A reader of this site, Karl Williams, sent me a whole bunch of questions for this "ASK me" feature. They're good questions but not the kind I'd build a whole long post around so I've decided to answer them in bulk here. The next voice you hear will be that of Mr. Williams…

You used to host wonderful Golden Age Panels at Comic-Con. I understand why you can't do them anymore because so few people are still alive who did comics in the forties and most of them won't make the trip. But if you could assemble one last Golden Age Panel with ghosts, who would you have on it?

Jerry Siegel, Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby and Will Eisner.

Is there any Golden Age writer or artist who's alive who you never got to interview and you'd still want to?

Yes. Jules Feiffer.

Leaving aside Jack Kirby, who do you think was the most talented artist to ever work in comic books?

Oh, I can't answer that. It's especially hard because I have as much respect for the artists who drew funny animal comics as I have for the ones who drew adventures and super-heroes and how do you compare what Wallace Wood and Neal Adams did to what Carl Barks and Harvey Eisenberg did? (A pet peeve of mine is when someone makes up one of those lists like "The 50 Greatest Comic Book Artists of All Time" and you can tell the listmaker knows most of the hundreds and hundreds of super-hero artists and about three of the ones who did funny comics.

Since I'm evading your question, I'll make up for it with a story that I may have told here before. This was at some Comic-Con in the eighties, I think. I had lunch with a wonderful artist and a bit later, I was walking through the main hall and I came upon a gathering of about eight of the "hottest" artists then working in comics — the kind of guys who'd make most Ten Best lists. Felling impish or maybe just curious as to what their reaction would be, I said, "Well, I just had lunch with the best artist at this convention."

They all glared at me with defiant looks and challenged me to tell that person's name. I fearlessly said "Mort Drucker" and there was dead silence for about four seconds as they thought it over…then they all agreed.

Who to you is "the" Superman artist?

There's something about the work of Joe Shuster and his many ghosts/assistants that I find unequaled by those who followed. It isn't that they drew a great Superman so much as that they drew him in a world where I found it easiest to accept that Superman existed.

That was in the forties, of course. In the fifties and sixties, I loved the work of Curt Swan and Wayne Boring. I know a lot of people — especially those who came to Superman after Boring was gone — don't like his version but I have to admit that most of my favorite Superman stories of those decades were drawn by Boring and he handled drama better. Then again, I thought Swan drew better pin-ups and covers of the character. And later on, I really liked what Ross Andru did, especially when not being inked by Mike Esposito. There were a few others.

Favorite Jack Kirby inker?

IMHO: By far, the best artist who ever inked Jack Kirby was Jack Kirby…though if I was his editor, I think I'd rather have him pencil two or three comics a month instead of penciling and inking one or two. I also think Neal Adams was the best inker for Neal Adams, John Buscema was the best inker for John Buscema, etc. There are a few exceptions to that but not many. But if Jack didn't ink Jack, my five favorites were — in alphabetical order — Bill Everett, Frank Giacoia, Mike Royer, Joe Simon and Joe Sinnott.

Karl sent me a lot more of these questions and I'll get to them at some future time. In the meantime, here's this little box…

You're probably watching The Daily Show at least on Monday nights when Jon Stewart hosts. But just in case…

I admire the guts of whatever guy at the advertising agency thought this would be a good way to sell 7-Up…

John Oliver made his offer to Clarence Thomas — quit the Supreme Court and get a luxury motorhome plus a million bucks a year for life — on the telecast of Last Week Tonight on February 18. The offer was good for 30 days so time's up and I would imagine when Mr. Oliver does his next show this Sunday, he will have something to say about that.

I'm not bothered by Trump getting off the hook for that $454 million bond he can't post. The fine in this case was probably going to be reduced on appeal anyway and now that he has ten days to post a $175 million bond instead…well, that's not exactly pocket change. If and/or when he loses his appeal, he'll probably have to come up with some amount between those two numbers…and as Kevin T. Dugan notes, Donald still has money problems aplenty.

