Unbelievably Heartless

 My local papet, The Delaware County Daily Times, has a feature called "Sound Off" in which readers can call or e-mail with anonymous commentary on news or local events or just a personal pet peeve.

Today, it included what has to be the most heartless two paragraphs I have ever read in my life. At first, I thought the author was dealing in sarcasm, but by the second paragraph I knew she was deadly (and I mean that adverb literally) serious. Here it is in its entirety:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

I hate these school shootings! Every single time there’s one, the same people start with the whining. “Oh the guns! Oh the guns are bad! We have to do something about all the guns!” Here’s what needs to be done about all the guns. Nothing. That’s right. Nothing. Because it’s not the big awful problem these dummies try to make it out to be. These Dumocrats, they exaggerate everything. Look, there are tens of millions of schoolkids in the country. In any given year, how many get gunned down?

A couple dozen, maybe three dozen in a busier year. Out of so many millions of kids, that’s nothing! Look, COVID was another big exaggeration, but more kids probably died from that than from school shootings. Just stop with the moaning. Crying about it only makes more people want to shoot up schools. Stop making those shootings front-page news. There’s more important things going on, like how Biden is destroying the country.

MARCI

 I have nothing more to say.

More on George Perez

 After nearly 50 years, it's tough for me to remember these events exactly, but I first recall meeting George Perez at Jim Glenn's home in Brooklyn in 1975 (maybe '76). Jim and I had just published the second issue of our fanzine, Factors Unknown, and up until then, it had consisted only of stuff Jim and I had done, including our creations the Hazardman and the Symbiote. I don't remember where Jim encountered George (and his friend Tom Sciacca) but they were there to show us some pages to publish in the the next issue.

George's work was already at a near-professional level (and far better than anything Jim or I had done) and we readily accepted it. George even did a piece for the back cover, centrally featuring my Hazardman character (and he's never looked better). Shortly after that, Sal Quartuccio joined us in co-published Hot Shots #1, featuring a book-length story written and drawn by George, starring the She-Devils, a team of female agents. I had the honor of doing all the tone work on the art (right on the actual boards as it were).

That got George noticed by pro artist Rich Buckler, who hired him as an assistant--and that got George noticed by the editors at Marvel. His career took off rapidly, with assignments to marquee titles like Fantastic Four and Avengers. He never looked back after that.

I am very proud to have had a small part in introducing this talent to the world...and I am extremely sad now at his passing.

In Memoriam: George Perez

 There's so much I could say about George Perez, who died on Friday at the age of 67 after a battle with cancer, but I need time to work it all out in my head (and my heart). He was still a teenager and I was barely out of college when we met, so I have to work through a lot of memory and history.

I'll get to it.