On Waiting For the Flood That Never Came

The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

I'm no chicken little, but even I bought into the hype that hurricane Florence was gonna knock down my house. Living in Columbia, SC, we get about 4 to 5 warnings a year and 90% of the time it has turned out bogus or just a heavy rain. Granted the last time it actually hit, I was caught completely off guard, but this time it was the complete opposite.

Hurricane Florence was on the warpath and the price of coffins was gonna rise! - to paraphrase Mark Twain. To listen to the news all of the other floods and hurricanes would be a glob of spit in the ocean, compared to this event, it was a typhoon, locked in a box of tsunamis, covered in explosive diarrhea. I was urged from all sides to batten down the hatches and squirrel away enough food to last the apocalypse.

I had one thing going for me. My live-in girlfriend was off on a cruise around the Caribbean with friends of her, this reducing my need to bring in enough supplies for two. My cat, Boo Radley, would be out of luck, as I refuse to pack in more food for the little glutton. If supplies ran low, he would have to make do stealing scraps from my plate. An activity he is already well versed in.

To add to the hysteria, schools began closing with an alarming rate. Not just public schools, but private ones like my own institution, which is prone to staying open until the first meteor hits the ground. All of these closed rather rapidly on advice of the State’s governor. The state militia was then called out and a general state of panic set in. The I-26 was shut down for traffic to the coast and turned into a lanes heading west for the refugees to escape the assault.

What they told me was going on.

Having learned from my previous mistake, I went on all gut-busting adventure to find food to horde when God’s wrath finally materialized in my little town. Bottled water had already been drained from the local supermarkets, even the dollar stores and gas stations were empty. The stereotype of the slow-moving southerner didn’t play out here, they most damn fast when the smell disaster in the air.

Thus I concentrated on grabbing what I could from the closest store to my house and bunkering down for the duration. The problem, of course, is that a lot of non-perishable foods are all dehydrated and terrible or packed with preservatives or canned in some syrupy solution, so I got some snacks to go along with it. Actually it was a lot of snacks, salty and sweet. All the goodness of the corn-syrupy  rainbow. There was some fruit and stuff, but that might go bad and there was a chance I could be stuck alone in my home for awhile.

The time came. The dread rainfall was imminent and then… nothing. Nothing but some grey clouds and a light sprinkling of rain. The next day, nada again. New reports showed devistations all along the coast, but it was the brightest day of the year in my town. The day after that, bright skies and happiness. I settled down for several days of  an unexpected pleasant vacation, spending the time reading, writing, eating junk food, watching films, looking at the devastation elsewhere and playing video games. It was great. Little did I know a storm of a different nature was on the horizon.

What I actually saw. 

The problems came when my girlfriend reemerged on the scene. Our agreement was that if the city was wrapped in the throes of a tidal wave, then she and her friends would remain down in Florida until the storm blew over. When the roads proved to be clear, she showed up at my doorstep, where I was parked on the couch, surrounded by fast-food wrappers, and replaying Fallout 4.

“Where’s all the water?” she asked.

“I got Mountain Dew.”

“I don’t like Mountain Dew.”

“More for me then, huh?”

“Why didn’t you get water?”

“Everyplace was out of water.”

“But you should have gotten some for me?”

“Why?”

“In case we got flooded in.”

“If we were gonna get flooded in, you were supposed to stay away.”

“That’s not the point. You should’ve been prepared if I did come through.”

“Why the hell would you drive into a hurricane?”

“But what if I did? Don’t you care about me?”

“Sure, but I thought you were smart enough to stay out of the rain.”

“So you’re saying I’m stupid?”

“If you deliberately drove into that fucking hurricane you were.” 

“But I didn’t.”

“I guess not.”

“So you still should’ve gotten prepared in case I did.”

“Why?”

“Because it would’ve been nice to know you cared.”

“Ah, shut up!”

And on and on it went like this, like a record skipping back on itself.  She insists that she was right, that some mythical what-if scenario is more important that the cold hard reality that stocking up on extra food her was unnecessary. What is with people? If a person need reassurance, how about me just being happy to see them being enough. Do you really need all sorts of useless physical tokens to believe?

I guess so.

