Greetings Loyal, Airmen, as you are reading this Flight Log, the Air Chief and Valerie are somewhere on the beach at Honolulu enjoying our first real vacation in a long, long time. We’ll be gone for two weeks and plan on enjoying every single minute of it, ergo, we’ve time this Flight Log to post via a date program.

One of the real joys of this trip will be our getting to meet our life-long friend and creative partner, artist Gary Kato.  The Air Chief came out of Vietnam the summer of 1968. In 1969, we discovered the art of Gary Kato in a fanzine and wrote to him in care of that magazine. Gary replied and thus began a friendship that is now 47 years old. Together we created Mr. Jigsaw, Man of a Thousand Parts and broke into the world of professional comics together. Throughout our long careers, we’ve remained friends and done quite a few comic books together.  We’ve exchanged hundreds of letters and now communicate by e-mail, we’ve had hours and hours of phone conversations….but we have never actually met face to face. By the time you are reading this, that will have finally happened.  To the Air Chief it will be like being reunited with a soul brother, Gary means that much to us. And no worries, Val is bringing along her camera and plans on taking lots and lots of pictures.

On other exciting matters, we’ve been fans of the Max Allan Collins crime series that features a professional assassin known only as Quarry.  We’ve been reading them for a long time and each is great, we can’t recommend them enough.  Well, good old Cinemax has just launched a new weekly drama series based on those books and the premier episode aired last week.  Above is a photo of Max and the series star, Martin-Green. This is a gritty tale of a Vietnam vet who returns home disillusioned with life and desperate to find his place in this world.  The era is the 70s and the show captures it perfectly, with intelligent scripting taken directly from Max’ books, taut directing and very capable action.  You might want to check it out.

And that’s a wrap.  Note, as we’ll be out of the office next week, we are going to post a very special Flight Log made up of a few illustration sneak peeks on our up and coming titles.  A little treat for all you Loyal Airmen who make it a point to stop by every week. Our way of saying thanks.  And that’s all from here till after the 26th.

Aloha!

Ron Over & Out!