COMFORTABLE WITH COMEDY, MARTIN DEFENDS ITS MERIT.(ACCENT)

Byline: LUAINE LEE Scripps Howard

BEVERLY HILLS When Steve Martin was the prematurely gray comic with an arrow piercing his head and a white polyester suit plastering his body, he wasn't breaking new ground as a comic.

At least that's how he sees it today.

``I really think what I did was go back,'' says Martin, whose hair now is the color of wet goose-feathers.

``In the '70s when I started, comedy was very jokey, very `Vegas,' sequential and very political and very unfunny, with the exception of George Carlin and Richard Pryor,'' says Martin, sitting uneasily in a damask chair in a hotel room.

``I just thought there's another kind of comedy out there. I KNOW there is. And what I did really comes out of vaudeville, I think. Also …