Say What
Running Down a Dream
Essays on creations, life lessons, and many original stories; also visit integr8dfix.blogspot for even more!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Pure Pop
Because of all the creativity going on and new stuff to check out, I actually have not exhausted the hottest songs of the year! It's like I've saved something of them by not hearing them too much.
One of his three debut number ones: the ATL's B.O.B.!
Big year for crossovers: hipsters listening to Americana and country back in the Pop Top 40. Did you ever expect Cease ill to put on Lady Antebellum? Well, why even record a record with no appreciation to what is happening out there. I am back in touch with teenage hit record lover with his first girlfriend. Yah, you'd think I'd put up Taylor Swift on that cue. I just like the completeness of this song.
Here is one great lyricist.
and that
was my
pop
experience
2010.
One of his three debut number ones: the ATL's B.O.B.!
Big year for crossovers: hipsters listening to Americana and country back in the Pop Top 40. Did you ever expect Cease ill to put on Lady Antebellum? Well, why even record a record with no appreciation to what is happening out there. I am back in touch with teenage hit record lover with his first girlfriend. Yah, you'd think I'd put up Taylor Swift on that cue. I just like the completeness of this song.
Here is one great lyricist.
and that
was my
pop
experience
2010.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Vado Bujinka
Our dear friend was travelling out of the country for a few weeks to study. I started a fantasy story to entertain her a spell against homesickness.
All this time later, the character, who I was mulling over for a guest spot in another untold tale, pops into my noggin when I ran across a drawing challenge: draw your favorite Sword & Sorcery character!
A Half Moon genesis.
Here, I'm inking one level at a time: the thickest fills come from one end of my Copic Pen 100. Then I break out the Microns, and lay in the bottom lines that remain with my .7, then some fine details with the .03, then the .5 to fill the rest.
After that, I white out mistakes and redraw them. I need a less cruddy white out, so when the free stuff runs out I'm going to experiment with finding recommended brands.
So, with her science fiction trappings mixed with tribal magic and myth (and a healthy dose of R.E. Howard adapted by Roy Thomas in Conan the Barbarian), Vado (VAH-doh) insisted I employ my modest skills to her definition.
So here we are: over an hour penciling, then that again, maybe more, inking and photographing and head scratching. Truthfully, this is still but a beginning.
More music I loved this year
1 Janelle Monae
2Huge year for Kings of Leon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT6mB8N24_g&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=6&playnext=5
3Tom Petty
4Shoreline Rootz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y40TsOIpuEU&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=3&playnext=3
5Best Coast
6 The Crocodiles
7Incomplete Neighbor
2Huge year for Kings of Leon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT6mB8N24_g&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=6&playnext=5
3Tom Petty
4Shoreline Rootz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y40TsOIpuEU&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=3&playnext=3
5Best Coast
6 The Crocodiles
7Incomplete Neighbor
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Seven of the best music acts I loved this year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBhdVne3570&feature=BF&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=8
Let me say I always enjoy Astra Kelly live and look forward to her band continuing on in the future. Meanwhile, she'll be popping up around town this spring, so I thought I'd keep a home fire burning. The lady rocks. Her lyrics are straight forward and earnest, but in a very evocative way that will move you, the more deeply you share the feelings. They're wise, literally words you can live by, sung with the passion of Teena Marie. They fit nicely into my life in a way I'm not used to, at all, with ardent love, hope, and a unique spiritual glory, while very neatly inscribed in indie rock anthems.
There's something about the album that would've been a smash if you'd heard it 25 years before. I can't quite place a single influence: like Joan Jett with beautiful, though not flowery, lyrics. Soaring beside the eagle-like nobility of the guitars on "Just Fine" Astra delivers another smash chorus. I don't think I listened to anything more in 2010 than Spoon's Transference and Astra Kelly's Battling the Sun!
1Astra Kelly “Alright” from Battling the Sun EP (AND! It's her Birthday!!!)
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/11/beauty-in-need-astra-kelly-rocks-quake.html
2Steph Johnson: We enjoyed the crowd’s reaction to her at Art Walk, but had much more fun visiting Kevin Cooper’s Wednesday night U.S. Grant Hotel bash featuring the Steph Johnson Band. She's actually a smooth jazz singer; but her live show is full of boogie opportunities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZL91Uv5e8g&feature=BF&list=PL206E51CC897C7BC0&index=1
3Autolux I want to know more about them. This song is creepy, intense, listenable.
4Israel Moldonado For what it's worth, this local guitar instructor's a killer volleyball player and, from what we've talked, a cool guy. I don't know if he ever found his stolen guitar again, but after learning about Steph Johnson's stolen car (right after winning SD MUsic Awards Jazz Album of the Year) I had a whole new insight into (unwilling) sacrifice I hear artists make...
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/04/art-walk-two-san-diego-ca.html
Midlake
7Ray Montagne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBSnR4ZP2MI New EP out on Yule, with the Pariah Dogs.
Monday, December 27, 2010
X-Men: Frightened Off the Face of the Earth part five The Secret of the Wolf Sorcerer
Just joining us? See recent posts of X-Men---Supercilious Cecil
With the focused power of the mutants cleaving now, from its nimbus springs Remus Sharptooth, grappling viciously with Storm.
As though by mitosis, the other half of Sharptooth’s form, the essence of the sorcerer is revealed: her lost brother, Ray, taken by the enchantress’ spell between his vanishing at the Break through and the Unknown.
THE BEAST: Nicola Dragonvayne and the Marc Kane have breached a critical point in the make-up of this being---the very fulcrum of his pastiche existence. What lies within? Where does this occur, that Cerebro can track the psyches of the X-Men along the same mental plane?
XAVIER: i feel sure this hidden being was aiding them in finding the way inside Remus’ mind. The identities of these ancient guardian psyches are now more clear: searchers, in a dark age lost to antiquity; the present age bears museums spotted still with artifacts and treasures they assembled. Those caretakers' last mission involved the deadliest secret of their era.
The Box they had guarded together is conjured from outside time and space to reappear here and focus the energies of the Tranz-Rupture. They, its final guardians, the last defenders of humanity, have come to this place and time to prevent it once more from being misused: once, as a coveted weapon of war, and now, as an agent to shape all of human consciousness and the earth itself.
Thousands of years of greater understanding of the Box are at play---the present spell of the wolf that holds Transmetamorphosis together, that increasingly makes all in its contagious awareness to feel everywhere in presence. Many, indeed, vanish for the stars beyond---so porous is the command of intention over reality.
RAY AWEN : Abril and Prince Dragonvayne---boon companions, half of your natural born lives---
MARC KANE: We will find a way, do not quit fighting Ray!!!
RAY AWEN: Swam now I have from the brackish mind of the wolf. Emerged, I find myself, my essence, bound to a most grandiose trickster.
PRINCE NICOLA: We were sundered during our mission: break through enemy lines, dispose of Slave Box. Ray, it’s still happening; we’re needed!
RAY AWEN: Who says?
MEANWHILE, the X-Men battle: Wolverine challenges Remus, Cyclops and Nightcrawler battle the Four Armed Men; Storm and Colossus tackle the she wolf Corpse Flower; Phoenix grapples with the eighty story Fire Elemental Dragon.
