Here's a smart message from Michael Grabowski. I'm going to interject between some of his paragraphs so don't get confused as to which of us is speaking. I'm the one with the wider margins…

To start, I'm okay with any company deciding how it wants to use or no longer use its characters and trademarks. I get a bit nervous when they do that out of cultural pressure rather than commercial pressure, though.

I get a bit nervous about that too but I also think it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between cultural pressure and commercial pressure. Some TV stations said they wouldn't carry reruns of The Cosby Show because they didn't want to be putting money in his pocket or suggesting that his sex crimes didn't matter and it was fine to promote the image of the man as America's Dad. Other stations decided no one would want to watch him now, and apparently some did polls and surveys that shaped this decision. So is The Cosby Show not around much now due to cultural pressure or commercial pressure? I sure can't separate them.

I vaguely remember the Dr. Seuss books under fire as ones I read as a kid but never got around to revisiting when my kids were Dr. Seuss-ready age. I remember the premise of On Beyond Zebra fondly, but I don't recall the specifics.

I have copies of all the Dr. Seuss books up to a certain point in his output. Of the six that have been withdrawn, On Beyond Zebra was the only one I would consider a major work of Seuss. In a couple of the articles about this entire matter, I've read that all six of the books have sometimes been outta-print for long periods with no one noticing. I have a hunch this one will soon be back with some art corrections.

I think Pepe LePew is a bit more marketable than you give it credit for. I have a Pepe necktie bought from a Warner Bros. mall store in the 90s that I still wear every Valentine's Day, and I have a Looney Tunes DVD from about ten years ago that featured a dozen or more of the Pepe shorts. No idea how those items sold relative to, say, the Sylvester or Foghorn Leghorn DVDs or Taz ties, but the character still had commercial worth and entertainment value (in moderate doses).

I'm told by a person involved with Warner Home Video that none of the DVDs of classic Warner Brothers cartoons are selling too well these days but when they did that Pepe one, it sold worse than most of the others. This might have been because of the seduction aspect of the material but I'd be more inclined to think it was because no one wanted to watch a collection of cartoons that were all the same story over and over again.

I once bought a Pepe LePew video collection and never got around to taking off the shrink wrap and watching it…and I'll tell you how far before the "Me Too" movement this was: Not only was this a videotape but, so help me, it was on Beta.

The same person connected with Warner Home Video told me Pepe merchandise never did well for them; not as strong as the "first tier" characters (who I believe are Bugs, Daffy and Tweety) and not as strong as most of the "second tier" ones, which I guess would be Porky, Foghorn, etc.

All that said, you seem to be saying that it's ok for these books and that character to disappear from modern culture in part because their copyright owners haven't realized much commercial potential from them lately, or they're not really cherished by the intended audience the way other, more memorable such characters and books are.

(To take it to another category for a moment, we live in an age where we can't see Fatty Arbuckle shorts or get a decent Blu-Ray of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, because the probably undeserved scandal around their names wasn't and isn't worth the hassle for such limited commercial potential. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's hits will never get off the radio — and I'm not saying they should — despite concerns about him, because those songs still have tremendous commercial value.)

I think it's okay for a private company to say "We're not going to put this out because we think we'll lose money on it or not make enough to make it worth the effort." That to me is a totally valid reason and there are zillions of books that are not in print and oodles of movies and TV shows that are not available on home video for that reason.

The fact that someone someplace may find the material offensive may or may not have anything to do with that. I worked on some TV shows that have never been issued on DVD because no one thinks they can make a buck doing that. Are you suggesting that if someone thought there was something offensive in those shows, some company would have some obligation to invest in their release?

I also don't think material disappears from modern culture just because you can't order it off Amazon at the moment.

Are we really far from the day when it's decided that Elmer Fudd's speech impediment is no longer funny, or that the hunting and gunplay in those cartoons are no laughing matter? Will their commercial potential be enough for WB to stream those cartoons still, or will they get locked up with Coal Black? I'm glad I'll still have all those DVDs if that becomes the only way to watch them. (Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs probably deserves to stay out of public view. Elmer Fudd and Pepe LePew are nowhere near that class of bad taste and deliberate harm.)