Jonathan Chait has an interesting article about the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The program is succeeding in almost every regard and all the predictions of doom and destruction it would cause have turned out to be — surprise, surprise! — dead wrong. Chait says that the G.O.P. still wants to nuke it, if only because it was a "win" for Democrats but they don't want to run on that. They want to talk as little as possible about what they might do about it. You know what that means.

One mistake tourists make when they come to Hollywood is thinking there's a Hollywood that one can go visit. There's a big sign on a hill. There are studio tours and TV tapings. There are many great sightseeing opportunities not actually in any area that can be described as "Hollywood." But if you get in a cab and tell the driver "Take us to Hollywood," God knows where he's going to let you off.

You might find yourself on Hollywood Boulevard, which has about as much to do with the place that makes movies and TV shows as Sunset Boulevard has to do with the sun going down. You can go to the Chinese Theater and see which stars of the past had the same size feet you do. You can walk down said Boulevard and see a lot of their names embedded in the Terrazzo. You can even pay to have your photo taken with an unauthorized Spider-Man in a homemade costume that doesn't get his boots right.

(A year or three ago when I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, reading the stars' names in the pavement. I decided for no particular reason to take a photo of the name of the first star I came across who I'd worked with. It didn't take long to find one and take this picture…)

It is truly The Street of Disappointments. Big ones. It's also sometimes dangerous. You might get swindled by a conman, mugged by a thug or — worst of all — accosted by someone who works for Jimmy Kimmel who'll drag you into a bit where you can't help but come across like Gomer Pyle.

I've been around that street for much of my life. There used to be great bookstores there for the comic book collector. There used to be a lot of great restaurants there instead of just The Musso and Frank Grill. There used to be parking spaces.

And I think in all my years, I've only had one real incident of seeing "stars" outside of Musso's. I told it back in this post and now that I review it, I see that I accidentally left out the punch line. Here's what I said then…

One of my favorite "star-spotting" memories occurred not far from the Musso & Frank Grill. Across the street and down a bit is the Hollywood Magic Shop, which like most magic shops caters to a lot of amateurs and beginners. But it also serves many celebs and seasoned professionals, and one day in the seventies when I was walking by, I spotted two men standing out front — Orson Welles and Carl "The Amazing" Ballantine. Carl was heckling tourists who walked by and Orson was roaring with laughter at everything Carl said, which is still not an uncommon response around Ballantine. I stood there for maybe ten minutes, taking in the show until a huge convertible pulled up at the curb and Welles, with great effort, went over and got in. Years later, when I became friends with Carl, I reminded him of that day and thanked him for that moment. It was one of the rare times Hollywood Boulevard was ever as colorful as we all wish Hollywood Boulevard was.

And here's the punch line which a professional writer of comedy would have thought to include: After Welles departed, Carl started to walk off, then turned and announced to me, "My next show is at three o'clock!"

So you get what I'm aiming at here: That street is a pretty crummy place to be that famous and I don't think anyone disagrees. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and other such agencies agree so much that they've been drawing up plans to refurbish long stretches of it and so far, all the announced proposals or plans or whatever they are sound terrible to me. Most include narrowing (yes, narrowing) one of the slowest-moving streets in town so they can widen the sidewalks to encourage more pedestrian traffic and more restaurants with sidewalk dining.

In so doing, they will eliminate an awful lot of parking spaces, thereby breaking an immutable rule of Los Angeles: People here never go anywhere it's difficult to park. It's an obvious reason for many businesses failing.

And nothing in the proposals I've seen does much to make the Boulevard either safer or more interesting. I'd suggest they start the renovations with three things: More off-street parking lots and structures, a friendly police presence and having Disney build some Carl Ballantine animatronics to heckle passing tourists. That's about what it would take to get me up there to do more than dine at Musso's.

Here's a "Tiny Desk" concert of four songs from the Broadway show, Wicked. Stephen Schwartz (who wrote the songs) is at the piano. The two vocalists are Alyssa Fox and McKenzie Kurtz — two of the 43,046 actresses who've played Elphaba and/or Glinda since this show opened in New York on October 30, 2003. So far, it's had about 7,890 performances at the Gershwin Theater in New York. This is a lot…

Recently, the Disney organization announced this year's roster of "Disney Legend" inductees. They are, in no particular order: Kelly Ripa, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Miley Cyrus, Martha Blanding, James L. Brooks, James Cameron, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Frank Oz, Joe Rohde, John Williams…and Steve Ditko. More than a few folks have written to ask me…

A lot of people seem to feel it's inappropriate for Steve Ditko to be named a Disney Legend. How do you feel about it?

