Spider-Douchery #2--The Vulture and the Tinkerer

There is some divisiveness over how a comic especially one such as Spider-Man, should be written.  Some are fans of arcs which guarantee a story for a character, but make missing an issue ruin the immersion and often giving a stronger sense of marketing or pandering than of entertainment.  Others are fans other meandering storylines with no designation is destination, giving a sense of humanity and chaos to the characters and world, but weakening any sense of story structure or character evolution.  Me, I prefer a middle ground, giving both a chance to thrive and work together, which is what we see a lot of in Amazing Spider-Man.

So, Peter Parker is Spider-Man, a science geek and yet not the sharpest crayon in the box, he needs money, J. Jonah Jameson has nothing better to do than complain about him, and Aunt May is a million years old.

Let's get this party started.

The story starts out immediately with, well, the story.

And just like that, The Vulture swoops in and steals a briefcase full of fortune bonds.  This act is apparently so shocking that crowds gather around to watch, despite taking no pictures.

It's probably hard to do anything useful when you're melting

Meanwhile, Peter Parker overhears that Jameson's newspaper, The Daily Bugle, is offering considerable amounts of money for pictures of The Vulture.  I should point out that as much as Jameson is so skilled at Journalism, it took him only a single article to turn the public against Spider-Man for putting on a silly circus show, he's threatening to replace editors if they can't get him photos.  No wonder he's surprised when a photographer managed to.

Given how much Jameson hates his alter ego and how much time and effort being a photographer will take out of his social and academic life, Peter of course thinks things through and--oh, wait, he doesn't. He immediately asks Aunt may for an ancient camera what use to belong to Uncle Ben and doesn't stop for a second to think about how bad the quality of the pictures might be.

A blonde, a brunette, and a guy named Moose? Are you Peter Parker or Archie?

 But don't worry, Marvel comics has taken subtlety outback and killed it.  Loudly.  By a clown.  So thinking things through would just waste everyone's time.  Case in point: With the rash of thefts committed by The Vulture, the Bugle sees no problem publishing an article about a million dollars of diamonds being moved, plus the when, where, and how.  So, do diamond companies let anyone print stuff like this, or do you have to ask politely first?

But hey, two can play at that game. The Vulture flies past Spider-Man giving no hoots and totally polluting by chucking rocks with messages tied to them through the windows of The Daily Bugle and the police station (don't bother asking why no one looked out the window, cops aren't going to accomplish anything but an angst-inducing death scene for at least ten years).

As The Vulture flies back to his lair to...I don't know.  He's got a lot of free time now.  Anyway, he flies back, I guess because he left the oven on.  Spider-Man spots him and immediately takes the opportunity to take a picture, only to carelessly kick a loose brick.  Well, The Vulture isn't as dumb as he looks and isn't having any of Spider-Man's shit, so he swoops down, tosses Spidey in a water tank a few buildings away and effs off.  He's got better things to do than stick around, whatever those things are.

Don't worry, this is issue #2.  Spider-Man's not in trouble (although turning him into a zombie water-bender early on would have been kick-ass).  He struggles for a bit and eventually leaps out and wanders off back to his camera. So much for tension.

At least he learns something this time.  He grabs extra web fluid packs so he'll never run out (we'll see how long that lasts) and attaches the camera to his belt.  I guess villains are too nice to notice the crotch bulge after this.  Spider-Man also takes time out to create a McGuffin to use against The Vulture so he can spend time giving us exposition instead of the story actually having tension.

The next day, Peter calls up The Daily Bugle, offering his pictures of The Vulture.  Despite the fact that any idiot could have figured out that either Spider-Man himself took the pictures or someone Spider-Man trusted well could have and that Jameson has it out for the guys, he immediately buys the pictures, and agrees to Peter's conditions of not asking how her took them (yes, that doesn't sound suspicious at all).

Even back then we were warned of the horrible Marvel Now! series he'd be responsible for.  If only we had listened.

One day later, everyone in Peter's school is excited to see the diamond exchange.  Really?  I know entertainment was different back then, but I don't think watching someone hand a suitcase to another qualified as anything close to fun or fascinating in the 60's.  The kids even make fun of Peter being scared when The Vulture shows up.  Why? He steals valuables and cash.  He has no use for abducting random teenagers.

