THE SHADOW, No. 1 (Bernstein / Rosenberger; Archie, 1964)

That was... something – and we haven't even gotten to the superhero costume iteration of The Shadow, who has, in Archie Comics' telling – of which I'm going to write about each of the eight issues here because such is my capacity for self-flagellation – become a blond-haired, blue-eyed commie-smashing, karate-chopping, Secret Service-I-guess Cold War super-spy, Lamont Cranston as The Man From UNCLE which has me crying the same as he faces off with a turtle-necked Shiwan Khan and his sunglass-ed and similarly clothed minions.

Here's the rub, though: excepting the blond/blue superhero change, in the hands of better writers, The Shadow as Cold War spy-smasher – Chakyin (along with Helfer, being the only ones to have successfully brought The Shadow to present-day) started going there in MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW – could have worked; The Shadow was the (proactive) head of a spy ring to begin with, the perfect melding of detective and spy genres in the ink-black streets of a pulp/Depression-era NYC.

But this... this is something else: at best, a haphazard, soulless exploitation of a license that one would expect from a protein-deprived child playing with the same two action figures, each with a snapped-off limb.

Seven more issues and the superhero costume iteration await.

One of those days where I worry that the only reason I’m still writing is that if I stop I’ll realize that I’ve been playing a joke on myself for the last twenty years.

display purposes

Vinyl J-channels (for house siding) are a great and cheap way to display comics on the walls. I bought a single 12’ piece for seven bucks, cut it to size (three two foot pieces and one six foot piece) and attached to the walls with screws. Have to add thin wire (clear fishing line?) across each so the preciouses don’t faceplant at the slightest provocation.

I remembered to put salt and pepper on my eggs this morning.

The Collection: … and how it came to be

(or, how I paid for all this cool shit and why)

While no one has asked, I wanted to discuss how, exactly, I've been able to acquire all of the pieces that have come to constitute The Collection over the last few months so: as I've written about endlessly, my mother died last year and, while her accounts were considerably depleted, she had sold the cabin in the woods a few years earlier for a sizable sum, all of which went to me as the only child and, when you add on top of it that I'm an only child profoundly disinterested in the siring of small humans, you get the picture.

Wasn't easy for me to decide that The Collection was what I wanted to do with said sum – go back to school, finish a degree (in what? I basically majored in band and I can't play an instrument for shit anymore)? start a business (doing what)? travel? (go where?) invest in the projects of others (why not invest in my own)? start a non-profit (might do but in what)? get a cybernetic pocket pancreas? (done)? write whatever I want to write? (what I've always done and will always do – not like anyone's paying me to do this shit): I've never been in a position where I could do/buy what I wanted without guilt or was lucky enough to be married to an amazing woman who, for some still-unknown reason (beyond said awesomeness), did nothing but encourage me and support me and be as excited as I was (if not more so) by each new arrival.

But what I'm doing on a deeper, maybe, level: other than the memory of a great dog, that fucking cabin in the woods (its proper name now being revealed) left me with nothing but bad memories and PTSD of fights and anger and yelling and belittling and guilt and shame and pain and self-loathing and major depressive disorder and therapy bills and, as such (and given that I can't reanimate a dog who's been dead for 22 years), I'm more than happy to use the fruits of it becoming someone else's problem (a few someone elses at this point) to surround myself with things that either, a.) return me to the few respites (comics and toys and dog) that can be had (see lack of reanimation) from the hell of nearly every waking hour in that fucking place or, b.) expand upon those memories and create new ones (1939 Superman Composition doll, Daredevil, Dick Tracy, The Shadow, Ditko Spidey, etc etc) in what I can describe only as a (generally) harmless midlife crisis – let it be said here that cars hold no interest for me; my wife would be the one to talk to there – and fully realize a reality I never knew I wanted: to become a temporary caretaker for these precious bits of cultural history and ensure that when I piss off this mortal coil they pass to someone(s) who will cherish them and continue their existence across and through time – or, rather, they had fucking better or else I will haunt everyone responsible and you can trust that I will make a total pain in the ass ghost.

Has this been the best use of that infusion? Going fully by my mood – and not just the chemically altered happy pill day to day of my mood – and thinking only of the present moment, yes, absolutely. For now, I'll roll with that – the rest will work itself out only in and through time.