Speaking of things coming out on video: I had a little something to do with Bob, the short-lived (1992-1993) sitcom in which Bob Newhart played a comic book artist. Some sites will tell you I created it but that's not at all so. As you can see in the opening titles below, that credit belongs to my friends Bill & Cheri Steinkeller and Phoef Sutton, and I suspect that if they'd been able to do the show they wanted to do, it would have lasted as long as your average Bob Newhart series. I just wrote one episode and answered a lot of questions about the comic book business.
The comic book graphics, by the way, were done by artist Paul Power. My buddy Paul was often seen as an extra in the show, playing an employee of the comic book company for which Bob "McKay" worked and in the titles below, he stunt-doubled Mr. Newhart's drawing hand. At one point on the set, I heard Bob telling someone, "I can't draw anything" and I turned and told him, "I suspect you draw a very handsome salary."
This is all my way of mentioning that the complete series is coming out on DVD on April 3. Many of you may want this if only for the episode in which Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Sergio Aragonés, Jim Lee and other real draw-ers of comic books made cameo appearances. Cute story: The filming schedule required these folks to be there a few days for rehearsals, which meant they had to sit around for hours while other scenes were staged. Sergio had a Groo deadline…and there were drawing tables on the set. So he brought along pages and sat on the Bob set and drew Groo, much to the fascination of everyone in the cast and crew. He also brought along a high-wattage light bulb to swap out in the lamps they had on those tables because for filming reasons, they had very weak lights in them.
I liked the series, at least during its first season before panic set in about the ratings and folks began mucking with its premise and adding Betty White to the show. If like most of America you never saw it, you might enjoy it, too. We don't have an Amazon link yet for this but I'll put one up when it's possible to pre-order it. In the meantime, here are those opening titles…