For no reason whatsoever, I felt like watching this prehistoric Billy Joel video. Here it is, just in case you feel the same way for no reason whatsoever…

Andy Paquette, a friend of mine and a darned good artist, writes to ask…

Another question for your blog: I am wondering whether some comic book covers were "written" and others weren't. I ask because some covers have strong storytelling and others have none or very little. Almost any Curt Swan Superboy, Action Comics, or Superman cover tends to stand on its own as interesting to look at, to read, and to think about. Many DC covers from the same era have the same quality, while later eras do not.

Neal Adams' covers appear to have been done both ways. Sometimes he was given a story and asked to illustrate the story, or he was given a page asking for a specific scene. On other occasions he was told, "just draw Batman in an interesting/dramatic pose." Or so it seems. My favorite Adams cover, or one of them, is from Phantom Stranger. It depicts a boy pretending to shoot a scientist in a lab, who reacts as if actually shot by a real bullet. In another, from Superman, we see a closeup of Supergirl's boots, the bottle city of Kandor smashing to the ground, and Superman yelling, "Supergirl, What have you done?"

I'm curious how many of these were literally written as covers and delivered to artists much like a script page for an interior story. Some have that feel, and some don't, but I have a hard time believing that almost any cover in the last 20 years was done that way.

It seems like a lost art now. It's a shame, because those "story" covers are what often induced me to buy a comic as a kid, and interests me now as a collector.

The answer — and some people who write about comics don't seem to get this — is that there was a lot of variance in how issues of a comic were produced.  Julius Schwartz often told of certain issues where they designed and drew a cover and then handed it to a writer and said, "Here — come up with a story that fit this cover." That made a lot of folks assume they did every issue that way and that's not so. Sometimes covers were conceived and/or drawn before and sometimes after.

And at DC during the period you're asking about, Carmine Infantino was in charge of the covers. Sometimes, the basic idea for a cover would start with the writer of a story, sometimes with the book's editor, sometimes with Carmine, sometimes with someone else in the office, sometimes with the artist. I once watched a cover conference where Joe Kubert walked in with three rough sketches based on an idea that Robert Kanigher was then writing. Joe and Carmine discussed the idea, Carmine looked over Joe's sketches, selected one and then marked up the rough to indicate how he wanted a few things changed…and Joe went off and did the finished art.

The whole conference took about six minutes. Later, Schwartz came in with the finished art for an issue of World's Finest Comics. He and Carmine went through it and picked out a scene in the story which might make a good cover, then Carmine did a sketch which was later turned into finished art by Neal Adams.

During this time, Jack Kirby would send in rough sketches for the comics he was writing, drawing and editing for DC and it became obvious to me that he and Carmine had very different ideas about what made a good cover and how to stage a scene. Carmine had the final word there so the covers on Jack's DC books of the time were usually either based on Infantino sketches or Infantino's modifications of Kirby sketches.  I personally think that either man was capable of drawing a great cover but when Jack worked over a Carmine layout, the result was inferior to what either would have done on his own.

Neal Adams was in the DC offices a lot.  His rough sketches were very impressive and so was he when he "sold" one to Carmine.  So he came up with cover ideas around which stories could be written and he also looked at finished stories — or maybe just the scripts — and came up with interesting cover concepts that were kinda/sorta in those stories.  It worked many different ways.

So — to finally answer your question — some covers were "written" and some were just someone coming up with an intriguing cover.  No hard and fast rule.

Here's Bob Hope's opening monologue for the 1971 Academy Awards telecast. It does not go well for ol' Bob…

In following the trial — something I often wish I could resist doing — it helps to remember that the trial is not being directly televised. What we hear is coming from observers who were in the room and who may or may not be interpreting it the way you or I would. And a lot of it is coming from folks on a newsroom set who are repeating and perhaps paraphrasing what folks at the courthouse are telling them. And there's a whole mess of mind-reading going on.

So as I'm watching, I'm thinking that…and also how uncomfortable Jake Tapper looks as he keeps having to quote the term "orange turd" that was spoken in the courtroom.

