Category Archives: Reading

September 18, 2026 · 4:39 pm

So far I’m one step ahead of the axe-men

You know, these axemen. I’ve posted this Billy Graham cover before because it sums up the way life keeps bushwhacking us just when we think we’re out from under. There were more axemen this week than expected but like the first week of September, the work got done.

A lot of the distractions were paperwork, like submitting for our dogs various recent vet visits, ordering fresh dog drugs, etc. There was also tiredness due to Trixie’s drug regimen keeping up up late to get the last ones in. Her UTI and her GI issues have resolved themselves, though, and the drugs are done. However she developed a slightly shaky left rear leg so we have an appointment this Saturday. It’s nothing serious but it’s definitely not normal — I don’t want to wait for serious discomfort like we did with the GI bleed.

Despite the leg, she’s 100 percent better from last weekend. Hungry, bouncy, eager to play, willing to walk and just more her usual self. Dudley too is in good shape. We had his rehab recheck Monday and the vet gushed over the great shape he’s in for nearly 16. Yay Dudders, yay vet, yay us for taking good care.

Overall life was nowhere near as intense as last week. However it was intense enough I didn’t really get to draw breath, either.

So, walk. As one of my October articles for The Local Reporter is a listicle of Carrboro nonprofits I spent Monday researching them. There’s quite a lot for a small town so it’s a good thing I started. I imagine I’ll break them down into different groupings (kid-related, sports, arts, charity, etc.) when I write it next week.

I’ve proofed The Savage Adventures through 1937 which is about 45 percent of the book done. Having reread the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunder last week, I began planning Draft Three. That meant reading a lot of articles about rewriting, developing character arcs, etc., then starting work on Paul and Mandy’s character arcs (details next week). That was very productive; hopefully the work will translate into a smooth, faster-than-usual draft.

My two stories for the Become the Sky anthology have gotten two rounds of editing so I made changes Thursday. This took longer than expected so I didn’t write anything further. However the critiques were really good and the stories are stronger for it. So yay. If all goes well we’ll have this out before year’s end so you can decide for yourself.

Oh, and my sensitive teeth appear to be getting back to normal so maybe a crown won’t be necessary. Hurray! Second hurray, I sold another copy of Southern Discomfort. Whoever you were, thank you — I hope you enjoy it.

After I wrote the first draft of this post, I realized something else about this week: I’m waaaaay more focused than I have been in a while. I’m having no trouble concentrating on my work and only wandering off to check BlueSky (or whatever) occasionally. That hasn’t been the case in … a while? I’m not sure what changed but hopefully I can keep it up next week (much chaotic stuff to deal with, details next Friday). Because it feels good.

All rights to images remain with current holders.

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Filed under Doc Savage, Nonfiction, Personal, Southern Discomfort, Story Problems, Time management and goals, Writing

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September 13, 2026 · 5:20 am

Dreadstar vs. Superman! Comic book TPBs read

Even though I was dead broke in the early 1980s, I was still buying comics. Mostly DC, though; even though Marvel’s Epic line of creator-owned books looked interesting, it was more expensive and well, Marvel. Perhaps the most interesting was Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar — a science fiction comic written and drawn by the same guy who did such amazing things with Adam Warlock? Had I had the money … Recently I discovered THE DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 1 was available via the Hoopla library service and I decided to see what I’d missed.

The opening arc, Metamorphosis Odyssey is quite a ride. Akhnaton of the ancient, wise Osirosians, realizes the relentlessly warlike Zygoteans will inevitably conquer the galaxy, subjugating every other race to slavery and then death. To prevent that he gathers a team of unlikely heroes to obtain the Infinity Horn, the one device that can avert the doom. And it does, though the solution is … drastic.

A million years later, Akhnaton and his ally Vanth Dreadstar, wielder of a powerful mystic sword, arrive in another galaxy. After Akhnaton’s death, Vanth settles down to peaceful married life …until his new homeworld is caught in the long war between the Monarchy and the Instrumentality (a religion as ruthless as the Magus’ Church of Universal Truth in Warlock). Vanth was ready to quit but they dragged him back in … and now he and his new team are out to end the war and avenge his wife’s death.

