A League of Their Own

By recurring guest blogger, C. L. Schock:

Because the Captain Marvel movie is scheduled for release later this week, I thought it would be fun to write about some of my favorite female heroes and why I have an affinity for them. My husband knows much more about comics than I do, but never let it be said that I am not a geek in my own right or that I don’t have my own distinct opinions on all things nerdy.

Certainly, my journey started many years before I met him. When I was in elementary school, my favorite cartoon was Super Friends. (Footnote: It was eventually eclipsed when the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon came out, but that’s a tale for another time.) While watching these iconic super heroes fighting crime on Saturday mornings, I became well... a bit obsessed with Wonder Woman. In addition to the Super Friends cartoon, I faithfully watched the live action Wonder Woman television show starring Linda Carter throughout its run. I can neither confirm nor deny that Underoos may have been purchased. And I even spent many hours on the playground pretending to fight criminals as an Amazon princess. That’s a powerful and empowering image that remains vivid in my memory even today. So, as you can imagine, when I saw the DCEU Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Gadot, my eight-year-old self was dancing for joy inside my head as I sat there in the theater. Therefore, while this is more a series of reminiscences rather than a ranking, Wonder Woman would have to rank #1 for me if I were to create a list of my favorite comic book heroes.

Carrying that logic forward, I think I could quickly rattle off the next few heroines on my list—if I was making such a list, which I’m not—though the next contender could only be considered a comic book hero in an indirect sense. Princess Leia, from the Star Wars universe, has political influence, serves as a general in the Rebel Alliance, and can hold her own with a blaster. She plays an important role in many battles and is well respected both as a diplomat and a tactician. Though I never owned any Star Wars comics, I played with several different Princess Leia toys as a child—all of which would surely be worth much more today if I had left them in their boxes. However, the value of those memories is... no, who am I kidding. I had lots of toys as a kid. I should have left the Star Wars toys in their boxes. (Sigh. Groan. Sigh. Giggle.)

Later, after my husband came on the scene, my exposure to comic-book-based entertainment expanded—both because of his love for the genre and because its prevalence simply increased. I remember enjoying the 1990s X-Men cartoon, in particular, and, if I was ranking my favorite heroes—which I’m not—then I know I’d need to add two of their number into the third and fourth slots.
 

Number three on this non-existent list would be Rogue. I know she has a complicated back story in the comics, and started off as a villain, but I hadn't really known much about the character before this appearance and I liked how she was portrayed. I find that the nature of her powers makes her quite sympathetic, and I think that the cartoon did a decent job of conveying that in a way that even kids could understand.

The other X-Man in question would be Storm. I like how, at least in the cartoon, the stories helped to convey that Storm usually only uses a fraction of her full power. Her capacity to alter the weather is enormous, and it shows her level of self-control when she only uses them to the extent necessary to get the job done. Her skill in leading a team in a fight is admirable, and she rightfully earns the respect of her fellow X-Men.

Does this positioning suppose that I like Princess Leia more than any one X-Man? Not necessarily. I'd like to say it's a profound philosophical decision--because it feels too much like a beauty contest or because I chaff at the idea of pitting women against women--but it's more basic than that. I'm sure my husband could describe to you in detail whether Rogue's powers would work on Diana's Amazonian abilities or whether Leia could navigate a snowspeeder through one of Storm's tempests, but the traits I tend to idolize in my fictional heroes are more absolute rather than comparative. Wonder Woman is kind and noble. Storm is wise and self-possessed. Leia is courageous. Rogue is perseverant.These are all core aspects of the characters that don't need to be stacked against each other--traits that I value not only in my superheroes, but also in the people I choose to surround me.

And from my current vantage in life, I find that there's one more heroine that I'd like to add to this select circle--Elastigirl from Pixar's The Incredibles. Whereas I spent hours pretending to be Wonder Woman on the playground as a child, I find that Helen Parr represents the kind of grown-up I want to be. Not one of the throng of femme fatales that litter comics, she's a realistic modern woman who strikes an almost perfect balance between being a powerful super hero and being a great wife and mother. As a mom myself, I have a personal appreciation for this character and what she represents. She's not perfect, but she owns up to her mistakes. She is a powerful and intelligent superhero, using her abilities in creative and sometimes unexpected ways. She does her best to protect her family while also catching villains and making meatloaf for dinner.

