I got this a few weeks ago from Barry Wallace who wants to know…

Thank you for the brief visit with Daws Butler and it is wonderful to hear that such a wonderfully talented man was so nice. A recurring topic on your blog is the good fortune you had to meet and even work with performers who you watched as a child and it must have been great to have a friendship with the voice of Yogi Bear. But I have to ask if anyone you ever met in this sense was a disappointment to you. Was everyone as nice as you hoped they'd be?

Pretty much, yes…and that goes for comic book creators as well as folks I knew of from television. I have mostly good memories of the ones I first knew from television and then later in real life. There were a few who in comics who were exceptions (to me) and maybe a half-dozen in the comic book industry. Each of those fields had about a 2% Asshole Factor and I'd rather not name names here. And that word you used — disappointment — that's exactly what it was. Not anger, not contempt…just a sense of "Gee, I wish I'd had a better experience with that person."

One of the things that happen when you meet the person is that you're meeting a real person. You may have loved their work but they may have bad memories of what happened on that project…what they were paid…what it did or did not lead to. They may not be working much these days and might have anger or deep worry about that. (Some people can be very touchy when complimented about long-ago work because they think you're suggesting they haven't done anything good or successful lately.) Some of them may have family or relationship problems.

Getting to know them better might mean getting to see the aspects of their life that you might have preferred not to see. Those, I'm pleased to report are rare but sometimes not rare enough. So I guess the answer to your question, Barry, as to whether everyone was nice as I hoped they'd be is "Not everyone but most."

Trump's tariffs are unsettling many industries but none more than the publishing biz which depends a lot on getting books and magazines printed outside the U.S. Those who traffic in books in and around the comic book field have had another body blow with the announced bankruptcy of Diamond Distributors, the folks who get their wares from Point A to Point B, Point B being the stores that sell the books to customers.

To put it simply, all publishers who serve that marketplace are going to suffer and the smaller publishers — because they haven't the clout to demand not to be paid last and because they are more likely to depend on last month's receipts to fund the printing of next month's books — are in the most trouble. Some of them literally will not get paid for books of theirs which sold in recent months.

I feel for all of them but am here taking up (and talking up) the cause of TwoMorrows, a small firm which since the mid-nineties has been publishing some of the best magazines and books about the glorious history of comic books. It started with The Jack Kirby Collector but soon expanded to include Alter Ego, Comic Book Artist, Draw!, Back Issue, Comic Book Creator, Retrofan and many more…and those are just the magazines. Many of these and many of their books have won Eisner Awards and other trophies.

They've signed with a new distributor — Lunar — and if you treasure any or all of these publications, now would be a good time to support them. How can you do this? By doing one or more of the following.  TwoMorrows has posted this list…

Order something at www.twomorrows.com!
Anything you purchase directly from us — print or digital — will help us stay in business, and avoid disruptions to our upcoming releases. Get our new 2025 catalog here for easy ordering.

Subscribe or purchase our next few issues!
Retailers could miss some items during our switch to Lunar Distribution, and new tariffs may result in price increases. Save by pre-ordering upcoming items from TwoMorrows now, and subscribe or renew your current print or digital subscription.
Check out our Rainy Day Sale for:
• Full 8-volume sets of American Comic Book Chronicles hardcovers at 30% off!
• Rare Kirby Five-Oh! unnumbered hardcovers!
• One-of-a-kind complete runs of File Copies of our magazines, Modern Masters books, and more!

Tell your comics shop to switch their Diamond orders to Lunar!
Diamond cancelled orders for all new items starting with the ones below. Use these Lunar Codes to re-order at your local comics shop by February 10!

1224TM832 Alter Ego #192
1224TM833 American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-69 (new printing)
1224TM834 American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1980s (new printing)
1224TM835 Back Issue #158
1224TM836 RetroFan #37

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Have you contributed to our publications and need more copies of your work for your files, or for family and friends?
• Any magazine issue you contributed to is $3 each plus shipping.
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This is me again and I have little to add to this. TwoMorrows produces excellent publications which do the good work of uncovering and preserving the history of comics. Their publications and important and excellent and deserving of your support. They're not asking for handouts. But if you've been thinking of ordering some of their excellent magazines and books, here's your chance to do so and help them keeping doing the fine work they do.