This morning, Stormy Daniels was being cross-examined and if the reports are correct, Trump's lawyers were trying to push the fact that Ms. Daniels has made a lot of money off her alleged encounter with Trump. I guess that's supposed to suggest she has a solid motive to lie but I would think that if she was lying for money, she would make a lot more by making the encounter sound a lot less consensual than she seems to be doing. She does seem to have made the point that Donald Trump is out to make money every possible way he can.

If I understand correctly, the Defense position is that the sexual encounter absolutely did not happen and also that it was absolutely consensual. Meanwhile, CNN seems obsessed with telling us when Trump is whispering to his lawyers. I have no idea why that information is supposed to be of interest to us.

They're on now to less — shall we say "colorful?" — witnesses. I'm going to try to not follow this case, at least until they put Michael Cohen on the stand. That's the exchange I wish they would televise.

Buddy Hackett visits The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for May 5, 1983. Buddy brings some jokes but before that, he and Johnny get to talking about The Three Stooges and Hackett tells how he once turned down the job of being the third Stooge…which is true. But they get the lineage wrong of who was in the act when and Johnny also says they're all dead but Joe Besser didn't die until 1988 and Joe DeRita lived until 1993…

So we have this Running-Mate-Wannabe who thought it would make her look good to tell the world how she killed her dog. And now we have this President-Wannabe who thought he should tell that same world that a worm ate away part of his brain. I can't wait to hear the next installment of "Things You Perhaps Should Not Tell Voters When You're Running For Public Office."

Here's a recording of tonight's live broadcast by the folks who bring you The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. Their blog and podcasts are in no way affiliated with Comic-Con International but they still bring you lots of news and tips about that great annual event. Since this is their first podcast of the season, their guest was Yours Truly. It's just like how Jim Nabors used to be the guest each year on The Carol Burnett Show's first broadcast of the season…

It was easy today to not pay a whole lot of attention to the Trump Trial as Stormy Daniels testified. Every time I turned on the news to hear the newscasters repeat what was being said in that courtroom, I said to myself, "The jury has to listen to that but I don't" and turned it off.

The witness on the stand just before her was an executive from the publishing firm that issued Donald Trump's books. He had to testify that they were indeed books written by (or at least approved by) Donald Trump because Trump and his legal team refused to stipulate that this was so.

If you know of the wonderful Susan Buckner, you know her because of her role as Patty Simcox in the movie Grease and for appearances on a wide variety of TV shows and a few films in the seventies. I know her as that lovely lady I met on a TV show I wrote in 1978. She was brimming with talent and beauty and she could sing and act…and I was one of her many friends who was stunned when one day, she decided to give that up and opt instead for a marriage and a family. We kept in touch and she never seemed to have regretted that decision.

I took the above photo of her in my old apartment around '79. This was when she was still acting and wherever we went, she somehow got recognized as the girl in Grease, even though (as you can see) she looked nothing like the character in real life. Thirty-some-odd years later, she was in town, we got together and I took her to the Magic Castle for an evening. Among the many bars at the Castle, there's one that is sometimes — and don't ask me why — referred to as "The Golddiggers Bar," referencing the troupe of young ladies who used to sing n' dance in that group on The Dean Martin Show.

Susan had been one of the Golddiggers. Actually, she was a lot of different things. She had been one of the Krofftettes, the swim/dance troupe that did water ballet on Sid & Marty Krofft's Brady Bunch Variety Hour. She was Miss Washington in whatever beauty pageant it was that crowned a Miss Washington at the time. She was in other groups. That night at the Castle, she wanted to visit the Golddiggers Bar because…well, just because. I escorted her there, we ordered non-alcoholic beverages and the bartender said to her, "Hey, you were the girl with the glasses in Grease, weren't you?" It was the most amazing feat I ever saw at the Castle.

She was a lot more than any of her credits. She was truly charming and funny and lovely and I don't have anything else to say here right now. I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that she's gone. If there's an Afterlife, I'm sure someone there is asking her if she was the girl in Grease.

I have a real busy day today and it ain't helping that Stormy Daniels is testifying in the Trump Trial. I have no idea what that adds or doesn't add to those proceedings but it sure is fun watching newsfolks on TV relaying the latest details of her testimony and paraphrasing all sorts of things that are apparently being said in that courtroom.