See? Here's what I meant about things that aren't available on Amazon at the moment. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is not out of public view. There are probably a hundred copies of it — some from a really good transfer — on the Internet at the moment. Now, if you want to argue that it deserves better treatment, okay.

But this is not a terrible situation. While the folks at Warner Brothers probably don't officially like the idea of their property being bootlegged, someone there's gotta be pleased they're sidestepping controversy. They're not preventing anyone who wants to see it from seeing it…so there aren't angry mobs denouncing them for suppressing and "canceling" a wonderful cartoon. But if other angry mobs are outraged about its content…well, WB isn't responsible for it being seen.

Fatty Arbuckle shorts have long been hard to view…and I say that as someone who was searching for them back in the sixties. Again, this gets to the muddle between things becoming unavailable due to cultural objections or commercial problems. For seventy or eighty years, there was no market whatsoever for Arbuckle movies so no one invested the funds to preserve and restore them. As we mentioned back here, they're becoming a little more available. And Turner Classic Movies has even run a few of his movies as mentioned here. I'm going to guess there was not a huge tune-in and that if there had been, we'd see more of him there.

As for the Pepe shorts, their biggest crime is their repetitiousness. I'm pretty sure Pepe never gets the girl. The whole bit is about all the suffering he endures while being such an obvious creep. As with Wile E. Coyote, no one roots for him to succeed. The whole gag is about the constant and crazy failures, as in most of the WB cartoons, to get what they want. It's just a different kind of hunt theme, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that Pepe LePew wasn't a role model.

I have no outrage over this issue, but definitely concern. Can't we develop a better sense of perspective about the things in our culture we think others might take social cues from? I'm okay with WB not making any new use of Pepe LePew if they choose not to, but can't we also make it clear that Pepe LePew is not Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, or Cuomo? Thanks as always for thoughtful, entertaining blogging.

And thank you for a thoughtful, entertaining message. I wish people didn't take umbrage at some kinds of humor…but then again, I think people these days are more sensitive about some serious issues like alcoholism and sexual exploitation. It's possible, I believe, to crack down on the Harvey Weinsteins and that kind of behavior towards women and still enjoy a performance of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or a Pepe LePew cartoon but I recognize that might not be as easy for some people as others. When wrongs are righted, they're sometimes righted too much for a while.

Randy Rainbow is back with one of his best…

With all the problems in the world today, it's amazing that people find time to get outraged about things like six obscure Dr. Seuss books that no one was reading being taken out of print or some episodes of The Muppet Show rerunning with disclaimers. This week's way-outta-scale outrage seems to be about Pepe LePew, a character who during the "Golden Age" of Warner Brothers cartoons appeared in eighteen short cartoons, all of them the same.

And like you, I was amazed to find out that they made eighteen of those things. I thought they made three and just ran them over and over.

I was and am a huge admirer of Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese and the other folks who concocted these cartoons but I think I liked everything else they did more. And I don't think I'm alone in not having a whole lotta love for the horny skunk, even back when date rape was an acceptable subject for humor. Maltese, who wrote the cartoons, wasn't even too fond of him.

I knew Mike a little and I recall him saying something like, "We made one and it went over well so we did it again because that's what we did when something went over well. And then the second one won an Academy Award." That was a distinction which no one in the business thought went to the best cartoon each year — it had more to do with what the guys who ran the studio chose to submit — but when it did, to quote Mike, "We had to keep making them."

The audiences for which they were made laughed at them, as Linda Jones (daughter of Chuck) notes. But I don't think Pepe ever rose to the popularity of other characters her father worked on or others that came out of that studio. When I was growing up, I had Bugs and Daffy and Porky and Tweety and Sylvester and Elmer and Sam and the Road Runner and the Coyote and several of their comrades on my t-shirts and lunchboxes and toy shelf…but only once in a while did you see Pepe.

He didn't even have his own Dell or Gold Key comic book like all the rest of them did at one point or another or always. Every year or three, Pepe might pop up in someone else's comic on a puzzle page or a short back-up story or somewhere but it was extremely rare. I suspect one reason was that no one knew what to do with him. Okay, so he chases around a female black cat that happened to get a white streak painted on its back. What's the plot of the next issue?

