Monthly Archives: October 2022

Warren Scott sent me this question…

There was an article floating around social media for a while that suggested the Scooby Doo series resulted from the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and an effort to reduce violence on television. It seemed to be oversimplifying things to me, but what is your take on it? And what do you think of the show using real ghosts versus fake ones? There seems to be some debate over that among fans.

From the dawn of TV for kids, there were always groups that wanted those shows to be more uplifting and educational and which mistook slapstick for violence. There probably still are such groups, though I would imagine they're pretty ineffectual these days. A lot of my career in animation involved dealing with network folks who were trying to appease those groups…while at the same time, putting on shows that kids wanted to watch. At times, it seemed hard to achieve both at the same time, especially at ABC.

My understanding is that Scooby Doo came about because Fred Silverman (then at CBS) thought there might be an audience for a whodunnit and they did it in the style they chose, rather than a more adventure style, because the Archie cartoon show was a recent hit. Also, in the early development, the focus of the show was almost wholly on the kids and the dog was kind of an add-on tagalong. As the show took shape, mostly in the hands of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears with Silverman and Joe Barbera participating, the dog seemed to be stealing the show. Joe Ruby told me once about a day when he and Ken decided to make the dog more of the star and even to name the show after him.

And with that decision — with the show now more about a scared, almost-talking pooch — that further cemented the lighter style. They may have said that it was part of an effort to reduce violence because of the R.F.K. killing but I think that was just good public relations. I heard about the show from both Joes, Ken and even a little from Silverman. I don't think they really had that in mind at the time though the network may have decided there was some value in saying they did.

As for the switch from fake ghosts to real ghosts: I think the show quickly got into a rut with the ghosts always turning out to be fake. At some point, even the most open-minded kid had to be asking why Scooby and Shaggy were so terrified about this week's alleged ghost when the last eighty alleged ghosts all turned out to be someone they'd met who had put on a mask and maybe rigged up some cheapo special effects.

Plus, the writers had come up with every conceivable fake ghost and it was necessary to be open to real monsters and goblins and such just to get a story that they hadn't done eleven times before. So I was fine with it.

And before anyone asks me what I think about the announcement that Velma is now officially gay…I don't care. I don't even care whether actual people I know or work with are gay or straight. Either way, they're still human beings who deserve to be treated with respect — whether they're gay or straight, "out" or not. I guess it matters if you might find yourself in a dating or mating situation with someone…but it's been my experience that when that's an issue, you find out soon enough.

As a kid, I loved ventriloquists and puppeteers so naturally, I loved Shari Lewis and her friends Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse and a few others.  From 1960 (when I was eight) until 1963 (when I was eleven), I never missed The Shari Lewis Show, which was on NBC every Saturday morning.  It was one of those kids' shows that was so clever and so expertly done that it attracted a significant number of adult viewers and one Peabody Award.  At the time, I thought a Peabody Award was something you got for going back in time and correcting a problem in history.

You cannot, alas, see much of The Shari Lewis Show these days.  It's one of those shows that was not well-preserved.  Not long before Ms. Lewis left us in 1998, I had the pleasure of working with her on a TV pilot which, alas again, never reached fruition.  When I asked her about the 1960-1963 series, she said with great regret and a bit of anger that all the copies of it were lost or destroyed.  I believe a few have since been located and restored …but only a few and I think they're in the U.C.L.A. Film Archives and maybe nowhere else.

What we have for you here is a commercial for the series.  The video and audio aren't good but the writing is great and the vocal dexterity of Shari is amazing.  You may have to remind yourself that all three voices are coming from the same larynx and I'll bet she didn't take more than one or two takes to get this right…

I should have put a soup can up this morning but I didn't know then how busy today would get.