And it's not just the teenagers who desperately want to see the diamond exchange and treat it like watching the president wrestle alligators for charity.  There's a  huge crowd of people already lined up, as well as cameras, reporters, helicopters, and policemen everywhere.  Not that theft is a petty thing, especially for a million dollars worth of stuff, but even back then it was pretty impossible to sell diamonds as an individual.  You'd just end up with a lawsuit for more money or given far less money to get them back.  Diamond companies were and still are one of the the closest real things we have to the mob and heck, it took a while for comic books to top them.

So, the helicopter flies directly above, cops are on every rooftop and two escort the man about to hand over the briefcase to an armored truck with guards inside and out and...

Wow.  New York's finest leave a lot to be desired.

The Vulture flies off through the sewer and  into the subway tunnels, with Spider-Man in so close in hot pursuit, he 's still next to where the robbery took place and in the middle of changing.  I'd be worried about how he's more interested in getting paid for pictures than actually stopping a villain or saving people from getting hurt, but I'm too distracted by New York's sewage and transportation system being connected by human-sized tunnels.  Eww.

Well, it's a good thing The Vulture doubled back to save Spider-Man much trouble of finding him.  But again, The Vulture has better stuff to do, not that he'd tell us what that is, and loops around before Spider-Man can figure out where he went.  He's not bothering with some guy who looks less like a spider than he does a vulture, and he's got the color scheme of Kermit The Frog.

However, Spider-Man is ready for him this time and he's not letting The Vulture get away with ignoring him.  It's his comic book, after all. So he goes all 'Let's see how you like McGuffin in the face!  Take barely explained plot device!'

Having disabled The Vulture's wings, Spider-Man jumps off, clings to  building and watching his plummet to the ground.  Yeah, don't make sure he won't land in traffic or on something sharp.  Not your problem, is it?

And people were surprised when this happened in Batman V Superman

The Vulture thankfully manages to land safely on a roof just and miss hitting the police helicopter coming to get him.  Instead of being there while he's arrested to make friends with the police or at least make sure The Vulture isn't hurt and he doesn't have to prepare for a huge lawsuit, Spider-Man hides and snaps pictures of The Vulture's arrest, completely oblivious to rules against recording on duty cops at the time.

Before the arrest is even made official by the police, Peter's selling the pictures to Jameson, who happily pays for them and tells him to go buy one of those new fangled Hula Hoops or Rock and Rock records or whatever the kids are into these days.

And so Peter tells Aunt May he 'paid rent for a full year and will be buying expensive new kitchen appliances'--were photos really that expensive back then?  Why not go work for Playboy then?--and The Vulture vows revenge, because of course he does.  While the page ends with 'The End', the comic isn't over.  All the McGuffining had to Make Room for the next story about The Tinkerer.

As much as he looked like an elderly Mr. Rogers with three spoons on some legos, I'd say the first guy with a real gun WOULD be your biggest threat so far

The next day, in class, the newest sinister plot is revealed.  No, it's not that he's making meth, it's that there's another teacher who wants him to intern for him and is about to unwittingly lead Peter to the villains' lair.

Meanwhile Liz is checking out Peter;s damn fine ass

Like any intern, his first assignment is to run personal errands for the teacher while important people do stuff, like getting paid.  I guess there are some things that never change.  So off he goes, with barely a complaint.  Ah, to be oblivious to what it's like to truly at the bottom of the ladder.  You'll get there, Peter, you'll get there.

When he gets there he meets Mr. McCreepy there, but thinks it's all the electric doodads that are making his spider-sense go off.  Are we sure this guy is a genius?  He tells McCreepy he's here to pick up his teacher's radio.  So Mr. McCreepy goes down into the basement to get and and he reveals the plot...ALIENS!  Yes, we're only in the second issue and we get aliens.

And these beings who have traveled light years to our planet to hide from society as they seek to take it over right under our noses, using their superior intellect and weaponry looks like...this:

Yes, a weight-lifter's girdle, a tiny speedo, and a sports bra that's too small.  I guess intimidation didn't make it onto the priority list.  Well, enough of that reveal, back to the old guy handing Peter the radio and Peter being shocked about how cheap the prices are.  Riveting stuff.

