Written in the eaves

Foo Fighters tell McCain to stop using song

And in breaking news...

NEW YORK -- Popular indie rock band Vampire Weekend today issued a statement asking that Senator John McCain refrain from using any of their songs in his campaign, in case he was thinking of doing so at any time in the future. A spokesperson for the band explained, "First it was John Mellencamp, then it was Heart, then ABBA, then Jackson Browne, then Van Halen, and now the Foo Fighters. The band thought it would save a lot of time to make it clear at the outset that permission to use their songs would not be granted."

Following up on this development, fellow indie rockers Death Cab For Cutie subsequently issued a companion statement, declaring "Let's nip this one in the bud right now and spare everyone the trouble of calling their lawyers, okay? Don't use our songs either."

Garage rock revivalists The Strokes, currently preparing to release their fourth studio album sometime after the inauguration ceremonies in 2009, also issued a statement indicating their back catalog was henceforth to be considered off-limits to the McCain campaign.

In response, the McCain team dispatched operatives to all forthcoming campaign stops to verify that all background music played during personal appearances by the candidate and his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin will consist exclusively of music by Ted Nugent, Pat Boone, John Rich, and "anyone else who didn't expressly and specifically tell us not to."

Senator McCain (pictured above with Senator Barack Obama during their debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee on October 7, 2008) was unavailable for comment.

Update: And Bon Jovi.

They got the guns but we got the numbers

Found on Gothamist, this map illustrates the sheer number of people living in each borough of New York City by comparison with an entire state of the U.S. of similar population size. For instance, the estimated population of Maine in the year 2007 was 1,317,207; the population of the Bronx the same year was 1,373,659. The above map uses estimates from 2006, but the principle is the same.

Actually, a couple of them now fall short: the entire population of Idaho in 2007 was 1,499,402 people while Manhattan alone had 1,620,867 residents. And New Mexico the same year was quite spacious with 1,969,915 citizens...while the borough of Queens was a little more, um, let's say neighborly at a population of 2,270,338.

And I can get to all these places by subway except for the island of Wyoming, but the ferry there is free.

And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time

Teenagers From The Future, the anthology of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes edited by Tim Callahan and published by Sequart Research and Literacy Organization, is now available from Amazon.

The book includes my essay "The Perfect Storm: The Death and Resurrection of Lightning Lad" about the early days of the Legion series. The particular storyline I examine is one of the first examples of a multi-issue "story arc" in superhero comics (I also mention a few precursors) as well as an early instance of the "death as a revolving door" motif which has since become a staple of comics as well as other serialized entertainment. All this and a tribute to the great Jerry Siegel, plus a comparison of the different working relationships he and his successor Edmond Hamilton had with their editor, the controversial Mort Weisinger. And even though that seems like it should be enough for one book, this particular volume comes with seventeen other essays at no additional cost, written by...um, a bunch of other people who I'm sure have interesting things to say too. Whatever.

(I'm kidding, of course -- I've read this entire book several times in painstaking detail and I'm proud to be one small part of it. Also, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and it means a lot to be able to participate in commemorating that.)

According to Tim, the book will also be available for order through the direct market in either the October or November Diamond Previews catalog. Tim isn't sure whether the book will still be available through Amazon after it appears in the Diamond catalog, so anyone who wants to be sure of getting a copy without actually going into a comics shop should probably order it now.

And that cover is amazingly cool, isn't it?

This post is inappropriate

This was my mother's actual response to news that the first day of the Republican Convention might be postponed or curtailed due to Hurricane Gustav:

"I just hope the men's restrooms in St. Paul are prepared for all those Republican delegates with nothing to do..."

See? Now you know where I got my crass sense of humor.

The whole thing is a blessing in disguise for the RNC. The last thing Republican strategists wanted at the convention was to have those high-profile appearances by Bush and Cheney -- reminding everyone yet again how closely tied McCain is to the staggeringly unpopular incumbent -- but there was no way to exclude them from appearing without it being noticed and remarked upon. Now those speeches can be cancelled altogether without it looking like a sign of embarassment.

Plus McCain and Palin now get an opportunity to rush to the Gulf Coast for a photo op that will make them look presidential. It's like McCain received a special blessing from above in return for picking a running mate so beloved by Christian conservatives.

On the other hand, Focus on the Family may not be able to savor this victory, as they'll be preoccupied with filing a breach of contract suit against the Almighty for utterly failing to live up to their demands. Whose side is that guy on, anyway?

Search for tomorrow

When I was seven years old, one of my most prized possessions was a book called The World of Tomorrow written by Kenneth K. Goldstein and published by McGraw-Hill. (Miraculously, I still own that book today, and it's still one of my most prized possessions.) As the title indicates, this was a book about the future, lavishly illustrated with gorgeous full-color photographs of life in the year 2069.



You wouldn't believe how many hours I spent staring at those photos when I was seven. Well, actually, maybe you would. It was so authoritative: these were detailed photographs, not merely drawings created by some artist, so any reasonable person could only assume this was how the future was actually going to be. I tried to put myself into the world of those pictures to better understand how the future would feel to live in at ground level. What would it be like to walk down that street? What view would you see from that park? What sounds would you hear from the traffic of those automated cars zipping by on their grooved tracks? How would it feel to ride in one? Were those rosette-like buildings carousels or restaurants? Would it be strange to sleep in an underwater hotel?



Because of all those hours staring and contemplating, these images are still the indelible default setting for "the future" in my imagination. This is still the future cityscape I envision when reading a science fiction novel. It's the utopian future Earth of Star Trek; the three-dimensional version of what Curt Swan drew in old issues of Adventure Comics with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It turns out the photos in The World of Tomorrow actually came from the Futurama II exhibit presented by General Motors at the 1964 New York World's Fair, the very building I wrote about in my previous post. (The original Futurama was presented by GM at the 1939 World's Fair.) Neither the corporate connection nor the association with the World's Fair were highlighted in any way by Goldstein or singled out in the acknowledgements. The book was published several years after the fair closed, in which time a lot had changed in America...and the surprisingly progressive, socially conscious, and environmentally enlightened text wasn't a commercial sop to the automaker. As a result, I went a decades not ever guessing the connection until I came across the familiar pictures by accident a couple of years ago while researching something else.

And now, because we live in the future -- where this home computer terminal I'm using at the moment is connected to a worldwide communications network -- I can share with you something I never dreamed existed: actual motion picture footage of that other future I kept trying to visit throughout my childhood.



Note: the above scans were found at nywf64.com, which offers a thorough guide to Futurama II among other attractions.