I mentioned back here that my third-favorite place to eat Italian food in Los Angeles is Maggiano's, a chain restaurant that's better than any other chain restaurant I've been in that serves pasta 'n' such. The one I frequented was in The Grove, a shopping center over next to CBS Television City. And did you notice that I changed to the past tense? That Maggiano's, I was unhappy to learn, suddenly closed last week. A few months back, another favorite restaurant right next to it — The Wood Ranch Grill — moved out so both huge restaurant structures are vacant.

The Grove is a 575,000-square-foot…well, they don't call it a mall. They call it a "Shopping Xanadu" and it's owned by Rick Caruso, a local businessman who is currently running for Mayor of Los Angeles. The Internet Chatter is that Mr. Caruso wanted those two restaurants out because he has plans for the real estate they occupied. I don't know if that Internet Chatter is true. If it is, then I might be a little happier with the fact that I already filled-out and sent off my mail-in ballot on which I voted for Caruso's opponent, Karen Bass.

The recorded announcement when you phone that Maggiano's just tells you they've closed but you're invited to patronize the Maggiano's in Woodland Hills or the one in Costa Mesa. The one in Woodland Hills is 25.3 miles away and the one in Costa Mesa is 48. Their food is good but not 25.3 miles good.

"Legal Eagle" Devin Stone explains how screwed Alex Jones is…and you have to remember that Jones hasn't even touched bottom yet in this matter. He's still awaiting an assessment of compensatory damages in Connecticut and a whole other penalty-phase trial in the third lawsuit he lost. He also must have a few million bucks in lawyer bills ahead. I'm kinda curious as to whether this man has really, really bad lawyers or he has good ones and he keeps paying them but not following their advice…

My pal Tom Brevoort, who supervises many a fine comic book at Marvel, read what I had to say about word balloons on comic book covers and sent this add-on…

A bit of additional nuance for you concerning the reason why word balloons and copy aren't used on covers so much as they once were. Everything that you stated is absolutely correct, but in my experience, there's another factor at play that caused everybody to scale back on the use of copy on covers. And that concerns the changing tastes of the audience.

I don't know where the sentiment came from necessarily — possibly a backlash against all of those silly early 1960s DC text-heavy covers that we all remember. But at a certain point, the hardcore fan cognoscenti reached the unshakable conclusion that word balloons on a cover made it look juvenile. Now, as you know, there is nothing that an insecure young comic book reader fears more that being pigeonholed as somebody who reads "kid's stuff" by their peer group. So as this sentiment penetrated into the fandom, especially as more and more business ran through the Direct Sales marketplace which sold on a non-returnable basis to stores and consumers — stores that, in many cases, were opened by people who had previously been fans, some of whom based their ordering decisions on their own likes and tastes as much as anything else.

This feeling also began to extend largely into the creative community, who were also a bit afraid of having their work seen as juvenile, especially during the era when grim and gritty was the common shorthand for what was considered good by the audience at large. (A sidebar — this is also what happened to thought balloons in general. Once Frank Miller introduced first person narration as the way in which tough guy characters revealed their inner thoughts to the readership in a literary style, every writer worth his salt abandoned thought balloons and first-person narration became a dime a dozen. And even when that narration largely went away, the thought balloons didn't grow back, they were simply gone for the most part.)

And once the word balloons went, it was only a matter of time before any other copy on covers was likewise deemed unattractive. For the longest time, the people who worked as art directors or cover editors at the major two comic book companies would evoke a study that had been conducted many years earlier, which showed that a cover that had copy on it would be looked at by a prospective consumer for a fraction of a second longer than one without — it took that long for the average person's brain to decipher the text. And so cover copy was for the longest time mandatory. But as those art directors, et al left, they were replaced by a new generation that either weren't aware of that study or who gave it no credence, and who felt that the purpose of a cover was to provide a strong piece of art, a compelling image that would draw a prospective reader into buying the book.

Who is right? Who can say? It's possible to do great covers without copy and it's possible to do great covers with copy. No one approach is the only one, all tools in the toolbox should be valid. But this is in large part the reason why so relatively few covers employ cover copy today.

