Eight New York Times opinion columnists do something that today's political pundits rarely do. They admit they were wrong about something. There are people in this world who are congenitally incapable of doing that.

I'm no longer on hold…but not because I got to speak to Tech Support. After 45 minutes waiting, I called the company on Line 2 and told them how long I'd been waiting on Line 1. A nice lady — who, alas, had no power to get Tech Support to actually speak with me then and there — apologized, took my number and promised they'd phone me within one hour. This has not happened.

In the meantime, I got this message from Brian Phillips, a wise and sage reader of this site…

I empathize.

The day after my birthday, I needed an item that only a certain supermarket sells and it's about 25 miles away, so I'd rather know that they have it before driving. I called to ask them and they put me on hold.

I waited.

Then I got in the car.

I drove all the way there (they had what I was looking for) and I spoke to the manager. I said, "If you look at line 1, that's me on hold, waiting for your staff to find out whether you had this item. I showed him my phone. I was on hold for 35:52.

He did not apologize. Hopefully, he spoke to the staff about this.

In an ideal world, all these CEOs who are paid six and seven figures per year to run a company would have the following clause in their contract. Once a week, they must get on their cell phones or call from home, phone their company, pretend to be just an average customer and ask a real question. If they don't get a satisfactory answer to that real question within fifteen minutes, their salary for that week goes to charity. If they don't receive that satisfactory answer within thirty, the entire salary for that year goes to charity.

It probably wouldn't change anything but some money would go to a good cause.

And just as I was proofreading the above before posting it, Tech Support called me and gave me the answer to my problem: The device is old, it's out of warranty, the price of repairing it is about 80% of the price of a new one and their new model is so much better. I've decided to toss it out and buy a new one…of a different brand.

I'm on hold waiting to speak to someone in the Tech Support department of a company that makes something that is important in my life and not, at the moment, working. Pleasant guitar music is playing over and over and every thirty seconds, either a recorded male voice or a recorded female voice (they alternate) assures me that they know my call is important and help is only "moments away."

I have now been on hold for 37 minutes.

If you're down at Comic-Con (where I am not yet), that guy you see running around taking photos of absolutely everything is my pal Bruce Guthrie. With his kind permission, I've often featured his photos on this blog because no matter what happened anywhere, Bruce got a photo of it. He shot some of my birth and I still don't know how he managed that since he's so much younger than I am.

He's already down in San Diego, sending me photos of, among other newsworthy images, people standing in long lines to get their vaxx status confirmed.  The photo above of a Comic-Con banner inside the hall looks just like photos he's taken there every year…but this one was taken last night and that's the key thing: It's solid, incontrovertible evidence that Comic-Con is back.  I shall confirm this in person before long.

I can't really explain my assorted feelings about going this time.  I know I'm happy that Comic-Con exists again as I've always had a good time at them.  I guess I'm just hoping that everyone rises to the occasion and respects everyone else's concerns about too much close contact.  Comic-Con has never been the place you go to get away from crowds.  Quite the opposite.

The last time I went to Comic-Con — or it may have been the year before — I was scurrying to get to the Eisner Awards to make my little presentation and I was walking across the park-like area between the convention center and the Bayfront Hilton. Cosplayers were all around creating little photo-ops, displaying their wonderful outfits.

When I first began attending conventions back in the Mesolithic Era, long before the word "cosplay" was invented by whoever invents words like that, there were costumes. On average, they seemed to take about fifteen minutes each to make. Some guy would put on a torn shirt and declare he was Doc Savage. Some gal would remove as much clothing as the convention allowed, make up a clever title to justify it, and get so much attention, no one would notice how lame the Doc Savage guy's costume was.

Now, those who dress-up really dress-up. Most of what they don is elaborate and sometimes expensive…and you know so much time, effort and creativity went into them that the wearers earned the chance to show off.