If you've only seen it once, you haven't seen it all

As a special treat for those who follow the exploits of the internationally famous super-scientist Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture and his clan, we present an actual photograph of their home and research headquarters, better known as the Venture Compound, circa 1964:



The above picture is the best quality photo I was able to find online after long hours of research. Because the flags and the throngs of tourists may obscure your view of the main building, we also offer an artist's conception depicting a wider angle, as seen in a postcard from the same era:



And this image from yet another angle clarifies the overall design of this impressive structure:



The unfamiliar corporate signage may seem puzzling, but this is easily explained. At the time these images were created, Dr. Jonas Venture leased his distinctive home and research center to the General Motors Corporation for use as their pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, New York. General Motors used the complex for their Futurama exhibit, in which visitors seated in moving armchairs glided past detailed scenes depicting urban life as it would be lived in the early 21st Century. Futurama proved to be the most popular attraction of the World's Fair: nearly twenty-six million people took the journey into the future during the Fair's two year run.

I've visited the fairgrounds at Flushing Meadows many times, but no trace of the Venture Compound remains. I assume that, having made a tidy profit on the temporary use of his abode, Jonas Venture removed it from the site after the Fair ended and returned it once more to the remote location where it stands to this day. Courtesy of a Mr. Jackson Publick, we conclude with this image of the Venture Compound as it appears today:

Dark as his shadow

This kind of thing fascinates me:

First, Marc Tyler Nobleman -- whose book on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Boys of Steel, has just been published -- notes a significant, but totally expected and unsurprising, omission from the credits of a recent superhero movie, leading him to wonder about the origin of the phrase "the Dark Knight" before it appeared in Detective Comics #40 in a story written by Bill Finger in 1940.

Then, doing the literary legwork, J.L. Bell traces the coinage back to Irish gothic novelist Charles Robert Maturin in 1816.

What, you didn't think Frank Miller invented it, did you?

Found here. Both blogs are really excellent in general and, it should go without saying, well worth reading.

Temporally unavailable

I'm back but I'm not back. Or do I have that backwards? Maybe it's the other way around. I've concluded my annual retreat for another year and have returned to my usual surroundings to get caught up on work and e-mail but I'm not quite in a position to resume normal blogging activity just yet. Thanks in advance for your continued indulgence.

The title of this post is a phrase that seemed funny and apt when I first saw it just a couple of days ago. It was on a sign in a shop window announcing iPhones were out of stock at that location. Doesn't it seem like something out of Doctor Who? On checking Google, I've come across a lot of people using this phrase the same way. The funny thing is, even though the phrase is properly speaking a mistake, if it did exist it would probably mean more or less just what these people think it means. Unavailable in this time. If you come to this locus in spacetime seeking this item, you will not find it here and now. Adjust your temporal and spatial coordinates and try again.

Lightful dwellings

Photo ganked from Gothamist.

I was only peripherally aware of Buckminster Fuller for all these years, but in recent months I've become a bit of a fan and suddenly, as if in reply to my vague stirring of interest, he's everywhere. Really, don't you think it's time we gave the Dymaxion car another shot?

In a pleasing coincidence, a Fuller dome has been constructed near my home on the very week I'm heading off to visit another dome that has a special place in my heart. In other words, it's time once again for this blog to enter a state of hibernative naptosis while I go off to recover from the first half of this year. I will be travelling with geeks, but I won't be checking my e-mail often (if at all) or keeping up with my favorite blogs while I'm in retreat, so try not to ask me anything or say anything interesting while I'm gone.

I have some good stuff in mind for when I return so we'll see about that, eh?

People we couldn't do without

Strangely enough, the vast majority of search engine traffic arriving at this blog comes from people searching on Google for the origin of the phrase "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." For the benefit of anyone who arrives at this entry looking for the same information, those words are written on the tombstone of Billy Pilgrim in the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and they appear again on Stony Stevenson's tombstone in a television program called Between Time and Timbuktu which adapted scenarios taken from an assortment of Vonnegut's novels and short stories. As I describe it at the above-mentioned link, seeing that program at an impressionable age was a major formative influence on me.

I usually claim that my top search referral is "Kim Possible erotic fan fiction", but the truth is those hits take second place to the Vonnegut post. Given the choice, I'd much rather have a blog where people went looking for erotica about cartoon characters than one best known for eulogizing my childhood heroes and role models. Sadly, fate hasn't helped me much in that department.

When I was writing about Steve Gerber, I wish it had occurred to me to call him "the George Carlin of comics" because in some respects that's exactly what he was. (Fortunately the same comparison occurred to Jim McLauchlin of the HERO Initiative, so at least the world was not denied this insight due to my mental slowness.) Of course Gerber and Carlin and Vonnegut were radically different in a lot of ways -- perhaps more ways than they were similar -- but they occupied the same continuum of thought and embodied the same outlook. Devastatingly intelligent, viciously funny, outspokenly skeptical, fiercely enraged by stupidity and hypocrisy, able to see the humor in our vanity even as they watched the human race needlessly destroying itself. These are qualities I've always wanted to possess...especially that last one, because finding the humor in disaster is a necessary survival skill and it's getting harder and harder all the time. I listened to what all three of them said and read what they wrote and always hoped they'd give us still more clues on how to get by. And now these three of my lifelong icons are gone in the span of a little more than a year.

Oh, and one other: although I never met him, I had a tenuous family connection of a sort with Algis Budrys and was a huge fan of his work, especially the novels Who? (made into a very good movie with Elliot Gould and Joe Bova) and the astonishingly prescient yet criminally out-of-print Michaelmas. Carlin, Gerber, and Vonnegut all saw America from the inside; Budrys arrived in this country in 1936 as the five year old son of the ousted consul-general of Lithuania and he never forgot those inexplicable childhood glimpses of Nazi insanity that caused his family to flee their home.

In some ways the immigrant learns a new culture more thoroughly from the outside than the native ever knows it from inside. If you learn a second language, you may be more conscious of its formal rules of grammar and its odd linguistic quirks than you are of your first tongue; you might speak the language more correctly than a native because of all the things they can take for granted that you had to acquire through hard study. In most ways Budrys lived as the perfect assimilated American immigrant, but inside (he would later say) he never lost sight of the fact that friends and neighbors and community were essentially werewolves -- capable of transforming from kind, reasonable people to bloodthirsty monsters given the wrong impetus.

Now that makes two more people who were huge personal icons of mine gone away this year. If you'll excuse me being so self-centered about this, it does feel meaningful: as if something is being stripped away, as if the world is being diminished around us. More so than usual, I mean. And I had a brush with serious illness at the start of this year, and then my mother did, and then I nearly lost one of my best friends, and I did lose another who meant a lot to me. So I really don't want to write any more memorial posts. From now on, nobody I like die, okay?

In the news

N.Y. attorney general forces ISPs to curb USENET access

Verizon offers details of USENET deletion

Verizon blocks access to whole USENET hierarchy

You really have to admire the bravery of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for standing up to the all-powerful Usenet criminal cartel that no one else dares oppose. At last, thousands of innocent Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint customers are spared exposure to the depraved rituals of newsgroups such as alt.adoption, alt.arts.ballet, alt.astronomy and so on and so forth, all the way down to those havens of twisted perversion that call themselves alt.yoga and alt.zen. Don't be fooled: obviously those are assumed names. While it may look on the surface as if these sickos are talking about astronomy or gardening or yoga, they're actually trading kiddie porn right under your nose. That's how deep this thing goes. Anything and everything you see is a secret code word that actually means "kiddie porn." Even this very paragraph might be full of sickening perverted filth and neither of us would ever know it!

