We are at an odd point in comic-book history:  At a point when the sales of mainstream comics in the format most of us grew up with have nearly reached the vanishing point, comics in new and more adult formats have seen sales spikes. Maybe you can’t find comics on a spinner rack at the market or to any great degree at 7-11,  but you can find them in collected editions at Barnes & Noble, where they are selling in increasing numbers.

You can also find them deeply rooted in our mainstream culture, where they have enormous influence and growing general acceptance. Without comics, we’d have no “Heroes,” and without comic books I’m wondering what movie studios would be releasing on most of their screens any more.

In addition to their new marketplace foothold, comic books in my lifetime have become a source of worthy academic and literary  investigation.  Case in point:  the new biography of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Having come of age during the strip’s decline into cuteness and Hallmark merchandising, I haven’t been a fan. But I have to admit that the earlier strips show a multi-leveled psychology that underpins its later enormous success. (The same can be said with Spider-Man, and Superman, and all iconic character creations, Spider-Man being a loser unable to strike back against a bullying society, and Superman being an alien Jew determined not to lose another homeland or see his new race perish.)

I’ve decided I’m going to read that Schulz biography  early next year. (Yes, it’s gotten to the point that I’m scheduling my book reading. It’s the only way to accomplish these goals.) As much as being a biography of Schulz, and one related to comics, it also sounds like a biography of our culture in a certain time and place. Similarly, I’m looking forward to Mark Evanier’s forthcoming book, “Kirby, King of the Comics,” a mini-bio of sorts of Jack Kirby in preparation for Evanier’s long-in-development biography.

For insights into these two books, as well as other thoughts about the place of comics in our culture today, I suggest this fine piece in today’s Los Angeles Times.  While I bemoan its title — “Comic strips aren’t just for laughs,” which is, after all, a variation on the tired “Hey, comics aren’t just for kids!” angle — the piece itself is dead-on about something that has been signally important in my life and the lives of many, many others.

1. How to identify the front runner? The front runner is the candidate who is so concerned about being perceived as a front runner — and therefore someone whom the actual electorate can take down a peg in a looming contest — that he denies it. (Or she, as this case may be.)
2. Similarly, beware of candidates who run as “fiscal conservatives.” For examples, please see Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush, et al.
3. Also, always be wary of “the people’s candidate.” What people? Which people? I’m part of the people, and so are all of the people I know, and yet we almost never support “the people’s candidate.” In one example from 2004, Dick Gephardt was a guy who clearly needed to meet more peoples. Even the peoples he knew didn’t support him, so I was never sure who he meant.

In Las Vegas, imploding old casinos to make way for new ones is almost a way of life. (And, judging by the casino hotel I stayed in there just yesterday, it needs to happen a little more frequently.) But in my old stomping grounds of Atlantic City, it hadn’t happened until last night, when they blew up the Sands real good.

I remember playing blackjack at the Sands when it opened in 1980 (and when it was called the Brighton, after the hotel that originally stood there), and yes, I was underage and got in anyway. (I don’t recall any of my friends ever being stopped at any casino hotel.) I would drop in occasionally for the next eight years until relocating to Los Angeles, but after that I never went again. If they blow up Harrah’s — or, perhaps, when they blow up Harrah’s — I will lose a large chunk of my history: just out of college, I worked at Harrah’s for almost a year, and often booked suites on the sly so I could host poker parties; at the end of one of them, my father sadly shook his head and said about one of my more, um, entertaining friends, “Joe shouldn’t play cards,” and then left with all of Joe’s money in his pocket.

Here’s the true lesson to learn from this implosion: that Kansas was right, and we are indeed all dust in the wind. Because if in Atlantic City nobody was able to save the site of the final concerts by New Jersey native Frank Sinatra, then there is no final hope for a legacy by any of us.

Thomas Friedman on who really won in the long strange story of Bush v. Gore. Truly an epic saga, except the critics would say it was too neat, with the loser triumphant and the winner losing everything.

Steven Colbert he suited up and ready to run.

