Ack! I can't open Nightwing #81! And my dial-up is way too slow to re-download the zipped file. Will have to re-do it at work tomorrow. Crap.

Bart to do surveillance, unless one thinks he looks pretty in pink.

Snerk. Bart is such a little freakyhead.

I love Bart sooooooo much.

Alfred brought clothes down for Dick to wear to the funeral -- I guess I was imagining that he changed back to the Nightwing gear post-funeral and that Alfred took the regular clothing back home.

Or he threw it in the trash. Either way. The point is, there's no reason for him to be in civvies while he's under constant attack -- I don't think you ever see Bruce out of the costume in NML, for example -- and given that it's people in Dick's life who are under attack, there's actually a positive reason for him NOT to appear in civvies.

How does kevlar get ripped up?

Kevlar blend. Which isn't AFAIK possible either, so I just try to enjoy the ride.

(I am now reading up on the properties of Kevlar(R). The fact that I'm justifying it as research doesn't really make me feel like any less of a hopeless geek.)

All I know is that to get a kevlar vest that fits my cup size costs WAY too much money.

Transmet: Spider complains about the pollution, but smokes and drives a combustion-engine car. And if it's industrial pollution, why would you have that when you have makers?

The reservations are a good thing, but the neo-nazis are not. Spider's all about seeking the truth, but scorns anyone else who tries to, if they don't see it his way.

Things like that. I'm nit-picking of course, because hey, a comic that even teases like it HAS a thesis, damn. Haven't seen that since Alan Moore. I guess one of the theses I'm getting out of it is that in order to live in a fucked-up violent society, you must be fucked-up and violent yourself...just don't let it touch your heart. Stay open and vulnerable for when you need those things. I guess. I dunno.

(back to reading)

I believe it's established at some point that smoking, at least, has been pretty much taken care of as a health risk. Cars, I'm not sure. I'm hampered by not having read the earlier TPB's in a while.

Nazism is, I figure, Ellis's personal views showing through. The way I remember making sense of a lot of Spider's little idiosyncracies is to figure him for an individualist almost to the point of anarchy. The rules for what people do unto people are much more lax than what the State can do unto people. Plus, he's a druggie, and a certain amount of inconsistency is to be expected, I think.

I saw Michael Stipe on the Craig Kilborn show last night -- is it sad that when he (Michael) said that he was ear-wormed with a song called "The Outsiders" that REM is recording, I just assumed it was about, you know The Outsiders.

(I guess we'll find out this Fall.)