Time will tell whether or not I will enjoy the Captain Marvel movie. But I know one thing for sure--that a lot of previous female heroes have influenced my opinions on the subject and that I'll be judging Ms. Danvers not on marketing hype but on expectations set by them and the other real-life women and men I consider to be role models. Does that set the bar pretty high? Yes, I suppose it does. Within the week, we will learn if she can fly higher.

Bromance with A Bronze Age Brawler

The flu decided to pay us a visit this week, knocking our family's axis off its tilt for several days. While everyone has pretty much recovered, there wasn't much time for blogging at the beginning of the week--so we're playing a bit of catch-up, with each spouse working on a topic. C. L. will have one to post on Monday, and mine is shared below.

A friend recently turned me on to Ollie's Bargain Outlet--a regional retailer of closeout merchandise--as a great place to find deeply discounted graphic novels. What I found there last weekend was a bit of a mixed bag. While there were two floor-to-ceiling shelves devoted to graphic novels and trade paperback comics compilations--a flabbergasting amount, frankly--the current selection skewed heavily towards the latter. And though I was sorely tempted by some of the volumes devoted to Geoff Johns' run on JSA, I didn't feel like a lot of the books represented landmark stories worthy of donation to my local library.

I did however grab a compilation encapsulating essentially the complete story of the bronze age Deathlok. Flipping through it was an interesting journey that reminded me of how the character touched upon several of my favorite series and storylines of the 70s and 80s.

As a kid, I'd been allowed to buy several issues from the character's original run in Astonishing Tales #25 through #36--but I'd have to guess that my parents were unaware of how different these books were from the types of stories I'd been reading in comics like Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Avengers. Set against the backdrop of urban warfare on the eve of the new millennium, Deathlok was serious dystopian science fiction and social commentary packaged as a superhero story.

Luther Manning is a cyborg. And typical of the trope, he's rebuilt based on the agenda of others. But this isn't a surface-level tale of social control and rebellion. In what was extremely dark plotting and dialogue for a comic in the mid-70s, Luther Manning faces genuine existential horror in the face of cloning and transhumanism--which his inner dialogue with the computer integrated into his consciousness lays bare for the reader. It's also a violent story that brings to mind Frank Castle, The Punisher, as Manning kills both as a pawn of his masters to start and then in eventual pursuit of his revenge. So, for those reasons alone, I would have considered the character and story arc memorable and visionary.

But then Marvel's editors did something that was, at that time, very common in their fluidly and fully integrated fictional universe. They continued--and ultimately completed--Deathlok's story in the pages of other title characters' comics. Like a group of experienced golfers "playing through" on a Saturday afternoon, characters could carry their storylines into any number of popular Marvel comics--and two, in particular, were specifically designed to thrive on that kind of story-telling. I have a soft spot in my heart for both Marvel Team-Up and Marvel Two-in-One, though I'd have to admit that the former was typically the better of the two.

MTU was a monthly comic featuring Spider-Man and another random guest character. (Marvel toyed with the dynamic occasionally making the anchor of the team-up either The Human Torch or The Hulk, but that was always a change-up and never lasted for more than an issue at a time.) This was a great and ultimately rather logical formula as Peter Parker--being a photojournalist working in one of the most superhero-dense areas of the globe--could be expected to bump elbows with any number of other costumed crime-fighters. And when those adventures sometimes took him to more exotic locales in space or time, well--you could wink at that without too much difficulty. Marvel Two-in-One featured Ben Grimm, The Thing, and another guest character. In this case, the story would often revolve around someone coming to the Fantastic Four for assistance and finding only Ben home. That premise got a little threadbare after while, but it was still a charming romp.

These titles were the glue of the 70s and early 80s Marvel universe, as this was a time before limited series were common--back when comic book companies worked primarily through outlets like newstands and drug stores and they were publishing only as many books as would collectively fit on a wire rack. There weren't "niche" books. New characters would have to grab a following either in the pages of anthology books (as the B-side to a more notable character's story), in books that rotated stories and characters (Marvel Premiere, Marvel Spotlight, etc.), or in MTU and MTIO.

