From Late Night with David Letterman for October 2, 1986: It's my old pal Jeff Altman with a chilling tale about a strange man in a Santa suit…

It's 74 days until this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego…and I am here being optimistic that (a) it will happen and (b) that I will be there. I'm currently prepping panels based on both assumptions and things are looking pretty good that way.

Based on the same assumptions, my friends who run The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog are revving up with a new season of podcasts and news coverage of what's going to happen at the con. They are in no way affiliated with the actual event or the folks who run it but the Unofficial Blog site is still a valuable tool for attendees.

This coming Tuesday evening at 6:30 PM Pacific Time, they'll be launching their new season of podcasts with their very special guest, me. You can watch it live on their site or I'll have a replay later on this site. That's two chances you have to see me make the usual fool of myself.

In the meantime, I got an e-mail this morning from a fellow who I'll quote in part here. He goes on and on about how it's stupid to wear masks these days. He's angry that Comic-Con International will be requiring them and he writes, "…no one wears masks anymore at indoor businesses. No one wears masks anymore, period!!!" Which indicates to me that he and I do not patronize the same businesses. I see lots of people wearing masks at indoor businesses I frequent and I am sometimes one of them.

He quotes a Florida judge as saying masks are simply not necessary at this point and calls it all "a political power play." I suspect that judge was ruling on whether she thought certain laws requiring masks were in accord with existing laws, not whether they should be worn. There's a big difference there. Here's my simple position on this: I don't respect any opinion on the wearing of masks that doesn't come from a licensed, experienced DOCTOR (caps for emphasis), preferably one who specializes in infectious diseases.

Frankly, I think wearing a mask or not wearing a mask because of what a politician or judge or TV pundit says is stupid. You might just as well ask your plumber if he thinks you ought to have open heart surgery. (And I'm not suggesting doctors are infallible or that 100% of them agree. I just have this odd theory that they generally know more about medicine than politicians, pundits or plumbers.)

Anyway, then the fellow who wrote me wrote, "I'm sure that, as one of the main speakers and leaders at Comic-Con, you could get the fine folks running the event to reconsider the masks policy." Yes, if you want to formulate a responsible, intelligent health policy, listen to the guy who writes dialogue for Groo the Wanderer. Who could be more qualified than that?

I also don't think it's their policy. I think it has a lot to do with the state, the city and the convention center. The San Diego Convention Center, by the way, is a non-profit public benefit corporation created by the City of San Diego. And I'm fairly sure that all those agencies, in formulating the current policy, consulted with DOCTORS. Gee, I wonder why they didn't ask my opinion.

Is the policy over-cautious? Maybe. I don't know. I have several friends who currently have COVID and while their symptoms seem to be mild, there are still people out there suffering mightily and perhaps dying. Here are current stats for California. We seem to be near the end of this thing but we've thought that before and been horribly wrong so I don't think over-cautious is a terrible thing. I also don't think wearing a mask is any more oppressive than not sneezing on someone else or not coughing in their face.

What do we have here? Oh, it looks like Albert Brooks doing his ventriloquist routine on The Ed Sullivan Show for January 31, 1971.  It took a lot of guts to do this routine on that show on live TV.

Comics who did Ed's show used to always tell of the agony of having to do their act earlier that afternoon at the dress rehearsal. The audience for those, they all said, was largely unresponsive…a lot of derelicts using the free tickets to get off the street for a little while, a lot of little old ladies who were out shopping just wanting to get off their feet…

Ed, it was said, would often panic over the non-response to a comic's act and order that it be cut down for the air show. He was also known to cut an act entirely. I wonder how "Danny and Dave" made the cut…

One of those folks who wanted me to answer a question without giving their name read my obit of Neal Adams and asked…

In what you wrote about Adams, you said "God Help You if you were a young kid showing him your portfolio and asking him for a critique." I gather that means he was rough on newcomers. Do you think he was right to do this? Do you think beginners should be subjected to this kind of treatment? I believe you wrote once that Bob Kane looked at your work when you were a teenager and told you to give up trying to be a writer.

Yeah, but that was Bob Kane. Even at that age, I knew not to take him seriously. I believe he offered to look at my work not to advise me on any possible career but to see if I could be of any immediate use to him.  And he had no use for what I did.  When someone slams your work, it helps to remember that, first of all, that's just one person…and the greatest talents who've ever lived all have at least one person and maybe even a million people who hate what they do. Also, of course, not all opinions are honest…or informed.

