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September 19th, th' annual celebration o' speakin' th' way a swashbuckler would be enjoyed by many o' th' landlubbers here on SpinDizzy. Many be havin' nere set foot, paw, hoof, claw or other appendange on th' deck o' a ship, but fer this day they spoke as tho they`d been on board a ship all the'r lives.

Th' majority o' SpinDizzy residents observed th' day by speakin' th' venacular o' them hearty seafarin' souls. Some e'en sailed' so far as t' dress up in th' clothin' o' swashbucklers. Hats, eyepatches, ruffles an' swords made many folks look th' part as th' spoke th' language o' th' sea.

Th' celebration sailed' on all day, an' most o' th' night. Luckily, nay booty be taken an' nay cannons be fired as th' whole thin' be in fun. Nay one were bein' forc'd t' be hoblin' th' plank, and nor were seafarers bein' keelhauled, In fact th' whole day were bein' spent havin' fun more in talkin' like a pirate than actin' like one. Hopefully next voyage, thar be more folks celebratin, "Talk Like a Pirate Day" with a 'Yo ho ho,' and a bottle of rum!

Patch O'Black, local Jellicle cat, was pleased to find that his birthday had been remembered this year.

Although the feline's age is a bit of a mystery, cats are mysterious after all, he did tell this reporter that, as yet, he has used only one of his nine lives. Most cats use up a few of their lives as kittens, but Patchy apparently had protective parents and his evidenced good sense was active even then.

The Jellicle cat's friends brought him several gifts to celebrate his birthday raging fron cat treats to cat nip. Thanks to the special properties of his cat basket, he had no trouble storing the items away for enjoyment at a later time.

Patchy seemed particularly happy at his friend Borris, local polar bear's remberance of the day. Of course Patch and Borris are good buddies and this came as not supprise. Hopefully Patchy will remember Borris; birthday with the sam enthusiasm as Borris did Patchy's.

All reports indicated that Patchy enjoyed the day, and it was rumored that he even purred!

DTF, local wolf, was watching over his herd in a remote mountainous pasture on SpinDizzy when suddenly a brand-new BMW blew out of a cloud of dust towards him. The driver, a wallaby in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the wolf, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

DTF looked the wallaby up and down, obviously an SED (Society of Evil Doers) member, then looked at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answered "Sure, why not?"

The wallaby parked his car, whipped out his Dell notebook computer, connected it to his Singular RAZR V3 cellphone, and surfed to a NASA page on the Internet, where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then fed to another NASA satellite that scanned the area providing an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The wallaby then opened the digital photo program in Adobe Photoshop and exported it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he received an e-mail on his Palm Pilot that the image had been processed and the data stored. He then accessed a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few more minutes, received a response.

Finally, he printed out a full-color, 150-page report on his high-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and turned to the rancher and said, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

The wolf, who had been watching with a bit of amusement at all the fuss scratched his head fur and said "Well... that number sounds about right, I guess you can take one." He watched the wallaby select one of the animals and looked on with an amused expression as the wallaby stuffed it into the trunk of his car.

As the wallaby settled into the driver's seat DTF said, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give 'im back to me?" as he thumbpointed to the trunk.

The wallaby thought about it for a second or two then shrugged and said "Okay. Why not?"

DTF smiled broadly at the wallaby. "You're with the Society of Evil Doers aren't you?"

"Wow! That's correct," said the surprised wallaby, "but how'd you guess that?"

"Didn't have to guess at all," said DTF. "Was easy enough knowing. You showed up here even though nobody called you, you wanted to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you think ya are, and you sure don't know a durn thing about cows.

This is a herd of SHEEP, now give me back my dog!"

Gilead, local otter, is often talking about how much he enjoys the Harry P. Otter books and movies.

As long last, Grizzly Gifts has made T-shirts for Gilead's favorite movie. They have Harry P. Otter right on the front, and they come in blue and in purple.

