It's Lent, which means that for Catholics, it's a time of sober reflection and not eating meat on Fridays, and for everyone else, it's the 40 days between the day when women will show you their breasts in exchange for cheap beads and the day when an egg-laying rabbit gives you candy.

Under orders from my wife to come up with something meatless for Friday, I consulted the internet, and consulted what looked good at the grocery store, and I consulted the fact that I'm a big fan of garbanzo beans, and I came up with a meatless meatloaf that was a lot of fun.

As it turns out, chickpeas can neutralize a lot of spiciness, so even though this looks on paper like it ought to be pretty spicy, it's actually flavorful but not especially piquant.

For a little extra flair, I put these together as individually molded "roasts" by cooking them in small pyrex bowls. This recipe filled three and three quarters one-cup bowls and one two-cup. I figured cooking them in a water bath would minimize cracking and make them easier to get out without breaking, but I've no idea. Some sautéed zucchini rounded out the meal.

• 400-500g chickpeas (About 2 cans, or half of a 1 lb bag of dried chickpeas rehydrated
• ¼ lb seasoned breadcrumbs (I pulsed some croutons in the food processor, having a big bag of croutons left over from Wednesday's French Oignon Soupe Gratinée)
• ~3 Tbsp Spaghetti Sauce or crushed tomato

• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 large onion, diced fine or coarsely food-processed
• About 2 Tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 2 oz diced green chiles (half a can)
• 1 Tbsp Chilli Powder
• 1 Tbsp Cumin
• 1 Tbsp Dried Oregano
• 2 eggs
• ~1-2 Tbsp grated swiss cheese (Again, because I had leftovers from Wednesday)

Mix together the chickpeas, breadcrumbs and tomato sauce in a bowl and fold in the vegetables. Any experience you have with making a meatloaf will come in handy here: just knead/stir/mash it until it comes together like a meatloaf. Fold in the eggs -- you might not need both eggs if it seems like it's holding together on its own.

Spray some oven-safe bowls with baking spray. If you're using cheese, sprinkle down a layer of cheese on the bottom of each bowl, then press the bowl just shy of full with the chickpea mixture.

Place the individual bowls in a water bath. If you've never done this before, it works like this: put the bowls in a largeish pan, like a lasagne pan, and put the pan in the oven. Then pour water into the pan around the bowls enough to fill it up to about the middle of the bowls. This is the technique that minimizes you splashing water all over the place and soaking your little chickpea roasts. Now, if anyone has a good technique for getting them out of the water bath at the end, let me know. I pretty much just ended up taking one for the team and grabbing something hot.

Cook at 350° for about 45 minutes or until firm. Remove the bowls from the water bath and run a thin knife around the edge of each bowl. Invert over a plate and give it a few gentle taps until the loaves fall out.

Scene from the Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Well, the race is over, and now that the blinding terror that the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration induced in me has passed, I thought I'd wrap up with a few thoughts on the whole thing.

1. As an upper-middle-class white heterosexual man, this election was, for me, an opportunity to choose sides based on whether I like liberal or conservative social and economic polcies better*(That said, even though I do prefer liberal social and economic policies, the reason I side with the liberals is because, regardless of whether or not their policies will be better for me personally, I feel a certain empathy for some of the groups I mention below and wouldn't feel right kicking them to the curb.).

This just isn't true for a lot of people, in both directions. If you're a woman, then it doesn't really matter if you think that conservative economic policies are good for the economy, because a vote for Romney is also a vote against fair pay for women and a vote against your right to make your own reproductive health decisions. If you're a minority, it doesn't matter if you think that a strong conservative stance on defence is good for the country, because a vote for Romney is also a vote for people who have been consistent in their use of race-baiting and racist dog whistles. If you're gay, it doesn't matter if you consider yourself in the line of Eisenhower and Reagan; a vote for Romney is a vote for you to never have the rights afforded you that are granted to the rest of humanity.

Contrariwise, if you're a racist, it hardly matters if you think that the economic crisis was the result of underregulation; you're voting for Romney anyway. And if you're convinced that the life of a fetus trumps the rights of an adult woman, you have to hold your nose even if you think Mitt Romney is a psychopath. And if you're a devout Catholic who feels the need to vote in a way consistent withthe teachings of the Church, well, it doesn't really matter if you think Mitt Romney's saber-rattling will bring about world war 3; the other guy wants to let two dudes get married.

2. President Obama won the election with only 39% of the vote among white men. Now, there are lots of reasons for that. White men, see 1, includes the group who got to choose their position based purely on whether they sided with liberal or conservative politics. And one thing that seems clear from trends is that the country is roughly evenly split between those positions, with perhaps a mild lean toward the conservative side. So the difference between the 50% we'd expect to find all things being equal and the 39% actual, and you get 11%. That's the percentage of people who would have voted democrat, but were turned off by something. I'm not going to say what.

But it's pretty much some combination of racism, sexism, homophobia, and the fear of losing their hegemon.

3. Also, President Obama won the election despite only having carried 39% of white men. For the first time in the history of the US, the decision as to who will lead this country for the next four years was made not by white men, but in spite of them. Hegemony's over, guys. Relax. It'll be great.

4. That Mitt Romney the Candidate was defeated is less important to me than that The Mitt Romney Campaign Strategy was defeated.

All politicians exaggerate, misrepresent, overpromise, mislead. This is a fact of life and part of the American political discourse ever since George Washington told the electorate that he could not tell a lie, and demonstrated this trait by making up a bullshit story about a cherry tree out of whole cloth.

But Mitt Romney's political campaign displayed something I haven't seen before. Mitt Romney has been accused of holding contempt for the truth. But that's not it; the Mitt Romney campaign has displayed not contempt for the truth but rather an utter disinterest in the truth. Mitt Romney did not merely twist the truth or present misleading facts; he told bald-faced lies about things which were matters of public record, and when called on it, he showed no shame but rather was sort of insulted you'd dare accuse him of lying just because he knowingly told an untruth. This was a man who would literally say anything if he thought it would get him elected, not caring if it were true, false, or the exact opposite of the thing he'd said in his previous sentence.

And the electorate decided that wasn't going to fly. Which is good, because if that strategy had proven a winning strategy, it would be impossible for anyone to ever win an election by caring about the truth. If it really is just as simple as "You can tell any lie you want," there's no winning strategy for telling the truth.

