You know a Mantlo and Buscema fan was just in Greece and Israel when you see pics like these

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This is not Sparta, this is Athens. Sporting my ROM t-shirt in Greece may not be quite as epic as King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans holding off thousands of invading persian scum at the Hot Gates of Thermoplyae or even the naval campaign the Athenian general Themistocles carried out against the persians in that war effort but I still think it's still kinda cool.

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And this is Israel's eternal and undivided capital Jerusalem. And that is a copy of Incredible Hulk 256 which is the first appearance of Marvel's premier Israeli superhero Sabra. Written by Bill Mantlo and penciled by Sal Buscema in 1980 which was a better time in history for comic books as IDW's Micronauts #1 and ROM "the" spaceknight 0 issue have proven to us once again. Here's a little something else from later that day in Jerusalem  . . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww-PSW4afKw

A real life Sabra

Also wanted to give a big thanks to deviant artist nikoskap for doing this awesome Sabra fan art during my time in Greece. Niko lives on the island of Crete which I unfortunately didn't get a chance to visit but at least we were able to communicate electronically while in the same time zone for a change which was nice. Thanks for this great surprise which I'm honored to post here and for standing with the people of Israel. Sabra is a fictional character ofcourse but in the real world there are many brave women in Israel putting their lives on the line for The Holy Land and it's people. Military service in Israel is compulsory, 3 years for men and 2 years for women. Left click the image to magnify.

On a side note here I wanted to say something about podcasts these days. Is it just me or do they ALL suck? Some of the plane service had Wi-Fi and at one point I tried to listen to some podcasts having to do with the sort of thing we comic book sci-fi nerds are into and everyone I tired to listen to was boring as Hell. In fact it's been years since I last heard one that was any good at all. At one point I tried to give a listen to some having to do with The Suicide Squad and then one having to do with Free Comic Book Day and it was all about as much interesting as watching your computer buffering a video stream.