One problem though, is they only come in sizes for small otters. It's possible to buy one of the shirts, take the picture and scan it on your computer, and then have one of those dry transfer T-shirt places make you a larger one. Being an 8.5 foot tall, 2000 pound plus centaur, I'd need to XXX-large size like my Narnia shirt. But as most folks here on SpinDizzy are of smaller stature, they could probably wear one.

So if you're a Harry P. Otter fan, here's the chance to show everyone else that you love the books and movies!

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a film this bad, and just like I did with that film, I ended up walking out on this one too. Why? One may ask that question only briefly after viewing this film before it becomes, ‘why didn’t you walk out sooner?’ To give an honest review, the entire film should be seen, but after an hour’s worth, I’ve seen enough.

The big clue to any germination of a bad film is when there’s an exposition at the beginning of the feature. This had three. After the first one at the start, the remaining two involved a flashback within a flashback. A lot of it had to do with explaining why the main characters act they way did… outside of the wooden acting, that is. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the audience should be gradually fed information involving the development of the story just as the characters are, not having it force-fed through the nozzle of a firehose.

While I was looking forward to what appeared to be ancient, legendary dragons in an epic struggle in modern-day society, it turned into a bombastic chase film with mediocre computer-generated effects; the big, bad dwagon (I can’t call those things ‘dragons’ out of deference to dragons I know as friends) always a few minutes behind the heroes, leaving a trail of destruction.

The film left an equally bad impression on me, leaving a trail of destruction upon my notions of any further films released through South Korea.

Greetings, fellow travelers! Well, we are about at the end of our little tour of the crossovers between the Marvel and DC universes! Please keep your hands, feet, and head inside the trans-dimensional vehicle until we come to a complete stop!

When we last left Earth-Crossover, the young heroes of the Teen Titans had met up with the merry mutants of the X-Men. This was the last team-up between the big boys of DC and Marvel for over a decade. Then, in 1994, DC and Marvel decided it was time to join forces again, and put two of their grim and gritty characters together. DC had long ago established the shadowy figure of justice known as Batman, but Marvel had more recently unleashed the anti-hero called the Punisher. It seemed natural to pair these two up, particularly with the Punisher willing to use lethal force in the form of large caliber weapons while Batman sees taking a life as a last resort, and never would use a gun, due to his origin. The two fought a duo of disfigured criminals, Jigsaw and the Joker, as the attempted to take over Gotham's crime underworld. Naturally, the Punisher though it best to do away with these two bad apples once and for all. This ended with Batman oddly having to protect the Joker from the gun-toting Mr. Castle. While they managed to stop the villains from achieving their ends, the Joker escaped due to Batman having to fight off the Punisher to stop him from killing the Clown Prince of Crime. In the end, the Dark Knight trounced the Punisher. Batman then told the Punisher that he would hold him responsible for whatever the Joker did next, and to leave Gotham City, which the punisher did.

The next crossover also featured Batman, but this time Marvel decided to bring back one of their A-list players. In was time for the the web-slinger to meet the World's Greatest Detective. When Batman meet Spider-Man, it was because each were having nightmares with an odd twist on the tragedies which made them into heroes. Peter Parker dreamed that the burglar who shot his Uncle Ben was actually the Joker. Bruce Wayne, however, dreamed that the symbiote known as Carnage was the thief who gunned down his parents. As Spider-Man and Batman investigated Carnage and the Joker respectively, we find out that each will be receiving treatment using special bio-techological chips surgically implanted. Carnage manages to short out his implants, and tracks down the Joker to remove his chips as well. When the two crime fighters discover this, they team up to take down their crazy killer adversaries.