Everyone oughta see this. It's Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing his nation's response to Trump's new tariffs. And here's a link to Paul Krugman telling us what all this may lead to…

I've received this question a number of times and answered it privately so I thought maybe it should be answered here for all to read. This time, it was from John R. Troy…

I have a question based on reading your blog for over two decades. Most people who blog tend to not to write as much as you do, and many bloggers end up having a sporadic schedule, and give up, with the exception of professional columnists who are using a professional blog like Substack.

With the amount you regularly post, I am curious why you bother to make posts letting people know you are busy. There's the mushroom soup can which means you have to focus on paid work, and there's the Sorry notice which covers all other cases. The latter I get concerned about because in some cases there's been serious issues and we don't get posts for several days.

But in the former case, you post so frequently that I wonder why you bother putting up the can? We tend to get at least 1 daily post from you, in some cases several. Usually when I see the can the next day there's a new post. So I was curious if you have your own personal quota, posting schedule, or goal you set for posting articles, and this is just a way to compensate if you don't make that quota. Knowing this is a personal blog, I've never expected a quota of articles, I don't know of any specific schedule you have, and while you accept donations, it's not a Patreon with any sort of set standards. Outside of the "tradition" factor of the can, is there any other reason for the notice?

I post whenever I have the time and something I think is worth posting. I don't think of it as any obligation but I guess I've created a certain sense of expectation in those who come here. When I don't post when they expect me to, I get a lot of concerned e-mails and phone calls asking me if I'm sick or dead or sick and dead. Or maybe I've been arrested. Or I've decided to quit blogging because I haven't done it in eighteen hours.

For some reason, no one ever thinks, "I guess Mark is busy" or even that my computer might be broken, my Internet connection might not be working, my electricity could be out, etc. I don't like people worrying about me so it's easier to post something than to answer those worried messages.

In case anyone's interested: There are currently 32,566 posts on this blog of which 264 are "Encore" reruns. I started this blog — it had a different name then — on December 18, 2000, which was 8,814 days ago. So I'm averaging about 3.6 posts per day. When I started at this, a more experienced blogger I knew advised me to never post more than once a day, which is what he did. He said that way, followers of the blog would get used to visiting it once a day and would suffer no disappointment if there was nothing new there.

I didn't do that because I like the immediacy factor of a blog…but I guess by posting at all hours, I've developed some amount of visitors who come here more than once a day and I hate the idea of disappointing them. So let me apologize in advance for the next time I go a few days without posting.

It's Frank, Dino and Bing performing the "Style" number from their 1964 movie, Robin and the Seven Hoods. It's a film I wish I liked more than I do but this is a pretty good number. Bing Crosby was a last-minute cast replacement. His role was originally supposed to be played by Peter Lawford but he and Sinatra had a falling-out, after which they not only never appeared together but never even spoke.

It had to do with a planned visit to Los Angeles by then-President John F. Kennedy. J.F.K. was going to stay at Sinatra's home, which was a big, proud deal for Frank. But then Bobby Kennedy got worried that Sinatra's ties to Organized Crime (or at least, Organized Criminals) would taint the President's good name. J.F.K. wound up staying instead at Bing's home and while Sinatra obviously didn't blame Bing, he was furious at Lawford who, he believed, had the connections to stop this from happening and didn't.

Anyway, I don't think it's a great movie but I like this scene…

Hey, while I've got your attention: Did you know that Rupert Holmes and some other folks turned the movie into a musical that never made it to Broadway? It was full of songs by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. The two of them wrote the score for the movie (including "Style") but the stage version ditched all the numbers in it except for "My Kind of Town" and substituted other hits from other sources by Cahn and Van Heusen.

The musical tried out in San Diego at the Old Globe Theater in 2010. It was there during Comic-Con that year and if I'd known, I would have made time to go see it but I didn't know. As far as I'm aware, it went nowhere after that so maybe they should have left "Style" in. Here are some moments from that try-out…

P.S., ADDED A FEW HOURS LATER: It just dawned on me that I put up the clip of Frank, Dean and Bing before…a few years ago here. Forgive the duplication. It's worth seeing again.

