Born This Day: Jacques-Yves Cousteau

SubHuman™ & © Michael Ryan & Mark Schultz

Cousteau (1910-1977) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, marine biologist and ocean explorer, known for his extensive underseas investigations. He was co-inventor of the aqualung which made SCUBA diving possible (1943). Cousteau the developed the Conshelf series of manned habitats, the Diving Saucer, a process of underwater television and numerous other platforms and specialized instruments of ocean science. In 1945 he founded the French Navy's Undersea Research Group. He modified a WWII wooden hull minesweeper into the research vessel Calypso, in 1950. Link

Visit Cousteau.org

"STAND BY FOR ACTION!":

The Hyborian Age: Chapter Two

CLICK TO ENLARGE & READ ALL PAGES






Script by Roy Thomas; Art © Walt Simonson; The Hyborian Age and Conan © their current copyright holders.

Read Chapter One HERE

The Hyborian Age: Chapter One

CLICK TO ENLARGE & READ ALL PAGES

Robert E. Howard Days 2006 took place this past June 8-10 in Cross Plains, Texas, in honour of the centenary of his birth. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of Howard’s work – I think you had to first be exposed to it in your very early teens – but the event gives me the excuse to run this nice overview of the Hyborian Age done 30 years ago by Roy Thomas & Walt Simonson. The chances of this ever getting reprinted are slim so enjoy this 1st chapter.

Script by Roy Thomas; Art © Walt Simonson; The Hyborian Age and Conan © their current copyright holders.

NoMeansNo - The River

"Inspired equally by jazz and fusion as trashy punk rock, NoMeansNo continues to bulldoze through genres. Describing the ardently amazing hybrid of styles is similar to tossing a delicious cacophony of jazz, fusion, blues, hardcore, rock, new wave and punk in a blender, setting to liquefy, and serving on the rocks. To label NoMeansNo a punk band would be a transgression of mammoth magnitude." link

"Mothers tell your children the truth
Don't hide the fate that's waiting
When you're born you start to drown
There's no help, no safety

First a gift of love is given
Then the winds rise, the sails are riven
IN THE RIVER"

NoMeansNo! The River:

© Estate of Vaughn Bodé. Click to enlarge.

Supercomputers To Transform Science

Poor Luornu! Disintegrated by a supercomputer designed to transform science! Don't worry too much; two of her three selves survived to fight on as 'Duo Damsel'! link

"New insights into the structure of space and time, climate modeling, and the design of novel drugs, are but a few of the many research areas that will be transformed by the installation of three supercomputers at the University of Bristol.

At peak performance the multi-million pound high performance computers (HPCs) will carry out over 13 trillion calculations per second. That is equivalent to the entire population of the world working simultaneously on hand-held calculators for about three hours." link

DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!

The Blast Gets Married!

Art © Tom Bagley

A few weeks ago the Time Bubble produced the above wedding invitation from Mike Moynihan and his lovely Bride-To-Be, Kelly. Nicely illustrated by the wonderful Calgary artist, Tom Bagley, it depicts Mike as his alter-ego, The Blast.

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s Mike ran the ‘Words & Pictures’ comic shop on the University of Calgary campus. Mike was a big supporter of alternative comics and brought in a number of creators including, Mike Allred, Mark Schultz, Dan Brereton, and Mike Dringenberg, amongst others, to promote their work. Allred returned the favour by turning Moynihan into a super-villain in Madman #5 (below).

Madman & The Blast ™ & © Mike Allred

A few years later when Michael Ryan and Mark Schultz created SubHuman (below - illustrated by Roger Petersen and published by Dark Horse Comics), Moynihan (below - left) also tuned up as a member of ‘Storm Force 10’, Krill (SubHuman) Stromer’s band of action-adventurers.

Krill Stromer, Storm Force 10, & SubHuman ™ & © Michael Ryan & Mark Schultz

Mike must hold the singular distinction of being the only Albertan to be turned into a comic book character in two different mainstream comic books!

Life Survived Snowball Earth

Poster by the super-talented Chad Kerychuk and courtesy the Digital Dream Machine Blog. 'Superman' and 'The Fortress of Solitude' are ™ and © DC Comics.

It has been 2.3 billion years since Earth's atmosphere became infused with enough oxygen to support life as we know it. About the same time, the planet became encased in ice that some scientists speculate was more than a half-mile deep. That raises questions about whether complex life could have existed before "Snowball Earth" and survived, or if it first evolved when the snowball began to melt.

New research shows organisms called eukaryotes -- organisms of one or more complex cells that engage in sexual reproduction and are ancestors of the animal and plant species present today -- existed 50 million to 100 million years before that ice age and somehow did survive. The work also shows that the cyanobacteria, or blue-green bacteria, that put the oxygen in the atmosphere in the first place, apparently were pumping out oxygen for millions of years before that, and also survived Earth's glaciation. link

Captain America & The Avengers are ™ and © DC Comics

Ref: Biomarkers from Huronian oil-bearing fluid inclusions: An uncontaminated record of life before the Great Oxidation Event. 2006. A. Dutkiewicz et al. Geology 34: 437–440.