MARC KANE! The slightest breach in our rapport did render us vulnerable, as the heathen hordes did challenge us before I took the Box in my charge to the volcano. RAY: the break-through...the ice must've melted, we were merely a day too late in the year, and like thunder did the land beneath our boots cave...cave into a world of smoke, fire, and darkness. Your name, my disguised sister: Abril! That was the last word from my lips as we fell...
MARC KANE: Ray, YOU caught me into the world with your bare hands, as I cried and our mother grew cold. I have ever been the student of all things you do, brother. I only wish I could’ve reached you, through whatever malevolence manipulated us apart . But here we are, now.
RAY: Agreed. We know it was about Wanda, though, and what I did perceive of that priestess of Inguz and you.
NICOLA: If we can find a way back to the Box, we may yet wrest it from the Spell of the Wolf.
RAY: Well I know those fantastic machines, from my time spent as the essence of Remus Sharptooth. Without my body, he cannot resume his place in the material present!
Marc (Abril): The Dragon’s Line is together again. Though this battle be never ending, it is given to us to set things right.
RAY: But now---to reach that other side---must I rejoin as one to the Wolf?
Nearby...
COLOSSUS: Must we leave this unreality to survive?
CYCLOPS: May be no way out. We’ll have to fight them on their turf, outgunned though we may be. Kurt! I want you to teleport each of us back behind what’s left of that barrier; we need to regroup!
NIGHTCRAWLER: ja wohl!
STORM: Jean, can we help you deal with this trans-mind phenomenon? Can we provide humanity with some kind of ---switch?
JEAN: Who can say for certain what humanity would choose? It’s the mental habits of human kind that make this nearly impossible to absorb---but the power it’s tapping...shines like the solution to everything we know. Scott, I can give humankind the opportunity to stop it---I have an idea---but should I? Why are we set up as judges of all evolution?
WOLVERINE: Tell you truth, darlin’ ---you can only force so much change on a person before it’s up to them to let it stick. I don’t care at all for forcing a body to act against their will. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.
JEAN: You call that an answer?
WOLVERINE: Maybe nothin’ to do about it, now. But if there’s a choice, it’s only fair.
COLOSSUS: What can we do besides fight these nightmares on this dream-like plane?
NIGHTCRAWLER: i COULD try taking us back through the chamber that held the Box.
JEAN: Give me a minute to design our “trigger” and we’ll load it with the world outside.
STORM: Quickly! This “environment” here is becoming useless to manipulate.
Good 2010 Performers I enjoyed
Gaslight Anthem The modern New Jersey sound, beneath all that snow, is timeless rock and roll. Though some people say Southernness is needed to make real rock and roll. :-D
Black Keys
I've dug these cats a while now, they really blew up this year. I see a great four or five year run for them, getting nothing but bigger in 2011.
You can hear where the Black Keys've changed from here, where I found them:
http://citizenbandmusic.com/ If you liked the Keys, you might like the more Americana-slanted blues of Jeff Berkley and Citizen Band, "the most interesting band in the world." :-D If you like the Eagles or Wilco or Jackson Browne or Nils Lofgren, I don't see why you wouldn't dig CB. Mike Spurgat played live at House of Blues with a couple of bands; he may have been the best lead guitar player I saw this year! He brings a little "Joe Walsh" to the mix. He can bend it ruthlessly, babe. Check out "Broken Man" and "For Lillian" for two standouts.
How about some DJ's?
My sister Debra introduced me to DJ Tiesto. What else?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nFdlwmkCKw&feature=player_embedded
Robyn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmFu-hF6iKc&feature=player_embedded
Chad Cavanaugh I used to enjoy meeting artists at his java Jones gig. The atmosphere had quite a mix of people rather engrossed in their laptops, but I saw some great live music there before drawing Dna #1 drew me out of the loop. I tried sketching and even tried my hand at some songs that have received more complete and unique forms since then. As for artists, the first one, Nicole Torres, was super nice, told good stories, and blew us away. She also designed the jacket for her friend
Lindsay White’s first cd, which I reviewed at this link. Java Jones itself has passed on as an entity, to some new owner or redesign coming next year.
R.I.P. Ocean Beach’s own Matt Cook Live show I think the hardest part about this city is getting people to go to things more than a few blocks away. Maybe one day we’ll have awesome public transit here in San Diego. At least it’s played some part in keeping me from living as a hermit in downtown, getting Integr8d Soul Productions up to its commercial potential and hoping everyone has better luck this coming decade.
I really enjoyed my visit, as I was personally invited by Dana Ralston to see Flying Laura.
Dana
Flying Laura
Finally here was part of why I'd love to live in Encinitas; you can just walk down the street and meet someone good for a creative jam. More ideas and possibilities than time! Plus you have Moonlight Beach. Downtown's benefited me mostly with hermitage, though a nicer asylum I've never known.
Florence and the Machine
This lady is a star, if she wants it. Goth ethos and bright hooks alternate behind the biggest new voice in rock.
I found K'naan on Austin City Limits, about the time of the World Cup
Patrick Watson
San Fransisco music pretty much opened up to me through the gateway of videos branching off songs by A Place To Bury Strangers. Macabre group name? They are not doctor's office music, but they are drop dead slick. FB Friends with a friend of the band :-0
I think Silversun Pickups have a great sound and they're just getting more creative.
I almost didn't include them here for 2010 (I am most in love with "Panic Switch") but they did have a new song out after all.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPzU1Uz8ujw
Black Keys
I've dug these cats a while now, they really blew up this year. I see a great four or five year run for them, getting nothing but bigger in 2011.
You can hear where the Black Keys've changed from here, where I found them:
http://citizenbandmusic.com/ If you liked the Keys, you might like the more Americana-slanted blues of Jeff Berkley and Citizen Band, "the most interesting band in the world." :-D If you like the Eagles or Wilco or Jackson Browne or Nils Lofgren, I don't see why you wouldn't dig CB. Mike Spurgat played live at House of Blues with a couple of bands; he may have been the best lead guitar player I saw this year! He brings a little "Joe Walsh" to the mix. He can bend it ruthlessly, babe. Check out "Broken Man" and "For Lillian" for two standouts.
How about some DJ's?
My sister Debra introduced me to DJ Tiesto. What else?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nFdlwmkCKw&feature=player_embedded
Robyn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmFu-hF6iKc&feature=player_embedded
Chad Cavanaugh I used to enjoy meeting artists at his java Jones gig. The atmosphere had quite a mix of people rather engrossed in their laptops, but I saw some great live music there before drawing Dna #1 drew me out of the loop. I tried sketching and even tried my hand at some songs that have received more complete and unique forms since then. As for artists, the first one, Nicole Torres, was super nice, told good stories, and blew us away. She also designed the jacket for her friend
Lindsay White’s first cd, which I reviewed at this link. Java Jones itself has passed on as an entity, to some new owner or redesign coming next year.
R.I.P. Ocean Beach’s own Matt Cook Live show I think the hardest part about this city is getting people to go to things more than a few blocks away. Maybe one day we’ll have awesome public transit here in San Diego. At least it’s played some part in keeping me from living as a hermit in downtown, getting Integr8d Soul Productions up to its commercial potential and hoping everyone has better luck this coming decade.
I really enjoyed my visit, as I was personally invited by Dana Ralston to see Flying Laura.
