Our first post was one year ago today.  It’s been a fun adventure so far, and I know we’re all excited about the year to come.  At the six month mark, I took a moment to recap our history and now seems like a good time to do it again.  We’ve had incredible support from readers, hundreds of comments, thousands of visits, and great feedback. We’ve made some changes to the site layout (mostly to your right) in recent weeks to make things easier to find. Thank you to everyone that has taken a moment to look in at what we have to say.

It’s always interesting to see what draws people in and more importantly where they’re drawn in from.  We get hits from all over the world, and it’s the coolest thing to me.  However, I can’t help but notice that some of our very own United States have neglected to stop in. What could possibly be keeping people from the these states from visiting MLD?

Over the next few weeks, I’ve decided to reach out to these areas and see if I can generate any interest from the locals.  Even if I only end up creating a magnet for search engines, I’ll be satisfied.  In the meantime, enjoy this collage.

One of the things I enjoy most about reading comic books is speculating about what happens next. Sometimes what comes out of this process happens, sometimes it’s better that it doesn’t. Regardless, my favorite titles have kept me coming back for a long time.  Earlier tonight, I was thinking about Marvel‘s Amazing Spider-Man comic and what’s been going on for the last few years.

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DC Comics officially announced yesterday that a new series called Brightest Day will follow up their best-selling Blackest Night series in April. While Blackest Night is a more conventional 8-issue miniseries, Brightest Day will be a bi-weekly 26-issue maxi-series beginning with an issue zero. This is similar to DC’s weekly series 52, which launched out of Infinite Crisis, and its follow up Countdown, which led into Final Crisis.  I remember hearing a lot of mixed reactions to 52 and Countdown, so hopefully nothing will spoil or needlessly complicate this series.

Twenty-six issues is a big commitment for me, especially considering I don’t normally read DC’s books. However, given how great Blackest Night has been, I’ll certainly give this a try since Green Lantern/Blackest Night writer Geoff Johns will be writing this as well.

It was also announced that David Finch will be providing covers for the series. Kevin and I were just discussing him over the weekend regarding his new exclusive contract with DC. This is a high profile job and he deserves it as he’s incredibly talented. He’s done some of my favorite covers in recent years, particularly for the X-Men: Messiah Complex crossover and Moon Knight. I’m even planning to purchase a print of his cover art from X-Men #200.

More on Brightest Day can be found at our Brightest Day hub.

Just to bring closure to yesterday’s blog post, thanks to the interwebs we have our answer on what the evil, immortal, invincible wasp-like-things are. According to the Bug Guy at my wife’s new favorite blog, Whatsthatbug.com, it wasn’t a wasp at all, but rather a red headed ash borer. They’re designed to look like wasps as a defense mechanism and we were told they likely were burrowed into some firewood we brought into the house and emerged recently due to the warmer temperatures inside. Unfortunately, we don’t have a wood-burning fireplace. So this was a new mystery for us… but upon inspection we discovered some tiny holes in a wood perch in our red iguana’s cage.

Mystery solved.

Harmless beetles.

And since our dissection of one of the dead borers revealed it had a stinger, I’m apparently a terrible junior Entomologist. Now if only we knew what the deal was with the dead hornets we’ve been finding…

KevinMLD’s home is the victim to a hostile takeover by a UFO.  Of course, I needed to chime in and try to discover the identity of the enemy.  This is the conversation that ensued:

angelique do they look like this?  http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/01/the-jewel-wasp-is-amazing/
kevinmld no
kevinmld I tried to take pictures but they didn’t come out.
angelique are they big or small?
angelique you need to put your camera on the flower mode
kevinmld kar says bee size.
kevinmld i was using my phone
angelique Carpenter bee or Bavarian bee?
kevinmld what the hell is a Bavarian bee?
angelique hahahaha
angelique i have no idea
angelique are they fast or slow?
kevinmld mostly slow.
kevinmld but not that slow.
kevinmld the Orkin guy proposed that maybe it was some sort of wasp baby larvae thing, but he said that basically he had no idea what it was, why it was awake, where it came from, or how to stop them.
angelique interesting.
angelique i thought wasps were fast
kevinmld Since we basically live in a cartoon world, we’ve been putting cups over top of them when we find them. And then we watch the cups move ever so slowly as they fight for their lives. We literally leave them lying around for weeks at a time to the point that the cats slap the cups around.
kevinmld and we put one in the freezer…
kevinmld overnight.
angelique hahaha
kevinmld and it came back to life.
angelique eeew
kevinmld so clearly they’re immortal.
angelique

kevinmld no and what is that?
angelique that’s a digger/plasterer bee
angelique i guess it likes eating plaster the way a capenter bee eats wood
kevinmld we do have plaster all over the place in here.
kevinmld it’s wings are barely formed.
kevinmld and it’s skinnier than that.
kevinmld and it’s legs are almost like cricket legs.
angelique

angelique ?
kevinmld less happy than that with a friggin’ weapon on it’s tail.
angelique stripes?
angelique

kevinmld yes stripes, thats why we think its some sort of bee.
angelique

kevinmld stop! these pics are freaking me out (Karen)
angelique am i getting closer?
kevinmld that thing looks huge
kevinmld its super skinny
angelique i think it is super zoomed in

kevinmld

angelique eeeeew
angelique those legs are super long
angelique
?
angelique i don’t know what’s wrong with me……
kevinmld yeah… weird cricket legs.
kevinmld tiny wings and a nasty tail you can’t see in the picture.
kevinmld and they’re invincible.
kevinmld and immortal.
angelique ok – according to my search for “skinny bug long legs spider/bee”
angelique this is the culprit!

angelique also – immortal
kevinmld it looks just like the bottom one
angelique OR
angelique it is this guy:

angelique as found on the internet:  “Bees will only come back if you thaw them in your mouth. Every few minutes, you will need to sip a bit of honey so they have food when they wake up. Be very careful not to swallow.”
kevinmld i’ll have to try that
angelique i can’t find anything like that bug online.  it must not exist.
kevinmld cause its an evil hybrid mutant invincible immortal hell spawn that will someday be named after us