Yes, The Screw Iran Coloring Book is in the collection of the Michigan State University libraries.

And no, I have no idea how it got there.

One of my favorite people, Kim Glann, has joined the blogosphere. Her blog, The Eco-Urbanite, reflects her environmental conscience, especially after bringing a baby into the world.

I’m with her on some of her remedies, such as using compact fluorescents and cloth bags. When it comes to mess transit, though, it just doesn’t work for most of us. At least not yet.

Why will I be seeing the new film “Next”? Because it’s based on a Philip K. Dick story, “The Golden Man.”

Meanwhile, Paul Giamatti is working on a Dick biopic, with himself in the lead. A couple of years ago Giamatti wowed me in back-to-back leads in “American Splendor” and “Sideways,” so to me this bodes well.

Finally, Cornel Bonca in the OC Weekly does a nice roundup of recent and forthcoming Dick events, as well as a generous review of the recently published “Voices from the Street.” She admits the book’s faults, but greatly oversteps when comparing it favorably with “Revolutionary Road,” a far superior novel by Richard Yates, a truly haunted man I knew briefly the one semester he taught at USC before dying. (Yates had a host of health problems, one remaining lung, and nearly choked to death at dinner.)

Regarding “Voices,” while my regard for Dick is undiminished, the book is nearly unreadable; I feverishly ordered it as soon as it was available and while trying to get through it I’ve finished three other books instead. At the moment it’s mostly gathering dust on my nightstand, two-thirds unread. The first of Dick’s “mainstream” novels I read was “Confessions of a Crap Artist,” a book with a tripartite point-of-view storytelling style that qualifies it as postmodern; it is also a compelling read that rewards one, page after page, with insights into male-female relationships and how the truth of such stories can never be known. It’s a great book. The next one I read, “Mary and the Giant,” was odd and rambling, but each page was such an affront to the sensibility of the 1950s that I couldn’t put it down; among other things, it concerns a tryst between a large black man and a young white girl. Had this been published in the 1950s it’s unlikely that Dick’s obscurity would have continued. But now that I’m reading “Voices,” I see the same faults identified by the editors who turned it down — its rambling, its passivity, the two-dimensional characterizations, Dick’s bad case of adjectivis — and I remember them in “Mary” as well.

All of Dick’s books will wind up kept in print and studied, not because they’re all good, but because he is becoming a canonical writer. As someone with a 30-year enthusiasm for his work, it’s odd to find myself in agreement with those editors who long ago decided that some of these books weren’t good enough and rejected them. From the descriptions and from the rejection letters published in several Dick biographies, I’m starting to suspect that the rest of the mainstream books are even worse than “Voices.”

While I appreciate the sentiment of the latest Jib-Jab video, below, railing against the news doesn’t seem particularly new. (This reminds me of Peter Gabriel attacking Jerry Springer on his last album, about six years too late for the zeitgeist.)

Just when I thought I was finally done talking about my admiration at The Road here, Oprah (of all people) jumped on the bandwagon.

As if we needed any further proof of Ms. Winfrey’s all-powerful influence, the famously reclusive Mr. McCarthy has actually agreed to a guest appearance with her. That will be his first television appearance ever, and his first interview in decades.

Didn’t quite believe me when I said the U.S. auto industry plays games (and sometimes flat-out lies) about mileage?

Read up.

Here’s my favorite ironic quote of the day (and again, please bear in mind that in this context “favorite” means I actually don’t like it, except for its irony), and it’s from this piece:

“If you want to reduce gasoline usage—like I believe we need to do so for national-security reasons as well as for environmental concerns—the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice,” said a beaming Bush.

Uh, yeah. That’s why you shouldn’t allow automakers to LIE about it.

Yesterday afternoon I heard a staccato shredding sound outside my office here in Burbank, opened the door to look out, and saw that we had a sudden hailstorm. Actually, it looked like hail, rain, and snow. And that’s what it was. (Here’s a report about it.) From nowhere, on what had been just previously a crisp clear Los Angeles day. Five minutes later it was gone and the day became crisp and clear again. Deciding that this was a warning from God to free the Israelites, I went back into my office and awaited the plague of locusts and the rain of frogs.

