The Atlantic: In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

Vidal: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

There’s a gap there because the idea is we want to sell out of the Premiere hardcovers first, making those the collectibles for readers that have to get a story right away and can’t wait on. Then those that wanted to wait could get the collection in paperback a few months later. Now, however, they’re going to have to wait a little longer, as we’re going to push back the release of trade paperbacks out to about four to five months after the Premiere hardcovers’ releases. That should really give retailers that are selling those Premiere hardcovers an extra couple of months to sell them.

After more garbage that you’ve seen in every time travel story ever (”Do we win? In the future, is it worth it?”), a bit more pontificating (”But the country is still the country. It has its flaws, and it isn’t always right, but it’s still intact. And I guess that’s all that matters,” he says, as he looks off into the distance), we’re left with the money shot of all World War II stories: a character looking off into a graveyard and re-affirming that “they were the extraordinary ones.” My rawest, most honest reaction to this scene was “blow me.” You have a character who can move at superspeed, if not run during the story. He throws a thousand bricks and incapacitates a German unit in a matter of seconds. By the end of the book, he can move at light speed again and goes home, safe and sound. And he’s looking at the graves of the eighty thousand people, people who not thirty seconds ago were within arm’s reach, and thinking about how extraordinary they were?

JMS and Saiz’s follow-up to their oddly moving Batman/Dial H for Hero team-up throws Barry Allen back in time to the Battle of the Bulge, where the Blackhawks are caught in the middle of the fight of their lives. The results are not what you’d expect. Although superheroes have been entangled in real world wars since their conception in the years leading to World War II, few writers – particularly modern writers – have ever had the guts to fully explore the possible consequences of costumed do-gooders getting involved in a true high stakes, life and death conflict between regular humans. JMS boldly tackles that question head on, and in doing so, does more with the Barry Allen character than arguably has ever been done before. I won’t spoil the way Barry Allen decides to rectify his vow against murder with his need to help the Blackhawks stave off and defeat their Nazi attackers. Watching Barry make that decision is just too damn powerful and unexpected for me to spoil here. I will say that like much of JMS’s work, its brilliant in its simplicity, and in the way that he dares to take his story and characters seriously. With his work on this series, Jesus Saiz is quickly proving that he deserves to be in the discussion of the industry’s finest artists. Saiz provides the type of sweeping splash pages and dynamic action sequences you’d expect from a top tier superhero artist. More importantly, his characters all convey complex emotions, bringing a level of “acting” to the table that you just don’t see in many comics. His work here is critical to carrying out the powerful emotional punch JMS is going for with Barry’s surprising decision.

Only one thing stood between Dave Chappelle and the record for the longest stand-up appearance at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory this weekend — pee. In an attempt to win back the record that Dane Cook took from him last year, Chappelle held his bladder onstage for five hours until he could hold no longer. Club owner Jamie Masada disqualified Chappelle, who took the record from Cook in 2006 after a six-hour, seven-minute set. Cook snatched it back last year with seven hours and 34 minutes on stage. One thing seems a little off, though. Take this quote from Masada: “There are only two rules. You have to continuously tell jokes that are funny and you can’t leave the stage, even to go to the bathroom.” Our question: Why not bend the second rule for Chappelle if you so clearly bent the first for Cook?

Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[45] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.[45]

In addition, the Japanese had organized the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps — which included all healthy men aged 15–60 and women 17–40 — to perform combat support, and ultimately combat jobs. Weapons, training, and uniforms were generally lacking: some men were armed with nothing better than muzzle-loading muskets, longbows, or bamboo spears; nevertheless, they were expected to make do with what they had.[23] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, “Even killing one American soldier will do. … You must aim for the abdomen.”[24]