Here’s a story inspired by seeing a vintage pinball machine, during an annual camping trip with my family .- Cecil A man with a certain maniacal glee in his eyes leads another man into People’s Crossing, pictured here: The other fellow’s dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. He’s putting out a cigar as they travel over the bridge. He coughs, then says: Blamed walk to the top of this mountain best be worth it. Mr. Anthony, you are considering turning back? Not on your life, Sandu! We’ve got five grand riding on your proof that you can demonstrate what I will agree is Extra Sensory Perception. If you hadn’t walked up from nowhwere, told me my name, that I go by ‘R.A.’- that I’m a gambling addict, that I’ve seen it all but you can go one better, money guaranteed- and my blamed social security number! Why aren’t you selling lottery numbers? Sandu: Power made of belief- beyond every day levels, in this cynical world- can move that entire mountain top, RA. My sense of a tremendous ...

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...

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 ...

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...

“Basin City Blues, pt. 2” Vic Sage watches a person in priestly robes on his knees, hands open in supplication as though he seeks complete surrender and communion with some higher power, his gaze facing above the pulpit, while at the back of the 1000 seat chapel Sage stands silently stock-still. He sits with bated breath into one of the pews, as the apparent priest asks clearly aloud: ‘How will I know this Lady of Light? When will the world twist as before my eyes? How do I know, I am not still bound in purgatory?” Vic bows his head very low, listening inquisitively to this private soul searching. But the soul for which he has sought---which, indeed, brought both of these unrelated men to this place---walks in from the vestibule, the lady tall, slender, yet demure, in black, her cuffs and closely-drawn neckline all in white lace, as is her belt. She is near to tears, stepping forward quickly, then pacing gently, releasing her sobs, staggering towards forgiveness. Now newest friar of...

THE VANISHING WAVES Part three, “Eye of the Storm Waves” : Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the Human Torch Any time you can fly where the mountains stand and still smell the ocean... It’s the same type of temperature here in So Cal that I choose to maintain. For me, being hot is a state of mind. Sky high sights roll to me over bits of the city poised in the mountain peaks that descend into the city, just as we do. Reed is a channel, I admit, I like to turn down when I can, so I can take in my own observations... In every direction I look, there’s a beautiful girl. Every one else is okay, too. If no one needs the Fantastic Four today, why not find out what’s hidden in Escondido? We’re there from San Diego in 3 minutes. Ben is making some joke about visitin’ the wild animal safari. I’ve flamed on as our craft decelerates in a freakishly efficient use of inertia. Typical inside California city limits, every space set out as space is alread...

4-8-09 cld Alicia Masters, sculptress: The ocean’s side is the finest place to envision one’s surrounding, when seen the way the blind person sees it. Regular, rhythmic, yet constantly in flux; the visitors of every species across its shifting surface... The smells so pungent and full of life, the awesome smallness of humanity before the face of its oceans can be felt beyond the hints to the naked eye: a smallness beside the passages of time, here to shape the land for a moment amidst its waves on one of the dozen San Diego beaches... Franklin: Uncle Johnny! Alicia: (in thought) We find the slight chill of the elements and a kiss of the love of the sun, while I hear the cooling man’s feet splashed with hissing kisses across the moist, clay-like slurries of sand. “So how you like California, nephew?” says Johnny Storm. “I love it!” replies little Franklin, “and I hope, hope, HOPE you still want to take me out to look for the sea life off the shore!” “Inna minute,” Johnny rep...

a pastiche fiction featuring the fantastic four The Vanishing Wave By Lue Lyron envisioned as a King Size Special tale featuring the Fantastic Four; each four pages come dictated by a different character, such as I shall present a profile picture. (A viking warrior and his two fellow travellers steps on the ice of a sunlit mountain side. A flare appears from a dark, billowing cloud, and the flash disappears down the crevice with each of the three falling vikings, with faces that range from shock to a mysterious non-plussed sang froid. Three large runes drift in space, intercut.) Awen: The ability to foresee the consequences of one's actions is the mark of a profound person. How profound then is my situation. There am I , known some only as Awen of Argos, on the verge of this break through. One step!--have you betrayed the rest? With spring came the brittle basis upon which w...