Yesterday comic book artist Al Rio commited suicide. He was mostly known for his various pinup style drawings, particularly in the pages of Gen 13, and cover art for various Zenescope properties, including Grimm Fairy Tales. Being as I’m in South Jersey, and Zenescope is based just outside of Philadelphia, I’ve meet him at a few Wizard Worlds, and he was a pretty cool dude.

I am a big fan of his art, and he will be missed. In memorial, I thought I would share some of my favorite covers he has done, including those I own.

I never had a Game Boy when I was a kid (I did have a Game Gear though), so I never really played the games. I’ve played Red/Blue about 50% through on emulator, but never managed to finish, and if you can’t battle against real people it gets pretty pointless. I however played a lot of Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Stadium against my friend’s little brother. I also skipped many a class in college to watch the first season episodes.

From what I’ve been told (i.e. read on Wikipedia and seen on The Wonder Years), the 70’s were a pretty loose time, even in July of 1978, a full year before the infamous Disco Demolition Night. I can only assume that the swinging excesses of a decade of drugs and disco lead to parents who simply were too strung out to notice what their kids were doing, let alone care (Red Forman?). I mean, how else to you explain this?

I don’t have a lot in general going on, as I’ve already kicked a bunch of stuff off my bucket list. I, like everyone else, am very interested in The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, along with World War Z, Amazing Spider Man, and who doesn’t wanna see Battleship! Oh, Ok, just me then on that one I guess.

Two years ago when I learned they would be making an MMO based on Star Trek, I was in. In fact, I bought a brand new high end laptop just to play it on, and a lifetime membership before ever even playing I was so excited. I even bought the tie in novel. I’m not a huge gamer, but I’d done some MMO play before. I played WoW for 4 years until it got to be too much of a job and my real job was interfering with it, and I was in the betas for Earth & Beyond and MultiPlayer Battletech, two other Sci Fi MMO’s that crashed and burned that no one else remembers. Yesterday, being January 17 (17/01, see what they did there?), Star Trek Online went free to play. What are a huge Star Trek nerd’s thoughts on this, and STO in general?

Read on after the jump.

As I’ve stated before, I have a lot of comics. As of my last check, the count is 4813, or about 33 short boxes full. I basically have a small comic shop in my closet. In fact, I had to go spend about $150 to build more shelves in my closet to handle them all. See for yourself. Note however, this does not include the 3 short boxes full I bought between the bi-monthly Philadelphia Comic Con yesterday and at Frankenstein Comics’ New Years Day sale. It’s a lot of work keeping track of all those comics, and keeping them in order. So how do I do it? With the Collectorz CLZ Comics app.

Howdy folks! Welcome to the first of a recurring series. When I thought of the idea for this site, I immediately knew what I wanted to write about. I had a picture in my mind of it. As it turns out, it’s the picture below. But before I show it to you, let me tell you the story of how I came to see said picture.