Jimmy Palmiotti has more comic book credits
under his belt than can be sensibly listed in a sidebar biography.
He's done lots. Trust us. We don't lie. Much.
Notable amongst the above mentioned credits
are: Co-creator of 21Down, The Resistance,
Gatecrasher, Ash, and Painkiller Jane. Editor
and founder of Marvel Knights, working on Daredevil,
Black Panther, Punisher, Killraven, and
The Inhumans. Writer/co-writer on Beautiful Killer
and Superboy.
Jimmy is also one of the comic industry's
most popular ink artists, having put his pen to Superman, Batman, Catwoman, Midnight Mass, Codename ; Knockout, Sci -Spy, Punisher, Nick Fury, Brotherhood, and many, many more.
Justin Gray has been extremely lucky in
that he has managed to slide his way into a number of exciting
and interesting situations for which he was distressingly under
qualified. He traveled to the mountains of the Dominican Republic
and mined amber with the local people, spending his nights partying
on the balconies of Santa Domingo. Along with eccentric inventor
Roy Larimer, Justin has delivered previously undiscovered species
of insects to the curator of entomology at American Museum of
Natural Histrory.
Currently Justin is co-creator and co-writer
of 21Down and The Resistance, with Jimmy Palmiotti,
as well as being co-writer of Chastity Re-imagined from
Chaos! Comics.
His upcoming projects include a piece of
sequential fiction for the official Matrix
Movie Website with artist JG Jones.
The “Trike” we discovered, was buried beneath a hillside some fifteen feet below the topsoil. The trail of bones lead to the remains of the frill; a large crescent shaped bone connected to the base of the skull. When the Triceratops was alive, this bone served as protection against such fearsome predators as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptors. Some Triceratops specimens show scars in their skull or frill, bringing forth the possibility that these animals fought amongst each other. Conflicts may have occurred during mating season, over territories, or leadership. The frill of Triceratops was different from all others of the ceratopsids species. It was broad and round with ridges along the edge, and the bone was thick and was devoid of fenestrae (openings). Traces of blood vessels have been found in the frill and skull of previous specimens. It was most likely that these vessels supplied the bone and skin with blood. Paleontologists believe that the broad frill, with its extensive blood supply, may have been useful to heat or cool the body. Blood flowing close to the surface would give off body heat if the air was cool and in turn would absorb heat during warm weather.
It took the team nearly six hours to unearth a small section of the frill, carefully removing layers of dirt and mud that have surrounded the fossil for 70 million years. As they dug, the team continued to expose other fragile bones in the immediate area. Rib bones, measuring up to three feet in length, became more abundant. By the end of the first day, it was determined that the Triceratops had collapsed in on itself, stacking the skeletal remains in precarious layers. Given the limited amount of space available, this stacking of bone makes it extremely difficult to work. Unlike the popular film, Jurassic Park, most dinosaur remains are scattered and incomplete. In many instances a dinosaur may have died several hundred yards away and been carried by rain, scavengers or possibly rivers to it’s final resting place.
When the sun finally falls deeply into the Western sky, the heat of the day gives way to an onslaught of hungry mosquitoes. The Wyoming night sky is so clear and saturated with stars that it is possible to track the movement of satellites as they pass overhead. Close to midnight the mosquitoes call it quits and disappear, the heat fades and the wind finally picks up. In the distance, the coyotes move in howling packs across the open plains. The beauty and romance of the west unfurls in clouds of sage smoke and glittering cosmos.
The days that followed seemed to steadily increase in temperature. In the Badlands, water and sun block become far more valuable that money. As the team continued to strip away the hillside, larger and more complex bones were revealed, but they had yet to find the skull. However, having found the frill it seemed logical that the skull had to be near by. The team had bargained with a local rancher for use of his backhoe to aid with the digging, but it took several days to arrive. In the mean time, they were reduced to shovels and pick axes. The labor was intense, sometimes lasting four and five hours at a time. The team worked together without complaint, chipping away at layers of rocky soil in the ninety-degree temperature.
When the backhoe finally arrived, a day later, a hole had been dug, exposing a twenty by twenty-foot square section of land. Much more of the Triceratops had been unearthed, but the skull was still missing. For fossil hunters, a majority of their profits are centered on the skull. With so much work done already, the first hints of doubt began to filter through the team. Since the skull is made up of several smaller bones held together by muscle and ligaments, it was entirely possible that the great beast had been washed away and lost her head. With much of the bone exposed, the team began carefully removing the larger pieces from the ground. This is where patience and a steady hand are invaluable. The exposed bone must be coated with special glue called Paleo-Bond. Paleo-Bond is relatively ten times stronger than Krazy Glue and not something you want to play around with. Each bone, large or small, must be undercut and glued repeatedly out of fear of crumbling. Some of the thinner bones were caught up within the root system of neighboring sage bushes. These roots can work their way through a fossil in much the same way weeds can destroy concrete.
