"Post No. 608"

Above is the "Further Adventures of Little Oscar". Just click onto the pic and it'll bring it up larger. And over on the "My Unpublished Work" link on the top of the right column, I've posted a new piece of artwork from a comic strip I'm currently working on. As usual, you can click onto the little red arrow at the bottom right of the artwork and it'll bring it up to a larger size as well.

Saturday and Sunday were certainly the difference between day & night from our recent ice storms here in S-Central, KY., with temperatures rising into the 60's and lots of sunshine. Saturday the winds were pretty high though; around 30 MPH. This brought down yet another two larger limbs from our trees, but fortunately they just landed in the yard and did no damage. But that one really large tree over my driveway and lines is broken and just "hanging on". I wish it'd just go ahead and break and get it over with as it's sort of dangerous and we're certainly not parking under it!

I've got several comics that'll be coming in, maybe this week, that include the rest of volume one of Marvel's the Ultimates, as well as several issues of Volume Two of the Amazing Spider-man. Anxious for them to arrive as I've run out of anything new in the way of comics to read.

This past weekend at our local flea market I found some nice store copies of some DVDs I wanted. Got the first "Fantastic Four" flick, plus "Iron Man", and the trilogy set of "Starship Troopers". Although the latter is certainly a long shot from a true adaptation of the work of the late sf writer, Robert Heinlein, I always found the first in that trilogy to be very entertaining, starring Casper Van Den. Casper wasn't in the second flick (which I watched), but it was an okay sci-fi flick and retained many of the aspects of the original film. He's back in the third one (which I've yet to view at the time of this posting) and I'll more than likely get around to a review of the set sooner or later.

I'm also expecting in the mail soon around 500 modern comic book bags which a friend on a chat board is graciously giving me, and perhaps this will get all of these comics bagged that I've purchased in the past several months that are just lying there loose in boxes here in the pc room. May not even buy backing boards for the things, but I do need to get around to eventually buying at least 7 "long boxes" just to get my collections in order these days. I still have this Secondary Collection, seperate from the main boxes of titles/issues that I've never put in alphabetical order. Since I have something like 50 long boxes of comics, this takes up a whole lotta room and that's a chore I may accomplish only once every couple of years. Perhaps I'll get around to it (IF I get the boxes I need) when I take my week's vacation this time.

Actually been watching "Smallville" on a regular basis this season, and it looks like they're finally getting shed of "Lana Lang", which pleases me like punch as she's just excessive baggage left over from the original DC Superboy title, and with Clark finally getting to Metropolis and working for The Daily Planet as a reporter, it's a character this show really doesn't need around. And, anyway, they've screwed with the Superman legend so very much with tis series that it's also time to straighten this mess out before he finally becomes Superman, dons the costume, etc., and the series eventually comes to a close.

Still haven't figured out exactly whatever happen to "Kara (Supergirl) Zor-El" from the previous season. In fact, I just sort'a got the clue of "why" J'onn Jon'zz" no longer has his powers. And I'll be damned if I can figure out why characters such as "The Flash", "Green Arrow" and "Black Canary" are in this storyline wayyyy before they were ever supposed to appear, but then, the entire Smallville series has been nothing more than a continuous soap opera since its inception, with this ever-playing love-life (of sorts) between Clark and Lana that has drug on forever and needs to come to a close.

The 1980's Superboy live-action show, which didn't last all that long, was so much closer to this mess. Even "Lois and Clark" was more faithful to the material on which it was based. And if one's going to adapt supr-hro material to a regular weekly television show, one should make it as faithful to the characters as possible, or is it that "they" deem their younger audience just too hip. to understand what a comic book is all about? Still seems simple enough to me. You don't make it this overly-dramatic soap opera UNLESS that's the way it is in the comic. You don't make it overly campy (like the 60's "Batman" show), UNLESS it's that way in the comic. You simply make a script from an actual decently written comic book and then adapt it to the screen. And, yes, it might bomb. It might be commercially unsuccessful. But it'll be true to the material.

But then, that's what it's all about, huh? If you don't make the bucks, then you can't sell the show. Something like comic books are today. And I'm such a nostalgic that I'm sure I'd be a dismal failure at putting on a successful t.v. show with my own ideas on how it "should be", just because I wouldn't cater to the "hip new generation's" taste.