The indictment…

It was, I felt, bound to happen eventually.

Oh, and yeah, POLITICS FOLLOW… BEWARE…!

Donald Trump, former President of the United States, yesterday was indicted by a New York grand jury.

While we don’t know the exact details of the indictment, we do know it revolves around hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, whom Trump supposedly had an affair with and which needed to be covered up during his run up to the previous election. (You can read more details about what is known about the indictment in this article by Devon Kale and presented on CNN.com).

While there are those in Trump’s camp and the Republican party who are today bemoaning this indictment as an abuse of power or some dark attempt at revenge from the “vicious” liberal cabal out there, the reality is that this is the culmination of years of perhaps too careful investigation and deference to Donald Trump.

The roots of this case go back years and Trump’s one-time chief lawyer, Michael Cohen, was found guilty of aiding in this cover up/use of hush money and served time for this crime.

Mr. Cohen would eventually turn on Trump and the irony of this entire situation is that it appears that had Trump paid off Stormy Daniels from a personal account to keep her “quiet” during the presidential election of 2016, none of this would have unfolded as it did.

My understanding of the situation -and I will readily admit to not being a lawyer… or playing one on TV- is that Trump tried to hide the payoff by having Mr. Cohen pay Stormy Daniels then reimbursing said payoff through the presidential campaign funds, which is a no-no.

But I suspect this indictment has more teeth than just this one payoff, if we are to believe the early reports that there may be over 30 alleged crimes listed in the indictment.

Here’s the thing, though: This is very likely only the first of several possible indictments Trump will very likely face in the near future.

Others far more invested in this than I have noted the hush money/Stormy Daniels affair isn’t nearly as “serious” as Trump’s attempts to subvert the election of 2020 or his hand in the January 6th storming of the Capitol or the discovery of Top Secret files at his Mar a Largo residence.

All three of these issues are currently in the hands of various prosecutors and it would not shock me if we start to see more indictments pop up in the coming months… if not earlier.

Which leads us to the upcoming presidential election.

You have Joe Biden already announcing, for all intents and purposes, his desire to seek re-election and, on the Republican side, it appears that Donald Trump is the favorite to be the candidate there.

Which must be making Republicans really nervous.

If more indictments pop up, at what point will Trump’s candidacy be viewed as fatally damaged? So far, the only candidate that seems to get any press outside of Donald Trump is Florida’s current governor Ron DeSantis and, though it hurts to admit I’m a Floridian, I feel like his fan base is very shallow and limited.

He may do reasonably well in my home state (another painful admission) but I wonder if his appeal extends anywhere past the state’s borders. Recent polls seem to attest to that…

Fox poll shows Trump’s lead over DeSantis growing

According to the above article:

Trump was the top pick for 54 percent of respondents, who were asked to choose from a list of potential 2024 Republican presidential nominees. DeSantis — who has yet to declare his candidacy, though he is widely expected to — came in as a distant second pick, with 24 percent of the vote. It’s a slight drop in support for the Florida governor, who nabbed 28 percent to Trump’s 43 percent in a Fox poll conducted late last month.

We’re still very early in the whole process but I’m old enough to remember other Governors who seemed strong possibilities to represent either the Democratic or Republican parties and their campaigns fizzled when they moved outside the borders of their state.

So too it might be with DeSantis.

I will say this much: If Trump does once again become the Republican candidate, I envision Biden beating him and likely more handily than before. If DeSantis becomes the candidate, I suspect it will be the same.

Why?

Perhaps I’m very off but it feels like the Republican “brand” has become very bruised -if not outright poisoned- by the events of the last near decade. We’ve lived through Trump’s candidacy and presidency, the events of January 6th, the conservative Supreme Court and its striking of Roe v Wade, the lack of any serious policy that people seem to stand by (notice how the term “woke” has become a catch all phrase to signify… what exactly?!), and figures -especially in the House of Representatives- that are either silly or scary or inept in equal measures.

We see in the Republicans a party that seems to not offer much except near constant hate and division. There are those that feed off those emotions but for others, it becomes nothing less than a drag.

So here we stand, with Trump perhaps finally facing what he’s avoided all his life: Responsibility for his words and actions.

What will come of it?

Stay tuned.

Finally….!

Do you have this vague memory from your childhood, say a movie or TV show or perhaps a book or comic book that you read/saw/etc. and would love to see again but you just don’t quite know what the thing you read/saw/etc. was?

