Picture Post

I thought I should finally get around to posting some pictures that I've been meaning to put up here.
First up are before and after shots of my rececent slipcovering of my couch:


Pre-Op



Post-Op

Below we see the stacks that my comics taking up space in my living room.
They're going to be like this for a while longer, as the bags and boards I ordered last week are apparently on 2-3 week backorder. Would have been nice if they'd known that the day I was ordering them.
(I'm sure they did know; they just waited 3 days to tell me.)


If you're trying to make out the name on that comic that's fourth from the right, your eyes are not deceving you if you're seeing Atari Force. That really is the name of it, and for the record, I really enjoyed Atari Force back in the day. It was solidly scripted by Gerry Conway (Who has since ventured out from the world of comics to the world of TV. I see his name a lot as a producer on the Law & Order shows.) and beautiful art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who ranks up there as one of my favorite artists in large part due to his work on Atari Force.
And for the record, the stories in the book had little or no connection to any Atari games.
At that time, if I recall correctly, Atari and DC were both owned by Warner Communications, and a product that converged comics and video games was pretty much a no-brainer. Some of the initial books in the Atari line had more to do with the games, but Atari Force pretty much took the name and that was it.
AF also featured one of my all-time favorite characters, the multi-racial, heavily tattooed, semi-clairvoyant mercenary who callled herself Dart.
Dart was an aggressive, sexually forthright woman who knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to take it, and she made quite an impression on young Jon. She was the first "freaky chick" I was ever into.
It was Dart's - to borrow Stephen Colbert's term for TV anchor Soledad O'brien - pan-racial background that went a long way toward's making her so interesting. Her father was from India, while her mother was an Asian-Irish mix who, while looking Asian, spoke with a thick Irish brogue.
(FYI, Dart's mom was a MILF)
Of course, this was the early 80s, and comics didn't really have a way to visually denote that someone was from an ethnic background that fell outside of the standard ethnic skin tones brown, red, and yellow, so Dart got the neutral gray coloring that was meant to denote that she wasn't black, oriental, or an American indian (to use the vernacular of the day).
I may have to actually do a picture of Dart someday.
In any case, here are the rest of the comics: