Hey, do you own a good condition copy of the Marvel Super-Heroes Special #1 from 1966? Wanna loan it to someone for a prestigious event? A friend of mine is assembling an exhibit at Comic-Con next week and needs to borrow a copy. This friend is utterly trustworthy and will treat it with loving care and will also cover things like postage and insurance and whatever else it takes. He needs it by Tuesday morning so if you happen to be in San Diego or will be there by then, that would be ideal.

If you might be willing/able to help him out, drop me a note and I'll put you in touch with him. He can give you more details. I will just vouch for his integrity. And who knows? You may even be able to find someone who'll vouch for mine.

UPDATE: My friend found what he needs. Thanks.

SAG-AFTRA is joining my union, the Writers Guild of America, on the picket lines. As you may recall, I expressed some worry about the current president of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher. I said here on Wednesday, "She has not yet shown her members that she understands the responsibilities that come with the title and I sure hope she masters them in a hurry — like by later this evening." I am pleased to say she did…

It's a shame my partner Sergio Aragonés decided a few months ago to skip Comic-Con this year. He could have been the biggest star in the building.

To those who've asked: No, none of the thirteen panels I'm hosting or appearing on have been canceled. In fact, I just picked up a fourteenth one.

An amazing new entertainment/sports venue will open in Las Vegas this September and its amazing exterior is drawing mucho attention…so much so that many folks in town are worried about something. They're afraid that it will be such a distraction to drivers that it will lead to a serious increase in traffic accidents.

I have no opinion about this but it does look like something that will be hard to ignore. It's called the MSG Sphere, it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.4 billion bucks to build and — well, just look at what they got for their money…

I'm hearing conflicting things about whether soap operas are covered by the strike or not so I took out the sentence about that. Once again, if you need to know if a certain kind of acting job is on strike, CALL THE UNION!

Sometime in the next few hours, it will be announced that SAG-AFTRA is calling a strike, probably immediately. There are a couple of bad reasons why they might say something like "The strike starts in 48 hours" but I don't think anyone expects that to happen. So for the first time since Ronald Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild, both the actors and writers are on strike — and over approximately the same issues.

But not all the actors will be on strike. Animation voiceover is under another contract and that has not expired. Here's what Bob Bergen, one of the workingest voiceover actors in the business posted on Facebook…

• TV/Basic Cable Animation is NOT impacted by a TV/Theatrical strike as TV/Basic Cable Animation is a stand alone separate contract!
• New Media Animation made for TV is NOT impacted by a TV/Theatrical strike!!
• Nickelodeon Animation is NOT impacted by a TV/Theatrical strike as Nick is a stand alone separate contract!!!
• Animated Features ARE impacted by a TV/Theatrical strike and you may NOT work on an animated feature!

Here is a very simple piece of advice to anyone in the union who may be unsure as to the status of their employment: CALL THE UNION!  Do not believe posts on social media or word-of-mouth.  CALL THE UNION! There's a spectacular amount of erroneous information out there and as I mentioned in yesterday's post, you need to not believe what you hear from uninformed or unidentified sources.

Why is there a strike?  I have no idea why they happen in the wrought iron industry but in the show biz unions there is only one scenario and it works like this.  Let's take it step-by-step…