Dana
Flying Laura
Finally here was part of why I'd love to live in Encinitas; you can just walk down the street and meet someone good for a creative jam. More ideas and possibilities than time! Plus you have Moonlight Beach. Downtown's benefited me mostly with hermitage, though a nicer asylum I've never known.
Florence and the Machine
This lady is a star, if she wants it. Goth ethos and bright hooks alternate behind the biggest new voice in rock.
I found K'naan on Austin City Limits, about the time of the World Cup
Patrick Watson
San Fransisco music pretty much opened up to me through the gateway of videos branching off songs by A Place To Bury Strangers. Macabre group name? They are not doctor's office music, but they are drop dead slick. FB Friends with a friend of the band :-0
I think Silversun Pickups have a great sound and they're just getting more creative.
I almost didn't include them here for 2010 (I am most in love with "Panic Switch") but they did have a new song out after all.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPzU1Uz8ujw
Saturday, December 25, 2010
My love of comic books: in a nutshell
The next-to-complete digital cover to DnA #1: available next week!!!
Best team: Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four *runner –up Gerber/ Buscema / Janson Defenders
Favorite Marvel Cahiracter*: Spider-Man and Heroine: She Hulk
runners-up: 1970’s Valkyrie and Hellcat! (presently digging Wasp in Roger Stern's Avengers, and love Sue and Storm, yes they share a name as observed in X-Men Ann. 5)
Favorite Marvel Story: Hopefully one I still haven’t read yet. For now:
“The End of Spider-Man!” Amazing Spider-Man #18
runner-up: Amazing Spider-Man #248, "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man
DC Team: The Invisibles
DC Cahiracter: John Constantine runner-up: Superman (honorable mention) Sandman
Heroine: Big Barda
DC Story: Ooo, the last issue of the Dark Knight Returns.
My first answer was the 66 issue run of Preacher runner-up Rock of Ages (JLA)
Favorite Artist: John Romita Jr.
Favorite Writer: 1960s Stan Lee R. Crumb 1970s Steve Gerber
1980s Roger Stern runner-up Chris Claremont (but diving into Frank Miller next!)
1990s Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Kurt Busiek
2000s Alan Moore Grant Morrison Ed Brubraker, Matt Fraction
Indie Work: enjoying the Hernandez Brothers and Terry Moore.
David Lapham's Stray Bullets, Arthur Spiegleman's MAUS,
Favorite Humor Books: Groo the Wanderer, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Local Favorites: Jay Allen Sanford, Billy Martinez
Always wanted to try : Cerebus Vol. 2
My Christmas stash this year involves a score of back issues of Power Man and Iron Fist, Morrison's Seven Soldiers book, Moore's Halo Jones, Fantastic Four 240-242, the latest three issues of Amazing Spider-man, and doubtlessly some surprises. But that's what I'll be reading while I'm alone this morning, with some good music on.
This has been a great year of revisiting comics, but while I don't plan to buy many for a while now, I do plan to write and draw about FOUR by Summertime! Two comprise the sequel to the DnA comic; another is the redrawn version of the Stuckwayze Forev-ugh. The color one will be Not Another Comic Book---also redrawn, and replotted for a tight 25 page adventure not quite like any other comic book.
I really stopped buying many comics regularly over the last decade, so there's a lot of stuff like POWERS and CHEW I'd probably give a chance. I got much more introspective here: http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/01/letter-about-dads-and-old-comics.html One day I'll be just in the mood to tell you about the many faces of my old hobby, myself. Art and story together creates a fantastic possibility for collaboration; there's nothing quite like the private world between your hands where the movie you make is YOU filling in the world around those panels. I like the constant switching the brain does, dealing with words and pictures. I often get great ideas on other things and leave my comic lying around open all day unfinished.
I am sure I've forgetting something cool I'd like to tell you, but my mind's both full of a lot of things...and quite empty at the present.
Speaking of the present: Merry Christmas, one and all!!!!
Be Chill Cease ill
*Cahiracter involves an in-joke you either know or don't care about.
Favorite songs of 2010, part one
http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/12/lindsay-whites-trying-to-get-you.html
Artist Supreme Live by the Steph Johnson Band
http://www.stephjohnsonband.com/
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Frightened Off the Face of the Earth! part 4 featuring Stern-era X-Men
Cease: Here's what I had before the eclipse had ended: btw, this would've been an alternative plotline inserted before X-Men 125 in 1979, and so features those X-Men:
: As the Storm, buoyed gently upon the weather of her own being, drifts towards the great gate of Sharptooth’s defenses, her lightning lights the presence of two time lost Vikings connected to the great change---and fly they must. Only inside the jaws of utter destruction can they find their way to the mystery of this conjurer...only so may they reach the humanity captured within!
Before the eyes of those assembled to fire fight, Cyclops and the Wolverine begin to disappear in the physical sense...yet the darkness into which they reappear is present before everyone! They watch this central event, as thought forms of all the X-men surround the Sharptooth sorcerer. Nightcrawler is teleporting the X-Men in turn through the Slave Box, where they attempt to materialize inside a further plane representing Sharptooth’s apocalyptic plan.
They reappear, locked out of reach but able to see a trifecta of beings, one of whom is the Enchantress.
=
WOLVERINE: Did I hallucinate seeing that wolf head swallow up Storm? Blasted place, it’s got no scent!
Cyclops: Over there---do you see where my beam's lightly traced some nearly transparent barrier?
Wolverine: Yeah, shine your ever lovin' light on, bub.
From the shadowy reaches of the violet arena of space surrounding Sharptooth, three mysterious forms of indigo observe a towering man-form, crackling with power, robed with sharp, probing angles that reach like a castle of doom from his shoulders and head.
Before him appears a blond, beautiful enchantress dressed in emerald and black, leering. “Even should these meddlesome freaks discover the double nature of your pawn---pawn, or prince of the world to come---as an immortal of Asgard, I shall live on, either way!
SULINAR VIX: Behold, the self-styled heroes advance now from the abyss. You, who bound the warrior to the wolf sorcerer--- what payment do you extract?
ENCHANTRESS: “Come what may,I will take my rewards where I find them. I cast this spell upon her, who is also two people in one; the goddess maiden, the woman beneath. Even as the valkyior come in time to become goddesses of the Norn, so shall I place within her astral aura my spell, by which, in the fortuitous hour of my plans, to call her to join, bound within the Norn stones...and when they again become mine...but hark now, ‘tis done! Amora takes her leave, Sulinar Vix of Kolpar!”
With a lift of his chin, he regards her. “May you scheme in interesting times!”
With a humorless laugh, at the nimbus of a spell, she vanishes.
Wolverine still strains to carve against the barrier; Cyclops trains his eye beam with enormous will.
The three indigo forms consult with one another telepathically, grateful to have thus escaped notice. They see Sulinar Vix cast a light over the Machine Man, probing him as the heroes advance from the nothingness. Then he turns to an approaching form, a tall, ebony young man, who seems to espy them, by his eyes; to Sulinar Vix, his face reveals nothing. “So now,” he speaks, “upon my birthday visit to this world, I await the completion of the spell of the wolf...”
“Hail to Sennil, Dark Poet,” says Sulinar Vix. “ No doubt, you await also the return of what is taken from Semeicardia.”
“Your fellow Sinister has engineered cells swiped there, to become henchmen to your pawn of pawns. His fate also belongs to Semeicardia.”
CYCLOPS: Feels like someone's stepping over my grave!
