Comedy writer and cartoonist Jack Mendelsohn was a good buddy of mine. We presented him with the Bill Finger Award in 2014 and then sadly, just three years later, I had to write this obit of him. In there, there's a video of him accepting the Finger.

I just came across this interview online that will tell you more about this amazing man.

You probably won't see much of that header here in the coming weeks. Trump and his gang are passing into the category of "Things I don't like but I can't do anything about at the moment." Before last Tuesday, there was about a three-hundred-and-thirty-millionth of a percent chance that I could contribute, if not to a G.O.P. defeat then at least to the group dialogue on why there should be one. Now there's not even that in the near future and keeping up on politics at all means reading all sorts of articles that I don't want to read and don't think are helping.

One kind is the "Why Trump Won" pieces which are now crystal clear on all the reasons that were in place before Election Day but the person who wrote the article is just now noticing them. Too little, too late, I'm afraid. The other kind would be the "Here's the one reason" articles and while I'm not sure of much about this election, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of different reasons. It's like when they give out the Oscars and someone says, "Oh, they gave Best Actress to Meryl Streep because they all thought she got robbed when she didn't get it for that movie she made last year." The people voting did not vote in lockstep with the same one viewpoint.

One thing I'd like to think is that there won't really be a Mass Deportation. My guess is that there'll be an ongoing deportation not that much greater than what Obama and Biden oversaw, though Trump and his backers will be a lot louder and prouder of it and will make it seem like a Mass Deportation. I can't imagine Big Business in this country urging Trump to get rid of their lowest-paid, I'll-take-any-job-for-any-salary laborers. Trump doesn't think employers should even pay overtime to employees who work overtime.

This article by Kevin Drum is probably worth reading and saving. President Trump will doubtlessly brag that he solved the problem of Runaway Inflation but as Drum notes, that problem has already been solved. He'll say he solved the problems of Illegal Immigration and Economic Strength and Imports From China and Oil and Gas Production and the Murder Rate but all those are already trending in the right direction.

If you forced me to pick one reason why Trump won, I'd say it's because the Democrats failed to get the mass public to realize things were trending like that and the Republicans did a good job convincing that public that if they did hear such facts, they shouldn't believe them. You know…the same way even the Right Wing Press couldn't find even one Haitian in Springfield who actually ate a dog or cat but people inclined to vote for Donald thought, "That doesn't disprove what he said. We just know that kind of thing is going on somewhere or will."

But I also think they had a lot more than one reason. Democrats have until the mid-terms to figure out some of them and if they can't, maybe we need to find some new Democrats. Please don't write me about political stuff or any of this. I'm going to turn off that admittedly-small sector of my brain for a while and focus on matters that I understand a lot better and feel I can control a bit. Among other tasks, I have two books to finish. One is the one about Jack Kirby and the other is about someone else who was also really good at a drawing board. That much, I can handle.

Voice Guy Brian Hull has appeared in dozens of cartoons and — more important — on a couple of my Cartoon Voices panels at conventions. Here, he and many of the characters that live in his head and throat favor us with a rendition of "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. An amazing talent…

Here at newsfrome.com, we don't recommend a lot of things to put in your mouth…and when I do, you might think, "Why should I listen to Evanier about food?" And I have a great reply to that: "Why should you listen to me about anything?" Like most people on this planet, I have endless opinions about things I'm unqualified to judge so if you're going to listen to me about other matters, what's the big deal about listening to me about, in this case, the new Kirkland Signature Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Fillets at Costco?

I guess it's no longer much of a secret that all the Kirkland products sold at Costco are completely prepared and/or manufactured by one little old lady — Mrs. Edna Kirkland — who lives somewhere in South Dakota. She cooks all the Kirkland foods in her home kitchen including the hot dogs that they sell in the food court and all those rotisserie chickens. She makes the Kirkland brand batteries that are identical to the more expensive Duracell batteries. She catches and cans Kirkland Signature's Albacore Solid White Tuna and makes it taste exactly like the tuna that Bumble Bee sells. She even goes out every morning and spends an hour or two pumping oil to make all that fine Kirkland-brand gasoline.

Well, she's outdone herself with these lightly-battered chicken breasts. They're very similar to what you get at Chic-Fil-A in their sandwiches except that you can enjoy the Kirkland brand ones without giving money to a company you may detest. They come out a little soggy if you microwave them but they're still pretty good. They're crisper out of an air fryer or oven and at my nearby Costco, you get a 48 ounce bag of them for $14.20. That's without hormones or antibiotics.

