Mark is spending most of today resting after yesterday's surgery. It went so well they let me go home the same day but more sleep is feeling like a great idea so that's what I'll be doing.

Shelly Goldstein was nice enough to send me this link to four numbers from the current Broadway revival of Gypsy starring Audra McDonald. It's for NPR's "Tiny Desk" program and I saw no reason not to share it with all of you. Enjoy. I'll be back at full strength in a day or so…

Donald Trump said he'd solve the Ukraine/Russia nastiness within twenty-four hours of taking office. He might not even wait that long. But now, a hundred-plus days into his second presidency, people still seem to be killing each other over there so he's trying to back-pedal from his claims or promises or whatever you want to call them. But Daniel Dale of CNN has found fifty-three times Trump said he could settle it in one day.

Fact-Check.org chimes in with fact-checking of Trump's claims about the price of gas and eggs. Politifact tackles his claims about getting gas prices down to $1.98 in some states.

Meanwhile, Trump is claiming credit for a rise in military sign-ups but as the Associated Press notes, that rise started under Biden.

Professor (and author) Arnold Kunka is reporting the passing of his friend — and I guess, mine — comic book creator Jack Katz. Jack Katz was born September 27, 1927 so he made it to the age of 97. Like just about everyone who got into comics when he did, he was enraptured by "the funnies" in the newspapers when he was a kid, loving especially the works of Hal Foster and Alex Raymond. Jack attended the School of Industrial Art in New York City and began drawing comic books while still there.

Throughout his career, he bounced around so many companies and worked under so many different names that it's difficult to list all the work he did but his first job would seem to have been assisting C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza on the comic Bulletman and maybe the original Captain Marvel, which they were then producing.  This would have been around 1943.  He worked for many of the "shops" that cranked out pages for various publishers of the day including The Jerry Iger Shop, The Harry Chesler Shop and the shop of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.  Katz considered Kirby a personal mentor and always said, "Jack Kirby taught me how to ink and to spot black areas in my work."

He worked for everyone over the years and under many names including Jay Hawk, Vaughn Beering, Alec Justice, and David Hadley. Never very happy with the scripts or assignments he was given, he took advantage of the growing market for underground comics in the seventies and embarked on an amazing endeavor: He wrote and drew one of the first graphic novels to attract serious attention. Starting in 1974, he created The First Kingdom, an incredible fantasy story that he announced would span 24 issues.

Many doubted he would complete it, especially since the detailed art style he applied to it often required several days to complete one page. But finish it, he did: 768 pages done over twelve years. Each of its twenty-four issues was dedicated to his then-wife Carolyn who was as committed to seeing her husband fulfill his mission as he was to fulfill it himself. He later attacked shorter (but always epic in some sense) projects with the same intensity of effort.

Jack and I were friends for a time. He and Carolyn even once stayed a few days at my old apartment in Los Angeles where Jack spent almost every minute drawing about half of a page of The First Kingdom on my drawing table. The intensity with which he pursued it and everything else he did was amazing and, at times, a little scary. At some point, we drifted apart and I don't think we spoke in the last twenty-some-odd years. I don't know why.

The photo at the top of this piece was taken by me at a San Diego Con around — this is a guess — 1977. The one below is probably from the same convention. It's Jack at right with another of his many heroes, Joe Kubert. Jack Katz was a rare talent and of all the people I've met in the comic industry, I can't think of one who was more passionate and dedicated to his work or willing to spend every waking hour for days getting things the way he wanted them to be on the page. Just an amazing guy.

One of the world's greatest cartoonists — and of course, I'm only saying that because he's my best friend in the male division — Sergio Aragonés will be appearing online in a live virtual event on Monday, April 28. It's for a good cause: The National Cartoonists Society, which among its other purposes in life, raises money to benefit cartoonists who could use a little help. You do not have to be an N.C.S. member to join in this online event. You just have to pay twelve bucks. More details can be found at this address.

Tim Conway liked to tell this story about his frequent co-star, Don Knotts…

I am still fine but now I have no gall bladder.

People keep writing to ask how I am. I'm fine. Honest.

