It's almost an hour of segments that 60 Minutes did on Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Trevor Noah. The first interview with Jon Stewart is from February of 2002 and it's especially interesting to see how he and The Daily Show evolved from there…

Why is there no end in sight for our war — it's a WAR, people! — with Iran? Or for that matter, the WAR between Russia and Ukraine? Fred Kaplan thinks it's because Trump's diplomat-negotiators don't know what the hell they're doing. Here's an excerpt of the whole article which you oughta read…

Yes, Trump doesn't trust the professional diplomatic corps or experts of any kind. But, as a self-proclaimed businessman, he must notice when aides don't get the job done, and the Kushner-Witkoff duo have not lured the combatants one step closer to peace; in fact, they've arguably intensified the war in Ukraine.

Their utter incompetence was on full display over the weekend, as they met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, then — in their first trip to the Ukrainian capital — Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. They carried what Trump touted ahead of time as new peace proposals, and concluded both sets of talks with boilerplate adjectives ("productive," "meaningful," "positive," "businesslike"). But in fact, they came away with zilch — and, once again, proved themselves far short of the task.

I'm guessing that Trump fears that if experienced diplomats bring an end to either conflict, they might get some of the credit…but who knows? He may not have any perceptible reason. He does so many things that don't.

Since the disasters of 9/11, Donald Trump has come up with story after story about what he did that day and subsequent visits to Ground Zero. No one seems to believe any of them are true…as CNN reports and as Politifact reports. Remember when people called Al Gore a congenital liar not to be trusted when he said he and his wife inspired the book Love Story and it turned out the story was only partially true?

Another reason to love and respect Jon Stewart…

If you haven't read previous parts of this series, clicking here will take you back to the beginning.

Onward: As I mentioned in the first part of this series, I was interested in things other than comic books when I was a kid. One of those was magic and I learned about it because I obtained a special, magical library card. It enabled me at age ten or eleven — maybe even younger — to check out books from the so-called "adult" section of our public library. That's where they hid the books in which magicians, who are sworn to never reveal how tricks are done reveal how tricks are done. I wrote about that very special card here.

I got to be…well, not a good magician but about as good a magician as you could be at that age. I got better at it as I got older but never as good as some other kids my age.  Why didn't I?  Probably because I was interested in so many other things and had decided that what I wanted to be when I grew up was not a Professional Magician but a Professional Writer.

I know a number of the best magicians in the world and all of them — with no exceptions — devoted about a jillion hours to studying, reading magic books and doing the ten things you need to do to be a really good magician. Those ten things are — in this order — practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice and — of course — practice. Oh! — and it also helps if you practice a lot.

There are tricks you can master in an hour or two if you know the secrets and/or make or purchase certain gimmicks.  But to be proficient at the art, you need to do the ten things over and over and over…and you also need to practice a lot.  Because of my other interests, I was never willing or able to do all that much of what you had to do.

I never thought of making a living or even the occasional buck doing magic but I also didn't want to become as bad as it as I am these days. My magic kit has cobwebs and I am fatally out of the "P" word, plus I developed a touch of arthritis or something similar in my hands. There's a great sleight-of-hand move that I mastered around the age of thirteen. But since I passed the age of forty or so, my fingers — which are fine for typing like I'm doing at this moment — just can't or do that move anymore.

I was able to pass the difficult-to-pass audition to be upgraded from Associate Member to Magician Member at the Magic Castle but that has been my crowning performance for the last half-century. Magic was just something I had to sacrifice to get better at writing. Drawing, as we'll get to in the next chapter of this, was kind of the same thing.

At the Castle, I am usually in the company of some of the greatest magicians in the world — guys who do it all the time and I mean all the time. One such obsessive practicioner is a gentleman I've mentioned before on this blog, Richard Turner.

I joined the Castle in the early eighties and one night, I hosted a bunch of my fellow comic book writers there. We all put on jackets and ties — mandatory in the evening at the Magic Castle — and went to dinner and some shows there. I might be leaving someone out but I think it was me, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Mike Barr and Steve Gerber. In one of the showrooms, we saw this amazing person. He demonstrated uncanny skills to cheat at card games. You'll see him in a moment. It was all the more impressive because Richard Turner was blind.

