I Just Finished – Kid Lobotomy #1

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I was never much of a Vertigo comics reader. The line began between the time I had written my first story for DC Comics (the bonus book in Warlord #131) and the time I wrote my next one, for Star Trek, six years later. (He admits, shamefacedly.) The only things it had to offer that really caught my eye were Sandman Mystery Theater (I am still a devoted Matt Wagner fan as a result of that one) and Doom Patrol (I have yet to find a version of the Doom Patrol that equals the original Drake / Premiani run, but this version just made me wonder if I was losing the capacity to read the English language.)

But the cover of Peter Milligan and Tess Fowler’s new effort from IDW’s Black Crown line made me nostalgic for something I was never really into. “That looks like a 90’s Vertigo cover!” I thought. And I guess I pleasantly remembered those halcyon days when I thought I was about to make it in the comics industry.

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I Just Finished – Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love – The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail

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This is the first short novel of four that comprise the tales of Lazarus Long as he records his memoirs to placate his descendants while he undergoes rejuvenation—a process begun against his will by Ira Wetheral, the current Chairman Pro Tem of the Howard Families. “Chairman Pro Tem” because the rightful chairman of the Families—not a biological family, strictly, but an association of people bred for long life and named for Ira Howard, the philanthropist who funded, back in the 19th Century Gregorian, a project to lengthen the lifespan of humans simply by subsidizing the marriage and production of offspring of people with a genetic predisposition to long life. The Chairman of these families, by tradition, is the eldest member. When Howard’s experiment was not a century old, and Howard himself was already dead, it produced a mutant named Woodrow Wilson Smith. By 2012, Smith, under the pseudonym Lazarus Long, was the oldest man alive, Senior of the Families. It was a position he would hold for the next 23 centuries, and still counting as of Robert Heinlein’s last published work.

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I Just Finished – Justice League of America (1959) #75

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My wife Renee unearthed this issue, bought during my collecting days back in the late 1970s, in a chest of drawers in my mother’s dining room last week. I didn’t even realize it was missing from my collection, but I was happy to see it again. It’s in pretty good shape. Its cover is still glossy and its pages are not horribly yellowed. It was clearly a subscription copy, because, in the late 1960s when it was published, comic books were folded in half, lengthwise, before being mailed to subscribers. The comic book after market and CCG grading were unheard of.

Despite the crease down its middle, it’s a pretty nice copy. I decided to sit down and read it, since it’s probably been 25 years. Indeed, I found tucked into it a K-Mart receipt from 1993, so I’m guessing that’s the last time I saw it.

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I Just Finished – 12 Issues of X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold

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I like both of these series. It’s been a long road for the X-Men. Created in 1963, they were canceled six years later and consigned to reprints and occasional guest appearances. One of their number, Hank McCoy, The Beast, achieved solo status for a little while, during which he mutated from an intellectual with the strength and agility of an ape to a furry blue (or gray) creature worthy of the name. But his series didn’t last, and he wound up in the Avengers. In 1974, Marvel restarted the series with a (mostly) new cast, and this time they struck gold. The All-New All-Different X-Men revolutionized the field of superhero comics, and one of their members, the Wolverine, became a Marvel icon on par with the Hulk and Spider-Man.

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I Just Finished – Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

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I should say I just finished it this time. This is probably my fifth re-reading of this, my favorite of the Grandmaster’s novels. The timing comes because I decided this year to treat myself to The Virginia Edition, a set of 40+ leather bound copies of everything Robert A. Heinlein ever published. That’s a lot of books, and it’s intimidating; so I decided to start with my favorite.

This is my desert island book. If I could only have one, this would be it. Short version if you don’t know it: Lazarus Long has lived over 2000 years and is the unwilling leader (and direct ancestor) of a society of people bred for longevity. Ready for death, he’s tempted back to life by descendants who collect his memoirs and provide him with ideas that might be interesting enough to keep living for. It’s time travel, it’s western adventure, it’s erotica, it’s space opera. Above all, it’s never boring.