Luther Manning made appearances in each of MTU and MTIO that are captured in this compilation. In the case of his MTU visit, Deathlok played host to Spider-Man in the future. But in his MTIO appearances, Luther Manning was the one to switch timelines--becoming planted in the then-present-day Marvel Universe. While not typical for the respective comics, I believe that the MTIO stories are better. That's mostly true however because they link back to what I think is definitively the best multi-chapter story from MTIO and likely the best MTIO story overall--the Project Pegasus Saga, which saw an eclectic group of heroes ranging from Quasar to Thundra to Giant-Man help The Thing to prevent Armageddon at the hands of a villain, the Nth Man, who could/would make a great (and unusual) "big bad" for a later phase of the MCU.

Marvel could have used this as a final, if unsatisfying, chapter in Deathlok's own narrative (as his body ended up seemingly destroyed)--but chose instead to pit the unwilling cyborg super-soldier of the future against its original super-soldier, Captain America in the latter's comic. Not a mindless mash-up, this story brought both characters back into Deathlok's now-alternate future and ultimately tied up most of the remaining loose ends from his run in Astonishing Tales--while giving the good captain a lot of food for thought related to how quickly his country could descend into barbarism.

I'm not saying that this compilation is going to float everyone's boat or--just as importantly--that it's an all-ages read; because it's definitely not. Despite Marvel's protestation that he's an "offbeat superhero," Deathlok is more appropriately described as an antihero. And the book--while perhaps not as gritty as modern takes on similar themes of dehumanization and body horror--is nevertheless a dark science fiction story. (Brace yourself for several references to off-panel cannibalism--even one in the Captain America crossover.)

As a compilation, it also suffers from a problem that many trade paperbacks suffer--inconsistency in the art. With the story crossing the desks of multiple writers, editors, and artists over more than a decade, the look of the character and his environment evolves. The cover to Astonishing Tales #34 is perhaps one of my all-time favorite comic book covers from the bronze age of comics, and I enjoy the pencilwork of creator Rich Buckler throughout that series--particularly, I think, when inked by Klaus Janson. I also enjoy the clean, detailed look of John Byrne's art from MTIO #54, but Byrne deviates significantly from the original character design. And while that difference has a decent in-story explanation, it's an explanation not made until subsequent appearances. Given that I really love the original look of the character, that's a bit of a detractor from my perspective.

Nevertheless, in weighing these factors I ultimately decided that the story's merits and its historical significance far outweigh any of its shortcomings. So I picked it up and plan to deposit as a gift to our library later this week. (Mind you, I should point out that it wasn't a quick and decisive choice; I made my family browse the rest of Ollie's discount merchandise for about 30 minutes before deciding to go back and pick the book up.)

What do you think? Does this initial take on the character--albeit now a bit outdated, set in a dark vision of 1991--sound like something you'd read? Let me know in the comments below. And happy bargain hunting!

A Wizard, a Cyborg, and a Blogger Walk into a Bar...

Sometimes I find that my mind goes in 15 different directions at once. Most weeks--at least where this blog has been concerned--I've fought the flow and tried to focus my thoughts. But I'm going to give myself a little more latitude this time and see where it takes us. (Heaven help us all.)

So here's what's on my mind:

First, I want the Shazam movie to be good. This isn't commentary on the wider DCEU. I just really want this specific property to be good because I feel especially invested in it on multiple levels. I've liked Zachary Levi going way back--back even before the TV series "Chuck" premiered, back when he appeared in the 2002 Sara Rue-led comedy "Less Than Perfect." So fast forward through Chuck, Tangled, being a substitute Fandral (replacing Once Upon A Time star Josh Dallas) and one season of the hilarious "Geeks Who Drink" and yeah, we're fans. So I want it to be good on that count. But I also just want the character to get his due.

Captain Marvel--no, not the one in the Marvel Studios film coming out around the same time, but rather the original Captain Marvel--is an immensely underappreciated hero in the DC canon. His back story may seem corny--a centuries-old wizard brings a good-hearted orphan to his sanctuary via a magical subway train to grant him super powers--but I think that's the charm of it. It's an origin steeped in the Golden Age of comics. And while the good captain had an especially strange rogues gallery that will likely prove difficult to render on the big screen outside of the two obvious front-runners--Dr. Sivana and Adam Teth (Black Adam)--we're seeing that DC is having no problems addressing the same issue in its recently released Doom Patrol series.