Over the years, I knew perhaps a dozen artists who showed their work to Neal and didn't get the response for which they were hoping. And what they were hoping for was not necessarily praise. More often, it was the answer to the question, "Where do I go from here? What's my next step?" I've heard that there were times when Neal saw a new kid's work, picked up the phone and recommended him or her for a job. If he did that, good for him. What the folks I knew personally usually got from him was the answer to a question they were not asking: "What do I have to do to get a job working on super-hero comics for Marvel or DC?"

By contrast, Jack Kirby never discouraged anyone, including some youngsters who perhaps could have been helped by a bit of discouragement. He urged beginners not to draw like him or like anyone other than themselves.  And if he really saw potential in you, he would tell you to aim way higher than working for DC and Marvel on material they'd own and control.

I do understand the working premise of "tough love."  I understand the concept of the drill sergeant who treats you like dirt to make you a better soldier.  I just don't think that's what most people need on their way up.  I think they need honesty about who and where they are, a fair assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, and maybe being pointed in the right direction. If someone comes along with the potential to be the next Charles Schulz, he shouldn't be told, "Here's what you have to do if you want to get a job inking Spider-Man."

Neal was rough on some people but I didn't mean to suggest he was never of help.  A lot of people got into the business because of Neal Adams even if his critiques could be kinda torturous.  And a lot more made good careers for themselves by not listening to him.  Just because someone has more experience than you do, that doesn't mean their evaluation of your work is valid.  When people ask me how I've managed to be a working professional writer for more than half a century, I sometimes tell them the secret.  It involved not listening to Bob Kane.

I just set my AT&T account for automatic billing and when I was done, I got this message…

I can't wait for May 32nd so I can see what happens.

An outfit called Musical Mayhem Productions stages plays and theater workshops for performers ages 4-19. They're based in Elk Grove, California, which is in Sacramento County. This weekend, they're staging The Addams Family and later this month, it's The Little Mermaid.

This is from a production of Guys and Dolls Junior and the performers are Karoline Ongjoco and Henry Pullen. Sit down, you're rockin' the crib…

Longtime readers of this blog can probably guess how I feel about the impending prospect of Roe v. Wade being overturned along with some other possibilities from the Far-Right Wish List. I'm not writing about it because I don't think I have anything to say that isn't being said (and said better) by countless others. If and when I do, you'll see it here.

Please don't think that if I don't write about something here, I don't care about it. That goes especially when someone notable dies and I don't write about them. I just might not have anything to say that I think is worth saying. Goodness knows I post enough that isn't worth my time to write or your time to read.

In other news: Currently, I have 4,823 "friends" on Facebook and over a thousand requests. But I can only occasionally add anyone because Facebook sometimes thinks I've already hit the 5,000 "friend" limit and won't let me. I'm not snubbing anyone. Honest.

James Corden will soon step down as the host of The Late Late Show on CBS. My view of the man is just about identical to the one expressed here by my pal Paul Harris. I like Corden in certain special bits on his show which I watch on YouTube. (I always watch his Carpool Karaoke segments just to see if my house is in them. He drives around my neighborhood a lot.)

I liked him as a host on the Tony Awards and a few other gigs. I even liked him in the movies of Cats, The Prom and Into the Woods. But I rarely watch his nightly show where everything and everyone are fabulous and wonderful and awesome and everything merits a standing ovation.

And Paul's right: It's kind of pointless to speculate who may replace him. There's sometimes an obvious choice for an 11:30 talk show slot the way some of us predicted Stephen Colbert would take over Letterman's program. But 12:30 is almost always someone no one saw coming. No one predicted Conan O'Brien or Tom Snyder or Craig Kilborn or Craig Ferguson or Seth Meyers or Mr. Corden. I would guess though that the folks at CBS are at least seriously looking to see if there's a worthy candidate who isn't white, male or neither.

There must be. But I have no idea if they'd go with that person. I'll also guess that a major requirement for the job is that the new host be real Internet-savvy and able to generate online content because that's becoming almost as important as putting a good show on conventional TV.

Paul wonders what Corden's going to do. I'll tell you what I'd like to see him do. My favorite musical comedy is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and at the time he got the call about hosting The Late Late Show, Corden was in talks about starring in a new Broadway revival of it. I believe he's occasionally said he really wants to do that someday and I'd sure like to see it. I think he'd be fabulous and wonderful and awesome and would merit a standing ovation. But he might be too busy starring in every movie Hollywood makes adapting a Broadway musical to the screen.

Here's a very good obit/bio of Neal Adams by Alex Grand and Michael Dean.