1. A contract between the AMPTP ("The Producers") and a union or guild expires as contracts eventually do.
2. At the AMPTP, they employ a squadron of lawyers and professional negotiators who specialize in this kind of bargaining.  They make an assessment of how little they can give to the labor organization in order to nail down a new contract.  Their job is to arrive at the contract that gives the fewest increases and achieves whatever rollbacks they can get…and that's really all they care about.  They don't care about damaging the industry or harming the quality of the product or alienating the talent or usually even what a prolonged strike will do to the studios.  That's their employers' concern. These negotiator folks are judged solely by the simple numbers in the final deal.
3. So they make this assessment of the union's strength and solidarity and resolve and they work with the Producers to formulate an offer.  The union wants ten dollars.  The negotiator people tell their bosses, "I'll bet I can get them for six.  So we'll offer five and scare the hell out of them to the point where they'll settle for six."
4. And sometimes, they're right.  It works just as they said.  But sometimes they're wrong and the union stands firm at ten or offers to come down no lower than to eight-point-five.  And if both sides refuse to budge, the union has no choice but to go on strike.
5. And for a while, the negotiator folks may say, "Don't worry….after a week or two, they'll be on their knees begging to take six.  I may even get them for five."
6. But the union doesn't fold the way the negotiators predicted and pretty soon, the member producers of the AMPTP are fighting among themselves because the shutdown isn't hurting them all equally.  Some want to go back and offer seven or eight but they have this rule of unanimity.  They all need to agree on an offer.  Also, some of them care about certain issues more than others.
7. In the '88 Writers Guild strike which lasted 153 days, the rumor was (and here I am spreading a rumor after urging you all not to believe them) that Paramount and Disney were fighting over certain issues relating to compensation from video cassettes.  You may remember video cassettes.  Disney was more militant about not giving an increase on them than Paramount — or maybe it was the other way around. Eventually, largely through backchannel communications, agreement was negotiated within the AMPTP and they made an offer that was acceptable (barely, of course) to the WGA. And the strike ended.
8. Now, you might ask, "Was it worth it to the writers? Did the increase they finally got make up for what they lost during those 153 days?" And an argument could be made that it didn't, at least in the short run. But that isn't the right question to ask. You have to also consider the big picture and the long run. Because if we'd taken the rotten deal first offered by The Producers, we'd have gotten a much rottener offer when that contract expired and the negotiator people told their bosses, "I'll bet I can get them for three this time!"
9. Strikes happen because the "experts" underestimate the will of the labor organization. They get settled and become less likely to happen the next time when the labor organization doesn't allow themselves to be viewed as weak.

It is unfortunate that it has to be done this way but the unions did not design this system…and I'm not saying unions are always in the right.  There are bad unions and badly-run unions out there.  But as with so many things in life, the rules of engagement are dictated by the people who write the paychecks.

It's especially unfortunate for the collateral damage.  When production shuts down in the TV and movie business, camera operators and makeup artists and the stagehands and the caterers and the people who clean the offices (etc.) get laid-off because of a battle from which they do not stand to directly benefit.  For some reason, a lot of them blame the union for not taking a bad deal and don't blame the folks who formulated that bad deal and tried to force it on the union.  We all wish there was a way that these people did not have to suffer but no one's come up with one yet.  And we aren't the ones deciding that since production has shut down, their services aren't needed.

This post has gone on way longer than I expected so I'll just close with this one thought: If you are on strike and you're scared and feeling desperate, posting on social media that you're scared and desperate will just prolong the strike.  The negotiator people and others in management who want to hold firm on their unacceptable offers will find three or four of those tweets or posts and print them out and show them to the folks in management who want to settle.  They'll say, "See?  Everyone in the union is scared and desperate!  We've got them right where we want them!"

You're right to be frightened.  No one knows how long this thing will last.  This is my fifth Writers Guild strike and if I've learned anything, it's that predictions are worthless and a lot of them are just made to try and demoralize the opposition.  But if you are frightened, find others in your union who can hold your hands and comfort you.  It's human to be worried but please, keep it the hell off social media because you won't be helping your union.  You'll be helping the people whose job description is to try and crush your union.

A strike by SAG-AFTRA, otherwise known as "The Actors," looks pretty close to inevitable at this point. The precise date may be moved by a day or three but all indications are that it's gonna happen and that the main issue will be Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as "A.I." And it may be a long one. In the past, the AMPTP, otherwise known as "The Producers," has had some success with their divide/conquer strategy.

They give some faction within a Guild (writers' or actors') what they want and then that faction is ready, perhaps even eager to take the deal and go back to work. Like they give sitcom writers something they crave and the sitcom writers want to end the strike even though the folks who write features or variety shows or daytime dramas or something else still have unaddressed demands. This time though we have A.I. — an issue which seems to matter enormously to writers and actors in all genres, of all ages, of all genders, of all income levels, etc. It matters to Tom Cruise and it also matters to the supporting player who hasn't worked since Love American Style was canceled.

So brace yourself. And here is the best bit of advice I can give to anyone who is affected by the strikes: Don't believe rumors. In fact, that is so important that I will type it again, this time in all caps and boldface: DON'T BELIEVE RUMORS.

