Pat Kelly wrote to ask…

I saw a partial reprint of the DC First Issue Special where Jack Kirby created the new Manhunter. It had a very intriguing all-text last panel: "Want to see the clash between Manhunter and The Hog? If so, write and tell us! MANHUNTER / P.O. Box 336 / Newbury Park, Calif. 91320."

The California address makes me think this was Jack's own mailbox. Is that correct? Were you working with The King when he produced Manhunter? Do you recall what kind of response this got, why he wanted these sent to him directly instead of DC (I can guess that part) and what response if any Kirby made?

I was not actually working with Jack when he did that Manhunter story though I was visiting the Kirby home often and being of whatever help I could be to Jack and Roz. As I recall, the issues of First Issue Special where Jack introduced this version of Manhunter and another creation named Atlas received virtually no reaction at all.

Both were "pilot" issues Jack did at the request of then-publisher Carmine Infantino. DC was looking to expand their line to compete with Marvel's concurrent expansion so they had a lot of people doing pilot stories for potential new comics but they weren't willing to gamble on starting many of those proposals as new ongoing titles. A few of those pilots were launched as new comics. A few wound up as one-shot issues of First Issue Special. A few weren't printed then but they found places for the material later. A few wound up in two very-limited-edition books DC put together called Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. A few were never printed (or finished) at all.

That was Jack's P.O. Box number and I'm fairly sure it's no longer active. He got it — well, he had Roz rent it — because when he first arrived at DC, the company intended to keep the fan mail away from him. They didn't want it going to California where he was. They didn't want the letter pages in his books to be assembled by his assistants (i.e., my pal Steve Sherman and me). In fact, Steve and I wrote text pages for the first issues of New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle and without telling Jack, the New York office discarded what we wrote and had Marv Wolfman write a substitute. Jack, who was supposed to be the editor of those comics, didn't find out until those first issues were on sale.

Jack fought a lot of battles with DC and lost some pretty important ones. Getting control of the letter pages in his comics — though not Jimmy Olsen — was one of the less-important ones he won. When he did, he had Roz rent the P.O. Box and it was also used when Jack went back to Marvel and had a battle with certain folks in the editorial division about what went into the letter columns of the books he did for them there.

I don't know what Trump's so upset about. I didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize either and I've never bombed anyone or sent armed troops into American cities. If you want to know why he's claiming what he's claiming, Mark Hertling explains what happened with those seven wars and why the seven "peaces" of which Donald is so proud of still has people trying to kill other people.

Hertling's article was published a few weeks ago and is out of date on the supposed eighth war — the Israel/Gaza mess. Fred Kaplan updates us on that one and allows as how there has been some impressive progress in dialing that one down but they've got a long, long way to go.

The folks who make TiVos have announced they are no longer making TiVos. There are articles all over the 'net (like this one) that try to explain wha' happened to their marketplace but it seems to me they were done in by two factors. One was that almost every cable company in the world decided to offer its subscribers a proprietary digital video recorder and to make it difficult, if not impossible, to record and watch programs on anything else.

Over the years, I got my television programming from a number of different cable or satellite sources and any time anything wasn't working properly, the suppliers' first response was to junk my TiVos and use their devices. Once, more than fifteen years ago, a service technician on the phone for one provider told me his company had just purchased the TiVo company and was shutting it down. Even people working for Trump never lied so baldly.

I always refused to abandon TiVo. I checked out a number of cable-provider-supplied DVRs and every single one was grossly inferior to whatever the TiVo people were offering at the time. On several occasions, I'd tell a service person I didn't want the DVR they offered and they'd ship me one anyway and add it to my monthly bill. It was a battle I won several times in the short run but couldn't help but lose eventually. The other thing that did TiVo in was the shift to streaming services that required no hardware except for a "Smart" TV.

I was a TiVo user from the start. I remember demonstrating my first one for friends who dropped by, none of whom had heard of such a thing…but immediately wanted one. Before that first TiVo, if you wanted to record a TV show in order to time-shift your viewing, you had to do it with Betamax or VHS cassettes that were never easy to program or even to keep up with what was where on which tape. TiVo was just easier in every way. But now that's over and the TiVo company — whatever's left of it and whoever owns it this week — will focus on streaming protocols and other projects, no longer leading an industry or even being particularly prominent in one.

