I should, I suppose, make it known that I have a new cellular telephone. It’s one of those newfangled technologyphones with a screen that I will inevitably break and feel terrible about. Still, my previous phone, a proper phone that flipped open Captain Kirk-style, decided it was no longer willing to work well. It had to be done. I’m reluctant to move into the age of superphones, but I guess it was time.

One upside, though, I spent a long time putting my Contacts into the new phone, but I guess they’re on the SIM card thing now, so I’ll never have to do that again. One downside, I’m already sick of fingerprints on my screen.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have some things go wrong as I try to adjust to new technology, so I’ll be back to describe that, I am sure.

Okay, so today’s SecGov page wraps up the most recent story. During the course of that story I lost my script and just winged it for the rest of the scheduled 22 pages, so the pacing suffered, but whatever, it is done. With that story done, though, a lot of the little plot threads I had tried to build are now at the surface. I’m going to now probably focus on single pages for a while, because they’re a lot easier. Hopefully I’ll be able to delve into something more substantial soon.

In other news I had a dream the other night in which I was the new Prime Minister of Russia and I began my career by going house to house to ask what people thought their three least favorite things about the country was. I got to about five houses before waking up. Being Prime Minister of Russia seems hard.

Another pair of characters from the supporting cast of Justice-Man, the superhero I created as a child:

Justifier

Mike Hey was a martial arts instructor who made his living teaching self-defense in a particularly crime-ridden part of town. On a regular basis he saw the people in his community becoming the victims of criminals and eventually he, inspired by the exploits of Justice-Man, became a crimefighter of his own. Wearing a thick suit of armor and using his friendship with a local police officer, Mike became the Justifier and fought the local criminal element. Eventually this caught the attention of Justice-Man himself, who recruited Justifier into his ever-expanding circle of superhero friends.

I am much more aware now than as a child that the name “Justifier” is essentially pointless for a superhero. What is he supposed to be justifying? Basically, I wanted a name that was kinda related to justice as a concept, and this is what came out. Oh well!

Mind Agent

When the super secret crimefighting organization called BEST discovered a young boy who had been created as a perfect assassin, they tried to give the boy as normal a life as could be possible. Eventually, though, the boy, Alex, decided that he didn’t want the normal life. He wanted to be Justice-Man. As skilled as Justice-Man was, BEST did not intend to allow him to go into the field unattended. Senior BEST Mind Agent Natalie French, a friend of Alex since his discovery, became Justice-Man’s partner in his earliest days, using her mental powers of telekinesis and telepathy to watch his back and guide him. Eventually Justice-Man earned the trust to do his job on his own and Agent French would be promoted to the upper echelons of BEST, but the two remained close allies.

Perhaps the most important thing I remember about this character is that the name “Natalie French” was used on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show I didn’t get around to watching until around the year 2000. They clearly stole the name from me, but cleverly disguised it by having their character nothing like mine. Those dastards.

Étienne Parent is this guy who wrote that French and English could probably get along without armed conflict. Nobody wanted to hear that, so he got put in prison. That did not stop his writing, though. Here we see him smuggling editorials out of his cell under a pie while a guard fails to catch them.

This guard is apparently concerned enough about Parent’s writing that he’s willing to ruin a pie, but he isn’t bothering to check the guy’s pockets, or even to look into the cell to see if Parent is writing. I don’t consider this guard exceptionally good at his job.

Why is the pie going out of the cell? Certainly Parent is not baking pies and sending them out into the world. Is he just being given pies and straight-up not eating them? Dude deserves to be in jail. Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. There’s nothing to be quoted and the pie desecration is the only truly memorable bit.