5. Lest anyone think I'm uncritical: In a sane world, Barack Obama would be the Republican candidate. Obama is not a socialist, he's not even a liberal. President Obama is a reasonable, pragmatic, Eisenhower Republican. A proper liberal president would have stopped drone attacks, closed gitmo, given us single payer, and actually done something about the fact that our gun control laws were written by the gun manufacturer's lobby. Such a candidate would probably lose to Barack Obama, but frankly, I'd rather have a chance to vote for a proper liberal who loses to a proper conservative, over voting for a faux-liberal who beats one of the sociopaths who took over the former party of responsibility. We used to have one party that dreamt big and one party that kept both hands on the wheel. Now we've got one party that keeps one hand on the wheel, and another that is intent on setting the car on fire.

6. By the way, an openly gay woman got elected to the United States Senate. Awesome.

7. Also, the people of three states voted in favor of same-sex marriage. So y'know what, fuck you, NOM.

8. Puerto Rico voted in favor of becoming the 51st state. Prompting me to discover that statehood was on the ballot in Puerto Rico.

Y'know, that seems like the sort of thing that the news might want to cover.

9. Good grief. Donald Trump has lost the rest of his mind.

10. So, the sun didn't come up today. Crap. Chuck Norris was right.

Hello and welcome to A Mind Occasionally Voyaging, where bad comics... Well, actually, I don't know what happens to bad comics on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging, because I've never reviewed a comic before.

I don't have a whole lot of experience with comics. I grew up in an exurb that didn't have a comic book store, and even if it had, it was six miles to town, so I was pretty much at the mercy of my parents for anything that had to be bought, and comic book stores weren't high on their list of places to take me. Oh, I accumulated a few over the years. A Star Trek comic from the period between The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home when it was widely assumed in fandom that Kirk would be rewarded for stealing the Enterprise by being given command of the Excelcior (which he would just call "Enterprise" anyway) without being demoted. A crossover between Transformers and Spider-Man which had a note in the back explaining why Spider-Man was wearing a black suit. I still have this creepy image stuck in my head of Shockwave standing in front of a brick wall in which he's burned the words "All Are Dead" (the cover of Transformers number 5). A reprint of an old Tales From the Crypt.

But I'm not widely read. I've got the trades of Star Trek: Countdown and Watchmen, and a book by Scott McCloud about how to read comics, but most of what I know comes from Wikipedia and Atop the Fourth Wall. Nonetheless, when I found out that Continuity Comics very briefly produced a Captain Power series, well, there was no way I was passing that up. Remember, this was literally weeks ago, and for all I knew, this was the only Captain Power-related narrative that would ever exist beyond what I'd already seen twenty-five years ago.

You may well be a bit afraid. Comic tie-ins to existing franchises generally mean one of two things: either a labor of love trying to expand and ressurrect a beloved franchise in a new form, or... a cheaply-made attempt to spend as little effort as possible in order to milk the name-recognition for a few bucks. Which is this? Hey, let's be honest here: we're talking about a show that got green-lit purely on the condition that it could serve as a half-hour long toy commercial. So with all that in mind, let's dig into Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future #1.

Oh, and if I'm going to do this, let's do it properly, shall we?

There are two covers available for this issue. I don't know which one is the canonical cover and which is the alternate, and they were cheap so I bought both. I'm going to guess that this one is the earlier version, since the logo style on the other one is repeated on issue #2, which only has the one cover.

As you can see, the cover is a group shot. Not terrible, though the ground at the bottom belies the forced perspective in the rest of the frame, which is to say that Tank and Pilot look tiny, because they're supposed to be further back, but if you look at Pilot's feet, it looks like she's standing directly across from Scout, who is twice her size.

The costumes are pretty show-accurate, rather than staying close to the art from the toy boxes, which is a nice touch. Some of the laser blasts are coming from funny angles, but from a technical standpoint, that's also show-accurate. If I'm going to lodge one complaint, it's that Cap's facial expression is kind of weird. I assume we're supposed to have caught him in a fierce war-cry, but he just looks goofy, like he's about to take a bite out of something. If this were coming out today, I would fully expect this to be all over the internet with dongs photoshopped in.

The alternate cover has a redrawn logo. The colors are brighter and the logo itself is cleaner, though I'm not crazy about the "And the soldiers of the future" text; it looks sort of stamped-on. They also look to have made a real effort to imitate the look of computer-rendered text with the Gourad shading and the forced perspective; the other cover's text has a more "natural" metallic look, while this one looks computer-drawn.

This is also a group shot, though Cap's pose is more dynamic. For Cap himself, this cover gives you much more of an impression that we're watching real action going on, rather than a posed publicity shot. For Cap. Unfortunately, everyone else is just sort of shooting off in random directions, making it very clear that they're just here for demonstration purposes, and aren't really part of the scene with Cap and the scared civilian in the corner. Oh, him? Well, I assume that's Professor Karl Malenkov, but I can't really tell you much about him; he's pretty much a MacGuffin that they were presumably setting up for later in the run, but they never get around to actually doing much with him before the comic was cancelled.

Now, if you thought Cap's expression on the last one was goofy, look at this. He looks like he's about to ask a Bio-Dread if he feels lucky. Or perhaps he's just uncomfortable, as he apparently just crapped molten lava.

By the way, I'm going to forgo my usual tack of inserting punchlines and sight-gags into the images. Between the word balloons and the general density of the image compositions, it'll just make it too hard to work out what's going on.

Issue 1 is "freely adapted" from the episode "A Summoning of Thunder", which we won't get to in my regular reviews for some timeBy my estimates, at the rate we're going, June 2347, but the adaptation is loose enough that it's really not spoiling anything. Just like an episode of the series, we open on a fight scene that won't have anything to do with the rest of the story. Cap is pursuing a Dread scientist who's trying to defect. We're told that Professor Malenkov is the "holder of the key to the salvation of mankind... or its destruction," though we will never be told how exactly. We're also told that he "Runs like a broken-legged dog." So, um... Not at all because it's too busy laying on the ground whimpering about its leg? Of course not! It means that he's panting and puffing, which is to say, he's saying "Pant" and "Puff", and the occasional "Huff". Also, is it just me, or does he look like his jaw is broken?

We cut over to some Dread troopers, called "commandos" here, who are preparing a trap to attack Cap, but to their shock and awe, he touches the emblem on his chest, shouts his contractually obligated catchphrase, and...

A two-page spread shows us the results, along with a title card. So, the Power On transformation was one of the big visual effects things of the show, a sensory overload with strobing lights and complex crossfades and the best visual effects a Commodore Amiga could produce, so how does that translate to serial art?

Um. Is he naked there in the middle? That's... Really weird. Cap shoots two of the commandos while still in the air. One of them lets out a little "Eep!" as its head is severed from its shoulders with a pink "KREENK". The remaining Mechs return fire, apparenly surprised to discover that Captain Power is, in fact, Captain Power. The first time we see the transformation seems like a good time to pull out a two-panel spread, but I'm not crazy about the composition here. An awful lot of the page seems to be devoted to showing us the backs of exploding Clickers.

