All about girls - Matoumba

Last Weekend at Emerald City 2010 (or, the Cartooning Class Reunion)

- 18 hours and 49 minutes ago

Lunch-hour cosmetic surgery â€“ 45-minute boob jabs, nonsurgical rhinoplasty â€“ is booming in the UK. But nightmare stories are also on the rise. So are the treatments safe? We speak to doctors to find out, and take a front-row seat at a no-frills nose job

Cosmetic surgery is changing. One advancement is the use of twilight surgery, where they send you only half to sleep. Clinics are alive with dazed facelift patients, who keep their eyes open, frowning and smiling on demand, who come to after the sedation's worn off, their skin tight but bruised, able to remember nothing of the knife at all. There are other patients who trip in off the street for a half-hour boob job under local anaesthetic, and still more who book a session of Botox in their lunch-breaks. The current excitement, in plastics, is not in the perfection of a newly sculpted nose but in the speed at which patients can recover, and the market for these fast, temporary procedures is growing wildly.

The Knightsbridge Laser Clinic is one of many that has recently started promising lunch-hour transformations, offering laser lipolysis to eliminate fat, the G-spot injection to enhance sexual stimulation, Macrolane breast injections, nonsurgical rhinoplasty and Botox fillers to remove wrinkles. A block away from Harrods, I climb their carpeted stairs to the waiting room as the lunch-time rush subsides. Outside a light rain is falling, and the smell of a wet fur coat, woody and dead, hangs in the air of the clinic's small landing. Its owner brushes past me, straight into one of three white and well-lit offices. In a corner room, beside a sheeted bed, I soon take my seat, an audience of one at a 15-minute nose job.

The patient, a young, elegant woman with jewelled shoes, had rhinoplasty in Harley Street as a teenager but now wants it still straighter. Her first operation, which cost £8,000 and required a week in hospital, had left her with a smaller nose, she says, but slightly wonky nostrils. "You might not notice it," she says apologetically, "but I do."

The doctor, Salinda Johnson, a slight and surgically tweaked woman who studied cosmetic dermatology in Thailand, warns of the possible side-effects of today's procedure as she applies a numbing cream to the patient's face. "Soreness, redness, bruising," she chants, "which will settle down within two weeks and break down completely within a year." Johnson rereads the patient's notes and holds up a pink-nailed hand. "There is a problem â€“ we can't do the procedure on a pregnant woman." Her nose glossy with anaesthetising cream, the patient exchanges hurried words with the doctor, and I look pointedly out of the window. An unwanted pregnancy. A sense that the risk is welcome. Minutes later, she is gone.

"Don't worry!" the doctor chirps. "We'll show you the procedure on our receptionist!" Diane has worked at the clinic for four months and, at 23, has already had Botox to fill in a frown line between her brows. Her nose is small and straight, but she has self-diagnosed â€“ she feels there's a dent. She asks the doctor if she thinks rhinoplasty's necessary. "Nothing is necessary," Johnson says, applying the numbing cream. "So can you do my lips, too?" Diane asks, pouting. Johnson shows me the syringe, prefilled with a mixture of anaesthetic and Restylane filler, a hyaluronic acid. The needle is long, and she pushes it firmly into Diane's nose before using both hands to massage the filler into place. The air-conditioning system screams on, and dies just as quickly â€“ the only sounds are Johnson's gloves, baggy on her tiny hands, squeaking.

I gather myself. Does it hurt, I ask Diane, who's breathing calmly, her fingers gently worrying the sleeve of her sweater. "No, I can't feel anything. I can just smell the rubber gloves." Were you interested in getting cosmetic surgery before coming to work here? "No!" she says, through the doctor's fingers, her nose changing shape, delicately, before my squinting eyes. "But I see so many people coming in at lunch time and leaving looking... fresher, and you can't even tell what they've had done. So I had laser hair removal, which feels like being slapped, and Botox, which was really nothing, and then I saw that you could make your lips look more defined with filler, so I've been pestering Salinda to do me."

Dr Johnson wipes around Diane's mouth with a small antiseptic cloth, and warns her that, on a pain scale, this will hurt a seven. She injects Restylane into the lips, and Diane's eyes flicker backwards. With her fingers, Johnson pushes the filler into a cupid's bow â€“ the effect is that of a mother wiping chocolate smears off a child's mouth.

