1. For Christmas, my parents were kind enough to give me a scanner of my very own, so I can stop mooching off the one at work. Now, should the sudden urge strike me to, say, post a picture of the Bi-Beast pasting the Harpy with a serious haymaker:
from Incredible Hulk #169 (November 1973) by Steve Englehart, Herb Trimpe & Jack Abel
…I can do so right away, without having to plan a day in advance to scan the item at the shop. Higher bandwidth usage, here I come!
2. Christmas Day Eve, I finally got around to watching the Spider-Man 2 DVD with the pop-up commentary. Aside from catching the word “villain” spelled incorrectly at least once, I was amused at the occasional attempts at explaining Spidey’s convoluted comic book continuity. The interminable Spider-clone storyline wasn’t brought up, but mention was made of Aunt May’s “death” and subsequent return (complete with an explanation of the imposter Aunt May), Spidey getting his alien symbiote costume during Secret Wars, and even Spidey’s “six-armed” incarnation from around issue #100 of Amazing. I could only wonder what non-comic fans (i.e. the vast majority of the audience for this film) will make of some of these referenced storylines. A nice addition to the commentary, however, was Stan Lee’s lament that people keep forgetting the hyphen in “Spider-Man.” That bothers me, too.
3. Thanks to the Real Sam Johnson for his plug of my Swamp Thing contest. Only a week to go…I still want your entries!
4. Commenter Bob points me in the direction of a Sheldon Mayer website…I think I may have linked to it before, but even if I did, it’s always worth a second look.
