DOOMED WIZARD DIARIES

Imagine being three years old and having your main goal in life come true! Where do you go from there? Such was the case a week ago when my son Atticus, better known as Toad, went to Walmart to meet none other than the webslinger himself...Spiderman! Needless to say, Toad was speechless. What amazed me was that none of the other kids were in costume! What's wrong with parents today? On almost any given day, you can drop by our house and at least one of the kids will be running around in costume. Why limit the fun your kids can have to just Halloween? Keep it here, boppers.

In the few years that I've been "doing" the convention scene, I've had the distinct pleasure of meeting some pretty awesome folks, some of whom I'm now able to call my friends. Aside from being one of my all-time favorite pin-up artists, Jay Fife is one of the nicest people I've met in my conventioning experience. Not to mention one of the most patient people I've ever met. Awhile back, when I first met Jay, he had me do a sketch of Hawkgirl for his daughter, a burgeoning comic book fan discovering the positive female roles in comics. Since then, I've drawn a few more for her. One thing that always gets me about drawing for Jay and his daughter is that he actually asks me to draw these girls, especially if you've ever seen his work. When I told him this, his reply was something like, "Let me put it to you this way. She doesn't ask me to draw them." I guess that's one of the best compliments I've ever got. About a year...

There's never any telling what goes through the mind of a seven-year-old. Especially an amateur paleontologist like my boy Ayden (pictured below). Today, he brought his journal home from school and I found an entry in it that would've made Shel Silverstine proud. I wish I had 100 caterpillars. I wish I had 100 ants. I wish I had 100 snakes. I wish I had 100 bugs. But I wouldn't want 100 hats. I'm pretty sure he didn't intend it to be a poem, but that's how I read it. Sometimes we create art without knowing it, and that, I think, is the heart of it all. Keep 'em flyin', boppers...

God, I miss the Iron Curtain! Or rather the forest of men's adventure paperbacks produced dtowards the tail end of the Cold War. They were a throwback of sorts to the pulps such as The Phantom and The Shadow of earlier generations. I've always said everything I've ever learned about writing I learned from men's adventure novels, specifically Gold Eagle's gritty epic series The SOBs . Lead by the last man out of Vietnam, Colonel Nile Barrabas, the "Soldiers of Barrabas" were a mean bunch of mercenary sons-o-bitches who got the dirty jobs done. Barrabas got the jobs from Walker "The Fixer" Jessup, who got the jobs from an unscrupulous octogenarian senator referred to only as "The Senator" and Barrabas and company went to work. They fought the private little wars that kept us safe! Were they realistic? Of course not! But they made for a consistent hellasciously-good read, though unlike Gold Eagle's more popular if not drawn-...

That's right, boppers, "Dollar Store Cinema" has it's very own blog! In the tradition of all the great horror hosts of late night television, such as Svengoolie, Son of Svengoolie and Mr. Lobo, I'll be posting over at $SC as... The Scary Guy! It was a nickname given to me by some friends years ago that involved the mother of a stripper, but that's a whole 'nother story. Rest assured, boppers, I'll be posting announcements here everytime I post over there, so you won't miss a single review to movies you're likely never to see.

NEW YORK - Captain America has undertaken his last mission — at least for now. The venerable superhero is killed in the issue of his namesake comic that hit stands Wednesday, the Daily News reported. On the new edition's pages, a sniper shoots down the shield-wielding hero as he leaves a courthouse, according to the newspaper. It ends a long run for the stars-and-stripes-wearing character, created in 1941 to incarnate patriotic feeling during World War II. Over the years, an estimated 210 million copies of "Captain America" comic books, published by New York-based Marvel Entertainment Inc., have been sold in a total of 75 countries. But resurrections are not unknown in the world of comics, and Marvel Entertainment editor in chief Joe Quesada said a Captain America comeback wasn't impossible. Still, the character's death came as a blow to co-creator Joe Simon. "We really need him now," said Simon, 93, who worked with artist Jack Kirby to devise Captain ...