This is sometimes tough to do because rumors tend to fill voids of information. Negotiations and the inner works of labor disputes require a lot of closed doors and secrecy and neither side showing all its cards, even to the folks they represent or talking to the press at certain junctures. When you have situations where you don't know anything, it is too easy to fall for something that kinda looks like information even when you have no idea of its source. This leads me to another point that is so important it warrants not only all caps and boldface but even underlining: FALSE INFORMATION IS WORSE THAN NOT KNOWING ANYTHING!

This is so easy to forget. Let's say you are walking around lost and you run into me and you ask me how to get to the place you wish to be. Let us say that I have no idea, which is often the case when questions are put to me. The responsible thing for me to say is, "I'm sorry, I don't know." The irresponsible is if I say, "I think you go south for five blocks to Melrose, turn left and then drive six miles to Sepulveda, hang a right and it should be on your left in a quarter-mile or so!"

That happens. People do that, passing off as facts speculation or hunches or some story that someone heard from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from someone (etc.). This is dangerous. It's like if your doctor has no idea what's causing your stomach pains but he doesn't want to admit that so he takes out your gall bladder.

Recently, I had a debate — maybe you'd call it an argument — with someone on a comic book forum who was quoting past sales figures that I knew to be bogus…or at least, probably bogus. I e-mailed to tell him the numbers he was citing were almost certainly not real. He wrote back, "Maybe so but they're the only numbers we have."

In other words: False information is better than no information. Except, of course, we know it isn't. In a situation like a labor strike, it's tough enough to know what to do when you have absolutely accurate info. If you factor in false information, you are almost certain to reach false conclusions. Yeah, once in a while it turns out that removing your gall bladder does stop the stomach pains but that's not the way such decisions should be made.

And there are a few other points I should make. One of them I wrote about here before and I'm just gonna cut-'n'-paste from that. Back during the '88 Writers Guild strike — actually, during all the many Writers Guild strikes through which I've lived — I kept finding myself in this conversation with some writer who was sure he had the key to victory…

HIM: We have to be tough.

ME: Okay, fine. We'll be tough. What are you suggesting we do?

HIM: I just told you. Be tough. Let them know we won't give in. They're tough. We have to be tougher.

ME: I get that. How would you suggest we express this toughness? What should we do that we aren't doing yet?

HIM: Win. Get in there and fight and battle and be tough. They'll give in, trust me. All we have to do is be tough.

I could never get any of these tough-minded people to suggest an action on our part…or if they did, it was something we were already doing. I guess it made them feel vital and powerful to think they'd actually come up with a solution. There's a saying that "hope is not a plan." Well, neither is an attitude.

A close relative of that approach is something else I wrote about, in this case here. This is the kind of conversation I often heard during Writers Guild strikes. "HIM" is a complaining member of the Guild. "ME" is not really me but it might be someone on the Guild's Negotiating Committee…

HIM: Our committee should get in there and negotiate!

ME: The producers refuse to negotiate.

HIM: Then we should insist they negotiate.

ME: The producers refuse to negotiate.

HIM: Then we should get in there and be real tough and demand they negotiate.

ME: The only weapon we have against them is to strike.

HIM: Don't strike! Negotiate! Demand they negotiate! If I were on that committee, I could force them to negotiate!

ME: How would you do that?

HIM: By being tougher than they are!

And lastly, I'll give you one more piece of take-this-for-what-it's-worth advice. Every actor or writer has an agent and/or a lawyer and/or someone they rely on to make deals. When there's a strike, almost every one of these counselors will tell their clients something like "The trouble is you have bad people representing you. They don't know what to do. Why, if I were representing your guild in this, I would long since have gotten you every single thing you guys want including having Jeff Bezos personally come to your homes and clean all the leaves out of your rain gutters!"

That's the easiest thing in the world to say and I dunno…maybe not the easiest thing to actually do. He or she might be right that the folks negotiating on your behalf are not good at it…or not as good as the folks negotiating on behalf of The Producers. They're almost certainly not as experienced at the game. Still, I have a lot of trust in the Writers Guild representatives.

