It was sometime in the early 1980s – after 40 years, I don’t remember exactly when – and my friends and I learned that our local cable company was going to stop carrying one Chicago TV station in favor of another.

Now, we were old horror movie and cable TV fanatics so we were doubly anguished to learn this meant we would lose our weekly broadcasts of “Svengoolie,” the long-running Chicago horror movie program hosted by the ghoul of the same name, played by Rich Koz. Koz had taken over from the original “Svengoolie,” Jerry Bishop, a few years before. Koz’ version of the amiable character – a creature of some kind who hosted old horror flicks from his dungeon – and the show were highlights of our week.

The three (sometimes four or more) of us had the brainstorm of trying to express our appreciation of Sven and his old movies and silly puns by sending him a telegram. (As if this anecdote could be any more pre-internet.)

We sent an email that referenced a joke from another current favorite, Lola Heatherton, a show-biz creature played by Catherine O’Hara on the sketch comedy show “SCTV.”

In our telegram – cue 1914 music – we told Sven how much we would miss him and, quoting Lola, told him, “We want to bear all your children!” It was a phrase Lola would gush to adoring audiences on “SCTV.”

Now Svengoolie has always read viewer letters on his show. He still does to this day.

And, unbelievably, Sven read our telegram, citing us by name, on the very last show of his we would be able to see before our cable ditched his broadcast channel.

Sven did seem a little confused by our out-of-the-blue Lola Heatherton quote. And who could blame him? He even made some comment about not understanding what the heck these people were saying.

Now of course we can watch “Svengoolie” every Saturday night on the national nostalgia channel MeTV. And Koz, forty years after our telegram and 30 years after he returned to the role after a brief break, is still doing it. He’s now accompanied by helpers like Gwengoolie, played by Sarah “Pinup” Palmer.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that Sven and his show still let us wallow in nostalgia – and puns – and in the best way possible: with knowledgeable and fond presentations of classic films. I thought about this recently when I was watching his presentation of “Dracula,” the 1931 original with Bela Lugosi. Sure, you could watch the Universal classic on streaming or disc. But this feels right.

Nostalgia can be a tricky thing. We can’t wallow in it. We have to live for today. Svengoolie gives us the perfect framing for nostalgia.

Thanks, Sven, and thanks, Rich Koz.

In most respects, we live in fraught times. Some comfort can be found in two good Batman and Superman animated shows airing new episodes.

Yeah, that sounds like cold comfort for anyone worried about the state of the world.

But we take comfort where we can get it these days.

I’ve previously written here about “My Adventures with Superman,” a mostly lighthearted series that’s part of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. The series is good, fun stuff, probably the best Superman-focused animated series since “Superman: The Animated Series” in 1995. (“Krypto the Super Dog” was good fun too, and hewed to Superman canon more than it could have been expected to.) The Superman animated series, part of the wave of animated DC heroes that included the truly great “Batman: The Animated Series,” “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited,” featured the work of Bruce Timm, Eric Radomski and Paul Dini.

The 1995 Superman series, like all of the work of those creators and other animation geniuses like writer Dwayne McDuffie (“JLU” and others), captured the comic book spirit of Superman: the forthright hero who deals with uncertainty at times but always does the right thing. “My Adventures with Superman,” pitched to a slightly younger audience than some of those earlier series, has the absolute correct tone.

And as different as Batman and Superman are, so are “My Adventures with Superman” and “Batman: Caped Crusader.”

The later series, ten episodes of which are available on Prime Video, debuting just a few days ago, is the latest in a long, long line of Batman adaptations that include live action and animation.

It’s no surprise that “Batman: Caped Crusader” is so good when you consider the show’s creators and executive producers: long-standing animation wiz Bruce Timm, producer J.J. Abrams, “The Batman” film director Matt Reeves and writer Ed Brubaker.

The series is an incredibly effective blend of Batman mythos and characters into a genre that’s always been a good home for the vigilante: noir.

In “Batman: Caped Crusader,” Batman operates in a shadowy world that’s clearly the 1940s, even more so than the stylized “Batman: The Animated Series.” There might be an anachronism or two, but the look and feel of the series is pure mid-century noir.

Batman – and alter ego Bruce Wayne – moves through a world of gangsters, cops both crooked and straight, crusading attorneys and prosecutors and increasingly, as the season progresses, more dangerous and outlandish criminals.

In the 10 episodes of the season, we see the deepest, most unsettling secrets of not only Gotham’s criminal underworld but of its upstanding citizens. We’re introduced to a number of classic Batman villains, but none more impressive than Harley Quinn, who isn’t played as a frenetic joker (pun intended) but as a soft-spoken menace.

The vocal cast is led by Hamish Linklater, who at times seems to be channeling the voice of the late, great Kevin Conroy but always makes the dual roles of Batman and Bruce Wayne his own. The supporting cast, especially Jamie Chung as Harley, is perfect.

“My Adventures with Superman” is lighthearted comic book fare and does a great job at hitting that tone. “Batman: Caped Crusader” is dark and menacing and is the best Batman adaptation in years.

We’re lucky to be able to see both right now.

Like a bunch of other people, I’m gonna mark the anniversary of MTV’s debut on this date, Aug. 1 1981, with a little bit of nostalgia.

It’s okay, I’ll be brief and get this over with as painlessly as possible.

One thing I won’t do here is bemoan the lack of music on modern-day MTV. I haven’t watched the cable channel in years. I do watch the MTV Classic channel sometimes, mostly for the 1980s videos.

I just wanted to say that, if you’re not old enough to remember, MTV was a cultural touchstone for most of us around a certain age in 1981. I was a child in the 1960s and grew to adulthood in the 1970s, but the 1980s was probably the most important decade of my life up to that point.

I was reviewing movies and a bunch of entertainment for my local newspaper from 1978 to 1990, so I feel tremendous nostalgia for the 1980s. I started full-time at the paper in the 1980s. At the very end of the 1980s – okay, early 1990 – I met my wife. In 1989, I started covering politics and government and sometimes crime, the turning point in my newspaper career.

It sounds cheesy to say it, but MTV and the music of the 1980s was the heartbeat of my life at the time. I didn’t discover it as a teenager, like most people, because it didn’t exist until I was in college. But it shaped a lot of my tastes and entertainment sensibilities.

My friends and I watched MTV and its competitors and cohorts – Friday Night Videos, music videos all night weekends on TBS – religiously. We hauled ass to get to a screen to watch Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video debut on MTV on December 2, 1983.

We were glued to our TVs on Halloween 1984 to watch Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, guest-host on MTV, playing odd and weird videos. I refer to that night in one of my novels.

MTV was notoriously slow to play Black artists. It quickly became a delivery system for advertising. Some of the most pretentious music videos of the era are hard to watch now.

But MTV was a huge cultural force not long after August 1, 1981.

In many, many ways, that was a vastly simpler time. But many things are better now. Nostalgia can be toxic, especially when people pine for “the good old days” that were decidedly not good for so many people.

But nostalgia is okay once in a while. We can enjoy looking back and remember to look ahead, too.