The news today

This afternoon's two lead topics on the BBC:

The doctor who tried to save Neda speaks: "Suddenly everything turned crazy. The police threw teargas and the motorcycles started rushing towards the crowd. We ran to an intersection and people were just standing. They didn't know what to do.

"We heard a gunshot. Neda was standing one metre away from me. I turned back and I saw blood gushing out of Neda's chest.

"She was in a shocked situation, just looking at her chest. The she lost her control.

"We ran to her and lay her on the ground. I saw the bullet wound just below the neck with blood gushing out."

And: Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields.

"They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away," he told ABC News.

"They'd come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock."

Some people believe the mysterious circles that appear in fields in a number of countries are created by aliens. Others put them down to a human hoax."

Lady Fight Comics (and Other Embarrassing Names)

So I wrote a very short comic story, and it's officially been released in an anthology! I actually haven't seen a hard copy yet, but it's out, so I figured the shout-outs should begin -- especially since we just got our first review, and it's a good one.

My story, "Cacta," is an intro to a bigger story about a girl who gets cactus-based superpowers, a set of superpowers which is both way more cool and way more awkward than it sounds. Anyway, the reviewers liked it:

"The art on this one is very solid, with a rather striking splash page...My favorite part of this story, however, was not the super heroics, but our young heroine's inner dialogue as she struggles not to flaunt her deeds at school the next day."

I'm counting it as a solid vote in my comic writing ability, even if my first and last names both got misspelled in the review. The other stories have more than a fair helping of ass-kickery, and it's pretty awesome to be included with them. My one caveat: I'm a little uneasy about the title of the anthology, Lady Fight Comics, although I suppose it's technically the exact opposite of saying that girls can't fight. (I actually tried to propose another story for it called Lady Fight Club, but that got shot down...probably deservedly so. Although, if anyone wants to illustrate a short comic script about 1950s housewives and Fight Club, give me a holla.) The issue is out, now, in comic shops and on IndyPlanet: order it here.