I can't even get to the counter to order! This place used to be mine! Mine!! I'm losing everything I cared about!!!
- Bob Schooley & Mark McCorkle, Kim Possible: So the Drama

"The World of Possibility"
Kim Possible is coming to an end, and I can't get over it.

There's always one week in the spring in which I feel complete contentment and make my peace with my place in the world. It's kind of the opposite end of that week in the fall when all the leaves have changed colors but haven't all fallen off yet and I find my heart filled with this beautiful sadness. For all intents and purposes, this should have been that week, but it wasn't. Why?

Because Kim Possible is coming to an end, and I can't get over it.

Which is weird, because, as much as I've enjoyed watching this silly little cartoon since it's debut in the summer of 2002, in the last six months or so, my interest kind of dropped off, and I stopped watching it. In fact, the only reason I'm aware of it's eminent demise is that my 8-year-old cousin came by for the weekend a few weeks back and turned on the Disney Channel and there was an ad for a new Kim Possible movie and I did my usual bit of net research and learned that this flick was, in fact, the series' swansong.

Kim Possible is coming to an end, and I can't get over it.

When I told Danielle how much this was bothering me, she said that it could be a good thing, because now I could watch a good show like Gilmore Girls, at which point I explained to her that I already watched that particular program. When I told Kate, she suggested that perhaps I was really depressed about a lot of things and the cancellation of Kim Possible was just the last straw.

But I thought about it, and I've got to say, I don't have too much to be depressed about. I've got a job. There's a new Ben Folds album out that borders in the twilight realm of musical perfection. I sent an e-mail to a Marvel editor pitching a Prowler story. I've been reconnecting -- sometimes ever briefly -- with dear old friends. I'm on top of the world, ma!

Except Kim Possible is coming to an end, and I can't get over it.

I don't know why this should be the case. I mean, like I said, I kind of stopped watching the show for a while, and between the Disney Channel's endless reruns and the show getting moved to Toon Disney, too, I'll have plenty of time to catch up on all the episodes I've missed. Hell, there's still two episodes that haven't aired yet. I lived through the end of some classic shows. Seinfeld. The Creek. Ed. This really shouldn't bother me at all, but it does.

Part of it may be the fact that I was starting to think that a sample Kim Possible script may be easier for me to pull off than a Teen Titans episode for the next time Nickelodeon's fellowship program rolls around, but now I can't because it's no longer a current animated series, but I think it's mostly about the simple fact that I don't wanna grow up.

I'm about to enroll in a 401k. The illusion that I'm still 12 is fading fast, and the only thing I've got left to fight the ongoing push of time is my love for children's programming... except I don't really love children's programming anymore. I've got no interest in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Krypto the Superdog isn't really doing it for me, and if any kiddie show could, it certainly should. Kim Possible was one of the last ones I had any possibility of caring about. If it can fade away, how much longer can the aforementioned Teen Titans or Justice League Unlimited have left? And when they're gone, where will I be?

Twenty-six and alone. Practically dead, really.

So, I'll say this while I can. Ron Stoppable is one of the greatest characters ever rendered, and I applaud you, William Friedle. I never really got the naked mole rat -- always seemed to add this extra-dimension of outlandish fantasy to a show that was pretty out there to begin with -- but hey, his name was Rufus. That's always a plus.

Kim Possible is ending, and I can't get over it... But I imagine I will eventually.

"The Final Curtain"
And while we're talking about things coming to an end, Paul Jenkins just ended his five-year run as a Spider-Man writer. I had to buy the issue despite my Spectacular Spider-Man subscription (it's the gift that keeps on giving... especially until I replace that flint on the "Fuck Communism" zippo), the postman in New Jersey isn't quite so gently with my unbendables as the one in the Show-Me state.
("Do not bend?" Hahahaha! Bend. Fold. Crease. You'll be fine..)

No more Jenkins Spidey. I'd be depressed if I wasn't so busy wondering whether they were looking for a young, unproven replacement with something to prove...

"Mr. Lenar Clark and Guest"
Kansas City, here I come.

I want this to be as musically fulfilling as possible.

If I can get a late night stopover in Chicago, I'm gonna get it so the wind can blow me back, via Chicago in the middle of the night. I may even have to pick up a pack of Camel Lights to see whether or not it's true that back in your old neighborhood, the cigarettes taste so good (though probably not, all things considered).

