Greeting Loyal Airmen, we are sure most of you who visit this Flight Log know what diehard Red Sox fans we are here at Airship 27 HQ.  But one of the things we've learned over the years is just how hard it is to win a World Series Championship at the end of a grueling season, unlike any other in sports.  In 2012 the Red Sox suffered one of their most humiliating seasons ever under the awful leadership of Billy Valentine. Things were shaken up at the end of that year, a new general manager in Ben Cherington was broad on board and he immediately hired John Farrell as the new Manager.  New pieces were added to the team and along came 2013, which all sportscasters predicted with we a so-so rebuilding season.  Yeah, right.  The team expected to simply break even won it all in one of the most amazing seasons in all of Red Sox history.  So 2013 ends and as ever, management loses some of their key players.  But not so much that it should adversely affect the chemistry of the team, right?  Wrong.  Whatever that unknown element is that bands a group of 25 men together to win a World Series, when you take out even one or two of these players you change the recipe and that, like this year, can prove to be disastrous.  Lo and behold, today the Red Sox, holding firm to the last place in their division, began trading off the best of their roster, especially in the pitching pen in the hopes of gaining what has been critically missing this year; consistent good pitching and hard hitting bats.  Within the last week they've let go of Jake Peavy (to the Padres), Felix Doubront (to the Cubs), Jon Lester (to Oakland A's), John Lackey (to the Cardinals), all starters at the beginning of the year and Andrew Miller (to the Orioles), a left handed reliever at the same time also swapping out utility player Jonny Gomes (to Oaklland) and short-stop Stephen Drew (to the Yankees).  For all this, they in turn got one of the best sluggers in all of baseball today, Yeonis Cespedes and at least 8 of the top young pitching prospects in the minor leagues.

What a difference a year does make.  Reading expert analysis throughout the day, it is clear baseball watchers think these moves were all smart and will help the Sox put together a powerful new team come April 2015.  But it sure will be a new team filled with lots of new faces.  That's the way the baseball roller-coaster goes, up one year and down the next.  Here's hoping 2015 the ride goes up again.

To moving on to other fun topic, one of our favorite sci-fi TV shows on the air these days is BBC America's amazing ORPHAN BLACK.   Last weekend at the huge San Diego Comic Con, it was revealed that IDW Comics is soon going to be publishing an Orphan Black comic book series and they revealed the cover art for the first series.  Imagine our surprise when we saw that it has been beautifully painted by our very good friend, artist Nick Runge.  Nick is one of the finest talents in commercial art today and he recently packed his bags and moved from San Diego to Los Angeles.  Look at that cover above closely and tell the Air Chief this fellow shouldn't be doing movie posters.  We wish Nick all the luck in the world and for sure, we're going to be picking up this comic when it comes out.

On the movie scene, we've been huge fans of French writer-director Luc Besson for many years and this past week went to see his latest, a sci-fi thriller called LUCY starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.  It takes its central plot from old notion that we human only used 10% of our brain's capacity. This theory had been suddenly debunked in recent years but hey, this isn't a biography, it's sci-fi and if you can believe a kid bitten by radioactive spider can then climbs walls, then sit back and enjoy a really well made suspense story about an innocent girl who has evolution forced upon her by a gang of criminals who cut her open and put a new experimental drug in her stomach.  When the bag accidentally ruptures, the chemicals begin to affect Lucy's brain, making it work evolve and thus giving her strange and alarming abilities.  Normally Besson's movies are all about the action, but that is not the case here and the appeal of this movie is watching how Lucy slowly begins to change and the apprehension at what she is becoming is the crux of the tale.  Kudos for Johnsson for making us believe this metamorphosis and as ever, Morgan Freeman, given very little to do here except explain the science metaphysics, does so brilliantly.  We think if he read the telephone book, he'd win an Oscar.  Anyway, if you'd like to see a very good, short and entertaining flick, we give LUCY two major thumbs up.

Next up our newest pulp adventure from Airship 27 Productions is now on-sale at Amazon.com
CHALLENGER STORM # 2 CURSE OF POSEIDON by Don Gates with art by the great Michael Kaluta is an action packed sequel to the first Challenger Storm book we released a little over a year ago.  Gates packs old fashion pulp thrills on every page.  And we are thrilled to have it out now. We will have copies at this year's Pulp Fest.  Speaking of whick….

Finally we'd like to remind all you Loyal Airmen one last time that Pulp Fest coming fast. In fact this time next week, the Air Chief and his partner, Rob Davis, will be in Columbus, Ohio manning our two Airship 27 tables stacked high with all our latest pulp novels and anthologies.  The show looks to be bigger and better this year and we truly hope to see many of you there again this year.  Okay, back to packing.

Ron – Over & Out!