I had to toss in the towel and go to streaming a few years ago but I still have about eight different TiVos in my house or garage. I tell myself I'm keeping them around for when I have time to plug them in again and dub off the programs I still have stored on their hard disks. But I think the truth is that I have trouble throwing away an old friend…especially one who served me so well.

Here's one of my favorite Monty Python bits. I seem to be the only person on this planet who remembers that once — a long time ago, before most of America knew of Python — this video was used on The Dean Martin Show. As I recall it — and it's been a long time — Dean introduced it on-camera and then the video played with his voice replacing John Cleese's.

Martin's producer Greg Garrison worked a number of deals with British television, some of them involving Marty Feldman and using BBC video of him on American television programs. This bit was funnier with Cleese than it was with Dino…

Once upon a time, the Republican Party branded a man named Al Gore a "congenital liar" and therefore unfit to be President because he claimed that the main characters in the book Love Story were based on himself and his wife. And it didn't matter one bit that the truth was that (a) Gore hadn't claimed that; he'd claimed correctly that some reporters had said that and (b) the author Erich Segal said that the characters were partially based on the Gores. Today, many who call themselves Republicans are perfectly satisfied with a Chief Exec who claims that…

• Babies are given 82 vaccines in a single shot, the doses are the size of two glasses of water, Amish people don't need vaccines and other false "facts" about vaccinations.
• Every single "Venezuelan drug boat" that he bombs would have killed 25,000 Americans.
• He's settled seven wars — or eight if you count the Gaza one which seems far from being actually settled.
• "We're going to be reducing the costs of medicines by 100%, 200, 300, 500% and even more than that."
• The Big, Beautiful Bill he signed into law earlier this year ensures no tax on Social Security.
• Joe Biden never ever said the U.S. had the strongest military in the world, tried to get rid of "Space Force" and gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine.
• He [Trump] raised what member nations contribute to support NATO,
• 25 million migrants entered the country under Biden.
• He [Trump] authored a book in 2000 that predicted what Osama Bin Laden was going to do.

…and many more. Above fact checks can be found here, here and here.

This is the seventh (!) in a series of what I can now say with some (but not total) certainty will be an eight-part recounting of the gastric bypass operation that I underwent in 2006. I suggest reading the earlier chapters before you read this one: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.

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This installment starts with me waiting in a waiting room for the moment they would begin prepping me for Gastric Bypass Surgery. I was waiting there for a long time.

And I just realized I misspelled a word there. I meant to put about twenty-seven Ns in the word "long."  It sure felt like forever but finally my name was called — mispronounced but called. I was led to a room where I took off my clothes and put on the first hospital gown I'd worn in many years that was not way too small on me. The Gastric Bypass Division knew their customers.

A few feet from me, being prepped for the same procedure, was a lady we'll call Anna who weighed about the same as I did but she was a foot shorter and ten years older.  After being separately gowned, we wound up spending some time on adjoining gurneys — instant friends because of all we had in common.  Her end of the conversation called to mind what my Dr. Preston had said about folks who have this kind of operation expecting it will change every single thing in their lives they could hope would change.  What Anna hoped would change — immediately, if not sooner — was her marital status.

She wanted it to move A.S.A.P. from Divorced to Wed and I got the feeling one of the reasons she was talking to me was to see if I could be the reason for the changeover.  Her divorce, she told me as she seemed to be telling everyone, had been because she'd "let herself go." If she'd kept herself at or about the poundage when she and Bill were married, there'd still be a Bill in her life.

Was all that true?  Beats me.  But she seemed charming and, particularly if she dropped 100+ pounds, probably a good catch for anyone seeking a mate in her age range.  I tend to think that relationships rarely end for only one reason…unless, of course, they only happened for one reason in the first place.  I hoped for her sake that Husband #2 came along as swiftly as she seemed to expect.

Our chat was interrupted by hospital officials sweeping in and out with forms we had to sign before we went under our respective knives…though mine and probably hers wouldn't employ knives.  It was to be was laparoscopic surgery — tiny, quickly-disappearing scars, not huge forever ones.  We did though have to consent to our procedures switching to the old-fashioned, filet-you-open method should our presiding surgeons suddenly deem it a necessity.  I heard that when a patient awakens after the surgery, the first thing most of them ask is, "Were they able to do it laparoscopically?"

That's not what I asked. A nurse in the recovery room told me I asked, "Can we send out for pizza?" That sounds like me and I'm sure I meant it as a joke.

