Easy, I'm A Friendly Beast.

  

 

I hadn't read Marvel Comics' limited series Longshot … heck, in a few decades, so when I had the chance to pick up the trade paperback collection of the six issues (ISBN 087135568) this Saturday at Grand Slam for five bucks – it was marked half off its cover price and in addition was going to be marked down to five dollars and the owners hadn't yet updated the sign – I took it and read them through. Amazing the stuff that, when you first read this story written by Ann Nocenti and penciled by Arthur Adams about an amnesiac genetically engineered humanoid once a slave who has events occur inexplicably in his favor when his motives are pure. I'd forgotten he had two hearts (made me wonder when I read that about his relation, if any, to the Doctor's race from Gallifrey) and also didn't notice the name of the first place where Longshot turned in our world when he saw his face, Nocenti's Deli. It's almost sad that Longshot would eventually become one of the X-Men, but I digress.

Today's title comes from one of the main characters in the series, a canine bounty hunter named Gog or Magog or Gog n' Magog depending on what part of the story you're in. I still don't understand that … anyway, Gog befriends Longshot on our world (remember, Longshot doesn't know who he is; heck, Longshot's chosen name comes from a survivalist who calls him that in passing) and gradually gets nastier to him and, drawing magic from all around him becomes larger and ready to give Longshot a good trouncing for exiling him here! (But he's the one who chose to stay when all the other Longshot-hunters got to go home, so what does that tell you?) Introducing new villains like the corpulent Mojo and the six-armed sorceress Spiral and with cameos from She-Hulk, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange, this series originally cover dated September 1985 to February 1986 – which means it originally appeared from July to December 1985 – was also an attack on mass media before it was cool!

At least, that's how I in January 2014 can see it now, or begin to. This weekend was also my debut teaching Sunday school in Parable Playhouse after first service at Bethany yesterday … I'd written up the play for a lesson based on Jesus calming the storm (Matthew 8:23-27) and in a change of pace the five kids, my assistant Brandon, and I performed the play first and then had the fifth graders read the Scripture, which in a Bible with subject headings is broken up into several stories. Throughout chapter eight you've got Jesus healing a leper, a centurion's servant upon being asked by the centurion himself, Peter's mother-in-law (which shoots in the foot the Catholic church's argument that priests must be celibate, for Peter “the rock” having a mother-in-law must have had a wife; it actually is a power issue from the eleventh century, but again I digress), some tests of discipleship, Jesus “quiets” a storm, and casting demons out of two men and into a herd of pigs.

The sun's not shining too brightly today, yet my heart sings … this week my daughter Sarah is Student of the Week in her second grade class, and that means a lot! She got to fill out a poster with interesting facts about herself, color it, add photos, and she gets to help out her teacher Mrs. Braasch as “special helper”. Saturday I brought Jeffrey to and from his friend Jasper's house for his eighth birthday party with a LEGO theme. He and six other boys had a lot of fun there, and overnight Friday we had our niece – Sarah and Jeffrey's cousin – Josceline spend the night because her grandparents (my in-laws Robert and Sharon) were out of town. Went well, we all save Martha slept in, and Sunday after church Robert and Sharon came over to help me – okay, Robert did the lion's share of this, but I did get to help and didn't look too mechanically inept that day – put a new prong on our block heater so I can plug the car in if it gets freezing weather again. With sixty-nine days to spring, that could happen.

Guess this is the right planet, after all.

David