The bitter taste of your own green shell smashing into your face in MARIO KART.

Didn’t get anywhere in The Work but at least I don’t feel shitty about it so maybe that’s progress.

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.