Transitions and Passings

First off, happy belated birthday, or belated happy birthday as the case may be, to charva.

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I was saddened to hear that James Doohan had passed away. His health had been failing for a couple of years, and he'd been struggling with Alzheimer's for a while. Last year he withdrew from the public eye in a very graceful way.

Scotty was always one of my favorite characters on Star Trek. Kirk was always a bit of a narcissist, and while Spock was cool as hell, he was a little hard to relate to. Scotty was always one of the characters I related to the most. He was just a guy doing his job and taking sheer joy in it. If and when humans make it out to the stars, I'd like to believe the ones who go will be a lot like Mr. Scott: adventuresome, a little irascible, and utter miracle workers.

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Another death that really saddened me was that of longtime Batman artist Jim Aparo. I was just thinking fond thoughts of him a few days ago, as it turns out. Beaucoup Kevin recaps his career far better than I ever could.

Aparo wasn't one of these rock-star comics arists like Todd McFarlane or (gack) Rob Liefeld. The guy just plain delivered the goods, month after month, year after year. In so doing, he really did end up defining for me what would become my absolute favorite fictional character of all time. Kevin says it best: "Jim Aparo drew the first Batman comics I read and in my mind, it's his Batman that I see when the character's name is mentioned." Same here.

And yes, that Batman/Flash "Disco of Death" story was one of the first Batman comics I ever read, too.