All of us comic book writers had the same thought at the same moment that night: Oh, my God! We found Daredevil! And I had the thought to put him on a TV show I was writing at the time, a show some of you may remember called That's Incredible! Here's a not-great video of Richard Turner's first-ever appearance on network television. This was taped while he was still in L.A. for his Magic Castle appearances…

And Richard's still doing that act. A couple years ago, I was asked to suggest some magicians to be on Penn & Teller Fool Us and I told them they had to get Richard Turner on there. They already had him on some list. You can get a sense of how good this guy is by watching Teller's face…

By the time I met Richard, I had neglected my magic enough to not be very good at it anymore. His skills impressed me and so did his devotion to practicing. And practicing and practicing…all the time.  That first video above was not exaggerating.  Even when I'm sitting and talking with Richard, he has a deck in one hand and he's doing one-hand shuffles or moving all the aces to exactly where he wants them.

I'm dwelling on him here because meeting him crystalized for me a decision I'd already made without formally saying it to myself. I'd decided to focus on writing and to move magic way down on the list of priorities in my life. I also made that decision about drawing once I was around artists who in their own way were as remarkable as Richard Turner. We'll get to them in the next chapter of this.

Here's a real good (but real long) documentary on the building of Disneyland. I'm surprised the Disney organization has never made a movie about this because it's a pretty great story…

As you may recall, I haven't decided if I'm going to see the national touring company of Boop! The Musical when it gets to Los Angeles next July. It's a non-Equity production and I have mixed feelings about patronizing those. I did decide not to fly to Japan to see the production of the show that was playing there…

The Jerry Lewis Telethon remembered…

One year, I was asked to write for the telethon and I turned it down. I'm still not sure if that was a good decision.

I've known Sergio Aragonés since either late 1968 or early 1969. This is the oldest photo I have of us together…

It was taken in the Dealers Room of a Comic-Con International long before the annual event was called Comic-Con International.  It was called the San Diego Comic Con back then.  This one was at El Cortez Hotel and it must have been in 1975 or later.  The round pinback Sergio is wearing is from the Famous Cartoonist Series of pinbacks that Kitchen Sink Enterprises brought out in '75.

The real mystery is (a) who took this picture and (b) why I have the negative of this photo in an envelope along with the negatives of other photos I recall taking at that con. You might say, "That's easy. You handed your camera to someone else and had him take this photo with your camera!" And that can't be it because in the photo, I'm holding my camera — the only one I owned at the time.  This puzzle will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Still, there's no mystery of how Sergio and I got to the point of referring to each other as "My Best Friend."  We just started seeing more and more of each other, especially after we, along with the late Don Rico, decided to form a group called CAPS — The Comic Art Professional Society.  That was in 1977 and soon after, we were collaborating on comic book material including, since 19fucking82, Groo the Wanderer.

That was 44 years ago and we still haven't had one fight.  We've had disagreements, almost all about story points, and they're usually solved by both of us giving in to the other's view.  He is the easiest person in the world to get along with…and he draws pretty well, too.

He is blankety-blank years old today and drawing just as well as he ever did, if not better.  The only change is that he doesn't draw quite as fast as he once did.  He used to draw eight times faster than any other cartoonist and now he's down to around six times as fast.  But then again, he's also putting 50% more details in every drawing.  So you do the math.  Here's a more recent photo…

And here are some interesting statistics: Sergio's first published work in MAD was in issue #74 which went on sale August 9 of 1962.  That was 64 years and 28 days ago.  MAD just changed its numbering system.  There were 550 issues of MAD published in New York. In 2018. The entire operation was moved to Los Angeles (Burbank, actually) that year, whereupon they issued a new MAD #1, followed by #2, followed by #3 and so on.  When they recently reached #49 of this new series, they decided to merge the numbering of the two runs so #49 was followed by #600 and the latest issue is #601.

Since Sergio started in #74 and missed appearing in only one issue after that (#111), his work has appeared in 526 issues of MAD. I am not about to count how many cartoons he's had in each issue and neither are you.  But if due to some mental lapse, you did try to do the math on this, you should know that his little cartoons in the margins started in #76.  And he's still at it.  I'd like to think he's about reached the halfway mark.