The Harley Medical Group, the UK's largest cosmetic surgery provider, published figures in January revealing the nonsurgical cosmetic surgery market (which includes the Macrolane boob jab, an injection that increases your bust size, and Restylane rhinoplasty, the injection that straightens your nose) saw continued growth in 2009, with dermal fillers and chemical peels driving the increase by 26% and 306% respectively. Last year also saw a continued rise in the number of male patients (up 5%), with "Boytox" (male Botox) and "Sweatox" (anti-sweat Botox) both contributing to the leap.

"Minimally invasive procedures rule today â€“ and this is what consumers, and especially men, want most," says Wendy Lewis, independent cosmetic surgery consultant and author of Plastic Makes Perfect. "The benefits for consumers are: subtle improvements over time; nothing radical; less risky; definitely cheaper than big surgeries; no need for anaesthetic or going to hospital and catching MRSA; and no scars."

"There are many reasons why day surgery is becoming more and more popular," Dr Johnson tells me after Diane has floated back to her desk, swollen but smiling. "People who thought they didn't want to get surgery because they were not brave enough, or not rich enough, are interested in these temporary and non-expensive procedures â€“ our nonsurgical rhinoplasty starts at £350. And it's so quick! The talking takes longer than the treatment. We have a lot of clients who work at Harrods and really do just pop in on their lunch breaks."

The market continues to swell, imperceptibly smoothing the faces of colleagues, relatives, local hairdressers. A study carried out for the Girl Guides last November found almost half of secondary school girls said they planned to have plastic surgery. "Girls and young women are telling us that they are finding it quite hard to accept their appearance, and it is starting at a much earlier age than we had previously thought," says Nicola Grinstead, a trustee of Girlguiding UK. "The survey shows girls as young as 11 are dissatisfied with how they look and are prepared to use surgery to make a change."

All the women I talk to in the clinic's waiting room flicking through OK! magazines agree that today Botox, and increasingly cosmetic surgery, really is "no big deal". They nod, eyes wide, and reel off names like a BBC3 news bulletin. Last year Kylie Minogue, Geri Halliwell, Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox all gave interviews about their Botox use, while a film critic compared Nicole Kidman's facial skin to melamine. This month Cheryl Cole was photographed walking through a London airport with lips like salted slugs, and reality star Heidi Montag, 23, underwent 10 procedures in one day and ended up looking just like lingerie model Caprice, who is 38.

In a culture that celebrates youth, the appeal of an injection that appears to shave a little time off your age is clear, especially for the famous and often-photographed. As the demand for surgery has grown, academics have increasingly discussed the democratisation of beauty. If everybody could, in the space of a lunch hour, become symmetrical and clear-skinned, would the power of prettiness be weakened? If we accept that we will be judged on our appearance, is the fact that we can control it almost liberating?

Two years ago, Observer beauty journalist Alice Hart-Davis was one of the first women in the country to try the Macrolane breast enhancement jab. "I had never seriously considered having a proper breast enhancement. I don't feel surgery is something to be undertaken lightly," she tells me. "But I've always wished there was something I could do to boost my bust just a bit that didn't involve surgery."

Macrolane, which arrived in the UK in 2008, is a gel filler which is injected into the breast with a long blunt needle. It increases the bust by one cup size, lasts a year and costs around £2,000. "The procedure was amazing," says Hart-Davis, "an instant result. I was beyond thrilled with it." Though clinics advertise boob jabs in their list of lunch-time treatments, and the injections are over in 10 minutes, she warns: "It's by no means a 'lunch-hour lift' type procedure; it doesn't take long, but I reacted strongly to the local anaesthetic: it didn't hurt, but I could hardly speak straight for the rest of the day. And your body and brain go into a kind of post-traumatic shock after any procedure like this. You need to take it quietly afterwards."

Three months after her injections, one breast deflated â€“ she settled for stuffing her bra with a sock â€“ and the other went rock hard. Her surgeon broke up the gel under anaesthetic, then injected more to balance her bra. A few weeks later, she felt a lump in her right breast. She panicked and returned to the doctor, who reassured her that it was nothing to worry about â€“ just a lump of hardened gel. "That experience," she concludes, "alongside discovering that the research conducted on the product was not half as extensive as I'd been led to believe, and talking to several surgeons who strongly disapprove of the procedure, has put me off trying it again."