Moving on...

I need someone to tell me this is a hoax. Hmm, the Telegraph, that's like a British version of the Onion, isn't it? It just does gag stories and satire that aren't meant to be taken as fact, right? Whew, that's a relief! Because this actually being true would have made me sick as a parrot. A dead parrot.

Also, I was literally three blocks away while this was happening, and I had no clue.

Seven songs

At the behest of sean, who bade me answer the following:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.

And my reply:

Feist, One Evening -- The tune from the iPod commercial that made her reputation in the States didn't grab me...but it led to her back catalogue getting more exposure here, and when I heard this it pleased me in all the ways the better-known song didn't. Enjoy the video directed by Leslie herself and costarring her fellow Nova Scotia music sensation Buck 65 here. (Edit: damn you anyway, sean, you know everything takes me longer because I'm so old! I was just getting to this!)

Broadcast, Come On Let's Go -- What if the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were taken over by the Lloigor from Zenith to become a pop group in Swinging London circa 1967 and wrote the missing love song from the soundtrack of Billion Dollar Brain? It would sound like this.

The Jigsaw Seen, Baby Elephant Walk -- You'll recall their gorgeous cover of the Scott Walker tune "30 Century Man" on the soundtrack of Bender's Big Score. This is another track from the same album, Songs Mama Used To Sing. (The album also includes a peppy version of "Tattoo" by the Oo.) Video here.

Donovan, Barabajagal -- Jeff Beck on lead guitar, Ron Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Micky Waller (who just passed away a few months ago) on drums. Wikipedia claims no less than Robert Plant also helped on backing vocals, but I'm not sure about that. People might think of Donovan as the folkie tunesmith with the Dylan cap who introduced the Beatles to the Maharishi, but he's also the guy who recorded songs like this and did backing vocals for Alice Cooper a bit later. Set to images here.

Spanky and Our Gang, Like To Get To Know You -- Looks like I've fallen into a 1967 groove here. This may seem very much of its time to modern ears, from the days of The Mamas and the Papas and the 5th Dimension, but the truth is this was pretty unconventional even then. Check out this vintage performance clip from the Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour.

Rench presents Gangstagrass, Pistol Packin -- Speaking of crossing genres! I've been waiting years for someone to do this, but I didn't expect it to be so awesome. Listen to this and three other tracks here or download the whole album for free here.

John Cage, 4'33" -- Free download here.

I just don't feel like tagging anyone, but consider yourself tagged if you wish to be and haven't been tagged by someone else.

The road to oranges and lemons

While promoting one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite bands, said favorite band (XTC) demonstrates their willingness to commit career suicide and gives new meaning to the act of burning one's bridges while still crossing them. In other words, it's brilliant. For some reason it also puts me in mind of Joel Hodgson...

Who's blogging now

And doing a good job of it too? Gerry Conway.

No, not the drummer from Jethro Tull, Steeleye Span, and Fairport Convention. This one is the former EIC of Marvel Comics and onetime writer of Daredevil, Iron Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Justice League of America, Batman and Legion of Super-Heroes and apparently several hundred other comics I bought and read during the 1970s. Creator of Firestorm and Ms. Marvel. Author of Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. The guy who killed Gwen Stacy. Also he's written some things for television. That Gerry Conway.

One of the strange benefits of the interwebs and this blogging stuff in particular has been encountering people who loomed large in my personal mythology many years -- decades! -- ago, and seeing them now in an entirely different light as regular folks instead of impossibly distant icons of comicdom. It's happened to me a number of times now and it never gets less strange. This particular guy was a major figure in my past, especially during the time he returned to DC Comics as a writer/editor and spawned new characters and series like mad, in what seemed at the time like a bid to make him the next Stan Lee. It didn't quite work out that way, but he was a huge part of the comics conversation of the era. Now, far removed from the hype of those days, he turns out to be a thoughtful and lucid commentator.

Well, unless this is another one of those Fake Stan Lee deals. In which case I look pretty stupid now.

Anyway, check his blog out.

No point at all

From the evidence of Final Crisis #1, it seems Grant Morrison doesn't know what a Lagrange point is.

Lagrange points (or libration points) are areas formed by the orbit of one body around another, positions in which gravitational forces are balanced so that things put at those points tend to stay there, relative to the other bodies of the orbital system. A celestial body by itself doesn't have "a Lagrange point" as such; you need two bodies in an orbital relationship. There isn't one Lagrange point in such an orbital system but five of them, all moving with the orbiting body in fixed relationships. This diagram should make it clearer than words alone could do:

The two bodies shown above could be the Sun and the Earth, or the Earth and the Moon. The Sun–Earth L4 and L5 points lie 60° ahead of and behind the Earth as it orbits the Sun; the Earth–Moon L4 and L5 points lie 60° ahead of and behind the Moon as it orbits the Earth. Because things put in libration points tend to stay in those positions relative to their bigger neighbors, they've been considered as potentially useful places to put space stations or other orbiting hardware. As it is, they tend to collect interplanetary dust.

Morrison seems to get that "Lagrange point" has some relationship with a planet's gravitational field, but the term doesn't quite make sense the way he uses it here. (He might instead have used a term like "the Lagrangian zone" to indicate "a spherical zone as far away from the planet as its Lagrangian points" or "out to the Trojan points" which is a more colloquial term for the L4 and L5 points.) The subsequent lines about "no one must enter or leave the gravity well" and "dust for radiation prints" are equally senseless for different reasons, except to reinforce the conceit of this being a cosmic police procedural, and to tip us off that none of this should be taken seriously.

It disappoints me when a writer I otherwise admire immensely devotes time and attention to promoting crackpot pseudoscientific drivel, Whitley Strieber UFO abduction books, and supposed Mayan astrological forecasts while not knowing real scientific concepts and terms. It's okay for him to throw in a misused word just because it sounds sciencetastic. After all, who would know what a scienceish word actually means? Unless you were a practitioner of scienceism or something.

Whirling transient nodes of thought careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention

I have no personal anecdotes or strange associations to relate, nothing special to say here. It's just that Blazing Saddles has always been of nearly religious significance in my family -- no, screw that, it was totally religious for us, no "nearly" about it, that movie is what my family followed instead of deity or church or religion. So the passing of another of its stars is something I must acknowledge with considerable regret and reluctance.

Even when Harvey Korman wasn't the actor doing the "funny" thing in a scene, he's still the center of attention, but without upstaging any of the other performers. See for instance here, but it's the case all throughout Blazing Saddles -- even when he's performing with Mel Brooks. The people around Hedley Lamarr are all insane, but it's his withering glare and icy putdowns that get the laughs. I don't know anything about acting, but it seems like he was was genuinely paying attention to the others in the scene with him, responding to them and not just waiting for his next funny line, and that's why those scenes work so well. In this film Korman pulled off one of the best comedic performances recorded on film, and I hope he's remembered for that (and a few dozen other times he did the same) instead of only as the guy who kept cracking up at Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show. That always bugged the hell out of me.