As the battle continues, one of the commandos marvels at Cap's "impossible" speed. Cap tosses off an awkward one-liner while privately thinking that he's outnumbered. At this point, we introduce Soaron, who is eager to destroy Cap, and for some reason, refers to himself in the third person.

He's called off by Lord Dread, who for some reason looks less like Lord Dread and more like the Borg assimilated the Pharoah from Prince of Egypt. Dread orders Soaron to stand down, as he wants to get the entire team together. Never mind that picking them off one-by-one would almost certainly be a safer idea; they're worth more as a box-set.

Tank obliges by showing up, guns a-blazin'. His legs are weird in this shot, like one of them is cut off mid-calf. I think the idea is supposed to be that he's cresting a hill and his other foot is behind the rocks, but the way he's standing, it looks like one leg is way longer than the other. He's fighting a group of mechs led by "Overunit Drucker". In the series, the title of "Overunit" always went to men in Nazi costumes with large bling around their necks. Overunit Drucker, on the other hand, appears to be wearing red power armor. He may even be a cyborg, it's not quite clear. It's an interesting idea, but I think having Dread use armored human soldiers sort of undermines the major gimmick of the Power Team, and that's doubly annoying when Overunit Drucker doesn't really do much of anything that really calls for him to be wearing power armor. Tank, we're told, has "Good reason to hate Dread," though these reasons will not be disclosed in this comic, or in the series for that matter.

Hawk appears above Overunit Drucker to provide covering fire for Tank, prompting Drucker to think "It's Hawk! It must be!". Yes, it must be him, Hawk, and not one of the other flying armored resistance fighters. In the next panel, Soaron confirms: "It is Hawk!" Um. Did Soaron just respond to Drucker's thought balloon?

Next, Scout and Pilot show up. Cap thanks them for appearing in a timely manner in order to have a proper roll call introducing all the characters for the benefit of the readers. And again, we've got Cap posing for an internet meme picture with photoshopped dongs. In this particular panel, Cap looks quite a lot like his appearance in the original trailer. It wouldn't surprise me if work on this book started before casting was finished, though this comic is dated August 1988, which means that it wasn't published until after the series had ended. I have no idea how much lead time you'd normally have for a project like this. It could be that they started work on it before the show aired, but held off on publishing it until the summer hiatus. I kind of hope that's the case, since it seems like a bit of a cruel joke for them to start work on a comic in 1988 for a show that was already cancelled.

Tank catches up to Overunit Drucker, leading to what for my money is the best pair of panels in the entire book. Tank decides to do a Judge Dredd impersonation. Gaze into the fist of Tank.

True to the show, Hawk and Soaron go mano-a-birdo, and they even follow the Captain Power Cliche of "Bad guy shoots hero, hero falls offscreen, then hero turns out to not be seriously hurt after all and rejoins the fight. Though here, I think the problem is that Hawk's wings are on upside down for a few panels.

The rest of the battle is pretty much a confusion of people jumping around, firing lasers, and shouting things with that slack-jawed dongs look. I don't know what it is about the artists on this, but they seem inordinately fond of drawing people with their mouths really wide open.

I'll also take a second here to note that I think they do a really good job on the likeness of Maurice Dean Wint here. It's a nice touch, given how hit-or-miss the art has been so far.

Dread resorts to using weapons they descibe as OASes, short for "Obsolete Armored Shell". Or maybe it's not Dread. I can't really tell, and they never go back and explain what the deal was.
Dread's forces eventually retreat, but Cap and Company can't find the professor, so they all pile into the Power Jet XT-7 for some reason and fly home. I think this officially gives the Power Jet more screen-time in the comics than it has in the show.

Back at base, Cap takes off his helmet, but remains in-costume, which is a little weird, since in the show, he'd be about an hour past the maximum charge on his suit by now. He makes plans to go visit his dad's grave, and we get a nice close shot of him without his helmet on, and for the first time, he's actually recognizably based on Tim Dunnigan. I wish I could say the same for Hawk, but at no point in this comic does Hawk look anything like Peter MacNeill. At first, I thought maybe he was modeled after Hawk in the original trailer, but that Hawk was younger, and looked kinda like Stephen Collins in Star Trek 1. No, Hawk seems to look inexplicably like Reed Richards. And while we're on the subject, what's up with Pilot's forehead in this shot? Humans do not have that much head above their eyes.

The dialogue across this bit is so weird that I had to check both copies to make sure I hadn't lost a page somewhere. First, Pilot says "His father?" to which Hawk answers, "S'a long story, kid. The Captain goes back to see his dad every year about this time. (Ominous pause) Back to the grave." What's with the melodrama here? And, really, is it that long of a story? The story here is "His father is dead. He visits his grave once a year." Surely, the concept of having lost a family member and mourning them doesn't require a lenghty explanation in this post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Weirder still, we get the exchange in the picture above. I didn't cut anything out -- this is literally the next panel after Hawk says "Back to the graveAnd what's the deal with that anyway? "He goes back... Back to the grave" is the sort of thing you'd say if Cap were a zombie. And clearly, this is not that kind of apocalypse.." I don't even know quite how to parse it. It's like Pilot is just cottoning on to the fact that "Power" is actually Cap's family name, and not just a superhero alias. The best I can figure out is that she recognizes Stuart Power's name and has just realized that he's Cap's father. Though this doesn't work on several levels: first, wouldn't this have come up the first time they talked to Mentor? More immediately, why would the fact of Cap having a dead father lead her to reach some previously unrecognized conclusion. It's just a very strange way to set up the scene, and the only real point to it is to give Ra's Al GhulHawk an opening to refer to Cap's dad as "The Monster Maker".

We cut to Volcania, where Dread is chewing out Drucker and Soaron for their failure. And in contrast to normal supervillain rules, he decides that rather than give his failed underling another critical assignment, he's just going to off him. Overmind talks Dread down, ordering him to digitize Drucker rather than kill him outright. Overmind chastizes Dread for letting his emotions get the better of him. This is sort of an ironic little scene, because one of the big reveals intended for the second season was that this whole digitization thing was just something Overmind did to keep Dread on-board; Overmind would just as soon exterminate the human race. We get a close shot of Dread, the only time in the book where he actually looks show-accurate. Extremely show-accurate, in fact. This is also the facing-page for that close-up of Cap I mentioned before. One thing that they do really well here is this parallel scene composition thing, showing heroes and villains on facing pages in similar poses in juxtaposition. It's a neat effect and handled pretty well. Also, I love how Drucker is just standing there with a look of Dull Surprise on his face. You know, Dread's all like "You will pay with your life" and then Overmind is like "No, not death, just digitization (hey, have you forgotten that being digitized is a fate worse than death?)" and he's just sort of standing there. He's not trying to run, he's not even crying. Just dull surprise.