One such surgeon is Mr Charles Nduka, who runs the not-for-profit patient information website safercosmeticsurgery.co.uk. "There's so much misleading information being published about 'lunch-time' procedures," he says, "leading, at best, to unrealistic expectations and disappointment and, at worst, complications. Facial procedures such as Botox may leave localised swelling, redness and in some cases bruising, even in the best hands. This means that if you wanted to keep your treatment secret, lunch time may not be the best time.

"A major issue in the UK," he continues, "is that because fillers are classified as medical devices â€“ the same as implants â€“ rather than drugs, the regulations about who can administer them are among the most lax in the developed world. The recently introduced guidance from the Ihas [Independent Healthcare Advisory Services] is a mockery. It's a system of self-regulation which means that the very practitioners who should be regulated will not sign up. There have been more than 100 fillers introduced in the UK and in many cases they were withdrawn due to side-effects. Essentially the UK becomes a testing ground for new products."

So would he recommend traditional plastic surgery over the lunch-hour treatments? "Few people have social lives so hectic that they cannot give themselves the luxury of having a treatment in an unrushed fashion," Mr Nduka says, "without the anxiety that swelling might show."

Dr Mike Cummins, a GP and cosmetic surgeon who, after requests from patients, agreed to carry out group treatments at Botox parties, agrees that the "lunch-time" label can be misleading, but says that as doctors' experience of anaesthetics increases, "there continue to be more and more advantages to daycare procedures, both for the patient and the client. Laser-assisted liposuction is getting to the point where it's more than reasonable to do it under twilight sedation and cosmetic surgeons are all working to get the least trauma to tissue under local anaesthetic as possible."

In Jeanette Winterson's novel The Stone Gods, published in 2008 but set in a futuristic dystopia, people alter their genes to preserve their youth and get plastic surgery to amplify what's left. Only the protagonist, Billie, chooses to age naturally, wrinkling slowly among the smooth foreheads and perky breasts. Winterson worries about the normalisation of cosmetic surgery. "What really bothers me," she says, "is that women used to be made to believe that their minds were inadequate, but we were allowed our bodies. Now that we can't be told our minds aren't up to it, our bodies are paraded as defective. It is the same old control. It is not just an assault on women â€“ it is a war on feminism."

She emails me later that day. "I find 'lunch-hour surgery' savage and cynical. An insecure woman is a woman who will pay to feel better about herself. Disguising insecurity and feelings of inadequacy as empowerment is part of the usual twisted message of consumer advertising, but where women are concerned the strategy asks us to fund our own oppression. We pay to feel better instead of asking why we are made to feel defective in the first place... We need to understand that what is happening to women now is part of a disturbing bigger picture and not just a question of: 'Does madam fancy a nose job?'"

How does Winterson see society progressing in this era of perfectibility? Does she predict new lows, new depths? "We'll all get fixed eventually. Parents will do it to their kids. It will become routine. The Stepford Wives world of the 1950s was made impossible by feminism. We are heading back that way by another route. Women made in the image of men."

After Diane's 15-minute nose job, I take a walk through Harrods' beauty hall. I feel a little drunk. I had gone into the clinic expecting gore, or at least tears, but I left shocked only at the dry eyes, lack of fuss, the ease, the speed and gentle effectiveness. The women in Harrods testing the perfumes are largely blondes, largely wrinkleless, and largely slim. I see three people who look like Caprice, but as reflected in varying fairground mirrors. I watch a mother pick out scented candles for her granddaughter's wedding reception, and admire her shiny still forehead as she quietly exclaims over jasmine perfumes. I'm suddenly aware, looking discreetly from face to face, of all the "work" done and all the work yet to be done. It is an awakening of sorts. A half-awakening, maybe, to an odd new twilight world.

