BEEP! A green dune buggy roars down highway five in the Southern California afternoon, spilling sand from its beachside trek. Its occupants: a firecracker Bay Area girl in red tresses, with a hint of jasmine and seawater, hanging out in her home state, showing the palm-tree studded sites within the shade of coastal mountains, to her blonde, half-smiling Norse friend, every inch the Valkyrie, melting just a bit in the easy going company, the newly clothes, the silver Marc Antonio high heels she took off to feel Ocean Beach, pulled up to the seat. “Patsy, do you think we are abiding the speed limit?” “Oh, sure, Val! Whoo-hooo!” “I only ask because a speeding ticket would cramp your style.” “Yeah! They hate it when I don’t have a license!” Patsy Walker shares a common secret with her friend: another name, another life. Every since the day a housewife drop out made a deal for a prowess enhancing costume, she plays the adventurer, Hellcat. The name suits the lady. "Avengers Clea...

Vanishing waves, part ten: Mr. Fantastic How did the box connect with the future in the first place? Will it happen again? Does it represent some continuous loop into the past, back through to the future? In the streets cupped by the surrounding mountains, Reed holds the helmet from his vanishing waves adventure, speaking into a thin headset: “Still processing the sights given to me while I analyzed the phenomenon.” “What does it say about our salvation as a race?” “Furthemore: is it a key to our continued existence in the biological and extra-corporeal sense---a place of life beyond life, or is it life beyond death? I realized there could be no shortcuts to what the Box promised to do---that we as a species must find it in ourselves to live open to love, to share more fully in the qualities we consider, as an aggregated form, our existence.” “Reed, I’ve been wondering about something, I can’t shake! Can we say the people did not choose to vanish with the vanishin...

The Vanishing Waves, Part nine: Franklin Richards son of Reed&Sue (p.33 in comic form) My Daddy tries to find the Box that’s causing so much trouble. I can hear him and see him, even though I’m really asleep and I’m just there in my dreamself: “Perhaps if I can realize its location, I can concentrate on evading its effects on my morale!” I can see the Box just fine, from where I was standing with my friends! They seem like they’re gone into the giant black robots! I concentrate, and make Daddy see me, and rush over to the Box: “Here! Don’t worry, the good part of the bad guys is trying to take them over and make them stop!” He talks again: “Good…boy, Franklin! Uhh! Logic seems the only means to preserve my psyche! I’ve no choice but silence and shape! To avoid the Box’s control,… I must ‘become’ the box!” Just like that, Daddy shapes himself like the Box, covering the whole thing ...

Part 7: Prince Nicola Lafey? Lafey Jerasun? Wanda… Closer… Weird mystery… Feel you… Searching for us Now I know you are safe; The last act I completed… You were here made known: Where is the here I find you? And where from…do I find you? I become part of the knowledge that is the place in space and time where I’ve sighted my friends. Reaching out into this world, perturbed invisible waters carry pathways which many walk in my direction, and no doubt beyond me, into infinity. Some walk these pathways; others walk back to the homeworld that circles the sun; Some transgress the cosmos, finding new forms, And I bear witness. How many lifetimes hence did this future world lie; And something of my own lifetime ties to this transformation across everything. You, I see, descend from the children of our magicks, the night before Ray, Abril and I fell with the Box to its final resting place. Yet what now is final? Even here, I see the Box resides in your mind, and from your imagination was it ...

check out my friends' work at comics xspress.com back to our fantastic four/ transrupture story next time! Cheers, C Lue

Sue Storm Richards, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman. If I was really sure what I am looking for, passing sweeps with my visibility power might actually tell us something about where everyone who disappears is...there are spectra beyond the visible, but when the phenomena is as close as your incomplete neighbor, maybe the answer to their disappearance has to do with migration into some otherwise unseen form, as though the waves have an extra dimensional mass that serves as its interface...can I make something visible from another dimension that is present invisibly? Reed, I’m topside, about fifty yards from Johnny. He’s darkened, earthy, like he’s spoiling! And he’s about to burn some kid with a pillar of fire...it’s already a wildfire, I’m containing it now---do me a favor? (via suit communicator) Yes? Help me think of how I might make an extra-dimensional mass visible, and we might understand the vanishing wave’s interface. There do seem to be extra-dimensional localities at work here; ex...

Part five: Ben Grimm, a.k.a. the powerful, stone-skinned Thing. Ben: I’m about to take this whirligig down streetside! The seismic tremors are strongest right about here. Any word from Torchie? Sue: His body temperature via telemetry sensors in his costume indicates sporadic use of his powers , but there’s no response. Reed: I know what you’re wondering, darling. Your brother may need you immediately. Sue: You’ve almost triangulated a third position? Reed: I’m beginning to search for a different plane for that coordinate, true; a stream of particles seems to be converging further up in the mountains. If you go to Johnny, I will observe and do what I can. Ben: Wish I could check in on Alicia and lil’ Franklin! Is there a perimeter for these vanishing waves? Reed:There seems to be one expanding exponentially with each micro-second in every direction. It’s critical we find the definitive points of the disturbance. Ben: Guess I win the prize, then, this is one definitely disturbed point! I...

featuring Johnny Storm and characters from TRANZ Troy, a teenaged runaway . I have a completely dope drawing in mind, as I get away from it all: let Rex and Carina kill each other. Three Sister Tattoo Parlor could be gone tomorrow, but I’ve learned not to worry. People disappear. The more free they want to be, the more they gamble away the chains that keep them in this world...but I’m not just looking for some other people I don’t know, I think at the moment, my existence is caught up in this city that natives complain is just vanishing by the day. It is a part of my own vanishing. That’s why I love to walk to this cluster of woods, rarely seen, draw out the thousand bad drawings, drop out this year’s masterpiece in my little sketch book no one else sees, keeping the secrets of what I really wonder in wordless form. I look again at the box, the one that inspired me to tie in the Viking people I started the same da...

A homage to a conversation between overeducated fanboys (and not a rip-off) You have to understand, reading comics is a solitary affair (though it is sometimes fun between the right people who don’t mind sitting close enough!), but much as an unpublished comic is never fully realized without its non-creator reader to give it its own special life (see “Double Articulation” blog commenting “On Gender”, an online treasure), the friendship and humor built from a language of the sparkling personalities who read them and otherwise participates in the world is required as a catalyst to extract the continuing pay-out of fandom. In other words, it’s not just the treehouse, it’s the club house banter inside that makes it what it is. I’d been drawn into several chats with distant family, in lieu of the story with which I’ve wrestled of late, still sitting behind an as-yet-unfulfilled desktop shortcut, when my old pal (one without kids---yet!) who has of late begun an affair to remember with my...