Dave Garroway was a popular TV host in the early days of television. He was best known as the host of The Today Show on NBC from 1952 to 1961 but before that, he hosted a live variety half-hour called Garroway at Large. It came out of Chicago from June of '49 until June of '51. As you'll see if you watch the entirety of this episode from November 19, 1950, the show had a nice troupe of singers and comedians as well as the then-typical array of on-air bloopers and mistakes.

The member of his cast that you're most likely to have heard of was Cliff Norton, who had a pretty good career as a supporting player and comic actor. I wrote about him here. He had the distinction of being edited out of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World shortly before its release so his name is in the opening credits but he's not in the film.

The special guest on this episode of Garroway at Large was Al Capp, a very awful man who wrote and drew the very wonderful comic strip, Li'l Abner. Before we had the recent debates about whether you could still admire Bill Cosby's work despite his personal transgressions, I heard professional cartoonists having the same argument about the work of Mr. Capp. He appears in the last third of the show mainly to segue into a sketch with the Garroway supporting players dressed up very badly as the characters from Lil Abner. It's…odd.

I've set the video embed below to begin playing at the point in the program when Capp is introduced but if you want to watch the whole show, you can click here. You can also just watch in the window below by moving the little slider back to the beginning…

I spend less and less time these days reading online forums — on Facebook or elsewhere — about old comic books. It's a topic dear to my heart but discussions there are too often hijacked by the occasional participant who's lacking in knowledge about the field and/or an ability to cope with someone having different tastes. It's especially bad in debates over super-hero comics and especially especially (two especiallies) over super-hero comic book artists of the past.

The most debated-over of the seventies is probably Frank Robbins and after reading the eighty-seven quadrillionth thread about him, I feel the need to write something here about the man and his work…and by extension, about creative talents of his generation. In some cases, though the work is long since done and the folks who did it have passed from this mortal coil, some people are still hating on them…to what purpose, I have no idea.

I mean, it's not like there's a chance of Frank Robbins, who died in 1994, coming back and drawing more Captain America stories. Some of us loved what he did but there are folks who I think worry about that happening again. And he didn't even do that many.

Mr. Robbins was mainly a writer-artist for newspaper comic strips…and one of the best. Like about 50% of the artists who drew adventure newspaper strips at the time, he was heavily influenced by two men — Noel Sickles and Milton Caniff — who were in turn heavily-influenced by each other. Caniff in particular was regarded as the supreme role model by most in the adventure strip field and Robbins was hardly the only guy who drew a lot like him.

Robbins was such a natural at the Caniff/Sickles style that he not only got a job producing a nationally-syndicated strip at the age of 19 but the strip he was handed was the popular Scorchy Smith and he took it over from his hero, Noel Sickles. That's how good he was. At the age of 19.

A few years later, Robbins decided to create his own strip and his Johnny Hazard ran in papers from 1944 until 1977…a most impressive run. It was also in the Caniff/Sickles style but what a lot of his fellow artists believed but rarely spoke aloud was that Robbins "did" Caniff better than Caniff. Among his peers, that was a widely-held opinion — if not in the forties then certainly later on. The late Alex Toth used to rant on and on about how as Caniff's work declined over the years, Frank Robbins just got better and better.

Robbins was also, as an artist, lightning-fast. Caniff sometimes spent 60 hours a week producing the daily and Sunday Steve Canyon strip — and that was with one or more art assistants plus a letterer. Robbins, drawing a strip with similar density and detail, would write and draw Johnny Hazard in three days a week — two for the dailies, one for the Sunday page — unassisted except (sometimes) by a letterer. With the rest of his week, he would paint and do what some would call "fine art" and his creations wound up in some pretty prestigious galleries.

Robbins was proud of his "fine art" but there was a problem with it: It didn't pay all that well. And in the sixties, the kind of newspaper strip he drew was going out of fashion so his income from it was dropping slowly but certainly. He was concerned about that one evening around 1967 when at a gathering of the National Cartoonists Society, he met Carmine Infantino. Infantino was then transitioning from drawing for DC Comics to running DC Comics.