Mrs. Kirkland also makes the similar Kirkland Signature Lightly Breaded Chicken Breast Chunks but those little nuggets have too much breading and too little chicken for me. The fillets, I think, are just right and enormously convenient…so great work, Mrs. Kirkland! And I hope you have time soon to make that full-sized Kirkland Turbo V8 Sports Car you promised to make for me — the one that will drive just like a Maserati. And I hope they'll let me buy just one but knowing Costco, I'll probably have to purchase a package of twelve.

Here we have another of Robert Klein's specials for cable TV. This one is from 2005 and I still think he's one of the best stand-up comics of his or any other era…

Open Registration for Comic-Con 2025 — where anyone can venture online and try to buy badges — took place on October 26…only it didn't. There were tech problems and the website didn't work right and, oh, we hear it was a mess. But they think they've got the problems solved so they're trying again on Saturday, November 23.

One tip: You may or may not get what you seek that day but I can pretty much guarantee that you'll fail in your mission if you don't learn in advance how this thing works, which you can do on this page. If you succeed, you can start counting the days until the event commences. As of right now, there are 258 of them. Better leave now if you're going to need a parking space.

Chris Cavanaugh poses this question to me…

I enjoy your Instagram posts about comic books you owned, read, and loved. There is quite a variety. Did you buy almost everything you saw on the stands? Which genres and titles were your favorites? Were there any you passed on?

My memory is that I started with comics featuring characters I knew from television. We're talking 1957 or so here…so mostly Dell. At that point, there were comic book racks in a lot of markets and drugstores so my parents would say, "Go pick out a couple" and I'd pick out a couple and they'd buy them for me along with whatever else they were there to buy. But my parents also loved old book shops and in those, while they shopped for used books, I'd hit the piles of old comics that sold for a nickel each, six for a quarter.

Naturally, I bought them in multiples of six. An awful lot of the diversification in my purchasing came in the second-hand shops because I'd pick out, say, 35 comics I wanted and then I'd have to take one more to get to that multiple of six. So that was how I tried a lot of new things…because from my point-o'-view, that 36th comic was free. I'm pretty sure the first time I bought a Charlton comic, it was as a "free" comic in a used book shop. I do not remember seeing Charlton comics on racks of new comics until around 1966.

With me, it went roughly like this: I started with Dell comics that featured characters I knew from television. That led easily to some Dell comics that were similar in content even though they featured characters I didn't know from television.

I also started buying Harvey comics that had characters I knew from television and that led to Harvey comics featuring characters I didn't know from television. And somewhere in there, I bought two DC Comics — The Fox and the Crow and Sugar & Spike before I ever went near Superman. I still think The Fox and the Crow and Sugar & Spike are two of the Ten Best Comics to ever come out of that company.

Soon after, I started buying Superman comics because I knew Superman from TV. One local station sometimes ran the Paramount cartoons and another had the live-action series starring George Reeves. Julius Schwartz once asked me to write the Superman comic for a while and I realized that the way the character was being handled then was quite different from the way I would have wanted to do it so I declined.

I'm not knocking how they were doing it. Their approach might well have been more commercial but it wasn't the way I saw the character. (The way I saw the character, he would have been more like the Paramount cartoons when he was Superman and more like George Reeves when he was Clark Kent.)

Anyway, the first comic book I bought that had Superman in it was a coverless copy of Action Comics #250. I'm not sure why I had a coverless one but I did and it was many years later than I acquired a copy with a cover on it. That cover can be seen above and next to it is Jimmy Olsen #45, which was the second comic I bought that had Superman in it.

Not long after that, I bought an issue of World's Finest Comics because it had Superman in it…and it also had Batman, which led to me collecting all the comics with Batman in them, and then Justice League of America because it sometimes had Superman and Batman in it.  Each comic was a gateway drug to another.

Beyond that point, I just kinda started buying everything…all the other super-hero comics, then war comics and westerns and romance.  I just decided I liked every kind of comic book and I was more interested in the form — how they were written and drawn, how a story was told in them — than I ever was in the characters or stories themselves.  I can't chart a timeline of when different comics went on my "to buy" list because I was getting a lot of them second-hand, not when they arrived at newsstands.  I'd say "…and reading all those comic books made me the man I am today" but that's a horrible thing to say about comic books.