This is being posted all over Facebook and other dens of social media. I found it interesting and decided to put it here. This is by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University…

I'm going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University-Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.

Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of The Art of the Deal, a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all deal-making as what we call "distributive bargaining."

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves, the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining. the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not as a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked.

Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from U.S. farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn't another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on U.S. goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the U.S. and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to U.S. farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM — HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, Negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists on flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether it's better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.

This reminds me of so many people I've encountered in this world. Sometimes, they've been haggling with someone over the selling price of an old comic book or a piece of artwork. Sometimes, they've been arguing with me or my agent over what I'm to be paid for my services. But they're very into this concept of "winning." They aren't fond of the deal where both sides go away pleased with what they got because in those deals, they didn't get to beat someone.

I've met people who would rather make a hundred dollars in a deal where the other party went away in tears than a thousand dollars with both sides going away happy. It was for them more of a sport than a business deal and there were sometimes very blatant ego problems showing…or anger. When the Writers Guild has one of its weekly strikes — okay, so they aren't weekly but they feel that way — there are always members who have vast amounts of anger against The Producers and The Studios. And those members don't want a deal that works for both sides. They want a show of power than leaves the other guy bleeding and begging for mercy…which is never gonna happen.

I get worried when I hear someone suggest that Donald J. Trump is trying to run international negotiations the way he ran his casinos. We all saw what happened to those casinos.

A gent named Jim McCawley was at one point The Most Powerful Man in Show Business, at least insofar as wanna-be stand-up comics were concerned. He was the main person who could put an act on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson back when that was the main route to comedy stardom. When McCawley walked into The Comedy Store or The Improv or anyplace up-n'-coming comedians could be found, you have never seen so much butt-kissing in your ever-lovin' life.

That stairway to stardom no longer exists and it barely existed the last year or two that Johnny was on the air. Back when it was at its full power, the Tonight Show stage was one of the few places a new comedian could prove himself. And if he did, if he scored there, he was well on his way to the thing most new comedians back then wanted more than anything else: Their own sitcom. Almost all of them wanted to follow in the well-paid footsteps of Freddie Prinze, Gabe Kaplan, Drew Carey, Jimmie Walker, et cetera, et cetera…

These days, most of them seem to want to follow Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Bill Burr, Kevin Hart and other concert-hall fillers…and talk show appearances won't get you there. To the extent anyone today can turn a new comic into a superstar, it's probably a top-level booking agent.

Anyway, I never got to know Jim McCawley too well. When I saw him at a comedy club, his time was monopolized by aspiring comics. We became slightly friendly one day though in the NBC Commissary. I was lunching with someone he knew, he joined our table and began talking about a comedian from Canada he was trying to book for The Tonight Show. Johnny was hesitant and so were the comic's agents…all for reasons I couldn't understand. McCawley was certain the comedian was headed for stardom and wanted to get him on Johnny's show before that happened so the program would get some credit and keep its star-making image.

And not long after that, the comedian did get on The Tonight Show and did go on to much bigger things. Here was his first appearance…

In this video of new TV shows on ABC in 1969, there were clips from The New People, a revolutionary — and maybe a bit ahead of its time — series created, under a bogus name, by Rod Serling. My old pal Buzz Dixon found it as intriguing as I did and he wrote about it here on his blog.

Yes, I know there's a new lawsuit over the rights to Superman, this time from the nephew of co-creator Joe Shuster. No, I won't be writing about it, nor will I be explaining why I'm not writing about it. But if you want to read what's generally known about the suit now, here's a link. A lot of news sites have written pretty much the same things about it and some of them even spelled Joe Shuster's name correctly.

By the way, I don't know how many people know this: Saturday Night Live had a very fine writer in its early days named Rosie Shuster. She was married to Lorne Michaels and the Saturday Night movie is a lot about her. She was (and still is) the daughter of Frank Shuster, who was half of the Canadian comedy team of Wayne and Shuster, and she's a cousin of Joe Shuster. Yes, that Joe Shuster.

