"Post No. 623"

Gee. Here next month (the 14th. of May as I recall, but I'd best double-check that), "Elmo's Junction" will be celebrating its 5th. Year Anniversary! And, ya know, I haven't gotten a thing special planned for the occasion. Much like birthdays at my age I celebrate them only to remind me that I'm still alive, but I'm sure I'll come up with "something" different just to mark the day.
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Yes...5 long years of reading my babbling rants, bad reviews, etc., etc., all of which you can blame on "Johnny Bacardi" (aka: David Jones) who got me started in this racket, and told me about Blogger in the first place. Little did he know what terror he would release on an unsuspecting world. (In fact, as I've stated before, I can't believe anyone still even reads this stuff.)

And I promise no long waxing nostalgically about all the things that have gone on in my personal life over those 5 years. Instead, we'll look ahead towards "change"...which usually means socialism....which is just another word for communism.

Went and picked up some prescriptions for mom recently, and the druggist there alwats has those free J.C.Chick religious tracts. So, picking up some new ones, I now officially have over 100 of those in my collection of such.

And that lot of various modern issues of The Fantastic Four came in. Out of the 13 issues I received (12 FF's and an Ultimate FF), I didn't have 12 of those, so I had some reading to do. The most interesting of these were issues 509 thru 514, written by Mark Waid. The first 3 revolved around a storyline where "The Thing" was just holding onto life by a thread, and the FF actually go to Heaven to try to bring him back to Earthly life. When they arrive in that dimension they're attacked by angels and the like and other hazzards until they finally arrive at "Heaven's Door" where they find Ben Grimm. Also there is Ben's older brother who had died several years before, and along the way, they encounter the parents of Sue and Johnny Storm.

Ben hadn't been able to get the Door into heaven open to cross-over, supposingly due to Reed's attempts to keep him alive, but finally discovers that this Door is one made by himself because he really didn't want to leave the rest of the team. After that realization, Ben's brother tells the FF that they have an invitation (by God) to stay in Heaven, and that they'll also be able to bring their children there as well (or just wait for them). When the FF decline this offer, telling them they still have a lot of exploration and "things" to do, they're informed that this was the "right" answer, but they would still get a glimpse of what Paradise will be like. They open the Door, walk a ways and find yet another door, and when entering that they find an older man sitting at a drawing board.

Although never named, it's obviously Jack Kirby.

After a few bittersweet moments with him, the artist sends them back to their own world as the tale ends. Really a surprize-type ending, and one of the better FF tales I've ever read.

The next three issues have 2 stories each. The first part involves "The Torch" going to "Spider-man" for advise. He tells Spidey that he needs to know how to handle being a loser, as the FF have always been heroes in the eyes of the world, but Spider-man has always had this stigma due to bad press and the like. Spidey's about half-way insulted by this, but still gives Johnny Storm a lesson he won't soon forget in humility, and after fighting "The Hydro-man", The Torch ends up the hero once again while Spidey gets the short end of the stick.

The back-up tale is about Reed's old girl-friend coming for a visit and wanting to use the "Dr. Doom" time machine to retrieve a lost artifact and Sue Richards tags along to discover that Reed had much more involement with this woman that she previously thought (even to the point of his asking her to marry him), and sees that this may just be a bit of a "catty" move by the woman in an attempt to weaken their marriage and perhaps get Reed's interest back. Over-all, this issues from circa 2004 were pretty decent.