And here’s something you won’t see…
(I’m in the middle of a weekend of io9 editing and Onomatopoeia writing for the Comix Experience newsletter. Oh, and that whole “going to meet with the INS about my US citizenship” thing that happened this afternoon. But all this means is that my brain is well and truly puggled; I have too much going on for anything to settle in my brain, which is how I wrote the following for the CE newsletter before realized I didn’t have anywhere to go with it. So, for once, here’s something that won’t appear there… or anywhere else, for obvious reasons.)
If there’s anything that anyone who’s been reading superhero comics for any length of time whatsoever knows is unfailingly true, it’s that wonderful things come in unexpected packages, and most normally when you least expect to receive one of those said packages. For example, a friend of mine was absentmindedly going for a walk one day when the opportunity presented itself for him to save an old lady from certain death at the wheels of a passing eighteen-wheeler; he grabbed that opportunity – and the old lady – with both hands, only to be covered in radioactive glop that fell from the back of that passing doomwagon. The glop blinded him, but as we gathered at his bedside to offer our condolences and steal his Star Wars action figures, he revealed that it had also given him heightened senses of touch, hearing, taste and, unfortunately, smell. He added that I should really look into the various possibilities that deodorant may bring to my life and, while I was at it, put down that Han Solo In Hoth Outfit figure if I didn’t want my hand to be broken by an impeccably-thrown walking stick.
You may have heard of my friend; he’s now a popular lawyer in New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen” neighborhood.
The moral of his story was a clear one: never save old ladies from speeding trucks. But there was another lesson to be learned from his tale, and it’s this: You never know just what’s around the corner, but there’s at least a 50% chance that it may include you getting superpowers.
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