My Fowl-Weather Friend

Let me share my story.

In 2004, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. She was diagnosed on a Wednesday, and her surgery was a couple days later, on Friday. I never realized until then just how close I came to losing her. She's the Iris to my Barry Allen; the Sue to my Ralph Dibney. We'd been married for 14 years. My wife wanted to have kids since the second after I proposed. I said "I do", she said, "Let's get crackin' mister!" When she came out of surgery, she told me she wanted to adopt. We held hands tight. I said, "Yes, ma'am."

By October 2010, we were no closer to being a blended family than we were in August of 2004, after her surgery. 

Hopeless, we were about to give up. We decided not to update with the agency we were working with. After Christmas that year, I posted a status on Facebook.

"I want to be a Dad in 2011." 

Remember, we were not with any adoption agency at the time.

A friend saw my post.

"There's this boy..." A family was set to adopt our son. One of their natural children had just been diagnosed. The diagnosis set them on a very expensive path. They couldn't adopt our son.

January 3rd, 2011, I met my son for the first time. I was introduced to him as "Papa Dave". He was here from Kiev, Ukraine on a hosting program. We spent the final week of his three week visit together. After that week, my wife and I knew he was our son.

We left for Kiev to bring our on home September 11, 2011. He came home for good October 23rd, 2011.

Mission accomplished!

(Our son introduced us to our second son; our second son introduced us to our daughter. I am blessed that my children chose us.)

I took a number of comforts for the trip. I took my Bible. I took Alex Ross' Justice. I took my buddy Bill Halliar's Evilman. I took Wes Molebash's You'll Have That. I took Teen Titans: Year One. I took The All-New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #1 - "Bottle of The Planets" - which is an awesome The World's Finest team-up of Batman and Superman.

I took pictures of me reading in the "library" in our apartment in Kiev. 

I picked up a copy of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl. 

I devoured that book on the trip. I was lucky to find an English book store in the subway mall under Independence Square in Kiev. I bought and devoured the second and third book in the series. I read the comic book adaptation of the first novel. It's okay. Disney just released the trailer for the film adaptation due next August 9th. It looks pretty good from the preview. Dame Judi Densch does the voiceover on the trailer. Kenneth Branagh is directing. He directed the first Thor film.   

As you can imagine, I hope it's a spectacular adaptation.

I consider Artemis a good friend. I hope Disney and Kenneth Branagh do Artemis right.

Creature Comforts From Home II: You'll Have That

The Multiverse is cruel and unfair.


"You'll Have That" Finale, @ Copyright 2014 Wes Molebash
 

I'm not sure how I came across Wes Molebash's webcomic, You'll Have That, but I really enjoyed it and was sorry to see it come to an end. I'm not sure how to describe it. I read super hero comics, and this was a non-super hero webcomic. I guess I would compare it to Mad About You; Friends - focusing specifically on Monica and Chandler post-finale. It was a rare, unique webcomic that celebrated married life with a daily gag about today's nerd/geek males that read comic books, play video games and guitar; yet know nothing about real sports or car maintenance. I found a lot of common ground with Wes' Andy in You'll Have That. The only difference was geography. Both Wes and Andy are from Ohio. I grew up in Illinois and travelled a little for my career in radio. I grew up reading comic books and played rhythm guitar in a "garage band" that never went anywhere, but sure was fun to do! While I didn't dream about making my mark as a cartoonist like Wes' Andy, I still dream about making my mark as a comic book writer.

1985 Guitar Dave

The picture above is of me a couple years after high school, the summer of '85, when me and my buddies went into a recording studio and recorded seven songs for a demo tape. We had three major songs that we wrote and produced for the demo. A couple instrumentals. The guitar I am playing is home built. My buddy Derrick built it. The wires on the backside were exposed, so every now and again I would get a heckuva jolt in the gut. Ah, good times, good times...

Soul Mates

There was something else about You'll Have That that spoke to me. Just like Monica and Chandler on Friends, Andy and Katie really loved one another. It was funny to see a gag poking fun at either Andy or Katie, but it was fun and touching to see a strip where she saw him as a super-hero for killing a spider or walking her across the street and him picturing her as a vision of loveliness, enraptured and overwhelmed by her natural beauty.

Along for the ride, was Andy's best friend Steve; who was kind of like Selby in the early episodes of Mad About You. Selby apparently didn't test very well with the audience, so the character was dropped in favor of Paul's cousin Ira. What was unique about the strip, was Steve found a girl himself, and the strip added a dimension by focusing on "couplehood".

From start to finish, the strip maintained it's celebration of relationships, marriage, fidelity and faith.

You will find no end to webcomics that push the boundaries of taste, class, values and morals. What I have enjoyed is, no matter what strip Wes moved on to from You'll Have That, it was more grounded in Mayberry than in Jersey Shore. I felt good reading the strip. Reading You'll Have That was like reading a Love Is... newspaper comic strip.