I have no opinion of the SAG-AFTRA reps at the bargaining table but they should not be confused with Fran Drescher, who as SAG-AFTRA President, will be the spokesperson and "face" of the union during a war. She has not yet shown her members that she understands the responsibilities that come with the title and I sure hope she masters them in a hurry — like by later this evening.

A few years back, Rupert Holmes (left) wrote the book, Jerry Lewis (center) directed and Marvin Hamlisch (right) made the musical The Nutty Professor, based on the center guy's movie of the same name. The show had one not-in-New-York tryout engagement in Nashville in 2014 and then went nowhere for a while. The deaths of Mr. Lewis and Mr. Hamlisch probably had something to do with that. Last year, it had a one-month revival at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine.

Shows are supposed to live on despite their creators' mortalities, both stagings got encouraging reviews and Mssrs. Holmes and Hamlisch had pretty good track records. It was amusing that Jerry kept announcing firm but totally spurious dates when the show would play other cities and when it would open on Broadway but it's not impossible that it deserved to play those cities, New York especially.

Perhaps it will help keep it alive and get it finally on more stages that there is a studio-recorded album soon to be released. The press releases about it, of which I've received many copies, do not say when it will be out or who will be heard on it but it does seen to be pending. It would not surprise me if this show finally does make it to Broadway. And I'll bet whoever tries to get it there will at least try to get Martin Short to play the lead…if someone hasn't already.

"Uncle Jimmy" Weldon (as he liked to be called) died last Thursday at the age of 99. Folks around my age who grew up in Los Angeles remember him as the host of Cartooneroony — I don't guarantee that spelling — a Monday-Friday afternoon kid show on KCOP Channel 13 locally. It was also known as The Webster Webfoot Show, named for a little duck puppet with which Jimmy performed a ventriloquist act. Actually, Jimmy and Webster did local kids' shows in many cities, sometimes concurrently. Webster couldn't fly but Jimmy could — in a private plane via which he sometimes commuted, doing a morning show in, say, Fresno and an afternoon show in L.A.

His Channel 13 gig gave him exposure in 1959 when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were looking for a new voice for a baby duck character of theirs. The baby duck under various names had appeared now and then in Tom & Jerry cartoons they'd done for MGM and then when they started their own studio, the duck popped up as a supporting player usually called (though not onscreen) Iddy Biddy Buddy or Itty Bitty Buddy. A comedian named Red Coffey — often spelled "Red Coffee" — had always done the duck voice for Bill and Joe. In 1959 when they renamed the duck Yakky Doodle and planned to star him in cartoons on the new Yogi Bear Show, Mr. Coffey was too often outta town on tours.

So they needed a new duck voice and they found him on Channel 13. And interestingly, they found the guy to voice Yakky's bulldog friend Chopper concurrently on Channel 5 where Vance Colvig was starring daily as Bozo the Clown. So when The Yogi Bear Show debuted in Los Angeles, you had Mr. Weldon voicing Webster Webfoot on Channel 13 and opposite him on Channel 5 was Mr. Colvig playing Bozo while — and these were all on at the same hour — The Yogi Bear Show with both actors was on Channel 11. At the age of eight, I actually noticed this.

I also noticed Jimmy Weldon popping up all over Los Angeles with Webster making personal appearances, hosting on telethons, even apparently appearing at birthday parties for what I heard was a rather modest fee. Jimmy was a charming gent who loved to entertain and he often popped up on TV shows in guest roles. I remember him on a Rockford Files and on Dragnet and on The Waltons, among others. He usually played a flamboyant preacher or some kind of inspirational speaker.

In fact, the last decade or two of his life, that was his main line of work — inspirational speaking. In 1996 when the prolific character actor Peter Leeds (also an occasional Hanna-Barbera voice) passed away, I took Stan Freberg to the funeral and one of the speakers talked to us not so much about Peter but about coping with death and not sinking into depression over it. The speaker was Jimmy Weldon.

He addressed many groups, often with a speech he called "Go Get 'Em Tiger: Becoming the Person You Want to Be," which was also the title of his autobiography. It urged everyone to realize their full potential, never give up, grab onto that star, etc. He was also a super-patriot and very active in the American Legion. (During World War II, he served with General Patton and was involved in many heroic efforts including the liberation of the concentration camp in Buchenwald.)

