Shiny

I discovered Firefly at the perfect time — late 2004, two years after the Fox TV network mishandled the brilliant science-fiction series, canceling it after only 11 of its 14 wonderful episodes were aired.

The show gained a significant following after it was released on DVD, gaining enough of a fan base to convince Universal to greenlight a movie that answered some questions and tied up some loose ends. That was when I found the show — about four months before the film, Serenity, came out.

I had time to binge-watch those episodes several times after falling head over heels the first time through. As I recall, I watched three episodes the first night, three episodes the second night, and eight episodes the third night. I concluded it was the best TV show I’ve ever seen, and I haven’t changed that opinion in 22 years.

And so I watched with interest earlier this month as Nathan “Malcolm Reynolds” Fillion released a series of videos in which he approached the other seven living stars of the show with the message: “It’s time.” “We’re doing this.” “I can’t do this without you.”

And I was distracted from the worst snowstorm of my lifetime by Sunday’s announcement that the eight original cast members are lending their voices to an animated revival of Firefly, which apparently will be set in the time between the last TV episode and the movie, which is good because two main characters die in the film.

Animation makes sense because all of the actors have gone on to other projects, including ongoing TV series, and also because, well, they’re all 24 years older than they were back then. Their voices are the same, but their faces mo longer look like they did between the last TV episode and the movie.

Everything is lined up to launch the cartoon except a network or streaming service to carry it. Fillion is shopping it around, and there’s a lot of enthusiasm from the fans. The last few nights I’ve been rewatching some of my favorite episodes — “Out of Gas,” “Ariel,” “Objects in Space” — and confirming that it’s still my all-time favorite TV show.

There’s always a chance that they won’t recapture the magic and the new stories won’t ring as true as the old ones. Perhaps some of the magic came from the mystique of being canceled with so many stories left untold.

Still, it will be a treat to see these beloved characters interacting in that rickety old spaceship again. I was in a movie theater for the first showing of Serenity, and (Lord willing) I will be in front of the TV set when the Firefly animated series premieres.

And get those kids off my lawn

The comics page used to be an integral part of my day. It was the page I read first, and even if I didn’t have the time to read the rest of the newspaper, I would read the comics to see what the various characters and critters were up to today.

I would read every strip. I had my favorites, but I didn’t ignore the strips that did not consistently satisfy, because every one hit a mark at one time or another.

Then newspapers fell on hard times, and the page started shrinking — literally — and so did the comics as a result.

Once upon a time, comics could take up two or three pages in a daily newspaper. Each strip would stretch about two-thirds the width of the page, with the rest taken up by puzzles or single-panel cartoons. In a worst-case scenario, there would be a single comics page with two columns of comics top to bottom, which was still fine.

But then, to save money, the papers started shrinking the size of the pages. There are two basic newspaper sizes, broadsheet and tabloid. How much did they shrink? It’s not much of an exaggeration to say today’s broadsheet is only a little bigger than a 1960s tabloid.

At the same time, we all kept getting older. Even with my glasses, it’s harder and harder to read the fine print — or the tiny comics.

A long time ago, my local paper briefly carried a comic strip called “Luann” that I found charming. I was disappointed when they shook up the lineup and it disappeared.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, I discovered you could read “Luann” (and other comics) online. Over the years I added a strip or two — for example, I discovered Joe Staton, a favorite comic book artist, was doing “Dick Tracy,” and I still check in on the legendary detective years after Staton retired.

I still start my day with the comics. I open my laptop and visit nine different strips, a handful of blogs and news sites, and three word puzzles.

If I have the time, I’ll leaf through the daily paper, but I usually just glance at the comics page. I can’t read them comfortably at all anymore. The photo shows Thursday’s “Pearls Before Swine” in the paper and the laptop, for comparison.

I probably sound like a grumpy old man, but this makes me sad rather than angry. My earliest memories of newspapers involve sprawling on the living room floor reading the comics and the baseball box scores in the Newark Evening News.

Don’t get me started on baseball box scores.

Run into the future

On Monday I shared my 10-year-old recollection of the first time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s prose poetry in my youth, and how every so often I need a booster shot of Bradbury to jumpstart my creative juices.

Wednesday morning the Ray Bradbury social media page shared a moment I had never seen before, from a 1974 interview with a journalist named James Day. The author talks about the importance of imagination, saying the ability to fantasize is the ability to grow.

“Boys and girls at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13, right on up through, the most important time of their day, or especially at night before going to sleep, is dreaming themselves into becoming something, into being something,” Bradbury says in the clip, “so when you’re a child, you begin to dream yourself into a shape, and then you run into the future and try to become that shape. When I was 10, 11, 12, I began to dream of becoming a writer …”

I love that image of “dreaming yourself into a shape.” When I was 10, 11, 12, I was writing dozens of songs and putting them on Top 40 lists on imaginary radio stations, and I was drawing my own comic books, and writing poems and collecting them into “albums” of 12 poems each, because the average record album had 12 songs, so why not poetry books?

As an adult I found myself fitting into those shapes. I went to work for real radio stations. I kept writing songs, started recording them, and tinkered with sharing them with the world, but it remained basically a hobby. My making comic books evolved into making newspapers, and I spent the second half of my career primarily as an editor.

In my semi-retirement I have published a couple dozen books as both a writer and editor, and thanks to my pastor friend who invited me to add my guitar to the worship team, I have reignited my love for making music. And thanks to modern technology that makes it easier than ever to create recordings that reflect what I hear in my head, and share them with the world, I am more than tinkering.

Ray Bradbury never stopped dreaming himself into new shapes. He dreamed of becoming a writer of science fiction stories, then of becoming a novelist, then a movie screenplay writer, then a TV and movie producer, a playwright, a poet, a mystery writer, and many other shapes.

When he died at 92, he was probably the oldest child in the world. May we all aspire to keep dreaming ourselves into a shape and running into the future to become that shape.

Ray Bradbury remains my single most important human role model.