I agree with all that. And I'll add that I think the whole attitude about cover design has changed over the years, in part because someone finally realized that there was no evidence that cover blurbs and balloons led to higher sales but that there was some indication that visually-arresting covers did. Largely gone are the days when someone in the office would crank out layout sketches for a dozen covers and then Gil Kane or Nick Cardy or someone would take them home, draw covers following the sketches and than the office would slap lettering on it.

This discussion started here with an e-mail from Ken Scudder asking me who was responsible for word balloons on a cover. It might advance this conversation if I mention that my partner Sergio Aragonés, being a master of pantomime cartooning, believes that covers should never have lettering on them above and beyond the title logo, price, issue number, etc. Comics on which he and I have collaborated have resulted in well more than 200 covers and unless there was one that has fled my memory, we've had word balloons on a grand total of two…

The way we handle covers is that at some point in the process, someone tells Sergio we need to have a cover drawn and Sergio just sits down and draws a cover. No one does a sketch for him. No one approves his designs although I've made suggestions on one or two covers but not many more than that. I think they've all turned out fine.

When he drew the cover of Groo #18, he surprised the heck outta me by putting a word balloon on it.  That's his lettering even.  When he drew one of the covers for The Mighty Magnor #1 (it had several), he surprised me again by drawing the above, leaving space for word balloons and telling me to add them.  I wrote and lettered them.  In case anyone's interested, the blurb that starts "First Time Ever…" was penciled by me and inked by him.  These were rare exceptions.

Under the category of Unsurprising Information we find recent "news" stories that Donald Trump doesn't think Trevor Noah is funny. Anyone startled by that revelation? Is there a comedian…no, make that anyone of any profession…who doesn't kiss his butt but Trump likes? He'd probably call you a sick failing loser if you said his tie was crooked.

Mr. Noah thinks Trump will not be able to resist the temptation to testify before the January 6 commission. Lots of people feel that way just as lots of 'em think there's no way he'll put himself in that position. From the divergence of forecasts, I deduce that no one has any idea…and that may include Donald Trump. I would expect that if he does testify, he;ll make super-clear that it's not because they have the power to make him show up but because he wanted to do it. He may even try to dictate terms and win some concessions from them. Everything's a show of power with this guy.

Noah is said to be departing The Daily Show on December 8. That's a lot sooner than I imagined and I assume Comedy Central knew and began discussing his replacement a long time before he made the public announcement. Jon Stewart announced on February 10, 2015 that he was leaving his Daily Show, saying his contract was up in September and he might leave around then. He actually did his final broadcast twenty-five weeks later on August 6, 2015. Noah will leave ten weeks after his announcement.

Comedy Central has said the show will go on hiatus and will return with a new host on January 17. I said I'd give it to Jordan Klepper but that was in no way a prediction. I remind you that with talk-type shows, the "new host" has rarely been someone who was on the lists of those speculating on who'd be the new host. No one predicted Trevor Noah or, for that matter, Jon Stewart.

The other day here, I linked you to a video collection of times on The Carol Burnett Show when one or more cast members could not avoid laughing and breaking character. Our link today is to more of the same — but first, I have some words from Arnie Kogen, who was one of the writers on the series…

Unlike many of my friends' wives (not mine) Harvey was not faking it. His laughter was legit. Tim could easily push Harvey's buttons and get him to laugh whenever he wanted. Burnett had a dress rehearsal and an air show every Friday. Tim would hold back on the afternoon dress show. He'd "save it" for the evening performance. In the evening, Tim would surprise Harvey (and us) with one or two new pieces of business. We never knew what was coming or when. Harvey was genuinely uncontrollable.

The best example, of course, was The Dentist sketch. There were many others. I wrote the fireman sketch where Tim played the world's oldest fireman. It was fairly funny when I wrote it. It was incredibly funny while Tim gave Harvey mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Loved writing for Tim.

