Tuesday
There’s something about waking up a few minutes before it’s time to actually roll out of bed and just lying there and enjoying the warmth of the bed, covers pulled up to your chin. Knowing that you’re stealing those last few moments of bliss before joining the race.

Semi-cocooned.
Impervious, if only for a short while, from whatever exists outside your door.
Outside your bedroom.

Then, in seemingly too short a span, it’s time to get moving.

A couple of highlights of the day included dinner with , and . And a Heroclix® figure of The Shade (complete with top hat).

Stray Toasters

  • I am out of cotton candy and caramel popcorn. I shall have to remedy that. I do, however, have pistachios. And Toblerone white chocolate. So all is not lost.
  • The spell-checking function wants to be your friend. You should let it.
  • Neurotica
  • Will Eisner, best known as the writer/creator of The Spirit, passed away on Monday. Neil Gaiman had this to say (excerpted):

    I interviewed my friend Will Eisner a few year ago, at the Chicago Humanities Festival. At one point I asked him why he kept going, why he kept making comics when his contemporaries (and his contemporaries were people like Bob Kane — before he did Batman — remember) had long ago retired and stopped making art and telling stories, and gone.

    He told me about a film he had seen once, in which a jazz musician kept playing because he was still in search of The Note. That it was out there somewhere, and he kept going to reach it. And that was why Will kept going: in the hopes that he’d one day do something that satisfied him. He was still looking for The Note…

    Will Eisner was better than any of us, and he kept working in the hope that one day he’d get it right.

    You can read the rest here. Wizard Universe had this to say about Eisner’s passing.

  • In a related note: Former science fiction, MAD Magazine and comic book illustrator Frank Kelly Freas passed away on Sunday. More information here.
  • Just weeks after Todd McFarlane Productions filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Dreawmwave Productions announces that they will be shutting down operations.
  • : Broken Frontier’s review of Legion of Super-Heroes #1
  • An artist on the C2F Digital Concept Gallery came up with a manip of Colm Meaney (ST: TNG/ST: DS9) as Banshee. Interesting concept. I could actually buy him as Mr. Cassidy.
  • I’ve posted images of Image Comics’ Ultra in here before. You can read the entire first issue here, courtesy of Newsarama.com.
  • Extreme Ironing. I… don’t know what to say.
  • By way of Backwash: Switch Zoo.

Quote of the Day
I mentioned yesterday that I was rather taken with the newest incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as writtten by Mark Waid. Here are a couple of examples of why:

Science Police Officer: This won’t cheer you up. A team of Legionnaires has just been spotted in the A.I. District. They’re fighting an experimental macrobot gone wild.
Science Police Chief: Then get our men on it! Tell them I want them to assess the scene, give me projected alpha and beta strategies, compute a valid situation contingency, and await my orders!
Officer: Right awa– Hmm. Its’… taken care of, sir… The Legionnaires nullified the threat.
Chief: HOW? What did they do?
Officer: Apparently, they… they hit it, sir.

…and after defeating the macrobot and facing down a squad of Science Police officers…

Shadow Lass: Think the Science Police will bill us for their weapons?
Star Boy: They’re free to pick them up whenever they like. They’re right here. They’re in plain sight.
Shadow Lass: You gave them the mass of a white dwarf star.
Star Boy: They might need a crowbar.
(The team flies off, back to headquarters)
Star Boy: Hey, let me be the one to tell Cosmic Boy we won this one, okay? I’ve been on his bad side ever since the Fusionstrike case.
Shadow Lass: If I were leader, you’d be on my bad side, too.
Star Boy: It. Didn’t. Look. Like. A. Bomb.

…and…

A team of Legionnaires has beaten back an army that has been “punishing” (read: “attacking with their full force of infantry and weaponry”) teens who espouse the Legion philosophy.

Victory plus one day.
Star Boy and Invisible Kid are standing atop Legion HQ looking out over a plaza full of 31st Century youth.
Invisible Kid: What happened to you?
Star Boy: Macrobot head.
Invisible Kid: Ow. What are your powers, again?
Star Boy: Increasing an object’s mass and ignoring bombs.
Invisible Kid: That would explain the pit in the east plaza. How far did you sink it before it detonated?
Star Boy: To about natural-gas-pocket level.
Invisible Kid: That would explain the fire in the east plaza. Hey, you’ve been with the team a while. I have a question about all the kids down there. All the time. Living outside our headquarters. Why don’t we just let them inside?
Star Boy: Let them–? Do you not remember, like, six months ago? Aaah. I probably shouldn’t be shocked that ther was no newslink to it on the infogrid. It made us look too good. The Science Police had reached the end of their extremely exhaustible patience with us. They were past the point of caring who had a right to be where. They just wanted the Legion gone.

So we woke up one morning to the sound of grav-impact bulldozers headed for this building. I’m talking about machines that could level a moon. There was no way that even we could have taken them down in a fight.

But we didn’t have to.

Those guys down there stood up — I mean to a one, they stood up — and they marched forward and they formed a human shield around the whole plaza. It was the second-most amazing thing you can imagine.
Invisible Kid: What’s first?
Star Boy: That they’d do it again if it came to it. They’re free to come inside whenever they like. They choose not to. There are a lot of cool things about being with the Legion, my friend, but never forget the coolest…

They’re not here because of us…

…we’re here because of them.

And that’s all there is from Lake Saline today.

Namaste.