Those of us who are from New Jersey have never questioned why there is a magazine called Weird NJ. It is a land of odd characters, strange ironies, and who-knows-what happening deep in the woods (whether’s it’s occult practices or body dumpings). In order to keep my own head filled with useful weirdness, I frequently check in online with my old newspaper, The Press of Atlantic City, where I found this story. Essentially, the mayor of Atlantic City went missing for two weeks — just got in his car and drove away — and now has returned to resign. The getting in the car and leaving part we can all understand — it’s the returning to resign part I can’t follow.

Mayor Bob Levy had claimed to be a Green Beret in Vietnam who had won several medals in the commission of his duties. None of that was true, as you can read here. The Press of Atlantic City did a stone-cold expose, Levy had a mental collapse, and now he’s gone. I seem to recall former mayors of Atlantic City serving prison time while remaining mayor. In this day and age, I have to wonder what has happened to the sheer ballsiness of Atlantic City mayors. It’s a sad day for would-be Huey Longs everywhere.

A side note that some of us may enjoy about The Press of Atlantic City.

When I was a kid, the paper was called The Atlantic City Press — a pretty good name, when you think about it. Everyone I knew had a beloved nickname for it — The Atlantic City Mess — because it was riddled with errors. (Although to my eye The Los Angeles Times has many, many more errors of commission and omission on a daily basis and, let’s be fair, many more resources.) About when I was in high school, the paper changed its name to The Press because their distribution covered much of southern New Jersey, which put them in competition with the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Courier Post, and because, honestly, nobody wanted to be associated with Atlantic City any more. Shortly after that, casino gambling was voted in, Atlantic City started a turnaround, and the error of the name change became apparent. So rather than switch back, they tagged “of Atlantic City” onto the end of the moniker. So now it’s a badly named newspaper.

I worked there from 1977 or so, when the offices actually were in Atlantic City, until 1980 (by which time we had moved to the unaptly named Pleasantville), starting at age 14 as a classified ad taker and moving my way up to full-time classified ad sales until having a falling out with management. We were trying to unionize, and management decided to make an example of the kid. I was asked to fight that but chose not to, and shortly afterward went into business and then to college. (I had graduated high school early.) A few years later, the Press was hiring copy editors, they did a recruitment from the literature program I was enrolled in in my college, and I took the test and passed. (The only one to do so.) That put me back at the Atlantic City Press, this time as a copy editor, then senior copy editor, then production editor. I was 24. Every day that I was there, as you can see by the above unconscious misuse of the the newspaper’s name, I wished it would just fix its damn name. But I loved the paper and the job with all my heart.

By the way, on the off chance you don’t believe the next presidential election is really over, and if you aren’t entirely crazy about the current field of candidates, you could always do your utmost to draft a guy who already won that race before.

Yesterday’s LA Times had a nice profile of “Love and Rockets” creator Gilbert Hernandez. If you enjoy his work, as I have for a long time, you’ll want to read it. Here it is, minus a good photo of the artist look surprisingly urbane in a book-lined study. (I guess there is still a reason to look at the print edition of the Times: to see the photos they don’t put on the web.)

Scott Timberg, the writer of the piece, makes a strained comparison between the Hernandez brothers (Gilbert and Jaime) and Lennon and McCartney. In each case, two men were involved; I think the comparison ends about there. We know the story of Lennon and McCartney well enough, so there’s no need to rehash that here, but let’s note at the outset that the two men worked together. I don’t recall Gilbert and Jaime ever doing a piece together — what they did were two separate strips that were published together in the same title. Even if John and Paul had taken the same route — and they came close, with the white album and “Abbey Road” — they at least played on each other’s songs. I’ve met Scott Timberg once or twice and seem to recall his having a Beatles fascination, so I can only assume that’s the origin of this pointless comparison. Pointless because the Hernandez brothers haven’t even broken up — they were solo artists and they remain solo artists. Pointless because I can’t find any way in which Jaime is “the McCartney” and Gilbert “the Lennon.”