I don't know, though. Should I call in a favor so that someone there's to pick me up when I've landed, or should I opt to rent a car so I can drive through my hometown with "Next Year" or "Moment in the Sun" playing on the stereo?

Decisions, decisions...

"Time and Time Again"
I've been reading over the great, meandering and unwieldly bulk that is Scenes from-the-Next-in-progress as I gear up for the final push to finish this thing off. Almost a year ago now, I left Spider-Man and Penny Lane in a mid-air leap to avoid the fierce and savage dreadlocks of the Little Black Duck. I suppose they should probably land so Steve can hit him with the web-fluid he's mixed with Nair(TM) for just this type of occasion eventually.

As I've been rereading the abridged adventures of the Little Black Duck thus far, I've been thinking about my previous work, and I've come to a decision. The Unhappy Duckling will always hold a special place in my heart for starting the ball rolling. I'll always be proud of For All the Laughter that Lies Ahead for telling a sweet and sad story so succinctly rather than sprawling on for pages and pages. The Duck Days of Summer is immortalized as the only appearance of stick-figure Neufeld and Along Came a Spider is the realization of a decade-long dream to write Spider-Man. But despite all of this, Time Quack is my favorite Little Black Duck Tale.

You might not know this about me, but I love time travel stories. (Actually, if you don't know that about me, it just means that you haven't been paying attention, but honestly, considering how much I blather on, I can't say I blame you.) And Time Quack is my love letter to the genre.

If you haven't had the opportunity to read it, here's the rundown:

The Little Black Duck is sent back in time by his physics professor, Albert Einstein (who, if I had my way, would be voiced by Bill Murray in Adult Swim's Little Black Duck series) to the year 1892 to prevent the burning of Academic Hall. While he's running around the tail end of the 19th Century, the Duck gets attacked by a mystery assailant who seems determined to stop him, but he pulls it off and puts out the fire. When he returns to the present, he discovers that his actions have created a perfect world, and honestly, that was where all the fun in this book lay. Dildo the Drunken Monkey on staff in McDavid Hall? Inventing the highlights of a thiry-year catalogue for The Beatles? Turtle and the Duck babysitting Jittery Joe Kelly's kids? The Big Black Duck bidding his son good morning in a brown polyester shirt? Fun on a bun, my friends. Fun on a bun. Of course, perfection makes for lousy storytelling as conflict (much like spite) makes the world go 'round, and the conflict in Time Quack takes the form of the problem I have with every time travel story -- except Frequency, oddly enough.

If the Little Black Duck goes back in time and changes the past to make a perfect present, then the events that lead to him going back in time to change the present never happen, so he doesn't go back in time to change the past, which means that the events that cause him to go back in time and change the past do happen, so he goes back to change the past, which means that the events that cause him to do it don't happen, which means he doens't go back to change things, which means that they do, so he does so they don't so he doesn't which means he does which means he wouldn't which means they do which means he does which means they don't which means he does which means they don't which means he does which means they don't which means he does which means they don't and on and on and on...

So, in the end, Einstein sends the Duck back to the past again to stop the past Duck (who came from the future) from changing the past, and we discover that the mystery assailant who attacked the Duck the first time was, in fact, the Duck from the future.

...

Dammit! Everytime I try to explain this -- no matter how simple I try to keep it -- it always gets bogged down like this. And to my mind, the fact that the Duck was always fighting himself -- as opposed to him putting the fire out unopposed the first time only for things to be different when he goes back in time later -- is that the continuity of the story is maintained. Nothing happens that didn't happen the first time the Little Black Duck fights his future-self. The Little Black Duck from the past -- let's call him Duck A -- still seems to beat the Little Black Duck from the future -- Duck B -- (though, technically, they're both from the future, as they are, in fact, the same person). The only difference is that the reader knows he's fighting himself this time. Duck A goes back to a future based around his victory over Duck B, which is the utopian society where Erin Turtle digs him, then ultimately, he becomes Duck B and goes back to the past to fight Duck A who goes back to a utopian society, while Duck B is still in the past, then decides to just set Academic Hall on fire again so he can go back to a present based around the building burning, which satisfies the temporal paradox, at least to my mind.

...

