It's a sign of how long it took my Super-Phone to log on that the line behind me now seems to be 30 or more long. It's out of sight behind the bookshelves, anyway. Memo for next year: It's a good idea to get here half an hour early. Woo hoo!

So I'm standing in line at the Neenah Public Library. A dozen people are standing in front of me (and more are sitting), as we prepare to wait for 20 more minutes to pay $3 to take the first crack at the annual book sale here. A couple years ago I bought more than 100 Nick Carter dime novels for less than 75 cents each here (of which 8 were ones J. Randolph Cox didn't have -- till I sent them to him), so you never know what you'll find. Happy people are chatting with each other about favorite authors, building bookshelves, and what's in public domain. Nice.

On Talk of the Nation at the moment, he is discussing the death of Lisa. It'll be available shortly online, complete with comments from callers.

Brent gave me a hand with my home scanner yesterday, so I'm hoping it'll eventually mean more pictures on this text-heavy blog. I tried a scan with which I'm not satisfied (despite the fact that it was done on the same scanner that came up with the images below). More experimentation is due.

Much more experimentation.

In the meantime, though, here are two more holiday covers.

I'm going to discuss holiday comics in the next print installment of Beautiful Balloons, so yesterday I began a casual search for such comics -- both in my own collection and in information sources. While I think the greatest number of Christmas releases probably (logically?) occurred in Western's March of Comics title, I think it's also interesting that Christmas comics in general have almost disappeared.

Paul Dini's Jing notwithstanding, the vast majority of creators (and publishers) recently seem to have cut way back on Christmas, while increasing Halloween output.

And when was the last time an Easter comic book came out?

I see there's a copy of Trump #1 (Jan 57) on sale at the Heritage Auction website. At the moment, it's at $3, which would be a bargain -- but I bet it goes for more. Bidding ends Oct. 7 at 11 p.m. ET, and I thought I'd point it out to folks who might not be aware of this delicious humor magazine.

After Harvey Kurtzman left Mad, Hugh Hefner offered him the job of creating a top-of-the-line satire magazine, and Trump was the result. It lasted for two issues, both of them comedy gems, and it's the sole example of what the unfettered genius of Kurtzman could provide with a great budget and high production values. Just sayin' ...

In case it didn't occur to you already, there's no Postal Service Monday. Just sayin'.

It was a radio show that ran from 1947 to 1954 and starred Marie Wilson as the quintessential airhead. It was successful enough to get a theatrical feature (starring Wilson) that is remembered today mostly as the national debut of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who also appeared in the sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West.

And, what you won't find in many of the small summaries of the show, it spun off a goofy comic-book series scripted by Stan Lee. It ran from 1950 to 1955 and featured Dan DeCarlo art with occasional back-issue prices driven up by Kurtzman and Frazetta filler pages.

Anyway, it turns out that I'll be appearing in a Friends of Old Time Radio event: the performance of a "lost" episodes. (Some well-known old radio shows survive only in the survival of a script; there are no surviving recordings.) So I'll be in the bit part of Mrs. O'Reilly (the landlady). If I can only master an Irish accent, I'll be all set.