Suitably inspired, Hawk launches us into the flashback that makes up the bulk of the second half of the issue. Hawk tells of the Metal Wars, how industry produced robot soldiers which made war "palatable", leading to countries declaring war at the drop of a hat, as is illustrated by a sequence where apparently the east coast of the US declares war on the west coast. Which is just silly; we all know that what would really happen is that Real America in the middle would declare war on those latte-drinkin' sissies on both coasts.

We learn that "limited" war was all the rage, televised on network TV under the assumption that the robots would just duke it out on their own leaving humans to go about their business. Everything went up the spout, though, when the robot battles spilled out of the designated war zones and into occupied areas. Robot soldiers and weapons would demolish buildings to deny cover to the enemy, blissfully unconcerned about the humans inside, such as this cowering family about to meet their maker. Man, and I thought the TV version was dark. Nice touch having the little boy shout "Mommy!" as their apartment building is bombed into rubble around them.

War stopped being "fun", but for some reason or other (Hawk is vague on this point), no one was able to just turn the war machines off (It sort of sounds like it's just the prisoner's dilemma: whichever side turns their robots off first loses). The cities are defenseless, we're told, because all the world's nuclear weaons had been destroyed years earlier. Damn you Superman IV! You short-sighted fool!

Hawk finally gets around the the point of this flashback, telling how Stuard Power and Lyman Taggart, played here by Doctor Strange and Jerry Lewis, had a vision of achieving peace through technology, so they built a robot-controllin' machine called "Overmind". While Power wants to test it more, Taggart is anxious to go ahead and switch the thing on. And what's with Taggart's character art here? He doesn't even look like the same person from one panel to the next. First he's Jerry Lewis, then he's Gilbert Gotfrey, then he's Darren McGavin, then he kind of looks like the professor guy from the first page.

He turns on the machine, which treats us to Taggert's O-face as he's overcome with pain as "The machine cuts me... to... my... soul! And fills me with the precision of the machine!" It also burns off the side of his face, so now he's got a Harvey Dent thing going on. I don't know what purpose this serves in the comic; in the show, Taggart isn't disfigured until much later, during his final battle with Stuart Power. Here, he'll wear bandages for the rest of the flashback, though he won't get his artificial hand before the end of the second issue.

A somewhat confused little montage shows us that Taggart gains control over all the machines, and summons them to serve him. Power organizes a resistance, based around everyone going their separate ways and finding "their own strengths" and "special talents". It's kind of hokey, like he's setting up audtions for the JLA. "Sorry, Sea-Person, we've already got three guys whose gimmick is controlling the creatures of the oceans. We're also all stocked up on Fire, Air and Heart."

The next two pages are kind of a mess, divided between a two half-page spread of a battlefield that's mostly laser blasts and people's backs, and smaller panels showing pretty much the same thing in miniature.

Lord Dread constructs his private techno-volcano in DetroitI think this is the closest thing we get to official acknowledgement of where Volcania is., and I really love the look of simple pleasure on his face as he watches his union construction crew knock a Detroit sign down on him.

With his new base built and "Power levels at maximum," they "BEGIN THE CREATION". Which seems to involve Dread humping one of those transporter pods from The Fly.

We cut back to a younger Hawk, whose duties had "taken him from the battlefield." Those duties involve pressing the clicker on a garage remote. We then show some young, boyishly handsome fellow fighting robots with a sword. By which I mean he's got a sword, though he does all his fighting in the form of implausibly high kicks. The scene is kind of a mess, just shots of the as-yet unnamed character mid-kick and robots exploding, often against a blank background. The scene is broken up with panels of Dread on his knees raving about the "Seed of the machine." Eew. And if this is supposed to be a flashback that Hawk is telling to Pilot, where's the stuff in Volcania coming from? Hawk wouldn't know the details of Soaron's creation.

This all gives way to the next pair of facing pages where we have another of those great juxtapositions, on the left, Soaron emerging from his birthing matrix. This is a great, full-page shot, with a lot of attention to detail that really seems to capture both Soaron's menace, and also a real sense of something like joy at suddenly finding himself alive.

Juxtaposed on the facing page is the hero from the last scene, now revealed to be a young Jonathan Power, smoke curling up around him(It kinda looks like his hair is on fire) as he poses with his sword and gun held high, gleeful in his triumph over the training robots. Just as the last page showed us the birth of Dread's ultimate weapon, Soaron, this page is really showing us the "birth" of the resistance's greated hero, Captain Power. In the background, Wolverine and Rex Harrison from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir look on in pride.

Hawk narrates us out of the flashback, and we cut to Cap, landing in an "anonymous graveyard in the Land of the Enslaved". No idea what he's flying. I assume it's meant to be the Power Jet, and the phoenix logo is visible on the canopy, but it actually looks like a Dread Interceptor that's been painted white. I'm kind of curious who makes these headstones and tends the graveyard, what with the whole "apocalypse" thing. Interesting bit of trivia here too, as Stuart Power's gravestone isn't quite legible, you can make out part of the birth year, and it's in the twenty-first century, possibly 2024, which would make him awfully old even if they're using the originally-scripted 2099 setting, making him about 60 when he died, and putting him in his forties when Johnathan was born. Not impossible by any stretch, but pretty surprising.

As Cap fills his dad's grave in on the plot about Professor Malenkov, and about their new friend Pilot, we cut back to Volcania, where Dread charges Soaron with a mission to ambush Cap at the graveyard, and insists that, "I want him I find this sort of interesting; it seems to be a theme in this comic that where Overmind and Dread differ, it's largely because Dread gives in to his violent emotions and demands someone's death, while Overmind considers that wasteful and prompts for digitization instead. In the show, when Dread falls short of the machine ideals, it's because he has a sudden stab of compassion, choosing to let someone go rather than digitize or kill themdead!" And so we end on Soaron, bowing to his master and swearing to kill Captain Power.

This comic... It's a mixed bag, really. The art, taken on its own, is pretty good, at least for the slower, dramatic scenes. There's a lot of well-composed scenes where the frames are laid out to show parallels between the heroes and the villains. But when you consider it all together, it's not as sunny; although the art is always pretty good, there's no consistency to it; characters look radically different from one panel to the next, with Lyman Taggart/Lord Dread being the worst offender. Cap switches back and forth between two very different depictions -- again, I'm wondering if some of the art was based on Dunnigan and other parts were based on the original trailer. The only character who's drawn consistently is Hawk, but he looks nothing like he did in the show.

