Wow- Thanks for turning me on to Ed Piskor, looked up his stuff, it seems pretty great. 

GREAT issue, that’s where I first started with X-Men, 1979 I think. Became a steady buyer from the newsstand, and mad trading with other comics nerd kids to get back issues. Then in 1980 Marvel Comics started separate reprints of the first ones from 1963, which was helpful.

Because when the writers and artists made these comics, they understood they were for children and adolescents that no one else would read, and they had to come up with 24 pages of story every month, 12x a year. They weren’t thinking about how all of it would fit into a 2-hour movie 30 years in the future so Marvel…

I liked Paul Smith’s style too. Following after John Byrne, that was huge responsibility, but he did it in is own way. And this is heresy, but I was never crazy about Cockrum’s art very much (whose art appeared between the two on X-Men). Compared to John Byrne with Terry Austin’s sharp inks, I was bummed when Cockrum…

It’s incredible how dumbed-down this place has gotten. This is People magazine space-filling shit.

I really appreciate Gwen Ihnat’s take, about the Dark Phoenix story. I’ve written largely the same, it’s an allegory about drugs, but also about sexuality and power and stardom. That’s a heady mix. John Byrne (the artist) said in 1982 that Jean as Dark Phoenix was in search of “a cosmic orgasm”. She did what she…

Let’s face it, those asparagus people deserved to die when Dark Phoenix ate their sun.  Or at least be sauteed in a nice stir-fry, which is delicious. 

I have always liked Uatu The Watcher. Though he was alost always just called, “The Watcher”in my day. I think he was always just some big Marvel in-joke among the creators about the primordial fanboys who wrote letters by mail to them. Always watching! Wow, they would love the Internet superhighway!

Throughout the 20th century, printed on shitty newsprint, comics characters who were redheads excelled because they popped on the greige page.  They stood out.  

I just still deny all that 90s shit. Jean Grey commited suicide on the Moon to save the galaxy in #137 on 1980, and to me that is that. She was mourned in the next issue, but the X-Men moved on, with great sadness. Her death was might and powerfully real, to we the readers, and Claremont had the integrity to keep…

I was dreaming of a Dark Phoenix cinematic experience as a kid in 1980, because reading the comics was a cinematic experience. You could completely imagine it, the whole story was sophisticated and complicated and spectacular. One of the best comic stories ever told. I don’t know if a 2 hour movie could do it…

Seriously, this whole wank trip to the UK and Ireland with Trump and his four idiot adult children is going to cost US taxpayers about $30 million. There is literally no expense spared. Blue collar billionaire, man of the people, am I right? Palaces and five star hotels and limousines for the whole delightful family…

Reminded of the story of Dede Wilsey, a socialite in SF who ran off with the husband of a prominent newscaster there- I gather it was quite the scandal in the late 70s. Anyway the newscaster lady would drunk-dial Dede and demand, “Is this the bitch who stole my husband?”, and Dede would reply in a cheery singsong…

At least Donj’s awful girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle wasn’t invited. The Queen might have not gotten over that. Living in sin those two! I’m reminded when the Kennedys attended a state banquet, Jackie wanted to invite her sister Lee, but the Palace said no divorcees please! so there was a bit of a fuss. Jackie got…

Then count the silverware when he leaves.  

Bernadette Devlin was badass. (Hey, she had devil in her name.) And she   was completely right. 

Speaking of Irish Catholic, I’d bet anything the only reason Bannon can spend over a year trying to stir shit in Europe is that he has an Irish passport from his grandma or something. There are surely other ways to do it, but Ijust know he has one. It irks me for some reason.

Quite seriously, rightwing fascists anywhere in the world are by definition assholes, they are always going to turn on each other and fight like a bucket of crabs. So it pleases me greatly to see Bannon fall on his bloated face in attempting to “unite” European asshole rightwing “nationalists”.

I find his “I’m going away for a while” sort of self-pitying, “farewell cruel world”.. A bit passy-aggressy, he’s probably seething, so he rather overdoes the apology to where one could read it as faint sarcasm.