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I'm starting to think this optician's appointment will never happen.

A pedant writes...

The speech bubbles in Brink (page 2, panel 4) are going to the wrong people. Those hands belong to Kurtis, but it's Regina that's saying "There wasn't much to work up."

Methinks thou dost needs teleport thyself to Thought Bubble. [See prog 2388.]

[SPOILERS]

[Rummaging around in the Funt Attic, a dusty box is emptied onto the floor. Grimy hands with broken fingernails scrape away the beetle dung and fungal spores to reveal...]

Do I have to say SPOILERS this far on in time?

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The Harlem Heroes *SOFT REBOOT*
It's Beverly Hills 90210 meets Rollerball, as a gang of easily identifiable (but attractive) misfits (leader, vixen, driver, tough & hacker) are forced into service as mercenaries by a shadowy government organization, and then betrayed. Also, they have jetpacks. Everything explodes: whether it be escaping convicts in a mole machine, or computer terminals infected with an explodey virus (because making other people's computers explode remotely is so a thing). Then there's lots of *budda budda* and posing. Nobody ever changes their clothes, so if this was presented in smell-o-vision, you wouldn't like it. All of the work-a-day henchmen that get casually offed by the "heroes" are reminiscent of Austin Powers and The Henchman's Wife.

Despite agents being sent to track down Fleisher and take his typewriter away, by force if necessary, the plot shoe-horns in a poor person's Leonard Smalls (an unnamed "deadly assassin" with bionic eyes)to move things along. He flags down a passing high-speed train and then, when he realizes it's going to Albuquerque rather than his prefered destination of Los Angeles, he murders his way into the engineers's compartment and forces them to de-couple all the other cars (which tumble to their doom) before demanding to be taken to LA. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes (or even Shaggy from Scooby Doo) to realize that if LA is in the direction of current travel, one assumes he'll still have to pass through Albuquerque, because this is a train that travels (like trains do) on rails. If it's behind them, then he's going the wrong way (and has blocked the track with crumpled train cars). He couldn't just go to Albuquerque and get a connecting train?

Then there's an ED209 from Robocop, and more shooting and stuff so that the "Heroes" can clear their names by making sure that the public realize they're not those hired killers.


[The] Harlem Heroes featuring Slice: Death-Sport
"CLAK | SNEK! | KLUD | THWAM | POOMM | BOOM | CLAK | KBLAMMM | WHROOOM | KA-RAAASH | KLIK | WHOCK | FWIP | CHONK | KLIK | KABLAM | WHUD | KZAAAKT | HCHUP! | AAAAAAA"


[The] Harlem Heroes featuring Silver: Grey Ghost Overflight
A prequel in which Silver (an arms dealer) fights back when the trade show she's at is taken over by unlikely mercenaries seeking to hijack a stealth fighter. This wouldn't have been out of place in Hotspur.


[The] Harlem Heroes: Cyborg Death Trip
Definite drawer fodder, this crops up almost exactly three years after the previous side story from the softly rebooted Heroes. The four remaining Heroes are on the lam from the law and trying to keep a low profile: by starting murderous bar brawls.

Because they're comic characters, they all have clear visual traits (like specific haircuts, HH t-shirts and even in one case a HH tattoo on the side of the head) which makes any attempt to blend in superfluous. The other built-in story problem is that they don't actually play aeroball anymore, so excuses to use bulky jet packs (which they're magically wearing hidden under their clothes whenever the plot requires it) have to be shoe-horned in.

Plot: the Heroes are forced to stop a drug gang who are pushing an economically terrible product that makes the user get really high just before their brain explodes. In a shock twist, the bad guy is Artie Gruber (from the prequel series Inferno).

This is it for the second generation Heroes. I think the next future sport story to get tried is maybe that one with the guy with the head of an ass ... Second City Blues (2006)? Although: the denouement has Artie Gruber's mind in an escape pod, so there's time for a sequel yet. Tharg? Hello?

Just checked Barney
The first Story is 186 pages so this volume 1 will not have the full story.

So sorry, but the first story is 159 pages. I love Barney but he has that count wrong.

[28 - The Cursed Earth]

28 - The Cursed Earth

Or, if you're doing Merlin's accent (i.e. Nicol Williamson in Excalibur), The Curséd Earth - now hope is broken!


How the West Was Won (meg 220; 2004; John Ridgway) - in this episode of Funt's Believe It or Not, quail in astoundment at the science fact that this is the first Megazine wraparound cover! I enjoy Ridgway's work, but the H-Wagon's not very exciting, the Dredd pose is wonky and the perspective on the body-bags isn't quite right so they look like pizza delivery bags. "I guess we won't be needing all these pizzas now, huh, Dredd?"


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No Mercy! (prog 1514; 2006; Simon Coleby & Chris Blythe) - only two Cursed Earth wraparounds in the list, and in both of them Dredd is presiding over mutant massacres. Tut! Mind you, these guys seem to be putting up more of a fight.




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Next: city lights...

I read (or, sometimes, listened to) all of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and remain entirely a lubber. It's okay to just let some of the naval jargon sail (pardon) over your head, for all love. The Simon Vance audiobook versions are superlative.

But isn't "acerbic" just a natural and expected reaction? The communicative equivalent of swatting a mosquito?

I realize that the mosquito in this case is massive and sits astride the political spectrum, fed the blood of victims by politicians and hucksters, keen to profit.

Zzutak?

I once ditched the prog for eight years, then got caught up. So, it's not a judgement call on Spector, just a delayed start.

Yes, but Wookiee ... wait, what? 

Snow/Tiger - seemed to get slated pretty strongly by the hive mind, but I thought it had legs.

Bison - again, generally slated but I found it punchy.

I've lost track a bit but I think there's some debate about how much protection a face mask offers from wookie wang.

Keepin' it classy here on the serious thread!

guess the fallacy

Ooh - guess the phallus! My favorite!*


*An example, btw, of the Chewbacca defense.

I was just fannying around, JBC. So sorry. I'll back right off.