Greetings Loyal Airmen, the Air Chief is back in his office at Hangar 27 after having spent an amazing weekend in Norman, Oklahoma at the 45th Annual Oklahoma Fiction Writers Conference.  Yup, you read that correctly; this super talented organization of writers has been around for 45 years!!  That in itself is a grand achievement indeed.  As you know, the Air Chief and his pal, artist Rob Davis, were invited this year to present workshops on how to create graphic novels. We did two of these and they were extremely well received.  Everyone one we met, from President Patty Stith, who was kind enough to invited us, to all the attendees were the most gracious people ever and we'd like to think we made tons of new friends in the wonderful Sooner state.  Here's hoping they invited us back again soon.  (Pun intended…chuckle.)

                   
                                 Rob Davis  – Christopher Chance – The Air Chief
And speaking of “new” friends, we are really happy to meet an “old” one for the very first time.  Christopher Chance (yes, the comic book hero WAS named after him, as he is a good friend of comic writer Len Wein) is someone the Air Chief had met on the social network Facebook several years ago.  Chris is one creative dude and as it happens we have the same conservative political leanings, so we became buddies. When he learned Rob and me would be in Norman, Oklahoma, he jumped into his car and drove 137 miles up from his home in Texas just to spend Saturday with us.  What a great guy!!  He even took us out to lunch on top of that.  Thanks so much Chris, it was one of the highlights of this trip to finally meet you in person. Here's hoping we do it again often.

                              
                                                    Denver Comic Con 2012
And speaking of conventions and conferences, no sooner were we back in Colorado and getting settled into the office to tackle the stack of editing chores before us then the good folks in Denver sent along our table number placement for this year's big Denver Comic Con.  Last year, the Air Chief and Val were guest at the premier of this truly super comic con and we had a blast (see photo above).  We're most anxious to get back this year and for all you Loyal Airmen who plan on joining us there, you will find the Air Chief at Table D-15 in Artist Valley.
We'll be bringing more fun comics and for the first time a few of our Captain Hazzard pulp novels.  Hope to see you there, Loyal Airmen.

Because we were out of town last weekend, the Air Chief made it a point to get to the local cinema this past week to see the new comic book movie blockbuster, IRON MAN 3 and we loved it, start to finish.  Of course there are major deviations taken from the actual comic and several of our colleagues who love this character were very upset with these changes.  As someone who hated the GREEN HORNET movie of a few years ago, the Air Chief can certainly empathize with their disappointment.  Still, despite these variations, we absolutely thought the movie was a thrill ride from beginning to end and the cast superb.  Robet Downey Jr, from the first movie in this trilogy has truly been Tony Stark for us and this particular entry seems to come full circle tying up many loose ends and of course setting the stage for the eventual coming of AVENGERS 2 in a few more years. So major thumbs up to a great action movie.

    
                     Special Effects Genius Ray Harryhausen & model of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG
Of course one of the primary reasons Val and the Air Chief enjoyed IRON MAN 3 was the amazing special effects throughout the entire flick.  Which is a poetic segue in our saying farewell to one of the true pioneers of Hollywood movie magic, Ray Harryhausen who passed away this week at the age of 94.  As a teenage boy of 13, Ray saw the original black and white KING KONG and was instantly mesmerized by the stop-motion technique used by the brilliant effects man, Willis O'Brien to make the giant gorilla come to life on screen. Ray proceeded to learn everything he could about the process, bought himself a movie camera and set up his own studio in his family's garage where he began making his own stop-motion shorts.

After graduating from high school, he traveled to Hollywood and somehow managed to get a meeting with his hero, O'Brien and showed the old movie maker his work. O'Brien hired him to work in his shop which led to Harryhausen becoming the chief FX tech on the movie, MIGHT JOE YOUNG, though he was never given screen credit for the movie.  With that success behind him, Ray went to on join forces with other producers to create amazing movies that would push Special Effects forward, allowing it to blend seamlessly with live action and thus be able to put actors in the same scenes with sword-wielding skeletons or have giant lizards came slithering through the streets of Rome.

In his brilliant career, fantasy movie fans soon began to recognize his touch and his films became classics of the genre from JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, to his SINBAD trilogy and up to his last spectacular, the original CLASH OF THE TITANS.  It is no surprise he won several Oscars for his work and ultimately one for Lifetime Achievement.  He influenced two generations of movie makers and such luminaries as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have all paid homage to him with their own movies of the fantastic, testifying that without Ray Harryhausen, they mostly likely would not have been able to produce the movies they did.
And so he's gone, but his magical movies live on and will continue to entertain us for many more generations to come.  Rest in peace, Ray, and thank you from one of your millions of fans.

Ron – Over & Out.