A post on Tom Brevoort’s blog said the transition from the initial story to the Dreadstar series felt like the transition of Marvel from the unconventional era of Starlin’s Warlock and Captain Marvel to the Jim Shooter era when editorial control was far more rigid. Metamorphosis Odyssey is wild; the subsequent series much less so. It has none of the visionary cosmic quality of Warlock and the adventures could as easily have happened to the Starjammers, the Omega Men or other comic-book SF teams (the Instrumentality and the Papal High Lord could likewise be Palpatine and the Empire). Which wouldn’t bother me if I liked the adventures better — though Starlin’s art remains solidly entertaining.

I wouldn’t have bothered with DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 2 except the first volume ended on a cliffhanger. Three or four issues in, I gave up on it. It felt even more conventional with the new adversaries Infra-Red and Ultra-Violet, Dreadstar getting a new costume and Vanth undergoing a transformation similar to how the cosmic entity Eon reinvented Captain Marvel during Starlin’s run on him. Still, I’m glad to have satisfied my curiosity about this series.

DC FINEST: Superman — Kryptonite Nevermore proved a fortuitous find for my Silver Age reread over at Atomic Junk Shop. While the 1971 story arc that starts with Superman #233 is on the DC app, the Action Comics stories from the same period are not. Like the DC Finest Legion of Superheroes collection, this fills a gap as the Silver Age transitions into Bronze.

The Superman story arc starts when a freak nuclear accident turns all kryptonite on Earth to iron. Suddenly Superman’s greatest weakness is gone! Not only that but Morgan Edge, the new owner of the Daily Planet, transfers Clark Kent from print to the cutting-edge world of TV reporting. Plus a mysterious flying figure, formed out of sand, begins showing up and slowly draining Superman’s powers away.

What’s going on? Well, it’s new editor Julius Schwartz and writer Denny O’Neil (Super-stalwart artist Curt Swan continues on the book) doing their best to give Kal a soft reboot (details here) away from the gimmicks of Silver Age super-editor Mort Weisinger. Over the course of 10 issues struggles to do his job while becoming weaker and weaker; even the help of Wonder Woman’s mystical mentor I Ching can’t seem to turn things around.

At the end of the story arc, the “Sand Superman” has left Earth for its home dimension carrying half of Superman’s powers with him. Kryptonite no longer allows ordinary thugs to take the Man of Might down; however he’s no longer the invincible figure he was before. While I’m not a fan of O’Neil’s writing he does put Superman through the wringer. However as soon as he left the book, Superman’s back to performing super-feats as if his power hadn’t dimmed at all. Of course, given he can fly inside the sun or shove the moon out of its orbit, it’s not like losing half his power would make him weak by most standards — I’m not sure how the heck you’d convey that (it does amuse me that Supergirl might have been stronger than he was at this point in time).

The Action run was under editor Murray Boltinoff with Curt Swan and primarily veteran DC writer Leo Dorfman. The stories don’t break the mold though the backups are interesting. After Supergirl got the leads lot in Adventure Comics, the Legion of Superheroes took over her backup in Action Comics for a while. Now most of the backups are various sort of “untold tales” about Superboy, Superman, Kandor, etc. Nothing staggering but they did add some novelty.

I’ll be discussing this era over at Atomic Junk Shop soon. Covers top to bottom by Jim Starlin (x2), Neal Adams and Curt Swan. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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September 8, 2026 · 5:15 am

It’s Tuesday, have some covers!

First up, one by Barye Phillips. Yes, that’s Gardner Fox the Golden and Silver Age comics writer/

Second, Charles Binger with a very Richard Powers-looking cover.

Third, art uncredited.

Fourth, also uncredited.

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September 6, 2026 · 5:14 am

Not alternate enough: Summoned by Michael Anderle

In a discussion of Doctor Who: Wish World at his Blue Towel Productions blog, Ben McClure says that when writing about an alternate reality version of a popular show, you can “make the new world incredibly interesting, often by raising all sorts of questions about how the world works or even how the world came into being at all … the other way to make an alternate-reality story interesting, and by far the preferred one, is to make the alternate-version of the character meaningful.”