As I've said here, I love about 95% of the cosplayers…and that number may be low. But there are always a few who don't respect that others just might need a place to be. The 5% or less strike their poses and do their little antic scenes wherever anyone has a camera…and of course, these days, everyone has a camera. We talk to each other on our cameras. I have prevented actual injuries, once to a small child, by stopping a cosplayer from cosplaying too close to others.

Anyway, that early evening when I was hustling to the Hilton, there was this guy dressed as Conan the Barbarian or Kull the Barbarian or Crom the Barbarian or Someone the Barbarian…I don't know who the f-word he was supposed to be; only that it wasn't Groo even if he did have about the same I.Q. and consideration for others. Dancing about, waving a prop sword that could still have done serious damage, he somehow did not see me walking where I had every right to walk. ("How…clumsy…was he?" "He was so clumsy, he couldn't see me." That's like not noticing that you're in close proximity to Mighty Joe Young.)

Crashed right into Yours Truly. Knocked me off my feet, which is like accidentally toppling the Colossus of Rhodes…and I was dirtied a bit but unhurt. Mostly, I was stunned by the lack of "I'm sorry." There are people who go through life unaware that they're expected to share the planet with others. I guess they've always existed but before those omnipresent cameras and YouTube, we didn't see video-recorded evidence of them in the wild and no one dubbed them "Karens."

I've thought about that guy way more than he deserves…probably way more than is good for me. I hope he's not there this year. I hope he's not there any year but especially this year.

The souvenir book for this year's Comic-Con International is now online where it can be read or downloaded in PDF format. It is chock full of articles, several of which are by me. But don't let that stop you. You will be very glad you spent some quality reading time on this well-assembled, well-designed publication. And hey, it's free!

This is from the televised version of The Sound of Music from 2013. I'm not a huge fan of the show and I wasn't a huge fan of that production…but I couldn't resist Audra McDonald singing "Climb Ev'ry Mountain." Come to think of it, I'm not a huge fan of that song either, but I am of Audra…

The 2022 Comic-Con International in San Diego opens tonight at 6 PM. I can tell because the end of the line to get in is somewhere near my house 132 miles away. As you can see below, I begin appearing on panels on Friday.

A lot of folks won't be there because of that COVID thing and I did consider missing my first of these conventions ever. I'm not sure I can explain my decision to chance it but I shall, like any human being with a brain in his head, take precautions and mask as appropriate. To some extent, I think we are all somewhat dependent on the sanity of others in this life.

I'll be seeing the upper middle part of some of your faces there. In the meantime, here's this again…

Friday, July 22 — 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM in Room 10
COMICS FOR UKRAINE
Comics for Ukraine is a crowdfunded comics anthology through zoop.gg initiated and edited by Scott Dunbier to help relief efforts in Ukraine. Dozens of creators have stepped up to help. Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Johnson, and Arthur Adams have supplied covers. More than a dozen all-new stories will be included: Astro City by Busiek and Anderson, Groo by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier, American Flagg by Howard Chaykin, Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Star Slammers by Walter Simonson, and Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai make up a portion of this book, But there are more, too many to list—so come to the panel (which will have several of the creators listed here) and find out about this very important book and what you can do to help this charitable endeavor.

Friday, July 22 — 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM in Room 10
WALT KELLY AND POGO
Some would tell you that Walt Kelly's Pogo was the cleverest, most wonderful newspaper strip of all time. It was certainly up there with them. It's now being reprinted in full for the first time in a series of lovely hardcover volumes from Fantagraphics Books and Volume 8 (of 12) is on the presses now. Hear all about Kelly's work from Pogo authority Maggie Thompson, Walt Kelly archivist Jane Plunkett, cartoonist (and creator of Bone) Jeff Smith, Fantagraphics editor Eric Reynolds and his co-editor and your moderator Mark Evanier.

Saturday, July 23 — 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Some say it's the fastest, funniest event at Comic-Con every year. It's the annual Quick Draw! game as three of the fastest, funniest cartoonists rise to challenges hurled at the by the audience and your host, Mark Evanier. Competing this year, we have Scott Shaw! (Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons), Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha), and Mike Kazaleh (Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). As usual, wagering is strictly forbidden.