QUICK FIXES The most popular nonsurgical procedures

MACROLANE: BOOB JAB Created by Q-Med, the Swedish company behind the wrinkle-filler Restylane, Macrolane was launched in Europe as a correctional filler for body indentations. It wasn't until it was used in Japan in 2004 that it took off as an alternative for breast implants â€“ by January 2008, when it launched in the UK, about 30,000 Japanese women had had the boob jab. The procedure, which takes 45 minutes, involves a gel filler made of hyaluronic acid being pumped into the breast through a flexible knitting needle-sized canula. PRICES from £1,800

RESTYLANE: NOSE JOB Restylane, a water-based filler, is a synthetic reproduction of hyaluronic acid, a substance found in living organisms. Until recently its main use has been to plump lips and fill crow's feet, but the new procedure involves injecting the bridge of the nose to fill in dents, and the tip, so it appears perkier. Effects wear off within 18 months. PRICES from £350

BOTOX An injection of Botulinum toxin A (a diluted and purified form of the bacteria which causes botulism) softens and prevents frown lines. The jab, 22 years old this spring, changed the face of cosmetic surgery, with celebrities including Simon Cowell admitting to relying on it to look younger. Each year it is estimated to make its manufacturers around £800m from more than 60,000 injections. PRICES £230 to £390

JUVEDERM: LIP ENHANCEMENT A series of injections of Juvederm filler around the mouth can make the lips fuller and reshape ageing pouts. Juvederm contains hyaluronic acid which, by attracting water, plumps up the skin. Results last for up to a year. PRICES from £250

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Firefox Friday Five - bringing a little fire to your weekend!

Download Squad

- 1 days and 22 hours ago

Filed under: Features, Mozilla, Browsers

Sebastian is out stomping the fjords in Norway -- true story! -- so I'll be your humble replacement columnist this week. Fortunately, I 'm inheriting a pretty easy job, because there's plenty of interesting Firefox news to discuss today.Just pretend I'm writing all of this in my poor approximation of a British accent, and Seb will be back before you know it.

Okay, here goes ...

1. The Contacts Add-on

I wrote about this on Download Squad earlier in the week, but it's worth mentioning here, too. Mozilla has a created a browser-wide contacts extension that syncs with your address books and social sites. Why is it cool? Well, how does having access to your contacts on any website grab you? How about browser-wide email autocomplete? Mozilla's new Contacts add-on is a pretty sweet deal, and you can grab a preliminary version now.

2. Mozilla escalates the HTML5 open video battle

As you may know, Mozilla has taken Firefox down the path of open HTML5 video, but in a different direction than Webkit browsers like Safari and Chrome are headed. Instead of the H.264 video format, Mozilla is backing OGG Theora. This is both more open (because H.264 is proprietary, and Theora's open source) and cheaper for Mozilla (because it avoids H.264 licensing fees).

Who the heck uses Theora for HTML5 video, though? Well, starting this week, Wikipedia does. It's not exactly YouTube, but it's good news for Firefox fans that one of the most popular (and most democratic) sites on the web has endorsed Mozilla's video format of choice.
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3. The End of Firefox 3.0!

It's been a good run, Firefox 3.0, but it's time to let go. The final security and stability update ever for FF3.0, version 3.0.19, will come out on March 30. Considering how long 3.5 has been stable, and how much progress 3.6 and even 4.0 have made, it's about time everybody moved on up from 3.0. This quick update cycle is why we love Firefox, though! Look how long it took Microsoft to stop supporting IE6. Feel free to point, laugh and gloat.

4. Mozilla testing awesome Account Manager

Last week, Lee checked out an experimental login manager add-on for Firefox that makes logging in and out of websites a snap. It's not quite ready yet -- it worked for Lee on Facebook, but not Google -- but when this thing gets up to speed, it'll be a big boost to both security and user experience. Knowing at a glance whether you're logged in to the webpage you're visiting? Yes, please!

5. Hey, remember those Firefox icons?

Last time I wrote this column, I put out a call for your Firefox icons, and you came through! Sebastian never got around to posting them, though, so I'm taking this opportunity to present some of the coolest submissions here. Thanks to everyone who left a comment.

And, to the guy who sent in the Opera icon, ha ha, very funny.

That's the Five for this week, foxy boys and girls! Have a good weekend, and look forward to the return of everybody's favorite sassy Brit, Sebastian, either next week or the week after.

Firefox Friday Five - bringing a little fire to your weekend! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comic Book Legends Revealed #252

Comics Should Be Good!

- 2 days and 11 hours ago

Welcome to the two-hundred and fifty-second in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous two hundred and fifty.