There are several techniques involved with the removal and preservation of the bones. The most common method is to use plaster of Paris and build a protective shell around the piece. Wrapping the bone in aluminum foil first keeps the plaster from adhering to the outside of the fossil. Paleontologists the world over use plaster of Paris as the primary means of fossil excavation. However, plaster is extremely messy and in one hundred-degree temperature has a tendency to dry quickly. Cracks forming in the plaster cast can seriously affect the final condition of the bones. Trying to work with plaster on a windy day, with the dust swirling around your head, is nearly impossible. The glue however, gives a clear view of the bone and allows for photographing and cataloging the pieces as they are taken from the ground. Most paleontologists prefer to prepare the bones in the safety of a laboratory where they can monitor and spend hours treating each specimen. Roy, for his purposes, chose to spend the extra time required to prepare the bone before its removal.
Finally, after the second week of excavation, the team had cleared the land well enough to realize that the Triceratops skull wasn't there. Taking one final survey of the surrounding area and what was once a large hillside, they determined that a river or predator had long ago carried the skull, teeth and horns off to a distant location, losing them forever. Although the team failed to uncover the skull, they had collected a good portion of the Triceratops and seemed to be satisfied with their findings. The simple fact that they had discovered and lifted from the earth the remains of a dinosaur, thousands of miles from any museum, was plenty cool for me.
Fear and Loathing with a Side of Paranoia
Just when armchair generals are ready to lose hope for anything other than a videogame war with low number casualties and back page press coverage, along comes a first-rate Korean-War scare.
Oh yea, our old friend communism stumbles back into the spotlight talking shit and ready to give us a little Pay Per View Opportunity. All these little wars with out of shape dictators are just not going to grab ratings like a traditionalist conflict can. It is a new century after all and we need the assurance of old familiar villains. We need big names, even if North Korea resembles Larry Holmes coming out of retirement to fight Lennox Lewis, it’s going to get people talking. Let Don King swagger through the war propaganda for a few months and see what he comes up with. What he’ll most likely have for us is a straightforward fight as opposed to all this sneaking around.
You have to admit things were looking pretty grim for a while, what with the Iraq invasion being delayed more times than a Kevin Smith comic. It looked like we’d never get the war Nostradamus promised.
I switch on the TV each night in hopes of seeing the new GBUs with the Baghdad-cams sparking in a green hued massacre of innocent civilians. Instead we get weak Pentagon promises and sissy French guys crying for more time to look around Saddam’s bachelor pad. What’s with France and Germany and their insistence on waiting and looking and negotiating? One would almost think they were running their own deal behind closed doors.
Speaking of Germans-- this poor Hans Blix character that, if you ask around U.N. cocktail parties, couldn’t find his wiener if he was naked and had one hand glued to it, is taking all kinds of flack for checking all the usual places. Hans…boobie, you’re not going to find weapons of mass destruction just lying around Saddam’s palace. You need to find some secret underground installation in the desert. After all, Saddam is the sort of Mission Impossible villain that forces people to undergo plastic surgery to impersonate him in the hope that they catch the bullet. Could the UN inspectors be any less creative?
And what’s with all these people with the human shield Visa’s? If they want to get shot by their fellow Americans while trying to improve the lives of strangers, they could simply patrol the crime-infested neighborhoods in their own cities trying to stop crime.
I tell you if they set up a WTO meeting in Baghdad all the peace loving hippies would be there throwing rocks and starting shit on the double. Where were these interested parties willing to die for their beliefs when it came time to vote in the 2000 election?
Anyway as we all know, Desert Storm II: AKA Operation This Time We’re Really, Really Going to Get Things Done Swear to Exxon…I mean God, is presenting us with an opportunity for a serious and long term ground war/occupation.
Why a ground war when we’re constantly told America possesses the most powerful technologies and missile systems in the world? Well the President is suddenly faced with the reality that Hispanic or Latin people aren’t just invading his home state of Texas at what he perceives as an alarming rate, but they’re now the major minority in America is passing Trent Lott’s least favorite ethnic group. Since sealing up the borders would put a damper on Operation Turn Mexico Into A Giant Industrial Complex or NAFTA for short, Dubya has to get creative and start tossing around fifties comicbook terms like Axis of Evil and Evil is as Evil Does.
Meanwhile the TV is drowning in join the military now advertisements offering money for college and an opportunity for independence--only you’re not going to college and you’re not going to be independent--your going to Iraq as a drone where you will stay for decades while people back home drive bright yellow Hummers burning the oil your buddies died for!
Then something unexpected happened! The North Koreans took the moustache twirling Axis of Evil comments to heart! Yes baby! North Korea, led by that wacky dude with the super sized Florida senior citizen wraparound sunglasses announces that he’s restarting the old nuclear-weapons program and, frankly he don’t give a fuck who knows it.
Now we’re cooking with isotopes! The world NUCLEAR is back on the lips of the average man on the street. Not just that but the CIA is dusting off the ICBM terror that enthralled so many Americans in 1960. As we are still grappling with words like Smallpox, Dirty Bomb and Anthrax, along comes old faithful. Good old nuclear war is making its way back from a temporary hiatus and he’s bringing his pal the Star Wars Space Program along for an 80’s political revival. Not only does North Korea offer up the familiar communist threats of old, they present the opportunity for a bloody, population reducing, job opening, economy restoring, and vendetta based land war in an area we’ve been mapping out for over fifty years!