Just because someone puts something into print doesn’t make it true. It also doesn’t mean there’s any wisdom in the metaphor.

This AP story caught my attention:

Man faces long prison term over doughnut theft

FARMINGTON, Mo. – It’s a hefty price for a pastry: A man accused of stealing a 52-cent doughnut could face time in jail.

Authorities said Scott A. Masters, 41, slipped the doughnut into his sweat shirt without paying, then pushed away a clerk who tried to stop him as he fled the store.

The push is being treated as minor assault, which transforms a misdemeanor shoplifting charge to a strong-armed robbery with a potential prison term of five to 15 years. Because he has a criminal history, prosecutors say they could seek 30 years.

“Strong-arm robbery? Over a doughnut? That’s impossible,” Masters told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from jail. He admitted that he took the pastry but denied touching the employee. “There’s no way I would’ve pushed a woman over a doughnut.”

Farmington Police Chief Rick Baker said state law treats the shoplifting and assault as forcibly stealing property. The amount of force and value of the property doesn’t matter.

“It’s not the doughnut,” Baker said. “It’s the assault.”

Masters said he didn’t even get to enjoy his ill-gotten gains: He threw the doughnut away as he fled.

You may recall this as eerily similar to the major plotline in “Les Miserables,” in which Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years’ hard time for stealing a loaf of bread. This is the entirety of the AP story, while “Les Miserables” is only slightly shorter than the 30 years’ war. Proving once again that whether or not truth is stranger than fiction, fiction tends to be longer.

One further difference: Jean Valjean is a noble figure who later shows mercy to his tormentor, Javert, and who steals the bread to feed his starving family; he is someone struggling against whom the ills of French society and, as such, represents a plea on behalf of the author for justice and reform. (A la Dickens.) In the story of the boosted doughnut, we have a lout who has already done hard time who stole a doughnut rather than pay 52¢ for it and shoved around a clerk who tried to stop it. Some people just can’t learn a lesson from the justice systm, and this person sounds like one of them. Whether or not he does 30 years for the misappropriated pastry, I’m sure law enforcement hasn’t heard the last of him. That he didn’t get to consume the cruller makes the irony all the more delicious.

You may not have noticed, but judging from the news coverage the presidential race is over.

I know, you thought there was going to be an election of some sort in 2008. And, barring some reason to cancel it trumped up by Dick Cheney, there will be. But as someone who reads the way the mainstream media is covering this, I’m not sure why we’re going to go through all that. Because apparently Hillary Clinton has already won. She’s pulled ahead in the Iowa poll, and that has put an end to it all. And the other day, Newsweak’s Howard Fineman started picking her running mate, three months before the first primary and a full 11 months before the general election.

Hillary has won not only the primary, but also the general election. That’s because the GOP can’t find a good candidate, the bubble speak goes, because the leading candidate (Giuliani) can’t win.

All of this is disgusting.

It’s disgusting to believe what they would have you believe: that a handful of people in Iowa are truly going to select the next president. If I were in Iowa, at this point I would seek out the candidate furthest from the top of the polls and do everything I could to get that person a higher perch — just to knock the conventional wisdom and give some more time to the process. Front-runner Mike Gravel, anyone? God knows I’ve enjoyed his videos.

More than that, it’s disgusting to watch what has happened to political coverage in the past 30 years. Note to the media: It isn’t a horse race, and it isn’t The World Series of Poker, which ESPN is allowed to cover in this way. It’s about the next four to eight years of this country — and a lot of other countries. It’s about things like effective response to terrorism, and balancing a budget, and protecting resources, and leaving a better world than you found.

Why is it being covered like a horse race? Because announcers need sporting events to make their living.

I’m not especially predisposed against Hillary Clinton, although I don’t think she has a depth of qualification for this position. (The current inhabit did, to some degree, as governor of a large state — and look how that turned out.) But I don’t think the 2008 election is settled, no matter what seemingly every single bit of news would have me think. And I think it’s a more serious matter than their coverage reflects.