“These are the last moments of the Spell of the Wolf,” says Sulinar Vix. “I bid you observe the resolution of this gambit, Dark Poet, and we shall see if the nature of the world yet shall be formed by the Tranz-Rupture.”
The triplet forms observe the dark Poet dissolve into the indigo light as he walks on, while the wolf sorcerer conjures fierce lights, bolts of power escaping his claws.
Nightcrawler has now reappeared from the interface zone about Slay Box with Colossus.
The Wolverine leads the others in shredding the way into the force field, and seem unstoppably close.
Vix, with a mystic pass, restores his four-armed henchmen and she-wolf by his side, as the Defenders attack before the towering form of the Fire Dragon.
Now Jean appears with Machine Man and Nightcrawler, who is amazed that she has figured out how to tap Slave Box and use psionic means to do the teleporting of the trio. Machine Man asks himself:
MACHINE Man: Is this proof I am, at least, a conscious mind?
NIGHTCRAWLER: Vast ist?
MACHINE MAN: How else could my mind be transferred to this battlefield? The information I recorded seemed to give her the insight to crack the code, so to speak, on the Slave Box!
NIGHTCRAWLER: Good thing for me! Not sure how much longer I could’ve held out!
JEAN: With the souls of Prince Nicola Dragonvayne and the Marc Kane aligned within the energies of you, my best friend, Storm, we can surprise the sorcerer!” So they do: with a strike of that sword, flowing with the Flames of the Phoenix. Cleaving his form, now from it springs Remus Sharptooth, grappling viciously with Storm.
: As the Storm, buoyed gently upon the weather of her own being, drifts towards the great gate of Sharptooth’s defenses, her lightning lights the presence of two time lost Vikings connected to the great change---and fly they must. Only inside the jaws of utter destruction can they find their way to the mystery of this conjurer...only so may they reach the humanity captured within!
Before the eyes of those assembled to fire fight, Cyclops and the Wolverine begin to disappear in the physical sense...yet the darkness into which they reappear is present before everyone! They watch this central event, as thought forms of all the X-men surround the Sharptooth sorcerer. Nightcrawler is teleporting the X-Men in turn through the Slave Box, where they attempt to materialize inside a further plane representing Sharptooth’s apocalyptic plan.
They reappear, locked out of reach but able to see a trifecta of beings, one of whom is the Enchantress.
=
WOLVERINE: Did I hallucinate seeing that wolf head swallow up Storm? Blasted place, it’s got no scent!
Cyclops: Over there---do you see where my beam's lightly traced some nearly transparent barrier?
Wolverine: Yeah, shine your ever lovin' light on, bub.
From the shadowy reaches of the violet arena of space surrounding Sharptooth, three mysterious forms of indigo observe a towering man-form, crackling with power, robed with sharp, probing angles that reach like a castle of doom from his shoulders and head.
Before him appears a blond, beautiful enchantress dressed in emerald and black, leering. “Even should these meddlesome freaks discover the double nature of your pawn---pawn, or prince of the world to come---as an immortal of Asgard, I shall live on, either way!
SULINAR VIX: Behold, the self-styled heroes advance now from the abyss. You, who bound the warrior to the wolf sorcerer--- what payment do you extract?
ENCHANTRESS: “Come what may,I will take my rewards where I find them. I cast this spell upon her, who is also two people in one; the goddess maiden, the woman beneath. Even as the valkyior come in time to become goddesses of the Norn, so shall I place within her astral aura my spell, by which, in the fortuitous hour of my plans, to call her to join, bound within the Norn stones...and when they again become mine...but hark now, ‘tis done! Amora takes her leave, Sulinar Vix of Kolpar!”
With a lift of his chin, he regards her. “May you scheme in interesting times!”
With a humorless laugh, at the nimbus of a spell, she vanishes.
Wolverine still strains to carve against the barrier; Cyclops trains his eye beam with enormous will.
The three indigo forms consult with one another telepathically, grateful to have thus escaped notice. They see Sulinar Vix cast a light over the Machine Man, probing him as the heroes advance from the nothingness. Then he turns to an approaching form, a tall, ebony young man, who seems to espy them, by his eyes; to Sulinar Vix, his face reveals nothing. “So now,” he speaks, “upon my birthday visit to this world, I await the completion of the spell of the wolf...”
“Hail to Sennil, Dark Poet,” says Sulinar Vix. “ No doubt, you await also the return of what is taken from Semeicardia.”
“Your fellow Sinister has engineered cells swiped there, to become henchmen to your pawn of pawns. His fate also belongs to Semeicardia.”
CYCLOPS: Feels like someone's stepping over my grave!
“These are the last moments of the Spell of the Wolf,” says Sulinar Vix. “I bid you observe the resolution of this gambit, Dark Poet, and we shall see if the nature of the world yet shall be formed by the Tranz-Rupture.”
The triplet forms observe the dark Poet dissolve into the indigo light as he walks on, while the wolf sorcerer conjures fierce lights, bolts of power escaping his claws.
Nightcrawler has now reappeared from the interface zone about Slay Box with Colossus.
The Wolverine leads the others in shredding the way into the force field, and seem unstoppably close.
Vix, with a mystic pass, restores his four-armed henchmen and she-wolf by his side, as the Defenders attack before the towering form of the Fire Dragon.
Now Jean appears with Machine Man and Nightcrawler, who is amazed that she has figured out how to tap Slave Box and use psionic means to do the teleporting of the trio. Machine Man asks himself:
MACHINE Man: Is this proof I am, at least, a conscious mind?
NIGHTCRAWLER: Vast ist?
MACHINE MAN: How else could my mind be transferred to this battlefield? The information I recorded seemed to give her the insight to crack the code, so to speak, on the Slave Box!
NIGHTCRAWLER: Good thing for me! Not sure how much longer I could’ve held out!
JEAN: With the souls of Prince Nicola Dragonvayne and the Marc Kane aligned within the energies of you, my best friend, Storm, we can surprise the sorcerer!” So they do: with a strike of that sword, flowing with the Flames of the Phoenix. Cleaving his form, now from it springs Remus Sharptooth, grappling viciously with Storm.
Frightened Off the Face of the Earth! Part 3 featuring Stern-era X-Men
JEAN GREY (Continuing to sneak into the defenses of the Wolf Wizard.
I'm close enough to observe his "ritual space;" so far, so good. I notice this amazing box, but all my attention goes to...Remus Sharptooth. I feel you at the borders of my mind.
So let’s be friends, huh? I’m Jean Grey! Who is the handsome fellow under all that fuzz!
REMUS: I DO have a handsome fellow inside!! Snarl!! Don't taunt me, fetching one!
What is your purpose here?
His mixed essential nature becomes an apparent truth.
Jean: "Have I struck a nerve?"
He’s both flattered and...defensive...what is going ON here? It’s like two minds... or even make that three or four at play; we’re not alone! There’s one I see above, and some other around me---!
REMUS: A nerve, a body, a sliver, a cell!
You don’t know what it’s like : plucked out of one history, one continuity, one set of stories, and put together in some new, melded form for the sake of unseen players?
JEAN GREY: You might be surprised what i know about that! Wolfie, I have to be frank, I get no sense you as either inherently good or evil...is this thing happening with everyone’s opening inner lives permanent? What’s going on? Maybe if we could just understand what you are doing here...you can feel some people are afraid, and I picture some disappearing, stressed out---how can all those folks be spared the fright of their lives?