Back in 1982 when I wrote a prime-time Yogi Bear special for Hanna-Barbera, Yakky Doodle had a cameo role with one or two lines. Jimmy had not worked for H-B for a while and when Yakky had recently appeared, they had Frank Welker do his voice and then Frank would also play other roles in the show. I asked them, pretty please, to bring Jimmy Weldon in to do the one or two lines plus some other roles. They did. I'm not sure I can explain why that mattered to me as much as it did but it did.

I met him briefly at the recording session and then, about eighteen years later, I was in a Hometown Buffet in Van Nuys and there, dining with some friends of his who I'm sure were army buddies, was Jimmy Weldon. I went up to him at the buffet table and told him I grew up watching him and Webster on Channel 13. Before I could even tell him about the cartoon special I wrote that he was in, he put down the plate he was filling with food, gave me a big hug and dragged me over to his friends' table to tell them, "This young man knows who I am!"

He had me repeat what I'd told him about growing up with him and Webster and he seemed so proud of that that. And his pals were responded good-naturedly, "Yeah, yeah, Jimmy. So what is this? The tenth time this week you've introduced us to someone who told you that?"

There's a new production of the musical 42nd Street current touring the U.K. Here's a peek at the cast rehearsing one of the big numbers…

I'm trying to not look at the news much but the whole Rudy Giuliani story is hard to ignore. Basically, the affronts for which he seems likely to face some disbarment have to do with filing a flood of "frivolous" lawsuits. And what was frivolous about them is that they charged massive voter fraud without offering any real evidence. It was kind of like "The official vote count for this state should be overturned and Trump should be declared the winner because some of us have suspicions!" Read this for more.

We are edging closer and closer to Comic-Con. Some people online seem very upset that there won't be a lot of movie stars there promoting their upcoming releases and some of them seem to blame the convention for that. I assume those folks will remain upset but I feel pretty confident that most attendees won't notice much difference.

And I continue to have no idea what will happen with the Writers Guild Strike or when it will or won't happen.

This article in The New York Times has aroused much arguing among professional magicians. Basically, it states that the magic community, which once treated faux-psychic Uri Geller as a charlatan, has now embraced the guy. According to the article, magicians still think he's a charlatan but now they kinda admire him for being such a good charlatan. The sheer reaction to the piece suggests that the embrace is not as widespread as the reporter claims. The professional magicians I know have always kind of regarded the guy as someone who got very rich and famous duping people with the kind of magic most of them could do when they were thirteen — and probably do it better.

Lastly for now: On this blog, we sometimes discuss annoying spam calls. Kevin Drum read this article in the L.A. Times about an operation that scammed both major candidates for the presidency in 2016. Drum notes that the scammers made more than 275 million robocalls and took in close to $4 million smackers. From this, Drum calculates that "a single robocall nets one-hundredth of a dollar" — otherwise known as a penny. That's still more than they deserve and it makes you wonder what the spam calls from live human beings are grossing.

The 2023 Comic-Con International in San Diego commences with Preview Night from 6 PM to 9 PM on Wednesday evening, July 19. This is basically your chance to walk around the main Exhibit Hall with slightly fewer folks clogging the aisles. The real action starts the next day and here's what I'll be up to…

Thursday, July 20 — 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM in Room 32AB
SPOTLIGHT ON BARBARA FRIEDLANDER
Fresh out of high school in the sixties, Barbara Friedlander got a job at DC Comics and quickly ascended to a job in the editorial division working with or alongside, among many others, Carmine Infantino, Jack Miller, Robert Kanigher, Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz, and Joe Orlando. What was it like to work in that office on DC's romance comics and on her creation, Swing With Scooter? Comic-Con Special Guest Mark Evanier will be quizzing her — and on Friday evening at the Eisner Awards, he'll be presenting Barbara with the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.

Thursday, July 20 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a new and important book that is raising funds to aid people whose lives have been devastated by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Some of the top names in comics have donated their time and artistry to this book, which is debuting at Comic-Con. Come join several of those folks as they talk about their stories and why this project is so important. Mark Evanier, John Layman, Stan Sakai and Billy Tucci will be on hand, as well as Richard Walden, the founder of Operation USA, the charity that is funneling funds to help the struggling people of Ukraine. Moderated by book organizer Scott Dunbier.

