics and that his graphic designs have bled into other areas. He really was one of the great lettering designers of the twentieth century. Go find out about him.

Hey, let's go to Greg's Kitchen and watch as he makes everyone's favorite — a warm fish milk shake…

Three weeks ago today, I was on an operating table getting my knee replaced.

A couple of people have written to ask me what this thing costs. Answer: Beats me. So far, the hospital has rung up a bill of $167,804.48 and there's still quite way to go. Insurance has already paid for or agreed to pay for all but about $2,000.00 of that. I suspect both numbers will climb…and of course, the final "total cost" will not be what an uninsured person would actually have to pay. Then again, an uninsured person might not have been able to have it done or could have been wiped out by the actual pricetag.

How am I doing? Much better than I thought I'd be doing after three weeks. I have largely stopped my pain medications. My foot hurts a bit. My thigh doesn't hurt so much as it's numb here and there. My knee hurts for a while when I get up after sleeping or sitting for too long but that goes away and thereafter, the only pains occur when I move it too much in certain ways that I can usually avoid. I'm guessing that in two weeks, all of this will be minor and in two weeks after that, it'll be forgotten. Just when I'll start driving again, I'm not sure.

People keep asking me, "Are you glad you did it?" as if I had a real choice. Yeah, I'm glad I did it before the old knee got a lot worse. The surgery was inevitable and better now than then. Thanks to all of you who sent well wishes for the well wishes.

Kevin Drum has a good piece up about the problem the Republican party faces: No matter what they stand for, it pisses off some portion of their base they can ill afford to lose.

I received a few e-mails like this one from my buddy, Nat Gertler…

Your response to Thomas's question of "Hillary is beating him by 20 points. Do you really think he has a chance at the nomination?" could've had a much
simpler answer:

CBS news poll, October 2007: Clinton is leading Obama by 28 points. In retrospect, we can safely say that yes, Obama had a chance.

Yeah, and I sure didn't say Sanders didn't have a chance. I don't know. My main "prediction" through all of this has been that with so much time to go before the election, a lot of things will happen that will alter the dynamic and change the game. As many have noted, we aren't yet even into the year when the voting will take place. Today, we don't know if Joe Biden will be a candidate by the end of this week. If he is, that's going to make a lot of today's "conventional wisdom" obsolete.

I admit to a certain skepticism that enough of America will vote for a guy who cops to being a "Socialist." The "Democratic" part won't matter to a lot of them. Then again, there was a time not so long ago when I thought it would be another decade or two before enough of this country was ready to vote for a president who wasn't a white male. I think we're in that frequent political situation where it's too early to make a lot of predictions but that's not stopping anyone.

Jonathan Chait explains why Marco Rubio's ideas about energy and the environment are ridiculous. What I've heard out of Rubio on every issue pretty much comes down to the premise that reinstalling every policy of the George W. Bush administration is a flood of fresh, new ideas.

This kind of thing bothers me more than it probably should. Every evening, Monday through Thursday, I have my TiVo set to record The Daily Show, The Nightly Show and @Midnight on Comedy Central. Looking at tomorrow night, the TiVo schedule is as follows…

• The Daily Show starts at 11 PM and runs 34 minutes
• The Nightly Show starts at 11:31 PM and runs 32 minutes
• @Midnight starts at 12:01 AM and runs 30 minutes

Obviously, there's some strange overlaps going on there. But then an hour later, they rerun all three episodes. This time…

• The Daily Show starts at 1:33 AM and runs 32 minutes
• The Nightly Show starts at 2:05 AM and runs 30 minutes
• @Midnight starts at 2:35 and runs 30 minutes

I'll do a more careful measure tomorrow night but it sounds to me like they're sticking 2 minutes of extra commercials into the first runs of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show…but then the next day, they rerun both shows a few more times and both of them are 32 minutes. I guess they put two extra minutes of ads into Mr. Wilmore's program then.

But that still doesn't explain how between 11 PM and 12:01 AM, they manage to run 66 minutes of programming.

I'm going to conduct a thorough investigation and get back to you on this. If anyone's already done this, drop me a note and save me the time and effort.

The Today Show debuted on NBC on January 14, 1952 with its first host, Dave Garroway. The week before, The Bob & Ray Show — starring Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding — closed with this little sketch/crossplug and a surprise appearance by Mr. Garroway himself…

From someone named Thomas, a few minutes ago…

Regarding your tweet about Bernie Sanders not getting enough press coverage, why should he? Hillary is beating him by 20 points. Do you really think he has a chance at the nomination?

I dunno. It's a long way to go until that gets decided. Sanders stands a decent chance of winning some early primaries and that never hurts anyone's chances. And we can all imagine things that could happen between now and the Democratic Convention that could be real game-changers.