I especially loved writing Tim-Harvey sketches. THE SCENE: An Ancient Slave Ship. Many oarsman chained together rowing strenuously. Harvey, a slave, is rowing alone. The seat next to him is empty. He is waiting for the arrival of his new slave partner who will be chained next to him for eternity. Tim Conway enters and is chained next to Harvey. That's all you need. You've got comedy gold. BTW, Tim's opening line to Harvey, Hi, I'm a Leper!"

The mouth-to-mouth resuscitation scene was in the previous collection to which I linked. Arnie probably wrote something in here, too…

This morning was Returning Registration for Comic-Con 2023. To qualify for Returning Registration, one had to have been a paid attendee of Comic-Con 2022 and/or Comic-Con Special Edition 2021. I have been to every Comic-Con in San Diego in the summer and have never been a paid attendee of any of them. Still, I hear a lot of complaints about the process so I decided to peek in this morning and learn a little about what it involves.

An "online waiting room" was supposed to open at 8 AM and then at 9 AM, sales were to commence. Something went wrong, the waiting room didn't open as scheduled but not long after the appointed time, the con tweeted that a glitch had been fixed and that the waiting room would open at 9:30 and the sale would begin at 10 AM. These are all Pacific Times I'm giving you here.

The waiting room did indeed open at 9:30 and at 10 AM, all of us in the waiting room were "admitted" to…another waiting room. The computer randomizes everyone in this second room and then assigns each person an expected wait time. Mine, as you can see below, was over an hour. That didn't bother me a whole lot because I wasn't there to buy anything…just to see how the system works. It might bother me if this was my only or best way to get myself and maybe a couple of loved ones into the con.

All this time, about 1700 of us were being guided through the process by the folks who operate The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. This is operated by a group of dedicated attendees who have no actual connection with the con but who provide valuable advice and insight year round. They began blogcasting live on YouTube early this morning, answering questions and providing helpful hints for folks tackling the registration process. Most of all, they gave us, as we all waited in the waiting room, the feeling of not being alone.

Around 10:20, folks in the chat who'd been admitted to the purchase area were reporting that Preview Night (Wednesday night) was sold out for today's sale. But others were reporting they'd gotten in and purchased it and other days. Others were reporting that "Your estimated wait time is more than hour" had changed to a lower number of minutes but mine didn't then and wouldn't for quite a while.

At 10:42, the convention tweeted "Preview Night badges have sold out for this sale. Badges for other single days of Comic-Con 2023 are still available!" A minute later, they tweeted "Saturday inventory is running low. You may not be able to purchase a Saturday badge if you are selected for a registration session." At a later date to be announced, there will be an Open Registration sale and if you didn't get what you wanted today, you may be able to get it then. Only a portion of all the badges are up for sale today.

At 11:00, my estimated wait time was still more than an hour. All this time in the chat room for the Unofficial Folks' podcast, various people were reporting they were able to purchase most or all of the badges they sought.

At 11:01, there was this tweet from the con: "Friday inventory is running low. You may not be able to purchase a Friday badge if you are selected for a registration session." Folks in chat were saying that in past years of this sale, Saturdays and Fridays had sold out by this point. That may mean fewer people vying for tickets this year but I suspect it's more likely a matter of how swiftly the computer program was admitting shoppers and processing their orders.

At 11:10, my expected wait time changed to 50 minutes. One minute later, it was 43 minutes. People in the chat were still reporting they snagged all four days but not Preview Night.

At 11:11 came this tweet: "Saturday badges have sold out. Badges for other single days of Comic-Con 2023 are still available!" Again, this is all Saturday badges for this sale. There will be more Saturday badges up for grabs in Open Registration. Same with Preview Night.

At 11:16, my expected wait time was 36 minutes. A minute later, it was 28. A minute after that, it was 29. Three minutes later, 21. The latest tweet said "Friday badges have sold out. Thursday and Sunday badges are still available."