The Colgate Comedy Hour ran on TV from 1950 to 1955, back in the era when the sponsor could control a program up to and including its name. Every big comedian — and a lot of lesser ones — appeared on it and it is most often remembered today, when it's remembered at all, because it was the TV home of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis who hosted often.

In 1967, George Schlatter produced a special reviving the name and it had some pretty good people on it including Bob Newhart, Dick Shawn, Nipsey Russell, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, Allan Sherman, Nanette Fabray, Kaye Ballard, Edie Adams, Phyllis Diller, Bob Hope…well, you get the idea. Here is that special. There's some real good material in there…

In times of despair — and for some of us, this morning is just such a time — I think the most important thing is this: Don't be self-destructive. I know people, and it's a mistake I have made myself, who deal with bad news by compounding it; by wallowing in it and letting it impede all the positive things they could otherwise be doing.

Sometimes, it's a retreat into drugs or drink. Sometimes, it's just to let that black cloud overshadow all aspects of their lives. Of many examples that come to mind, I'm thinking of a friend who lost his wife and immediately plunged into a mindset of "Nothing else is ever going to go right in my life." And by God, he did his best to make that true. It wasn't just the alcohol. It was the neglect of taking care of himself — his health, his hygiene, everything.

Here's just one item on a very long list of his self-destructive mistakes: He stopped opening his mail. He stopped due to a fear that there might be bad news in there somewhere and he'd convinced himself his system couldn't handle one more shot of bad news. Naturally, not opening his mail meant that he didn't pay his bills, didn't read letters that might have helped him in certain ways. By so doing, he created a whole new tier of unnecessary problems for himself.

You and I and everyone have seen elections not go the way we thought was clearly the right way. It happens in these fragile (at times) things called Democracies. We survived them, even one involving the same (we believe) wrong choice. Nothing you can do about it. Nothing anybody can do about it.

But you can make things worse for yourself if you stop doing the things you need to do every day to survive. Today, I need to write an assignment for a project that it would be foolish of me to screw up. That would be very easy to do if I sulked and pouted and went back to bed…and it wouldn't make things better for anyone, especially me. Admittedly, I have less to worry about than some people but I can still compartmentalize my concern for those other people and devote sufficient attention to the things I can do something about…like finishing that script.

I think I'll post this and then go work on that script. And later on, I'll find a very silly video link to post here. And look at the bright side of what happened yesterday: At least we probably won't have to vote anymore.

(That's a joke. We will vote. And it won't always turn out the way we like but as I said, that's what happens in Democracies.)

I'd like to think it ain't over 'til it's over — and I'd be delighted to be proven wrong — but I think it's over. At the moment, I don't see how the Harris/Walz ticket can close the gap in Pennsylvania and I don't see how they get to 270 if they don't. We all knew this was possible given recent polling but it still comes as a shock, in some ways more so than 2016. Lots of us were amazed then that so many people thought Donald Trump was a good fit for the presidency but back then, we could rationalize a certain amount of it: He's never held office, they don't know what he might do. This time around, they did know and they voted for him anyway.

The other day, Peter Baker wrote this long piece for The New York Times about all the lies and misdeeds of Donald Trump. It's a stunning list of dishonest statements and actions, and a lot of us are amazed that stuff didn't make more of a difference. I have the feeling a lot of folks who supported our 45th — and now, apparently 47th — President are amazed too…but they won and in some circles, that's all that matters.

You sure don't need me to offer theories on what went wrong. The deluge of Monday Morning Quarterbacking is already beginning and it will continue for a long time. So will the divisiveness in this country because a President Trump who thinks he can get away with absolutely anything will never be as conciliatory and gracious to the losing side as a President Harris would have been. She won't go before the microphones when it's officially over and say, "I'm not going to give a concession speech because I have exactly as much proof that I won and the election was stolen as Donald Trump did four years ago." She'll probably even certify his victory and no one will storm the capitol.

In case you want something to take your mind off the election, here's one of my favorite Laurel and Hardy short comedies — Blotto…

Remember the good ol' days when if someone running to be President of the United States said one thing that could be spun as a lie or one thing that suggested they were not all there mentally or one thing that someone could find disgusting, they lost massive support? I seem to recall that Howard Dean's march to the White House ended when he came on too strong in a victory speech…

Well, at least he didn't simulate performing oral sex on his microphone. Sigh.

