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Underground > Comic Books >

Weird true comics stories

  
 
The Falcon
02:05 / 13.11.02
For you rillumination and entertainment (or, failing that, diversion at least) my comic story. Which is weird. And true.

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This is pretty amazing, so I'll give you the background - is something that began in Glasgow bus station, after I'd returned from working in a bar in Germany. I went into a newsagent, in order to get a drink (a strawberry Ribena, as I recall. Very nice.) As I approached the counter, I looked down to the bottom shelf on a display on my way there - to my amazement there were comics there: Dr. Strange and, say, Damage topped the two piles. Bear in mind comics had not been sold in newsagents here for at least 2 or 3 years.

So, I've also not read any comics for 3 months, 'cos I'm away in Germany having a miserable time. Upon closer examination, I find some original Moore 'Swamp Thing' stuff (including #37: 1st John Constantine, a character I've always associated with weird happenings,) an Ellis 'Lazarus Churchyard' and a Milligan 'Shade, the Changing Man'. This is probably the best thing I've found in the world, by the way.

So, I buy all the ones I want, and get back on the bus to Dundee. Later, I tell my (non- or barely- comics reading) friends about this (they've got a couple of Oni Press things, some Fantagraphics, some Vertigo - very few in all.) One peruses the issue, and says 'The best thing about comics from the '80's is the adverts'.

This is, probably, my best friend.

At this point, I want to kneecap him.

****************************************

All true, dat.
 
 
Gabby Jay
16:33 / 02.12.02
When I first saw the title of this thread, I thought it would be for bizarre news articles like this recent story from the New York Times. This sounds disturbingly close to the experiment that created the Lizard in the spider-Man comics. And the best part is when the reporter reveals the name of the company working on this technology - Hydra Biosciences. As in supervillians in green pajamas shouting "hail Hydra!"


Missing Limb? Salamander May Have Answer
By ANDREW POLLACK

IRVINE, Calif. — In a closetlike room at the "Leg Lab" here, salamanders stare blankly out of clear plastic drinking cups. The lab is so named because many of the animals have had, or will have, a leg cut off. But the salamanders recover, with perfect new limbs growing back in weeks.

Salamanders are the superstars of regeneration. They can grow back not only limbs but also tails, parts of their hearts and the retinas and lenses in their eyes. Humans cannot do any of that. So scientists here hope that the salamander's tricks may one day be applied to people.

"I really do believe it's just a matter of time before you're going to regenerate an arm or at least a finger," said Dr. David M. Gardiner, a biologist who runs the laboratory at the University of California at Irvine with Dr. Susan V. Bryant, the dean of biological sciences and his wife. "I'd like to see that in my lifetime."

Regenerative medicine, regrowing or repairing damaged organs, has become a hot topic. Almost all the attention has focused on stem cells. The idea is to grow stem cells outside the body, turn them into particular types of tissue and transplant them into patients.

But a few scientists theorize that a better approach is to induce the same regeneration in people that occurs in salamanders and some other animals. Natural regeneration, which might be accomplished with drugs or genes, would be easier than transplanting, they say. And the tissue would be the patient's own, doing away with the problem of rejection. Even if salamanders' feats cannot be reproduced in humans, those scientists say, studying regenerating animals will at least provide clues for stem cell scientists...

...venture capitalists recently invested $9 million in starting what is perhaps the first company that wants to replicate natural regeneration in people. The company, Hydra Biosciences...
 
 
The Falcon
19:03 / 02.12.02
That's fine, too.

I thought this thread was dead and forgotten.
 
 
Sebastian
13:17 / 04.12.02
This one hits close. Makes me think of Genosha. The supreme lord of communications here in Argentina, who owns and overpowers TV channels, radios, and newspapers, who chooses what you know and what you don't, and even if you go for an alternative source of information, you can't never really tell if his powers are not transvesting what you read or listen, this millonaire man who puts soothing words in your brains, his last name is... MAGNETTO.
 
 
deja_vroom
13:45 / 04.12.02
No way, Sebastian. No. Way. That's just too good to be true.
 
 
The Falcon
16:58 / 04.12.02
That's fucking excellent.
 
 
Sebastian
17:38 / 04.12.02
Okay. Then look at HÉCTOR MAGNETTO/GRUPO CLARÍN.

Translation of some relevant lines:

[In green] Pay attention: let me tell you about the worst problem Argentina has and you'll understand why we are where we are. [...] Do you know the face of Hector Magnetto [PICTURE OF SOME GUY] the man that drives the country from the shadows?

End of translation.

What follows is a rather familiar -to me at least- enraged and frustrated account of how the "group" operates locally, mainly through direct contact with ministers, congress people, the supreme court, and also media manipulation. Of course, everybody is suppose to be covering everybody else and so. From what I know from an independent newspaper, these "guys" can push a law to become effective in matter of days. They were brought to parallel media attention because their newspaper was bankrupted -they supposeddly took all the money out of the country- and they were trying to get a law effective that would change the whole legislation of bankrupcy, so that you basically could go bankrupt and still run your business, at the sake of everybody else. The law was voted, and then removed two months later. Anyway, this guys push the big buttons.

They also managed to get a law that sends every guy running an illegal radio station to jail. The point is that the organism that approves whether you can have a radio station or not is under their direct influence, or so it is claimed. Money, in short, and contacts, have brought us the most powerful mutant in earth.
 
  
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