What happened from the moment I awoke in that room to the moment I left the hospital is blurry now and it was blurry then. I recall being transported to a wing of the hospital where patients who'd had done what I'd had done stayed, post-bypass, for a few days. Anna was across the hall from me and there were other rooms with oversized patients who'd probably be dwindling in girth in the months that followed.

We were encouraged to get up and walk as soon as we could and it somehow fell to me to be the drill sergeant for this activity. Every ninety minutes or so, I'd go door-to-door in that wing and round up a gang to go hike around our floor. All the other G.B.S. patients there at the time were women, all (still) very large and we were all wearing these huge, unsightly paisley gowns. We must have looked like quite the sideshow, marching about like that. Every time we passed a nurses' station, I'd announce something like, "We're going to all get into one elevator and see if we can make it buzz!" Or "We're making a break for Jerry's Deli across the street!"

Sunday morning, I was told to go home though some in our wing who'd been there as long or longer were not. Anna, for instance, was staying. Phone numbers and e-mail addresses were exchanged but I didn't stay in touch with anyone except Anna. My lovely friend Carolyn picked me up in a taxicab — remember taxicabs — and we drove not to my house but to my mother's.

My mother then was 84 years old, somewhat frail and was hospitalized for one thing or another about every four months. I had made the decision not to tell her of my elective surgery, though I did tell her personal physician. I figured it would just worry her so I made my usual daily phone calls to her every day and didn't mention that I was phoning from a hospital bed. Now that it was over, Carolyn and I went to tell her and she got a little emotional but thanked me for not telling her until I'd been discharged. She asked if there was any way she could help me and I said, "Yes!"

We had a little ritual. Every time I took her home from the hospital, she wouldn't consider herself officially "Home" until I'd cut the hospital's wristband off her wrist. Now, I pulled up my shirt cuff to expose mine, handed her the scissors I always used and asked her to cut mine off me. She laughed and cried and it was the moment I think I remember most vividly from the whole experience.

What I remember second-most-vividly was the weight loss. I'll tell you how that went in what will be our final chapter in this whole saga…unless it isn't.

Most folks know of Rocky and Bullwinkle but are unaware that the show on which Moose and Squirrel were first featured was called Rocky and His Friends. It's the form in which I first discovered those characters and the wonderful world of Jay Ward and Bill Scott. The video below is a complete half-hour episode (including commercials) the way the show was when I became an avid watcher.

It went on the air on ABC as of November 19, 1959, airing at 4:30 in the afternoon two days a week. In September of 1961, it made the jump to fringe prime time on NBC, Sunday evenings at 7 PM and this is when Dudley Do-Right became a part of the proceedings. Later on, it was syndicated in several different packages, a few of which incorporated elements of shows produced by a company called Total Television. The Total Television material (like The World of Commander McBragg) was animated by the same animation company in Mexico that animated most of the Ward product. This has caused some confusion in the marketplace as to which were Jay Ward cartoons and which were Total — but this half-hour is all Jay Ward.

You may notice in the end voice credits, there's no mention of Daws Butler. Daws was heard in the Fractured Fairy Tale and also in a commercial that used characters from Ward's Aesop & Son cartoons. Ordinarily, Charles Ruggles supplied the voice of Aesop while Daws did the Son and other roles but in this commercial, he imitated Ruggles and did both parts. At the time, Daws was voicing so many shows for Hanna-Barbera that he decided to have them leave his name off the second season of Rocky and His Friends.

Anyway, here's the format in which I first met some of my favorite characters in my favorite cartoons…

I may put a few of these up today to make up for a paucity of them here recently.   This is the episode of the game show I've Got a  Secret for March 25, 1963 which someone just posted to YouTube — and by "just," I mean less than a half-hour before I noticed it there. I have not seen this since — and these are real numbers — it aired 62 years, 6 months and 14 days ago when I was 11 years and 23 days old.

Nevertheless, the moment I saw that composer Meredith Willson was the celebrity guest, I instantly remembered what his "secret" was and I remembered the name of Mr. Somerstein who played such an important role in it. I also remembered that Mssrs. Willson and Somerstein came back on a later episode and did a kind of sequel to the stunt on this one.