But, hey, all the Republican leaders are saying, as Mitt Romney did this morning, that Donald Trump ain't gonna be the nominee and the press coverage is practically The Donald Trump Comedy Hour. No one thinks Ben Carson has a shot at it even though some polls have him in the lead for the Republican nomination. Jeb! Bush is at 8-10% and running out of loot and he's getting more face time than Sanders. (Okay, admittedly most of Bush's coverage suggests how his candidacy is collapsing. Then again, most of the time when Sanders is mentioned, it's in stories about how he can't win.)

This morning, Larry David's impression of Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night Live seems to be more newsworthy than anything the real Bernie said the last few days.

Like I said, I don't know if Sanders has a real chance to be the nominee. At some point, it has to become an issue that he's not even a member of the party he wants to have nominate him. But I don't think that's what press coverage is about or should be about. I also don't think the Sanders candidacy is only about whether or not he gets to sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office. It's very much about trying to take the Democratic Party more to the left and to shine a spotlight on certain issues which many politicians would prefer to avoid. In that sense, I think he's succeeding. That merits more attention than he's received.

• Wish the press did as much coverage of Bernie Sanders running for president as they do of Joe Biden not running for president.

Two of my areas of interest — comic books and Broadway — came together in 1973 when Charlton Press issued one of the oddest comic books ever. In connection with the release of the motion picture version of 1776, they brought out an adaptation that was…uh, interesting. Western Publishing used to do this kind of thing for their Dell and Gold Key lines but by '73, they'd stop doing that kind of thing. Almost every comic book company had.

I have no inside info on how it came about but I have a pretty fair guess. My guess is that someone at Columbia Pictures remembered when they used to arrange that kind of merchandising with Western or Dell and approached them about it and were turned-down. I'd further guess they went to DC and Marvel and maybe other places before hooking up with Charlton, a firm which didn't say no to much. Charlton occasionally produced some fine comics but they paid poorly and had lousy printing and my sense is that almost every company that made a licensing deal with them was unhappy with the end-product.

At about this time, Hanna-Barbera was doing a lot of comics with Charlton and when the contract ended, they yanked it away and set up a new operation which I worked for. One of the guys I worked for had largely gotten his job because the guy before him had been fired for many bad deals, one of which had been the license to Charlton. I would be surprised if whoever made the deal for the 1776 comic was any happier with how things turned out.

The comic was written by Joe Gill. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Paul S. Newman as the most prolific writer of comic books ever. I liked Paul and he sure wrote a lot of them but I always suspected he was in there because he got the bright idea to submit himself for the title. I can think of several other guys who might qualify, one of whom is Joe Gill. Charlton paid so poorly that in order to make a living, Gill had to churn out scripts around three times as rapidly as the guys working for DC or Marvel. Enough of it was good that you have to wonder what he could have done writing at a more human pace.

His adaptation of 1776 was not among his better efforts…nor could it have been, trying to cram a 141-minute movie into 31 pages of comics. (141 was the original release length. Some home video versions run longer.) The songs, of course, were absent but some of the lyrics were retooled as dialogue. Large chunks of the plot were eliminated…

…and, oh yes: Gill cut out all that stuff about slavery.

I assume he was ordered to do that and oddly enough, it may have been a good cut for reasons of space. I doubt he had the room to treat that topic with any sensitivity. (Or maybe Gill looked at his working arrangements with Charlton and just found the whole topic personally distasteful.) In his abridgement, the primary obstacle to getting the Declaration of Independence approved and signed was merely that various delegates were squabbling about various points, most of them largely unnamed. Most of the romantic tensions between John and Abigail Adams, as well as the romance of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Jefferson, were also trimmed way down.

The artwork was done by Tony Tallarico, who did a lot of work over the years for the lower-paying companies. As with Gill, I suspect he had a lot of talent that didn't show through the low, low rates he was paid. He did a decent job drawing William Daniels in the lead role and seems to have not been given sufficient photo reference on anyone else. It had to have been one of his tougher assignments since all it was really was 31 pages of guys in colonial garb arguing with each other.

Charlton's costs were so low that they probably made a few bucks off the comic, especially if (as there may have been) some sort of promotional deal where copies were given away in some areas to promote the movie. That was done with many of the film adaptations that Western or Dell did.

Anyway, that's about all there is to say about this comic. I am by no means suggesting you seek out a copy of it because it's not good in a bad way or bad in a good way. Given the assignment of adapting a musical about slavery without the music or slavery, I doubt anyone could have done much better. It's just one of the oddest comics I ever came across. And you may have some idea of how many comic books I've seen in my day…