"America's Pasttime."

All together now: Click to enlarge!



Three years down, and according to my blogger dashboard, this is like my 1001st post. Um, no: there's a good fistful of drafts and posts that saved multiple times, so not quite. Getting there, though.

Personally, this last year was very much not the best year ever. But, I am glad I have the time and comics and toys to do this blog--a lot of the blogs on my sidebar aren't as lucky, and I miss them. And I'm very grateful to everyone who has stopped by, linked, left a comment, or followed this nonsense. Thanks again.

OK, some notes! The baseball diamond is about three dollars worth of construction paper and foam, with bases made from a cut-up backing board...that I cut off in most of the photos. I'm not a realistic set builder, no: I just try to vaguely approximate where I'm setting the strip, like stage theatre. Nightcrawler's glove is leftover foam. The bat is from a Playmates Simpsons figure, but I'm not positive who. Nelson, maybe. Of course, Nelson can hold a bat, which is more than can be said for Booster Gold and Superman, who both have two clenched fists. The bat was a bit too big for Wonder Woman to grip, but at least she had open hands. (You could definitely get a more realistic bat from a McFarlane sports figure, but I didn't find one marked down that had a bat...) The baseball is Captain Sisko's, from Art Asylum/Diamond Select's Star Trek: Deep Space 9 line: they gave a lot of accessories with those. The ball's actually mounted on a little black stand, but I didn't want to risk shredding the ball removing it.

Now, we ran a lot of superhero baseball panels earlier this week, and it may have occurred to you as well just what a phenomenally terrible idea playing baseball with super-powered hitters like Colossus or Superman would be. That panel with Wonder Man pitching against Thor? WM throws so hard, the ball's almost on fire, which means it's probably faster than the human eye can see, and Hank Pym's catching those? Sure, he's got a big glove, but if Thor tips one back Pym's a dead man.

In the X-Men Evolutions game, Sunspot powers up and knocks out a big one, and Nightcrawler teleports up for the catch. Which is so hard, it throws him back into the Danger Room windows, and Jean has to telekinetically catch Kurt. Of course, in a training situation like this, the danger of superpowered line drives can be written off to being aware of potential hazards, like a live-fire drill. Maybe. At any rate, if you're headed to a game this Memorial Day, have fun, and try not to dwell on Superman's batting average...

With this and the holiday, we're going to be out until Wednesday, but we'll have a new strip then! Hope to see you there...figuratively.