Happy Today, Sergio.  You really are my best friend…at least among people with facial hair.

Portions of this chapter were posted previously on this site.  To read this series from the beginning, click here. I still don't know how many chapters this thing is going to run.

Now then: When last we left me in this narrative, I had sweated profusely for many days to both write and draw a two-page feature for Laugh-In magazine. There were two reasons it took so long and both were my inadequate drawing ability. When you aren't sure what you're doing, it can take a lot more time than if you did know what you were doing.

It can also take longer than it should if you fear a negative reaction to the work. You might — consciously or unconsciously — be putting off handing it in to delay that ugly, possible/probable moment of rejection. As I probably was. A man named Chase Craig was my main editor when I later began writing comic books. I once asked him what was the toughest part of his job.  He said it was getting even seasoned pros to stop stalling and turn the damned work in.

He told me about an artist who did a lot of work for him. The guy would draw a whole story in three days…then it took a week and a couple of phone calls to get him to decide it was as good as it was going to get and to turn it over. Chase told me this because I was about to hire the guy for a job and, sure enough, he drew the whole story in three days…then it took a week and a couple of phone calls to get him to decide it was as good as it was going to get.

First Rule of Professional Writing or Drawing: You have to finish the job and hand it in, approximately on-time. I have met many writers and artists in my life who didn't fully grasp that concept.

I more or less finished my drawing for Laugh-In magazine, then spent a few days "polishing" it — which mostly consisted of staring at it and finding microscopic ways to improve it about an eighth of one percent. Finally, overcoming a fear my editor would say "This stinks" — which given my skills was a strong possibility — I worked up the courage to turn it in.

I went to the publisher's office where I was told my editor there was no longer my (or anyone's) editor there. He was outta there, not by choice. The receptionist who informed me of this then directed me to a gentleman who had some job description in management there. He sat me down in his office and told me that Laugh-In magazine had been canceled. They would pay me for the work I was turning in though, of course, it would never be published. In hindsight, I am very happy that it was not published. It was pretty bad and my name was on it.

Here's a slight aside: There are benefits to having a name that no one else has but there are also drawbacks. I used to think it would be nice to be, say, Bob Jones. That way, if someone hated what I'd done, I could say, "Oh, that was by the other Bob Jones.  People confuse us all the time!  Yeah, he's pretty bad!"

The exec at the company offered me work on some of their other magazines which were of the teen and movie gossip sort.  For around eight months, I wrote for them and it led to other jobs — all writing, no drawing — for other outfits. I was not writing anything that interested me or felt like it had much of a future.  Still, I was being paid okay money and getting experience. If nothing else, I was learning to finish a job and hand it in, approximately on-time.

It wasn't long before I was writing the kinds of things I wanted to write…mostly comic books. Occasionally, an assignment involved drawing. I was a lot less nervous about handing in writing than I was about handing in drawing. When I wrote comics for Chase Craig at Gold Key, he kept telling me he needed cover ideas and the only way to submit those was to roughly draw them out. Here are two of the covers I designed. Artists more experienced than I was — and everyone drawing for Gold Key was — tightened up and corrected my drawings. I was paid for writing and penciling.

It was exciting to see my handiwork on a for-real, sold-on-newsstands comic book but I also had an odd feeling about it. I didn't know what to call this odd feeling at the time but a few years ago in some article on the Internet, I saw a phrase — "Impostor Syndrome" — and I thought, "Hey, that might be what I was feeling back then. I quickly Googled the term and found this definition…

Impostor syndrome is a psychological experience where a person doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and fears being exposed as a fraud.

…and I thought, 'Yeah…that's it!"

I felt it most when whoever my girl friend was at the moment would take me to her friends' parties and introduce me around as the guy who wrote and drew the Bugs Bunny comic books. I'd ask her to just say I wrote them and then the following conversation would ensue…

SHE: But you draw Bugs Bunny. You drew Bugs Bunny on the paper tablecloth at the restaurant last week.