Infantino's mission right then was the reinvention/revitalization of the entire line and a lot of longtime freelancers were dismissed — some because they demanded health insurance, some because Carmine thought their work was old-fashioned and dull. There were also some personal animosities in play. One of the people he brought into the DC Talent Pool was Robbins, who decided that it would be more lucrative to spend the days he wasn't working on Johnny Hazard working for DC Comics.

He started as a writer and his first efforts were awful. There's a 1968 issue of The Flash where you can even find a letter from me saying as much. I am now embarrassed by some of those letters and I also now understand the problem that I didn't fully understand then. It wasn't all Mr. Robbins' fault. Marvel was gaining dangerously on DC in sales and several DC writers were ordered to emulate Stan Lee. They all did a pretty poor job of it, picking up on Stan's worst habits and missing even the point of them.

When Robbins stopped trying to do that, he turned out to be a pretty good writer. In fact, he became my favorite Batman writer of the period and I was pretty fussy about Batman writers. He also wrote Superboy for about four years producing what I think were the best Superboy stories ever done.

Eventually, Robbins also drew the occasional story for DC and on Batman, his artwork was instantly controversial…to say the least.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2

Here's a Legal Eagle Double Feature for you: Two videos by Devin Stone, the YouTube attorney who talks a bit too fast but seems to know his stuff. In the first, he evaluates the many past and present lawyers who've represented Donald J. Trump in his many recent investigations, indictments and lawsuits. Some of these folks will probably write books and I wonder how many of them are going to say that the reason they lost was that the client insisted on doing things his way despite sound advice to the contrary…

And here's Counselor Stone talking about a legal issue regarding online videos in which someone shows someone else's video so they can "react" to it and when that does and does not qualify as "Fair Use." Stone used to do such videos. He and a lawyer friend would show some law-oriented movie and comment on how much what was in the movie resembled actual courtroom procedures and how much the legal content resembled the actual laws…

Last night, the Writers Guild held a meeting at the Hollywood Palladium. The last time I was in that building up on Sunset Boulevard was for the meeting at which we voted to end the 1988 strike. It's hard to believe that the Palladium has not been torn down and replaced by a Walmart…or just plain fallen down on its own accord.

Anyway, I didn't attend last night but my great friend Shelly Goldstein did. In the wee hours of this A.M., she wrote and posted a report on Facebook and I just got her permission to share it with you here…

My thoughts on last night's WGA meeting at the Palladium. Bear with me:

The room was absolutely packed. The energy was unlike any industry or guild event I've ever seen. I'm going to describe it with some simple adjectives:

"Happy"

"Positive"

"Engaged"

"Unified"

Not a single person in the room thought it was a perfect deal that would revolutionize the industry and end all our creative and financial problems.

It wasn't a roomful of wild abandonment, 1,000 people looking to party. Although there was palpable joy oozing from every inch of the room.

It was a roomful of focused, celebratory word-nerds justifiably proud — showing absolute respect to our board and negotiators…and reveling in the joy of a word that gets way too little respect in this country and perfectly describes what we need a hell of a lot more of:

"Union."

People were — ok, this sounds silly, but it's all too rare in 2023 — "nice." The room was engaged, everyone wanted to hear from others' experiences on the line. People showed care and concern for each other. If you bumped into somebody, they apologized before you could. People showed genuine joy for what we did over 146 days.

What "we" did — thousands of people in the WGA, thousands more who supported us in countless ways. Not — as in the past — a single Kingmaker or Exec or Agent or Politician who swooped in to save the day. It was all of us, together.

The leadership spoke beautifully – notably our President, Meredith Stiehm and co-chief negotiator, Chris Keyser.

If Chris' speech was video'd, please watch it. It was articulate, factual, heartfelt and invigorating. We all bought the pitch in the room.