REMUS: You sense it, do you not? Yes, particularly with the gifts I sense within you...you are the first living human I’ve yet encountered here. I do not seek to persuade nor offend you.
JEAN GREY: Could I help you figure out why you seem so uncomfortable?
REMUS: i KNOW not your role, nor bare enough, mine. Two voices in me, divided serving my master---
Sulinar Vix! Let the crystal power flow, as now all dragons arise. Let all become so wide minded as they, Returned One! Almighty Zavox, power of the empirical world, let rupture forth your change across the hastened reality of this planet!
JEAN GREY: So bright! Vibrations...hurt! ---it’s like agony with his spell.
Sensing her ESP probe, Remus turns it around and responds with an effusive overload her perceptions with accurate interactions as they occur throughout the effected space/ time of Transmetamorphosis, including the minds of ever more humans. The natural turning of the world towards this ultimate change begins to seduce Jean, as she envisions a world of empathy.
MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?
What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.
Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!
And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!
Such a world, however, cannot be held hostage by terror. Now she sees the image of Sulinar Vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in some alien armor...
Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!
JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s on the scent of my metallic playpal; could being a machine camouflage him? Whoa! Congrats, you’re bait now...try not to end up wolf chow!
Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower is more physically powerful, and also, that she senses her colluder’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.
Hands interfaced with components inside the super machine decode the digital analysis. MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?
What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.
Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!
In the inner chamber...
Phoenix sees the image of sulinar vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in alien armor...
Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!
MACHINE MAN (thinking) And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!
JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s sensed Machine Man. But she’s not going to reach him before she reckons with the Phoenix!
Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower’s manipulation of fundamental forces, her eyes aglow with malevolent inteligence, aware Machine Man’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.
Now it’s Machine Man’s turn: he telescopes his arm with her sitting on his palm, setting her high atop the machines out of the way.
MACHINE MAN: I realize I can’t be the first guy to put you on a pedestal, my pretty friend!
JEAN: Still he attempts to multitask communication with the machine, which he reasons is neutral, while battling the giant she wolf. Nice work, really!
Hmm...robots can be mutated, but I don't suppose I've considered mutant robots! What type of mutant doesn't have genes? I'm sure I could find something akin but distinct in races all over the universe.
(still JEAN): I'm momentarily safe, but someone must disrupt Remus Sharptooth now! My psi-shields keep me masked for now. If I dive for him, engage him in the physical plane....time to open my psi-link with Kurt, so he can see through me where to teleport; we'll double team!
Sharptooth is alert; he breaks out the blue flash balls to play 'chase!'
KURT (NIGHTCRAWLER): What's going on behind this platform?
JEAN (activating Phoenix force): Another plane; feels almost like the subconscious, like some deprivatory tank, floating in darkness. Well, as a telekinetic, if the Phoenix is ready to stan firm, she just wills a bottom to meet her boots and allow her to walk.
This being Sulinaro Vix has erected a translucent shield. What's this glow?
KURT( NIGHTCRAWLER): That's Storm! Possessed of a transfixing light.
JEAN: Machine Man appears, and I find myself easily reading his mind. It's...different; the information's very readily offered. His...humanity catches me a bit ...off-guard!
KURT: He's pointing to the Slay Box I noticed (what is that word I obtained; was it "slay" or "slave"?)
MACHINE MAN: It's Remus again! Do you see---
Machine Man and Phoenix gaze inside the field, tight around the Box: a giant head, a cavernous maw of doom Viking ghosts who comprise the blade’s flame; the team must fly onward, nonetheless.
On a fantastic plane of the mind and soul, Sharptooth’s head devours Earth’s Children of the Atom!!!
I'm close enough to observe his "ritual space;" so far, so good. I notice this amazing box, but all my attention goes to...Remus Sharptooth. I feel you at the borders of my mind.
So let’s be friends, huh? I’m Jean Grey! Who is the handsome fellow under all that fuzz!
REMUS: I DO have a handsome fellow inside!! Snarl!! Don't taunt me, fetching one!
What is your purpose here?
His mixed essential nature becomes an apparent truth.
Jean: "Have I struck a nerve?"
He’s both flattered and...defensive...what is going ON here? It’s like two minds... or even make that three or four at play; we’re not alone! There’s one I see above, and some other around me---!
REMUS: A nerve, a body, a sliver, a cell!
You don’t know what it’s like : plucked out of one history, one continuity, one set of stories, and put together in some new, melded form for the sake of unseen players?
JEAN GREY: You might be surprised what i know about that! Wolfie, I have to be frank, I get no sense you as either inherently good or evil...is this thing happening with everyone’s opening inner lives permanent? What’s going on? Maybe if we could just understand what you are doing here...you can feel some people are afraid, and I picture some disappearing, stressed out---how can all those folks be spared the fright of their lives?
REMUS: You sense it, do you not? Yes, particularly with the gifts I sense within you...you are the first living human I’ve yet encountered here. I do not seek to persuade nor offend you.
JEAN GREY: Could I help you figure out why you seem so uncomfortable?
REMUS: i KNOW not your role, nor bare enough, mine. Two voices in me, divided serving my master---
Sulinar Vix! Let the crystal power flow, as now all dragons arise. Let all become so wide minded as they, Returned One! Almighty Zavox, power of the empirical world, let rupture forth your change across the hastened reality of this planet!
JEAN GREY: So bright! Vibrations...hurt! ---it’s like agony with his spell.
Sensing her ESP probe, Remus turns it around and responds with an effusive overload her perceptions with accurate interactions as they occur throughout the effected space/ time of Transmetamorphosis, including the minds of ever more humans. The natural turning of the world towards this ultimate change begins to seduce Jean, as she envisions a world of empathy.
MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?
What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.
Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!
And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!
Such a world, however, cannot be held hostage by terror. Now she sees the image of Sulinar Vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in some alien armor...
Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!
JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s on the scent of my metallic playpal; could being a machine camouflage him? Whoa! Congrats, you’re bait now...try not to end up wolf chow!
Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower is more physically powerful, and also, that she senses her colluder’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.
Hands interfaced with components inside the super machine decode the digital analysis. MACHINE MAN: I think of what these explosions must sound like to regular guys like those soldiers I bumped into in the woods, before finding that weird hutch.
I wonder what their world will be like, as the colossal disturbances of these superbeings fill the air with the promise of forces beyond their control?
What clue will reflect this mission: the human adventurer Jean Grey and the cybernetic Machine Man, confronting the living conduit of enormous trigger energies: what this supercomputer identifies as Sharptooth, guarded by his partner the she wolf Corpse Flower, beside the extraordinary devices used to focus the M’Krann energies.
Extraordinary: the after effects of an event beyond even my ability to see, to the Milky Way’s edge!
In the inner chamber...
Phoenix sees the image of sulinar vix, who feeds the M’Krann powers to Remus, equipped in alien armor...
Sulinar vix (above great dissonance and wind): The purpose of your incarnation here is at hand, Remus Sharptooth. Open this world by your imagination...use these energies to unwrap the form of the Slay Box/ Slave Box to trigger the Five Dragons to End the Earth!