ME: Yeah but that's a paper tablecloth. I don't really draw him in the comics.

SHE: Yes, you do. You showed me that issue with the cover you drew.

ME: And I explained to you that all I did was the rough sketch for that cover. Someone else — a real cartoonist — did the finished art.

SHE: Okay but the point is you drew Bugs Bunny on that cover. You showed me the sketch you did. It was a drawing of Bugs Bunny. I don't know why you don't just draw the finished comic books.

ME: Maybe it has something to do with me not being good enough…

SHE: Nonsense! You did that drawing of Bugs Bunny for my niece. She loved it!

ME: She's nine years old.

SHE: And how old are the kids who read those comic books?

ME: Oh, they're much older. They're like…ten or eleven.

SHE: You see what I mean?

And she'd go on introducing me as the guy who wrote and drew the Bugs Bunny comics. Depending on my mood, I might stop arguing the point, especially around people who couldn't grasp the concept that those might be two separate jobs. I'd say, "Yes, yes…I do the pictures. I make up the words in the 'bubbles.'" (Folks who don't know comics always call them "bubbles." Those of us who know better call them "word balloons.")

Or she might say I wrote and drew the Donald Duck comic books or the Goofy comic books. For some reason, any time at a party I was passed off as a Disney artist, someone would ask me if I would do a drawing for them of Donald and Daisy or Mickey and Minnie having sex. No one ever wanted a dirty picture of Porky Pig and Petunia getting it on but there was some repressed sexuality attached to the Disney characters.

I did no such drawings of Disney Ducks for anyone, partly because I had integrity and respect for those characters…and partly because I didn't draw well enough to put them into those poses.

It took a while for me to decide that I really wasn't an artist on a professional level and was never going to be that. What I really was was a pretty decent forger. I shall elaborate in the next part.

In the past here, I've raved about Puppet Up!, a mostly-improvised puppet show for adults (only!) here in Los Angeles. Just thought I'd let you know that it's going on tour. Presently, the list includes Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC and New York City. If you live in or near Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC or New York City, you might want to check it out.

A number of my friends are recommending (highly!) that I see the newly-released Coyote vs. Acme movie. Actually, that should probably be "newly-escaped" because, as you probably know, the Warner folks who commissioned it in the first place tried to bury it for some sort of tax write-off. If I read properly between the lines of the praise it's now receiving, it feels like some of that is because the movie is real good and some is because its success shows how wrong powerful corporate giants can be.

With that success comes renewed talk about the oft-injured Wile E. Coyote and folks are occasionally noting that the "E" stands for "Ethelbert." Well, it does and it doesn't. So this would be a good time for me to rerun the following post which first ran on this site on 2/20/07…

We all love Wile E. Coyote, the long-suffering Road Runner chaser. But, uh, what does the "E" stand for?

I guess I don't know. I mean, none of the cartoons directed by Charles "Chuck" Jones and written by Michael Maltese ever said. Only a couple of them ever even said his name was Wile E. Coyote.

But it has just (this morning) been brought to my attention — thank you, Devlin Thompson — that more than a thousand websites say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. The source for this is a 1973 story that appeared in the comic book, Beep Beep the Road Runner, published by Western Publishing Company under its Gold Key imprint. This is noted by Jon Cooke over on this page and as he also reveals, it was the question/answer to the Final Jeopardy question on the 1/18/07 episode of the game show, Jeopardy!

In the story, which was called "The Greatest of E's," Wile E. Coyote realizes he doesn't know and gathers together some of his relatives to answer the question. One is an uncle named Kraft E. Coyote who informs him and the world that the "E" stands for Ethelbert. That is, as far as I know, the only piece of fiction licensed or otherwise blessed by the Warner Brothers company that ever said such a thing.

This raises one of those moral issues that has no firm answer. What makes something like this an "official" fact in the world of animated cartoons? I mean, we know Bugs Bunny is named Bugs Bunny because…well, we just know. But what is the name of the frog that sings and dances in the Jones-Maltese masterpiece, One Froggy Evening? It's Michigan J. Frog, right? Apparently…but that name appears nowhere in the cartoon. As I understand it, the moniker was coined years later when there was some merchandising interest in the character…or maybe when W.B. decided to try and generate some merchandising interest. Chuck or Mike may have come up with it then or someone at WB may have and then Chuck and Mike endorsed and used it…but anyway, that's the frog's name. I suppose. I mean, if the guys who made One Froggy Evening didn't argue the point, who are we to say it isn't?

