The Strangest Adventures T-Shirts!

If you are still reading at this point, perhaps you enjoy this type of humor enough to want a The Strangest Adventures T-Shirt. I’ve tried to include the main candidates in the 2012 Presidential election in this homage to the Justice League/Justice Society/All-Star Squadron team-up of the 1980’s, Crisis on Earth Prime. This is my first “official” foray into T-Shirt design, aside from home printed and applied iron-ons for myself and others, an early noble design experiment. I would appreciate any feedback, positive or negative, that anyone could provide. And note, I have provided inexpensively priced shirts for the tight of budget as well as premium style shirts. Wear this shirt to tell others you think the candidates are as much of a freak show as I see them to be, well at least in my fevered imagination! Your support would be appreciated; this would supplement my meager earnings from freelance work.

http://www.cafepress.com/TheStrangestAdventures  

Candidates of 2012-Rick Perry

Rick Perry replaced George W. Bush as governor of Texas, after Bush became president. Most of us not being Texans are unfamiliar with this guy, so, who is he? He started off as a Democrat in the Texas State Legislature and supported Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1988; in 1989 he became a Republican. Coincidence? Eventually he became Lieutenant Governor, then Governor, where he has remained to this day. In the last election, the Bush family ran Kay Bailey Hutchison against him but she lost. Rick seems to be attracted to the Tea Parties, or at least he is pandering to them. On April 15^th, 2009, fired up by a Tea Party gathering he said, “Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that... My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.” That sure sounds like he was threatening to have Texas secede from the US. Some would call that treason. How ironic then, that within the first 48 hours of declaring he said of Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke, "If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous – or treasonous in my opinion." Way to go Rick, threatening a federal official. Governor Perry zoomed to the top of the list on at least one poll and seems to be the charismatic candidate many were waiting for. He has charisma but I find the way he touches people to be a bit off-putting, certainly when he patted the cheeks of a CNN camera man that seems to be one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen a politician do. Perry touts job creation in Texas; during the past two years Texas has accounted for at least one-third of the new jobs created in the United States but as it turns out, those were all government jobs! D’oh! This guy seems a bit dense and self deluded, but here at The Strangest Adventures, we like that. I’ve presented him as a western gunslinger, going after the president; they were both campaigning in Iowa on the same day, recently. Makes sense to me, Perry is known for being armed most of the time, even while jogging!

DC Comics Reboot-Silver Age Hour-Man

The next Golden Age DC Comics hero to inspire a new version for the Silver Age was Hour-Man. Carleton Chronos was born into the Chronos Family legacy; the oldest male would receive The Time Cloak! The wearer, and a few companions, can travel through time, to any era, for one hour. He can also emit time waves, which can, as needed stop or speed up people or objects. His earliest adventures seem to be misadventures, as he has trouble controlling his powers at first. Later, his powers mastered, he worked for a time as a temporal agent and has worked with the Legion of Super-Heroes. Later, he was the founder and leader of The Super-Squad. His power was sufficient to transport the members of the Squad when needed, but his greatest asset was his inborn leadership. His own title had a spotty history, selling well in the 1960’s but getting progressively less popular as time went on. In the 1980s, after a series of lackluster time traveling adventures with third rate guest stars (think Brother Power the Geek) his title was finally, mercifully canceled, and Hourman was unceremoniously killed in Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Bachmann Begins

Ah Representative Michele Bachmann, the gift that keeps on giving. She is currently running 9% to 12% behind Romney is various polls, but that still puts her in second place. Not bad, and, unexpected. She IS the darling of the tea parties, and their champion in congress, so certainly that may account for her numbers. She always claims to be against government spending (apparently not the cases for her husband–more on that in a moment). Pretty ironic by the way that she’s an anti-tax advocate who once worked as an attorney collecting taxes for the IRS. Representative Bachmann claims to have the solution to all our woes. She wants to revoke the federal minimum wage. She believes that eliminating this and other regulations would “virtually wipe out unemployment.” Could this work? I don’t know, I doubt the answer is that easy. Though I wonder how Ms. Bachmann would fare on minimum wage. And then there’s the curious case of her husband Dr. Marcus Bachmann. He has collected Medicaid monies for his clinic, Bachmann & Associates. One thing is clear enough, Marcus Bachmann collected state aid, and he got these state funds and used them for, among other things, counseling gays to change their sexual orientation. He said last year on Point of View Radio Talk Show that "barbarians need to be educated" when asked how parents should deal with their homosexual children. “They need to be disciplined, just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road.” What he’s referring to is “reparative therapy”, the crackpot idea that gays can be cured through therapy. I believe people are who they are, and can’t be “fixed” nor should they be. Most mental professionals agree with me, attempts to change orientation can be dangerous and lead to suicide. So far Bachmann has remained silent about this, perhaps hoping the furor will die down. We’ll see. Maybe we can return to merely pointing out Michele’s foibles such as when she confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy! When asked why she launched her candidacy from Waterloo, Iowa, she said, "Well what I want them to know is just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too." Yikes!

DC Comics Reboot-Silver Age Starman

There has been much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over DC Comic’s decision to reboot their entire line of comics, restarting with number one on all titles. Yes, Superman, Batman and all the rest of them are starting over, from day one, now. No back-story, no history. However, I’m sure Superman will be from Krypton, Batman will live in Gotham City etc. Of course this isn’t the first time the DC Universe has been restarted; In the late 1980’s, after Crisis on Infinite Earths erased 50 years of continuity, Superman and Wonder Woman started from scratch, other characters were revamped, often drastically. However, the most important reboot occurred in the 1950s, when new versions of Golden Age heroes appeared in the pages of DC Comics. After concentrating mostly on Westerns, Romance, Detective, Military, and Pirate comics, editor Julius Schwartz felt 1957 was the right time to bring back superheroes, but DC played it safe, creating new characters for a new age that had names that hearkened back to the Golden Age. The first of these new heroes was Starman.

The new Starman was astronomer Ray Nelson, who had crafted a device, the Cosmic Converter, capable of harnessing the power of the stars, only, he taps into something else, too; it’s something alien he must learn to control. It’s all told in Showcase # 11, written by Gardner Fox. The cover is by the incomparable Wally Wood.  The editor took no chances that buyers would be confused; this was, according to the cover, the best comic book you could buy! The marketing ploy worked, this was a top selling comic!  After all, see how Starman easily decks Batman with a Star-Burst and shoves Superman away using Red Sun energy! The editors were putting the slow selling Batman and Superman on notice; sell more copies or get canceled! The arrival of Starman signaled the beginning of The Silver Age. After this million-dollar debut he had a long and storied history eventually gaining a sidekick, Starman Jr. Perhaps someday I’ll cover their careers, but next time, I’ll discuss Silver Age Hour-Man.