Our chief negotiator, Ellen Stutzman, went through the deal point-by-point — with pride and intelligence, never overselling it. She explained what was asked for, what was possible, what was accomplished, how it was different from similar asks during these negotiations (and during past decades.) She told us what they'd said and how the negotiators moved the line as best they could.

And moved it, they did. Not 100%, but no one in the room was silly enough to believe that was possible.

Still, the gains in the deal run the gamut from good to strong to spectacular.

How long has it been since a "rally" offered its attendees simple "facts?"

Ellen also made it clear the WGA's future intention is not merely to rest on this contract, but to work more closely with the members to make sure provisions are adhered to by our employers.

Cheers and standing ovations were plentiful. My two favorites went to Drew Carey & "Fake Carol."

There was clear support for SAG, IATSE, UAW and other union workers.

I have been in this guild for a long time and I've never seen anything like it. I don't know if I ever will again.

We all know there will be problems. We're screenwriters.

But sometimes we're blessed with a moment of clarity and actual joy.

This was one of them.

For years I've sung "It Goes Like It Goes," the Oscar-winning song written by David Shire & Norman Gimble from the 1979 film Norma Rae. It ends with this lyric, that played through my head throughout the evening:

It goes like it goes, like the river flows
And time, it rolls right on.
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better.
And maybe what's bad, gets gone.

Last night, thanks to our membership, our leaders and our allies, things got a little bit better.

May it continue.

As you may have heard, all the late night comedy shows are returning to the air: Bill Maher this Friday, John Oliver on Sunday and Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon and Meyers on Monday. Seth Meyers won't be having any guests that night. He's doing a one-hour catch-up "A Closer Look," and I have high expectations for it.

At the moment, Mr. Oliver and Mr. Meyers are my favorites followed closely by Mr. Colbert. My TiVo is set to snare their shows but I figure anything that might interest me on Kimmel's or Fallon's shows will be easily catchable on YouTube. Over the last year or so, I've found that the occasional smart observations from Mr. Maher aren't worth sitting through the many things that seem to be said just to prove he's unafraid to say things that might be unpopular…and I feel like that's the reason he's saying them.

The Daily Show will return on October 16 with more of its on-air auditioning guest hosts. I would guess that Hasan Minhaj is no longer as high as he once was on the list of those who might get the job permanently. Mr. Minhaj, who I liked the few times I saw him perform stand-up, has been accused and has more or less confessed to telling stories from his life that were exaggerated to the point of being…well, if not lies then the next-closest thing.

True, most comedians do exaggerate or simplify true tales to make them shorter or clearer or more pointed or, most often, funnier. I think most audiences understand that but there's a line one can cross and Minhaj seems to have crossed it too far too many times. To his credit, he's confessed to his "crime" but that doesn't give him back all or even enough of his credibility.

Someone will probably write in to ask why, if SAG-AFTRA is still on strike — and it is — the hosts can appear on television again. It has to do with how the role of talk show host falls outside the category of what the current strike is against. I'd explain it in greater detail but that's about all I know. Actors, however, are not supposed to be promoting product from the companies they're striking so the guest lists may be…uh, interesting.

I'm trying to limit the amount of attention I pay to the guy who insists he won the last presidential election even though he can't persuade one judge in this country — including the ones he appointed — that this is so. Still, with the very, very bad news he's gotten lately, it's hard to look away.

If you're puzzled about the adverse ruling he received the other day — or arguing with MAGAfied friends who say D.J.T. was wronged — you might want to watch Ben Meiselas, a civil rights attorney and a partner in the Meidas Touch Network, explaining what it is that Trump and his associates did wrong. Skip past the annoying ad in this video. I like the Meidas Touch Network but I question their integrity in some of the sponsors from which they accept advertising.

In a non-hysterial, non-theatrical way, Mr. Meiselas explains the situation and, unlike so many who discuss this kind of thing these days, cites actual evidence. Too many people think that "facts" are things you establish by saying them louder and more often…

The Writers Guild has declared its strike officially over…with the slight caveat that it could resume if the membership rejects the offer. I said earlier that they won't and now that I've studied it a bit, I'm even more certain than that. It really is an impressive list of gains, maybe the best I've seen in my five (5!) Writers Guild strikes.