For that matter, even if some "fact" appears in a cartoon that doesn't make it inviolable. There were WB cartoons where Sylvester the Cat could talk and was owned by Granny. There were others where he couldn't talk and was Porky Pig's cat. Quick: If I asked you, "Who owns Sylvester?," you'd probably forget about all cartoons to the contrary and say it was Granny, who also owned Tweety. There were Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons where for no apparent reason, those characters lived in other eras. Elmer Fudd had a couple of different middle initials in different shorts and characters' appearances were often changing and we could list hundreds of other inconsistencies. The films weren't intended to have an airtight continuity from one to another. Some "facts" were meant to be forgotten.

It was the same with the comic books. Western Publishing licensed the right to do comics of those characters for around thirty years, and the editors at Western thought of the comics as separate entities from the cartoons. The Donald Duck that Carl Barks and others wrote and drew for Western's Disney comics was not exactly the same Donald Duck that appeared in the Disney cartoons. They adapted the character, rethinking and redesigning him for a different medium. (It's a funny thing: When I was a kid and read Bugs Bunny comic books, I always "heard" the wabbit's dialogue in Mel Blanc's voice from the shorts. But when I read a Donald Duck comic book, I never thought that duck spoke with the voice Clarence Nash supplied for Donald in his cartoon appearances…maybe because I understood so little of what the animated duck said and I could read every syllable of the comic book Donald's word balloons.) In some ways, the Donald of the comics was the same character but in others, he was a different but similar creature. And I never quite related the Mickey Mouse of the comic books or strips to any of his animated appearances.

While Western was doing the Warner Brothers-based comics, they changed a lot of the characters to make them — they thought — more workable for print media. They didn't think matching the cartoons closely mattered because, for one thing, those films weren't on TV every week then. During the forties and early fifties, they weren't on TV at all. Many of the kids who bought the comics rarely, if ever, saw the animated shorts and certainly didn't see them over and over and over, like they would in later years. So it didn't matter a whole heap if the comics matched the cartoons; only that they worked as comic book reading experiences. Back then in the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip, which was read by millions, Elmer Fudd rarely appeared and I don't think Yosemite Sam ever did…but Sylvester was a regular. He was a hobo who wasn't owned by Granny, didn't chase Tweety Birds and who had a British accent. Someone thought it made for a better strip that way.

This is why, for instance, the Road Runner in comic books differed so much from the Road Runner in cartoons. When I was a kid enjoying both, I was puzzled. I'd seen Road Runner cartoons. They were tough to come by then but I'd caught one or two and in them, there was one Road Runner and one Coyote and neither spoke. In the comics, the Road Runner not only spoke, he spoke in rhyme. He had a name — Beep Beep — and in some stories, he had a wife and a family of either three or four youthful road-running kids. The Coyote spoke too, though not in rhyme, though that didn't bother me as much. The Coyote had spoken in a couple of non-Road Runner cartoons.

I wondered aloud back then if the folks who made the comic books had ever viewed one of those hard-to-see cartoons — but of course, they had. As I learned much later, Michael Maltese wrote many of those comics and the early ones were drawn by Pete Alvarado. Pete handpainted all the backgrounds for the first Road Runner cartoon, Fast and Furry-ous. Almost all the other writers and artists who did the comics (Phil DeLara, Don R. Christensen, Warren Foster, et al) had worked for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio, if not in Jones's unit then right down the hall. They knew that in the cartoons, the Road Runner didn't talk — in rhyme or at all and it had been a conscious decision to change it for the comics. The editors and creators had also decided to not worry about consistency from comic book to comic book. In some, there was a Mrs. Road Runner and four kids. But there were several years there where the wife and one of the kids disappeared…except that every now and then, they'd inexplicably turn up for a story or two or in a reprint sandwiched in among new adventures.

