A ship in the night

Hey, remember this? You may well not, it was four and a half years ago. I had expressed my strong belief that money was there to be made if DC Comics would print and market posters of the artwork depicting a time-traveling Batman as a pirate. I, for one, would spend money on it because my basement is the domain of pirates and comics in my house, and decor that covers all the bases is always appreciated. (These days it is also the domain of the little guy's ever-expanding Lego collection, but Lego goes with everything.)

Sadly, DC never did heed my advice, and so far as I know there are no commercially available, frameworthy enlargements of that Bat-swashbuckling cover art. It's a shame, but as of now it is also a moot point, again if we are going from the perspective of my basement's wallhanging needs, which of course we are. The mooting came courtesy of my Very Little Bro, who created a fantastic birthday present for me which I just received this past weekend.

As it was related to me, my brother sat before a search engine and asked himself what kinds of things I was into, and typed in what first came to mind: Green Lantern and pirates. Lo and behold, the vast interwebs repository of information yielded up the following image:

Which I admit I had never seen before in my life. You might notice in the upper left hand corner the caption box reads "Superman is missing" and that leads me to believe this is from a storyline that took place in one of Superman's own titles; strong as my opinions on the meaning and value of the character as an icon may be, I've never been a regular follower of his series. I'm also assuming Very Little Bro had never seen this before either, but once he stumbled upon it he decided to copy it, in enlarged hand-pained canvas form, and bestow the results upon me for my birthday. It would be impractical for me to try to scan the final painting, but trust me when I say it is an admirably faithful rendition, and one which is improved immeasurably by the fact that Very Little Bro used glow-in-the-dark paint to recreate the energy construct pirate ship itself. Needless to say, it beats the heck out of some comic shop poster.

While I love the gift in and of itself, it also reminds me that I'm very lucky to have a great family. It's big and complicated and certainly imperfect at times but bottom line we all care about each other and want each other to be happy and genuinely enjoy seizing the opportunity to make each other happy when we can. I really took that for granted growing up, and just assumed that was how all families were, except maybe for the fanciful ones with evil step-mothers in fairy tales. Of course as I've gotten older (a lot) and matured (a little) I've come to realize that being indifferent towards or outright estranged from ones own kin is sadly common in this world of ours. I'm more and more grateful all the time that I lucked into the blood relations that I did, and that I can devote so much mental energy to dissecting the petty indignities of my boring job because the base fundamentals of my life are solid.

Very Little Bro is getting married next fall, so now I have about eleven months to figure out a wedding gift for him and my future sister-in-law that comes remotely close to my birthday present in sheer raditude. Any and all suggestions welcome!