The reason I feel that the Multiverse is cruel and unfair is that a guy like Wes Molebash - just like my friend Bill Halliar - should be creating regular monthly comic books. If Art Balthazar and Franco can create great comics, then so can Wes and Bill.

The reason I call my blog Earth-Dave, is that we all create our own personal universe. DC and Marvel have an infinite number of universes filled to bursting with innumerable characters. On Earth-Dave, You'll Have That never ended. Even though they are characters in a webcomic, Andy and Katie are still having happily married adventures full of wacky hijinks.

You'll Have That signed limited-edition comic!

I brought Volumes 1 and 2 and my signed, limited-edition You'll Have That comic book, with a very nice sketch included on our trip to Kiev to bring home our daughter, Masha, because on these trips, my wife, Cathy, and I have had a chance to spend some quality time together enjoying each other's company...And getting on each other's nerves. The two of us have an opportunity to re-connect and bond with one another as we are developing a bond with our kids - each one, one at a time. This is our third and probably final trip to Kiev - or anywhere - to adopt. From this point on we'll be spending quality time as a family of five, with a few moments for ourselves here and there.

That might make an interesting webcomic...

You'll Have That is one of my creature comforts from home that I've brought to enjoy re-reading for a good laugh.

Thanks, Wes!

Creature Comforts From Home I: Evilman

KIEV, UKRAINE - Wednesday, April 16th, 2014

My wife, Cathy, and I are in Kiev to bring home our daughter, Masha. We've been in Kiev a week and a half now. I should be home with our daughter by Memorial Day weekend. Most of what you are seeing in the news about Ukraine is happening south in Crimea, or east, along the Ukrainian-Russian border. There is still an Occupy movement going on in Kiev. There are still tents, shelters and barricades in Independence Square.

The Square is at the bottom of a hill. It is the heart and center of the city. There is an underground, two-level shopping mall; and below that, is the hub of the city's subway system, Maidan station. Maidan is one of the three Metro, or subway lines through the city. Maidan is the Blue line that runs north to southwest. There is another platform in the station for the east-west Red line. One stop south, there is a connection for the northwest-to-southeast Green line.

At the top of the hill there is Parliament and the Ukrainian government offices. There is a cathedral outside Parliament, on one side and on the other a longer diplomatic academy building. In the parking lot for all three of these, there is the another barricade. It is all very Les Miz.



  
We're here just to get through the process of adopting our third child, a daughter, Masha. A week and a half here, and we are waiting for our court date on our motion to adopt. Ten days after that we will get our court decree approving the motion and then the final days spent here will be getting her new birth certificate, passport, visa from the U.S. Embassy and final physical before we head back home. It is a long and involved process that means an extended stay here in Kiev. This is the third time we have adopted from Ukraine. My wife and I have been chronicling our story on Facebook at Cathy and Dave's Adoption Journey.

On our first trip, I had just picked up Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's first issue of The New 52 Justice League. I spent seven weeks re-reading that one issue, along with Alex Ross and Jim Krueger's twelve-issue opus, Justice. I brought the three softcover trade paperbacks. I was reading Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, and enjoying it immensely.

On our second trip, Justice came along with again, along with six, seven or eight issues of Marvel's Avengers Assemble tie-in comic to the Disney XD animated series.

This third, and final trip, the stack is a little larger.

One of the books that I've brought along to re-read is on by a good friend of mine, Bill Halliar. Evilman Saves The World #1, published by Moonstone Books.

Sittin' in the...uh, liberry, reading...

I haven't read Deadpool, but I guess if you are fan of Marvel's Deadpool, Dark Horse's The Mask, Rob Schrab's Scud, The Disposable Assassin, Ben Edlund's The Tick and characters like that, then Evilman Saves The World is for you. Bill did both the story and the art for the book. In a nutshell, while eating breakfast, Evilman fends off an alien invasion with the help of his breakfast cereal. And, a small firearm. Free... inside his breakfast cereal. It is wacky and irreverent. Like The Simpsons comics, there is a gag in almost every panel. There is also a set-up and then a gag. So, it is almost twice the laughs in every panel.

The reason I brought this along is I needed a good laugh. Evilman delivers.

The first page has a bunch of good laughs. The paper Evilman is reading is called The Poop. Evilman is holding a coffee mug with the inscription "Caffeine is Life", while he is reading his morning paper. Called "The Poop". Did I mention already that the paper is called, "The Poop"? Evilman's breakfast cereal of choice is Yak Puffs, with a "FREE! Small Firearm Inside!" The front page banner headline of the paper - called "The Poop", y'know - reads "Macabre Moon-Monster Menace". I can only guess that is a nod to Mr. Nightmare's Wonderful World, another Moonstone Book, by Dave Ulanski. That's just the first page, and I'm hooked. But, that's just me.

Evilman Saves The World is good for a laugh. That's what I need. These trips have been stressful. It is not easy being a foreigner in a foreign country like Ukraine, in a city like Kiev. I have great respect for the people here. I just need a little creature comfort from home. Like a sinister pickle.

Seriously. Evilman looks like a pickle with arms and legs. It's hilarious!