At 11:33, my computer played a little fanfare like the Pearly Gates were opening to welcome me in…and I was admitted to the portion of the site where I could purchase badges. There, I was offered Thursday and/or Sunday. At the same time, I was seeing folks in the chat room saying that they were in and that Sunday passes were gone. At 11:36, the con tweeted "Sunday badges have sold out. Badges for Thursday of Comic-Con 2023 are still available!" One minute later, they tweeted "Thursday badges have sold out."

So that was the end of today's sale. I think I could have scored Thursday and Sunday but I was just there to observe, not to buy.

I absolutely understand why the process frustrates so many folks. I started around 8:30 this morning and three hours later, got the chance to buy passes for but two of the four days…and Preview Night was even farther out of reach. For now.

I don't know how many people didn't get in at all…probably a lot. At the same time, I also have absolutely no concept for any better system. If you do, don't send it to me. Send it to the folks who run the convention…and keep in mind that there is a maximum capacity for that event and that the number of human beings who wish to attend each year far exceeds that maximum capacity. There is no way to make them all happy.

In fact, I think if somehow, the San Diego Convention Center could magically be made ten times as large and admit ten times as many people, they'd still have to use some registration process like the current one because ten times as many people would want to attend. And just imagine the joy of trying to get a hotel room then.

Not long ago here, I recommended an old TV show to you — Harry O, which starred David Janssen in what's probably my favorite detective-type series of all time. Its two seasons are rerunning now on the sorta-new TV channel, MeTV-Plus, Monday through Fridays at 4 PM in my area. Several of you have written me that you've been watching 'em and liking 'em.

Whether you've sampled it or not, I call your attention to the episode rerunning there on Monday the 17th. It's called "Mr. Five and Dime" and it guest stars J. Pat O'Malley, Glynnis O'Connor and Michael Pataki. It's probably my favorite episode of the series in one of those "the plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense but it's awfully fun" kind of ways. Part of the reason is a standout performance by Anthony Zerbe as the long-suffering Police Lieutenant who has to put up with Harry Orwell (Janssen).

But also great in it is Les Lannom (above) in the recurring role of Lester Hodges, a wanna-be detective who hangs around Harry trying to learn from the master. Lannom appeared in a different role in Show 1 of Season 1 and it's obvious someone on the series said, "We've got to use that guy again." They did — several times — and in the next-to-last episode of the second season, they had Lester get involved with a wizened criminologist named Dr. Creighton Fong, played by Keye Luke.

It was a pretty obvious pilot for a spin-off series called Fong and Hodges but it didn't spin off…and that second season was the last season for Harry O so that was also the end of Lester Hodges. A search of Ye Olde Internet suggests that Mr. Lannom had (and still has) a pretty active career guest-starring in other shows and a few movies, and that he's also quite active as a musician, especially playing the bagpipes. I have a very funny mental picture of the expression on Harry Orwell's face if Lester ever walked into his house playing the bagpipes.

Dave Blanchard read this post, then sent me this message and it got me to thinking…

I guess this might be about politics, but really it's about comedy writing.

Yesterday, writing about MAD Magazine, you wrote that "it's one of the reasons I became a writer of comedy." In that light, I wanted to get your take on MAD's approach to political humor, and the current state of political humor among comedians.

Growing up back in the 1970s, the best places to go for political commentary (for me, anyways) was MAD Magazine (and sometimes Johnny Carson's monologues). The basic premise to MAD's political humor, as I distilled it, was that you can't really trust ANY politicians—not liberals, not conservatives, not Democrats, not Republicans. They ALL had their hands in your pockets, they ALL would say anything and do anything to get elected and stay in office, and there really wasn't much difference between either of them since the ideologies they promoted and pretended to espouse were basically a sham. They were in politics for one reason and one reason only: power (synonymous with money).

It was a very cynical take that MAD had then, but hard to argue with. And whenever TV comedians, like Carson, would deliver political commentary, they tended to skewer whoever was in power with an equal brush, poking fun at and exposing the idiocies of both parties.

