Timing, part twenty-six.

The girl that casual Captain Kirk is chasing is from McFarlane's Conan line, and is slightly more poseable than, say, a pencil.

We're just playing here, but in the Marvel Universe proper, it might stand to reason that Reed Richard's may have written a book or two. Given his somewhat staid image and dry presentation, he may make Al Gore look like the party machine, though. Now, granted, compared to the much more lively Torch or Thing, Reed seems like a droning lecturer; but the fact is, he is really excited about what he's doing. Reed's not going to be jumping up and down and waving his arms, but he is.

Of course, there are at least two very good reasons why Mr. Fantastic may not be on the New York Times Bestsellers' List: Reed may be leery of publishing anything that could possibly lead to Dr. Doom, the Wizard, or some nameless clod opening a hole into the Negative Zone and sucking the earth into it. Also, Reed has a surprisingly flighty nature: one week, it's unstable molecules, the next it's a new rocket, then it's back to trying to cure the Thing. Reed's an idea man, not so great on follow-through: almost any given one of his inventions or discoveries could change the course of the world, if he wasn't already on to the next one.

This is a lot of write-up on a character that doesn't appear this strip...Nightcrawler mentions Reed's time-travel theories, which are prominent in Marvel Two-in-One #50 and later, Alex Ross and Jim Krueger's Earth X series, especially Paradise X. It may be overly optimistic to think he can fix their problem by reading all about it, and I'm not sure where Kurt got those books, either. Also, one of the stacks is a solid piece, from a Simpsons figure; but the other pile is individual pieces, which I knocked over and stacked out of order multiple times. Swell.