If you've been reading all the remembrances of Neal from his colleagues, you probably have a pretty good grasp of how important he was to so many careers and to changing the face of comics in the seventies and eighties. I was most impressed by the fact that he was a freelance talent who would not and could not be treated as a peon. This was not just because he drew so well. There were a lot of guys in comics who drew well but, having grown up in The Depression and not knowing any other way to make a somewhat-secure living than filling pages for DC and Marvel, they allowed The System to treat them as expendable and lucky to have any income at all.

On my first visit to the DC offices in 1970, I sat in on a meeting in which an editor berated one of his longtime freelance artists. I won't name names here but the artist was one of those reliable guys who worked hard on every page and who delivered a consistent product and always on time. Until you're put in the position of editing comics, you might not realize how valuable those guys are. There's a certain "assembly line" mentality that's inevitable in the production process even on the best books. One artist has to get his work in before the next one can do what he has to do…and somewhere down that conveyor belt, there are deadlines that simply must be met. If one person hands in work late…or hands in work that needs to be redone…the other people working on the book can suffer and so can their work.

This longtime freelance artist was always on time and the work was always solid — maybe not spectacular but solid…and probably way better than the company deserved for the page rates it paid. Still, this editor felt the need to be a bit of a tyrant.

He'd had the check for the work already made out and as he looked over the pages the artist was handing in, he dangled that check. He was going to give it to the artist, of course. But he had to play out the fantasy that the work was just barely acceptable and the artist had better do a better job next time. He literally waved the paycheck in front of the artist and said, "I don't know if you earned this…that panel should have had more of a background…I don't know if I can give you this check…"

I saw this little ritual played out. And the fact that the editor didn't mind me seeing this…didn't mind me witnessing him humiliating this longtime contributor a little…that should tell you a lot.

The artist, put soundly in his place, mumbled a bit about how he'd try harder next time. And he left with that check and also with the next script he would take home and draw. When I encountered him in the halls later, I told him what a shame it was that he'd been put through that humbling. He shrugged and said, of the editor, "He always does that. But he always has work for me." As if that made it right.

So, uh, what does this have to do with Neal Adams? Just this: No one at DC or anywhere ever dared to do that to Neal Adams. And they became less likely to do that to any freelancer because Neal was around, reminding freelancers of their value, reminding them that they made the product that the company sold. The folks in management listened to him. A lot of them were afraid of him.

And like I said, it wasn't just because he drew so well. A lot of it was because they all knew that Neal made Big Bucks in advertising and could walk away from comics in a nanosecond if you didn't treat him right. The freelancer who had to grovel a bit to get a check he'd clearly earned didn't have that going for him. He also didn't have Neal's ability to stand up for himself or others and Neal was also really good at telling bosses they didn't know what the hell they were doing.

I also saw an example of this on that first visit to the DC offices…

Alex Toth was one of the most-respected artists in the field and he had just written, penciled and inked (but not lettered) an issue of the Hot Wheels comic book DC was publishing. It was #5 and the night before my pal Steve Sherman and I flew from Los Angeles to New York, I went by Alex's house in Hollywood, picked up the original art and I hand-delivered it to the DC offices back there two days later.

For this story, Alex had done something different. He divided every page into eight panels of the same size and shape, and he put black in the gutters between those panels. Here — take a look at a couple of pages from that story. You can click on the image and make it larger…

As you can see, it was a very "talky" story. Alex, who complained about every single thing in every single job, was always bitching about too much dialogue and too many captions in comics. And then almost every time he wrote his own script, he'd put in three times as much copy as the writers he insisted put in too much.

I delivered his pages, which of course were in black-and-white. Alex had left space for someone in New York to put in the lettering and the story was immediately assigned to John Costanza, who did that lettering. Because Alex had in many panels left too much room for copy, there were blank spaces around many of the word balloons and someone in the office had to go in and extend the art to fill in those gaps. The staffer assigned to do this was a gent named Sal Amendola, who later distinguished himself as a pretty good artist on his own.

And Sal was also assigned to do something else to Alex's pages. The Production Department told him to take the black out between the panels. The reason? "We don't do that here at DC."

The real reason? DC's Production Department liked to "fix" things…to change what the freelancers did. It was not all that different from the way that reliable freelancer had to be demeaned a little so The Boss could prove he was The Boss. It was why they insisted on redrawing the way Jack Kirby drew Superman in Jimmy Olsen. It was why they pasted an old Curt Swan Superman head over the Superman head that Alex drew for a Super Friends special comic he did for them. It was why a lot of arbitrary, gratuitous changes were made.  They wanted to be able to say, "We saved it!"

Because I was kind of Alex's rep at that moment, Sal came to me — this is a few days after I'd delivered the pages — and told me what he'd been assigned to do. We both knew what damage this would do to Alex's composition…to his placement of blacks within the panels. But Sal had no power to overrule the Production Department and if he'd refused to do it, someone else would have done it. I asked him, "What are you going to do?"