So as far as I'm concerned, it's no more a "fact" that the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert than it is that the Road Runner is named Beep Beep, has a wife and kids and speaks in doggerel. It said the "E" stood for Ethelbert in one comic book story but that's just one obscure comic book story…and even the guy who wrote it didn't intend it as anything more than one joke on one page of one story in one issue.

How do I know this? Because, as some of you may have guessed by now, I was that guy. I wrote that story. I think I was around twenty years old at the time. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that that one was conceived in a lecture hall at U.C.L.A. while I was simultaneously jotting down script ideas and feigning attention to what a tedious Anthropology professor was teaching. Mike Maltese had been occasionally writing the comics in semi-retirement before me…but when he dropped the "semi" part, I got the job and that was one of the plots I came up with. For the record, the story was drawn by a terrific artist named Jack Manning, and Mr. Maltese complimented me on it.

Still, I wouldn't take that as any official endorsement of the Coyote's middle name. If you want to say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert, fine. I mean, it's not like someone's going to suddenly whip out Wile E.'s actual birth certificate and yell, "Aha! Here's incontrovertible proof!" But like I said, I never imagined anyone would take it as part of the official "canon" of the character. If I had, I'd have said the "E" stood for Evanier.

Fred Kaplan has a solution to the Iran War…

President Donald Trump is reportedly having private discussions with senior aides about whether he should end his war with Iran. The story, in the Wall Street Journal, rouses memories of Vermont Sen. George Aiken's suggestion, early in the Vietnam War, that we should just "declare victory and go home." Aiken didn't really say quite that, but it would have been good if President Lyndon Johnson had taken up the idea then. And it would be very good if Trump followed his instincts — at least this instinct -— now.

I'm wondering if anyone would believe anything Trump says about the war by now.

Every so often, I treat myself to one of George Carlin's stand-up comedy specials. There was a period there where he was showing a bit of a nasty streak and I didn't find him as funny and perhaps not as honest. But most of his career involved a stunning quantity of solid, perceptive comedy, There were other guys who, if you went to see them live, you got to hear a lot of material they'd already done on a record, a cable special or a talk show. Carlin always seemed to have something new. That was one of the many things about him that was to be admired.

I met him a few times. He guested on Welcome Back, Kotter on an episode my partner Dennis and I mostly wrote and he was funny off-stage, too. His old specials hold up pretty well and I probably should link you to some of them here. But one thing he did you might not have seen or heard was this appearance in 1999 at the National Press Club in Washington. It's more speech than stand-up but if you liked Carlin, you'll like this…

My complaints about Walmart's delivery service seem to have reached someone in their corporate structure who wants to improve their system. I got a call today from a gent who seems to actually have the power to fix things and who wanted me to walk him through what went wrong and why. He gave me more store credit and his direct phone number and he seemed to understand when I told him, "I don't want apologies from folks who didn't cause the problem and can't do anything to rectify matters. I want the problem fixed!" He promised me it would not happen to me again and maybe not to anyone. I was impressed.

Jim Held read my recent piece about my first attempts to write comic books and asked,"When you submitted your first script, how did you know what a comic script should look like?" Answer: At first, I made up my own format — a combination of writing and sketching — and then I saw a Gardner Fox script in some fanzine of the day. I do not recall which one.

Others wrote to ask if they could see a copy of that wretched Jimmy Olsen script I wrote. No. I really don't want to experience what it feels like to have every single reader of this blog simultaneously lose every last bit of respect they might have ever had for me. Also, I'm not sure I could find it.

Brian Phillips liked the video of the openings to all those TV westerns. He tells me that he has the TV Guide that was previewing the fall season in 1958 and between shows that were on the air and the ones premiering, there were twenty-six (!) westerns on television each week. I can believe it. That's an awful lot of testosterone on horseback and Frankie Laine theme songs.

Lastly for now: Happy Birthday in about thirty-nine minutes to my friend and occasional collaborator, Scott Shaw! How long have I known Scott? We met at Jack Kirby's house in early 1971. He was not yet a professional cartoonist but you only had to look at what he was drawing in those days and know it was just a matter of time — and not much more of it. I'm awfully glad I know this man.