But Peter's spider-sense goes off!  Maybe he'll do something now.  Or maybe he'l just think it's all the electronic doodads and walk away with the radio.  Are we sure this guy is a genius?  Anyway, he heads back to school and gets to work being a lowly minion intern.  He notices his spider-sense is still going off and finally suspects there's something weird going on.  After his teacher leaves, he carefully opens the back to look for clues.  At least he's polite enough to wait until he's alone to break other people's things.

We're not told what he found, but apparently it's enough for him to quit whatever he's doing and change into Spider-Man so he can go fight the Tinkerer.  At first I thought he mistook the 'Intel Inside' label as an ominous message of evil, but it turns out he found spyware in the radio.

As he makes his way down to the basement, the aliens and The Tinkerer discuss how the spyware gives them valuable insight about the weaknesses of important humans.  Well, how smart do you expect aliens who can't dress themselves to be?

Anyway, they--Gaaah!

MY EYES!

Put some pants on!

Anyway, they start to spy on...someone with a camera hidden in the back of the radio.  Instead of just picking up darkness or the innards of a machine, they see..someone addressing another as 'Colonel' and talking about the defenses of the eastern seaboard.  How the aliens don't know if they're watching a televisions show isn't mentioned.  

By now, Spider-Man's caught up to them and has learned of their dastardly plot to...invade people's privacy I guess.  Spider-Man suspects they want to learn earth's military and scientific secrets, but that'd be too silly even for this comic.  Sure, they haven't figured out pants yet, but they have spaceships that can travel to other planets, they know our electronic communication and media devices inside and out, and they can keep a shop open while it sells its services for way below regular price.  Besides, if they wanted to know about our military, they'd be spying on Washington or the UN.

But while they spy on someone, Spider-Man spies on them, while another one of them spies on Spider-Man.  While we the reader are technically spying on all of them.  I suddenly have the urge to shudder all my windows and turn off all my lights.

This finally leads to our first real fight scene in the comic series.  Aliens shot at Spidey, he dodges, they chase him up a wall and onto a ceiling make him fall off, and then gang-rush him.  It's not amazingly brutal, but a) second comic and b) this is Spider-Man, not The Punisher or Judge Dredd.  We've got years to wait until writers forget that about him.

As he throws all the aliens off his back, remembering that he has spider-strength (but forgetting his webbing), the Tinkerer shoots him in the back with a ray gun.  Thankfully it wasn't set on 'Superhero', so it just stuns Spider-Man.  Instead of killing Spider-Man while he's unconscious, the aliens decide to just dump him in a terrarium they happen to have around.  They still want to kill him, so instead of changing their minds, they still put him in the terrarium and then let the air out.

If you thought dealing with The Vulture with a homemade McGuffin was a cop out of speeding through the plot, you don't know Spider-Man.  Contrivances are one of his superpowers.  As the air is being let out, he shoots his webbing through one of the holes and hits the EXACT RIGHT BUTTON on a control panel that opens the terrarium.

He then throws he aliens around, not caring to see if they're s fragile as humans, and when one is thrown into the control panels, it immediately light on fire. Because all super-advanced technology is made out of nitro-glycerin.  Just ask Star Trek.

The aliens run off, and just as Spider-Man tries to nab The Tinkerer,  he disappears in the smoke. Spider-Man decides they all have the right idea and gets out of the smoke-filled burning building.  People say Spidey must have set the building on fire, tons of private property is destroyed, the aliens turn tail and leave for another galaxy, and it's revealed that Spider-Man took the Tinkerer's mask off as he tried to grab him, and none of this is ever followed up in the next issue.

Wasn't this supposed to have something to do with responsibility?

_________________________________________

Click here

It's Marvel's favorite and most useless vampire.  It's Morbius in the Marvel Rebooted Universe.

The MRU could always use more readers and writers.

____________________________________

Looking for more?  Check out my other works and my store.

If you'd like to help keep these projects going!  Check out my Patreon and contribute.  Chooses from speedier blogs to a prize bag and a charity dinner!

Spider-Douchery # 1--Job Hunting, Space, and the Chameleon

 Rocky history aside, I've only recently become used to reading longer and more complicated comics online. Hey, bad 90's artwork took some time to get used to. I'm not complaining, I'm just late to jump on he bandwagon (and formally to poor to hitch a ride).

Ah, but what ride to take first? Marvel offers so many. Dark and gritty, humorous and silly? Meaningful or just simple entertainment? A long series that inevitable takes up time and dedication with the risk of leaving you unfulfilled or even heartbroken or angry in the end? Or to play it safe and find something you'd never get so attached to, but want some depth out of?