One of his few appearances in comics of the preceding century was a one-panel cameo in an issue of Bugs Bunny that I wrote for the Gold Key line back in 1975. It was a story about Elmer Fudd deciding to join the French Foreign Legion and I think I only wrote it because I thought it would be funny to have Elmer keep saying "Fwench Foweign Wegion." Speech impediments were funnier then too. Here is that one panel from "Beau Fudd"…

I'm not sure if it was on this story or one other one I wrote that had a three-panel cameo of Pepe but it was a hassle getting him in there. When my editor at Gold Key, Del Connell, saw I'd put Pepe into the script, he said, "Pepe LePew? We haven't used him in years! I don't think we even have a model sheet for what he looks like." I suggested that maybe they oughta have one.

As I mentioned back in this post, the Warner Brothers studio wasn't actively producing new cartoons then. There were however folks there in charge of supervising what was done with their characters, merchandise-wise. Del called them and asked for some reference on Pepe. According to him, they said, "Oh, we don't have any. There's not enough interest in that character these days."

Fortunately, the artist on that particular comic book I wrote was Tom McKimson, who'd worked for the cartoon studio and he remembered…kind of. So we stuck Pepe in the comic and as far as I could tell, nobody cared. That's the character that some people are now furious is being "canceled."

When DC Comics later took over issuing comic books of Bugs and Friends, they did a few short stories of Pepe and I gave him a cameo in a Superman/Bugs Bunny crossover series I wrote for them. But I think at that point, Pepe was just appearing to see if there was any merchandising potential in the character…and apparently, there wasn't.

I am against losing great work because someone somewhere might take offense to it. But when things go away because they haven't aged well or no one really cares about them anymore…well, that's not a hill on which I choose to die or even suffer a slight scratch on.

Not everything that was funny then is funny now. I don't think drunks are as funny as they used to be. I know most of the racist gags of the thirties and forties — jokes of the Mantan Moreland variety — don't bring down the house the way they used to. And given the changes in fashion and in how we view adult sexuality, I don't think your basic man-in-a-dress, as practiced by Milton Berle, Flip Wilson and the movie Some Like It Hot, is the sure-fire laugh-getter it once was.

And I don't think the amorous M. LePew skipping after some terrified pussycat was ever that funny…and it's even less so now. I'm against giving in to pressure groups that scream about things they don't understand. If this was my government banning something, I'd be out on the Capitol dressed like the QAnon Shaman, trying to occupy Nancy Pelosi's office. (Well, no, I wouldn't…)

But when a company that owns something decides there's no market for it at the moment, I'm okay with that, just as long as the material still exists somewhere. I'm not sure there ever was that much of a market for Pepe.

Eric Idle teaches you how to play that song he plays everywhere he goes…

Thursday's the big day here when we celebrate (that's not the right word) one year since my wise doctor told me to stay home as much as possible, avoid gatherings, wear a mask when I absolutely had to go out and, in general, forget about going to public events that, by and large, weren't going to happen anyway. Day after day after tomorrow, we'll be discussing what one year of quasi-isolation has meant to some of us.

Meanwhile, I see that the new ABC/Ipsos poll says that 68% of Americans approve of the way the Biden Administration has been handling the COVID-19 response. That's amazing because I didn't think you could get 68% of Americans to agree on anything these days.

Here are some things I won't be talking about on this blog. I didn't watch Oprah Winfrey's interview last night with Harry and Meghan. After an unscientific survey of comments on the web this morning, I gather most of you did and wish you hadn't.

I'm not really following the travails of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo but I can say this: These days, when someone in public life is accused of "inappropriate sexual behavior" — a term which can cover a wide range of improprieties — I think there are two things which oughta be considered…

One is whether the alleged offender lacked the self-control and consideration for others to do the alleged deeds. The other is whether they lacked the good judgement to not do those things because they'd get caught and people would demand their resignations and they'd become very ineffective in their jobs and maybe lose them.

I dunno quite what Cuomo did and didn't do to the ladies who've accused him so I don't know how bad it was. But maybe he oughta step down because he was very foolish to do whatever he did. We don't need foolish people in positions of power and he's certainly harmed his ability to get things done in his job.

Then again, this might not be a great time to change leaders and install someone who's going to have to learn on-the-job in the middle of a war.

