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(Jon sez:)

Your Writer: Jon Kilgannon My wife and I went out to Ohio this week to visit her family in Dayton. While we were there, we went to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The place is immense, and has a number of planes displayed on the floor in the hangars - with no guards or velvet rope - so that one can walk under their wings. An F-22 Raptor is on display, and an incautious webcomic writer can put his head into the vectored-thrust jet nozzles when no one is looking.

The museum boasts an IMAX theater in which is playing a film about the International Space Station. The ISS is a beautiful thing, built by scientists from all over the world and crewed by the bravest astronauts of half a dozen nations. It orbits over our heads this very minute, a fragile statement of hope and amity for a tired world.

Science Note: If you can, go outside on the morning of November 19th (or stay up very very late on the 18th) to see the Leonid meteor storm. The experts are predicting between two and six thousand meteors per hour during the peak, which means we may see more than one meteor a second. This is the last big Leonid storm for the next century, so don't miss it. If you have never seen a meteor shower, you owe it to yourself to watch one of the most impressive and beautiful displays found in nature. And, while you're out, perhaps you will chance to see the steady, hopeful light of the ISS passing silently overhead.
(Mark sez:)

Your Artist: Mark Sachs Allow me to ditto Jon's recommendation of the Air Force Museum, although my personal favorite plane on display was, of course, the XB-70 Valkyrie. But be that as it may, let me add that museum admission is free, parking is free, the food in the museum is relatively cheap, and there's a lot of inexpensive hotels in Dayton, Ohio. If you're ever within a hundred miles of the place, you owe it to yourself to go out of your way and spend a day visiting the museum. You'll be glad you did, and you'll realize the inner aviation geek you never knew you had.

The new robot font is Android Nation from Blambot Comic Fonts, an invaluable resource for anyone doing computerized comic lettering. (If you were curious, the dialog font is Digital Strip and the sound effects font is Twelve Ton Fishstick.)

And finally, in the original script the good Dr. Haas was supposed to be using that tele-operated robot to trim a topiary bush in the shape of his own head. This had to go out the window 'cos topiary bushes in the shape of people's heads is one thing I just can't draw. Other things I cannot draw include dogs, horses, togas, and Leslie Nielsen, so don't expect to see very many of those things in A Miracle of Science.