MACHINE MAN (thinking) And what of the origin of this source, tapped by Sharptooth; these machines, I’d estimate, reflect the engineering genius at least 5,000 very optimistic years of human existence. Is that where Sharptooth and company came from? Somehow, it seems the source of this machinery holds the strings back to the puppeteer of this whole she-bang!
JEAN GREY:
Where did that gigantic black she-wolf come from? It’s ---She’s sensed Machine Man. But she’s not going to reach him before she reckons with the Phoenix!
Another part of the revelations of the nature of this power and transformation comes from Machine Man’s digital analysis. Jean Grey senses Corpse Flower’s manipulation of fundamental forces, her eyes aglow with malevolent inteligence, aware Machine Man’s intrusion. She breaks stasis of action to attempt to distract Corpse Flower, which helps, but imperils her life.
Now it’s Machine Man’s turn: he telescopes his arm with her sitting on his palm, setting her high atop the machines out of the way.
MACHINE MAN: I realize I can’t be the first guy to put you on a pedestal, my pretty friend!
JEAN: Still he attempts to multitask communication with the machine, which he reasons is neutral, while battling the giant she wolf. Nice work, really!
Hmm...robots can be mutated, but I don't suppose I've considered mutant robots! What type of mutant doesn't have genes? I'm sure I could find something akin but distinct in races all over the universe.
(still JEAN): I'm momentarily safe, but someone must disrupt Remus Sharptooth now! My psi-shields keep me masked for now. If I dive for him, engage him in the physical plane....time to open my psi-link with Kurt, so he can see through me where to teleport; we'll double team!
Sharptooth is alert; he breaks out the blue flash balls to play 'chase!'
KURT (NIGHTCRAWLER): What's going on behind this platform?
JEAN (activating Phoenix force): Another plane; feels almost like the subconscious, like some deprivatory tank, floating in darkness. Well, as a telekinetic, if the Phoenix is ready to stan firm, she just wills a bottom to meet her boots and allow her to walk.
This being Sulinaro Vix has erected a translucent shield. What's this glow?
KURT( NIGHTCRAWLER): That's Storm! Possessed of a transfixing light.
JEAN: Machine Man appears, and I find myself easily reading his mind. It's...different; the information's very readily offered. His...humanity catches me a bit ...off-guard!
KURT: He's pointing to the Slay Box I noticed (what is that word I obtained; was it "slay" or "slave"?)
MACHINE MAN: It's Remus again! Do you see---
Machine Man and Phoenix gaze inside the field, tight around the Box: a giant head, a cavernous maw of doom Viking ghosts who comprise the blade’s flame; the team must fly onward, nonetheless.
On a fantastic plane of the mind and soul, Sharptooth’s head devours Earth’s Children of the Atom!!!
Sneak Peak, latest run, 2 Left Hands
I was just glad I made it this time! My whole evening was nearly ruined, but I wouldn't let it go---I mean, if you have any choice, why, right? So we got this down and had fun from there out.
I'd love to sing some of the riffs with more purity, but that's what practice is for; I just finished changing the lyrics again! hahah
The sound wasn't there on this one, and the arrangement has changed. I want to bring the keys back in, plus, of course, the Marc Kane
But I like the "around town romance" idea.
unconditional love, incomplete neighbor
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=173985179300203 Soda Bar,3615 El Cajon blvd. 8 o'clock to eleven! What else were you gonna do? Maybe a lot---but if you want a genuine change of pace, that's exactly what this trio will deliver. Come see them before they head for Washington after Christmas!
Here they were live, pardon the limits of my little camera, they played Rock the Quake for the Clermont House Orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti.
X-Men / Tranz Part One: Frightened Off the Face of the Earth!
"Frightened off the face of the earth!"
X-MEN/ TRANZ (featuring and dedicated to the stern-era uncanny x-men PUBLISHED BY MARVEL COMICS as written by Chris Claremont, drawn by John Byrne)
This story takes up nicely after x-men 124)
(this is my second draft, having redesigned the scenes more carefully to incorporate the individuality of the X-Men)
Written by Lue Lyron
If it weren't for X-men #188 (Dec. 1984)and Amazing Spider-Man in Marvel Tales #156 (Oct. 1983) I might not still be dreaming up stories with the X-Men and Spider-Man.
Truthfully, I've got one good story to tell with each of them this year: Spidey's came about the time of the oil spill on this very blog, http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/06/spill-and-spider-one-for-all-ages.html
Prelude: “Mama I don’t Wanna Be a Soldier!”
PVT. STEVE HOLT: Any other time, I’d love to be in Southern California. Even coming to this mountain on National Guard fire-training maneuvers with the Canadian Mounties isn’t the worst day I’ve had.
But now I’m sitting in the midst of a blazing ruin, beside a tank I drove over a ...troll or something, cradling a woman who saved my life, wondering if I am in love with her and why won’t she wake up.
I can’t say I’m losing my mind because of all those things. The strangest part, no, no, was all that, in the midst of the sensation I’m feeling the feelings and observing the thoughts of every person I see. I was glad to be apart, as that seem to make it quiet again in my head.
Feels like that’s about to end; someone’s reading my thoughts at this very minute. I don’t think it can be helped.
I know I can’t help how I feel about this chick. Wow: she threw me to safety, right before the hideout for these creatures blew sky high and set off this mess. I feel like she’s fighting the hidden conflict underneath it all, with her spirit, and I don’t know how I know that, but I can almost see her flying into the darkness, towards this sinister plateau of red light.
I don’t even know you, lady. You’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. For all I know, you’re married. Maybe I feel this way because you saved my life. Maybe it’s the adrenalin. And you’re hot. Maybe I’ve never known just what I’m doing on this planet, but maybe I’ve always wanted to feel this way.
“All you know is that you want to help her...” His mountie friend Dave Blancley has walked out of the brush, into the bright afternoon sun.
“Damn! Blancley, you read---“
“---That right out of your mind, I know, ‘Sarge’, it’s happening to everyone...is that thing under your tank alive?”
“I haven’t checked...but you know that. I’m just standing guard over this warrior lady’s body.”
BLANCLEY: On that subject, you’ll have to excuse my thoughts, buddy. Maybe she’s just in a trance!
PVT. HOLT: But you know that’s what I think.
BLANCLEY: It’s bizarre: seeing other’s inner thoughts, their loved ones, their frustrations, and every feeling that comes out fighting this wildfire.
One minute, Steve, we’re laughing over the jOYOUS Show and by the end of the day it’s like...the end of the world. Not exactly, but...you can sense it...this is happening elsewhere, too. It’s rather distracting, really; I had to get my head in the game and deal with the fire.
HOLT: I don’t know how else to thank the lady, bro, I just hope there’s more help than me.
BLANCLEY: But you will stick beside her.
HOLT: Damn right.
Perhaps it’s intuition---or some side effect of the increasing ripple effect of the Transmetamorphosis changing the Earth---but the soldier’s aware of another presence suddenly arrived upon the seen.
To stand before such a door way is to immerse one’s self in facing the direction of all one’s fears, and sense, moving forward, your survival’s path, its methods.
Now both soldiers become aware of aid, not only from the strange team of beings diving with Storm into the perilous recesses of the spreading phenomenon...
...but surfing atop turbulence as extra-dimensional energy from the astral plane is the consciousness of Professor Xavier---presently, from the rugged Muir Island!
XAVIER: In the act of discerning, clarity is everything. Sometimes, an act must be made certain with only the most doubtful perceptions.
