Sorry to post this so late in the day, but I wanted to notify everyone that I have just shoveled a skidload of [credit-card] cash to the website for Bob and Ray.

This is the final day for a Half-Off sale "in honor of Bob Elliott's 85th Birthday." I think the stack of simoleons completes my collection of currently available recordings of the decades of delight produced by Elliott and the late Ray Goulding. (If you check the website above, you can click on the Charles Osgood audio for a brief sample. You can hear an interview with Elliott and more samples of their strange, gentle, absurdist routines at National Public Radio.)

Again -- apologies for telling you so belatedly, but I couldn't let the deadline pass without recommending the special sale.

One reason this site is set up the way it is is that I want a fast way to check some of my favorite sites. In case you're one of the folks who doesn't look at them with the fervor with which I do, let me recommend yet again that Mark Evanier has some of the best pop culture commentary in the biz. In fact, in several bizzes. (Well, "bizes" didn't look right. What can I say?)

At any rate, I hope vast numbers of people will take to heart his posting on "questions from the audience." He has an update on it today, but please look at the original -- and tell your friends. He's not the only person I've read on the subject (and I've heard Neil Gaiman do a devastating impression of the sort of questioner under discussion) but, as one of the best panel hosts around, Mark certainly knows whereof he speaks.

On a completely different "links" topic, I note that www.maggiethompson.com has been offline for a day or so; I'm assured that The Problem Is Being Solved. Just not yet.

And, finally, I was delighted to hear on this morning's Weekend Edition Saturdaya lovely interview with Bob Elliott, who seems in fine fettle, as he prepares to turn 85. I'm not sure the interview conveyed the hilarity of his comedy sketches with partner Ray Goulding (and I have known a very few people who never have grasped their talents). But do listen to it -- and to the links offered there. Wonderful.

One thing the acquisitions (almost without exception, by the way, they were "reading copies," beat-up but readable remnants of an earlier age) led me to do was try to codify in my brain some of the ins and outs of the output of one of my favorite publishing companies. Well, the indicia read, "Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc.," but later in the announcements almost invariably came the phrase, "Designed and produced by Western Printing & Lithographing Co." So what the heck?

Well, as we know, Dell was (for many years) the distribution company that handled comics from Western. Moreover, another arm of Western was clearly "K.K. Publications, Inc." Wikipedia says K.K. was named for Disney Studios character-merchandising head Kay Kamen, but there are Disney comics from Western and non-Disney comics from K.K. among the comics I picked up yesterday.

It seems to me that it was in 1961 that Dell and Western broke their relationship; I know I've tracked it via the Tarzan title. In any case, for this brief blog posting, I'm not going to look it up. But in the group that I bought, Around the Block with Dunc & Loo (a John Stanley creation) and Ghost Stories (which clearly has at least one [horror] story by Stanley) follow the split but carry the Dell imprint.

I also tried to get something of a handle on the doggoned Whitman imprint, largely used as something of a packaging tool for reprints of earlier comics (both from Dell and Gold Key imprints). The earliest ones I acquired yesterday were 15-centers published in 1972 and 1973. Whitman titles then went to 20 cents, then 30, then 35, then 40, then 50, with the latest dates on the 50-cent ones I bought coming in at 1982.

And then there was the matter of the consarned cover number codes. Some are fairly easily deduced, but others ...

Well, here's what we have of the coded comics, and we can see -- generally speaking of the Gold Key titles -- that the last three digits are the last number of the year followed by the two digits of the month of that year. So 102 is 1971 February, and 910 is 1969 October, and 911 is 1979 November, so you need to know what decade you're in. But those first five digits? I'm not so sure. They're apparently tied to the title, but Ripley's is the same title. And as for Whitman, who knows? Anyway:

Gold Key:

10027-802 Mickey Mouse #116 (Feb 68)

10053-102 Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #33 (Feb 71)

10058-702 Tom and Jerry #234 (Feb 67)

10058-908 Tom and Jerry #246 (Aug 69)

10058-910 Tom and Jerry #247 (Oct 69)

10058-110 Tom and Jerry #260 (Oct 71)

10115-510 Merlin Jones as The Monkey's Uncle (1965)

10208-908 Ripley's Believe It or Not! #15 (Aug 59)

10257-105 Baby Snoots #4 (May 71)

90148-911 Flash Gordon #26 (Nov 79)

90208-810 Ripley's Believe It or Not! #82 (Oct 78)

Whitman:

90058-110 Tom and Jerry #337 (1960 date, 50 cents)

90062-110 Woody Woodpecker #194 (1981 last copyright, 50 cents)

90069-110 Popeye the Sailor #164 (1981 last copyright, 50 cents)

90140-202 Porky Pig #104 (1981 last copyright, 60 cents)