…I Am A Tree

Archive for the ‘Comics’ Category

And I’ll whisper, “No…” -Rorschach, Watchmen

Oh, yeah……!

Kim already blogged about the unique experience we had on Monday night, but I figured I’d add my viewpoint to the dialogue, as she sort of glossed over it.

It was around midnight or so on Monday night. We’d wandered down to the dock out back behind the house we were renting to stargaze, something we rarely get to do in our neck of the Bronx. The sky was a blaze of diamonds, the stars twinkling in ways I rarely get to see — in fact, it was the most vivid I’ve ever seen in that regard. We were sipping some wine and chatting about life, the universe and everything, when suddenly, up above us, moving from southeast to northwest, were a trio of lights moving rapidly — and silently — across the sky. We’d seen a couple of shooting stars earlier, and these most definitely were not shooting stars.

They were flying so fast that they lasted maybe two-to-three seconds above us before moving over the horizon. They were fast. Very fast.

Now, they could have been on one object, in a triangle, or three separate objects. I was excited because I was able to point it out to Kim — who grew silent as she worked on processing what we’d seen. And while she may say that I was all about Greys coming to kidnap us (we both jumped when a compresser kicked in a few moments later, very loudly), it was just the absolute coolness factor of seeing something in one of the acknowledged hotbeds of UFO activity.

What were they? I don’t know. But the picture below speaks volumes.

I had no idea that Steve died until I saw Neil Gaiman post about it.

Steve was one of the first comic writers who caught my attention back in the Seventies. His Howard the Duck remains one of my all-time favorite goofy books, and his run on Defenders was filled with wonderful oddities. Definitely not your standard comic writer, by any stretch of the imagination, and likely very ahead of his time.

And let’s not forget his creation, Thundarr the Barbarian.

Rest well, Steve.

Update: Here’s his NY Times obit.