EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWStrike a blow! What Sam Houston knew, Muhammad Ali knew. And it’s that same strange mix of insight and endurance, of arrogance and urgency that presents itself in rededication of Lucifer.
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWI hate Seneca. I hate Seneca and I still do, even to this day. And you would too if you’d known him before It happened to him, and if you had to watch what It Happening had done to him. And, please believe me Dear Reader, it has absolutely nothing to do with him saying “Everything that has a beginning, also has an end…”. That, was pure Nero, a consequence of what Seneca had become after Nero got his hooks into Seneca. But Nero wasn’t the It. Nero was what the It opened a door for.
There’s a certain kind of betrayal that comes with friendship. It conspires around how much you’re willing to see the other person change. Were Seneca’s intimates savaged by his sudden wrestling with and “conversion” to Stoicism? And yet it’s Seneca himself who reminds us that no matter what amount of personal evolution there happens to be, it always comes capped by an end we cannot escape.
Something is amiss in the United Federation of Planets. Klingons conspiring with retired legends. Planetary genocide and planetary genocide (hints at spoilers but no real spoilers). Starships with unknown backdoors. Lying and cheating and stealing. Promises made that cannot be kept. And at the heart, the crew of the Enterprise, caught unawares. Each member of the crew checks his or her own moral compass and then they calibrate against the others. The prime directive lives to be challenged another day, and the criminals warp toward justice behind force fields.
Continuing the story of “T.O.D.D.” (The Original Daredevil) requires a rewind to the history of comics where a very different superhero met his cancellation and resurrection. Ever hear of “Shazam”? What’s he look like? If you said something along the lines of “Like Gandalf.”, then you’re right. If you said “He’s a big dude in red with a lightening bolt on his chest.”, then you haven’t paid much attention.
The “Big Red Cheese” with the gold lightening emblem on his chest, as most every real comic fan knows, is Captain Marvel. The wizard who gives young Billy Batson the powers of Captain Marvel every time he speaks the wizard’s name is “Shazam!” It’s easy to understand the confusion. Ever since the 1970s, the comics, DVD releases and TV shows (yes there have been two) have carried the name “Shazam”, not “Captain Marvel”. Why can’t DC Comics use the character’s name on his own comics?
Well, it’s actually DC Comics’ fault. Captain Marvel was a Fawcett Comics creation that DC felt was a bit too close to their own hero Superman (especially once “The Marvel Family” started outselling Superman’s titles each month). So DC did what any good sport would do and sued Fawcett for copyright infringement. After a 12 year legal battle, Captain Marvel was no more. But with the same assault on comics that closed Daredevil’s publisher Lev Gleason Publications hitting the entire industry, superhero titles were on the decline anyway.
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWIt was hard to stand in the cathedrals of Europe, to stand in Paris and and in Rome, and not be lulled (just a tiny little bit) into the idea that there was indeed something grander than the world we know. Just looking at the raw splendor of such houses of worship as the Notre Dame, and imagining the wealth and the power it must have taken 1,000 somesuch years ago to produce these cathedrals and their interiors would do that. And if there might be something grander than this world, wouldn’t it be at least plausible that whatever network of power could produce such cathedrals as these, might very well be the agents of such otherworldly power? And by extension, wouldn’t we owe them some manner of fealty?
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