All-New Ultimates #4

There is a lot I could say about yesterday, which was one of those dispiriting conveyor-belt Fridays where all energy has evaporated due to the daily commute and the horrible pettiness of working in the modern office space, but I'll confine it to two thoughts.

The first came to me when, on my walk home in the evening, I passed a young blue-black woman on the sidewalk. I felt myself dissolving, spontaneously disappearing as I looked at her beautiful face and skin. My last girlfriend was a dark-skinned black woman. So I am obviously still carrying that patterning around with me. But the feeling I felt wasn't prurient or run-of-the-mill lust from a guy who hasn't had a girlfriend in over four years. It was more primordial. I felt like an infant lost who suddenly finds his mother. Which should tell you something, brothers, about our relationship to our wives and girlfriends.

The next thought was one that hit me when I got home and dealt, exhausted as I was, a bachelor returning back to the cave, with the chore of feeding myself. I got to thinking, What price am I paying to live in such a corrupt and predatory society as are these United States? Granted, I am not a willing accomplice to all the crimes being committed. Nonetheless I am, as a citizen and taxpayer of this Great Satan, culpable. The thought added to my feeling of exhaustion.

I went to bed early and I dreamed two stunning dreams. In one I was back in New York City living in a tenement with my beautiful girlfriend Mary. Outside in the inky black street at night I happened across a huge mountain lion of pure muscle. It was death incarnate, and it was bearing down on me hard when all of a sudden out of nowhere a guy, a pretty big guy, comes up and saves me, tackles the mountain lion. The two of them battle in a bloody death struggle. The big guy, who I think is black, runs the cat off but not without sustaining serious injuries. I am worried that he has been infected and that he will now turn into a huge cougar that will stalk the midnight city streets looking for prey.

In the other dream, the latter of the two, I was in a crowded house with family and friends. One guest, a friend, a guy I knew from my Green Party days, was being disruptive. He was shitting in his hands and then wiping them on people and handling dinnerware. He shook my hand. Then he jumped out a second-story window.

But this morning things are much better. I have been enjoying the Shinyribs record Gulf Coast Museum (2013). "Sweet Potato" is a great song. Kevin Russell tears it up in the video above. Rock'n'roll. It is still alive.

Last Saturday, I hit a sweet spot last Saturday by reading the current run of All-New Ultimates. The one that particularly appealed to me was All-New Ultimates #4. It is a cheesecake issue where the heroes -- Kitty Pryde, Dagger, Black Widow and Bombshell hit the beach at Coney Island for some girltalk. Below are six scans from All-New Ultimates #4. The cover and five interior pages of bikinis and sand. The cover artist is David Nakayama. Interior page art is supplied by Amilcar Pinna. The story is written by Michel Fiffe.

Art. It is alive.