Glenn Kessler: "[Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.] Kennedy says the percentage of Americans with chronic diseases has gone up 20 times in six decades. That makes no sense." Here's why it makes no sense.

And Politifact says the man doesn't know what he's talking about when he talks about autism. I think we've all known that for a long time but he wasn't in a position of power when he used to say it.

In June of 1993, David Letterman did his last episode of Late Night on NBC before decamping for a new deal and a new show on CBS. This is the final eighteen-or-so minutes from that last NBC telecast and it features a guest spot by Tom Hanks that oughta be high on anyone's list of All-Time Best Performances by Someone in the Guest Chair on a TV Talk Show. And the nice thing is that Dave contributes just the right amount of participation, not breaking his guest's rhythm, not stepping on any punch lines.

A lot of talk show hosts don't know how to do that…or just plain don't want to. Even Dave after a while on CBS, seemed to have that "the audience came to see and hear me" attitude — but not in this spot…

Fred Kaplan explains Donald Trump's plans for Ukraine. They basically consist of giving Putin every single thing he could possibly want including an endorsement of the fiction that Ukraine started the war. Trump's supposed to be this great deal-maker but if that's going to be the resolution of that conflict, any of us could have engineered that settlement.

Daniel Dale over at CNN says Trump has been lying about the price of eggs, the price of groceries and the price of gas. I'm more than a little curious as to how many of his supporters look at articles like this and think "CNN is lying," how many think "Trump is lying but I don't care" and how many just plain don't want to deal with the discrepancies like this.

Politifact says he's lying some more about Kilmar Armando Abrego García while FactCheck.org delves into the real meaning of "due process." Trump seems to be fighting mightily for his presumed right to deport anyone anywhere without the blessing of any court or judge.

I'm going to be kinda busy the next few days but I've got a great video for you to make up for it. My longtime friend Russell Myers draws this comic strip about a lady who's 1,500 years old and he's been doing it for about half her age. Or at least, it feels that way.

Russell is among the last of a certain breed of cartoonists. He does it on paper with pens and brushes…and he does it all himself and somehow manages to keep coming up with funny ideas. I don't know how he manages it. He is therefore quite worthy of a recent award he received from the National Cartoonists Society and the folks there made up this video which I highly recommend as worth your time…

If you're following the matter of Kilmar Abrego García, you're probably hearing a lot about tattoos he may or may not have which may or may not prove anything. Politifact sorts out what we know at the moment…which sure sounds to me like the people who are 100% certain he's an MS-13 gang member don't have enough actual evidence to be that certain.

Mention the name of Jimmy Dean to folks today and if they recognize it at all, they probably know him from his success in the sausage business. But there was a time when Mr. Dean was a top recording artist and a pretty big TV star. At one point in the late sixties when Johnny Carson was battling with NBC over a new contract, the network signed Jimmy Dean to guest host The Tonight Show in Carson's absence and to become its permanent host if they never managed to make a deal with Johnny. Which, of course, they finally did.

Our video today is a truncated video of the first episode of The Jimmy Dean Show, a series he did on ABC from 1963 until 1966. It's an interesting show because one of his guests is Fred Flintstone in (fittingly) a primitive attempt to combine live-action TV with animation. I remember seeing this when it first aired and there was a really nice musical number with Fred and Jimmy which has, alas, been edited from this video. The sequence with Fred starts around 12:19. A spot with Dick Shawn early in the show was also apparently cut but he reappears later with an unusual dance spot.

There's also a bit where our old friend Chuck McCann does the Little Orphan Annie characterization that made him very popular…and there's other stuff. Other episodes of this program also featured the dog Rowlf, the first major network exposure of The Muppets. It was a nice little series while it lasted.

The big stampede for hotel rooms for this year's Comic-Con International is happening day after tomorrow. It starts at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time on April 24, 2025 and if things go like they have in past years, the room you want will be booked by someone else by 9:30.

I have no idea why they aren't doing this on a Saturday like they usually do. Matter of fact, I really don't know much about this at all so I'll just direct you to this page and wish you luck.