Yesterday, Julia texted to ask if I had read FAIR PLAY by Tove Jansson, which Julia said reminded her of SWEET BANANAS. I had read no Tove Jansson at all, though she often came up in ADVENTURE TIME meetings. Here's the thing! Yes, here's the kind of astonishing coincidence you pay me the big bucks to notice. I had just plucked a book by Tove Jansson off the shelf the day before! It was one recommended by both Jimmy and Bill, I'm pretty sure: THE SUMMER BOOK. I read a few pages after receiving Julia's text, and came straight away to "a tiny owl. It was sitting on a branch, silhouetted against the evening sky. No one had ever seen an owl on the island before." It upsets me to think that some of you may not remember how every book I read has an owl in it. In non-owl matters, I was tempted to "blog" yesterday, when McNeil told me about some comic books he had found, detailing the exploits of a group of soldiers called "The Losers." He wondered whether the comics were from the 1940s, then mentioned the cover price of 20 cents, which set my old brain a-chiming! Twenty cents is what I paid for a comic book in the early 70s, I helpfully informed McNeil. I remembered when the price began to have a seemingly cheerful sunburst around it, along with the ominous (if you thought about it) slogan, "STILL ONLY TWENTY CENTS!" (see above). Soon enough, comic books would cost you a cool quarter apiece! Two bits! In the parlance of our goodly ancestors. It was well before comics went up to 30 cents that I eased myself from the coarse habit of haunting the spinning rack at Schambeau's grocery store or Red's Drugs, two now-defunct institutions of Bayou La Batre, Alabama. So I must have stopped reading comics by late 1976, if the internet is to be believed. Yes, I am proud to say I never stooped to buying a 30-cent comic book. This is the kind of stuff I almost "blogged" about yesterday. According to McNeil, one of "The Losers" (I want to say his name was Johnny Cloud - yes! There it is, printed on the cover) purposely destroyed his plane after every mission! It seems wasteful, and maybe I don't have the facts right. I was never into the war comics. As I think we can all agree, I was such a special little man.