I chose to go with Spider-Man. Film and movies alone have given me all of those and much, much more.

Including the most awesome themesong in existence

Sure, there were mediocre and downright bad versions of him. Some tried to be weird, some put too much effort in being 'hip'. Some tried to downright re-invent parts of Spidey's world to the point of being a huge distraction or plothole even. But I didn't care. When they got things right, they got things perfect. He's always been Amazing, Spectacular, and The Friendly Nighborhood Spider-Man.

When done right.

So let's check out the comics. Back to the well. The original. The absolute best--

Okay, but--

Well, there's--

Screw it, there's something good, I'm sure of it.

Yeah...while Spider-Man officially debuted in Amazing Fantasy in 1962, he didn't get his own series until 1966.  The art had some obvious growing pains, which I'm not sure were all that passable for back then.

From the first page, it's quite clear that thins never slow down for Peter and his Aunt May.  While he's complaining that just last night he was bitten by a spider and he lost Uncle Ben to a shooter, Aunt May pleads for an extension to pay rent.

Well, Peter can do two things.  He can whine about Uncle Ben and make his own pity part about the rent.

Which might have worked if he weren't thirty and she wasn't too old to be a zombie

First thing he does is imagine all the robberies he could pull off as Spider-Man.  But then, three panels later he's worried how Aunt May will feel if he ever gets caught.  For a super-genius, he has no idea how to plan a simple robbery.

He settles on getting an agent and performing stunts as Spider-Man. Sadly, he can't cash his check without exposing his secret identity.  I'm not sure who's worse at this, Spider-Man for being so bad at hiring a competent agent, or the agent for not realizing this would be a problem in the first place.

Meanwhile, J. Jonah Jameson is already mad about Spider-Man and decides to put him in his place by writing up late edition article.  As much as he's the main antagonist for Spider-Man for decades, he's the only person good at his job in the series until his editor shows up and takes over that role, because one article form one newspaper is enough to convince everyone in New York City to boycott Spider-Man's show forever.

However, it's not really the show he's mad about, it's that Spider-Man took two up panels to stop the criminal who killed Uncle Ben when those panels could have been used on Jonah's son, the astronaut.   If J. Jonah Jameson were real, we'd be arguing that NASA has too much of a budget.

Peter's not about to give up just yet.  He's going to find a real job--okay, actually he spied Aunt May and followers her like a creepy stalker and finds her pawning junk jewelry.

Which she seems fine with

So he does what any sane adult--what any normal teenager--he blames Jameson for everything and starts beating on a wall, vowing that Spider-Man will will stalk the streets.  And here I thought it would take until the 2010's for him to get pissed at someone for no reason.

The next day, Peter's watching the space shuttle with younger Jameson in it take off.  Why?  Because he has nothing better to do.  The caption even tells us that, just as we begin 'Part 2'.  Why Part 2?  Fuck if I know.  The shuttle launches, the top capsule detaches, and everyone's in danger.  Raise your hand if you're surprised (put that down and go read a comic book!).

But don't worry, obviously Spider-Man's here to help.  Remember, Peter's got nothing better to do.  So he runs over to his house, grabs his costume, and goes all the way back to the launch site to stop the rocket capsule.

There's not much else to Part 2.  Spidey says he'll save the say, Jameson bitches, Spidey webs up a guard instead of just saying he's trying to help, he hops on a plane to catch up to the capsule, snags it with webbing, replaces a missing piece, beginning 'Part 3.'

Part 3 isn't much.  Jameson still hates Spider-Man and wants him arrested and Peter's mad about it.  I can't see this getting old at all.

Peter's still mad, but his money troubles distract him from hurting any more innocent walls.  So of course he decides to bug he Fantastic Four about it.  Sure, makes sense.  If he wasn't supposed to be a super genius.  Or supposed to act like a normal adult.  Or just plain have common courtesy and sense.

So he walks right in, setting off booby traps, climbing through their roof, and giving them all a run for their money in a fight.

Not that it's hard to defeat Sue

When it's over it turns out he could have just called for an appointment and found out they were a non-profit group and didn't have that kind of salaries.  Waah, wah.