And while the slower, more dramatic scenes are well-done, the action sequences are a chaotic mess. They're too dense around the edges, with too much space at the center taken up with people's backs and blaster-fire. It's hard to tell what's going on, especially when they jump around in the flashbacks.

The story itself is also a mixed bag. I love that we get a detailed backstory about the Metal Wars. The episode that this comic is based on focuses much more closely on the personal story of Cap and his father; we never really get to see what the Metal Wars were all about.

But on the other hand, backstory isn't the same thing as story, and the entire second half of this comic is essentially a long-form backstory infodump. There's hardly any narrative, just a sort of montage showing Dread's empire arising and the human resistance forming. The character of Malenkov is introduced early on, talked up as the possible savior of mankind, then ignored until the last page. We have a long action sequence at the beginning that doesn't really accomplish anything, and is there mostly to introduce the caracters -- though even then, we don't get to see Pilot or Scout really do anything that gives us a sense of what their characters are about. And we never learn what was up with the "Obsolete Armored Shells" being dropped on them.

In all, as much as I liked having the story of the Metal Wars shown for us, for a first issue, I think it would have felt a lot tighter if we'd been given a condensed, text-only summary of the events in the second half of this comic on the inside cover, and used those pages instead to show us Cap and his team working together, getting on with the actual plot. There's a reason that the episode this was adapted from came in the second half of the season: we needed to see these characters doing their thing first so that we'd have a reason to care about them and about this world, so that we'd want to know how Dread's empire came about and how Cap and the others came to be Soldiers of the Future.

Storywise, I think it's a good tie-in; it expands and enriches the world of the show, rather than being a direct adaptation of one episode. Folks who hadn't watched the show probably aren't the target market for this. But in that case, it's even more grating when they make changes from the show continuity and can't even get the characters to look quite right. If you're a fan and you don't already have it, there are a surprising number of copies available on ebay, for roughly what you would have paid for them new, adjusted for inflation.

Many, but not all of my issues with this comic are fixed in issue number 2, and we'll take a look at that one next time. See you next mission.

A few nights ago, I made lentils for Dylan to take to daycare for lunch. He refused them for blandness, so they got recycled into a side dish for last night's dinner. With just a bit of seasoning, I transformed the leftover lentils into something that met with approval from Mommy, Daddy and Baby alike.

• 12 oz cooked lentils (I'm pretty sure I overcooked ours, which was good for Dylan, though I thought it made them taste a little starchy)
• 2 Tbsp butter (As always, a bit of black truffle butter will kick it up a notch)
• ~1Tbsp olive oil
• ½ of a medium onion, diced
• 1-2 Tbsp curry powder
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ground corriander
• 1 tsp Mohini Indian Fusion Vegetable Blend
• ¼ tsp Puerto Rican-style adobo powder
• ~¼ cup broth (I used beef; chicken or vegetable would work fine)
• 1tsp-1Tbsp heavy cream

Melt the butter in the oil over low heat. Increase heat to medium and cook onions to translucency. Stir in 1 Tbsp curry powder, the cumin, and the corriander, then add the lentils. Add broth to thin the lentils out to the desired thickness. Don't go all the way to soup (Well, I guess if you wanted lentil soup, I have no objection), just enough that the lentils will conform to the pot instead of sitting there in a lump. Bring to a simmer, then add the Vegetable blend (If you don't have any on hand, any sort of vegetable curry seasonings will work) and adobo. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes. Add a bit of cream, shooting for a smooth texture. Taste, and add more cream, curry or adobo until you're happy with it. Simmer 5 more minutes, then remove from heat and let stand, covered, a few minutes.

I served this beside sausages in a homemade red sauce, but that's just because it's what I had ready to hand.

Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.

Goddard Film Group is working on a revival of Captain Power.

The new series is currently being developed under the name Phoenix RisingPretty much everyone agrees that Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was a kind of a hokey name and trying to get people take a show with that name seriously is a sucker's game. It's a shame, of course, that they'll lose the name-recognition, but Phoenix Rising is a good solid name (Assuming they don't come up with something even better), and my sense of nostalgia is hardly justification for using a name that sounds like a superhero comic. Not even a real superhero comic; a fake superhero comic whose name someone rattles off in a long comic list in some story where one character establishes his credentials as a comic book nerd by rattling off a long comic list of superheroes. Also, Phoenix Rising is totally the name of my own post-apocalyptic Power Rangers fanfic. But I digress., and it's reported to be a more serious, modern hour-long drama, something in the vein of the modern incarnation of Battlestar Galactica. All the classic characters are included (No word yet on Stingray, Tritor, or the female Liquid Metal Bio-Dredd whose name escapes me at the moment). And, blowing my mind even more, Tim Dunnigan is apparantly going to be playing the role of Mentor (The guy I describe in my reviews as "Hologram Kenny Loggins").

I'll post details as I learn them, but follow @PhoenixRisingTV on Twitter for news as it happens.

You know, when I started reviewing Captain Power about a year ago, I had no idea anything like this was even possible. I wasn't even really actively aware that a big anniversary was coming up (It only occurred to me when someone mentioned that Star Trek The Next Generation had an anniversary coming). I was still thinking of Captain Power largely as a show that I remembered and no one else did. I'm really just floored to see that there are still so many people with so much love for a show that burned brightly, but too fast. Today, I can finally let go of that 24 years-long sting of disappointment from when I finally realized that Captain Power wasn't coming back.

The best thing about this, for this thirty-three year old man who was a little boy back in 1987, is that some time soon now, I'm going to be able to share Phoenix Rising with my own little boy.

Link Roundup:

• Phoenix Rising on Twitter


• Captain Power Lives! on Tumblr, who is a lot faster about getting news than I am


• Henshin Justice reports on the news


• Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future on Facebook


• The Realm Cast reports as well

For what it's worth, I swear, not having known anything about this announcement until 3:30 this afternoon, I was planning to do anyother Captain Power review next weekend. I'll see if I can get it done any faster than that.

This was adapted from a recipe for a Pulled Pork Torta provided to Delish.com by Eatingwell.com. I made a few modifications and took a few liberties based on local availability of Stuff In My Fridge and my desire to try out a pair of Tortilla Bowl Makers I'd just bought. If you follow the original recipe and use a pie pan and larger tortillas, you'll probably only need one. This made two mini-tortas for me. A slightly larger tortilla probably would have worked better, but it was my first time at the new Weigman's and I couldn't find low-carb tortillas, and had to go with what was in the fridge. Mine is also less spicy, in keeping with Leah's preferences. Still too spicy for Dylan, who requested a little taste, and then freaked out when he got it.