One thing that makes me think Trump will lose badly is that he keeps posting and saying things like "THEY HAVE NO CASE – This according to virtually all Legal Scholars & Experts." Well, maybe the experts on Newsmax. With Trump, "Everyone says" is the greatest tell that he knows it's not true, as in "All legal scholars, both sides, wanted, and in fact demanded that Roe v. Wade be overturned." He's never right about unanimity or even near-unanimity.

As I try to look away from the trial and focus on work, I won't be posting much here today but I do have something for you. In this recent post, I wrote about the day in 1994 when I recorded Arnold Stang in New York for a Garfield cartoon. After that, I took the limo that our producer had let me hire to Kennedy Airport in New York and I flew to Orlando, Florida. In '95, I wrote an article about what transpired in Orlando at Walt Disney World. I've never put it up on this blog but I just did and you can read it here. See if you can solve the mystery of the missing luggage before I do.

Here's one of my favorite scenes from one of my not-favorite movies. The movie was The Seven Little Foys (1955) which was not among the best of Bob Hope's films. But there's this one part of the film where Hope (playing Eddie Foy) and Jimmy Cagney (slipping back into the role of George M. Cohan) have a dance-off at the Friar's Club. They both worked hard on the scene and it was especially hard for Cagney who, it is said, was suffering from knee problems at the time and in some pain. He sure doesn't show it and according to John McCabe's book on the actor…

When Jack Rose, The Seven Little Foys producer, first approached Jim about his salary for the job, he refused payment, not only as a favor to Hope but as a contribution to the memory of Eddie Foy. "When I was a starving actor, I could always get a free meal and a friendly welcome at the Foys. You don't forget things like that."

Watch it. It's not long and it'll remind you that Hope was quite a hoofer and so was Mr. Cagney…

Richard Baron wrote to ask me…

Carmine Infantino was the primary artist of the 1952 series for The Phantom Stranger. Based on a conversation I had once with Sy Barry, a major inker on the series, he had a special fondness for the character. Curiously, or not, shortly after Infantino moved into management, the character was given his own book. I don't think this was a coincidence. Do you know anything about this?

Not a coincidence in the slightest. Infantino was the first and main artist on the series which came out in '52 and lasted a mere six issues. It was a good comic but not a particularly unique one. Almost every company back then took a stab at some mysterious character in a big hat and cloak who was not unlike The Shadow, wandering about in spooky circumstances, making folks wonder if he was alive or a ghost or what.

In my opinion (for whatever's that worth) it was a pretty good comic.  According to its editor, Julius Schwartz, he and Carmine (and others) were disappointed that the company gave up on it so quickly. It was a bi-monthly and as we've noticed elsewhere, back before the direct sales market emerged for comics, if a book lasted six bi-monthly issues, that meant the decision to cancel was probably made on early sales reports for #2.

I am not the only person who believes that this was a mistake that many comic book publishers in the past made way too often. They all probably talked at great length about trying to attract new readers to the newsstands but then expected those new readers to find a new comic immediately. It was like opening a new restaurant on Monday and deciding on Wednesday to go out of business because customers weren't flocking to your door. And I think DC really made this mistake a lot in the late sixties/early seventies after Infantino was put in command.

But he didn't make that mistake with the Phantom Stranger revival…and it's pretty obvious why Infantino and his crew decided to revive it in 1969.  One was that Infantino and editor Joe Orlando had a belief that super-hero comics were cooling down and the next trend was "weird" comics — ghosts, demons, spirits, etc.  Secondly, they both thought the character deserved another chance…

…and thirdly, they could judiciously use reprinted material from the first series to lower the cost of a new book.  At about the same time, they took old stories from DC's defunct Dobie Gillis comic, did some retouch work and marketed a "new" comic of old material now called Windy & Willy.  They also began cramming books like Strange Adventures and their romance titles with reprints, often altered to look less like reprints. This was when they paid bupkis (nothing) to the writers and artists whose work was reprinted.