I have plenty of such fragmentary memories and, luckily for me, we live in an era where if you look around the internet with a bit of diligence you may eventually find such items.

In this particular case, it was a comic book story. I recalled it involved a guy -our main character- who goes to a cornfield looking for work. There, he meets Death. Death, as it turns out, is tending to his crop of corn.

The upshot of the story is that Death is looking for a replacement, someone who will tend to the crops and, at day’s end, take some of the grown corn to his shack where they will eat them. See, each individual kernel of corn has the face of someone who will die on it. Thus Death has its “meal” and those whose faces are on the kernels die, including (the story’s punchline) the main character’s wife.

For many, many, many years I’ve sought that story. I’ve longed to see it once again but I had only vague memories of where it could be.

I was certain it was published in a comic book released likely in the late 1970’s. I realized, after a while and after collecting horror comic books from that era, that it was likely a DC comic and I became certain, based on memory alone, that the artist who drew the story was likely Jerry Grandinetti.

While over the passage of years certain artists may become very famous and their work well known, others may fall by the wayside and be somewhat forgotten.

Jerry Grandinetti (you can read his Wikipedia entry here) was a great artist who was primarily known for doing DC war books.

His work was even (ahem) used by Roy Lichtenstein in a couple of his pop art pieces.

By the 1970’s his artwork had become very unique and, let’s be honest, perhaps a little too odd for popular consumption. The artwork, in my opinion, looked like comic book versions of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, expressionistic works with heavy shadows and almost bizarre backgrounds. The piece below appeared, based on what is written at the top of the page, in the DC horror title Unexpected

It was because I spent some time into the 1980’s and 90’s (perhaps even a little beyond) collecting DC horror titles like The Witching Hour, The House of Mystery/Secrets, The Unexpected, and Ghosts among other titles and stumbling upon stories drawn by Mr. Grandinetti that I realized my memory of that corn-farming Death story was very likely drawn by him.

But where was it?

I couldn’t recall which of the DC horror books it was in. I couldn’t recall the cover of the particular issue it might have been in.

And over the weekend, I thought about that story and decided I would once again try to find it.

This time, I succeeded.

Looking around over the weekend, I found a website that offered a list of Jerry Grandinetti’s comic book work and, specifically, his stories presented in the DC Horror comics and, voila, I found House of Mystery 261 from October of 1978.

As you can tell from the cover alone (something I don’t recall, even though I do recall the Grandinetti illustrated story within!) it is obviously showing Death holding corn and, you guessed it, the cover very much ties into the story. The story is called “The Husker” and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Mike Kaluta cover (spectacular, by the way) was drawn first and Greg Potter’s story was subsequently written to tie into that cover concept.

Anyway, looking around a little more, I found a website which offered the contents of the issue and there, finally and after all these years, I once again read the comic and the Jerry Grandinetti illustrated story. There were, to be clear, other stories within the issue but for whatever reason they didn’t stick to my mind quite as much as the Grandinetti drawn piece…

I know it is a total dream on my part, but I would dearly love it if DC comics would collect and offer a large trade paperback of all of Jerry Grandinetti’s horror stories. As I mentioned above, I’ve stumbled upon other stories he illustrated while collecting DC’s horror books and each time I find a story drawn by him I’m delighted by his weird compositions, heavy blacks, and overall look.

Either way, it’s great to finally have this particular “itch” scratched after all these years!

Is it just me…?

I swear, it seems like the days are not just rushing by, but literally rocketing before my eyes.

We’re already three months into 2023 and I can barely remember 2022 at this point.

Anyway, as I pointed out a little before, I’m currently working on two things: A (gasp) graphic novel I’m working on with a wonderful penciller and my latest novel.

I’ve written before that the novel is moving along but I do still have to figure out the novel’s ending. I’m not quite there yet but when I do crack that particular nut -and I’m sure I will eventually- everything should fall into place.

As for the graphic novel, if all works as I hope, this will be the second graphic novel I’ve ever done… in collaboration with a wonderful artist, of course. My first is The Dark Fringe, which was the very first attempt at creating a full story…

I am loathe to get into too many details of this new graphic novel simply because we’re in the very early stages of this work and I’d rather start making formal announcements when the work is near release. I will say this much: The script is complete and if all works out, the book itself will be approximately 170 pages long. It will likely be released in three volumes at first before being collected into a single volume.

So far it looks terrific and I couldn’t be happier with the work of my friend who is drawing it.

Again, I’m being a bit cryptic here but revelations will be made when the time comes.

Until then, stay tuned!