Thursday, July 20 — 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM at the Dark Horse Booth
I will be signing stuff, especially copies of Groo in the Wild #1 along with colorist Carrie Strachan at Booth 2416.

Friday, July 21 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
The brilliant newspaper strip Pogo was created, written and drawn by one of the great geniuses of comic art, Walt Kelly. It's currently being reprinted in full in a series of books from Fantagraphics, one of which is up for an Eisner Award tonight. Meanwhile, fans of Mr. Kelly and his zany swamp denizens can gather to discuss him, his work, and what it was that made his cartooning so very special. Come hear from artist Steve Leialoha, scholar Maggie Thompson, Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, and the co-editors of the current reprint series, Eric Reynolds and your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Friday, July 21 — 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 10
THE GROO PANEL
For 40+ years, the irrepressible (and ignorant) barbarian Groo the Wanderer has wandered the land and through comic book shops making good things bad, bad things worse, and all things hilarious. What's it like to work on this comic with master cartoonist Sergio Aragonés? Since Sergio isn't attending the con this year, these three people can speak freely about the experience: letterer (and creator of Usagi Yojimbo) Stan Sakai, colorist Carrie Strachan and a guy named Mark Evanier who does something on the comic but we don't know what. Also, they'll try to phone Sergio, which will be great fun if it works and probably funnier if it doesn't.

Saturday, July 22 — 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM in Room 6DE
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: AN ANIMATED ANNIVERSARY
Mark Evanier (show developer), Katie Leigh (voice of Sheila), David M. Booher (writer, IDW's Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures), Frank Todaro (voice actor, Netflix's The Cuphead Show), and Luke Gygax (son of D&D creator Gary Gygax) discuss the legendary tabletop game's 40th anniversary as a Saturday morning cartoon from the perspective of the talent who worked on the show and today's creatives who grew up on it. The session will be moderated by TJ Shevlin (2023 Eisner Awards judge).

Saturday, July 22 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
No matter when you're reading this — hopefully before the event — run and get a seat for Quick Draw!, the fastest and funniest presentation at Comic-Con. Your Quick Draw quizmaster Mark Evanier will be putting three of the swiftest cartoonists in the business to the test, inventing well-projected humor on the spot. Competing this year are cartoonist and Comic-Con co-founder Scott Shaw!, MAD magazine's Tom Richmond, and Disney legend Floyd Norman. As usual, there will be no wagering on the outcome.

Saturday, July 22 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Once again, Mark Evanier has assembled a roster of some of the most-heard performers in the world of animation, and they're here to tell you what they do, how they do it and then demonstrate it. The dais includes Adam McArthur (Star vs. the Forces of Evil), Elle Newlands (Lego Marvel's Avengers), Keith Scott (Bullwinkle Moose), Bill Farmer (Goofy, Pluto), Dave Fennoy (Batman, Transformers) and Jessica DiCicco (The Emperor's New School, Muppet Babies). And as usual, the actors will mangle a classic fairy tale for your enjoyment.

Saturday, July 22 — 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM in Room 4
MAGGIE THOMPSON SPOTLIGHT: Wrangling History (How to Preserve the Past So We Can Read in the Future)
As we lose creators, memories fade, and collectibles are lost or damaged, what can be done to hang onto the creations and establish the facts? Maggie is joined by writer and producer Mark Evanier, Columbia University comics and cartoons curator Karen Green, and Abrams ComicArts editor-in-chief Charles Kochman.

Saturday, July 22 — 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE HISTORY OF CARTOON VOICES
Keith Scott is one of the top voice actors and impressionists in Australia, and he's also an expert on cartoon voices for theatrical cartoons in this country. He's making a rare visit to America this year and he'll be talking about Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Walt Disney, and many you've never heard of. Don't miss this rare chance to hear all about how cartoons learned to talk, with not only Keith but also historians Jerry Beck, Leonard Maltin and your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It's a Comic-Con tradition to assemble on Sunday morning to remember the man some still call, and with good reason, The King of the Comics. His life and career will be discussed by folks who knew him or wish they did. They include writer Tom King, Jack's grandson Jeremy Kirby, Kirby experts Bruce Simon, Mark Badger and Jon Cooke, attorney Paul S. Levine and your moderator, former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Cartoon Voices I on Saturday will be so wonderful that we'll need another such panel on Sunday with other top actors in the animation-voicing profession. This time, moderator Mark Evanier will welcome Maurice LaMarche (Futurama, Pinky and the Brain), Anna Brisbin (Final Fantasy VII Remake), Fred Tatasciore (Team America, The Hulk), Frank Todaro (The Cuphead Show, Transformers), and Courtney Lin (Monster High, Rainbow High).