Reprints in 32-page comics didn't sit well with readers of the day and most such attempts sold poorly…but the Phantom Stranger book swiftly shifted from partially-new to all-new and the new material was good enough to make the comic a modest hit — for a while. It ran seven years, making it one of the longer-running "new" comics of its day…lasting until (again, in my measly opinion) it had too many reprints stuffed into the package and too many miscast artists.

I am a big fan/supporter of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog, a website operated by a couple of enthusiastic folks who love Comic-Con (the one in San Diego) and WonderCon (the one in Anaheim) and make a great effort to help others enjoy those cons as much as they do. Their enterprise is totally unaffiliated with the conventions themselves but it offers valuable information and suggestions to make your con-going experience easier, safer, less expensive and just plain happier.

Should you be considering attending either con, keep an eye on the SDCCBlog. You should also listen to their fine podcasts which commence in May each year. The first one leading up to this year's Comic-Con will be live online tomorrow night, May 7, at 6:30 PM West Coast Time, which of course is 9:30 PM back east. As has become tradition, their first guest of the year will be me. I will post it here but if you can, watch it in real time over on their website.

If you're going through withdrawal due to an absence of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, this may tide you over. HBO has posted all of Season One on YouTube. Here's a link to where you can watch 'em and see what's still relevant and what isn't.

This is about fifteen minutes from a series that ran on TV for three seasons starting in 1971 — Johnny Mann's Stand Up and Cheer. It was a half-hour that helped fill a void that appeared in TV schedules at the time called The Prime Time Access Rule. Rather than explain what that was, I'll cut-n'paste the following from here…

The Prime Time Access Rule, designed to encourage the production of local and independent television programming, went into effect in September 1971. By the mid-1960s the prime viewing hours had been almost completely locked up by newly expanded editions of both local and network news and by a network prime-time schedule that ran from 7:30 to 11:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. The access rule allowed networks to provide programming for only three hours per evening in prime time (four on Sundays), with the intent that this would open 30 minutes per evening to local productions and independently made programming. All three networks relinquished the 7:30–8:00 pm slot, the prime-time segment with the smallest audience, but most local stations elected to air nationally syndicated programming during the time period rather than less-profitable local productions.

At first, a lot of those freed-up time slots were filled with syndicated "barter" shows, meaning that a sponsor paid for the show, took some of its commercial spots for itself and let local stations that aired the show sell the others. Stand Up and Cheer, as you'll see, was made possible by Chevrolet.

Johnny Mann was a choral leader, though apparently not much of a singer himself. He specialized in commercial jingles, especially "I.D. Programming" for radio stations — like when you'd hear a chorus sing the name of the station or a disc jockey. Hundreds of such snatches of music were produced by Mr. Mann and whatever vocalists he could assemble for a session and call "The Johnny Mann Singers." He was also the bandleader on Joey Bishop's late night talk show that challenged and failed to unseat Johnny Carson from 196Y to 1969.

He was also the musical director for a lot of Chipmunk projects from the man known variously as David Seville or Ross Bagdasarian. Mann helped with music and sometimes provided the voice that was sped to create Theodore, brother of Alvin. Mann also produced Grammy-winning records and…well, he was pretty active.

His Stand Up and Cheer show starred a bevy of good-looking singers who could dance and energize the screen and some of them were so good, it's remarkable that none of them, as far as I know, went on to any notable stardom. I can only recognize two of them. One is Gayle Crofoot, who went on to be a performer on other variety shows (including a couple I worked on) and a Solid Gold Dancer and a performer on Broadway.

The other, who was a star of sorts before and after this series, was Thurl Ravenscroft…the only age-inappropriate member of Mann's Troupe. If you don't know who Thurl Ravenscroft was, shame on you. You can find out all about him here. I'll bet most people who would come to this blog know who he was, how he was the voice of Tony the Tiger, how he's still heard all over Disneyland, etc. Sometimes referred to as "Pappy" on Stand Up and Cheer, he often got special solos to show off his amazing voice. In the clip below, you'll find a real short non-singing bit with him at 10:25.

The series was super-patriotic and occasionally religious to the point of feeling very plastic and shallow but I kinda enjoyed its energy now and then. Here's the first half of one episode…