And lastly for now: I'm also not paying that much attention to what's up with my own governor, Gavin Newsom, whom many wish to recall. I know someone who thinks Newsom should be recalled because he's been too strict with lockdowns and masking mandates, and I know someone who thinks Newsom should be recalled because he hasn't been strict enough.

Again, Newsom did something — attending a public event — that he should have been wise enough not to do. What scares me about the recall effort is that the last time my state recalled its governor, the guy who got the job made everything worse. And there's also that horses-in-midstream question. I think I'll stop thinking about this stuff and go write a comic book.

Veteran comic book/strip artist Frank Thorne has died at the age of 90 and change. Thorne, who claimed he wanted to be an illustrator "as far back as I can remember" became one while still in his teen years. His earliest known work in comics was for the company Standard Comics in 1948 but he had been selling occasional drawings to pulp magazines before that.

His heroes were Alex Raymond (who drew Flash Gordon, among other strips) and Hal Foster (who drew Prince Valiant) and he described his own art at the time as in their tradition, only nowhere near as good. But it was good enough that in 1951, King Features Syndicate — which handled Raymond and Foster — hired Frank to draw the Perry Mason newspaper strip. When that ended, he had no trouble securing work in comic books, mainly for Western Publishing's Dell and Gold Key titles. Among the comics that featured his work were Mighty Samson, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery, Jungle Jim and many, many TV and movie adaptations.

In 1968, he began working for DC Comics with work in Son of Tomahawk, Our Fighting Forces (and all their war comics), The Spectre and Korak, Son of Tarzan among others. His work was professional and popular but he didn't become a fan-favorite until 1975 when Marvel connected him with the character Red Sonja, a spin-off from the popular Conan the Barbarian series.

At age 45, Frank Thorne blossomed into a whole new artist — bold, experimental and brilliantly-imaginative. He became known for his drawings not only of her but of many warrior women, and he also appeared often at comic conventions in the guise of "The Wizard," a companion to Red Sonja, appearing in live shows with women costumed as her and judging Red Sonja look-alike contests. His flair for drawing outrageous and sexy female characters led to work for Playboy and more adult publications and graphic novels like his own Ghita of Alizarr.

This is the spot in an obit where I would ordinarily tell you that it was a pleasure to meet and know the man but the truth is that I never met him. I was around him a lot but he was always mobbed by fans (and cosplaying ladies) seeking autographs and commissions. It was a joy though to see this man segue from realistic, somewhat staid illustration work to a style and vision all his own. I'm sure his work will be reprinted and devoured for a long time.

When I was ordering my McDonald's Crispy Chicken Sandwich yesterday on my iPhone, I noticed this odd bit of pricing. I believe this is kind of how Bitcoin works.

The audio book autobiography of our friend Laraine Newman is being released this coming Thursday — all nine hours of it — and I'm sure eager to experience it. If you are too, this might hold you over 'til then. It's the latest outing of Phil & Ted's Sexy Boomer Show, an audio podcast hosted by Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. Laraine is a fascinating, talented lady who has lived a fascinating life among other talented people and I wanna hear all about it.

You can hear the podcast at this link and you can order her book at this link. Do both.

I know, I know: You've been checking in here every day, wondering when Mark is going to review McDonald's new Crispy Chicken Sandwich. Your wait is over, my friends.

I had one yesterday. I had them leave the pickles off and it wasn't quite as fluffy and large as the one in the photo above but it was close. It wasn't particularly crunchy and I didn't do weights and measures but the filet seemed a bit larger than what one gets in the corresponding sandwich at Chick-Fil-A.

And that's really the question here: How does it stack up against the Chick-Fil-A sandwich that it was designed to replicate?  McDonald's — the firm everyone in the Fast Food Biz used to emulate — has been reduced to playing catch-up because them Golden Arches haven't been very golden lately.

Mickey D's has its advantages. The fries are better, it's open on Sundays and you can get their knock-off without any moral reservations that come with patronizing a company that has Chick-Fil-A's history of supporting anti-gay charities. Then again, it's a little hard to say how much of that, if any, Chick-Fil-A is still doing.

And I'm very much aware that almost any company that gets my money is going to have given something to some cause or politician I oppose. McDonald's has announced it's pausing its political donations to reassess…but during the 2020 election cycle, the company reportedly donated half a million bucks to federal candidates, 63% of which went to Republicans including Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

So to me, in the chicken sandwich consideration, that's a wash. I've decided not to let it stop me if I'm driving past a Chick-Fil-A and I feel like downing one of their sandwiches.