I kinda feel if it makes his family happy — and I'm hearing it does — fine with me. True, he doesn't seem to have ever worked for Disney but that does not seem to be part of the criteria to be designated as a Disney Legend. You just have to have played a major role in something that made the corporation a lot of money or will. If them's the rules, he's qualified.

Would the notoriously fan-shy artist have welcomed the honor? Probably not. He probably would not even have liked people printing and circulating the few photos of him that are around but his most devoted fans ignore that. (I saw one of them on Facebook say that the Disney honor is wrong because Ditko always shunned awards. I have a hunch the person who said this expressed no displeasure when Mr. Ditko was named to The Hall of Fame and would have been outraged if the artist had been snubbed.)

Yes, Ditko shunned awards and interviews and after he attended one of the first comic book conventions, comic book conventions. He also was upset to the point of actually speaking out — well, writing a few angry letters — when his role as co-creator of Spider-Man was denied or ignored. I'm not pretending to be able to speak for him but since the Disney organization will probably own and exploit the hell outta Spider-Man and Dr. Strange for all eternity, it might help keep Ditko's name attached that they've now formally recognized his contribution.

Yes, it's that time of the year again — the time when I, on behalf of the blue ribbon committee that has no blue rubbons, solicit nominations for the annual Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. We will select someone who is alive for the honor and there will also be a posthumous award…and if it goes as it usually does, someone who doesn't know what the word means will suggest someone who is very much alive should receive the posthumous award.

(A Tip: If you have a good candidate for the posthumous award, try and suggest someone who would be an appropriate person to come pick it up — a relative, a co-worker, someone.)

All past nominations will be considered so if you nominated someone in the past, you need not submit them again. Basically, we're asking if any new names have occurred to you.

This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer…someone who is or was unrecognized and/or unrewarded for that body of work. It is not for your favorite artist. It is not for someone who wrote a few stories. It is not for someone whose talents have been honored over and over and who got very, very rich and/or famous writing comics.

It is also not for anyone who has received this award in the past. The full list of such people can be read over on this page.

Here's the address for nominations. They will be accepted until April 15 at which time all reasonable suggestions will be placed before the committee and we'll make our decisions. They'll be announced before this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and the awards will be presented then and there. That is all.

There's good news tonight: My friend and collaborator Will Meugniot is already up and walking after his cancer surgery yesterday. So says his wonderful wife Jo. You have no idea how happy this makes me.

This blog was down for about twenty minutes yesterday because of maintenance work by its hosting company. I think some folks are spoiled by websites like eBay and CNN which are almost never/ever down because I got something like forty e-mails, some time-stamped three minutes after we went offline. I'm sorry for the outage but do yourself a favor, folks. If a non-vital site is down — and this one is about as non-vital as you can get — give it a half-hour or so before you write to complain.

I'm a little confused. Trump's lawyers are saying there's no way he can come up with the dough he's supposed to pay by the Monday deadline. He's running around saying he's got the cash. I suppose we'll find out in about 36 hours. When I get up that morning, I'm going to check eBay and see if Mar-a-Lago is up there with a $1 opening bid. If I can get it for less than six grand, I might buy it. Looks like a great place to store documents.

Note to self: Never order a Fatburger again. They aren't anywhere near as good as they were when you occasionally had one last century.

For those who live in Southern California: There will be five performances of the very-adult improvised show from the Henson Company, "Puppet Up!" between April 26 and April 28. Tickets are on sale now but going fast. I'm skipping this time but you might not want to.

Lastly for now and because people keep writing to ask: No, neither Sergio Aragonés nor I will be present at WonderCon next weekend. But if you are, I'm sure you'll have a peachy time. Make sure to say howdy to my longtime friend, Tony Isabella. And I ain't kidding about longtime friend. We met in person close to 54 years ago following 2-3 years of intense pen-palling.