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Life With Lazarus – A New Day

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Whatever god there be—or spirit, or entity, or faceless multinational or computer program—or is it Robert Heinlein’s Time Corps that watches over little orange tabby cats?

All I can say is “Thank you.”

This is the day he wasn’t supposed to be here, and he’s sitting on the bed with his feet propped on my leg. His fur is soft again, instead of matted. His eyes are no longer sunken into his head. He runs instead of walking. He jumps instead of waiting to be placed on a chair or bed.

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Life With Lazarus – Three Days

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Day 2 – Back to Work

Lazarus woke me up around 5 this morning, wanting to go out. He seemed fine, and I figured he just needed the litter box. Of course he’d already had diarrhea on the rug. No blood, at least. And it means everything is working in his digestive tract, which is huge.

It also means that we now have two aging cats who aren’t always using the litter box. In the other room, Oreo, who had become somewhat incontinent, had urinated on Ethan’s bed.

As we were getting ready to arrive at the 911 Center to begin a week of fairly stressful testing of new technology, Renee settled down onto the bed, shaking her head. “I cannot take another thing.”

She was right. It’s been almost too much. We were both feeling pretty broken.

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Life With Lazarus – Day 1 – Let’s Go Get Our Boy

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After a late Saturday night, it was not easy to roll out of bed at 6:30, but Dr. Hutt had told us that one day of hospitalization ended at 8:00. We’d spent about $2,600 so far, and knew we would need more as the days went on; so we wanted to be sure to get Laz discharged by 8:00.

It was not a good morning. I will not go into why, but, frankly, I had no patience. When a family member is ill, possibly dying, even if it’s a four-legged family member, it puts things in perspective. It also drains your emotional resources. I was in no mood to take responsibility for anyone else’s feelings. My own were too much for me.

Anyway, we got to the vet and they brought out Lazarus. He had a Fentanyl patch in a shaved spot on his back. It seemed to make him walk like a drunken man. That worried me, because the patch said it was applied at 11PM, and Dr. Hutt had said it took 12 hours to kick in. Would this get worse?

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Life with Lazarus – Day 0, Continued – Some Prefer the Roller Coaster

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Ethan, Jess and I got to my book signing with about five minutes to spare. We have an amazing used bookstore in Howard County, in Glenwood, called “Books With a Past.” Recently, the owner, Erin, branched out and opened another location in Savage Mill, an actual textile mill that’s been turned into a shopping and dining venue, plus art studios. The new store is more focused on new books and book-related knick-knacks, and Erin says science fiction does better there. That maybe because the Family Game Store, of which my old friends Laura Burns and John Cmar are part-owners, is next door.

I spent the next two hours texting back and forth with Renee, and trying to be upbeat. Fortunately we didn’t get a lot of customers. That’s an awful thing to say, but, if we’d had hundreds, I don’t know if the stress might have broken me. In text messages, I learned that Lazarus definitely had pancreatitis, and that that could be caused by Feline Leukemia and Feline AIDS. So we were testing for that. After that, he needed to go to the ER for at least the rest of the weekend, and Renee would drive him there.

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Life with Lazarus – Day 0 – You Don’t Look Right

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My very brief post two days ago hit the low spots of a couple of very bad days, but, as these days are still going and their events are foremost on my mind, I’ve decided to share them with you. Not a happy story, and I don’t know its ending as I write this. But it’s a story, and the characters in it are special to me. So here goes. 

So I’m sitting in the family room, having just dragged myself out of bed on a Saturday morning. I’d planned to take it easy. I’d been going and going with house renovations and work, and I decided, before my 1PM call to sign autographs at one of our local bookstores, I would just eat breakfast, talk to my wife and get my books ready to sell.

Lazarus shuffled into the room. Lazarus does not shuffle. Lazarus waltzes with grace and purpose, looking up at you only enough to let you know that he has arrived, and he is now in command of the operation. Today he shuffled, and he didn’t look in command of anything. He moved tentatively toward a square of morning sunshine on the floor, but didn’t seem particularly enthused about it.

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