A reader named Joey Fisher sent me five questions…
- Did you really eat lunch yesterday in the CBS Commissary?
- You seemed to have had such a great time at Comic-Con in San Diego. Why don't you go to more conventions?
- You're working now for the videogame company Blizzard that makes some of my favorite games. Why didn't you tell us about this?
- When will your long-awaited jumbo biography of Jack Kirby come out?
- When will the next Pogo book be out?
Those are his questions. Here are my answers…
- Yes. In fact, I was lunching with my occasional employer Marty Krofft. In case I haven't made it clear here, I have lots of stories about producers I've worked for who were crooks and/or incompetents and I am not shy about telling them, especially when I omit their names. None of those stories are about Sid and Marty Krofft. I've worked for them on and off since the mid-seventies and I thought (and still think) they're terrific.
- I don't go to more conventions for two reasons. One is that I went through a period of approximately five years when my mother was dying, followed by a period of about equal length when my friend Carolyn was doing likewise. During that span, I turned down most invites to go outta town so a lot of cons that invited me stopped inviting me. Secondly, most cons seem to have no idea what to do with me. They expect a guest to come in, set up a display and sell things, maybe even including autographs. I don't like selling things and I get bored writing my name over and over. So unless they want me to do a lot of panels (or I want the free trip to that city for other reasons), there's not much point to me being there. At the moment, the next convention I have on my calendar is WonderCon, which is March 29-31.
- I dunno. I think I have more interesting things to write about than what of mine you may soon be able to purchase or watch. Like I said, I don't like selling things. And I think it looks terrible to make one's entire Internet presence into one continual infomercial for one's self. When others (like publishers) remind me, I do it but it usually does not occur to me.
- Hoping for Christmas of 2019. Right now, I'm in the process of chopping out some sections where I wandered significantly off-topic and wrote about things peripheral to Jack. Those hunks will probably turn up here or somewhere else but I've decided they don't belong in the book.
- Amazon is saying they'll have it October 9 and it'll probably be sooner than that. The insides are all printed and I know this because I actually have a printed, finished copy. It takes a while to bind and ship them all but 10/9 should be easy. This, I oughta be promoting here more so here's the cover…
It's a wonderful book with a fine foreword by Jake Tapper and two whole years of my favorite cartoonist at the height of his talents. Doesn't get any better than this.