I’ll be blogging about this in another context but it captures part of why I was disappointed in SUMMONED: The Free Judge Reborn, Book 1 by Michael Anderle. The book takes place in the 2080s, the history is very alternate but none of that seems to matter.

(This has nothing to do with the book, I’m just using random photographs to provide some visuals).

Kara Greims is a crusading attorney, constantly frustrated that money and connections allow so many of the people who wronged her clients to walk away without paying a price. When gets news her brother has been murdered in Los Angeles, she heads west and discovers he was a Free Judge, part of a secret, supernatural justice system devoted to providing justice when the secular, mortal system fails. As the skull of Jacob Grimm, her brother’s mentor, explains to Kara, the True Court prefers it if the True Judges bring justice via quasi-legal means — intimidate someone into confessing to law enforcement says — but if that doesn’t work, executing malefactors is acceptable. Kara’s first target (I’m assuming the family will turn out to be descendants of Jacob or his brother): the corrupt corporation that killed her brother.

This leads to the novel approach for an urban fantasy of having Kara work within the system: she digs up documents via public information requests, puts together a case that the company has been violating the law, gets it to the right regulators. It is not, however, novel outside urban fantasy; as she herself points out, it’s not that far from a Leverage episode. Or similar, earlier TV creations: Mission: Impossible‘s organized crime episodes, the TV movie Institute for Revenge and others.

Lack of novelty is not a problem. Bringing justice to those the law cannot touch is a popular premise and like the legend of Robin Hood, there’s always a need for someone to do it. What doesn’t work is that the bad guys fall too easily. Kara puts in a lot of effort to make her case — it’s not a cakewalk — but her legal moves invariably work. Where is the Hamilton Burger to her Perry Mason? Why are the bad guys’ lawyers not throwing up counter-moves? For all the work Kara performs, it’s too easy. Likewise, her repeated beating of the thugs they send after her makes me wonder why they don’t change tactics — a bomb in her car or something like that.

The final problem is the worldbuilding. In Kara’s timeline, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade took a different route in 1914 and he was never assassinated. No WW I, no treaty of Versailles imposing crushing burdens on Germany. No fascism. No WW II. Also no stock market crash, no Depression. On the downside, with no Cold War there was less pressure on the federal government to support civil rights, segregation continued unabated until the 1980s. At this point there was a horrifying fire in the Japanese neighborhoods of Los Angeles; assuming it was fueled by race, imperial Japan invaded and won. Kara’s story takes place a century later.

That’s a good premise for a timeline, though not always convincing (why would the stock market crash and the Depression not happen?). I don’t see any signs of it in the story, though. Other than zeppelins being the primary form of air transport, there’s nothing that feels different from 2026 in the real world. No sign of Japanese control. No sign the law is different. Hell, Leverage is a TV show in both worlds so apparently their history ain’t that different. To go back to that quote from Blue Towel Productions, it isn’t an interesting alternate world because there’s so little alternative about it.

I wanted to like Summoned much more than I did.

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September 5, 2026 · 5:07 am

One book, one movie: Dr. Lao and his seven faces

Charles Finney’s 1935 THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO is one weird book. And I love the cover of my edition (wish I knew the artist)

Abalone, Arizona is a small, dull, dusty desert town. First the newspaper has a big ad announcing the coming of the circus, then it shows up. In small towns back then, that’s always exciting, but townies who gather to watch are underwhelmed — three wagons, that’s all? One of them with a horse that has a fake horn on its head, one of the wagon-drivers has horns on his head and plays a syrinx, there’s a dog painted green, a little old Chinese man and a furry Something/Someone in one of the cages — is it a bear? Or maybe a Russian? Lao himself can shift from pidgin English to standard English at will.