How can you not root for this character? He's a hard-luck hero that almost makes Peter Parker seem privileged. Not only is the fictional character an orphan, but so is the comic series itself. Though Fawcett Comics was responsible for creating one of the most recognizable super heroes of the 40s--one that outsold the adventures of Superman--that couldn't prevent them from being sued over supposed copyright infringement to the point of bankruptcy. And with Marvel Comics subsequently trademarking the name "Captain Marvel," later publishers of his comics adventures couldn't even name the comic after him.

BTW - If you want to see an excellent treatment of his origin story, I suggest the "Superman/Shazam:The Return of Black Adam" segment of the 2010 DC Showcase Collection, featuring the voice acting of the late James Garner in one of his final roles (as the wizard Shazam). Note that the other segments are also good--particularly the Green Arrow story.

That brings me to my second random thought--which is, when am I going to get to see a Rom Spaceknight movie?

I'd originally heard that the character was going to be included in a shared Hasbro cinematic universe and some outlets teased the possibility that Rom--noble defender of the planet Galador--could be introduced (or at least hinted at) in 2017's Transformers The Last Knight. When those rumors proved to be false, screenwriter Zak Penn (Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, Ready Player One) was then announced--about a year ago--to be working on a script for Paramount. What has followed has been radio silence.

If Billy Batson was a bit older--and Rom wasn't a cyborg without a visible mouth--the two would certainly have a lot to talk about over a few beers. Based on a perhaps forgettable toy that I recently saw at a local comics convention, the Marvel-licensed comic turned him into a compelling, tortured hero who gave up his humanity to defend his homeworld. (Come to think of it, he'd have a lot to talk about with the Silver Surfer too.) Arriving on Earth in pursuit of the shape-shifting Dire Wraiths, he finds that they've already infiltrated society and they've branded him a dangerous alien invader. On the run from the army, he holes up in a small West Virginia town near his crash site where he's befriended by--and ultimately defended by--several of the local townspeople, including one who is a near doppleganger for his long-lost love left behind on Galador centuries beforehand.

Rom hopscotched eclectically across the Marvel Universe, touching the lives of characters ranging from the Nova Corps of Xandar to the Avengers to Alpha Flight and even Luke Cage. His foes the Dire Wraiths became ubiquitous enough to menace the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and New Mutants. But then his time in the sun ended--for a while at least, though the comic was recently relaunched with the revival of several Hasbro toy-themed comics at IDW.

For my part, I don't know that Rom needs to be part of a larger Hasbro-property universe--as the character could really stand on his own. So if tie-ins to Transformers, GI Joe and Micronauts are going to add unnecessary complications, I'm hoping Paramount will elect to move forward based on the project's own merits.

That said, Micronauts is another great property I'd love to see adapted. The comic by Bill Mantlo--who also wrote Rom Spaceknight--was an interesting mix of Star Wars and Inner Space, featuring a band of alien rebels who find themselves transported to Earth where they're only the size of action figures. But their pursuers are no less dangerous for their small size, and what ensues are some very cool fight sequences of dinner-plate-sized spaceships in dog fights across backyards and parking lots. (That description doesn't do it any justice--I'd suggest grabbing a few issues from the dollar bin and checking it out.)

OK--I'm going to stick a pin in this rant. The Micronauts frankly deserve a post of their own, so I won't try to cram that in here. If this week's stream-of-consciousness approach has shown me anything, it's that my mind tends to riff on itself pretty easily--as I pinball from one area of interest to the next. Thank you for joining me on this excursion; next time I promise to bring a map.

How Sorry Helped Me in The Game of Life

by guest blogger, C. L. Schock - 

I'm to understand that my husband has been attempting to entertain you with his musings and opinions for a while now. Contemplating this--my own first attempt to blog--I couldn't help but be a bit reflective. As my spouse has shared, he had been slow to launch any new posts in recent weeks because of a family tragedy. What he did not tell you was that the tragedy was the death of a close relative from my side of the family tree.

 

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I've been thinking a lot about what my life was like growing up. There was nothing unusual about it, unless you count the fact that there was nothing unusual about it. I was raised in a very traditional nuclear family: no divorces, no crazy uncles living in the garage--not even a grandparent living in the spare room. My mom made dinner every night and, after we ate, we would typically line up on the sofa to watch a couple hours of television. But every once in a while, we would turn off the television, sit around the dining room table, and play a board game.