And I may be the only person who feels this way, but I'm also inordinately fond of his performance as Colonel Slaghoople in Viva Rock Vegas -- the second and infinitely superior live-action Flintstones movie -- a minor yet warmhearted role in which he gets a comedic bit that may be silly and completely throwaway but never fails to crack me up because of his perfect off-the-cuff delivery.

Also, he once performed a touching romantic scene with Bea Arthur.

War is a racket

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 34 years. Butler served during the Boxer Rebellion and saw action in Honduras, Nicaragua, Veracruz, commanded a base in France during the First World War, and led the Marine Expeditionary Force in China during the late Twenties.

On his death in 1940, Major General Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He was one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor (since Butler's death, no one has received more than one Medal of Honor) and one of only three to be awarded both a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person ever to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

After retiring from the Marine Corps in 1931, Smedley Butler went on a national speaking tour. His standard speech was so well received that he prepared a longer version to be published as a small book in 1935. It also appeared as a condensed book in Reader's Digest. Here's the opening page of that book:



The text of War Is A Racket can be found here among several other places online.

Major General Butler was no misfit or wild-eyed radical, and his name is still honored by the U.S. Marine Corps to this day. The Marine Corps base in Okinawa is named after him. We can only speculate what his view of the Second World War might have been, because he died before America became involved. We know Butler was no admirer of Hitler or Mussolini, and he was a firm supporter of President Roosevelt. We can very easily guess what Major General Butler would make of the world now.

On a day like today, when Americans like to repeat comforting phrases about soldiers and the sacrifices they made, it's worth remembering that this man -- who clearly knew the business of war as well as any man of his time but held no illusions about what he had done and what it all meant -- turned around and said in no uncertain terms: to hell with War.

In honor of Mother's Day

On this special day we salute the world's most huggable industrialist. Tender as corned beef and warm as pastrami, her fondest ambitions are to see her enemies eaten by scorpions and to become Supreme Overlord of Earth. Whether making her robot oil with 10% more love than the next leading brand or rushing off to some charity BS for knocked-up teenaged sluts, Mom is one clever old skank. And don't you forget it!

Of course we all know and love Mom from her many heartwarming appearances on the television series Futurama but even her most devoted fans may not realize Mom has continued to enjoy a thriving career on television in the present day. Here's one interview she granted to a local affiliate back in December of last year, displaying all the folksy homespun charm and compassion she's always demonstrated as the head of Momcorp:



When asked for further comment, Mom replied "You call that a pressed ham? What is this moose drip? I'm sick of hearing about those turtle squirts! Jam a bastard in it, you crap! Shut your filthy trap!"

I am a clown, yet I am filled with indifference

For those of you who weren't fortunate enough to score a copy of Bongo Comics Free for All on Free Comic Book Day, nor saw this story when it appeared previously some time ago, enjoy The Simpsons manga courtesy of Chuck Dixon and the astoundingly wonderful Nina Matsumoto. There isn't a panel of this that isn't packed with awesome.

A losing play

My daydream goes something like this:

(RAB enters a tavern located somewhere in another state. Spying a patron not otherwise involved in activity or conversation, he approaches and doffs his hat.)

Me: Good day to you, sir. I am an avid supporter of a sporting team not local to this region and which has frequently competed against your own favored team.

Other person: Based on this statement, I assume that you may be a visitor to this area. If so, welcome to our community, my good fellow.

Me: My thanks. It is a lovely community and does yourself and your neighbors much credit. You know, I am firmly of the opinion that in their next encounter on the playing field, my preferred sporting team will best your preferred sporting team and emerge with the winning score.

Other person: Well, such an outcome is entirely possible. After all, both teams are composed of talented and dilligent players who will have trained extensively for the encounter...and of course one must never entirely discount the role of luck in determining the outcome of a given competition. However, bearing in mind these reservations, I remain of the opinion that in the event my own favored team will triumph, owing to their demonstrable skill and fortitude.

Me: A reasonable position. Watching their next encounter on the playing field shall be all the more enjoyable for me now. Should my expectations be vindicated, I shall enjoy the satisfaction of having correctly predicted the outcome of the game. On the other hand, should your prediction come to pass and your team achieves victory rather than mine, I will at least be able to take vicarious pleasure in the thought of you enjoying this vindication as I would have done.

Other person: So it would be safe to say there will be reward in the sporting event for both of us no matter what the outcome. I will enjoy my role as spectator even more for knowing this.

Me: As will I. Let us purchase and enjoy beverages together at this tavern in commemoration of our mutual respect in this matter.

Other person: Yes, let us.

(all exeunt)

That's my daydream. This isn't.

III. Conclusion

In which you will kindly recall that you asked me to write a convention recap. Well, at least one of you did. Don't blame me that it turned into another three-part epic no one is reading apart from my mother, and then only if there's nothing good on television tonight.

On Saturday evening, Lisa Hoppe and I attended the ReBoot panel (video here and doesn't it make my life easier not to have to recap all these panels when you can watch them for yourself) featuring series cocreator Gavin Blair and onetime producer Dan DiDio. This panel was for me what conventions are for. Not shilling things, not hype and press events and publicity for your big budget film, but seeing folks who are delighted to talk about something they had fun creating, and who are equally delighted to see how many people responded to it.

Dan DiDio in particular was a surprise. My close personal friend Gavin Blair -- by which I mean he once shook my hand and he signed my booklet, which is more than many of my so-called real life friends can say -- remarked afterward that comics people only get to see DiDio trying to promote the latest DC event under the scrutiny of his corporate employers, but the Dan DiDio he knows as friend and colleague is a completely different person. There was nothing to hype here, just a couple of guys reminiscing about this really cool thing they did a few years back...and it was obvious DiDio was having the time of his life telling those stories. If someone attended this panel without ever having seen or heard of ReBoot, that person would have left wanting to see the entire series right away, simply because Blair and DDio made their experiences working on it sound like so much fun.

That night saw a big dinner with the TwoMorrows/Kirby Museum crowd and Jack Kirby Collector contributor Mike Gartland, plus some sort of Philly art mafia consisting of Mike Manley, Jamar Nicholas, and Scott Cohn. Believe me, I am as shocked as you are that I got to sit with those guys. Have you seen their artwork? Go look: it's awesome. My presence there was solely because none of them knew me and generously assumed I had some right to be in their company. If only they knew.

Moving along to the last day of the convention, a few highlights...

Waiting for the Kirby: King of Comics panel to start, I ran into my actual real world friend Jeff Brady as well as JKC contributor and all-around swell guy Adam McGovern. They probably regretted sitting next to me when I heckled Mark Evanier about feral cats in his backyard. Also in attendance were several major participants in Kirby fandom, such as Harry Mendryk (whose own convention recap is much more informative than mine and has cool photos, so I encourage you all to check it out) and the shockingly erudite Atlas historian Michael Vassalo.