  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

Weird Stuff From My Comic Collection II

Continuing with my series about odd and/or rare comics that I have discovered, this week I present new odd and/or rare comics from the yearly cull of my collection. The problem with having a reading addiction is that you inevitably collect a lot of books and, as my house is not the Tardis, space eventually runs out. Thus, I need to go through twice a year and remove tomes that I know I will never have the desire to glance through again. As I get older, this chore becomes easier and easier.

As I previously stated, there are a number of comics which you might be hard pressed to find… at least at a reasonable rate. Understand that these comics are rare, but not valuable. The reason they are rare is because there is no demand for them so they’ve never been reproduced. Lack of interest caused them to be tossed into a dollar bin and eventually were picked up by my greedy fingers.

Aarrgh

Written and drawn by Ken Struck, apparently there is a number one to this comic and a number three as well, but I’ve never seen a physical copy. This is listed as a mini-comic even though it’s actually larger than your average comic and printed on very heavy stock paper. But it was the strangeness of the piece which attracted me to it.

This comic was part of the next generation (newave) of underground cartoonists in the 1980s. He had some of his Tootles cartoons (pictured below) published in Weirdo magazine, which was edited by Peter Bagge at the time. After that came these few mini-comics and then nothing.

The art is not the best but the stories are hysterical. The man knew how to add the flavor of humor to any situation, whether domestic or bizarre. I remember passing this one around to my friends in High School and us all having a good laugh. And I’m genuinely sorry I can’t find any more material published from this author.

Tales of Jerry

Created by Jane J. Oliver, the subtitle on the first few issues of this indie comic was “The Stoned Vampire”. This might be the very definition of an underground comic. It’s in black and white and consists of series of stories around the titular Jerry from all across time- from the Renaissance to the Modern Era.

It is incredibly difficult to find information on this comic. Each issue had an average of five to seven stories. The first few issues were completely drawn by Oliver. However, as time went on, more and more illustrators drew individual stories to the comic. Starting in 1978, only ten issues were produced, averaging about one a year. The original author died in 1992 and her wish was for the comic to continue, but no one seems to have picked up the torch.

While the art is rough in places and certainly is not Marvel level professionalism, it has heart. The title is a labor of love and the joy of it’s creation is obvious in every line on every page.

I own about five issues of this series and, considering that each issue averaged about 2,500 copies, I’m probably lucky to have any. Whenever I looked for more, either it comes up nil, are issues I already own, or are way overpriced. I mean, I would like to buy it, but I’m not paying $40 for one underground comic, no matter how rare. It’s a pity someone hasn’t collected them all and put it out as a print on demand. Hell, they might even be in the public domain by now. I would but I only have half the story.

Dagar the Invincible

 I literally grabbed this one at random at the Soda City Comic Con. After my usual feeding frenzy, I was stripped of nearly all cash and weighed down by bags and bags of comics. I was about to leave, but that one final dollar was burning in my pocket. On the way out, the last (or first if you’re coming in) comic vendor had a sale box on beat-up Gold Key comics and I snagged one. Why not?

Most of Gold Key comics were crappy spin-off series, leeching off of the popularity from established names in television, cartoon, and film series. They produced comics like Daffy Duck, Happy Days, Tennessee Tuxedo, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. A little aside, in 1967 they also reprinted in English a little known Japanese manga called Kimba the White Lion. Many many people noticed striking similarities between the adventures of that character and Disney’s The Lion King. You can read the whole flap here if you want.

Back to Dagar the Invincible. Don’t feel ashamed if you’ve never heard of him. His run only lasted about 18 issues, but with a few minor stories appearing in several other books. He was part of Gold Key’s original series. Some went onto minor fame others didn’t. Ever hear of Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok Son of Stone, Doctor Solar, The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor? Probably not, well they’re also titles of Gold Key.

This series was somewhat unique in the comic book world of the early 70s in that it was a “sword and sorcery” title before Marvel licensed out Conan and started a boom of the genre. This is a fun read. The character really doesn’t rise above the big, brawny thug who cleaves through all his adversaries (mostly monsters, supernatural foes, and the occasional wizard). He travels around finding a new city or town each story and has no friends. It’s very decent if you’re just looking for some old school, uncomplicated, barbarian rage fun.

  For more fun try books by Rex Hurst