But somewhere along the way, that kind of universal distrust and mockery of all politicians has gone by the wayside, and we're left with comedians and commentators who deliver their jokes and takes with blinders on, as if the stuff one political party does is ALWAYS outrageous, while the stuff the other party does is just normal stuff, nothing to see here or comment on. MAD would never pass up the opportunity to roast politicians on both sides of the political aisle. Like you, many of today's political comedians say they grew up with MAD, but they seem to have forgotten MAD's basic lesson: Don't take sides — go after all of them!

If nothing else, it seems like comedians are cheating themselves — and their audiences — out of a lot of prime opportunities for laughs. If somebody can't see that there are a tremendous number of knuckleheads on both sides of the political aisle, and that both sides are capable of doing great damage to our country, then I just wonder if the whole idea of "political humor" died an ignoble death years ago.

So anyways, my question: Are there any comedians right now that you think do a great job of lampooning all sides of the political spectrum, in the classic sense of "none of these bozos is working in your best interests so why should you believe anything they say?" I really can't think of anybody who fits that mold.

I don't think MAD's motto, even if some of its staffers said it was, was ever really "Go after all of them!" I think it was more like "Apply the same level of skepticism to all of them." When a Bill Clinton is caught being naughty with an intern or a Donald Trump is caught doing just about anything Donald Trump does, they get a lot of attention from those who mock public figures because the jokes practically write themselves. Many politicians as individuals do little to hang jokes on and MAD never went after anyone if they didn't think they had a good joke.

MAD was also never that political. It couldn't be. For one thing, there was a long lead time in publishing. Political humor today is instantaneous. If a politician says something outrageous or falls off the stage at Noon Eastern Time, comedy writers respond to it such that Seth Meyers is ready two hours later to record something or Stephen Colbert or others are ready by their recording times. And all are doing their monologues after hours of jokes on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. If you wrote something that same day for MAD, it would reach the audience in four or five months. At best.

It's always had that lead time. Most political humor is topical, especially these days. It has the shelf life of potato salad.  And like MAD, a good political comedian never goes after anyone unless they think they have a good joke.

It isn't always possible for comedians to go after everyone.  Not everyone gives you good hooks to hang jokes on.  Think of it as if you were writing jokes for one of those old Dean Martin Roasts.  If the "honoree" that week was Jackie Gleason, you could do fat jokes and drinking jokes.  If it was Don Rickles, you could do jokes about him being mean and vicious.  If it was Phyllis Diller, you could mock her appearance.  But what would you write if the subject was Jack Lemmon?

You could do it but it wouldn't be the bonanza of one-liners you'd get if it was some star known for being fat, drunk, promiscuous, cheap, ridiculously wealthy or anything like that. If you had to write jokes for a roast of Dick Van Dyke, you could poke fun at this accent in Mary Poppins…and that's about it.  On the other hand, I'll bet even comedy writers who love Trump and hated Obama would admit that jokes about the latter were difficult to come by but Donald is the gift that keeps on giving to professional joke writers.  As was Bill Clinton.

I also wonder if people these days really want a topical comedian who slams all sides. A lot of the comics who attempt that seem like they don't really have any points of view. They're just saying whatever they think will get a laugh. They also tend to just build on stereotypes: Fat jokes about the fat politicians, old jokes about the old politicians, horny jokes about the ones with sex scandals, etc. I think Jay Leno's one of the best stand-ups of the last few decades but I never felt that his political jokes rose above that level…and he was attempting to never seem like he was on any side. Fortunately for him, he was real good at other topics that he did seem to care about.

The Carol Burnett Show had some of the best sketches in the history of variety programs…but it would sometimes be criticized because cast members — Harvey Korman, especially — had a tendency to "break up" on camera. There was a lot of that in the early days of television when shows were performed live but it fell out of fashion when most shows were pre-recorded as the Burnett Show was.