We didn't have a lot of board games at our house, especially compared to the still growing collection I maintain today. But I know we had a smattering of the classics--Monopoly, Clue, Battleship, and even Cooties. And I know we must have played them all on occasion. But the game that most often comes to mind is Sorry. It was a simple enough game--the object of which was to move your pieces around the board and to your goal while also impeding your opponents as much as possible. We enjoyed playing it, but I don't know that we played it any more often than the other games in our collection. For whatever reason, however, it's the game I think of when remembering game nights with my family. Simply put, it was fun in a way that made an indelible impression on my memory.

I don't recall exactly how often we played. I don't remember who won more games, or who lost more games. I don't know how old I was when we played for the first time, or how old I was when we played it last. But what I do remember is playing, spending time together, and enjoying each other's company as a family. And now I treasure those memories more than ever.

Just the other day, I was watching my daughter play The Game of Life with her cousin. The game started out like any other--with the two of them moving their pieces around the board while attempting to (A) get the jobs they wanted, (B) get married, and (C) have the number of children they wanted. I wasn't paying much attention to their game play until I happened to notice it diverging from the traditional narrative and success criteria. They had started to turn it into a sort of role playing game, elaborating on their pretend jobs and make believe families with growing detail and gusto. I don't believe that they ever got around to finishing the game. But I do believe that they had fun. 

As I reflected on what to write about in my first blog, I compared these two memories. And when I did, I concluded that sometimes the truth in a platitude is overlooked just because it comes from a platitude. But that doesn't make it any less true. Dozens of well-meaning friends and family members can tell you while in line at the funeral home that you will always treasure the memories of your loved one. Maybe they say it because they feel awkward and don't know what else to say. Perhaps they say it because they have seen it in countless memes and sympathy cards. But, perhaps the reason that they say it when they feel awkward is because it comes from some instinctive, deeply buried pool of knowledge. Perhaps countless memes and sympathy cards have the same message because the people who have lived through the pain already recognize the truth. 

So for those of you who have already lost someone close to you, I want to say I finally understand the platitudes. And for those of you who have yet to lose someone that close to you, let me give you some advice. Pay attention to the sentiments people share with you--however trite they might seem. Spend time with the people you love. Put down your phones and do something together. Play a board game. Go hiking. Have a picnic. Play basketball. It doesn't matter what you do; what matters is that you care enough to do it. Make the memories. 

I don't remember the details of playing Sorry with my family, I just remember that we played and had fun. And so I'm telling to you to take time to enjoy the Game of Life while you can. Yes, you should try to get a good job, meet someone special, buy a house, etc. But don't be afraid to go off script and expand the narrative. Elaborate on your story. Make some things up as you go. And know that, one day, when you reflect on your life, you may not remember who won which game. But rest assured, you will remember and cherish the fun.

Two Heads Are Better Than One--Unless Perhaps You're A Troll

In my last post, I shared an aspiration to become more regular and more structured about both these musings and my social media presence in general. Two days later, my family suffered a tragedy which, while not completely unexpected, reinforced for me how important it is to integrate everything I do with my role as a husband, brother, son, and father. Now, more than a month removed from those events, I think I'm ready to begin executing on several of those priorities.

First, this blog and my other social media posts are increasingly going to be joint efforts. My wife--sometime author C. L. Schock--is going to periodically share her thoughts and insights in this forum, occasionally substituting for me and occasionally acting as a counterpoint to my opinions. Look for an update to my banner in the near future reflecting this change, as Owl, Cowl and Blaster will then be more accurately described as "a couple embracing geek as performance artist and nerd as a verb." She and I have similar but not completely overlapping interests: she's an epic Potterhead and Whovian who also waxes nostalgic about some of my favorite 80's and 90's fandoms (Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and DC Comics, etc.). Her tastes skew a little more towards the literary however--Tolkien, Martin, Lewis, and others--whereas I rarely find much time for pleasure reading these days. And her opinions of all of these works and franchises are by no means cloned from my own. So I think her contributions will help to add balance and texture to this outlet.

Second, I'm on the verge of aligning my various social media accounts to form a single multichannel voice and strategy.