Sometime after the panel, I heard of one attendee grumbling that it had focused too much on the entire careers of guests Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers and gave insufficient attention to Kirby. This strikes me as doubly mistaken. First, both offered a lot of praise for Jack and discussed the work they did embellishing his pencils, how they approached it and what it was like to work with him. Sinnott was particularly effusive in his love for Kirby; Ayers is less outspoken about it but the respect and warmth are there as well. More importantly -- look, I'm the big Kirby fanatic, right? Write a book about the guy, have a panel in his honor, mention his name in passing and I'm right there, as most bloggers learn all too quickly. But Sinnott and Ayers are still with us, their careers are worthy of attention, and I'd rather give them a standing ovation with both in front of us to enjoy it than only offering them praise at yet another memorial service.

I'm proud to be one of many at the con who personally congratulated Laura Hudson on her success at irritating those jerkwads at Virgin Comics. You can tell the worth of any journalist by the caliber of person she offends. To be called an "evil writer" can only be considered praise...because anyone who uses the phrase "evil writer" as a pejorative richly deserves offense. I told Laura to bear in mind the example of investigative reporter Wayne Barrett: on hearing former New York Senator Al D'Amato violently disparage him on television as a scandalmonger, a gutter journalist and worthless hack, Barrett beamed and declared it "better than winning a Pulitzer."

I was also glad to hook up my close personal friend George Khoury with a cheap source of Tom Strong action figure sets. A dealer was selling these at such a steep discount that having bought one I felt obliged to buy a bunch of other action figures from him simply to ease my feeling that I was taking unfair advantage. Yesterday at St. Marks Comics I saw the exact same set going for $44.99. I should have bought out the guy's whole stock. Around this same time, George and I got into a conversation with Erik Larsen about the original Fawcett version of Captain Marvel as compared with more recent interpretations, another of my favorite hobby horses. Okay, now I really am just dropping names...but Larsen is getting a lot of Gerber and Kirby work back into print as well as many other good comics, so if there's kissing up to be done I for one don't mind getting in that line.

As the convention wound down, I hung out for a while in Artists Alley with Richard Howell and his Claypool cohort Jesse Reyes, where my fatigued rambling was tolerated with characteristic graciousness by the always charming and civilized Carolyn Kelly. Carolyn was mercifully spared further babbling from me, however, when I went off to help John and Rand and Lisa pack up the TwoMorrows display before we all got hustled out by the Javits Center maintenance crew. When one of these shows ends they waste no time in letting you know you aren't welcome anymore. After loading up the van, a bunch of us went to dinner just off Times Square, and another convention weekend was over.

I feel as if the preceding entries have been just a big list of names, but that's what the whole convention experience is about for me. I don't go to buy stuff or see a lot of panels but rather to see people, so that's what I've recorded here. Although they were also at the con, I totally missed connecting with Sean Witzke and Jog and Neilalien and the returning favorite Redhead Fangirl. Dammit! There's always something you didn't manage to do.

II. Consolation

In which the author is moved to contemplate human mortality.

The Steve Gerber memorial panel on Saturday is covered extensively here and here sparing any need for yet another recap. From the world of comics there was Mark Evanier, Gail Simone, Paul Levitz, Buzz Dixon, Marty Pasko (who delivered the single funniest line of the event), and Hildy Mesnik (a coworker with Steve at Sunbow Productions on the G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons), as well as Steve's brother Michael Gerber and Steve's daughter Samantha, and finally (and most surprisingly) Steve's writing collaborator on Omega the Unknown and Hard Time Mary Skrenes, not known for attending conventions or interacting with fans. After the memorial, I had a brief chat with the charming Hildy Mesnik, who was also an editor at Marvel in the early Nineties, and with Len Wein, who seems not to have aged even slightly in the nearly twenty years since I last saw him at a convention.

The Legion of Super-Heroes panel in honor of their fiftieth anniversary -- that really just does not sound right, no matter how technically accurate it may be -- is discussed here, including a link to a full podcast so you can hear the whole thing for yourself. As moderator, Peter Sanderson left me uncertain as to whether or not he's actually ever read a Legion comic...but Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen were both lively and entertaining nonetheless, while current series editor Mike Marts was a bit more reserved and was disinclined to reveal anything about the future of the series other than stating that Jim Shooter was sticking around for the long haul. It would have been a much more lively and possibly contentious panel if Shooter himself had been present, but he skipped the con altogether for reasons as yet undisclosed...

Paul jolted me a little by naming a couple of my old friends from Legion fandom back in the Seventies as two people he particularly enjoyed hearing from; he also gave a namecheck to the original founders of the old Legion Fan Club in the letters pages of Superboy way back when. This combined with the reminiscences of the Gerber memorial panel contributed to a feeling of creeping nostalgia...or if not nostalgia per se, at least a sense of passing time. Like revisiting your old grade school or seeing the summer house where you spent your vacations decades later, it's not a desire to be young again -- who'd want that? -- but a feeling that being so far away from your past makes you somehow bigger. Your life occupies a bigger volume in spacetime than it used to. The years seem shorter because each year represents an increasingly smaller percentage of your total lifespan to date than they did when you were twelve.

I'd been looking forward to the Grant Morrison spotlight...but I ducked out of the packed hall shortly after the deliberately over-the-top and very entertaining intro was screened. The truth is, after the Gerber panel it just didn't sit right. Morrison made a concerted effort -- as he says in so many words; see the above-linked video -- to become a rock star of comics, a pop culture icon and media celebrity, to create this aura of glamour around himself previously unknown to comic book writers. (Neil Gaiman, his only rival in this achievement, is a special case.) He set out to do this and succeeded admirably and of course it's a sound decision in terms of his career. But at that particular moment, I didn't feel any pressing need to be in that audience.

Coming out of the panel I headed for the convention center cafeteria on the lower level, where someone unexpectedly called my name. It was Jon Browne, proprietor of They Walk Among Us, an outstanding comics shop in the London borough of Richmond for the past 18 years. I've often held up TWAU as the perfect example of a comics retailer who gets it right -- by presenting a welcoming and friendly environment, by diversifying stock to include a wide variety of toys and games and memorabilia, and mainly (as Jon is quick to point out) by an iron-jawed tenacity in sticking it out through lean times. I'd encourage any retailer to follow their lead, but I suspect the main lesson they'd have to offer is "work harder!"

We discussed the recent death of Steve Whitaker, who introduced me to Jon and his wife shortly after the store opened. Like me, Jon had also fallen out of touch with Whitko, in their case when the latter moved away from London...and had only just reestablished contact with him online a mere six days before he died. We also talked about happier things, like how the shop is doing and a number of celebrity customers who shop there.

After a while it was time to get in line for the Venture Bros panel, so I made my farewell to Jon and went off in that general direction. Last year the VB panel was one of the highlights of the weekend, but a line had started forming an hour before it began...and it had received a lot of publicity and was sure to be even more crowded this year. I'd been telling people that turning up more than an hour in advance was not uncalled for and I was all set to heed my own advice -- but. En route I ran into one Roz Kaveney, who at one time many years ago was very nearly my editor when I was very nearly a writer. She invited me to join herself and a friend for coffee, so I found myself heading straight back to the cafeteria. From now on, if anyone ever says "but you've never bought coffee for a transgendered former civil servant who works in British non-governmental organisations and writes scholarly tomes on teen movies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I'll be able to say "don't be silly, of course I have."

