Without having gotten near Comic Con, I managed to have a comic-booky day. In addition to finding a good comic book shop in town -- something I've been missing since moving from Phoenix and thus losing the helpful young enthusiasts working at Atomic Comics -- I wrote a whole comic book story!

Okay, it's only eight pages, but still!

And, okay, it stars a corporate-owned character, and I have no intention of submitting it, so it will never see brightest day nor blackest night, but still!

And it's actually not Green Lantern, but Superman, so the brightest day/blackest night reference isn't appropriate, but still!

I've been reading comics nearly my whole life, and I've been wanting to write them from the time in my mid-teens when I realized I'd never be good enough to draw them, but this is the first comic book script I've ever completed. It's practice. Athletes practice, musicians practice, artists sketch and draw studies, and I see no reason why writers shouldn't devote some time to practice, too, without any intention of submitting or selling the results.

I must admit, I'm pleased with the accomplishment, if not the actual quality of the work.

***

I didn't tell the barista my name, but somehow she knew.

I am so jealous of this dialog:



[from Apartment 3-G, via Comics Curmudgeon.]

"Ticket to Ride" by the Carpenters has to be one of the weirder covers. Still, I'd give a lot to be able to sing like Karen Carpenter.

Um.

Here's some Mad Max footage set to Motörhead. Because I am metal, totally.

***

Today I had a lobster burrito and a Negra Modelo with an ocean view, plus other pleasures. I lived like I was livin' in paradise.

***

The JLA Satellite blog finally got around to reviewing Justice League of America #124, the very first comic book I remember buying. It was on sale at the little grocery store at Lopez Lake, a regular destination for our family vacations, and maybe it was the spooky cover, but I was drawn to it like Batman to a mugger, and though I've drifted away and come back to comics many times in the intervening years, I've loved them ever since.

People in the comments to the blog post are dissing the co-writer of that issue, Elliot S! Maggin, but he wrote Last Son of Krypton, which remains one of my all-time favorite novels, and I will always love him for it.

I should get a new copy. Mine would fall apart if I touched it.

***

She really was an alto angel, though, Karen Carpenter.

I am watching Justice League: The New Frontier, and it is so awesome and I am so excited that I am about to explode.

So far I've watched the title sequence.

If you aren't watching Justice League: The New Frontier at this moment, then maybe you should at least drop my by current favorite blog, Rob Kelly's JLA Satellite. Or, almost as delightful, the Aquaman Shrine, from which I nabbed the choice treat below.

From the superb Justice League of America blog JLA Satellite comes this reader survey from a 1970 JLA issue:


This was two years before John Stewart (Green Lantern), six years before Tyroc, seven years before Black Lightning, and ten years before Cyborg.

Were their any other Black superheroes from DC between 1970 and 1980?

The whole survey is just so ... odd. I wonder what kind of data they got, and how that data influenced the introduction and development of Black characters.

I want to do nothing but watch superhero cartoons all day. But that would be irresponsible.

I am bothered by the intrusion of 3-D animated elements, such as spaceships and cars and disco balls (seriously), into otherwise 2-D animated productions.

Otherwise, I'm getting the same buzz from Justice League Unlimited that I used to get from comic books before they started with the incessant retconning. But I guess that should be no surprise, given that my introduction to superheroes wasn't through comic books as much as it was through syndicated repeats of the Filmation Aquaman, Superman, Batman, Atom, Flash, Hawkman, Teen Titans, and Green Lantern cartoons (and, omg, the Ted Knight narration!). And of course the Ralph Bakshi Spider-Man. Of course.

And the stuff that hooked me is actually pretty crappy compared to JLU. Today's kids, they got it lucky.

Anyway, I'll stop blathering about it for now, because this journal is threatening to become a 70's nostalgia blog, and I do have a life outside Micronauts and Planet of the Apes and the Legion of Doom.

Shut up, I do!

Today's We the Robots is funny.

Ben Boxer's Legend of Brunhild in comics format.

I'm gonna throw a horse question out there:

Considerations of strength and endurance aside, could a very large horse ride three adults bareback?

I mean, the adults -- the human adults -- would ride the horse. Not the other way around. I know horses don't ride people. Not bareback, anyway. Should I have said "Could a very large horse seat three adults bareback?" I don't even know the right terms here!

***

A weekend that includes pizza, burgers, kung fu, writing, new comic books, and a late afternoon stroll through the alien landscape of an urban park leaves little room for complaint.

I'm liking Buffy Season 8 quite a bit so far. It's doing things that wouldn't work in television, but it captures much of the tone (if not quite the spirit yet) of the TV series, but it is its own thing, and it works very well as a comic book.

I almost didn't get to read it at all, since my friendly neighborhood comics shop was all sold out, and I was sad, very sad, slumping around the mall like a kid who dropped his ice cream cone, but Lisa dug through the unsorted Jugheads and X-Whatevers at the bottom of the magazine rack at B&N, and I ended up happy and skipping.

Also picked up Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3: Torn, which I've read half of and am enjoying so far.

It's been too long since I've wallowed in comics. I've missed it. Maybe when I finish this @#$&ing book I'll try to write a comic book script, just for practice. And some short stories, so that 2008 isn't a completely bleak publishing year for me. And the weird beach YA. And CBT modules for structured critical thinking training and maybe some for assessment and measurement, because that sounds fun, doesn't it?

***

( cup/page and weird rocks pics below the cut )