From the core of his being, Professor Xavier becomes a mental mirror to Cerebro, his mutant detecting apparatus, an eye rolling over events of no less than a reality storm.
XAVIER: This distorting vision of the interlacing consciousnesses of the soldiers and fire fighters in the distance (as well as the Wolverine and Cyclops) suggests why unprepared humanity and Earth seem destined to shatter from this process of Tranz-Rupture. The adaptation of their minds to the accelerated empathy seems achievable---yet what is this? Those who fear most seem to simply ---vanish!
BEAST: I’m incredibly grateful to be back on the scene, myself. Jean and I are “tagging in” just in time, I hope. Cerebro’s keeping up with the team, but this about the people...vanishing!
XAVIER: My scans find a little evidence of them in their passing: traces of energy that radiate outward into the corridors of the fifth dimension, hinting at some existence elsewhere in the beyond.
I think the mystery could be fathomed by someone like you, Hank, who speculates upon the course of evolution--indeed, the hidden nature of the plan’s abandoned now, as pretense is no longer necessary in the face of naked power. I discern the source of power for this change, this rupture of normal reality, even such that it is: the M’Krann Crystal Its energies created a blinking of reality: fantastically, all ceased to exist in a barely detected split second, during a battle for the crystal involving the X-Men.
BEAST: Starcore One reported to the Avengers and FF immediately! It was beyond description...
XAVIER: Each action precedes a number of consequences, and the M’Krann “blink” was no exception. The energy was born in waves which proceeded the end of the universe as we experienced it--- save for the destiny of a universal force which has come to be part of Jean Grey.
BEAST: We’ve barely had time to talk about the artifact source. In fact, you and I haven’t at all; I knew the barest bit about how she’s...changed! (thoughtful pause.)
Glad her Phoenix powers let her join the team in Southern California.
XAVIER: The M’Krann Crystal, lies within the Shi’ar Galaxy. Its existence before the Milky Way existed has been marked with a special stargate alignment occurring regularly but extremely rarely throughout its existence. The alignment was manipulated by the mad Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken, whose ties and plans to involve Earthlings remain unrevealed. How now does an object, dormant throughout most of Eternity, shed consequences all the way from the Shi’ar Galaxy now?
BEAST: Reverberations in that very blinking of existence, as recorded by Peter Corbeau via Star Core One on that occasion have been harnessed, with minimal efficiency, into the necessary transformative power to choose an acceleration of evolution in both man and Earth.
Broken bells rustle by the oak door. Moira MacTaggert has proved a commendable tolerance, even enthusiasm, for these, her two touring guests, Charles XAVIER and The Beast. Their good conversation has led to quite an eventful afternoon.
As she turns from her wood stove top with a tray of tea, she senses something ineffable at stake, yet, she recognizes benevolent, yet awe-inspiring, energy in the traveling couple---even as she suspects they journey from the very place of XAVIER’s vision, dancing within Cerebro. He looks up.
XAVIER: Thank you. I trust you to understand the strenuous nature of this emergency.
MOIRA: Trouble at home?
XAVIER: You might say that.
MOIRA: Have no fear. You came to me to speak of other places where dwells the soul, friend. Now I must share my impressions with you, as I see outside you while you concentrate so feverishly.
XAVIER: The Beast seems to be recuperating energy from contact with our friends. The tea is very thoughtful.
MOIRA: Enjoy the ease in its heat, Charley. I feel the need to tell you of the three ghosts who surround the crystal ball’s tempestuous vision. What we gaze upon in this orb seems to be the very dreams of ghosts, lucid in the light of thousand year slumber coming to the threshold of wakening.”
THE BEAST: “Charles, do you recognize?”
XAVIER: Their language is Old Norse. They are adepts of some proficiency themselves; their intentions give me some notion what occurs in the most impenetrable place wherein Storm’s astral self seems to breech. She seems to be responding to her state of being by experiencing an environment about her as she plunges into the dark.
MACTAGGERT: Two are united as one...and the third is united into another pairing, as though merged, captured, contained...by one who is not of this world.
THE BEAST: Cerebro’s actually letting me keep touch with Ororo’s mind as she dives into the inner, exposed layer...his existence is growing so complex as to begin to unfold, as though archeypally.
XAVIER: Yet the wolf is a pawn, I think, to some greater outside presence!
THE BEAST: Nonetheless, Charles, it seems sure that this werewolf enchanter---his body, essences stolen from outside the known universe, yet bonded with something---human. Perhaps it’s a mutant?
XAVIER: If this being is composed of a dual nature, perhaps that way---holds the key to humanity grabbing some stake in the actions that cut and paste
The world we know.
He nods.
He begins to probe where the energies radiate, how they mix with the very fundamental place where human thought becomes human reality. “But should I discern the nature of this Transmetamorphosis,” he asks himself, “what then?”
Indeed---what then?
The Beast’s trance reassembles its contact with Storm, and now MACTAGGERT, XAVIER and The Beast all see the two ghosts united of which the Madame spoke.
In bolts of lightning are the two embodied: she, inside of him, and he, the very electricity commanded by the mutant X-Man.
Storm’s lips carry a song from her days as the goddess...adrift in her own
environment, Storm bears down upon the dark arena
where stands the transfixed wolf-man-god: Remus Sharptooth, drawing a techno-sorcerous circuit
triangulating the M’Krann energies and manipulation from the future itself,
as the world of our knowledge shatters.
X-MEN/ TRANZ (featuring and dedicated to the stern-era uncanny x-men PUBLISHED BY MARVEL COMICS as written by Chris Claremont, drawn by John Byrne)
This story takes up nicely after x-men 124)
(this is my second draft, having redesigned the scenes more carefully to incorporate the individuality of the X-Men)
Written by Lue Lyron
If it weren't for X-men #188 (Dec. 1984)and Amazing Spider-Man in Marvel Tales #156 (Oct. 1983) I might not still be dreaming up stories with the X-Men and Spider-Man.
Truthfully, I've got one good story to tell with each of them this year: Spidey's came about the time of the oil spill on this very blog, http://ceaseill.blogspot.com/2010/06/spill-and-spider-one-for-all-ages.html
Prelude: “Mama I don’t Wanna Be a Soldier!”
PVT. STEVE HOLT: Any other time, I’d love to be in Southern California. Even coming to this mountain on National Guard fire-training maneuvers with the Canadian Mounties isn’t the worst day I’ve had.
But now I’m sitting in the midst of a blazing ruin, beside a tank I drove over a ...troll or something, cradling a woman who saved my life, wondering if I am in love with her and why won’t she wake up.
I can’t say I’m losing my mind because of all those things. The strangest part, no, no, was all that, in the midst of the sensation I’m feeling the feelings and observing the thoughts of every person I see. I was glad to be apart, as that seem to make it quiet again in my head.
Feels like that’s about to end; someone’s reading my thoughts at this very minute. I don’t think it can be helped.
I know I can’t help how I feel about this chick. Wow: she threw me to safety, right before the hideout for these creatures blew sky high and set off this mess. I feel like she’s fighting the hidden conflict underneath it all, with her spirit, and I don’t know how I know that, but I can almost see her flying into the darkness, towards this sinister plateau of red light.