• You can expect to find a new blog post in this space weekly--ideally on Mondays
• That post will generally serve to set the tone for our social media for the week
• Next week's installment will likely be an introduction to/from my spouse
• Springboarding from there, I will be maintaining a weekly schedule of regular posts to my Instagram account across the other weekdays
• Tuesday and Thursday will be posts of "Migratory Meeples"--fun and funny pics of game pieces shown outside of their usual context (i.e., combined with pieces from other games, on other game boards, in real-life situations, etc.)
• Wednesday will feature forays into "Life as an NPC;" picking up a topic I'd first introduced in November, I plan to create what will be--at least at first--some simple random encounter tables for the purposes of making minor decisions for that day or the week on the whole
• Friday's posts will represent a continuing stream of story starters; "Pencil Prompts" is the tentative label, but that could change
• Not at first, but perhaps within a few months, I also hope to add at least one new design--be it for T-shirts, phone cases, pillows, whatever--to my CafePress storefront every weekend.
• Additionally, I hope to convert an old Twitter account into a series of "Dear Universe" posts--a stream of observations and suggestions related to "pie in the sky" ideas I'd love to see someone make happen (theme restaurants ideas, movies or TV show ideas, etc.)--impressions too small to warrant a blog post

I'm sure these ideas will continue to evolve over time, but this seems like a good starting point for a reboot. And hopefully you won't find the resulting two-headed monster that is OC&B too terribly scary a proposition to follow along. After all, we're a tandem of husband and wife geeks with strong--and often differing--opinions about a plethora of nerdy topics. So what could possibly go wrong?

;)

Unresolved: A Geek Dad's Argument For New Year's Aspirations Over Resolutions

You wouldn't think that the end of the year could sneak up on you, but it pretty much always sneaks up on me--even during the best of times. Life is so hectic in general--a continuous churn of family and work activities--that it warps my perception of the passage of time. And then one day I stop to take a breath and I see that New Year's Eve is just a few days off. In those moments, I feel like Ralphie from A Christmas Story in that scene where he's being pushed down the slide after failing to ask Santa for a Red Rider carbine-action BB gun. A voice--though not Jean Shepherd's--starts screaming "WAKE UP STUPID! YOU'RE BLOWING IT! YOU'RE BLOWING IT!"

In many past years, I've reacted by bargaining with myself. I start to list all of the things that I'm going to do differently in the next year. My list of resolutions has probably been fairly average in length and it's typically touched on the types of issues that most of us care about--spending more time with family, living healthier, carving out some time for myself, etc. That the list has remained relatively static isn't a great reflection on my success.

So this year, I've decided not to make any deals with myself save one--to enter the year with an open mind and an overarching aspiration to get more out of life in general. Rather than committing myself to make major changes that work and circumstance are going to actively undermine, I'm going to slow roll it by picking liberally from an eclectic list of small, achievable goals that will enrich my life one nerdy experience at a time:

• Getting Out to Game: Several years ago, my family and I joined a gaming club now attached to our local library. We met a lot of new people in the process, and many of those people make up the core of our friend group today. One of my fondest recollections of those earliest days of the club was going out to a nearby Panera Bread to grab sandwiches and play Resistance right there in the restaurant--allowing us to simultaneously both enjoy and advertise our hobby. With the founder of the club having moved away in the last year, I'd like to step up and initiate more events like this. Maybe a winter week night at one of our many fine pizzerias in some corner booth? Seems doable.

• Nerding It Forward: If you've been reading my blog from the beginning, you know that I've been buying graphic novels on the cheap--usually at comics conventions--to subsequently donate them to our local library. I plan to continue doing so, and have also considered expanding to comics-themed novels. (Shortly after my wife and I married, I read Diane Duane's trio of Spider-Man novels featuring the then-relatively-new character Venom and I'm thinking they would probably still hold up pretty well. While the story is set during a time when Peter Parker is married to Mary Jane Watson, I think it can still be timely given the plot of the enormously successful Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse now in theaters.) But beyond helping to populate our library with the comic arts, I'd also like to expand my efforts through the promotion of other nerdy activities--including bringing classic sci-fi movies to our local community theater. I've already proposed that they screen Forbidden Planet, and I hope to initiate a crowd-funding campaign sometime in 2019 to bank roll the endeavor--ideally as the start of a continuing summer movie series if I can swing it.