And of not-nearly-as-much importance, I've declared my little telethon fund-raiser over…which is not to say you can't continue to donate via the clickable box in the right margin. I'm just going to stop being a nag about it and interrupting the posts here with banners. Thanks to all who gave whatever you gave. You've helped fund this blog for another year during which it will only cost me an awful lot of my time.

The leadership of the Writers Guild of America has announced that the strike will end at 12:01 AM tonight Pacific Time…which is actually tomorrow morning.

In the past, strikes didn't end until the membership had voted to accept the contract but the way it's done now (I guess) is that we go back to work while we vote and if by some chance the membership votes to reject the deal — which won't happen — then we go on strike again. Or something. I'm not entirely certain how that would work but like I said, it won't happen. Voting will be October 2nd through October 9th and I'll go out on a shaky limb here and predict 94% acceptance.

Here is the deal. Here is a comparison of what we asked for and what we got. I gave both a quick read and this is by no means a serious analysis but it reads like a damn good deal. It's certainly an improvement on the final offer we got back on May 1. I would like to hear what people with legal training and more business acumen than I have think of it. I can already hear some people yelling "It's not good enough" but we hear that on every contract, especially from those who wouldn't be losing anything if we stayed out a few more months.

I'll also be interested to hear how our new terms could benefit SAG-AFTRA in their negotiations, which I presume will be resuming shortly. On some level, this kind of thing is like parents with a lot of kids: If you give one child a bicycle, you have to give every child a bicycle. But studio lawyers are sometimes very crafty at giving one union a gain in terms that don't easily translate to another union. I hope they haven't managed to do that in this instance and that our gains become actors' gains.

This might be the oldest episode of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show I've ever seen. It's from January 14, 1964 and while the video isn't great, it's amazing that this exists at all. You'll notice the show has a very different pace from Johnny's later broadcasts and from any other talk show of the last few decades.

Johnny makes reference to his announcer Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson sitting in for him the past few nights. I vaguely remember nights like that and I also recall a few times when Ed guest-hosted all by himself. For some reason, Ed in later years (and in his autobiography, I believe) complained that he'd never been asked to guest-host. I don't know what that was all about…

The Writers Guild of America is still on strike. Yes, there is a deal that our negotiators seem proud to present to us and yes, all picketing has been canceled for now. But there's still a process of approvals and acceptances that the offer must go through and this is how it always works. Some folks out there seem to think that if the offer were any good, we would have accepted it and gone back to work immediately. Nope. We always have to go through the process.

Some folks also seem to have unreal expectations about the offer. It may well be a very good offer but it cannot possibly match some fantasies I'm reading. Remember that all negotiations in every walk of life are based on the principle of Barely Acceptable. If I'm trying to buy your car and we're haggling, my goal is to offer you what you'll consider Barely Acceptable. That may be a very good amount for you but it will not be way more than you were willing to take.

And of course, let's remember that our friends at SAG-AFTRA are still on strike. A settlement with the writers may (I underlined "may") provide the basis for a settlement with the actors on some issues but actors have some issues that don't impact writers and vice-versa. Some things in our deal may be, to use the term folks use in this kind of bargaining, precedential. But not everything will be.

Also, the actors just voted by 98% to go on strike against video game companies if ongoing negotiations are not successful. So there may still be labor unrest in the entertainment field for a while. That's just how it always is in any industry that employs people who expect to be paid what they're worth and treated accordingly.

Martin Scorsese has directed some of the best movies ever made and most of them convey some powerful message with skill and depth. So it's odd that when he complains about "comic book movies" and says they're a danger to the whole concept of cinema, I have no idea what the f-word he's saying. That is unless he's saying that everyone should be making Martin Scorsese movies and I don't think it's that.