Saturday, July 23 — 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES I
Every year (with two recent exceptions), animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. This time out, the dais consists of Alicyn Packard (The Tom & Jerry Show, The Mr. Men Show), Phil LaMarr (Justice League, Samurai Jack), Gregg Berger (The Garfield Show, The Transformers), Shelby Young (Star Wars, Baby Shark's Big Show), Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania, My Babysitter Story), and Townsend Coleman (The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

Saturday, July 23 — 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 23ABC
SPOTLIGHT ON PHIL LaMARR
Actor Phil LaMarr, known for Mad TV, Pulp Fiction, and his extensive voice acting career, with roles animated series including Justice League, Futurama, Samurai Jack, Static Shock, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be ruthlessly interrogated by Mark Evanier about his journey from an '80s comic book fanboy to the voice of iconic characters in the DC, Marvel, and many other fandom universes.

Sunday, July 24 — 10:00 AM to 11:15 AM in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It wouldn't be a Comic-Con without a panel tributing the man they still call "The King of the Comics," the man who created or co-created most of the Marvel superheroes and plenty of other comic book superstars elsewhere. Sit and talk about Jack Kirby with comic book superstar Frank Miller, comic book editor Steve Saffel, Rand Hoppe (acting executive director of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center), and Jack's grandson, Jeremy Kirby. And presiding over it all will be Jack's biographer and one-time assistant, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 24 — 11:45 AM to 1:15 PM in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES II
Once more, animation writer and voice director Mark Evanier assembles a panel of some of the best and most-heard cartoon voice actors in the business to demonstrate their craft. Showing off their skills will be Jim Meskimen (Thundercats, We Baby Bears), Rosemary Watson (Let's Be Real), Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy), Kaitlyn Robrock (Minnie Mouse, Thundercats), and Zeno Robinson (My Hero Academia, The Owl House). There will be a reading of a classic fairy tale that will never be the same after these people get through with it.

Sunday, July 24 — 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
What is seen on the front of a book, comic or otherwise, is becoming of increasing importance, and some of the most amazing artistry is being seen these days on covers. This panel features five people who have been responsible for popular and even iconic covers in recent years: Comic-Con Special Guests Kevin Maguire, Lorena Alvarez, Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Bill Morrison. See how they approach their work. Hear what they use to create the magic. And learn how it all comes to be…with your moderator, Mark Evanier.

Sunday, July 24 — 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
This is Mark Evanier's annual panel on how to break into the world of voice-over and how to avoid those who would charge you large amounts without helping you much, if at all. Joining Mark will be two of the workingest actors in the field, Alicyn Packard and Gregg Berger, along with agent Sam Frishman, who's with one of the top agencies in the field, Cunningham, Escott, Slevin and Doherty. Here's a chance to learn the basics of the business…and it's absolutely free!

Every bit of the above is subject to change for reasons that may defy comprehension and 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.

If you're interested in any of the books I've worked on for the fine people at Abrams Books, I will be signing those at their booth (1216, I think) for an hour on Friday commencing at 2:30 PM.  But if you see me and want to say hello, please do.  I am usually not as busy as I appear except before and after Quick Draw! when I'm a maniac.  At other times, I am approachable and easy to find.  I'll be the guy running around the hall wearing a KN95 mask.

My linking to two of his videos (this one and especially this one) seems to have made some of you fans of the eminent British journalist Jonathan Pie. In real life, as most of you know, he's a comedian named Tom Walker…and he's apparently one of those comedians, like Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson, who speak of their characters in the third person as if they had lives and thoughts of their own.

This is a 21-minute interview with Mr. Walker and it was recorded in November of 2019 so some of the political talk is outta date but I find him quite interesting. And for reasons which you will see, this should have been edited for broadcast but I'm not sure it was…

I'm doing several panels at Comic-Con about folks who supply voices for animated cartoons and other media. Saturday at 1 PM in Room 6BCF, we'll be talking with Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger, Phil LaMarr, Shelby Young, Brian Hull and Townsend Coleman. Later that afternoon at 4 PM in Room 23ABC, I'll be doing an in-depth one-on-one interview of Phil LaMarr. I will interrogate him so ruthlessly, he may confess to felonies and misdemeanors.

