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Comics artist Carmine Infantino died the other day. I primarily remember his work on the Marvel Star Wars series, which he drew during a hefty chunk of the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, which was actually a really wild-and-wooly time for the Star Wars comics. At that point, nobody had any idea what was to come in terms of the Star Wars mythology and backstory and so on, so Marvel was flying about as blind as could be. The result was a sequence of issues that told some really fun and entertaining space opera adventure stories, and Infantino’s artDown the rabbit hole….

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Heavens, what a movie. I mean, really. Heavens, what a movie. The Avengers doesn’t quite take the top prize as my favorite superhero movie of all time, but at this point, I just don’t think that Superman is likely to be dislodged from that spot in my heart, ever. But the spot for number two? I think that Spiderman 2 is in that spot…but I’m not sure if The Avengers didn’t just take it over. Or at least tied it. I loved this movie. It’s thrilling and exciting. Its story is epic in scale, but fairly simple in its particulars. Its characters are allDown the rabbit hole….

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Oddities and Awesome abound! :: Dungeons and Dragons was created almost 40 years ago by Gary Gygax and David Arneson. Both men have passed on, but Arneson’s personal collection of materials comprising his creative work on the game was recently found in, of all places, an abandoned storage locker. Now it’s all going to be auctioned. Wow! I’m glad that the new owner of the locker wasn’t a putz like that guy on Storage Wars who is always searching for ‘collectibles’, and just tosses stuff aside if he has no idea what it is. :: How in God’s name haveDown the rabbit hole….

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Catching up on some notes about some stuff I’ve read over the last few months, in this case, comics…. :: I recently read in its entirety the comic book series Air, by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker. It’s a very strange story, much in the vein of things like LOST, with weird mysteries compounding more mysteries and lots of strange goings-on, surprising revelations, plots that start small but end up huge, characters whose loyalties and status as heroes or villains isn’t immediately obvious. For the most part, Air is well done and intriguing, although it does suffer from theDown the rabbit hole….

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Once upon a time, the occasional adventures of one of the greatest of all Interplantery Adventurers Extraordinaire appeared in daily newspapers across the world. You couldn’t be certain of when he would appear, but sooner or later, there he’d be, and we’d thrill to his exploits, as envisioned by a young schoolboy with, shall we say, a fascinating combination of powerful imagination and a very short attention span. Yes, it’s our hero, Spaceman Spiff! Spaceman Spiff is, as most cultured persons know, one of the imaginary alter-egos of young Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. Spiff tended to turn up inDown the rabbit hole….

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By rights I should save this for next week’s Sunday Burst, but it’s too good for that. xkcd brings the infographic goodness to the depths of the large lakes and oceans. Note the depth of Lake Erie, relative to the other Great Lakes — that’s why Lake Erie usually freezes over during winter (although not so much the last couple of years, and in the future, who knows — thanks, Global Warming!). On a related note, I think that we may be living in the Golden Age of Infographics. I love losing myself in these things! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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There was a brief running story in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine a couple weeks back that had the strip’s animal characters commiserating with their creator, Stephan Pastis, on his failure to win the highest award for cartoonists. (Pastis routinely draws himself into the strip; it’s one of many reasons I love Pearls.) This led to this installment: And of course, reading that, I had to look up this other strip, Cul de Sac. I’d never heard of the strip before (the Buffalo News doesn’t run it — but we get our crappy reruns of For Better or ForDown the rabbit hole….

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Page One: The Phoenix Saga (Uncanny X-Men), originally uploaded by Jaquandor. My main era of comics reading was in the mid to late 1980s, spanning roughly the latter half of seventh grade until the end of my senior year, when I decided to pretty much stop reading comics on the basis that there was no way I was going to be able to afford all my monthly titles whilst in school. For the most part I was a Marvel fan. There were titles that I didn’t much care for, but I really grooved on The Uncanny X-Men from the firstDown the rabbit hole….