Comic Book Legends Revealed is part of the larger Legends Revealed series, where I look into legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can check out here, at legendsrevealed.com. I'd especially recommend you check out this installment of TV Legends Revealed to find out the story of how Michael J. Fox got "revenge" on Brandon Tartikoff!

Let's begin!

COMIC LEGEND: Frank Frazetta turned down the opportunity to play professional baseball to draw comic books.

STATUS: I'm Going With True.

Amazingly enough, the world might have missed out on the artistic talents of Frank Frazetta! Instead, it is the world of baseball that missed out on the athletic skills of Frank Frazetta!

A few months back, reader Ed wrote in to ask:

I read somewhere, don't remember where or when, that Frank Frazetta turned down a "bonus-baby" contract to play for the New York Giants baseball team. I think this was from an interview, so came from his own mouth. I can't find any information about this online. Could it be true, and would there be any way to verify that the Giants actually offered him a contract, or did he just have scouts looking at him. This would have been right after WWII.

This story appears to basically be true, although I'm sure there's a little puffery involved.

For instance, on the Frazetta Art Gallery site a few years back, it was said...

Frank did not start playing baseball until he was 15 years old, but within just a few short years of playing sandlot ball in Brooklyn, he was offered a contract to play center field for the New York Giants.

That's stretching the truth of the matter a bit, as in the biography section, there is a more realistic take on the situation...

In this spot on the Frazetta Art Gallery web site, his baseball almost-career is discussed:

Through his teens, he continued drawing and painting, however he began to slack off due to his discovery of girls and baseball. In school he set several high school records, and eventually caught the attention of a scout for the New York Giants professional baseball team. Frank was offered a position on their farm squad with a good prospect of moving up to the major league within a season, but he turned them down. " I was involved with a girl at the time," Frazetta says a little sorrowfully. "And going down to Texas and sweating it out in the minors for a year didn't seem very appealing. You have to remember that at that time athletes weren't making the money they do today. They bussed you back and forth and it was just a big disgusting hassle. I remember that traveling to another state seemed like going to the end of the world, so I told them, maybe next year. Time went by and before I knew it I was too old. It was just my way of letting time make the decision for me. If I have any regrets it's that I didn't turn pro. If I was in my twenties and had it to do over - today, at today's salaries - you better bet I'd do it. "

And yeah, that's basically the "rub" of the story - while yes, Frazetta most likely WAS offered a baseball contract (he was a very skilled baseball player in high school)...

what a "baseball contract" was in 1946 is very different than what you would think of a baseball contract today.

In 1946, the New York Giants had a whopping SEVENTEEN minor league baseball affiliates!

They were all over the country, in cities big and small!

Minneapolis
Danville
Trenton
Manchester
Hickory
Springfield
Anderson
Oshkosh
Jacksonville
Bristol
Jersey City
Erie
Peekskill
St. Cloud
San Francisco
Fort Smith
Richmond Colts

With that many affiliates, the amount of players who were offered "professional baseball contracts" was a lot higher than it it is now (not to mention the fact that pro ballplayers were chosen almost entirely from white people at the time) and with that many affiliates, your average player was not exactly making a lot of money.

And while Frazetta was a great physical specimen...

there was no guarantee that he would actually make the majors (he wasn't a prospect along the level of, say, a Whitey Ford - just to name a major prospect signed around the same time).

And even if he were to buck the odds and MAKE the majors, even THEN he would not be guaranteed a hefty salary!

So when you add in very little upfront money and a lot of travel, all with the promise of MAYBE making the Majors, it was not exactly a great job offer if you had steady work at the time.

And comic books in the late 1940s/early 1950s had a lot more definitive work for a guy like Frazetta, so it's not surprising at all to see him choose drawing comics over playing minor league baseball. So, coupled with the many accounts of his baseball acumen from the people who knew him as a youth, plus the fact that Frazetta has consistently told the story over the years (with just the specifics moving a bit as time goes by), I'm willing to say that yes, Frazetta did, indeed, turn down a professional baseball job to draw comics.

And from his perspective at the time, it surely seemed to pay off...

By the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, Frazetta was all over comics...

And when comics stopped paying, Frazetta moved on to comic strips, and then to book covers, which is where his real worldwide fame began, as his science fiction and fantasy paintings are famous the world over.

And it all could have gone very differently if he had said yes to baseball as a teen.

Thanks to Ed for the question!