On Sunday at 11:45 AM in Room 6A, I'll do another Cartoon Voices Panel — this one with Jim Meskimen, Rosemary Watson, Zeno Robinson, Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore. Later, at 3 PM in Room 25ABC, I'll be hosting The Business of Cartoon Voices, which is the panel about how to get into the voiceover business. We do this panel each year because there are some unscrupulous teachers and voice coaches out there who charge a fortune for semi-worthless advice on how to have a career in voiceover. We'll give you a lot of advice for absolutely nothing.

On that panel, I will be joined by Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger and agent Sam Frishman, who's with C.E.S.D., one of the best agencies in the field. As usual, a lot of working voice actors will be there in the audience also because you can never learn too much about your profession.

I forget who but someone a few months ago in e-mail asked me if I had a list of everyone who'd ever been on one of my voice panels. I don't but someone compiled this list. It's not complete — Howard Morris and June Foray are among those missing from it — but it's pretty good. And here's another list this person made, just of the folks on this year's panels along with links to their credits.

Well, here's what Billy Crystal had to say on Stephen Colbert's show about the closing of Mr. Saturday Night: Nothing. Colbert at the end said it's playing through September 4 but there was no conversation about why it's closing when it's closing. Odd.

Billy Crystal's Broadway show Mr. Saturday Night will close September 4 after playing 28 previews and 116 performances. That sounds to me like a lot less than its makers and backers were expecting. Mr. Crystal is in Stephen Colbert's guest chair tonight so it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about it. The New York Times reports…

The show has generally been staged just seven times a week — one fewer than the industry standard of eight — and its box office grosses have been middling, and dropping this summer. During the week that ended July 10 — the most recent for which data is available — the show grossed $542,696 for a six-performance week, playing to houses that were 61 percent full, according to the Broadway League.

And they add that the show was capitalized for $10 million and has not broken even.

I would guess that Billy Crystal is enough of a star name that if he was willing to tour with the show and do a week here and a week there, he would pack theaters in many cities. Then again, he might be able to do that more profitably with a one-man show. So let's hear what the man says tonight. I wish I'd been able to see the play. A lot of my friends did and loved it.

It's happening, it's happening. Preview Night is this Wednesday…and no, I don't know why people say Comic-Con International starts on Thursday just because Wednesday is called "Preview Night." It's pretty much open and at full force then. I also don't understand why most people still abbreviate its name as S.D.C.C. instead of C.C.I. It hasn't been the San Diego Comic-Con since it changed its name in 1995…but Wikipedia still calls it by its old name.

If you're going, make sure you download the Comic-Con App, which you can do at the App Store for iOS or on Google Play. And if you downloaded it in the past, update it for 2022.

It's a very handy thing to have…the whole schedule and where any speaker or guest will be, right on your phone. You can find where I am by going to the Programs list and searching for my last name.

I look forward to seeing the partial faces of many of you down there later this week. Please read and abide by the masking/vaxx requirements.

Richard Gagnon asks me…

Back when Robert Redford announced he was retiring, I wondered why he did that. Most workers retire from an employment status. Entertainers and freelancers don't have a normal work relationship. They're constantly going from job to job where they're lining up future jobs while being temporarily employed. When they decide to retire, they simply stop seeking new work. Why do some make the effort to say they're retired? I've met retired coworkers that regretted retiring because they didn't know what to do with all their free time.

I can understand why you're not seeking retirement. You like to write. You get to set your own hours. You don't have to be someplace five days a week at set times. You've chosen a career as a writer which you would do even if you weren't being paid. Very few people have a job they enjoy enough that they'd do it without pay. Having spent most of your COVID time working at home, would you ever take a writing job in the future that required you doing it in an office setting away from home?

