Nature!
So cool. Too bad she isn't actually one of Darwin's tortoises. Happy birthday, Harriet the Tortoise!

The Magic of Shazam!
Not that a single script has yet been written (I don't even know how to write a properly formatted comic book script), but I've got Nos. 1-28 all acoounted for, more or less. I say more or less because I'm still trying to figure out exactly how long some of the stories are between No. 12, the end of "Kristallnacht," and No. 22, the beginning of "Man of Science." I'm beginning to doubt I can fit in "Radioland Murders" in the teens; so, I'll have to move it to after No. 28, the done-in-one story "Heck in the Pacific." And things are getting busy between then and the previously described "No. 50 Extravaganza": Nos. 45-50 "The Red and the Black," Nos. 51-52 "The Revenge of Theo Adam," and Nos. 53-58 "From Here to the Rock of Eternity."

Anyway, I mention this to express my exasperation: I don't know how real comic book writers do it. I have so many Marvel Family stories I want to tell that I cannot fathom how writers deal with having only six- or twelve-issue runs on books. It must be maddening. Yes, you can tell a good few good yarns, but such short tenures leave precious little time for the characters to change and grow.

Lately, I've been rereading selected stories from my Superman collection (this was started by the first DVD boxset of Superman: The Animated Series, starting with the only quasi-Superman story It's a Bird..., Steven T. Seagle's semi-autobiographical ruminations on his own year on Superman, one of my favorite runs (in part because it was draw by my favorite penciller, Scott McDaniel, but also because Seagle's story was cool). Also included are two recent acquisitions, the original graphic novels Superman: End of the Century and Superman: Infinite City. So, now I'm retasking some mental resources from The Magic of Shazam! to what kind of stories I would tell should I ever be graced with the opportunity to work on the Man of Steel.

A hybrid idea I had was "The Metropolis Marvel" (which is also an old and minor nickname for Superman): Superman is seriously injured, maybe by my villain Xenophon, and Captain Marvel fills in as guardian of Metropolis for a little while. The most egomaniacal version of this idea is that it could mirror the recent "Sacrifice" storyline that ran through the three monthly Superman books - Action Comics, The Adventures of Superman, and Superman - and ended in Wonder Woman. "The Metropolis Marvel" could begin in The Magic of Shazam! and then continue through that month's Super-books. They gave the crummy character Mr. Majestic, the WildStorm Universe's cheap ripoff of Superman, the super-books for a month once; so, why not Cap? Or, it would still work as a MoS!-only story, too.

Batman has always been my favorite comic book character, but I'm beginning to suspect that Superman is becoming "my fav'rit." We shall see.