COMIC LEGEND: A black and white EC Comics reprint uncovered a decades-old X-rated prank.

STATUS: True

Late last year I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed installment on how an issue of X-Men, when reprinted in black and white for Marvel's Essentials format, had some slight nudity where nudity was never meant to be shown (inker Terry Austin added some female anatomy for the sake of definition - it was intended to be covered up when the book was colored).

Well, a similar situation occurred in 1979 when Russ Cochran did the EC Archives Edition of Tales From the Crypt, with black and white reprints of the original series.

Here's a page from Tales From the Crypt #29....

Here's a panel from the issue...

Nothing weird, right?

Well, here's that same panel in black and white (you can click to enlarge it a bit more)...

And here is a detail of that panel....

Of course, in this instance, it was an intentional joke by original artist Joe Orlando that was intended to be colored over so that it would never be visible.

The best part about this story is that a few years after the collection came out , someone noticed the prank and informed Bill Gaines, who then wrote to Orlando to "complain" about the prank (Gaines was a noted prankster himself, so it's highly unlikely that he actually cared, almost certainly he was writing to acknowledge the decades-old prank).

And Orlando replied to him feigning outrage at the suggestion.

The great Bhob Stewart featured the prank on his great web site here. Stewart has a copy of Orlando's full letter to Gaines (written on DC Comics stationery) at that above link. It's a great read - well worth reading. Heck, Stewart's whole site, Potzrebie, is a great read as a whole and well worth reading.

COMIC LEGEND: Dreadknight was originally going to be the mysterious Masters of Evil member in Amazing Spider-Man #283.

STATUS: I'm Going With False

In the other week's Comic Book Legends Revealed, I discussed how Tom DeFalco was planning to introduce a brand-new Spider-Man villain during his run on Amazing Spider-Man in Amazing Spider-Man #283, but since he left the book soon after, he brought the character to his run on Thor.

Well, apparently there is some matter of debate over whether that was the ORIGINAL intent for that character in #283.

Readers Omar Karindu and trajan23 both wrote (respectively)...

The rumor I always heard was that the MoE-to-be was supposed to be Dreadknight.

Dreadknight was listed as a Master of Evil in the Marvel Handbook a few months before the Under Siege story began, and I think Roger Stern said somewhere that he wanted the evil Black Knight's successor in there somewhere.

and

The Marvel Appendix also goes with the Dreadknight as the intended MoE-to-be as well.

As to the first point, here is the page from the Handbook...

Note the circled part.

And here is the quote from the great Unofficial Marvel Appendix site on the Masters of Evil...

The mystery member of the Masters of Evil in Amazing Spider-Man I#283 was almost certainly supposed to be the Dreadknight, who was from Europe, was a good match-up for the Black Knight, and had been named as a member of the Masters of Evil in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition #4. However, Tom DeFalco decided to make it his newly-created villain the Mongoose instead. He was also intending to set up the Mongoose as a Spider-Man villain, but wound up establishing him in Thor after his abrupt departure from the Spider-Man titles.

Well, awhile back, someone asked Roger Stern about Amazing #283 on his web forum, and he replied:

No, Tom DeFalco wrote AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #283. The last issue of ASM that I scripted was #250.

However, Tom and I coordinated events between AVENGERS and ASM so that the Absorbing Man and Titania bounced back and forth between the comics and stayed consistent.

(Believe it or not, there was a time when this was common.)

I believe that Tom and Ron Frenz intended the mystery villain to be a new Spider-Man foe. But they ran into editorial problems and left the book shortly after that issue. I believe they later used the mystery villain during their run on THOR, but I don't remember who he was.

So it sure seems that the Mongoose was always intended to be the mystery character, as Stern does not even hint at anyone other than a new Spider-Man villain being the character in #283.

I think it's clear enough that I'm willing to go with a "false" here!

Thanks to Omar Karindu and trajan23 for the suggestion and thanks to Roger Stern for the info (and Dicky El for asking Roger the question)!

Be sure to check out the Unofficial Index to the Marvel Universe, while you're at it! It's a great site!

Okay, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com.

As you likely know by now, last April my book finally came out!

Here is the cover by artist Mickey Duzyj. I think he did a very nice job (click to enlarge)...

If you'd like to order it, you can use the following code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee...

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!

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