The rest is Spider-Man dealing with his first ever actual villain: The Chameleon.  Yup, we're over two-thirds of the way though a superhero comic and we've finally gotten to a real villain. The rest is him and a newspaper editor getting mad at each other, him hijacking various military vehicles, and breaking and entering.

Anyone remember when the Chameleon was a guy with an illusion belt that created solid holograms?  Well, there's not of that here.  He's just a guy in a body suit and goggles with a cartoon disguise kit.  He ties up a janitor and pretends to be him until he changes in an empty hallway where anyone can see him to disguise himself as a scientist and then just walks up to top secret files and steals half of a missile plan.  Well, that's what you get for not paying attention and getting haircuts that look like novelty items.

Why not just steal the keys disguised as the janitor?  Because where's the drama in that?  In fact, this is already too low-key for The Chameleon.  He decides to not only frame Spider-Man for hies next heist, but to send a message to him using only a frequency Spider-Man can hear.  Apparently spiders worked differently in the 60's.

Go home, comic, you're drunk

Like the super genius idiot he is, he follows the signal to the very roof of the building The Chameleon is robbing next.  At this point I've given up on trying to figure out who's dumber and just wish  had that cool web-squirt gun The Chameleon uses before running off to a helicopter on the roof just before the real Spider-Man arrives.

 Dear Amazon...

Spidey is his usual helpful and friendly self, webbing up cops without explanation and using the most ridiculous of comic book physics to pinpoint exactly where the helicopter and and where it's headed and launch himself right at it.  He gets points for enthusiasm, I guess.  Some how he steals a boat, (I guess he didn't get that far), and heads out the a not-at-all communist submarine the helicopter is headed straight for.

Maybe people aren't dumb so much as they're all blind.  Ether way, The Chameleon fails to notice either Spider-Man webbing up the submarine doors or him leaping at the helicopter until it's too late.  He tries to throw Spider-Man off, Spidey rips the door off and forces The Chameleon to land...somewhere right in front of the police, and despite how many things he stole and how many cops he's webbed up without so much as a 'sorry', they believe him about it all being The Chameleon's fault.

There's a few more pages left, so the writer has The Chameleon get away thanks to a smoke grenade.  Apparently when you can't see, you stop holding on to someone. He disguises himself as a cop, but Spider-Man's spider-sense goes off in his presence, despite it never happening before.  The Chameleon turns off the lights, but spider-sense works like Daredevil's powers and Spider-Man lunges at him.  The lights are turned on, The Chameleon still tries to get Spider-Man arrested, and instead of trying to prove his innocence, Spider-man runs off for no reason and cries about his powers.

Um, what a hero?

_________________________________________

Click here

It's Marvel's favorite and most useless vampire.  It's Morbius in the Marvel Rebooted Universe.

The MRU could always use more readers and writers.

____________________________________

Looking for more?  Check out my other works and my store.

If you'd like to help keep these projects going!  Check out my Patreon and contribute.  Chooses from speedier blogs to a prize bag and a charity dinner!

Comic Retrospective: Prolog

I got into comics late in my life. Sure, I read indie comics since I was a child and I watched Marvel and DC shows ever since I learned to use the television. I even perused local comic shops frequently. but I never had any interest in the printed medium until I was a late teen. Until then, comics were just jokes about stoned hippies, or poorly drawn scribbles complaining about the government or the X-men save the moon.

(Can this be anymore 90's?)

And that was it. Asking me about comics was like asking me about a wall. It's there. It has a purpose. Some people suck at building walls and some people are experts. Walls can look like anything and can be made to appeal to anyone in particular the person who made the wall wants. Was I interested in walls? No. Did I hate walls? No.

Then, one day I needed to kill a lot of time, so I bothered to check out comics again. I found this guy. He looked like he'd suffered an ambush makeover by Lobo's hair stylist, he dressed like the crow, at some point I think he stole Spawn's cape, and he was badly suffering from 90's snarling constipation.

(Everyone in the 90's had rickets)

I was introduced to something VERY new. There was no long narrative intro, no backtracking, no flashbacks to an origin story, and the fight scenes were barely in the book. It didn't resemble anything like a superhero cartoon or issue.

Michael Morbius woke up to find himself a prisoner of a mad scientist. But this guy resembled a real doctor. There were no delusions of grandeur, not insane laughter, no schemes. The guy likes to study the terminally ill and kept them alive and aware as he studied their conditions and operated on them—not to help them as victims, but to prolong their suffering so he could keep studying them. Did I mention the main audience was children and teenagers?