They'd often get into editing with multiple "takes" of a sketch — one wherein cast members broke character, one where they didn't — and elect to use the former. My old friend Gary Belkin, who wrote for many seasons on the series, thought they way overdid the "break up" scenes.

I don't know how I feel about this. I just watched this video and I still don't know. It's fifteen minutes of clips from the show with the performers trying to stay in character and failing — and some of it's awfully funny…

I've become a big fan of Devin Stone, the "Legal Eagle" of YouTube who explains lawsuits and other legal matters in the news. In his latest post, he brings in an associate — "Spencer" — to explain the case in New York which the Attorney General there, Leitia James, has filed against the Trump family. It's a little over a half-hour but I found it enlightening.

I have friends who believe Trump will never get convicted or pay any serious price for breaking the law. That's what they once said about Al Capone…

Hey, remember these? On March 11 of 2020, I began more-or-less isolating myself so I wouldn't get that "coronavirus" thing that we were all hearing about. In hindsight, I was probably a bit more cautious than I needed to be…but only a bit. And if you're going to err, that's the side to err on.

It wasn't that huge a hardship, at least for a guy like me who works from home and needs to be alone a fair amount of the week. I switched from going to the market or restaurants to having food and supplies delivered and that's worked out so well that I'll keep doing it even when the chances of catching this week's variant are down to zero. My cleaning lady, my assistant and my lady friend all agreed to be super-cautious so as not to infect one another…and when my assistant did get it, she isolated until negative.

I rarely left my house unless you count walks in my neighborhood. That was not that difficult because for a while, there was really nowhere to go. Conventions and live shows were canceled. Restaurants were closed. No one threw parties. Business-type meetings migrated to Zoom or Skype. I actually liked most of the meetings better that way and hope that custom remains in place.

I felt and still feel sorry for those whose lives really were torn asunder by isolation and sorrier for those who got the dread disease. I know many who did but I think I run with a smart crowd. So far — and I hope I don't jinx it by typing this out loud — no one that close to me has died from it or even been hospitalized, as far as I know. That may be because no one close to me ever doubted the necessity to keep a fair distance in certain situations, to mask where appropriate and to get vaccinated. Night before last, I got my fifth shot of Moderna.

You may notice that I have reverted the heading on this blog to me working at my computer, unmasked. This does not mean I think it's over. The Sergio drawing of me masked and gloved may yet return. At the same time, I have a drawing of me tossing away the mask and declaring the Pandemic a thing of the past…and it's not time for that one yet. I'll still mask where and when it's required or requested or even when I think it might be wise or even polite.

And I'm not traveling far and not by plane. When will I abandon that policy? I dunno. I'll decide when there's somewhere farther than San Diego I want to go. At the moment, I don't even want to go to the Ralphs Market if I can help it and not because of COVID. I'm just enjoying not having to go to the Ralphs Market as often.

Next year's Comic-Con International in San Diego is July 20-23. That means that Preview Night — which is Wednesday, July 19 — is a mere 280 days from today. Each year when we get close to the convention dates, I get e-mails and phone calls from people who suddenly started thinking about attending and are surprised to find out that they're a couple hundred days late in thinking about that. There's one guy — you know who you are, fella — who makes the same mistake year after year after year.

If you want to attend, you need to plan ahead. Let me say that again in all caps and boldface: PLAN AHEAD! And if you are a returning attendee, meaning that you paid for and attended Comic-Con 2022 and/or Comic-Con Special Edition 2021, you can dive into the pool to try and purchase and memberships for 2023 for up to three people (yourself probably being one of them) this coming Saturday morning, October 15. Read how to do it on this page and don't wait until Saturday to read it.

Memberships of other sorts will be available at later dates and I'll try to alert you about that but don't count on me. Follow the convention on Facebook and/or Twitter for announcements. In fact, if I were you, I'd make frequent checks of the convention website. You can have a wonderful time at Comic-Con but it takes a little work to get yourself there.

• Today is the best possible day to not be Alex Jones. So far.