Lastly for now: I seem to have been officially announced as a Special Guest or a Featured Guest or whatever they call us for WonderCon Anaheim, which takes place the last weekend in March about two blocks from the ass-end of Disneyland. I expect to be doing a buncha panels at the con, many of which will be about the history of the comic book business during the years I've been reading them and — God help us — writing them. Tickets are on sale now

Billy Suratt wants to know…

I'm curious if there are any particular tools you find useful for writing, especially given the mix of mediums in which you work. Do you typically just fire up Microsoft Word and stare at a blank page until words start falling out of your head, or do you use some kind of more purposeful writing software like Scrivener?

Do you use different tools for different kinds of projects (comics script, TV script, screenplay, book, etc.)? Are there any particular tools you find useful for helping organize research (especially for longer-form projects like books) and keeping track of ideas for possible future use?

I've been trying to get acclimated to Scrivener for years but it's never completely took. I think whoever said it's "like Photoshop for writing" was right, but just like Photoshop, it's got a pretty steep learning curve at first. I relied on Evernote for saving and organizing research and jotting down ideas for years, but I don't trust the company that acquired it a few years ago and have been trying to figure out a better solution (Microsoft OneNote being one possibility).

I used Evernote for a while and even recommended it on this site. At some point, some upgrade or something new I wanted to do with it made pointlessly complicated so I switched. I now use the basic iCloud Notes program which does everything I need including syncing my notes between my PC, my iPhone and my iPad.

Years ago, my pal Steve Gerber wrote a template for writing comic book scripts in Microsoft Word. I used his for a while and then wrote my own which Steve switched to at some point. He was talking with someone in the software industry — I know not who — about developing an actual program based on my template (with me getting a cut) when he took ill and that was the end of that. Steve, sadly, did not recover from that illness and I still miss the guy.

Somewhere along the way, my template stopped working with newer versions of Word. I've managed to forget everything I learned about how to edit templates so…well, it works at times and doesn't work at others and I've given up trying to fix it. But I write my comic book scripts in good ol' Microsoft Word with or without my template helping me. I also use Word for all my prose writing. (I am, by the way, a P.C. guy and I don't mean Politically Correct.)

Years ago, I began writing TV, movie and animation scripts on a program called Script Thing. It was then new and going through a lot of Beta birthpains and I struck up an e-mail correspondence with its author. He turned it into a very good program. And I especially liked it after I persuaded him to include a feature which would output a dialogue script for animation — a script with just the dialogue and each speech numbered and I showed him how to format them.

He later sold Script Thing to its current owners who renamed it Movie Magic Screenwriter and did further improvements on it…but (big grin) they kept my animation script format. You have no idea how much easier that has made my life when I've been writing and voice-directing cartoons.

Movie Magic Screenwriter is great for screenplays but I've never been comfy using it for comic book scripts. One of these days, I may try it again for that and another funnybook-writing friend recommended I try Final Draft. Again, "one of these days."

Most blog posts (like, say, this one) are written in the online entry screen for WordPress, which is the software that powers this website. Once in a while, I'll do a first draft of one of the longer posts in Microsoft Word or even a plain Text Editor, then paste that text into WordPress.

But these days, that's what I use for writing. I've never tried any of these programs that purport to help you organize your thoughts or which analyze your writing and offers suggestions. I'm always afraid they'll scrutinize my writing and suggest a career in Motel Management. I hope this answers your question, Billy. Thanks.

Over in the right-hand margin of this page — if you read it on a full-screen desktop computer — you will probably find a column of links which look like ads. On a smaller screen, they might wind up anywhere but they should be somewhere there. And they are ads, I guess, though I don't charge anyone when I place one there, nor do I place them because someone asks. You'll see links to comic conventions and friends and places where you can spend money that might trickle my way…and I've just added a few new ones.

I just put up three links to fact-checking websites — The Washington Post, Politifact and FactCheck.org. I have found these three to be generally accurate in correcting public figures who are sometimes not accurate. Some of those public figures are spectacularly not accurate and some of them, I feel, don't even try to be. They just say whatever advances their campaigns for money and/or power and try to get you to trust them over sources that don't lie or spin their way.