Despite the small procession into town, there’s a full circus with sideshow exhibits and a big tent when Lao opens his show that night (memory suggests a circus setting up magically this way is a common trope but I can’t swear to it). We have a sea serpent engaging in intellectual conversation about its life history. Medusa, carefully shielded so she’s only visible in a mirror (as you might guess, someone’s going to look closer …). The satyr sexually liberates a prim young woman. Two drunk college students cause trouble. Apollonius the seer gives a middle-aged woman a bleak prophecy: she won’t find love, nothing will change, nothing will improve, she’ll simply fade away, losing hope, and then she’ll die (it’s a strikingly sad moment). A sorcerer resurrects a dead man, who runs off immediately — he has important business! Almost all of which the locals treat with complete phlegmatism, no more excited than if they’d seen a tattooed man or the like. Faced with wonders they don’t find it that wondrous. Apollonius’ prophecy feels like it could apply to the entire town.

It’s an odd but fascinating story. No real plot, just a series of incidents. No real explanation of anything. The book concludes with a Cast of Characters list including details about people who were little more than walk-ons, or were mentioned but never appeared, plus a list of unanswered questions — was it a Russian or a bear? What business did the dead man have? The end result is not everyone’s cup of tea; I have no memory what I made of it when I read it in college, other than “that’s weird.” In its own way it’s brilliant. That said, we have a couple of racial epithets dropped into casual conversation and the satyr committing sexual assault; if those are unacceptable, well now you know.

I think such a plotless novel is unfilmable so it’s no surprise when they did film it, Charles Beaumont’s script for THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964) gives it a plot to hold everything together (the great George Pal directed it). A skilled fantasy writer and Twilght Zone scriptwriter, Beaumont gives it a Twilight Zone quality — Lao (Tony Randall in yellowface) shows up and transforms everyone’s lives for the better the same way Professor Fate saves Denton in the episode Mr. Denton on Doomsday. Though it also resembles the 1962 film musical The Music Man: like Harold Hill, Dr. Lao is a traveling trickster who revives the lives of everyone in town, including inspiring a prim librarian to find love (this does make Lao the equivalent of a “magical Negro”).

This version of Abalone is a dying town and everyone knows it. Cynical Stark (Arthur O’Connell) has offered to buy everyone out so they can leave and start over; newspaper publisher Ed Cunningham (John Ericson) is pushing his neighbors to say no. He’s also pushing widowed librarian Angela Benedict (Barbara Eden) to say yes to a date, without any luck.

Enter Lao and his circus. His satyr (Randall — the “seven faces” means he plays seven roles) loosens Angela up (not quite as rapey as the book scene), the serpent mocks Stark, Apollonius (Randall again) makes his bleak prophecy. Stark’s thugs harass everyone opposing him; somehow Lao neutralizes them.

The end result, alas, lacks the sophistication of a good Twilight Zone episode; it feels more like kidvid (Lao does spend a lot of time with Angela’s young son, who’s fascinated by him). The performances are competent but not stellar. Randall playing seven roles doesn’t add much, though “actor plays multiple roles” has its own appeal. It has some charm, but I think there’s a better unfaithful adaptation they could have made. “Every time I bet on weakness, corruption, and fallibility, I want to lose — but I always win.”

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September 4, 2026 · 4:14 pm

God said ha. I said “ha!” back

The old saying is that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I planned to get a lot done this week; God said “ha!” meaning there were a ton of obstacles. Despite which, to my pleasant surprise, I did get a lot done.

First the obstacles. We were still dealing with Plushie’s ulcer (diagnosed last week) but as of his Thursday appointment, it’s cured. Once again our dog has beaten a health problem despite his nearly 16 years of age! That’s always nice. He’s still on an antibiotic for the ulcer but that’s more a precaution than a necessity. We’re taking it though.

Trixie didn’t do so well. Last week she was becoming weirdly picky about food and reluctant to eat her meds. She also felt … off, in a way I can sense but couldn’t define. Sunday she began not eating at all so we took her into the vet Monday, followed by the emergency vet (they could do a couple of tests Park Vet couldn’t). At first the news was horrifying: anemic, blood count up, white blood cells up, which could indicate an infection, or possibly internal bleeding. At the end of the day, by virtue of eliminating the alternatives, they settled on probably some bleeding in the GI tract (I will skip the technical details).

