Greetings, Loyal Airmen.  The Air Chief has always believed that no act of kindness ever goes unrewarded in this world. No matter how small that kindness may be, one never knows how it may some day come back to you.  Which is what happened recently to the Air Chief.  You see, long ago back in the early 80s we were writing the second Volume of Green Hornet adventures for Now Comics.  At that particular time there was no regular art team assigned to the book and it seemed like every other issue there was a new artist on board.  Now most of these were professionals we had heard of in the business and then there were the new kids whose names were totally alien to us.  Such was the case with issue # 21 titled The Return of Mr.Death.

             
                 Green Hornet # 21 Vol. Two
We were told by our editor that a new kid, one Joe Bennett, would be drawing that particular issue.  Okay, all well and good.  Several months later the book is published and for the first time we saw Mr. Bennett's work. And we liked it, a whole lot.  There was something really original about his style with both pencil and inks.  Delighted by his work on that single issue, we wrote him a letter telling him so and sent it off to him via the publisher.  End of story.  As far as we were concerned you see, because Joe never did another issue of the Green Hornet.  Eventually the series and Now folded and all of us moved on.

As time passed, we did lots of other comics and eventually drifted out of the industry to devote ourselves to prose writing etc. and quite frankly we never heard the name Joe Bennett again.  And had absolutely no clue as to what had happened to him.  Until two weeks ago when out of the blue Joe sends us an e-mail asking if we would like to join him in creating an original science fiction adventure comic project that he has been working on for the past ten years called Neutral World.  At first we honestly didn't recognize who he was, although the name struck a faint bell in our memory gray cells.  Joe mentioned how we had sent him a letter and how much it had meant to him and now he very much wanted to work with us again.  Oh, and in his second letter he send along some artwork.

           
                                    Art From NEUTRAL WORLD by Joe Bennett
And our eyes widened in sheer amazement.  Above is just one of the awesome illustrations Joe sent us.  Well, Loyal Airmen, by now the Air Chief was really-really curious as to who this guy was and what he had been doing the last eighteen years since that long ago Green Hornet comic.  So we surfed over to the internet and lo and behold we discovered some pretty fantastic things about Mr.Joe Bennett.  Bron in 1968, his real name is Benedito Jose Nascimento and he hails from Belem in Brazil.  He obviously changed his name to appease American publishers.  He is a self-taught artist and for the past eighteen years has had a remarkable professional career having worked on such characters as Spider-Man, Captain American, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Teen Titans, Hawkman, Birds of Prey and many, many others.  He is considered one of the finest comic book artist in the business today.

Which is why we were bowled upon learning of Joe's truly great career.  Off all the pro comic writers out there he could have tapped to work on this, his personal dream project, he came to us.  Why?  Because Joe is at heart a sentimental guy and he always remembered his first ever comic book gig and the nice letter he got from that writer telling him how good an artist he was.  And that, Loyal Airmen is a hell of a moral to remember.  Right now, Joe and the Air Chief are packaging Joe's notes into a workable presentation package and we have a great comic book publisher very interested in seeing it once done.  So hang in there, keep your fingers crossed for us and we will keep you posted as NEUTRAL WORLD moves ahead.

Jumping further back into the Way-Back Time Machine, we wonder how many of you remember a wonderful movie called THE GOONIES.  Written by Chris Columbus and directed by Richard Donner, it is the stories of a bunch of kids who lived in the Goon Dock neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon in 1985.  When the city starts making plans to raze the neighborhood for whatever reasons, the gang, led by actors Sean Austin and Corey Feldman decide to find the treasure of a 17th Century pirate named One-Eyed Willy and save the day.  The movie, produced by Steven Spielberg, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.  We tell you all this because our daughter Michelle and her family gave the Air Chief a Goonies tee-shirt for Father's Day a few weeks back and we love it.

           
                       The Big Goonie
All of which got us thinking, why hasn't Spielberg and company gotten around to doing a sequel?  There had been some talk a few years ago that someone wanted to do a “remake.”  Which we find stupid. All they would have to do is bring back the original kid cast, now all grown up and with their own sons and daughters who would naturally become the “new” Goonies.  It such as logical progression.  We mentioned this idea over on Facebook and many, many friends chimed in affirmatively.  So come on, Spielberg, give us GOONIES 2!!

And with that we wrap it up for this weekend.  HAPPY 4th of JULY to all our Loyal Airmen and God Bless America.  She's still young as ever.
Ron – Over & Out.