• 1¼ c Unsauced Pulled Pork
• 2-3 oz Turkey Pepperoni, Sliced and quartered (Or cubed if your turkey pepperoni comes unsliced)
• 1 small onion, diced
• ¼ c apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp crushed garlic
• About 4 oz. chili sauce
• About 1 tsp minced chipotle chile in adobo sauce
• pinch salt
• Pinch black pepper
• pinch white pepper
• 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes with green pepper and onion, liquid drained
• ¼ tsp oregano
• About a tablespoon italian parsley, chopped (Now, I actually meant to use cilantro here, but the parsley worked out fine. And I hear parsley reduces the risk of ovarian cancer, so stick that in your uterus and smoke it.)
• ¼-½ cup shredded mexican cheese blend
• 6 medium low-carb tortillas (or a smaller number of larger tortillas)

Heat the oven to 375°. Put the pork and onions in a small pot over medium-high heat. Add the vinegar and chili sauce. Add the oregano, salt, pepper and chipotle. Cook for about two minutes, stirring regularly. Add tomatoes and pepperoni. Stir and reduce heat to medium. When the oven comes to temperature, spray the tortilla pans with baking spray and press a tortilla into the bottom of each. Put the pans in the oven. After three minutes or so, put in another two tortillas on a baking sheet. Cook everything for about 6 more minutes, then take the tortillas out of the oven and turn off the pot. Gently spoon about a quarter of the pork mixture into the bottom of the tortilla bowls, spreading it flatish. Sprinkle each with cheese and parsley. If you're using small tortillas, you should be just shy of filling the tortilla bowl. Place the other tortillas from the oven atop the filling and press them into shape as best you can. Split the rest of the pork mixture between the two bowls, then top with the uncooked tortilla. Sprinkle cheese and parsley on top. Now, the original recipe called for drizzling some of the liquid from the tomatoes on top, presumably to keep it from drying out. I forgot, but everything turned out okay. Back into the oven for about 20-30 minutes, until the cheese is whatever shade of golden-brown you like. Unless something's gone horribly wrong, the tortas should slip out of the pans with a minimum of fuss (It's a bit tricky since you can't really get any sort of utensil in under it to lift it. I just flipped the pan upside down and then very quickly flipped the torta back over. It should have enough structural integrity to survive that.

Technically, this casserole isn't appropriate for babies under a year, but I'm calling it "Baby's First Casserole" because I think it's a good food choice for a parent who's interested in trying to share a meal with their infant. The process of making it produces baby food as a, um, by-product. Also, though I've kicked it up a lot, there's a lot of elements in here that bear a strong similarity to baby food.

This was basically a "Clean out the half-empty jars and bags of frozen vegetables" exercise, so amounts on some items (The vegetables) are approximate, and you can improvise as you see fit. Other than the cauliflower, all the vegetables were chosen purely on the basis of "I've got a bag of these taking up space in the freezer," so use whatever you've got ready-to-hand. It's got some elements of a Sheppard's Pie, and some elements of a lasagne (This whole thought experiment started with "What if I made a casserole that was layered like a lasagne, but I used an Alfredo sauce instead of a tomato sauce...") One of my goals was try to do something with color, because most of my meals end up being so mixed that there's not really distinct colors in them.

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lb bulk sausage (hot)
• 1 16oz jar alfredo sauce
• ~½ cup heavy cream
• ~3 tbsp butter
• 2 tsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup onions, diced
• 16 oz cauliflower, steamed
• ~8 oz butternut squash, cut up and steamed
• ~12 oz peas, steamed
• ~6 oz roasted red peppers
• 2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 lb cream cheese (You might prefer to substitute ricotta here. Like I said, I was using what I had)
• You may need some other sauce-type things right at the end. Here's what I had on hand:
  • ~2 tbsp Cacciatore sauce
  • ~1 tbsp Skillet Chipotle Pumpkin Sauce
• Salt
• Pepper
• Oregano
• Garlic
• Basil
• Cajun Seasoning
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Saute the onions in a couple of teaspoons of melted butter and vegetable oil in a medium-large pot. Mix the beef and sausage together and add them to the pot, then add the Worcestershire sauce and about a half a cup of water and cook over medium low until the meat has lost most of its redness. Drain the meat and onions. If everything worked out properly, the water should have kept the meat from clumping together, but since we live in the real world, it probably didn't. Break it up as best you can. I pulsed it a few times in the food processor. Return everything to the pot and add the whole jar of alfredo sauce and a tablespoon or so of cream. Fire it up to a low simmer and leave it there. I like some cajun seasoning pretty much in everything alfredo, so I added a pinch, but there's going to be so much flavor going on here that you won't want to go overboard.

In a medium bowl, mix the cream cheese, half the mozzarella and three quarters of the parmesan. Add a pinch of garlic, oregano and basil, and add enough cream to work it into a thick paste.

Food-process the cauliflower into a mash. Take a few spoonfuls out for baby to enjoy with you, then add a pinch of salt and pepper, and a few pats of butter, and a splash of cream, pulsing in the food processor until you get about the texture of mashed potatoes. Take it out and set it aside.

Same deal with the squash. Whip it into pulp, set some aside for baby, then add butter and cream as needed to get a pudding sort of thing going on. Now, I found that on its own, the squash didn't have a lot of body and was a little too sweet, so I mixed in a few spoonfuls of the cauliflower.

Put the squash off to one side and do the same thing with the peas. The peas are texturally more complex than the cauliflower and squash, and will come out sort of like redskin mashed potatoes. After taking out Dylan's portion, I added cream but decided not to add any butter this time. Your call.

Finally, pulse the red peppers. They become more of a chunky salsa than a mashed potato. I didn't add anything to these at all, but I also didn't think Dylan would be interested.

Take a deep casserole dish or lasagne pan (I used a 13-inch lasagne pan, but it only ended up about halfway full. I think you'd get more interesting textural contrast with a smaller pan and thicker layers) and spread a thin layer of the meat sauce on the bottom (If I'd had some prosciutto left, I think I'd have lined the pan with it). Then spread a layer of the cheese mixture onto that. If you can't get the cheese to spread properly, work in a little more cream. Next, choose one of your vegetable mashes -- I used the cauliflower first, and spread that in a thin layer atop the meat. Make sure you don't use all of it -- you'll want to hold back between ¼ and ½ at this stage. Next is another layer of meat, another layer of cheese, and another layer of vegetable (Don't use the red peppers here. Well, okay, do whatever you like I guess). and repeat until you run out of something. Try to work it so that you end on a meat layer.