I also can't believe he thinks that any force in the world can stop the film studios — including the ones that fund and distribute Martin Scorsese movies — from making whatever the public is paying to see. At the moment, that list includes what he calls "comic book movies" and so it will be until enough of them lose money that the studios turn to something else.

He also seems unaware that the studios are making plenty of films that in no way fit any definition of "comic book movies." Plenty of them were up for Oscars last year. Plenty will be up next year. Here's a list of some of them for this year…

Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, Barbie, American Fiction, The Holdovers, Past Lives, The Zone of Interest, Origin, Maestro, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Color Purple, Ferrari, Anatomy of a Fall, May December, The Bikeriders, The Iron Claw, Air, Saltburn, Dumb Money, Rustin, All of Us Strangers, Freud's Last Session, Napoleon, The Burial, American Symphony, Fair Play, BlackBerry, Priscilla, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Wish, The Taste of Things, Nyad, The Boys in the Boat, Fingernails, She Came to Me, Asteroid City, A Little Prayer, The Teachers Lounge and The Royal Hotel.

There are a couple of things in there you might call "comic book movies" but not many. Then I think back to past years when it seems like half of what the movie studios were making were imitations of Porky's, Smokey and the Bandit and Halloween. Did all those movies warp an entire generation's mind of what a movie could or should be?

Mr. Scorsese is acting like "comic book movies" are some new thing. Just to take a some-time-ago decade at random, the highest grossing movie of 1980 was Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back. The highest-grossing movie of 1981 was Superman II. The highest of 1982 was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the highest-grossing movies of the following years were Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Batman.

I dunno about you but I'd call most of those "comic book movies." And now here we have Scorsese saying of the current flock, "The danger there is what it's doing to our culture…because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those — that's what movies are." Me, I think we've always had a movie industry that put forth a significant number of movies about which one could sound that alarm. I don't get why that's a problem now.

I miscounted. Today is the last day of our little telethon. The staff of newsfromme (which consists wholly of me) thanks all of you who've donated to the cause, which is to prevent me from being tempted by all these e-mails I get from folks who want to advertise on this site and/or send me "paid content" posts to run.

At least one said they'd pay me well for displaying a post they wrote but I had to agree to not let on that it was sponsored and that I didn't write it and I would have to allow the impression that I diligently used their product and recommended it highly…but they wouldn't tell me what the product was. Oh — and I would have to commit and sign a contract before they'd tell me what the product was. I said no, of course. With my luck, it would have turned out to be some brand of cole slaw…

This is from The Ed Sullivan Show for December 7, 1969…a couple of tunes from the singing duo of Sandler and Young, who had a tendency to turn popular songs into versions that their composers never imagined. If he was watching, Paul Simon was probably cringing at the second of their two numbers but I kinda liked them.

I saw them live in the early eighties at the old Sahara Hotel in Reno fronting "The Penthouse Pet Revue" — a show which featured a number of ladies who had allegedly appeared in Penthouse magazine walking (not dancing, just walking) around the stage in minimal apparel. In Reno then, that's what passed for entertainment…

As we all know, I get a lot of spam calls, many of them from home improvement contractors or people who work for home improvement contractors. I also get a lot from people with companies that pretend to have some official association with Medicare and from people who want to buy or sell my home.

One interesting and pleasant one I got a few weeks ago was from a gentleman who is running for the Los Angeles City Council in an election next March. This was the actual candidate himself calling voters asking for their support and we had a lovely conversation that was mostly about the problem of homelessness. Maybe I was snowed a bit by the direct appeal but he sure sounded smart and honest and eager to win that seat for all the right reasons.

I ended the call after about ten minutes because, as I said, "You have a lot more voters to call if you're going to get elected" but he sure convinced me to vote for him…though I won't. I can't. I looked him up online and I'm not in the district where he's seeking office. He's calling the wrong people.