I don’t even know you, lady. You’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. For all I know, you’re married. Maybe I feel this way because you saved my life. Maybe it’s the adrenalin. And you’re hot. Maybe I’ve never known just what I’m doing on this planet, but maybe I’ve always wanted to feel this way.
“All you know is that you want to help her...” His mountie friend Dave Blancley has walked out of the brush, into the bright afternoon sun.
“Damn! Blancley, you read---“
“---That right out of your mind, I know, ‘Sarge’, it’s happening to everyone...is that thing under your tank alive?”
“I haven’t checked...but you know that. I’m just standing guard over this warrior lady’s body.”
BLANCLEY: On that subject, you’ll have to excuse my thoughts, buddy. Maybe she’s just in a trance!
PVT. HOLT: But you know that’s what I think.
BLANCLEY: It’s bizarre: seeing other’s inner thoughts, their loved ones, their frustrations, and every feeling that comes out fighting this wildfire.
One minute, Steve, we’re laughing over the jOYOUS Show and by the end of the day it’s like...the end of the world. Not exactly, but...you can sense it...this is happening elsewhere, too. It’s rather distracting, really; I had to get my head in the game and deal with the fire.
HOLT: I don’t know how else to thank the lady, bro, I just hope there’s more help than me.
BLANCLEY: But you will stick beside her.
HOLT: Damn right.
Perhaps it’s intuition---or some side effect of the increasing ripple effect of the Transmetamorphosis changing the Earth---but the soldier’s aware of another presence suddenly arrived upon the seen.
To stand before such a door way is to immerse one’s self in facing the direction of all one’s fears, and sense, moving forward, your survival’s path, its methods.
Now both soldiers become aware of aid, not only from the strange team of beings diving with Storm into the perilous recesses of the spreading phenomenon...
...but surfing atop turbulence as extra-dimensional energy from the astral plane is the consciousness of Professor Xavier---presently, from the rugged Muir Island!
XAVIER: In the act of discerning, clarity is everything. Sometimes, an act must be made certain with only the most doubtful perceptions.
From the core of his being, Professor Xavier becomes a mental mirror to Cerebro, his mutant detecting apparatus, an eye rolling over events of no less than a reality storm.
XAVIER: This distorting vision of the interlacing consciousnesses of the soldiers and fire fighters in the distance (as well as the Wolverine and Cyclops) suggests why unprepared humanity and Earth seem destined to shatter from this process of Tranz-Rupture. The adaptation of their minds to the accelerated empathy seems achievable---yet what is this? Those who fear most seem to simply ---vanish!
BEAST: I’m incredibly grateful to be back on the scene, myself. Jean and I are “tagging in” just in time, I hope. Cerebro’s keeping up with the team, but this about the people...vanishing!
XAVIER: My scans find a little evidence of them in their passing: traces of energy that radiate outward into the corridors of the fifth dimension, hinting at some existence elsewhere in the beyond.
I think the mystery could be fathomed by someone like you, Hank, who speculates upon the course of evolution--indeed, the hidden nature of the plan’s abandoned now, as pretense is no longer necessary in the face of naked power. I discern the source of power for this change, this rupture of normal reality, even such that it is: the M’Krann Crystal Its energies created a blinking of reality: fantastically, all ceased to exist in a barely detected split second, during a battle for the crystal involving the X-Men.
BEAST: Starcore One reported to the Avengers and FF immediately! It was beyond description...
XAVIER: Each action precedes a number of consequences, and the M’Krann “blink” was no exception. The energy was born in waves which proceeded the end of the universe as we experienced it--- save for the destiny of a universal force which has come to be part of Jean Grey.
BEAST: We’ve barely had time to talk about the artifact source. In fact, you and I haven’t at all; I knew the barest bit about how she’s...changed! (thoughtful pause.)
Glad her Phoenix powers let her join the team in Southern California.
XAVIER: The M’Krann Crystal, lies within the Shi’ar Galaxy. Its existence before the Milky Way existed has been marked with a special stargate alignment occurring regularly but extremely rarely throughout its existence. The alignment was manipulated by the mad Shi’ar Emperor D’Ken, whose ties and plans to involve Earthlings remain unrevealed. How now does an object, dormant throughout most of Eternity, shed consequences all the way from the Shi’ar Galaxy now?
BEAST: Reverberations in that very blinking of existence, as recorded by Peter Corbeau via Star Core One on that occasion have been harnessed, with minimal efficiency, into the necessary transformative power to choose an acceleration of evolution in both man and Earth.
Broken bells rustle by the oak door. Moira MacTaggert has proved a commendable tolerance, even enthusiasm, for these, her two touring guests, Charles XAVIER and The Beast. Their good conversation has led to quite an eventful afternoon.
As she turns from her wood stove top with a tray of tea, she senses something ineffable at stake, yet, she recognizes benevolent, yet awe-inspiring, energy in the traveling couple---even as she suspects they journey from the very place of XAVIER’s vision, dancing within Cerebro. He looks up.
XAVIER: Thank you. I trust you to understand the strenuous nature of this emergency.
MOIRA: Trouble at home?
XAVIER: You might say that.
MOIRA: Have no fear. You came to me to speak of other places where dwells the soul, friend. Now I must share my impressions with you, as I see outside you while you concentrate so feverishly.
XAVIER: The Beast seems to be recuperating energy from contact with our friends. The tea is very thoughtful.
MOIRA: Enjoy the ease in its heat, Charley. I feel the need to tell you of the three ghosts who surround the crystal ball’s tempestuous vision. What we gaze upon in this orb seems to be the very dreams of ghosts, lucid in the light of thousand year slumber coming to the threshold of wakening.”
THE BEAST: “Charles, do you recognize?”
XAVIER: Their language is Old Norse. They are adepts of some proficiency themselves; their intentions give me some notion what occurs in the most impenetrable place wherein Storm’s astral self seems to breech. She seems to be responding to her state of being by experiencing an environment about her as she plunges into the dark.
MACTAGGERT: Two are united as one...and the third is united into another pairing, as though merged, captured, contained...by one who is not of this world.
THE BEAST: Cerebro’s actually letting me keep touch with Ororo’s mind as she dives into the inner, exposed layer...his existence is growing so complex as to begin to unfold, as though archeypally.
XAVIER: Yet the wolf is a pawn, I think, to some greater outside presence!
THE BEAST: Nonetheless, Charles, it seems sure that this werewolf enchanter---his body, essences stolen from outside the known universe, yet bonded with something---human. Perhaps it’s a mutant?
XAVIER: If this being is composed of a dual nature, perhaps that way---holds the key to humanity grabbing some stake in the actions that cut and paste
The world we know.
He nods.
He begins to probe where the energies radiate, how they mix with the very fundamental place where human thought becomes human reality. “But should I discern the nature of this Transmetamorphosis,” he asks himself, “what then?”
Indeed---what then?
The Beast’s trance reassembles its contact with Storm, and now MACTAGGERT, XAVIER and The Beast all see the two ghosts united of which the Madame spoke.
In bolts of lightning are the two embodied: she, inside of him, and he, the very electricity commanded by the mutant X-Man.
Storm’s lips carry a song from her days as the goddess...adrift in her own
environment, Storm bears down upon the dark arena
where stands the transfixed wolf-man-god: Remus Sharptooth, drawing a techno-sorcerous circuit
triangulating the M’Krann energies and manipulation from the future itself,
as the world of our knowledge shatters.
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