We came home with directions to switch some of her meds and to have her drink a protective slurry an hour before her meals. It’s working: we took her in for a recheck Wednesday and all her signs have improved, though not by a lot (but the vet said that’s expected). She’s livelier, though also sleepier — she’s on Gabapentin now and it knocks her out. But she’s clearly happier and more interested in eating so this is a definite win. A demanding one — the need to time the slurry and her food and some of her meds makes our schedules that much more complicated.

Oh, and I also had to take our car in for an oil change and checkup. That took up a couple of hours too.

Despite which, work went well. I got two articles in for The Local Reporter, both out next week. Might get a third one done but I think that’s where the dog drama will leave me too wiped. I also got three posts up at Atomic Junk Shop, one about iron-on shirt decals in the 1970s, one on a really weird 1971 cover (above, by Murphy Anderson) and one about the path to (IMHO) the definitive Phantom Stranger run by Jim Aparo and Len Wein which kicked off with the cover at left by Aparo.

I also got a nice review of Southern Discomfort from one of my fellow bloggers. Thanks, Greg!

I worked through another year of Doc Savage’s history for Savage Adventures, and polished the bibliography. And then, on Let No Man Put Asunder, I really got some good stuff done. First I went through the writing guide Writing the Breakout Novel, taking notes on stuff that might be useful to think about (give your villains goals. Your supporting characters too). Maybe not — while I’ve read the book a lot, I’m not sure I use it’s techniques not. But I think I’m using it early enough in the rewrite process that might be different.

Then I started rereading, taking notes along the way. Insights or phrases someone offers more than once (“making the beast with two backs” is not going to appear more than once). Thin characterization or motivation. Implausible plotting. Places where it needs more tension. I got a third of the way through the book; that’s pretty good.

I also received by McFarland second-half-of-the-year royalty check. Small, but my books are still selling, which is cool; if you bought one of them, thanks!

And I now have three stories in the “made the first cut” category. No guarantee any of them will sell — I’m quite used to “This was a really tough decision, but …” emails — but they’re all possibilities. More disappointingly, I won’t get an author table to sell my books at Retcon next year. It was quite lucrative this year because it’s set up so all the con-goers go past the sale area frequently, probably why table requests have quadrupled. I’m on the waiting list so fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed too for more weeks like this.

Below, a typical Len Wein opening to a Phantom Stranger story. Aparo art.

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September 2, 2026 · 5:18 am

When do the good times start?

When I watched The Exorcist a couple of years back, I was struck by how slowly the story opens, showing us the details of everyday life. It was a carefully calculated decision to ground the film in the “real” world before the spookery gets going.

I think the source novel, William Peter Blatty’s THE EXORCIST, does the same thing, but less successfully. It’s a hundred pages of mundane detail about Chris and Regan’s lives (and some about the priests) before anything happens; sure, there’s some odd noises in the attic, but that’s as creepy as it gets. Even after the supernatural happens, the resistance to accepting it gets comical: sure, someone fell down the steps with his head completely twisted around on his neck but that could certainly happen naturally! No, not it couldn’t.

I presume this reflects that Blatty was writing in an era when mainstream horror novels weren’t a thing — this was three years before Stephen King broke in with Carrie. So perhaps grounding it in reality was necessary — and the book’s blockbuster success clearly shows it didn’t hurt. Nevertheless I couldn’t get into it; Blatty’s oddly jerky prose style didn’t help. I do think a little more tension in the everyday stuff would have been a good idea — if you’re going to spend more than a quarter of the book in the mundane world, find some way to make it interesting.

This is, of course, a challenge lots of speculative fiction writers face when they’re setting stories in our world. Some plunge right in: the opening page of Storm Front informs us that Harry Dresden is a wizard helping people out with supernatural problems. My short story “The Savage Year” (in 19-Infinity) opens with mage Artemis West getting ready to perform magic on a job for the Secret Service. “The Glory That Was” in the same book has a robot minotaur break in on a political luncheon.