This was definitely worth being late to the line for the Venture Bros panel...but it had ceased to be any sort of line and was instead a confused heaving mass. Way more people had turned up than the hall outside the panel rooms could contain, and it tested the convention staffers on their crowd control abilities. They handled the situation smartly, moving the panel to another room three times the size of the room it was scheduled in -- even then, it was standing room only once more -- and everything got under way peacefully if twenty minutes late. A good recap of the panel can be found here (along with coverage of the Battlestar Galactica and Moonlight panels if those are your cup of coffee as well).

Something I haven't seen get quite the coverage it deserves. According to my close personal friend Lance Festerman -- that is to say, I spoke to him once for about two minutes, but I think there was a real bond formed between us and I'm sure we could totally hang out together and talk about stuff -- who was running the convention for the first time this year, NYCC had 15,000 more attendees this year over the previous year. I'll assume that's accurate pending evidence to the contrary. Yet we saw little of the traffic congestion and overcrowding of the past two years...partly because of the increased space available, but also partly due to better coordination and planning. The Venture Bros-related pileup was the only major issue I witnessed, and it was cleared up pretty quickly. I know a few people who swore off attending after last year, but this time was a lot more comfortable.

And next year I'm not going to commit to doing one of these goddamn post-con writeups no matter how much you beg me. Next: Lo, there shall come an ending!

I. Contumely

In which many names will be named.

Almost as soon as I arrived at the Javits Center for NYCC 2008, Rand Hoppe of the Kirby Museum introduced me to John Morrow, who'd travelled up from North Carolina along with Jim Amash to staff the TwoMorrows Publishing table. As previously mentioned, even though the Kirby Museum wasn't sharing space with TwoMorrows at NYCC this year, that table remained my default rendezvous point: the place I told everyone to look for me if I couldn't be found anywhere else and the first place I looked for other folks.

I also spent a good bit of time hanging out with Mike Philips and Tim Callahan of Sequart Research and Literacy Center -- publishers of Teenagers From The Future, the epic collection of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes that sold out its entire preview run before the weekend was over. I was lucky to score a copy at the rate they were flying away.

Totally by chance while I was still scoping out the show floor, I ran into Gavin "Gavok" Jasper of 4th Letter (though apparently he slept through meeting me), and the following day I also met David Brothers of 4L when he stopped by the Sequart table. They're both every bit as cool and personable as one would expect from reading their blog. I also had the fortune to spend time with Patrick Meaney and Rob Kelly, however statistically unlikely it was that any of us would cross paths that way. My long term plan is to get all four of these guys doing work for Sequart and/or TwoMorrows so that hooking up with them will be much simpler at future conventions. It's all about who you know...

The multi-talented Thom Zahler was almost directly opposite the Sequart table, and one of my stated goals for the con had been to pick up a full set of his really very wonderful Love and Capes comic series. Later this year, IDW is going to release a collection in trade paperback form: a much more convenient form for gift-giving if you happen to know anyone who might enjoy a) warm-hearted romance with a comedic superhero motif sometimes compared to The Incredibles and b) receiving gifts.

I missed the screening of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist but made it to the Will Eisner panel with producer Jon B. Cooke (who turns out to display previously unsuspected gifts as a panel moderator, and future convention organizers are encouraged to make use of him in this capacity), the film's director Andrew Cooke, Paul Levitz, Mike Uslan, Mark Evanier, and Will's nephew Carl Gropper. Gropper was probably the most interesting panelist for his family perspective on having Eisner for a relative. There was also plenty of discussion about Eisner the visionary genius who saw the comic book page as a unique graphic entity unto itself and not merely a vehicle for reprinting comic strip panels, and Eisner the unusually shrewd businessman (according to Levitz, rivalled only by Joe Simon and Joe Kubert in that respect). I still regret missing that film, though.

Later in the day, my actual close personal friend (as opposed to the countless people I refer to as "close personal friends" but who are in fact complete strangers or at best passing acquaintances who would barely recognize me under most circumstances) Richard Howell put me on the trail of Peter Sanderson, who was facing a last-minute cancellation by an intended member of his Legion of Super-Heroes panel the following day. I had a good idea of someone who could fill that gap, and spent a lot more time than I probably ought to have done trying to track down all the involved parties and get them on the same page.

It all turned out to be for nothing -- Peter found someone else to fill in -- but to be honest, I enjoyed the temporary excitement all the same. A few years ago I found work as roadie and guitar tech for a rock group simply because I was tired of watching gigs from the audience. Standing there with nothing to do but watch always made me feel antsy; I only ever wanted to be backstage, sorting out minor emergencies behind the scenes so the show could run smoothly. By the same token, I don't feel comfortable just passively attending a convention; I like to have a problem that needs solving.

In fact, I might as well admit it: I'm the one who stopped Jim Shooter from attending NYCC this year, just so he'd miss the Legion panel and I could run around all afternoon trying to line up a replacement for him. I'm so ashamed of myself.

Next: Death be not proud!

Tuesday evening coming down

And so another New York Comic Con comes to a close. Funnily enough, I've spent some of my free time since the con ended shopping for comics. Yeah, I know, right? But there's a reason for it.

My friend Howard, the Henchman 21 to my Henchman 24 if you will*, went into the hospital for emergency surgery last week, as I briefly hinted in my previous post. There were complications and he's been through a rough time of it. But I finally received word that Howard was doing a lot better and, although he's still not up to receiving visitors, he wanted me to get him some reading material to pass the time. I didn't see this last message until late Sunday night...that is to say, just after three whole days during which I was surrounded by dealers eager to sell me their comic books at low, low prices. If only I'd thought of it at the time, I could have got a huge stack of comics right there. Complete with autographs for the sick boy in hospital. That would have been lovely. Not to mention a prerelease copy of Teenagers from the Future before they all sold out.

But I didn't, so I hit the comic shops to get the books he wanted (Dynamite Entertainment's Lone Ranger and Project Superpowers and the latest Buffy) plus some others I hope he'll find entertaining (my chance to make him read Patton Oswalt's brilliant JLA: Welcome to the Working Week has come at last). Howard keeps up with the current titles a lot more than I do, so this means for a change I'll actually be hitting the shop every Wednesday and scoring his weekly fix for him until he's back on his feet.

Hey, it's the least I can do for a guy who keeps a complete set of Legion of Super-Heroes action figures on display next to an open window, hoping a stray bolt of lightning will transform him into the Composite Superman.

I'm working on a writeup of the convention, but I've also got a backlog of messages to catch up on so please bear with me a day or two longer.