He said, "Wait for Neal."

This conversation took place around 2 PM. Sal filled in the art around the balloons but didn't touch the black between the panels. Around 4 PM, Neal arrived at DC and, as he often did, took over a little office with a drawing table in it. It was directly across the hall from an office shared by editors Dick Giordano and Julius Schwartz. Sal and I went in with the Toth pages and started to explain to Neal about what the Production Department wanted to do to them.

He got it instantly. He said, "Let me take those" and he carried the pages over to the Production Department and closed the door behind him. Ten minutes later, he came out, handed the pages back to Sal and said, "Leave the gutters the way they are." And the comic was printed, as you can see, with the black gutters, just as Alex wanted. A lot of people in the field thought it was an outstanding art job — which it was — but few knew that it might not have been as good had it not been for Neal Adams.  And for that matter, Sal Amendola.

No, I don't know what he said to the men behind that closed door. I would imagine he talked about the integrity of Toth's composition, and because he was that guy who had his own syndicated strip at age 21 and was raking in all that dough in advertising work, they listened to him. Neal had this way of making you feel like he knew more than you even when he didn't. The contrast between the way they treated him and the way that longtime freelancer had been treated was startling. Neal had a lot to do with the entire industry putting more value on the freelancers and treating them with more respect.

Everyone writing these days about Neal has their favorite work. I liked his Batman way more than any other existing character on which he worked. I thought the best inker for his work was, far and away, Neal Adams.  I loved certain covers he did and certain illustrations…and not always the ones that other people thought were his best.

But I think his greatest contribution was the way in which he helped the comic book industry grow up. I'm not certain it would even exist today if it hadn't.

• A man charged the stage at the Hollywood Bowl this evening and attacked comedian Dave Chappelle. The would-be assailant was apprehended and he's in big trouble. There's talk he may be banned from attending the Academy Awards for ten years.

I was just telling someone this story and he suggested I tell it on this blog. I actually did once but it was back in 2001 and I didn't tell it very well then. So let's pretend this is the first time I've told it. It involves two men…

The one on the left is Morton Downey Jr., who had a popular (for a while) syndicated talk show that mostly consisted of Mr. Downey bringing on guests, screaming at them, calling them names, etc. Here's some of what Wikipedia has to say about his program…

Starting as a local program on New York-New Jersey superstation WWOR-TV in October 1987, [The Morton Downey Jr. Show] expanded into national syndication in early 1988. The program featured screaming matches among Downey, his guests, and audience members. Using a large silver bowl for an ashtray, he would chainsmoke during the show and blow smoke in his guests' faces. Downey's fans became known as "Loudmouths," patterned after the studio lecterns decorated with gaping cartoon mouths, from which Downey's guests would go head-to-head against each other on their respective issues.

Downey's signature phrases "pablum puking liberal" (in reference to left-liberals) and "zip it!" briefly enjoyed some popularity in the contemporary vernacular. He particularly enjoyed making his guests angry with each other, which on a few occasions resulted in physical confrontations.

I did not like Morton Downey Jr. I thought he was the most repulsive "human being" (using a very loose definition of that species) on television back then. I did however like the gent on the right. His name was Stanley Ralph Ross and he was a pal of mine — a TV writer and occasional actor. Stanley was one of the main writers of the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) and he developed the Wonder Woman TV show (the one with Lynda Carter) and also wrote for dozens of other programs. His deep, gravelly voice was often heard in announcing jobs and on cartoons.

This story takes place while I was writing and voice-directing the Garfield and Friends cartoon series. One day, I decided to use my disgust at Morton Downey Jr.'s show as the basis for an episode. I created a character named Joe Palaver and had Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, go on Joe Palaver's show.

Basically, the plot was that Palaver gave Jon the Downey-style treatment and so Garfield went in and made Palaver look like a fool. For the voice of Joe Palaver, I cast Stanley Ralph Ross and we recorded the voice track and all was well.

A week or so later, Stanley called me and told me he'd run into Downey at a party and told him about the parody. For a tenth of a second, I was worried we were going to hear from Downey's lawyer but Stanley said, "He was thrilled and I gave him your phone number. He's going to call you about seeing if he can get a drawing from the episode."

A few days later, I did indeed receive a call from Mr. Downey but he wasn't interested in any drawing. What he wanted was for me to dump Stanley's voice track and replace it with a new one. "I'll come in and record my voice and you can call the character by my name and make it look just like me…and don't worry. I'll go along with whatever you write. You can make me look like the biggest idiot in the world."