Sunday, July 23 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 7AB
COVER STORY
There have been comic book publishers who believed that what they put inside the comic didn't matter much — that readers decide to buy or not to buy because of the cover. It's arguable, but a great cover never hurt a book. On this panel, your host Mark Evanier welcomes four artists who have drawn great covers: Todd McFarlane (Spawn, Spider-Man), Becky Cloonan (Batman, Gotham Academy; this year's Comic-Con Souvenir Book cover), Joe Quesada (Daredevil, Spider-Man), and J. Scott Campbell (Danger Girl, Amazing Spider-Man).

Sunday, July 23 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 7AB
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
Are you interested in a career in the highly competitive world of voiceover? There are plenty of folks who will take your money to advise you, but you can get a ton of information for free with no strings attached at this panel. Two very busy voice actors (Vanessa Marshall and Gregg Berger), a top agent (Cathey Lizzio of C.E.S.D.), and a voice director (your moderator, Mark Evanier) will tell you how one goes about learning the craft, breaking into the business, staying in the business, and maybe even making a living in the business. This panel is not for entertainment. It's for enlightenment.

Each and every item above is subject to change for reasons that even I may not be able to explain. The entire programming schedule can be found and studied on this page.

Last year in this space, I wrote — and this is a quote, you can go check it — that "as usual, I will be exercising my constitutional right (until the current Supreme Court strips me of it) to not sit behind a table in the exhibit hall very much." Clearly, they're well on their way to doing that but they haven't yet…so this year I will only be writing my name on things at the Dark Horse booth from 2 PM until 2:45 on Thursday. Other than that, you may be able to catch me before or after panels. Please don't try it before or after Quick Draw!

We haven't had many lately but there used to be frequent rumors or predictions — it was sometimes hard to tell which — that Comic-Con would leave San Diego and relocate in some other city, usually Los Angeles, Anaheim or Las Vegas. I have spent a decade or two predicting that it would stay right where it is — and indeed, ten days from now it will convene…in San Diego. Where I believe it will remain for a long, long time.

There is at least one lady in this world who is certain the con is secretly planning to move soon to Las Vegas. I believe she also thinks that Trump is still president, John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and that COVID was the result of a Penn & Teller trick that went horribly wrong. I still see her posts online once in a while about Vegas and she occasionally drops me an e-mail to tell me that I am about to owe her a huge apology.

There are dozen of reasons why it's unlikely Comic-Con will ever move to Las Vegas but around this time o' year, I sometimes like to post this one: The National Weather Service says that next week when Comic-Con commences in San Diego, the projected average high temperature for the city will be 75° — and down by the water where the San Diego Convention Center is located, it's usually around five degrees cooler than the rest of the city. So call it 70°.

The projected average high temperature for Las Vegas for the same dates is 115°. No one wants to have the con there then unless you enjoy watching cosplayers melt. No matter what they were to dress as, they'd all wind up like this…

Sorry for not posting today.  I'm battling a deadline and I just couldn't think of anything to write here today.  I'll make up for it tomorrow or as soon after that as I can.  In the meantime, here's another video you may enjoy…

I don't watch a lot of baseball but every so often, I notice some superhuman feat that even a non-fan can appreciate. Here's Elly De La Cruz doing — well, you'll see what he does…

The MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas is the largest free-standing hotel in the United States and each day, its 6,852 rooms and all its restaurants and other facilities produce a lot of dirty laundry. It works out to about 24 million pounds of washing per year and it's all done by one cleaning lady who drives it, a ton at a time, to a laundromat on Tropicana Boulevard and takes along a crapload of quarters.

No, that's not true. It's actually a slightly bigger chore than that. This video will tell you how it's done. It runs seven minutes and is way more interesting than you might think…