Drunk, Jane Spoke As Though She Were

The Little Boy Had Wandered Away From His Mother, Tacking Across The Grass Toward The Play Structure. His Mother Watched Him Go, Proud, Tickled, Unaware That Every Time They Toddled Away From You, They Came Back A Little Different, Ten Seconds Older And Nearer To The Day When They Left You For Good. Pearl Divers In Training, Staying Under A Few Seconds Longer Every Time.

Drunk, Jane Spoke As Though She Were Nancy Drew. I Was A Fool For A Girl With A Dainty Lexicon.

I Saw A Lot Of Lousy Movies And Watched A Ton Of Crappy Television And Read A Bunch Of Utterly Forgettable Books And Comics And Listened To Hours Of Junk Music As A Kid. And I'm Still Drawing Profitably In My Own Art On Some Of The Tawdry Treasure I Stored Up In Those Years.

In Later Years, Holding Forth To An Interviewer Or To An Audience Of Aging Fans At A Comic Book Convention, Sam Clay Liked To Declare, Apropos Of His And Joe Kavalier's Greatest Creation, That Back When He Was A Boy, Sealed And Hog-tied Inside The Airtight Vessel Known As Brooklyn, New York, He Had Been Haunted By Dreams Of Harry Houdini.

So It Was Scary, But That's How It Goes. To My Great Delight, I Discovered That It Did All Belong.