Aw, fuck it. In the midst of all this fourth-dimensional theory, I've totally lost track of my point. All I really wanted to say is that I love Time Quack because I love time travel stories, even though they've always seemed flawed to me. (Actually, this is all because at an early age, I read this children's book called Me, Myself, and I by Jane Curry and it totally fucked me up forever.) Plus, Time Quack contains my favorite Turtle-Duck exchange ever. ("You remember back when things were simple between us?" "No." "Me neither.")

I wanted to say that, and I wanted to mention that I originally came up with Time Quack in high school, only it was tentatively titled "The Temporal Troika" and starred Baghead the Bag-headed Man. (He was a character I came up with who basically was a guy who -- you guessed it -- wore a bag on his head and shot people a lot. Prewitt said he was just a weak imitation of Deadpool. He was completely and totally right.) And I wanted to mention that to seque into an explanation of how I'd repackage Time Quack as a Prowler storyline.

Basically, it's the same idea. Hobie goes back in time (this time, using Doctor Doom's time platform) to a point before World War II and does one seemingly miniscule thing that sets off a chain of events that makes the Marvel Universe a perfect place. And again, I think the fun here is in depicting that utopia. It could be one of those big monthly events where every creative team on a Marvel Universe book drops everything that they're doing and spends an issue showing how their character's lives would be different in this perfect world.

I mean, that's kind of an asinine thing to do -- force my peers to drop their own storylines to feed my ego -- but if Bendis did it, we'd call him a genius... even though this was pretty standard fare five years ago. (Remember the -1 issues, Prewitt?) Plus, if they don't want to do it, I could pull a really major Bendis and write every Marvel title that month.

I swear. I wouldn't mind.

Basically, it's the biggest "What If?" event ever carried off in Marvel history. (Take that "Age of Apocalypse"!) I mean, there's all the obvious changes: Uncle Ben never dies and Peter Parker becomes a radically different kind of Spider-Man. Matt Murdock never loses his sight. Mutant rights isn't the big struggle its shown itself to be so there's no X-Men. In the pages of Fantastic Four, Reed Richards and his best friend Victor Von Doom cure cancer and AIDS in a drunken afternoon, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The big thing I'd like to see, however, is the Captain America issue. See, in a perfect world, Steve Rogers doesn't get frozen in a block of ice for the bulk of the twentieth century. He does his duty through WWII and comes back home, continues his service in the military, rises to the rank of General America, retires, then eventually decides to get into politics. As a result, instead of the 1980 Presidential Election giving us this old ultra-conservative cowboy president, we get the Living Legend of World War II to get us through the Cold War and completely reset the geopolitical landscape. Under my pen, the whole issue would be this interview between Ben Urich and former President Rogers detailing his highlights. It's the closest to Sorkin's West Wing that a dumb shit like me who eskews CNN for Cartoon Network could ever possibly get...

But of course, it's probably not to be. (And not just because Hobie'd eventually have to go back in time to stop himself from changing time because if he changes time the events that lead him to change time don't happen which means that they do which means that he does which means that they don't, etc. etc.)

There's an e-mail from my man at Marvel waiting for me in my mailbox. It's got to be about that Prowler e-mail I mentioned earlier. Who knows what it says? Could be good. As good as good gets. Could be monumentally depressing. I don't know.

I didn't want to check it earlier because the whole point of this blog entry was supposed to be how happy I should be but I'm not because Kim Possible is ending. If it turns out I'm on the way to Prowler town, I'm pretty sure bitching about Kim Possible would have seemed petty. If my dream's blown up in my face because I got overeager, my problems go beyond Kim Possible and the entry would have seemed lopsided. Guess I kind of figured it'd be best to capture the moment before it went and changed on me.

That's the thing about the times. They always are a'changing...

"The Last Picture Show"
Recent events have revealed to me that the only person who likes to reread my old blog entries is me. (Does this make me vain? I think so. But seriously, I think my old blog entries may have just saved my life. Hard to make the same old mistakes when you've blathered on about them long enough.)

With that being the case, I don't think too many of you are going to be affected by this news, but I thought I'd mention it anyway: My Bengal space has been wiped out, and with it, all of the cool graphics I peppered throughout my blog before I came to the Garden State and switched over to geocities.

Old Memory Lane's been hollowed out a little. Thanks a lot, IATS.

NEXT:
"On/Off the Prowl"
(depends on my e-mail)

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