Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin
For you, the living, this blog was meant too since 1969
Mikester 
So “Then…KOREA” took the nerdinet…well, not so much by “storm” as “a light spring drizzle,” but a few folks were amused by it, and that’s good enough for me. Pal Dorian featured it in one of his always-wonderful “Flop” posts, Greg went a little nuts with it in one of his weekly comics review columns, and even a Korean-themed podcast picked up on it. And a reader with the intriguing handle of “Interstate Shogun” gave me the should-have-thought-of-it-myself idea of putting it at the end of this series of panels.
I also had a couple of them come in by email:
Reader Daniel contributes this, inspired by a recent “Funkywatch” column by Chris Sims:
For whatever reason, I didn’t get all the chapters as they were serialized, but a few years later I certainly snapped up the three volume Incal series Marvel published. Finally getting the whole story together…well, didn’t make things any more clear, but it’s still beautiful and interesting and just plain strange. And that’s fine with me.
Thanks, Moebius, for this and your other wonderful works.
(Here is the L.A. Times obituary, which is a lot more eloquent than I am. EDIT: And here is a much more thorough obituary from Tom Spurgeon.)
The Firesign Theatre site has a memorial page that you can visit right here.
You were a funny guy, Mr. Bergman. Thank you for all the entertainment and laughs you’ve provided over the years, and I, along with all your family and friends and fans, are grateful that you’ll continue to live on in the work you’ve left behind.
So long, Peter.
Which of course brings up the fact that the Phantom Zone villains, while trapped unseen in that other dimension, could see into the real world, and why they wouldn’t, say, hang around Lois Lane’s boudoir and later taunt Superman with that knowledge. “HA HA we saw your girlfriend naked!” “Why, you…SHUT UP, YOU VILLAINS!” “HA HA look he’s all mad!”
I figure Superman probably walked around with some low level of paranoia dogging his every action, wondering if, while he’s using the restroom, or digging for some super-boogers, there’s Jax-Ur, hovering invisibly in a ghostly world, staring directly at him, observing everything and smirking all the while.
So the Great Gazoo is, well, showing off to Fred and Barney about how he knows what life is going to be like in the future of the Flinstoneverse. Well, yes, we all know that the Flintsoneverse eventually evolves into, and crosses over with, the Jetsonverse, and that at some point the Flintstones and the Rubbles travel through time to visit the 1964 World’s Fair, so Fred and Barney should be no strangers to time travel. But when Gazoo offers them a peek into tomorrow, Barney chickens out and settles for asking Fred to get him a present:
Anyway, Fred and the Great Gazoo zip into the 20th century, and Fred sees things like airplanes and cars and boats and supermarkets and dancing and other things I’m pretty sure existed back in Fred’s time, only not quite as dinosaur and / or foot-powered. However, I find Fred’s reaction to this particular future invention to be somewhat realistic:
Dude, whoa:
Anyway, Superman happens to be flying by and, having overheard this meeting of the Junior John Birch Society, decides to step in:
And yes, Red Tornado is colored yellow. I don’t know, maybe Superman’s telling it wrong and the kids somehow now think a character with “red” in his name is mostly yellow. Also, not revealed by Superman? Every member of the Justice League? Totally Communist. Oh no! An ironic comeuppance for those three character members of the JLA Fan Club from Anytown, U.S.A.
This is from The Secret Origin of the Justice League of America mini-comic that came packaged with some toy or ‘nother in the 1980s…you can read more about it here.
So a kid brings in some sample comic strips to get a job at the Daily Planet, and Clark (Superman) Kent quickly determines that the art school that encouraged the kid may be perpetrating a scam:
Anyway, Clark decides to investigate the art school by applying to it himself:
So the art school takes him in, and, via various plot hoohars, finds himself put to work forging famous pieces of art. And because this is a Superman story, Superman travels back in time to learn the skills of the masters directly from the masters themselves. And, on one trip, where exposure to certain energies during his time travel turns Superman younger and, um, blue…well, just check this out:
In the end, the forgery ring with the art school front is caught out and hauled up the river to do a dime in the graybar hotel, and there’s even a happy ending for that kid about whom even Superman basically thought “don’t give up your day job.”