* Or am I the 21 to his 24? It's a tough call. On the one hand I'm the thinner one and he's the one with the bigger collection of geeky memorabilia...but I'm also the more emotional one whereas he's the more grounded and efficient one. **

** No, I am not saying he's the husband and I'm the wife. That kind of talk is childish, not to mention sexist, and has no place among adults. Quite frankly I'm surprised you even thought such a thing.

Now these points of data make a beautiful line

Jonathan Coulton's song for the video game Portal is lovely all by itself, but this tribute to the Amiga computer -- animated on an Amiga 4000T -- takes it to an even higher level. (Even more so if you know the context of the song in the game.)



Read the comments at the above link to understand the regard in which the Amiga platform is still held by hardcore computer graphics geeks. I am neither a hardcore computer graphics geek nor a video gamer, but I can enjoy good geek humor and good animation when it's put in front of me.

And like I say, the song is great by itself. (Lyrics here.)

This post is for Howard, as soon as he has a chance to read it.

Stan Lee even called to remind me

As various people have noted, the New York Comic Con begins Friday.

New York may not yet have the repute or high profile of San Diego, but if this year's guest list is anything to go by, that won't be the case much longer. And you thought last year was overstuffed! We're moving from "finally a major comics industry event in New York again" to "another multimedia showcase promoting Hollywood that pushes aside the comics people, sending them in search of smaller events" with remarkable speed. Two years ago it was all about the comics, man.

That said, it's certainly been a major event of the year for me over the past couple of years and this year will be the same poignant combination of joy and heartbreak as always. Since some folks have expressed an interest in my plans, I thought I'd post a quick rundown here.

To start with, I'll be there all three days. My name badge lists "Estoreal" as my company affiliation -- apart from anything else, this is the only way Redhead Fangirl can recognize me from year to year -- so if you spot a debonair stranger with a certain reckless charm wearing a badge that mentions this blog, feel free to say hello. I always have time for my public.

I originally expected to spend most of my time at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center table -- this has always been the best way to meet everyone at a convention, since everyone stops by to visit sooner or later -- but it turns out we won't have one this year. Instead, Rand Hoppe will be helping out at the TwoMorrows Publishing table, so chances are good I'll be hanging around there instead.

I'll also be stopping by the Sequart.com table, as they'll be showing off copies of Teenagers From The Future, the Legion of Super-Heroes anthology edited by the rugged yet urbane Timothy Callahan. If you want, I'll even sign your copy...if Tim says I can.

The one panel event I expect to be attending on Friday is a screening of the Will Eisner documentary at noon, and the discussion afterward. On Saturday, there's the Steve Gerber memorial panel, and the Legion of Super-Heroes panel, the Grant Morrison spotlight, and the Venture Bros panel which was such a highlight last year, and then the ReBoot panel...

I'm going to be totally burned out when this weekend is over.

Sweet food of knowledge

1. I so wanted this to be true:



(via Serious Eats)


2. Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

"Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky," said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study. "High levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood brain barrier. Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders."

And I really hope this one is true. I make a lot of jokes about getting old and my memory failing and does anyone else remember The Amazing Three because that was a very strange cartoon and what was I just saying a moment ago? But the reason I make such jokes is that my family history contains more than a few examples of dementia and it's something that scares the crap out of me. But I also drink coffee.



(via Daring Fireball)


3. Finally, an ad jingle for Rice Krispies by The Rolling Stones, circa 1964:



(via The New Yorker)

Jim Mooney

Jim Mooney interviewed by Chris Knowles:

Certainly I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about the nine years I spent on Supergirl. First of all, it was a strip that wasn't terribly challenging. After a while, you were pretty much doing the same thing over and over. The other thing I didn't like about it was, before that I was doing some stuff for DC, House of Mystery and so on, in a much more sophisticated style. When I started on Supergirl, Mort Weisinger insisted it had to be what he considered the "house style." It had to look the way he wanted it, which was much simpler than the way I'd been drawing previously. So, I was pretty much fenced in by that particular requirement that Mort had. If I changed my style at all, he'd call me into his office and say, "What are you trying to do, make a million bucks? Do you have somebody ghosting for you?" I said, "No, I was just trying something a little different." He said, "Well, don't! Draw it the way you were drawing it before."

Steve Gerber interviewed by Dan Best:

I first became aware of Jim Mooney without even knowing that the person drawing it was Jim. That’d be Tommy Tomorrow back in Action Comics in the mid ‘50s. With the Planeteers in their purple and red Bermuda shorts. I first became aware of him at DC in one of Mort Weisinger’s letter columns. They were having a vote for a new hair-style for Supergirl and in the lead up Mort wrote that the drawings were all done by Supergirls’ regular artist, Jim Mooney. Then all of a sudden it was, Oh, that’s who this guy is! He’s been drawing this stuff for ten years and I’ve been loving it as a kid and now I know who it is.

Omega was a departure for Jim, although it had all of the elements that made a strip like Supergirl really appealing. The way he drew kids was just remarkable. I’m sure that an editor brought up his name and I agreed to it immediately of course, but I don’t recall the exact process of his selection. We did have a lot of phone conversations and I liked him a hell of a lot, he’s a wonderful guy to talk to and he really understood what Mary (Skrenes) and I were going for with Omega, and what I was trying to do with Man-Thing. He was a very, very perceptive artist with a keen appreciation of story.

Above, just a couple of my favorite sequences by Jim Mooney. However he may have felt about working on Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes for Mort Weisinger, he still managed to do some exceptional work...and Gerber was exactly right in seeing a direct line from the strengths of that earlier work to his later accomplishments with Omega and Man-Thing and Son of Satan and even to his final work for Claypool Comics.

Yet another of life's little disappointments

Wow, I really don't know what to...oh. Branson. I read too quickly. Dammit.

But really, can you blame them? Imagine the house Richard Branson bought for his mother. Now think of what Jesus put his mom through. Which one would you rather have for a son?

(Read the original here.)

The first cut won't hurt at all, the second only makes you wonder

Steve Whitaker 1955-2008

Whitko was the first person I ever knew who was as crazy as I was about Kirby's Fourth World and Gerber's Omega the Unknown. He helped me find a flat in London that was walking distance from his place in Twickenham. Before that I must have stayed at his place ninety times. (So you see why he was so keen to help me find a place of my own.) He wasn't born in London and he didn't die in London...but he loved that city and simply walking down the street with him was an education in the history and customs and noumena of the place. Everyone wanted to be near him for the endless stream of learning and knowledge he had to share.

Others at the link above have more to say.

I am so totally fucking sick of death right now.

Sing me a song that was a hit before your mother was born

Well, maybe not that long ago.

Over on Will Shetterly's blog I recalled a political campaign music video from a few months ago that deserves to be more widely seen, even if the unfortunate candidate himself is long gone from the Presidential race. It isn't often I've gone back to watch a campaign spot more than once simply to enjoy the music! The retro-pop animation also grabs me:



As I mentioned in my comment to Will, I wasn’t one of this guy's supporters…but if I’d seen this immediately before stepping into the booth, it would have been hard to avoid voting for him.

