disarmed42's New Writeups

Kraven's Last Hunt (thing)

2004-07-26T17:38:45Z

Spyder! Spyder! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake, by way of J.M. DeMatteis

Kraven's Last Hunt is the name of a 6-part storyline that took place in the Spider-Man comics in late 1987. J.M. DeMatteis wrote the story, while Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod provided the art. Several major events occurred in Spider-Man's life around this time. The Foreigner killed Ned Leeds, one of Peter Parker's co-workers, who at the time was thought to be the Hobgoblin, one of Spider-Man's enemies. Mary-Jane and Peter's wedding ceremony had taken place so recently that they hadn't even finished moving in together. Spider-Man's life was undergoing huge changes.

But this story is not about Spider-Man. This story is about Sergei Kravinoff, known to the world as Kraven the Hunter. His parents were Russian aristocrats who fled Russia when the…

polyptych (thing)

2004-05-19T21:50:21Z

Polyptych is a general term for a multi-part composition. You might be more familiar with the terms diptych and triptych, which denote two and three part works respectively. Polyptych is mostly used to refer to works with four or more parts because these more specific words exist. Although I have heard the word triptych applied to musical compositions, most polyptychs are paintings consisting of several different panels that are connected together. In fact, the word polyptych comes from the Greek for "many folds". A quick Google search turns up a few polyptychs, all of which are religious paintings from the 15th or 16th century. So it would seem that a polyptych is a forgotten type of art. Heck, not even Webster1913 seems to have heard of it.

However, this modern age has brought us a new application for this word: comics. Scott McCloud coined this use of the term in Understanding Comics. In comics, a polyptych is where a continuous background is…

City of Souls I (place)

2004-02-23T05:12:27Z

Zeitgeist

The sun hadnât quite risen, but the morning commute had already begun. The winter in this city didnât make it easy to find the motivation to go to work sometimes. The snow continued to pile up, and traffic was beastly.

None of this affected the Zeitgeist Building. It overlooked downtown from five miles south, in the old business district. Rectangular red-brick warehouses and towering gray factories still dominated the neighborhood, but few contributed to commerce in any way nowadays. Cozy restaurants and quaint specialty shops stood between the industrial clutter, and occupied the hard-to-capture âcheap but hipâ niche. The Zeitgeist Building presided over all of this, and it was the real reason people still cared about the area.

âI was thinking,â Aaron said, âthis place needs some generators. Think what would have happened if the blackout had gotten this far out. The people in the apartments wouldâve been pissed cuz they…

panel (thing)

2003-02-18T03:15:19Z

The panel, along with the gutter, is the most basic element of a comic. Youâre probably most familiar with the simple rectangular panels found in the daily comic strips, or maybe even the single, circular panel of the wretched The Family Circus^*. But a panel cannot be strictly defined as a rectangle that contains a picture. Scott McCloud, in Understanding Comics, defines a panel as, âa general indicator that time or space is being divided.â Sounds kind of heady for comics, right? But really, itâs the simplest definition that adequately describes what a panel does.

You see, back when comic books entered the American cultural landscape, they were seen as either childrenâs fare or trashy pulp fiction. Comics were simple, and their artists and writers only thought about panels as frames for the action. Enter Will Eisner, who revolutionized comicsâ storytelling techniques with his comic The Spirit in the 1940âs. He also wrote the first thorough…

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (thing)

2003-01-19T03:04:30Z

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was a case brought before the United States Supreme Court in 1964. It is the most important case related to libel law the Court has decided on. This case outlined the criteria for a media entity to be sued for libel by a public figure. In other words, it deals with freedom of the press, one of the civil liberties mentioned in the First Amendment of the United Statesâ Bill of Rights.

The Case

On March 29, 1960, a full-page advertisement appeared in the New York Times titled âHeed Their Rising Voicesâ. The ad attempted to gain support for the civil rights movement in the South by recounting some of the struggles of those involved, and mentioned police action taken in Montgomery, Alabama against protesters. The adâs writers were a little overzealous in their condemnations, however, and there were some incorrect statements in the adâs third and sixth paragraphs. L.B. Sullivan was the elected chief of police in…

Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge (place)

2003-01-03T05:06:15Z

The Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge is one of 520 National Wildlife Refuges across America. It is maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was founded to attempt to bring back the prairie that used to dominate the landscape of the Great Plains.

When Europeans first settled America, there were millions of acres of prairie in the Midwest. The pioneers ignored the land, reasoning that soil that couldnât support trees would not be arable. Unbeknownst to them, between the bison manure and the cycling of nutrients by prairie grasses, the soil was some of the richest in the world. When settlers finally discovered this fact, the prairie became the breadbasket of America. Unfortunately, this meant that the prairie grasses and the wide variety of animals living in them became endangered. In Iowa, where NSNWR is located, only .1% of the original prairie still exists.

The U.S. Congress authorized the purchase of 8600 acres of land to establish the…