Greetings Loyal Airmen. In a few ore days our beloved Red Sox will put FINIS on one of the worst season the team has ever recorded.  As I right these words, Manager Bobby Valentine appears to be on his way out the door after only one season.  Throughout the painful ordeal of the season one thing became abundantly clear and that was the pitching SUCKED!!  Sorry, but that was the elephant in the room that management kept ignoring.  All the starters from a worn out to Josh Beckett to useless Dice-K and a losing John Lester couldn't give us consistent wins over any period of time. And as the pitching goes, so does the entire team.  The Air Chief doesn't hold out much hope for next season either unless this Achilles Heel is remedied.

             
                              FORMER CATCHER & CAPTAIN JASON VARITEK
One small step in the right direction occurred this afternoon when the Red Sox hired former catcher and team captain Jason Varitek as a “Special Assistant” to the General Manager.  Kind of a vague job title, but most reporters who cover the Sox believe it was Tek's amazing knowledge of the pitching staff that made him one of the finest catchers in team history and they are most likely going to have him work closely with next year's rotation.  Now as much as the Air Chief admires and respects Tek and is happy to have him aboard, the true solution is still to get rid of their bad pitchers (regardless of cost) and get new ones. It's going to be a long winter, Red Sox fans.

On a much happier note, Marvel Studio released the long awaited AVENGERS movie on DVD and Blu-Ray discs this week and it is selling through the roof.  No surprise as this is one of the biggest selling films of all time and all of us knew fans who had seen the movie multiple times in theaters were going to want to own.  Hey, the Air Chief was the first through the doors at our local Target store to pick up the Deluxe Blu-Ray set above and we don't even have a 3D set.  Ha.  That's how much we love this movie.

And while Marvel Studios was parading out AVENGERS on disc, Warner Brothers Animation wasn't about to be undone and they released part one of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS based on the highly respected graphic novel by Frank Miller.  Although Marvel may be winning the live-action competition as far as movies go at the box office, they really come in a far-far second to DC's animated features via Warner Bros. Animation. The Air Chief has been a huge fan of WB Animation for years now and will certainly be picking up this title shortly.  Hey, we do have a fixed budget here.  Ha.

            
                        ROUGHS OVER SCRIPT
And finally we wanted to share the above image with all of you.  Artist Jesus Marquez is now illustrating a short four page comic story the Air Chief penned for the forthcoming Zone 4 Comic Book.  As it turns out Jesus was recently recruited for Jury Duty where he lives and so he decided to bring the script with him and while waiting to see if he would be called to sit on any trials, Jesus took the Air Chief's script and began to do what we call roughs and breakdowns to give him ideas on how he would eventually lay out his actual comic pages. We love this behind the scene look at how comics are made and wanted to share it with all of you.

And there you have another week Loyal Airmen.  As ever thanks for dropping by and for you support. Take care and look out, here comes October and HALLOWEEN!! 
Ron – Over & Out!