I only spent a few hours today thinking about comic books. Darnit, I hope I do better tomorrow.

Florida Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty For Black Career Criminal Who Stabbed Woman Over 40 Times in Dollar General Store Parking Lot
December 28, 2025

□ [“FBI Director Kash Patel Confirms Somali Fraudsters Being Referred for Deportation"]

The left is really ignoring this.  Maybe they just don't want to be called "racist" but there's more.  For one thing, they really don't care about the fraud, no matter how much the taxpayers lose.  They're all about seizing our money to spend it on things that are really necessary but don't want us to see it going back to fund terrorists in Somalia.  But darnit, they'll need to take even more from us next year because of homelessness or whatever, like that's spent just as well.

And every day it gets clearer that this is just one piece of the whole machine.  Walz has barely mentioned it and certainly isn't making a point of showing that he's punishing these thieves.  Because if he does that, the people being arrested will just point out how much money he got from them.  Nobody's asking Kamala Harris where her campaign got all those donations when Walz became her veep choice.  The nicest thing to say is that she doesn't have a clue.

And Somalis aren't the only ones doing this.  One reason most politicians don't want to look into this is because it's been done all along by many groups, whether tribes or NGOs, not just the Somalis in Minnesota.  The NGOs, the bureaucracies, all the leftist self-proclaimed "experts," they'll all stick their hands into government projects and grab whatever they can.

□ [“California drops lawsuit seeking to reinstate federal funding for the state’s bullet train"]

This is another example.  If they try to get federal money, the federal government will have complete authority - assuming it doesn't already - to see where that money is going.  Given the enormous waste of time and money this project has already been, no Californian has the guts to face that.  Maybe this is why they're so easy to hustle, because it's easier to just go along with it than to admit they were fooled so they'll keep doing it for years.

India Denounces Trump Crackdown on Fake Visas — ‘Hardship’ of Indians Being ‘Stranded in India’
December 28, 2025

December 28, 2025 Brigitte Bardot, French actress, age 91

Like most people, I spend a lot of time every day thinking about Steve Ditko's Spider-Man.  I'm increasingly fascinated at how he clearly had a long-range plot in mind and not just with Betty Brant as the love-interest.  I really can't think of a precedent in comics for such extended storylines.  Jack Kirby would follow it up with what I refer to as the 'Inhumans graphic novel,' best reprinted in Essential Fantastic Four volume 3 but for all its good points, it had less character and subtlety than Ditko's work here.

And as always, it should be pointed out that not only did Ditko never get close to finishing this storyline, but he never f*cking explained what his plans were.  AFAIK, for the rest of his life, the only specific comment he made about his plans for Spider-Man stories was saying that yes, he always intended Norman Osbourne to be the Green Goblin.  Nothing else so all we can do is guess.  It's a visual medium!  You have to provide the words!

Marvel had just introduced multi-issue storylines.  Cover-dated April-May 1964, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers fought and teamed up to battle the Hulk - whose title had just been cancelled - while the while several storylines in Spider-Man had started just a couple months earlier.  In #9, cover-dated February 1964, Aunt May was sick.  The following issue she was sick and needed a blood transfusion from Peter.  She got better after that but would again fall sick in #17, setting the story for a couple issues.  Then in #29 she starts getting sick again, leading to her being near-death for the Master Planner trilogy, where Peter learns that his blood transfusion is what caused this problem for May.  After that, she barely appeared for the rest of Ditko's run.

That's a character arc.  Her role in the story was done, Peter was an adult and didn't need to fall back on her.  Of course she would have continued to be used had Ditko remained and we don't know what his plans were.  Maybe she'd stay a permanent cast member, maybe she'd have died in fairly short-order.  But that was not to be.

I've covered Peter's relationship with Betty before but it started becoming serious in #9.  She had even visited May in the hospital but suggested something dark in her past.  In #10, as Spidey fights the Big Man and the Enforcers, they even hassle her about repaying a loan.  No details but she's run away, out of town.  The following issue, she's in Philadelphia working for criminals and Dr. Octopus.  It's her brother who's the real criminal, he's the one who owes money and ends up dead by the end of the issue.  She's angry at Spider-Man for this and we'll never see her again, until she re-appears at the Daily Bugle like she never left.  She also has a new haircut.

I've covered Betty and Peter before, showing that Ditko always intended her to be Peter's one-true-love.  But my point here is that she's given a multi-issue storyline for basic development as the lead female character in the series.  It's very well done and it really isn't noticeable.  This is a superhero comic for little boys and Betty's relevance is developed very subtlety at this time.

The first eight-or-so issues were just standalone stories.  The villains and characters would return but there were no story points Ditko would develop for he rest of his run.  It was the Betty and Aunt May plotlines where this started.  #10 is also where he started his story about crime interacting with business as well as, arguably, organized crime, with the Big Man and the Enforcers.

The Big Man was Ditko's first take on mysterious supervillains.  This one was clearly connected to the Daily Bugle and Spidey assumed he was really J. Jonah Jameson.  Turns out the Big Man was just another reporter at the newspaper.  The Enforcers were just a gang of thugs who would only make two more appearances, working for the Green Goblin, who would continue this storyline without them, and then the Sandman to finish the multi-issue storyline where Aunt May is sick for the second time [remember, this happened three times during Ditko's run.]