Now that we're nearing the top, it's time to bring things together. Sprinkle the top with the rest of your mozzarella and parmesan. Now, take all the vegetables you've held back, and the red pepper puree, and any other thick sauces you're itching to get rid of, and use them to top the casserole. If the quantities work out, just spread them out in stripes over the top. Or get creative: with peas, red pepper and cauliflower, you could top your casserole with an Italian flag. If your food artistry is up to it, do a festive pattern or something. Thanks to lack of planning, I ended up with a sort of Mondrian thing. The cacciatore sauce ended up going on mine because I reached the end of everything I had prepared and was still a quarter casserole short.

Cover with tin foil and then into the oven for an hour at 350°F. Let it stand for a bit to firm up before serving.

Dylan enjoyed the peas while Mom and Dad enjoyed the casserole with some leftover pasta salad as a side dish.

Told to my little boy at bedtime last week, with various corrections and embellishments afterward.

Once upon a time, back when you were quite small -- perhaps some time last week -- there was a little boy named Dylan who lived in a little house in the woods. And Dylan was friends with all the little animals who lived in his part of the woods. There was Scout the Puppy Dog, and Kali the Kitty Cat, and Foxy the Fox, Rakki the Raccoon, and Skanky the Skunk, and Gray, the Bunny Rabbit With No Sense of Self Preservation, and Sir Whittingford Quacksalot the Duck, and Ringo the Singing Chameleon, and Bluefish the Blue Fish and all the other little animals who lived in the woods.

One day, Dylan went out to play with his animal friends, and who should he come across but Gray the Bunny Rabbit With No Sense of Self Preservation. "Hello Gray," Dylan said. "Would you like to play with me this afternoon?"

Gray the Bunny Rabbit hopped from side to side. "Oh young Mr. Dylan," he said, "We will have to play another time, because the King of the Forest has summoned all the animals to a special meeting."

"Oh," said Dylan. "That is too bad. Why is the King of the Forest having a special meeting?"

Gray the Bunny Rabbit turned his head almost all the way around, looking to make sure that they were alone. In a very small voice, he said, "There is a rumor."

Dylan didn't know what a rumor was, because he was just a very little boy, but he didn't want Gray to think he was foolish, so he just nodded and tried to look thoughtful. "This rumor," he said, "Must be terribly important, for the King to call a special meeting."

Gray the Bunny Rabbit looked around again. "The rumor," he said, in an even smaller voice, "Is that a family of bears have moved into the forest."

"Bears?" Dylan said. "I thought you said it was a rumor." Dylan didn't know what a bear was either, but it seemed like a bear and a rumor wouldn't be the same sort of thing.

"The rumor," Gray said, "Is what told us about the bears."

"I see," Dylan said, even though he didn't. He started to worry that Gray was getting suspicious that Dylan didn't really know what a rumor was. Dylan decided that if he started fresh about the bears, maybe Gray would let the rumor drop. "I've never met a bear," Dylan said. "What are they like?"

Gray the Bunny Rabbit's ears stood straight up and so did the fur on his back. "Oh my, Mr. Dylan," he said, "A bear is a big, scary animal, four times as big as a little boy. With great big teeth and great big claws as sharp as knives!"

Dylan's eyes opened as wide as they could. He couldn't even imagine an animal so big and scary. "I shouldn't like to meet a bear then," he said.

"No you would not, Mr. Dylan," Gray said with a nod. "A bear would gobble a little boy like you up in one big swallow, and would still have room in his tummy for me!"

"Oh my!" said Dylan. "Whatever will the King of the Forest do about the bears?"

"I don't know, Mr. Dylan," said Gray, "But I hope he will tell the bears to move far away from here." Gray the Bunny Rabbit took out his pocket-watch and looked at it. "Oh-oh! The meeting will start any minute. I must be going."

"Well have a nice day, Gray," Dylan said, and he waved good-bye.

"And the same to you, Mr. Dylan. Look out for bears!" And with that, Gray the Bunny Rabbit hopped away.

Dylan stood a while and thought. If the King of the Forest was having a meeting for the animals, then he would not be able to find any animals to play with. Dylan thought of all the games he could think of, but none of them seemed like they would be as much fun alone as they were with a friend. So instead of playing, Dylan decided to go for a walk. Dylan always loved to walk through the forest and see the beautiful sights, like the trees with their leaves in every color, and the babbling stream that ran through the woods.

So Dylan went for a walk through the forest, and before long he had lost track of time and had walked quite a long way, and came to a part of the forest where he had never been before. And as he turned a little bend on the dirt path that led through this part of the forest, he saw a house that looked brand new with a bright red mailbox out front.

"Why, I am quite sure that this house is brand new," Dylan said. "And that means that I must have new neighbors here in the forest. I should introduce myself to them so that we can be friends, because it can be very lonely to come to live in a new forest until you make friends with your neighbors."

And so he knocked in the door of the brand new house. There was no answer at the door, but Dylan saw a note stuck on the door. The note read, "Gone For A Walk. Back Later," but as Dylan was only a very little boy, he hadn't learned to read quite all the letters yet.

He thought about the note, and decided, "Sometimes, people will put a note on the door to say 'Please come in,' perhaps that is what this note says." And since he tried the door and found that it was not locked, he decided that his guess must have been correct, and he went inside.

Inside the house, he found a long table with three bowls on it. And because Dylan had gone for quite a long walk, his tummy started to rumble when he saw the bowls. "Perhaps," he said to himself, "The people who live in this house are having a party to meet their neighbors. Oh! They will be so disappointed when they find out that all of the animals had to go to the King of the Forest's meeting and miss the party. These bowls must be snacks for the guests."

So Dylan sat down at the first bowl. And it was a big bowl full of mashed peas. Dylan took a little bite of the peas and frowned to himself. "These peas are yummy," he said, "But they are too hot."

Dylan moved down to the second bowl. The second bowl was smaller than the first, and inside it were little chunks of avocado. Dylan ate one. "Oh-oh!' he said, "This avocado is very tart, and it is also too cold!"

Finally, Dylan sat down by the last bowl, which was the tiniest bowl of all. It was full of rice cereal. He took a bite, and the rice cereal was delicious! So he took another bite. And then another. And before he even realized it, all the rice cereal was gone!

Dylan looked around the little house, but nobody seemed to be at home. "That is very odd behavior when you are throwing a party," he said. "Oh-oh! Perhaps there are animals who live in this house, and they had to go to the meeting!"

Dylan thought that if the animals who lived in this house had gone to the meeting, then they might not be back for some time, and so he should go home. He thought he would like to write a note so that he could thank them for their hospitality and leave his regrets that he hadn't been able to meet them in person.

But as Dylan tried to remember if "regrets" had three os or four, his little eyes started to get very heavy. And his little house seemed like it was ever so far away, to walk with a very full tummy. "Oh no," he said, "If I try to walk home now, surely I will fall asleep on the way. And what then if one of these bears who live in the forest should come upon me! They would eat me all up in one swallow, and then where should I be? No, I shall have to take a nap before I go home."