I thought but did not ask, "What makes you think I didn't?"

The call didn't last long but it lasted long enough for me to realize that everything about this man was an act. He was screaming at people at TV and advocating infuriating political views just for the attention and ratings and the financial benefits from that act. This did not shock me as I've long believed in "follow the money" as key to understanding why most people do what they do. But it was jarring to have such a blatant example of it before me.

I declined his offer. When the show aired, it aired with the voice of Stanley Ralph Ross.

A few months after my phone call from Downey, I was dining with a friend in Lawry's restaurant over on La Cienega Boulevard. There, a few tables from us and very audible, was Morton Downey, Jr. He was loud and he was screaming at the fine Lawry's wait staff, carrying his on-air persona into the public arena. I hadn't thought my opinion of him could get any lower but that evening, it did.

By this time, the act was getting very tired and transparent and the ratings for his TV show were dropping. He tried some hokey publicity stunts for attention but they failed to reverse his slide into oblivion. In June of 1996, lung cancer forced the removal of one of his lungs and that apparently made him realize that smoking just might be dangerous. He became a staunch anti-smoking crusader but again, no one paid much attention to him. He died from lung cancer and pneumonia on March 12, 2001.

One person who I wish had listened to him was my friend Stanley Ralph Ross. Stanley died from the same thing one year earlier.

Best-selling author John Green discusses the banning of books — his and others'…

Mark Jarek sent me this question about Neal Adams…

I have wanted to ask you this for a couple of years, but never got around to it. With Neal's death, it is unfortunately timely to ask you what it was like for a long-time comics fan (as you were at the time Neal started at DC) to see his work for the first time. I assume it stood out immediately to you and would love to hear your recollections of your initial reaction to his pseudo-realistic art.

I think I first saw Neal's work in one of DC's war comics and maybe on either the Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis comics. He did not stand out in the war books amidst Kubert and Heath, and I still don't think he was as good as Bob Oksner on Bob's or Jerry's comics. The first Neal Adams work that particularly impressed me was a story he drew for Warren Publishing's Eerie #9 called "Fair Exchange."

And in hindsight, I think one of the things that excited me about it was that, apart from the drawings of Cousin Eerie on the first and last pages, it was not him doing a new version of an established character. I know a lot of folks would soon be saying, "Oh, I love the Adams version of The Flash" or "I love how Neal draws Green Lantern." I'm more impressed when artists create as opposed to reinterpret.

One of the rare exceptions to that was when Neal got around to Batman. He didn't just draw a neater-looking Batman than others had. His drawings reinvented the character and the scripts fell in line with what he was drawing. And it wasn't just how he drew the hero but also the whole environment in which the character operated.

By that time, I was starting to hear tales of what Neal was doing besides drawing…how he was influencing the way creators and their work were treated and how he was inspiring new artists and writers. It became harder to judge the man just by what he was putting on paper, especially when I thought some people were learning all the wrong lessons from him.

I never thought of his work as "pseudo-realistic" except in the sense that most art for adventure or romance comic books is "pseudo-realistic." I just thought of him as a very talented artist who broke through a system that discouraged individuality. The field was very lucky to have him, especially coming along at the time it needed a force like him.

A video sampler from Billy Crystal's new Broadway show…

Here's a good print of a vintage cartoon that you may never have seen. Bob Clampett directed some of the funniest cartoons that came out of the Warner Brothers Studio during its Golden Age but he left there in 1945, worked briefly for Screen Gems (Columbia's short films and cartoon division) then made a deal to try and put Republic Pictures into the cartoon business. It was a helluva deal but it fell apart after one cartoon…It's a Grand Old Nag.

The cartoon introduced, for his one and only appearance anywhere, the character of Charlie Horse. His voice and a few others were done by Stan Freberg, getting his first-ever screen credit since his name was not on the many WB cartoons he'd done with Mel Blanc receiving sole credit. Other voices in It's a Grand Old Nag were done by Dave Barry, who did not receive credit.

Clampett managed to assemble some real good animators and he reportedly got Michael Maltese to moonlight from WB and write the script, sans credit. It's not a bad little film but problems quickly arose which, according to Bob, had nothing to do with the cartoon and any reactions to it. Republic Studios just got themselves into a financial mess and had to close down some divisions and cancel many projects. It was the last cartoon Clampett directed in that era before redirecting his energies to the new medium of television and his show, Time for Beany, also starring Freberg.

It's interesting to speculate what the new operation would have produced if they hadn't been shut down after this one film. Given the potential in this film and Bob Clampett's track record, wonders might have occurred. As it is though, we have to settle for just this…