The Goblin's first appearance seems quite pointless - and a rip-off of Fantastic Four #9 from September 1962 - but his remaining Ditko appearances were all about putting together gangs for a criminal empire and, as Norman Osbourne, making use of that in his business empire.

So after the Big Man, there was the multi-issue story with Doc Ock and setting up Betty.  During this story, Liz Allen decided to stop seeing Petey as a geek and had a crush on him for the rest of their time in high school.  Over the next couple issues, she kept throwing herself at him.  Betty hadn't met her yet but was already jealous of Liz.  In #15, they finally meet and really don't like each other.  Their interactions will continue to be entertaining for the rest of Ditko's run, but it should be noted that this issue also features the first time Aunt May insists Peter meet the niece of her dear friend, who turns out to be Mary Jane Watson.

It looks like Liz was just intended to be competition for Betty.  A subplot for #15 is that Peter has to turn-down Liz and Betty for dates because he's stuck meeting MJ, but then she's too sick to show up so Peter tries to call them.  But Betty and Liz have found better things to do tonight than put up with him.  MJ would continue to be mentioned but there's really no clue what Ditko's intentions were for her.  Betty and Liz meet her in #25 and realize they can't compete.  But the reader doesn't get to see MJ, her face was hidden from us just as the unmasked Green Goblin's was.

I suspect Gwen Stacey was just a replacement for Liz, more sophisticated and experienced.  She only had a few appearances in Ditko's run but it's interesting to note that Spider-Man was entirely absent from all of them, even in discussion.  Peter thought about being Spidey one time when she was around and in another issue, the villain attacked and she was Peter run away but had already left the scene when Spider-Man showed up.  It's an interesting subtlety from Ditko, the title character is completely absent from a subplot the main character is going through, even though they're the same character.

I really am enjoying going through these issues and one reason is that the quality of the stories just stands out.  Ditko is infusing these characters and plots with such depth that they remain fascinating and full of useful material yet he had barely started developing them.  Can't just leave Mary Jane sitting around for years then use her to follow up Gwen Stacey as Betty's main competitor, yet there's absolutely no clue what else he would have used them for.  All the evidence points to Norman Osbourne being the Green Goblin, but there's nothing concrete.  He could have just been revealed as some brand-new supervillain and it wouldn't have changed anything.

He was clearly doing something with criminal gangs getting organized, which was followed up by introducing the Kingpin shortly after Ditko left.  But there's also nothing about what or why he was going this way.  Even more unclear is what role JJJ had in this storyline.  Sometimes he was part of it, sometimes he was a victim, other times he was just passing along information or used as a joke.  That versatility prevents us from making any specific guesses.  Did Ditko have a plot for JJJ or was he just a useful tool for whatever story being told in a given issue?

Given Peter's growth over 37 issues (plus Amazing Fantasy #15 and two annuals) it's clear that Ditko was essentially doing an Ayn Rand novel as a child's superhero comic.  It obviously worked very well, given Spider-Man's status as a successful IP for the last 60 years.  But he never got to finish it because he didn't own the copyright.  I keep thinking of Jerry Seigel having a story in (I think) the early 40s where Lois Lane would be trapped with Clark Kent and actually discover his secret identity, where she would then continue as his assistant.  But DC liked the way things were going so they said 'no.'

We don't know if that was basically the problem Ditko had with Marvel but either way, he walked away from the biggest success in his career.  And never even told the audience what we were missing.  You can call that "integrity," you can scream 'wtf are you thinking???'  But it was his choice and his responsibility.  This isn't even counting Dr. Strange, the Question, Mr. A or anything else he created, this is the sort of work that few people could even conceive of but we're all grateful that he was here to provide it.

Italy Arrests Nine Islamic Charity Chiefs Suspected of Raising Millions for Hamas
December 28, 2025

□ [“Trump Says Russia and Ukraine Peace Talks Entering ‘Final Stages’"]

Like he's never said this before.  That's bad enough but apparently he also talked to Putin an hour or two before the meeting.  So every leftist will just assume Putin gave him orders and refuse to accept any peace deal.  Zelensky could come out saying this was the greatest deal ever made in history and they'd ignore that because he's no longer useful.

Putin has also made a public statement that Russia is just going to keep moving forward.  Achieving their goals with peace is fine but they'll use force if that's what it takes.  Now how do you make a peace deal with that?  Trump is just wasting his time on this.

If there's any point, it's that he's starting to expose what the EU is up to, with leftists around the world.  They're looting our money to funnel through Ukraine but we don't yet know exactly why.  We can speculate but there's little to see yet.  Trump also makes the point that this war only happened because the 2020 election was stolen.  Of course he doesn't give any details about this so we're left with empty hope that it'll eventually be revealed.

Puerto Rico Enacts Groundbreaking Law Recognizing Unborn Babies as Persons from Conception
December 28, 2025

George Soros Pours Money Into Corrupt New York AG Letitia James’s Re-Election Campaign
December 28, 2025