Actually, I think Trump's behavior the last week or three will cost him some votes. Will it cost him enough? I dunno. I'm feeling good about tonight. Behind a paywall that most of you probably can't read, Josh Marshall made a strong case that the Harris/Walz crew has run a nearly-flawless campaign. Everyone I've heard who has faulted it is someone who was never going to support that ticket anyway.

Still, no matter who gets sworn in next January, I think we're going to spend the rest of our lives wondering and trying to explain to younger folks how Donald Trump had the support he has had. There are multiple reasons to be sure but I don't think any of them or all of them answer that question.

The one thing Harris has said that I disagree with — and I understand why she's saying this — is that a victory for her will end the divisiveness in this country. No matter who wins, it'll still be a country where nearly half considers the rest enemies. Another sigh.

So right now, I think Kamala's going to win but the only thing we can all be sure of is that Trump will claim victory and insist that every single thing that didn't go his way was rigged. Can you imagine playing poker with this guy?

Bill Lentz has two questions for me. Let's see if I can come up with two answers…

I subscribe to both of the (mainstream?) comics pages and enjoy daily doses of some classic comic strips, in addition to current strips, as part of my morning coffee routine. Feels like when I used to read the paper over breakfast. Dawned on me the other day that Pogo is not an option and figured you might be the guy to ask why.

No one has asked. It may have something to do with the fact that Pogo is not affiliated with any current syndicate, whereas a lot of old strips are still offered about by King Features or one of the others. It also might have something to do with the fact that Pogo was sometimes very much of its time period. But the simple answer is that no one has asked.

I don't think this is a "political" question, but ignore it if you do. Your opinions on societal matters generally mirror mine, but you're much better at providing a reasoned basis for your opinion than I am. How do you deal with the issue of "love the art, hate the artist" and the related issue of racist or non-PC tropes in entertainment? Cosby immediately comes to mind, but as an amateur musician, there are plenty that I run into — Richard Wagner, Frank Rosolino, Phil Spector, just to name a few.

Well, to begin with, it's different when the artist is alive and maybe, like Cosby, still trying to rehabilitate his image. Wagner is not going to profit if I buy a CD of his work. There was much to admire about Bill Cosby as a performer but it's not so much that I have tried to cancel out his career as that his actions have canceled out any chance of my enjoying it. But I was never such a huge fan of his that it's a struggle for me to not buy any work he may ever put out or attend any appearances he may ever make. And it's even easier since it seems unlikely he's ever going to try to do those things again.

You kind of have to deal with these issues on a case-by-case basis. If I believed the accusation (there's only really one) against Woody Allen, I might not feel like watching any of his movies. Since I don't believe the accusation, I don't have a problem here and don't know how I'd feel if there was convincing proof out there. Some things you can overlook and some things you can't.

I know some unflattering things about some folks in the comic book and entertainment industries. Once in a while, the negative things I know interfere with my ability to enjoy their work. Sometimes, they don't. But often we walk a fine line — I do, anyway — between thinking someone is the Antichrist and feeling sorry for them. And sometimes, I see some contrition and sometimes, that affects how I feel about the person.

If they're deceased or alive and no longer in any position to do the bad things they did, I'm more open to viewing their good work as good work. But like I said, it works on a case-by-case basis. I don't have any blanket policy and sometimes, I'm surprised at what still bothers me and what doesn't. I guess I'm not of much help on this matter.

Lately, I've been embedding links to a lot of good movies (and some not-good ones) that YouTube was hosting for free viewing. Today or thereabouts, most of 'em changed from "Free" to "Free with ads" so I took down those links. You can probably understand why.

For a change, this is a YouTube video that I posted. The description of it reads: "This was a spontaneous (that is to say, unplanned) moment from the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel at the 2023 Comic-Con International in San Diego. The panel consisted of five top voice actors — Anna Brisbin, Maurice LaMarche, Courtney Lin, Fred Tatasciore and Frank Todaro, with your host, Mark Evanier. It occurred when Mark realized that Maurice and Fred were both among the actors who have succeeded the great Mel Blanc in speaking for the character of Yosemite Sam."