It is always good to not trust any news source blindly. These next four years would be an especially good time to do this. You may even find out on occasion that the people you see as being on your side are, intentionally or not, not giving you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Another Broadway moment from a past Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. This is from 1983 and it's the title tune from the show, Dreamgirls — not one of my favorite musicals but this song was nice enough…

Like a lot of you, I'm hooked on playing Wordle from the New York Times every day.  It's getting to be just about the only thing dependable in the New York Times.  Several weeks ago, I did something that you can only do through sheer dumb luck.  I saved a screen image of it to put up here and then forgot to do so.  Here it is now — and I swear to you, this is legit…

There's a new version of Hollywood Squares now on CBS and my first thought was that this show gets revived more often than any decent villain who dies in a DC or Marvel comic book. But then I looked it up and say that the original series hosted by Peter Marshall ran from 1966 to 1980, then it was part of the Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour from 1983 to 1984 with Jon Bauman hosting the Hollywood Squares half. A syndicated version hosted by John Davidson ran from 1986 to 1989 and another syndicated version — this one hosted by Tom Bergeron — ran from 1998 to 2004.

So this is only the fifth revival? Apparently so but it sure feels like it's on its ninety-eighth resurrection. That may be because of a few variations that have been tried like Nashville Squares on CMT and a music-oriented version on VH1.

This new one is hosted by Nate Burleson, who's fine but like everyone on this show, a little over-energized. Every putative celebrity seated in the big tic-tac-toe board is a superstar legend and everything they say is hilarious. This gets a bit grating when it's one of those celebrities you've never heard of, let alone celebrated. They all, of course, have a funny answer to each question Mr. Burleson puts to them but some of them aren't too good at pretending they came up with that funny answer — or even the non-funny answer they give after that.

Hollywood Squares has always supplied its Paul Lyndes with snappy "zingers" and decent fluff answers but their Paul Lyndes were, I guess, better at faking this kind of thing than most of their current Paul Lyndes.

And like most game shows these days, the program has the feeling of being edited and seriously sweetened. Once upon a time, game shows were live and you were watching actual, right-before-your-eyes competitions. As with most talk shows — and others that allegedly present real-time proceedings — as technological advances made it easier to edit, it became increasingly difficult for producers to resist tightening up these three seconds of Nothing Happening, cleaning up that bobble, etc. Sometimes, even when it's well done, it adds a subtle sense of unreality to the proceedings.

Drew Barrymore is the Center Square on this version and one of its producers. Henry Winkler was one of the producers of the Tom Bergeron incarnation so I guess the premise is that you need a celebrity as producer to help round up other celebrities…or something like that. I like that the show moves quickly and they haven't tried to reinvent it so as to award someone life-changing money. If someone could win a million dollars on it, it might not be as much fun as it is…because despite the above quibbling, I kinda liked it. The only big changes I'd make would be to stop editing it, stop gushing over its "stars" and to put a CGI Charley Weaver in the lower left square.

In 1974, Marlo Thomas and a bunch of her friends — some of them quite famous — put together Free To Be You And Me, a special which sought to break down antiquated stereotypes. Or at least, they were stereotypes that should have been antiquated, having to do with how boys should act and how girls should act. Basically, the premise was that one should not let their life be ruled and their possibilities limited by someone else's gender-related prejudices.

In the following years, we saw these prejudices become someone less potent. They haven't all gone away but a lot have and I'm at a loss to explain how this special might have advanced the changes, except that I think it had some impact. I also think we might need a new version of this special to knock down a lot of stupid beliefs about human beings who don't fit neatly into either descriptor in a society that recognizes only two options. I'm a big believer in the "None of my business" viewpoint about what consenting, informed adults can do with their bodies.

I also think that, deep down, most of the politicians and public figures who are all in a dither about these issues really don't care about them. They've just found that there's money and power to be attained from demonizing people who are just doing what they feel is right for themselves. Unfortunately, there's always money and power to be attained from crusading against minorities.

Here from 1974 is Free To Be You And Me…

Because none is needed for this…

Former RNC Chairwoman Lara Trump said hirings should be entirely merit-based during a stop by Fox News on Thursday. The one-time television producer and aspiring pop star, who landed her role as the head of the RNC with no political experience, had no answers for why someone other than the most qualified candidate should get a job during an interview on The Ingraham Angle.

"We oughtta base hirings off of competence and merit, and that's it," The president's daughter-in-law said. "When you are hiring someone for any other reason, then you are doing a disservice to the public."