What's that? You say you want a younger, fresher candidate? Or perhaps you'd just like to supplement the Lennon song with an equally cool McCartney number? Behold the future:



More details about this precocious troubadour here.

These are two of the best Beatles covers I know of. Julie Taymor, eat your heart out!

The night after you saved the universe

"Plants are like people. Writers are like plants. Therefore, and this may come as a surprise, writers are like people. Given them light, water, nourishment, a comfortable pot and an encouraging world and they'll grow."

-- Steve Gerber, Howard the Duck #16

A couple of years ago, Steve wrote a blog post thanking a group of friends who helped him move into his new apartment. With characteristic self-effacement, he said:

Why I have people like these around me is a mystery. Nobody could be nice enough to have earned their friendship, least of all myself. Somehow, I got very, very lucky.

To which I had to reply:

You know, this turns out not to be the case.

Turn back the calendar to the Spring of 1976 and see an overenthusiastic teenager attending one of his first comic book conventions, excited beyond all description because his favorite comic book writer is going to be there in person. Said writer — who at that time was enjoying prominence and attention equivalent to what an Alan Moore or a Grant Morrison possess today — took a table in the dealer’s room and made himself available to anyone who wanted to chat with him. Said teenager remembers spending pretty much the entire day at that table, and not being shooed away by said writer or being put in his place for asking endless naive and eager questions about Omega, the Defenders, Starhawk, Howard, and all the other pressing topics of the day.

Instead, at the end of the day, you thanked me for being interested in your work. To top it off, you even gave me a free “Howard The Duck for President” campaign badge — even though you were selling them at the convention — as, so you said, “a token of your gratitude.” I left that day knowing that while I may have been totally obnoxious and wanting to hog all your time, you still made me feel like I had done you a favor rather than vice versa.

Some of my later encounters with favorite comics creators were much less pleasant…but these weren’t as upsetting as they might have been, because I always had you as an example of how a truly classy person behaves. Years later I ended up working at Marvel and a few other comics publishers…and though it all, I always remembered meeting you as proof that someone in this business could demonstrate class and respect for others; the rock star ego trip was not inevitable. And whenever I’ve gotten praise for my own writing, I’ve always tried to emulate the example you set.

Nowadays, the mere fact of this blog is evidence that you’re still the same guy who’s willing to be honest and accessible even with strangers, and that you still care about making people feel appreciated. And I’m forced to assume that the folks who’ve known you in person all these years see the same thing. I’m just saying, is all.

I was fortunate enough to see Steve again at two other conventions here in New York before he moved west, but it was a much bigger thrill many years later to start corresponding with him when Steve was briefly a member of the Jack Kirby Discussion Group. Our correspondence was about non-comics stuff -- mainly to do with depression, relationship issues, why we both loathed Florida with a passion -- so I fell into the unbelievable position of regarding Steve simultaneously as an impossibly distant childhood idol, an approachable real life hero and role model, and a regular guy with whom I discussed regular guy stuff. In those e-mails I never mentioned having met him all those years ago nor what an impression he made on me as a thirteen-year-old, feeling he'd be uncomfortable with gushing hero worship. I kept quiet about it for a long time...and I'll always be glad I finally took the opportunity to tell him what that formative experience meant to me. I'm glad I had the chance to know him not only as an icon but as a person, though it means I'm feeling the loss of both right now.

(Who else in life do we know at first as gods, then as heroes, then as all-too-fallible mortals, then at last -- if we're lucky -- as friends? I think we usually only have that full gamut of relationships with our own parents. Which would explain why it feels as if I'd lost another parent.)

Also a couple of years ago, I wrote an appreciation of Omega the Unknown that says more than I can bring myself to say right now about just how much Steve did for me with his work and by the example he set.

(Thanks to magnetgirl for the button illo at top.)

Goodbye, Steve

Right now, there are no words.

Transitions

I'm still on a severely reduced blogging schedule, but a couple of things have happened that deserve at least a quick mention.

One regrettable development on the political landscape: as of the start of February, fomer Superman writer Elliot Maggin has called off his bid for Congress this year.

I previously mentioned Maggin's congressional ambitions here, and I was always hoping to find some way of supporting his campaign which somehow didn't involve large sums of money that I don't possess...but his reasons for terminating his candidacy are unassailable. I hope he'll try again someday, and I hope he'll succeed, because that would be amazingly cool.

And while we're on the subject of icons from my childhood, a fond farewell to Barry Morse. I know he had a proper serious acting career on stage and screen from the 1930s up to the present and might wish to be remembered for something more than one supporting role from the mid-Seventies...but back in the day I was endlessly fascinated by Space: 1999 and he was my favorite part of that show. If I'd been just a bit older I'd remember him from The Fugitive with David Janssen instead.

Anyway...for decades Morse was one of those actors who seemed to work nonstop, always bringing a touch of class and professionalism to small or supporting roles. His Wikipedia entry points out that "Morse was perhaps the only actor to have performed in every play of William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw" and also that he did charitable work in support of Parkinson's disease sufferers in honor of his late wife. That cause is very close to my heart as well, so I'm going to say he was a good guy and I'm happy to have been a fan of his work.

They all hate us anyhow

Anyone interested in seeing a discussion of the current Democratic primaries without all the tired horse race and boxing match metaphors used by television pundits should have a look at this post by former mock television pundit A. Whitney Brown (formerly of Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show for those of you not old enough to remember that far back) wondering how to make sure his vote counts. Definitely don't skip the comments thread: Brown's post itself is really more of a request for further discussion of the questions he raises...and what ensues is one of the most thoughtful and even-tempered online discussions I've ever seen, particularly among a bunch of political junkies. Plenty of good observations and sound reasoning on display from supporters of all the Democratic candidates, not to mention those who are supporters of none in particular and are still looking for the right choice to make. Given how heated this primary season has become between supporters of Clinton and Obama in particular, it's heartening to see a bunch of people sharing their views in a genuine attempt to reason out the best course.

But, you might say, you prefer your political discourse in musical form? Then enjoy this performance by Randy Newman at the end of this year's Macworld Expo keynote address, as introduced by Steve Jobs. There's a slight glitch in the video at the halfway point but nothing is missing.



Even I as a shameless Mac partisan have my gripes about Apple and Steve Jobs from time to time, but what other corporate CEO would have the balls to close his appearance at the company's biggest annual PR event with such pointed satirical commentary? People who only know Randy Newman from his film scores or that song from Toy Story may be surprised...but anyone familiar with Newman's work before that will know better.

Sigh

This relentless warfare of Clinton versus Obama has claimed two more bystanders: now John Hodgman and I are at one another's throats. By which I mean, we had a civil exchange of slightly differing views.

It is surely time, as Lincoln said in his second Inaugural address, to bind up the nation's wounds and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Or perhaps I exaggerate.

I can only hope Mr. Hodgman knows I love him more than ten Justin Longs.

Update: A small correction to the above has been posted. An object lesson (if one were needed) that we should never blindly accept a second- or third-hand account of events, even when coming from a generally well-informed source such as John Hodgman, without attempting further verification.

That is all.