The story didn't try to hold your hand because you were young and couldn't handle words like 'kill' or 'die' or pretend death wasn't real, and it didn't go for the lowest common denominator. It was meant to be absolutely terrifying psychologically and it did that almost perfectly. The protagonist wasn't someone who tried to save the world, he was just some guy who knew he was in over his head but tried to stop a bad guy because he knew no one else would.

I had never seen that kind of story before and it earned my respect for the medium. This was what it was now. It was like going from Trouble With Tribbles to In the Pale Moonlight. While the first is enjoyable and optimistic and the latter is full of unethicality and amorality, it was an evolution I enjoyed (both for comics and Star Trek). It changed my view of the medium, and especially the genre, from objective to subjective.

The specific character had much less impact than the story and the depth the character gave to it. In doing so, it changed acknowledgment to approval. It changed my thoughts on the medium as a whole from objective to subjective.

However, as much as something literally so small changed my opinion of something vast, I was still young with an inconsistent income and I soon found myself moving to a new house and into high school. Pressure to overachieve in school increased dramatically, social interests veered sharply away from anything defined as pertaining to 'geeks', and my new interest created problems at home.

My parents, though college educated, were mired in the school of thought that things like video games (I had to keep it a secret until I was an adult if I wanted to play at a friends house) and comics made one stupid, violent, and out of college. As much as that notion didn't make sense in the late '90's to anyone who knew a thing about comics, it made less sense that they whole-heartedly approved of indie comics such as Elfquest or humor such as Furry Freak Brothers. Those were graphic novels or silly nostalgia; they didn't count.

Then karma came along and changed everything. While my parents were vocal about voting against it, our neighborhood gained free cable (only 20 new channels or so). They never mentioned a single word of protest though, when it brought our household Batman: the Animated Series. They enjoyed it almost as much as I did. On Leather Wings, followed by Heart of Ice, reminded me of why I had ever wanted to pursue my hidden urge to buy more comics. There was a depth to these characters emotionally. I didn't care if it was a show for kids and the writers very often didn't care about that either (that or they were pure evil and wanted to give children something so good it would ruin all future cartoons). The show, and it's evolution into Batman and Superman, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited, often gave me a view into the psyche of those characters.

(Sometimes I wish I didn't want to know anything about their psyches)

In the later years of high school I was introduced to manga by a friend and found an interest in the foreign art style as I entered college. As much as I studied the history, culture, and connection that continues this day with American media, manga inspired me more as an idea than as something to continue. Either the stories went on forever (and I ended up preferring the anime most of the time), or I found singular stories that I regarded more as individual pieces than representatives or advertisements for the different form of the medium. While tales like 1001 Nights in Space and Uzumaki tantalizing beyond any other previous mix of graphic art and prose, manga lacked the staying power and pull that American retained over the years.

Now that I was an adult, I had more privacy and leniency. I eventually bought my own Playstation and began doing my best not to keep up with comics, but to find what I knew I was likely to enjoy once comic shops and bookstores carrying trades finally began showing up near me. I checked out the 'landmark' stories of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and...they were okay. I preferred reading Tower of Babel for just plain being enjoyably silly or Identity Crisis for all the wrong reasons.

(Which were pretty much all the parts DC never followed up on)

I was in my mid-twenties when I actually began to take a look back at the superheroes I liked and read their history and stick with a continuity for a whole arc. I learned a lot about the history of characters, the overall differences between Marvel and DC and why I tended to gravitate towards the former, and to stay far away from Frank Miller. Someone should really have warned me about him.

I dabbled all over the medium, especially as digital comics became easier to access without loads of cash. I checked out manga, found Elfquest had returned with all-new stories by the original artists, but I had become a die-hard Marvel fan.

It's not perfect and I read the occasional indie, Image, or DC book, but Marvel is now my rock. A bit eroded, but solid.

_________________________________________

Click here

It's Marvel's favorite and most useless vampire.  It's Morbius in the Marvel Rebooted Universe.

The MRU could always use more readers and writers.

____________________________________

Looking for more?  Check out my other works and my store.

If you'd like to help keep these projects going!  Check out my Patreon and contribute.  Chooses from speedier blogs to a prize bag and a charity dinner!