Out and about earlier the day this question's being written, I saw a man looking to be several years my senior wearing a hoodie and cap emblazoned with the characters of one of my all-time favorite cartoon TV series--and subject of a previous Tw survey of mine: Fat Albert And the Cosby Kids. In a setting where I don't usually engage strangers, I asked him where he got his apparel (alas, he told me his wife bought the items for him, and he had no idea were she got them). But between the time I spied his clothes and I asked about them, I ruminated on how Albert and at least a couple of his friends are characters based on real people who Bill Cosby mentioned in his stand-up comedy. Were you aware of Fat Albert, et al having based on real people?

Thinking about Fat Albert and Cosby got me to thinking about other comedians' characters that became cartoons, First to come to my mind was Carl Reiner's and Mel Brooks' 2,000 Year Old Man, which originated during Reiner's tenure as an actor and Brooks' stint as a writer on the 1950's TV variety program Your Show Of Shows--but first appearing on The d Sullivan Show--and featured on all five albums the duo issued from 1960 to 1997. Instead of being the basis of a series, however, Brooks' curmudgeonly sage and Reiner's interviewer starred in mid-1970's special. Before reading this, were you familiar with Brooks' and Reiner's 2000 Year-Old Man bits?

For about seven and one-half years, the distillation of a comedian's personality or public persona was a cartoon character. But it wasn't a animated one. Inside Woody Allen appeared on newspapers' funny pages from 1976-84, and at least two anthologies of the strip were published. The only rendering of an animated Allen, to my knowledge, comes in the sequence of his 1977 movie, Annie Hall, accompanying his question. Do you recall seeing Inside Woody Allen in any newspapers you saw in the '70's and '80's ?

As opposed to presenting one consistent personality of a comedian as the Woody Allen's comic strip did, the 1970-71 Saturday morning TV 'toon series Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down--the title plays on the linchpin line in the TV game show To Tell The Truth, "Will the real _______ please stand up?"--went with the screwiness its titular character maintained in may of his movies. The show features a caricatured depiction of Lewis, not dissimilar to that which appeared in the 1 952-71-comic book series in which he starred (for its first five years with partner in shtick, Dean Martin). can you think of any other stand-up comics or comedic actors you'd like to see rendered as a cartoon character?