Tuesday Morning

I spent yesterday (a) voice-directing The Garfield Show and (b) catching up on sleep I didn't get over the weekend working on the script. The session went well thanks to a superb cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo and Corey Burton. Today, we have all those folks back plus Laura Summer, Jewel Shepard and the legendary Stan Freberg. As I am fond of saying, when you hire the best actors, a rhesus monkey could direct one of these things. Normal blog posting should resume shortly.

Many of you have noted the new headers on this page — not just one but several new drawings of me by a man of mystifying talents. His name is Sergio Aragonés and I'd hoped the new art would go quietly unnoticed for a time but no. (I love the folks who are writing me to ask if I noticed it had changed.) There are more drawings yet to come.

Also to come on this blog: In the next day or three, I hope to post a long piece about the situation by which Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman while his collaborator Bill Finger is not equally heralded on the strip or the movies or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I shall mount the best defense I can of Mr. Kane and make a few points in his favor on this. But you'll still conclude, as I did, that it's awful that Finger's name is not there.

Also, I haven't forgotten that I promised more tales of working on Welcome Back, Kotter and witnessing, live and in person, a Battle of the Network Stars. And there's that long essay about the late Al Feldstein I said I'd get around to. And a few other things..

As usual, I will be doing more than a dozen panels at Comic-Con International this year down in lovely San Diego. There will be all the usual ones plus a few new things and I'll post my schedule here as soon as the convention is ready to release the total list.

By the way: Please don't write me about three things. One is getting into the convention. Another is helping you find lodging during the convention. And the third is suggesting programming, especially long after the schedule is locked, which it pretty much was a few weeks ago. You'd be amazed at the number of people who write or call me each year a week or less before the con to ask if some panel they want to do can be added. I don't program that stuff. There are people paid to do that and they have to do it way before the con.

I gotta get to the studio. Back later.