I enjoy a lot of the reruns of this series, probably to a large part because I recall them as a kid. Garry Moore was a great host and the panelists were all terrific, especially Bill Cullen, who they usually had go last because he so often guessed the secret. In fact, I've seen episodes where I believe Cullen figured out the secret-to-be-guessed right away but played dumb so as to get some laughs and/or not ruin the playing of the game or have the show, which was broadcast live, run short. If you watch the whole episode, you'll see him guess the second secret the minute it's his turn.

If you do want to watch the whole episode, either click here and it will play on your screen or watch the embed below which I've configured to start with the Meredith Willson spot late in the show, then move the slider back to the beginning. There's nothing earth-shattering here; just a good example of a kind of game show that they don't make any more, where you were watching people being playful and clever instead of watching someone try to win a million dollars and a Porsche…

• The folks at IGN say "The Essential Peanuts Is the Ultimate Book for Hardcore Snoopy Fans."
• While over at AIPT, they interview Mark Evanier on curating 75 years of story magic for The Essential Peanuts.
• Comic Book Club Live quotes Mark Evanier On Essential Peanuts: "Most Of Us Have A Lucy Or Linus Or A Peppermint Patty In Our Lives."
• Geek Vibe Nation offers you a "GVN Exclusive Sneak Peek of The Essential Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, Edited by Mark Evanier," which is fine except that the book was edited by Charlie Kochman, not Mark Evanier.
• MSN features "Snoopy's 75-year evolution captured in new Peanuts comic collection."

Thanks to all who sent Best Book Birthday Wishes yesterday to note the release of one of my favorite things I've ever done. If you're a follower of this blog, you know how rare it is me to "plug" something with which I was involved. I save it for things like this.

A long list of folks deserve credit for this book existing and being as good as I'd like to believe it is. They're listed in the Acknowledgements but I'll also list them here when I can. Right now, I just want to thank the people who've written to me…and, I guess, those who've purchased it too. I'll be back later (time permitting) to say more.

Over on Comic Book Resources, Brian Cronin and I have a brief chat at why Peanuts has been part of our lives so long that there had to be a seventy-fifth anniversary edition.

I dearly appreciate your ongoing concern for my health but I got my flu shot at my doctor’s office. I don’t need a text message every twenty minutes reminding me that you have them available. Thank you.

Consider this a Head's Up! that the coming week will, like the last few days here, have a few less posts than usual. The long ones like the saga of my 2006 Gastric Bypass Surgery take longer to write and I'm also immersed in publicity stuff for my new book.

It may already be obtainable from a vendor you patronize and if you pre-ordered from Amazon, your copy is probably on a truck somewhere at this very minute.

Speaking of what I was speaking about in the first paragraph above, a reader named Trevor wrote to ask…

My question is about writing the many multi-part blog entries you have featured on the site over the decades. Do you tend to do them individually as you go along? Tell the whole story/ies in a longer writing burst and then break it up? I'm curious as to your process for all of this.

It's not much of a process. I just write one chapter ahead of myself. When Part Four is almost ready to post. I post Part Three. Some of the fun of having your own blog is trapping yourself by choice.

Writing comic books, especially "Marvel Method" if you know what that is, I always hated it when I had to do my end of the first part of a multi-issue storyline and have it go off on the assembly line to publication before I was sure what was happening in subsequent issues. Once, I even had to write the dialogue for pages 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11 (etc.) before I was sure what was happening on pages 1, 4, 5, 7, 10 (etc.).

But at least when I'm recounting a true story that happened to me, I know where it's going so I can take it as a challenge to post Part Six while I'm writing Part Eight. Which is what I'm doing at the moment.

This is the sixth in a series of I'm-thinking-two-or-three-more-but-don't-hold-me-to-this parts about a gastric bypass operation that I underwent in 2006. To read the first part, click here, to read the second part, click here, to read the third part, click here, to read the fourth part, click here and to read the fifth part, click here. Simple?

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Let us review. So around Noon on Wednesday, May 24th, I got a call from Beth, the Surgical Coordinator for Dr. Perfect, the surgeon who was going to be performing Gastric Bypass Surgery on me. This would take place, I'd thought, on July 26…just days after that year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Beth was calling to discuss perhaps moving me up to Friday, May 26th. Instead of having the operation right after Comic-Con, I would have it less than 48 hours after that call. Which would mean plenty of time to recover from the procedure before Comic-Con.