Other stories take time to build. Southern Discomfort, as I’ve mentioned before, starts with little overt magic. We have Maria’s sense of something wrong, hints that Pharisee Georgia is, shall we see, eccentric (no stop signs allowed — traffic circles instead), freakish rainstorms. Until the ravens attack as Maria’s getting off the bus, there’s nothing that seems strongly supernatural. However Chapter Two spells out that this is a town run by elves, and the person who murdered Aubric McAlister is not of mortal clay. Not a long wait.

That puts me in mind of Orson Scott Card’s old rule that the opening and ending of your story should mirror each other. Mine starts out with Maria in a bad place: on the run from the cops, emotionally closed, desperate. The final scene is all about resolving that. Likewise Let No Man Put Asunder starts with Mandy and Paul waiting for their life to begin, and ends accordingly. Maybe that’s what bugged me about The Exorcist: it starts with Chris but it’s not really a character-centered story where her personal arc is resolved at the end. Instead it switches to horror midway through and stays there.

Then again we have the priest supporting character who does indeed get a character arc. Unlike the movie, he’s not quite interesting enough to be the spine of the story, at least for me — like I said, the success of Blatty’s book certainly speaks for itself. But like I said, I didn’t find it terribly compelling, and I think I’ve identified why.

All rights to images remain with current holders. Covers top to bottom by Lee Macleod, Kemp Ward and Sam Collins.

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August 30, 2026 · 5:30 am

A sorceress, a heroine, a feminist philosopher: books

T. Kingfisher’s A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL shows she definitely has a type in protagonists. Like Thornhedge and Nettle and Bone, the protagonist, Cordelia, is a socially awkward, emotionally numb woman who badly needs some found family to help her live again. Unlike them, Cordelia’s numbness is because she’s the daughter of the sorceress of the title; whenever Cordelia breaks the rules or doesn’t show her mother appropriate devotion, Mom reduces her to a puppet for a few days. What are rules? Cordelia has no idea.

Mom’s determined to see her daughter marry rich and if Cordelia objects, well, too bad. Not from any big scheme; she’s a mom in a vaguely Edwardian world and she knows what’s best for her daughter — some day, she probably, imagines, Cordelia will thank her. As innocent people get enmeshed in her mother’s schemes, Cordelia has to fight back, but even when she finds allies, what can they do against magic? This was very good, though the opening was so creepy in the way Cordelia was suffering, I almost put it down.

Following Heroine Complex and Heroine Worship, Sarah Kuhn deliver’s HEROINE’S JOURNEY focuses on Evie’s younger sister. Bea is an empath, constantly frustrated Evie and Annie won’t let her fight crime alongside her. And what’s with the way her long-time platonic friend Sam is getting her all hot and bothered? And is it possible Bea and Evie’s mom isn’t dead but kidnapped into the demonworld?

This has some good elements such as the sister’s relationship and Asian-American life (according to Bea, “Asian girl with multicolored hair” is now a trope) but it didn’t work as well as the first two books. Bea is more annoying than engaging and the ending felt like two chapters of epiphanies: everyone understands perfectly what their feelings are and everyone can explain them perfectly. That rarely works for me.

Kate Manne is a feminist philosopher who coined the term “Himpathy” for the way we’re supposed to sympathize with the tragic male figure accused of sexual harassment or rape. I figured her DOWN GIRL: The Logic of Misogyny would be interesting but I DNFed. Manne’s argument is that misogyny and sexism less about hate — thinking that’s the issue is “naive” she says in one chapter — than about resenting women for not providing the emotional/sexual/practical support some men think they deserve; sexism is the rationale for women’s subjugation, misogyny is the tools. Which is a fine definition (I used a different one in Undead Sexist Cliches but I don’t claim I have the definitive definition) but then she gets to the case of misogynist mass-shooter Elliot Rodger and a lengthy discussion about why his actions fit her definition better than a simple “hate’s women” and I couldn’t get into it.

All rights to cover images remain with current holders. Don’t know the artists.

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August 28, 2026 · 4:40 pm

Do I wither with time, or is this just a fluke?