All night long last night the wind howled outside my bedroom window at home and I wondered what the state of our trees, both long-standing and recently planted, would be. This morning revealed various small branches and bits of shrubbery blown into odd piles, but no major damage. There will be figs this summer.

But here was my truly favorite part of this unseasonable — and ungeographical — weather, and please note that in the classically American sarcastic style when I say “favorite,” I mean the opposite. Today when driving my youngest child to his preschool we came across a gardener clearing a residential corner. What was he using to clear the sidewalk? A leaf blower. And as quickly as he was blowing the leaves and other small debris into the street, using the large fume-spewing gasoline motor strapped onto himself, the wind was blowing it all back. When I see things like this I actually relish a real energy crisis that would force everyone to reconsider his true energy needs.

When I was a kid, we had state-of-the-art machinery that handled this sort of job quickly, efficiently, and with little to no use of fossil-fuel energy. We called these tools:

• a rake
• a bag

I was at Lowe’s just this past Sunday, and these implements are still available. I wish more people used them.

While I’m on a roundup of “internet death” (finding out through the internet that people you know have died), I should mention the demise of Jay Kennedy, a comics historian and comic-strip editor of major importance who, among other claims to fame, helped launch both “Mutts” (my friend Paul’s favorite strip) and “Zits,” my son Lex’s favorite. Kennedy died recently during a riptide incident while vacationing in Costa Rica. His obit is here.

While I’m not sure I ever met him in person, I do know I spoke with him on the phone in what had to have been late 1981. He was compiling the information for the book at left, “The Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide,” and having decided for some reason that my self-published masterpiece “The Screw Iran Coloring Book” was an “underground,” he had tracked me down for information.

About “The Screw Iran Coloring Book” (and yes, of course I still have copies for sale. Email me.):

In 1980 as the Iran hostage crisis went on and on, I hit upon a great idea: a coloring book, modeled after Neal Adam’s Jimmy Carter coloring book, to be called “The Screw Iran Coloring Book.” Every page would be something rip-snorting fun about the hostage drama, making the ayatollah and the captors look bad, and lining our own pockets with the immense sales prospects. A friend and I set out to execute this plan, hiring an artist, conceptualizing the jokes and writing the captions. As with many things done in youth, this project now seems like a very bad idea — so bad that even Rolling Stone magazine, where we had envisioned advertising and securing the bulk of our sales, a magazine that found ways to advertise drug paraphernalia, sex aids, nudist colonies, and God knows what else, wouldn’t take our ad. In fact, they sent us a terse note advising us that the idea of profiteering off hostages was not cool. And although we hadn’t realized, in our late teenage years, that this could be construed as profiteering off hostages, they were right. I just thought that bad taste was in, and given what was going on in National Lampoon and all and sundry “Newave” and underground comix, that was most definitely the case.

In any event, no one would take our ads and no matter how we tried I don’t think we sold more than 10 copies of “The Screw Iran Coloring Book.” I have no idea how Jay Kennedy heard of it, and I believe that was one of my questions to him, but I can’t remember the answer. Given that he grew up in New Jersey (as did I), maybe he saw or heard of it at a convention in that period when I was a comic-book dealer and was trying to unload them. The fact that he tracked me down to Ocean City where I had moved in September 1981 after the coloring-book debacle, and somehow got my home phone number is a testament to his diligence. You can imagine that I was initially skeptical — someone who was doing a “price guide” of underground comics must have been an unrepentant hippie, right? — and then flat-out thrilled that my printed offering, no matter how pathetic a failure, would be enshrined in history. (Like most writers, I love all my literary children, even the deformed ones.) Kennedy asked me a few questions for his records, and then said he needed a copy of the coloring book to attest that it did indeed exist. I offered to mail him one and he insisted on paying for it. He may have been our fifth sale. Or first — I may have given away the other four.