Two years after this was published, a second adventuring Batman and Spider-Man was published. In this one, Batman's foe Ra's Al Ghul sent his daughter, Talia, to Wilson Fisk, better known to Marvel Comic readers as The Kingpin, with an offer: Ra's Al Ghul knows that Fisk's wife is dying from a form of cancer, and offers him a cure. In return, The Kingpin will aid Ra's in his goal to rule the world (for the good of all mankind, of course). In the end, we find out that Ra's actually was the one to infect Mrs. Fisk with her cancer-like disease to begin with, and more surprising, The Kingpin had figured this out before Ra's had offered his cure, and even allowed Batman and Spider-Man to follow him to stop Ra's plan, which had included destroying New York. R'as admits being outplayed, Talia sends the cure for the illness to Batman, and Spider-man...well, he didn't really get much out of it other than getting out of New York for a while.

What makes the second story odd is that it takes place after an event that rewrote how Marvel/DC crossovers would be handled for the next several years. This even was known as "Marvel Vs. DC" or "DC Vs. Marvel", depending on which issue of this major company crossover was known. In this major event, we find out that two cosmic "brothers", who represent the total of the Marvel universe and the DC universe, have suddenly become aware of each other. This has caused elements and people from the two universes to start to shift from one to the other. Peter Parker shows up at the Daily Planet, which is bought out and has their publisher Perry White replaced with J. Jonah Jameson. X-Men bad boys Wolverine and Gambit, having fought off Killer Croc, manage to somehow steal the Batmobile, while Batman and Robin face off against Bullseye. After this sort of random crossing over, the two brothers decide that the cosmos isn't big for the two of them. They decide to match heroes from one universe against the other to see which one of them is better. The loser, and the universe they represent, is to be erased. While this is going on, a young man learns he is a 'shard' of the two brothers, and has the power to create portals through time, space, and into the two universes. Gaining the name of Access, he attempts to use his powers to avoid having ether universe destroyed.

When neither side seems to have a clear victory, nether brother is willing to allow the other to erase them. The Specter and the Living Tribunal quickly act before ether brother can attempt to attack the other, and merge the two into what is now known as the Amalgam universe. Here, people and places from both universe are thrown together and made anew. Captain America is merged with Superman, becoming the Super-Soldier! Batman mixes with Wolverine, becoming Dark Claw. The greatest heroes of this combined universe form such teams as the Judgment League Avengers, the Challengers of the Fantastic, and the X-Patrol! Meanwhile, Access is trying to set things to rights as some of the heroes, such as Dr. Strangefate, try to stop him from "ripping the universe in two", as they see it.

Eventually, Access manages to get the two universe to separate, the remaining crossover heroes team-up to stop the villains, and the cosmic brothers turn, and finally say the same thing to each other, that their brother has "done well". It was a nice way for each company to acknowledge their rival is worthy competition.

This was an important new step in DC/Marvel crossovers because no longer were these stories the happened on some Earth where both the DC and Marvel characters both lived, but established that each universe was separate, but could be traveled to, via Access. This went on to spawn two more mini-series using Access as the title character, as well as some more crossovers involving characters meeting up on the other's home turf.

However, that will have to wait till next time, as we have come to the end of this edition of the Four-Kolor Kitty! Remember, we are still taking suggestions and questions for future column's, so page #mail them to PatchO'Black. Until then, see you in the funny pages!

Q: What's a wah's favorite restaurant?
A: Bamboo Club.

Q: What's black and white and red all over?
A: An interspecies panda couple making out.

Q: What do you call it when a wah rips you off?
A: You've been bamboo-zled.

Q: Why do pacifist wahs carry cameras to dinner?
A: Panda (n) Either of two Asian mammals that eats bamboo, shoots and leaves.

Q: What kind of film do pandas like to do artistic photoshoots with?
A: Black and white and red.

Q: What's a panda's favorite kind of TV to own?
A: A 72" 1080p DLP HDTV with home theater surround sound. What? They're not stupid.

Q: What do you call a stupid wah?
A: A pan-duh.

Q: Why does a male wah look at copies of PlayPanda?
A: To scope out a little Poonya-tang.

Q: Where do you go to buy a loaf of bamboo bread in Spain's Chinatown?
A: To the Pandaderia.