But then the Chick-Fil-A I'd most often patronize is only a few blocks north and across the street from a McDonald's where the new sandwich is okay — not quite as good as Chick-Fil-A's but not a bad alternative. And they do have better fries and I can also get a burger while I'm there…

…and I think my decision will probably come down to which side of the street I'm on. And whether it's a Sunday.

My longtime pal Marc Wielage has much to tell us about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons…

What happened was the group kind of split up in the 1970s and wanted to perform different kinds of music. (Valli did the theme for Grease and other songs and had a decent solo career.)

Eventually, by the mid-1980s Valli and business partner Bob Gaudio controlled "The Four Seasons Partnership" and they bought out the old members. They hired new, younger singers to perform with Valli and did oldies shows for the next few decades. I saw Valli perform at a benefit for the Hurricane Katrina victims in late 2005 at the Greek Theater, and it was just Valli (71 at that time) and 3 new guys about 30 or 40. They had a backup singer/keyboard player way off to the side that hit all the falsetto notes that were a bit out of Mr. Valli's range — but it was still a great performance and the highlight of the show. He had genuine charisma and clearly enjoyed the crowd.

Valli and Gaudio own all the rights to the group's name and most of the master tapes and publishing for their hits, so they've profited handsomely from sales, radio broadcasts, and of course the Jersey Boys Broadway show and film. A guy I know who knew Valli while at KRTH-FM says that Valli made more money from that show than he did in his entire performing career.

That sure wouldn't surprise me. A lot of folks in the entertainment field manage to hang around long enough to wide a wave — and it's sometimes a huge, gnarly one — of nostalgia. There was something about Frankie Valli and his repertoire that set him and the Four Seasons apart from eighty-seven thousand groups like that you haven't much about since Lyndon Johnson stepped down.

And I doubt anyone who goes to see him perform in the last few decades cares a lot about which three or four other guys are on the stage with him as long as they sound more or less like the records.

Here's Valli in God-knows-what-year singing what I think was his best song…

• Some people don't seem to understand the difference between a private company deciding to take some of its products off the market, and the government or society banning those products.

Speaking of conventions, as I seem to be lately: WonderCon@Home will commence three weeks from yesterday. March 25 and 26, there will be many glorious online events to make up a little bit for the fact that we cannot all congregate in person in Anaheim this year either.

I have recorded three panels that will go online during those two days…

• The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel — in which I talk about Jack for an hour with famed fantasy author Neil Gaiman and popular TV presenter Jonathan Ross…
• The Groo Crew — in which I appear with the other folks who deserve the credit/blame (pick one) for the comic book Groo the Wanderer…Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth, talking about upcoming Groo releases and about Stan's comic, Usagi Yojimbo and…
• The Cartoon Voices Panel — in which I spend an hour talking with four top voice artists (Maurice LaMarche, Mara Junot, Brock Powell and Anna Brisbin) and get them to demonstrate their skills.

Announcements are forthcoming about the dates and times these will be available for your viewing pleasure, and there will be many more panels and presentations by other folks.  I assume there will be panels in July for Comic-Con@Home but we'll get to them.

Rich Firestone writes…

You know, "The Four Seasons" still confuses me, because as I recall, when those guys started, there were four guys onstage, including Frankie. There's even an album cover showing the band lifting Frankie up on a silver platter, and one of the four guys lifting Frankie…is Frankie! I assume Frankie got a promotion, or the others got demoted at some point, but it still seems weird to see five guys on stage at a Four Seasons show!

I'm no expert on this — and it's been a while since I saw Jersey Boys — but my understanding is that at some point, Mr. Valli went solo and was replaced in The Four Seasons…and then there were bookings where it was advantageous to have him perform with that group. So it was like a former member of The Four Seasons performing with the current roster of The Four Seasons.

Certainly if I am wrong about this, I will have eighty e-mails by Noon telling me so.

Hey, how about another number from Frankie Valli and the current Four Seasons?

And here's an update on our post from this morning. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced in a press conference today that the homeless folks who've been sheltering in the city's Convention Center are being relocated. More details here.