Would Jack Kirby ever have retired for anything other than health?

Taking the last question first: No, I don't think so. But if he'd had the kind of financial cushion he deserved, he might have worked fewer hours and indulged some longings to travel or experiment with other kinds of art or writing. Maybe.

I can only guess about Mr. Redford's motives for announcing his retirement. My guess would be that he wanted to stop making movies but didn't want people saying, "Looks like Redford's career has tanked. Nobody's hiring him anymore." In other words, he wanted everyone to know his exit from the screen was his choice and was not dictated by a lack of demand for his services.

And then, if and when he does decide to make some movie at some point in the future, people will say, "Robert Redford came out of retirement to do this picture" and not, "Hey, look! Someone finally decided to hire Robert Redford!"

As for me, I dunno. I'm very comfortable working at home but there are some things you don't want to say "never" about. I can't say that if the right offer for the right project came in, I wouldn't grab it even if it meant going into an office every day. I guess it's in that category of "I'll decide if and when it becomes a real option." I've wasted a lot of time in my life thinking about what I'd do in given situations that never happened…or where the circumstances were way different than I would have expected.

There are a number of situation comedy episodes that people cite as the funniest ever. I can't pick one but a worthy contender might be this episode of You'll Never Get Rich, aka The Phil Silvers Show, aka Sgt. Bilko. It was late in their first season that they gave us "The Court-Martial," sometimes referred to as "The Court-Martial of Harry Speakup."

I posted a scene from this back in 2006 but the entire episode is now online. Here's some of what I wrote back then…

It first aired on March 6, 1956 and the writing was credited to Nat Hiken (creator of the series and its main director and head writer), Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby. I actually worked with Arnie Rosen on one of my first TV writing jobs and was somehow then unaware that he'd worked on Sgt. Bilko. Wish I'd known because I'd have asked him about it. Then again, he was more interested in pressing matters like writing the show we were doing and having me fired.

One of the many interesting things about the Bilko program was that even though it was done on film, they tried to treat it as much as possible like a live performance. They barely stopped filming between scenes and often, if someone bobbled a line or things went wrong, they left it in. There are a number of instances when actors — most notably Paul Ford, who was otherwise so good as Colonel Hall — forgot important lines and someone else — usually Silvers, who had a fast mind and a great memory — would ad-lib around the problem.

Silvers often improvised during the show and he had to ad-lib a lot in this because a trained chimp didn't always do what he was supposed to. At one point, the chimp ran over to grab a prop telephone and Phil came up with a terrific explanation right on the spot. His quick wit caused a few of the actors to almost break up. At several points in the trial scene, you can see some of them trying to stifle or hide laughter. Especially watch the kid at left playing a guard.

You probably won't be able to keep from laughing either…

I'm real busy at the moment but I spoke to the folks running Comic-Con and asked if they wouldn't mind postponing it for a few weeks and they said, "No problem! We'd be glad to do it for you, Mark."

That's not true. I didn't ask and they didn't agree…though given how frantic they must be, some of them would probably have loved the idea. As long as those conventions have been held — and remember: I've been to all of them — it has been impossible to start planning so far ahead that the last week is not hectic with Too Much To Do. It's hectic for those of us who attend and those people who stage the convention. But Preview night is still Wednesday and the con still starts officially on Thursday.

Mixed emotions are already flowing freely. How do we feel about returning there after two years of not going there? How do we feel about being in a convention center where folks are masked and checked for vaccination status? And some are a bit uneasy about being there? I'd be fibbing if I said the COVID thing doesn't concern me. I'm also concerned that for the last 27 or so months, I haven't been around many people and I haven't walked the great distances you have to walk at Comic-Con. But I'm still going.

Please do not call, write or otherwise ask me if I can help you get a badge, hotel room or parking space. And don't ask me just days before the con starts, as someone always does and one person already has this year, if I can help you get a panel added to the schedule. The schedule is already printed.

I will see some of you down there.