Way back in September, I gave everyone a "heads-up" on a new comic called Grave Digger. From the previews that I'd seen, I thought that it'd appeal to many of our ZONErs. I received my copy last week and I've probably read it four or five times since then. It's great stuff. As you can see HERE, HERE, and even HERE, I'm not alone in my opinion.

Mills and Burchett have come together to create a comic that truly entertains. I'm hoping that the book will do well enough for more Grave Digger tales to be told.

If Grave Digger looks like something you'd enjoy, then by all means, have your local comic dealer order you a copy.

Or, if you want to get your copy quicker, you can order one on-line [at a discount] by clicking HERE.

And no, I don't get a kickback on this -- I just want to do my part to support a book that I really like!

The Wicked West is like a Reese's Cup. A Reese's Cup combines peanut butter and chocolate which by themselves are great, but together are even better!

Well... that's what The Wicked West is like. Writers, Todd Livingston and Robert Tinnell have teamed with artist, Neil Vokes to bring us a horror story wrapped in a western. And the end result is something even better.

I'd been looking forward to The Wicked West since I first heard the tagline: Suppose Joesy Wales rode into Salem's Lot. Man, that is the best pitch I've heard for any movie, comic, book or tv show in years.

The cool thing is that Vokes, Livingston and Tinnell lived up to the tag line! They created an ambitious story which not allows us to see "what really happened" in 1870 when Cotton Coleridge rode into a town under seige by vampires but also how the story was adapted to the "silver screen" for a "singing cowboy" movie in the 1930's. The art and story mesh perfectly. I think that anyone who is a fan of westerns, horror or simply great graphic novels would love The Wicked West.

Neil said that he had a blast drawing The Wicked West and it shows. I know I had a blast reading it, and like after eating one Resse's Cup, it left me happy, but ready for another!

When I was a kid, The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade was a big deal. Everyone would watch it... and I mean everyone.

Not just kids waiting for the turkey to be done, parents and grandparents would join their kids to watch as the marching bands, floats, convertbles with celebrities, and character balloons passed by.

And speaking of character balloons, did you know that the first were Felix the Cat, the Dragon, the Elephant, and the Toy Solider who appeared in the first Macy's parade in 1927.

Here are a few other things that I'll bet you didn't know about the parade:

1] The first balloons used in the parade were filled with helium, and would have exploded had they reached too high an altitude!

2] The second year Macy's came up with a helium and air mixture that is still used to this day.

3] Starting the second year and for the next three years, the balloons were released into the air at the end of the parade. Cash prizes were offered to those who found and returned the balloons.

Clarence Chamberlain, a pilot flying above New York City, caught the Pig Balloon in midair in an effort to be first to collect the prize money; and the following year, an aviator almost crashed into Broadway in an attempt to be the first to get a balloon. Due to stunts like these the practice of releasing the balloons at the end of the parade was stopped in 1933.

So here we are overy 70 years later and the parade is still on, but does anybody watch anymore? Seems like even parade organizers are having trouble getting celebrities to come to the darn things. I guess we live in a world that is just too fast paced. We don't have time for a good parade anymore.

And that's too bad, because when I was a kid...