Q: What do you call an Asian mammal that eats simply every kind of bamboo?
A: A Pan-da.

Q: What flat items does a wah consume in a typical breakfast (besides bamboo leaves)?
A: Pandacakes.

Q: What's the most famous line in panda TV sitcom history?
A: Wah Ricky, I want to be in the show...

Q: Why was the panda revolution against the British over almost before it started?
A: When Panda Revere rode through the bamboo forest yelling, "The Redcoats are coming, the Redcoats are coming!" the giant pandas just giggled and thought he was spreading romantic gossip about their smaller kin.

Q: What do you call a smash Broadway hit about a maimed wah who murdered those he felt responsible for his misery?
A: The Panda of the Opera.

Q: What do bamboo eaters do when they overheat? A1: Lie down with their tongues hanging out and pand. A2: And maybe drink some cold bottled wah-ter.

Q: Why couldn't the red panda eat another bite?
A: He was too Ailurus full-gens.

Q: What was the name of the super-strong baby in the panda translation of "The Flintstones"?
A: Bamboo-Bamboo.

Q: And who was his dad?
A: Bambooney Rubble.

Q: And his mom?
A: Bambooty Rubble.

Q: What did the panda boss say to the employee he was letting go?
A: Sorry, but now you're a fired fox.

Q: What do you call a panda who lives in the atrium of your home?
A: A foyerfox.

Q: What do you call a panda nowhere near you?
A: A farfox.

Q: What do you call a panda who does weekly surveys for SpinDizzy News?
A: A fa'arfox.

Hi there! Ba'ar here with your Spindizzy @Action News survey for this week..Patchy's birthday is coming up on the 23rd. What would you give him for a present?

• Ba'ar growls, "Since Patchy's a comic book maniac, I'd get Patchy a copy of Comic Book Nation, which is a lively, scholarly history of comic books."
• Diam04 says, "A music CD."
• Austin says, "Ba'ar, I will begin a splinter faction of the French Revolutionary Calendar for him. It will be applicable in those terrains which still use the West African Communaute Financiere d'Afrique franc."
• Lady_Ravenwolfe says softly, "Maybe cat basket accessories?"
• Gilead chirps, "Courage!"
• Dingo says, "Money so he can pick his present."
• Argon says, "Why,more Jellicle cat friends!"
• Chanspot says, "A chocolate mocha milkshake with amaretto flavoring, pecans, and cupcakes on the side. With fudge."
• Nyni cutely giggles, "His very own specialty treat at his ice cream place!"
• Casandro says, "If we would tell now, where would the surprise be?"
• Borris Gruffs, "A box of Chocolate Mice."

To add something special to this survey, I asked Patchy himself what he'd like most for his birthday. His reply? "Okay, Ba'ar, what I would really like for my birthday is a nice big birthday party thrown by my friends, with decorations, a nifty theme, and lots of tasty treats!"

Got something that You'd like to contribute to @Action News, but aren't sure if You should, or how to do it? Just get in touch with Argon, Skyler, or Findra, and they'll be happy to help! Here are some basic guidelines, though.

Contributing a story or artwork for @Action News is easy! Just send it to newspaper@spindizzy.org, or qmail/pagemail Argon, Findra, or Skyler, with Your article!

• @Action News is published weekly sometime on Sunday.
• Articles received after midnight Pacific time on Saturday may be held and published in the next edition of @Action News.
• Most any type of story or article of interest to SpinDizzy's newspaper readers will be accepted. Generally, we'd prefer things that aren't out and out lies or flames about other folks, and have a basis in the reality of SpinDizzy.
• Things that occur in public areas are fair game.
• The things reported don't have to have actually happened, (any more than anything that happens here does,) but make sure You don't overstep the social boundaries and rules of interaction that we have.

These are pretty broad guidelines, but we expect good sense to apply.

Thanks!

Argon
Editor - @Action News