Back in 1985, after having had some small successes with short comic strip projects, artist Gary Kato and I decided to try our hands at a full blown mini-series. The result was the five issue STREET-FIGHTER series we created for Bob Palin’s Ocean Comics. It was well received, the late Don Thompson comparing it favorably to the early Stan Lee & Steve Ditko work on SPIDERMAN.
High praise indeed.

In case any of you out there are aware of that “other” Street Fighter, the one based on a highly popular series of computer games, allow me to set the record straight. We proceed them by almost a full year. When their arcade games began appearing in local malls with the very same logo we were employing, we sought a lawyer to see if we could take any legal action and make them stop. Which is when we learned one of the harsh truths of this life, it’s not always fair. To have taken the parent company Via Com and made them desist from using our name and logo, would have completely driven us into the poor house. This wasn’t a case of David versus Goliath. It was more like David versus a hundred Goliaths. Our lawyers advice in the end, continue to do you comic and alter the name slightly. Ergo, when the series was collected as a graphic novel years later by Alpha Production, it was under the title..THE ORIGINAL STREET-FIGHTER. A claim I feel we were rightly entitled to.

So why bring is all up? Because in a few short months he is going to be back in action. Or, should I say, those long forgotten books are getting a brand new, shiny release on a forthcoming comics website. I’m not liberty to divulge much more save to say, when the series begins to run on the site, it will also be made available for print sales. And I very much wanted to introduce all of you to the magnificent work of Mickey Clausen. Mickey has signed on to recolor all those pages of the series and his work is just gorgeous. We’re lucky to have him on board. More as things develop further.

I am a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I have maybe 95% of all the movies based on his exploits on DVD and many, many volumes in my library. I’m also a major toy fancier of action figures. How do these two hobbies relate to one another? Well, I’ve often wished I could have an action figure of the famous Baker Street detective. But alas, it seemed a rather far fetched dream. I mean, one one thinks of Holmes, one thinks of brilliant deductive skills, not slam-bang all-out action adventures.

So, fellow, airmen, you can all imagine my complete surprise and total euphoric glee when a pacakage arrived yesterday in the mail containing such a toy! No, fooling! See picture above. It was a gift from my good pal,
Anthony Schiavino who actually knew nothing of my secret wish for such a toy. I immediately e-mailed him a heartfelt thanks. Now I have to find an appropriate place in the Batcave to display it. Ain’t it cool?

That’s it for another week in the hangar, airmen. Stay safe and well. Ron, over and out.