But it would also mean a lot of hurried rearranging. The conversation went like this. As you read it, try to imagine a slowly-increasing tone of mild panic in my voice…

BETH: A patient we had scheduled for Friday afternoon has canceled. He says he's too scared. Dr. Perfect told me to find someone else from our list to put in that slot as I told him I wanted to put Mark Evanier in there. He said, "Who's Mark Evanier?" and I said, "He's the patient who made that joke about Minimally-Invasive Sex, remember? And Dr. Perfect said, "Oh, I liked him, yes. See if he can get the necessary tests done in time!"

ME: What are the necessary tests?

BETH: It pretty much amounts to a full physical — x-rays, blood draws, stress test, the works. I'm not able to find any way to get it all done here so you'd have to find some way to get it all done in time.

ME: Arrange for a full physical by Friday morning?

BETH: No, I'm afraid that in order to put you officially on the schedule for Friday, you'd have to have it all done by tomorrow.

ME: Get the whole thing done by the close of business tomorrow?

BETH: Well, actually, first thing tomorrow. Like by 9 AM, I'm afraid. I know it sounds impossible but I figured if anyone could figure out how to arrange it…

ME: Okay, okay. Can you fax me the list of what I have to get done? I'll do it. I don't have any idea how I'm going to get it done but I'm going to get it done.

She agreed to fax over the list, we hung up the call and I dialed the cell number of my great physician and friend, Dr. Preston. I caught him at lunch and blurted out what I needed. He said, "Get over to my office. If we have to, we'll keep it open late today to make sure you have all those tests!" At that very moment, my fax machine was printing out the list from Beth. As it did, I called a friend of mine, the great magician (and now, voice actress) Misty Lee.

Misty had a live magic show coming up and I'd agreed to spend Friday acting as a kind of director/consultant, helping her stage portions of the show. I explained to her what I'd been offered for that day and she instantly said, "We can get by without you. Go ahead and get the surgery!" Thank you again, Misty. I dunno if you saved my life but you sure saved me a lot of guilt for canceling on you.

I drove over to Dr. Preston's office where there was a jam-packed slate of patients that afternoon, many of them needing the x-ray facilities, the treadmill, the lab that did the bloodwork, etc. But they squeezed me in where they could. The office closed at 5 PM but the necessary technicians stayed late and around 6:30, I was handed a big manila envelope with all the required test results in it. I drove it over to the hospital where most departments were closed but I finally found someone who would accept delivery of the envelope. I then went home and made the necessary calls to cancel or postpone some other plans for Friday and the weekend that followed.

At 9 AM Thursday morning, Beth called to say, "I don't know how you did it but you did it. You're all set for tomorrow!"

She gave me instructions about where to be, when to be there and what not to put in my mouth that morning or the night before. If you've ever had a colonoscopy, you'd recognize most of the instructions.

People ask, "Weren't you afraid?" Nope, not really. I knew I was in good hands and I was probably more afraid of not doing something about my weight. Even though — Spoiler Alert! — it worked out well for me, I still stop short of recommending this procedure to anyone else. I will however recommend that if you need to do something about your weight, that you actually do something about your weight.

(I also recommend that you not forget that the story I'm telling you here took place in 2006. There is no medical procedure on this planet that is now performed the exact same way it was nineteen years ago.)

The next morning, I got up early and my great friend (then, now and forever) Jewel Shepard drove me to the hospital and gave a last hug to — as of that day — around 340 pounds of me.

Today was Returning Registration Day for next year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego. A specified number of tickets were available for folks who paid attendance last year and here, according to one online report, is how long they took to sell out…

• 9:00 AM – Sale starts
• 9:32 AM – Preview Night sells out
• 10:05 AM – Saturday sells out
• 10:10 AM – Friday sells out
• 10:23 AM – Thursday sells out
• 10:28 AM – Sunday sells out

I can't vouch for those precise times but I bet they aren't far off. This is 291 days before the con starts. Amazing.

I know a few pretty famous people who don't go to this convention because other cons will pay them a hefty guarantee and/or appearance fee to attend and sell autographs and the Big One in San Diego won't make those deals.

A couple of those famous people have complained to me — as if I had a smidgen of power to change things. Still, I ask them: "Why should the con pay you to be there?" And they're shocked that I or anyone would ask such a thing.

They reply, "Do you realize how many people my name will draw in?" And of course, the reply to that is that the San Diego Con sells out in a couple hours without advertising a single guest! They don't need to advertise anyone. There are just plain no more badges to sell.