So this morning, I got a call of a kind I've never received before. It's from a company that wants me to hire them to promote my book. "Which book?" you might ask. This book…

Back in the eighties, I wrote a brief run on a revival of Jack Kirby's New Gods for DC. I didn't like it very much and I could list all sorts of reasons why I was prevented from doing what I wanted to do but it wasn't all the fault of others. I screwed up, starting with agreeing to what I should have known was an impossible situation. There's a great quote that is either from Alan Jay Lerner (who co-wrote My Fair Lady) or Moss Hart (who directed it). One of them said…

In my life, I have had many successes and many failures. The successes were for all different reasons and the failures were all for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.

I must be more versatile than whichever of them said it because I've had failures for a great many reasons. Saying yes when I meant no has only been one of those reasons. But the fact that I don't think I did a good job on the book is not the reason that when DC put out some collections of those issues a few years back, I didn't plug them on this site or put up Amazon links or anything. It's a reason but I also didn't mention them on this site because I didn't know about them.

No one at the company told me in advance and I kinda understand that. The way DC Comics has been run since they relocated to Burbank out here seems somewhat chaotic. There have been times when it feels like someone high up in the Warner empire is occasionally calling one of those agencies that represents temporary office workers and asking, "Hey, have you got someone there who can run a comic book company for a few weeks?"

That's only about half a joke. I've dealt with some great people there but it feels like immediately after they deal with me, they either (a) get fired, (b) get moved to somewhere else in the company or (c) get the hell outta the company and go work for someone else in what they hope will be a more stable environment…you know, like being Donald Trump's attorney.

Anyway, I absolutely understand why no one let me know about these books before they started putting them out. The way I found out is that someone came up to me with one at a convention and asked me to sign it. And then when I got home from the con, there was a box of them waiting for me and eventually, I got some royalties. Whoever's there now at the company sending out contributor copies and royalties is good at his/her job.

I'm not sure that will explain to your satisfaction why I haven't mentioned these books here but it explains it to mine. You will notice that there is no Amazon link to any of these books here nor am I urging you to check them out.

So this morning, I got a call from some stranger who asked, inventing a whole new way to pronounce my name as he did, if I was "Mark Evanier, author of Bloodlines." I said no. That title did not register with me at first but then I remembered. He told me it was a wonderful, wonderful book so I instantly knew he hadn't read it. The conversation then went roughly as follows…

ME: Really? What was your favorite part of it?

HIM (after a long pause): The ending. I really thought the ending was great.

ME: Oh? Did you like the part with the elephant stampede?

HIM: That was the best part. (There was, of course, no elephant stampede in that book. At least, I don't think there was. I haven't read it since it first came out.)

ME: Okay. So did you just call to tell me how much you liked it?

HIM: Well, yes and how I think it's a shame that more people haven't heard about this wonderful book and bought it and read it. I happen to work with a firm here that…

ME: Let me guess. I pay you money and you publicize my book.

HIM: Yes, we are prepared to arrange for saturation publicity on the Internet as well as in print media. We could set up podcast interviews with you and get your book written about in publications for the book store trade. You would receive full penetration.

ME: Wow. I haven't had an offer of full penetration since I was about nineteen and I was being hit on by this choreographer…

HIM: Pardon me?

ME: Never mind. Listen, I'm going to save you some time. I'm not going to pay you or anyone to publicize that book.

HIM: But…but don't you want people to read this book?

ME: Not really. Please take me off whatever list you're using and don't call again. Oh and by the way, there are no elephants in my book.

Click. About twenty minutes later, I got a call from someone who said they were with "Healthcare Benefits, affiliated with Medicare" trying to get me to let them send me a back brace that I in no way need…and I'm not sure but I think it was the same guy. Different number but I think the same guy. And if I'd recognized his voice sooner, I would have told him, "And by the way, there are still no elephants in my book."

We had a little surge in donations yesterday and I think we'll hit my target number — the amount I was hoping to collect to keep this blog online and healthy — today. Even if we don't, my main source of income looks to be returning soon so I'm ending the telethon tonight. Jerry Lewis used to end his by singing "You'll Never Walk Alone." If I sang, most of my donors would write in to ask for their money back so I won't do that. If you're grateful that I won't…