So Dylan found his way to the bedroom, where he found three beds. He climbed up into the first bed, which was very large. "This won't do," Dylan said, "This bed is too big, and if I go to sleep here, I shall get terribly lost!"

And so he climbed down and tried the second bed. Before he was half-way up the bedskirt, he gave up and slid back down to the floor, saying, "This one won't do either! This bed is too high, and if I go to sleep here, I might roll off the side and I would fall and that would be the end of me!"

Dylan was starting to get worried that he wouldn't find anywhere where he could sleep when he came to the third bed, and saw that it was a little crib, and Dylan clapped his hands with delight. This bed would do nicely. So Dylan climbed, carefully, up over the rails and into little crib, and it was only a few seconds before he was fast asleep.

Now, Dylan was very tired, so he stayed fast asleep for two whole hours. And he didn't even stir when the owners of the house came home. And what Dylan didn't know, because Dylan couldn't read the name on the bright red mailbox, was that the brand new house in the woods belonged to a family of three bears. There was a great big daddy bear, and a somewhat smaller daddy bear, and a little baby bear. They had gone out for a walk in the woods because the big daddy bear's mashed peas were too hot, and the somewhat smaller daddy bear's avocado was just out of the freezer and needed to warm up. And the little baby bear's rice cereal was just right, but she didn't like to make a fuss, and besides, she enjoyed going for walks in the woods with her dads.

After their long walk, everyone was very hungry, so they went to check on their bowls. And the big daddy bear looked at his bowl of mashed peas, and he said, in a big deep voice, "Somebody's been eating my peas!"

And the somewhat smaller daddy bear looked at his avocados, and he said, in a somewhat smaller voice, "Somebody's been eating my avocados!"

And the little baby bear looked in her bowl, and she said, in a very small and sad voice, "Somebody's been eating my rice cereal, and it's all gone!"

By now, the three bears were very worried, so they set to looking about the house. When they looked in the bedroom, the big daddy bear took one look at the bed, with the little spot of messed-up sheets in the middle, and he said, "Somebody was trying to sleep in my bed."

And the somewhat smaller daddy bear looked at his very high bed, where the bedskirts had all been pulled out to one side and he said, "Somebody was trying to sleep in my bed."

And the little baby bear went to her crib, and there she saw little Dylan, fast asleep, and she said, "Somebody was trying to sleep in my bed, and I think that they succeeded!"

So the three bears gathered around the little crib, and the big daddy bear reached down and tapped little Dylan on the shoulder, and Dylan woke with a start. "Oh hello," Dylan said. "This must be your house. I'm terribly sorry to impose. It's just that I was so very tired, and I was afraid I might fall asleep on the way home. I only came over for a visit to meet with my new neighbors."

And the great big daddy bear scooped little Dylan up out of the crib and put him down and said, "What a polite little boy you are. We are all very glad to meet you, because you are the first person we have met since we moved to the woods. You are welcome to come visit us any time you like, but you should really call first so that we will make sure we are at home."

"I'm sorry that I put you out," Dylan said. "I'm glad that we will be friends. My name is Dylan."

The little baby bear said, "Hello Dylan, I am Baby Bear, and these are my Daddy Bears."

Bears! Dylan looked up at the great big daddy bear, who was four times as big as he was, and he remembered how Gray the Bunny Rabbit had told him that a bear could swallow him up with one bite. But then he looked at the somewhat smaller daddy bear, who was only three times as big as Dylan, and at the little Baby Bear, who was no bigger than he was. And he remembered what Gray the Bunny Rabbit had said about bears having great big claws as sharp as knives. The great big Daddy Bear certainly had great big claws, but they were neatly trimmed and didn't look sharp at all. And these bears ate peas and avocados and rice cereal, and none of those things were very much like little boys.

So Dylan decided that it he were going to be scared of the bears, the time to have done it would have been when he first woke up, and not now that they were having such a lovely conversation. And Dylan decided that after he had eaten their lunch and slept in their beds, it would be very rude indeed to be scared of them.

"I am very pleased to meet you, Baby Bear," Dylan said, and he gave the bears his happiest smile -- yes, that's the one. "It would be grand if you all came to visit me at home on Thursday. We can all have lunch together, and I will serve peas and avocados and rice cereal."

Baby Bear said, "That sounds very nice, Dylan." Baby Bear looked around, and then leaned in close. "If it isn't too much trouble," she said, "Rice cereal is very nice, but I prefer milk."

"You like milk?" Dylan asked. "Milk is my favorite! When you come to visit, we can have milk and play games."

So they all agreed that the bears would come to Dylan's house on Thursday afternoon for food and milk and games. And because it was starting to get late, and because Dylan was still tired from his long walk, the somewhat smaller Daddy bear picked Dylan up and carried him on his shoulders back through the woods to the little clearing where Dylan lived.

As the somewhat smaller Daddy bear was putting Dylan back down on the ground, Dylan asked a question that had been bouncing around his mind for some time. "Mr. Bear," he asked in his most polite voice, "Do bears eat animals?"

The somewhat smaller Daddy bear smiled down at Dylan. "Well, we bears eat all the same things that little boys eat. But when you're a great big bear, it would be too much work to get enough food to eat by eating animals. We would only eat another animal if we were starving and there was no other food to eat." And he patted little Dylan on the shoulder and said, "And never a friend."

Dylan smiled, and wished the somewhat smaller Daddy bear a good evening, and he sat down on the front stoop of his little house to play and wind down after a long day.

Before too long, Dylan's animal friends Gray and Ringo and Sir Whittingford Quacksalot stopped by on their way home from the meeting. Dylan couldn't wait to tell them all about his new friends.

"But weren't you scared?" asked Gray the Bunny Rabbit. "Bears are so very big and such long claws!"

"I didn't know they were bears," Dylan said, "Not until we had been introduced and they had been so nice to me. So I didn't know to be scared. And by then, there wasn't any reason for me to be scared. They were very nice and I am having them over for snacks and milk and games on Thursday. You could come too if you like."

Sir Whittingford Quacksalot said that he did not think he would very much like to have lunch with bears, but Gray the Bunny Rabbit agreed to come so long as Dylan promised that he wouldn't be eaten. Ringo said that he would try to come, but he had an appointment that afternoon and might be busy.

And so, Dylan and the bears and Gray the Bunny Rabbit had lunch and played games on Thursday. And the next Thursday, Ringo came over as well. And even though some of the animals were still scared of the bears, before too long, most of them had made friends. And Dylan often went to visit his new friends the bears. But he always made sure to call first to make sure they were in.