• Being More of a Maker: I love the feeling of achievement I get when I make something. It doesn't really matter whether it's something I make with my hands--like sketches--or something I make on the computer--like some of the T-shirt and cellphone case designs I've been marketing on CafePress.com. But everything I tend to do in that arena is something of a one-off--not part of a larger whole or strategy. So in keeping with the sentiments mentioned in the bullet below, I'd like to be more methodical and effective in how I use my limited opportunities to express myself creatively.

• Being More Organized About My Social Media: I've been giving it a lot of thought, and I'd like to be more thoughtful about how I schedule and drop posts across the several platforms I traffic--with emphasis on this blog and my Instagram account. I don't have the specifics worked out--again, I'm trying to focus on small steps rather than committing myself to large deliverables--but I do plan to publish a schedule of specific post types that I want to attach to particular days of the week and weeks of the month going forward. I hope that will help to keep me both accountable to myself and also to those of you kind enough to take the time to look at what I have to share.

So how about you? What kinds of things are you hoping to do in the coming year? And how confident are you that those goals are achievable?

Tell me/us about them in the comments section below, and have a great start to 2019!

And to All a Good Night: Some Random Geeky Reflections on the Night Before Christmas

I'd hoped to continue my experiment with using random encounter tables to plan free time this month, but it's December and--like many people--I find that free time isn't something I need to worry about much during the holidays. Rather, it tends to be a blur of planned engagements and commitments--and that's true even in a normal year, which this isn't. While I won't right now dive into all of the reasons why this year has been more difficult and trying than others that come to mind, I feel strongly about not losing my momentum where it involves this blog; so I'm going to keep things going with some quick thoughts and reflections here as the season almost literally flashes in front of my eyes.

Cookies! As I've noted before, I enjoy baking cookies as often as I can find the opportunity. Since Christmas offers not only the opportunity but the outright expectation of cookies, I invariably squeeze the task in--though I did cut it pretty close this time around, having only just delivered on the promise before lunch this morning. Doing so in volume, I usually don't have time to customize every individual cookie. But I typically hand-slice or hand-mold the designs for the last tray. This year, I was inspired to create the lightning bolt, dragon eggs, and Death Star shown here.

Games! When family gets together, we enjoy playing a variety of games--with favorites including titles such as Ticket to Ride, Dixit, Catan, and Quirkle. I'm not always a fan of card games--but I also particularly enjoy playing Twelve Days around the holidays and have for the last couple of years. Noting that, I noticed something for the first time in picking through the deck just the other day. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Mrs. Claus looks fierce? I mean, Santa looks like Santa but Mrs. Claus--an hour of Sweet Grenadine hair color and she's out clubbing, right? Mr. Kringle, I think you need to stay on top of your game--that's all I'm saying.

Robots! Yes, robots. I couldn't bring myself to put them into storage after Halloween, as I really liked
how that project turned out. But I've also always just made an association between Christmas and robots dating back to around when I was seven. For some reason, all through my childhood, robots were really prominent on all my gift lists. There was the Transformers phase, which I suppose was fairly common. But another really deep cut--one that I will write about more comprehensively in a later post--was when I desperately wanted Raydeen from the Shogun Warriors.

The Shogun Warriors was a short-lived comic book series and toy collaboration between Mattel and Marvel back in the late 70s. But what was weird from my perspective was that the crossover between the toys and the comics seemed to be only partial. While I'd have been happy to own any of the two-foot tall figures based on the giant robots from the comic, there was only one crossover character--Raydeen. Unfortunately, it was also the most scarce of the figures in my area--presumably for the same reason.

It's only been in recent years that I learned that these robots were actually separately featured in Japanese animation in their own respective titles; the Marvel comic simply reinvented and repackaged them for an American audience. So the Great Mazinger that my parents eventually got for me--the one I ungratefully treated as a consolation prize--would have been warmly welcomed in thousands of other houses. While not featured in the Marvel comic, Mazinger was the subject of multiple anime series and even a recent animated movie. A cultural juggernaut several thousand miles away, he was greeted by an upturned nose and a sniffle at my house where I was a little boy who didn't know what he had.

Is there a Christmas message in there? Something to ponder as we bob and weave our way through various holiday traditions and obligations? Perhaps. In the meantime, I will simply wish you and yours happiness both in the midst of and in the aftermath of your celebrations.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a geek life. :)