Which is to say, this was another frustrating week. Looking at how often I type that, I wonder if I’m losing my ability to concentrate as I age? Or is it just that sometimes, shit happens.

This week was definitely partly “shit happens.” First off, Monday evening Plushie’s good eye had something wrong with it, making him squint so much it was barely open. TYG rushed him down to the nearby emergency vet who did not perform well. We may not go back which is a crying shame (it’s a lot further to the next closest E/R). However we were able to get a Tuesday morning appointment with his eye doctor (they’re also close): it’s an ulcer, which is manageable and it was back to normal by Thursday (though we’ll be doing added eyedrops for a week or so). Still that meant we got to bed sometime around midnight, which ain’t good.

Yesterday I went in to my own doctor, who confirmed I have sleep apnea. The most likely outcome is that I’ll end up wearing one of those freaky masks hooked up to a small air pump. I’ll be talking to a specialist about that. The other alternatives are a smaller mouthpiece that would widen my air intake or to take the GLP and see if my weight comes down. My doctor favors the CPAC pump and I’m inclined to agree. While I’m obese by BMI standards I’d need to lose 30 pounds to be non-obese; while I’m nobody’s idea of six-pack abs I do not believe I have 30 excess pounds to lose. In any case, that took a chunk out of my day.

Oh, and Trixie came down with a tummy this weekend and refused to eat. Since then she’s eating but she’s ultra-picky. Won’t take her meds on anything but the same canned chicken we give Plushie. Won’t eat kibble, only soft food. Refuses most hard treats — I’d think she had a tooth issue but there are some treats she does eat so … well, you’ve got me. If it keeps going I may ask the vet for insight.

All that said, part of the problem this week was me not being organized. I had three stories to work on for The Local Reporter and in-between sending out emails and waiting for replies my mind kind of wandered (the lack of sleep didn’t help). Plus I had some personal plane travel I might take before the end of the year and that always messes up my mind: do I want to spend the money? Do I want to get to the airport at 5 in the morning if it saves $100? I’ve spent much of my life living on a struggling writer salary so it’s impossible for me to be just “yeah, that’ll do for anything over a couple of hundred bucks. And if I plonk down the money now, who knows what’ll happen between now and then?However I did get most of the work done on the stories. Plus I got more work done on Savage Adventures, including adding footnotes. I’d been mostly attributing stuff in the text when appropriate but it’ll flow much smoother with footnotes.

And that was about it. Part of the problem is that I kept trying to do more than one project in a day and that’s usually a mess unless I plan it very carefully. I’m going to try to avoid that in September.

Oh, here are two pieces over at Atomic Junkshop: one about realizing what certain songs really mean, one on DC’s Homo magi and my head-canon version of their history.

Doc Savage cover by James Bama, comic book panel by Jack Sparling. All rights to images remain with current holder.

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August 26, 2026 · 5:07 am

A cool comics cover for Wednesday

The Shade became an A-lister thanks to his appearances in James Robinson’s Starman series. From there he springboarded into the CW’s excellent Stargirl as a supporting character for two seasons.

It’s surprising to look back and see what a minor player he once was. One appearance in the Golden Age. Then an appearance in the classic story “Flash of Two Worlds,” which introduced the idea the Justice Society and Justice League co-existed on different Earths. There he got to fight alongside the Thinker, Jay Garrick’s arch-foe (seven appearances) and the Fiddler (four). All he could do was blot out light — a useful skill, sure, but not much.

And then the Shade returned.

This was the story that established the Shade could access dimensions of darkness, elevating him beyond a C-lister. Without this story changing his trajectory, he’d be a bar-trivia answer.

What I’m really posting about, though, is the Carmine Infantino cover. I think it’s great. Then smirking, lean figure of the Shade. Jay, trapped. Barry unable to beat his foe. When I saw it as a kid, although I didn’t have the money to spare, I was hooked. Thrilled years later when I acquired it.

The Shade’s career shows even a C-lister has potential. The cover shows — well, while I generally disregard “things were better back in the day” I think the covers were.

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Filed under Comics, cover art