Kyle Minor

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July 20, 2005

A sad day for geekdom

When I was a wee laddie and first started becoming seriously obsessed with comic books, I remember distinctly the time in which I started to notice the names of the people who were making these books: Dick Dillin, Neal Adams, John Romita, Jr., Bill Sienkiewicz (yes I had to look up the spelling... again), Alan Davis, George Perez, Art Adams, John Byrne, Marv Wolfman, Joe Kubert and so many others.

Among these names was Jim Aparo, a long time artist with DC who had a VERY distinctive style, love it or leave it. I was one of the former, and even forgave him for The Nuclear Family and the Force of July in The Outsiders, though I still think Looker's 'costume' in that same book should have seen him face charges of some kind.

The angular look of his characters' bodies, especially their eyes and headgear (see Batman's cowl) was just very appealing to me, especially since I could easily identify his work at a young age.

I just learned that Aparo died today at age 72. That's one less comics legend, people! Get your lock of Stan Lee's hair while you can... I think he's still auctioning them off on eBay. Kidding. But not really.

Another death that took me by surprise today was that of James Doohan, aka "Scotty" from the original Star Trek series (or, for those non-Trekkers who read my blog, TOS). Talk about a double whammy! Naturally, the TOS cast likely had no clue what a phenomenon the show would become, but played along like troopers, Doohan included.

I'll never forget seeing him in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, picking up the computer mouse and using it like a microphone. "ComPUterrr...!" Plus, in that same movie, he uttered a line that C'pher and I used to say to each other when we first started dating: "Cap'n... there be WHALES here!" Who knows why, but we thought it was funny, and said it heaps. Probably because C is such a Scotophile (that's definitely not as dirty as it sounds).

Perhaps my favorite Scotty moment in Trek was the ep of TNG (The Next Generation) he was on, Relics. Scotty is discovered alive after 75 years in a transporter loop he put himself in after a ship he was on crashed onto the surface of a Dyson Sphere.

After he uses his not-inconsiderable engineering knowledge to help rescue the Enterprise-D from the same fate the old ship he was on, they give him a shuttle and let him free to explore the universe at his leisure. He got to literally ride off into the sunset.

It's a sad day to be a geek. I'm definitley busting out my TNG Season 6 box set tonight. I'll have to save digging out those old issues of The Brave and The Bold for another time, though... they're all the way in the back of the closet.

Posted by kyle at July 20, 2005 4:03 PM

Comments

Posted by: Hip E. at July 25, 2005 2:49 PM