And here's a puppy floating in a plane

Of course there is a Hayley Mills & Schatzi version. Duh.

Click the picture to beat the Russians!

From The World Around Us - SPACE (January 1951).

Schatzi vs. The Brain-Men of Pan-Cosmos

More FUTURA tomorrow!

Big Red's gone troppo, driving and other things

Item! The family and I went out to celebrate my son going to college by eating at one of those silly family theme restaurants the other night. I thought this coaster from the restaurant featuring some kangaroos apparently hopping away in terror from one of their zombie, cannibalistic mates wielding a fork and knife amusing.

The restaurant, as you know, offers authentic Australian cuisine. My meal consisted of: Large white grubs found under a rock, snake, frog and a heady beverage of fermented saliva served in an ostrich egg.

Item! On the drive home it was rush hour and I was paused at the on-ramp to I-805 from I-8. Being used to the area at this time frame I kept glancing up at my rear-view mirror. It paid off. A car was approaching from behind at high speed. Obviously the driver was inattentive and not at all prepared for all the cars on the highway to have gone from 65 to zero in the span of a few hundred feet. The driver slammed on his brakes and with tires squealing, went into a skid aimed right at the back of my car.

After a quick visual check of the car in front of me revealed no signs of containing babies or children (I'm that kind of guy), I calmly turned the wheel and gently rolled off onto the paved shoulder by the on-ramp and forwards a few feet. The car behind me came to a shuddering halt with the front bumper even with my rear passenger door. If I had remained in place on the highway I would have been struck pretty hard by the other vehicle. After a few moments traffic started moving again and I pulled back onto the road, the formerly inattentive driver now alert and keeping a good distance from other cars.

This is the second time I have had to perform a similar maneuver at that particular ramp. The last incident was a few years ago in nearly the same location. Makes me question how many accidents occur regularly in this area.

Item! I'm not one of those people who name their cars. The most of a moniker any vehicle I own gets is New Car or Old Car or something similar. Much of the terseness comes from communicating with the wife via sign language. Just signing using simple gestures saves wear and tear on the fingers, not to mention time. The last two cars we owned were just called Red Car and Blue Car. Those I sold when leaving for California and the car I have now we just call Free Car.

It isn't pretty but it costs nearly nothing to drive. I did however recently notice a little while ago that the car I've been driving for a year has a promotional Too Fast Too Furious 2 cover on the steering-wheel. When people talk of bad sequels they usually mention something from the Matrix Trilogy, Electric Boogaloo 2 or Elektra. But I nominate 2F2F2 as the worst sequel of all time. I can only think the family member didn't care what they used to grip the wheel and that the cover was free or under a dollar but maybe I should rethink my relationship with that one person. Hopefully he wasn't a fan of the film. More proof that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Item! I haven't thanked Bully's pal, John DiBello enough but he helped pull me through a crappy year by his gifts of books and graphic novels. While he never asked for anything in return I know I've been remiss in reviewing them because to do so would require I give careful attention and thought to them. Since my head was mainly focused on getting to the end of the day, this would do a disservice to John and his kindness. As anyone who cares to check my archives is aware, I don't really apply any careful thought to what I post. I'm in a position now that I can give the materials he sent the consideration they deserve.

Thanks again, John and Bully!



Item! Because you can't get enough SCHATZI!

Final Crisis #3 cover art preview

No, it isn't. A guy can dream. Who's that pup? More here.

Time Travelin' Schatzi's Happy New Year!

You never know where Time Travelin' Schatzi © will show up next! But Schatzi is a good dog so he stole a few minutes from his mission to save all of reality to drop in on San Diego's beautiful Ocean Beach in the year 1918 and pose for a Happy New Year photo with some bathers!

Moments after the photo was taken Schatzi sniffed out the sun-worshipers as actually being smelly tourists from Maryland and chased them off our beaches and out of the county, sending them all on their way back to Stupidlandia where they came from with comical rips to the seats of their pants and swim trunks. Schatzi doesn't like the Maryland tourists fouling San Diego's beaches and fine vistas with their imported garbage, foul presence and heathen ways. Good boy!

Where will Schatzi appear next? One never knows!

Everything's better with SCHATZI!

Eventually, every comic book author falls back on the plot device of the retcon. Whether the authors are out of ideas or actually believing that they have something to add to the story the concept of changing a characters' back story is usually met with dread and derision.

And with good cause.

Sometimes the retcon works. DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths was a bold experiment in mass-retconning, but the company dropped the ball after the story was finished by not starting over their entire line from Year One. The Marvel Ultimate line (for the most part), Ma and Pa Kent still among the living, Bucky dying near the end of World War II, Swamp Thing realizing he isn't really Alec Holland, Deadpool visiting a young Peter Parker, Batman never having captured his parent's killer and Daredevil being a ninja are further examples of retconning that didn't harm the characters and actually enriched their stories.

There are other retcons that failed miserably. Heroes Reborn, the John Byrne Spider-Man, Captain Marvel plucked out of time and Gwen Stacy playing Happy Tomato Fun Time with Norman Osborne (who appears to have a post-autopsy healing factor).

One of the sub-categories of the retcon is the Slice of Time retcon. This is when a writer revisits an established story and reveals what really happened that the reader did not see the first time around. Sometimes the new tale fills in the gaps or re-arranges the old story to better dovetail a new one. Marv Wolfman once proposed that the Barry Allen Flash could have a series based on a Slice of Time retcon. Trapped in time, Barry would be able to appear for short periods knowing that every time he entered the real world he was getting closer to his inevitable death. Not a bad idea and it seems to be in practice in the Marvel Comics revival of Captain Marvel, who may have been plucked out of time to serve as a prison warden in the Civil War titles some years before his death by cancer. More rarely, as with the current Booster Gold title, a whole new story arc and even series branches out of untold tales.

But if I was writing a comic book I wouldn't use Booster Gold. I would use one criminally under-used character that has lots of potential.

That character would be SCHATZI, the plummeting puppy!

You can read the whole sad tale of Schatzi elsewhere. But in a nutshell his story is that he fell from the open cockpit of an airplane during World War One and splattered into the ground. But for me, Schatzi's tale does not end there. What happened to Schatzi in the interval between his fall and the sudden stop at the end is where the true story begins!

In my comic book, Schatzi tumbles from the cockpit of Enemy Ace's plane just as Bob Kahniger and Joe Kubert originally plotted, but instead of slamming into the countryside and triggering a psychotic episode in the Hammer of Hell, his fatal fall is interrupted when he just happens to intersect with a random time/space warp.

A now intelligent and articulate Schatzi (thanks to the mental-boosting effect of chronal radiation, it's DC, duh!) is pulled through random warps to emerge at critical crisis points in DC history to repair the time line wherever it is broken. Along the way he will make friends and enemies knowing that each fall into chronal space might be the final one that dumps him out over war torn Europe and a date with furry destiny.

Here are some examples of the kind of events Schatzi would be involved in.

Black Canary is a hot property right now, so Schatzi can team up with Dinah Lance in a classic Silver Age story.
Will Black Canary's greatest nemesis, the dreaded Sportsmaster, defeat her once and for all?

Then Schatzi could warp into deep space, where he assists a band of shanghaied, shirtless explorers against an evil corporate empire!

Once the people of the future are properly attired, it's off to the 1950s!

By interfering with Oogie's date with Judy, they never marry and have the child who was destined to destroy Superman once and for all. Good dog.

Then it's a quick stop in a dystopian future, where our favorite falling canine convinces Captain Marvel to save humanity from itself.

But what DC epic is not complete without revisiting the mega-event to to end all mega-events?

The only creature in the entire multi-verse the Anti-Monitor fears is Schatzi!

DC's rich and convoluted continuity offers endless possibilities for stories that reassure the reader the status quo is maintained at the end of each issue and therefore their collection of back issues will remain precious, over-valued and worth keeping! Excitement! Pathos! Mega-Crossovers! DC Direct action figures! I can taste the Geoff Johns-level money already.

Where and when will Schatzi show up next? Wherever he is needed!

Comic Book PSA: Luck Is A Puppy Named...Oops!

Luck Is A Puppy Named SchatziFrom Star Spangled War Stories #148 comes this tear-jerker written by Robert Khaniger & penciled & inked by Joe Kubert. Starring the popular WW1 flyer Enemy Ace aka Baron Hans von Hammer aka The Hammer of Hell, this tale is about a cute puppy. Oh, and horrible death in war.

In the process of landing his Fokker, the Baron accidentally runs over a stray dog. Saddened by the dog's injuries, the Hammer of Hell (nee Heaven) takes pity on the poor creature, names it Schatzi and bandages up it's little injured paw.

As one can guess from the story title, Schatzi is destined for reprint fame later in a 1970's DC digest of favorite stories. The cover is a bit of a tease, because comic book covers usually pull a bait-and-switch on readers in regards to content. Not this time...war is hell, y'know.

Exercising the inbred wisdom that made some Europeans worthy of being appointed as nobility, the Baron tucks Schatzi into his jacket and flies off into combat. During maneuvers, the Baron does a barrel roll. Inevitably, not having secured the puppy with a belt, it tumbles out of the cockpit and out into space. Sigh.

Overcome with grief and despairing the loss of innocent life, the Baron flips out and shoots six enemy planes out of the sky.

That'll teach them about the senselessness of war! After the battle, the Baron searches the countryside until he finds his pet. As the bodies of enemy pilots burn in the smouldering wreckage of nearby crashed planes, he gives Schatzi a proper burial.













Many people claim SSWS #148 is is one of their favorite stories, but I didn't care for it because it was sappy and manipulative. In the Hammer's pained and troubled life Schatzi obviously represents hope, which he clung to desperately, only to have his chance for redemption slip literally through his hands. No one ever accused DC of being subtle.

Of course, being drawn by Joe Kubert it is automatically better than pretty much anything else being produced by anyone that month.