I enjoy “Mutts” and “Zits” and I’m grateful that a long time ago someone for some reason decided to include my wrong-headed little satire in his book. That makes it all the more real. Even at the time, I felt that having it listed as item “1754. SCREW IRAN COLORING BOOK, THE.” added to its value. If in no other way than this: The coloring book had a published value of 50¢. Kennedy listed it as being worth 50¢ — but he had actually paid for it. And you cannot imagine the joy it gave me to see my own name listed in the “Underground and Newave Artist Index” in the back; to someone whose entire world revolved around comic books it felt like I had some tiny personal share of history. I remain grateful to Mr. Kennedy.

Comic-book artist Marshall Rogers, best known for his definitive work in the 1970’s and 80’s restablishing the gothic nature of Batman in “Detective Comics,” died Saturday, Newsarama is reporting.

I always loved his work, and reading of his death just now reminded me that I met him once about 25 years ago at a comic-book convention. But then I seemed to recall something else, and picking through the cluttered attic of my brain finally helped me stumble across the lost memory I was seeking: I interviewed Rogers over the phone in 1985 for The Comics Journal. I pulled down the relevant issue — #100 — and there it is. And here it is transcribed online if you’d care to see it.

Rereading it just now resulted in these immediate observations:

1. I was a really bad interviewer. At least this time, and at least at first. The beginning of the interview is, well, flat-out rude: “First off, what have you been doing for the past few years?” That’s information I should have already known — and I suspect I did — but there is a better way to get it. My followup, “So more or less, over the past few years, one strip has been your job,” has a similar attitude that I regret. In retrospect, Rogers was nicer than I would’ve been.
2. I suspect I was also picking up Journal editor Gary Groth’s pugnacity. I recall his recurring snipes to me about Denny O’Neil (whom I also interviewed in this issue) for being a heavy drinker; later, after the interview, I made nice with O’Neil and we wound up having a very pleasant Chinese lunch in Manhattan on the Marvel expense account. I also remember that I discussed with Groth the angle he wanted for each of the five pieces I have in this issue. Why he assigned me to interview Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of both “Mad” when it was a comic book and “Little Annie Fannie” in Playboy, I’ll never know, because I was completely unqualified — something Kurtzman glommed onto instantaneously, threatening to hang up.
3. The interview, like all things from 1985, is incredibly dated. In the wake of “Shatter,” the first comic book done on a computer, I ask him if he’s afraid computers will supplant artists. Twenty years later, all mainstream comics are done on computer. You can also see how much the field was in transition in the mid-80’s, with the shift to creator-owned vehicles and profit-sharing.
4. Hey — I too am one of the people whose intellectual property is being stolen on the internet. I say that because I sold one-time rights to the Journal for this interview, and here it is on the web for free. I guess we’d all better get used to that, if we’re not already. Either that, or I can emulate David Thomas of Pere Ubu and countless others who spend long hours hounding people around the globe to take things down. (And I’m linking to the interview — which I hadn’t even remembered conducting — so how put out am I truly?)

Please pardon my bringing these things up in what is, to some extent, a death notice; I just feel like a part of my life from more than 20 years ago came knocking.

Rogers’ work on Batman was clean and moody at the same time (and at its best when inked by Terry Austin); his Mr. Miracle had a sharp plastic snap to it that made it ping off the page. I’m not well-versed enough in the technique behind these tricks to explain how, but Marshall Rogers’ covers always stood out on very crowded newsstands. They belonged to what was a highly plastic era, but had a rigor and a punch that a lot of comics were missing. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing any more of that work, or any more of him at conventions.

Think this presidential race won’t get uglier than ever (Obama be damned)? Check out what’s happening with the (non-partisan) Burbank, California city council race.

I too received the “sleazy mailer” that my friend David is writing about here. One of the things it slams candidate Gary Bric for is serving alcohol to intoxicated people, without ever explaining that the man owns a bar and restaurant and has been charged something like three times in probably 20 years. How many people does he (or his bar) serve in a night? 100? Times 365 days a year, times 20 years? I’m not endorsing serving intoxicated people, but sometimes it’s a tough call — particularly when you’re in the business of selling intoxicants. The police don’t seem too concerned about his behavior — they’re endorsing him — and both the chief and the deputy chief are well aware of who is a problem (like other local bars they talk about constantly) and who isn’t.

My immediate response to said mailer was to vote by mail for the two candidates being attacked.