Let's watch a clip from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 5/5/92. His guest is Mel Brooks who reflects on being a guest on Johnny's first broadcast, then Mel tells The Cary Grant Story. Don't miss The Cary Grant Story…

From Daniel Klos…

Random question if you're ever looking for a quick blog post: When sitcoms are filmed before a live studio audience, do they play the theme song for the audience prior to filming in order to get them in the proper mood?

Quick answer: Occasionally. I haven't been to any sitcom tapings (or filmings) for a few decades but when I did go, they sometimes played the theme. They sometimes had a little video reel they'd show the audience featuring great moments from earlier episodes and it might include the theme song. They sometimes had live musicians playing music as part of the warm-up and they'd often play between scenes and somewhere in there, they'd perform the theme song — without the lyrics if the theme song had lyrics.

Before a taping of All in the Family, they'd roll out a little piano and Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton would perform the theme song, "Those Were the Days," live just for the live audience. I haven't heard of a show doing anything like that in years but it wouldn't surprise me if one did.

This came to me from John Parkinson…

I've tried to ask this question before but maybe it didn't get to you or you're not interested, but I'm dumb enough to keep trying.

When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel he didn't pick up books (with the exception of Captain America) he was once most identified with. He did do covers for those books though. So was he never offered say Fantastic Four or was he simply not interested in revisiting those characters?

If Jack had been allowed to do whatever he wanted then — this is when he came back in 1975 — he would have written, penciled and edited all-new books which did not crossover into other comics and he would have avoided characters that were under the creative control of others. He basically wanted to be left alone. A lot of this had to do with his experiences doing Jimmy Olsen for DC. The editorial office there was constantly criticizing the way he handled the established characters…and even one he created (Morgan Edge) once that character began appearing in other books.

Jack understood the power of the "Marvel Universe" concept having been a key architect of it. He just felt that he could make his strongest contribution at that moment by going to new places with new players, plus he also felt a lack of respect from some of the people he had to deal with on the Marvel editorial crew at the time. The less he had to engage with them, the better off he felt he would be.

Mostly to be a good sport/team player, he agreed to take on Captain America and, later on, The Black Panther. Those were not his choices but that's where Marvel — mainly Stan in this case — wanted him. Also, Jack did not want to displace anyone from their regular assignments. At the time, Captain America had no regular creative team assigned and later when he took on Black Panther, it was because Stan wanted to launch a new series in a new direction. So Jack wasn't bumping anyone off a job there either. He would have had he taken on Fantastic Four or Thor…and as I said, he really wanted to be left alone to do new books.

Here's the Legal Eagle guy to explain what's going on with Trump down in Georgia. Seems to me Mr. Trump is in a lot of legal trouble — here, there and just about everywhere — and it ain't going away soon. He may be going away soon but his problems with the law won't…

The Fine Arts Theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills is running my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at 2 PM on Sunday, April 14. I mention this because folks keep writing me to let me know. I know, I know. I doubt I'll be attending. The Fine Arts is a lovely place to see most movies but I'm spoiled. I need my favorite movie on a bigger screen and will probably wait for the reopening of the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood even if, as it now appears, that ain't happening in '24.

I also don't think my ankle will be up to going by then. It's getting steadily better and I'd know that even if the surgeon who reassembled it hadn't said as much in a post-op visit last Wednesday. But it's still going to take a while…

This is the "Tiny Desk Concert" of the show Company — specifically, the genders-reversed production that played Broadway and out here a few years ago. Having not seen it — and after realizing I've always liked parts of the show but not the whole thing — I have no opinion on whether the sex changes made it worse or better. I am curious though about one line change in the song "You Could Drive a Person Crazy."

It used to go "When a person's personality is personable / He shouldn't oughta sit like a lump / It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull / To try to get you off of your rump." Now, it goes "When a person's personality is personable / She shouldn't oughta sit on her butt / It's harder than a matador coercin' a bull / To try to get you out of your rut." Did Mr. Sondheim change that and if so, why?

Here are four songs from the show including that one…