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  And Planets Sprang Forth from Her HeadJan 31, 2020 8:41 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
^ Sketch for a reader supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign. : )
 
Thanks everyone pitching in, you are making this comic possible! = D
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Not the right wristJan 30, 2020 9:06 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "The Case of the Aquarium Murders" in Black Cat #15, January 1949. By Russell Stamm.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Maybe it's a sweater vestJan 29, 2020 7:17 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
^ Sketch for a reader supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign. : ) Thank you very much for your support, you are making this comic possible!!
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Where super powers come from...maybeJan 28, 2020 7:52 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "Origin of the Blue Diamond" in Daring Mystery Comics #7, April 1941. Art by Ben Thompson. (info)
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Nothing escapes the keen grip of the law!Jan 27, 2020 7:11 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "Meet the Falcon" in Daring Mystery Comics #5, June 1940. Art by Maurice Gutworth. (info)
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Everybody can sing!Jan 24, 2020 7:36 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Here's a sketch I got to send to a reader for supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : ) :
 

 
Sometimes you just gotta let it out! : D Thanks everyone who's supporting the comic!!!
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Old Rocket-riders are a Strange BreedJan 23, 2020 7:04 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "Dr. Gore's Anti-gravity Villainy" by Basil Wolverton, in Target Comics vol. 2 #8, October 1941.
 
(Story title is possibly modern; it is not found in the original comic—I got it from the index of the Spacehawk collection from Fantagraphics).
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Comin' atchaJan 22, 2020 7:27 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:A* comes to you each day thanks to readers supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign! Thanks to everyone who's helping me out ^_^; here's a sketch I got to mail to a reader for their support:
 

 
Thank you very much! Let's do more A*! : j
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  And he was never heard from againJan 21, 2020 7:58 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
The last appearance of Whirlwind Carter, from "Planet of Black-Light" in Daring Mystery Comics #5, June 1940. Story and art by Fletcher Hanks (as "C. C. Starr").
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Be a radical, celebrate civil rightsJan 17, 2020 10:33 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I'll be off Monday for the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
 
Although signed into law in 1983, the holiday wasn't even officially observed in all 50 states until 2000—yet another sign that we'll always need people like Dr. King.
 
Back to work on a new A* page on Tuesday!
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Don't let this happen to youJan 16, 2020 9:48 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
^ The Fiery Mask stars in "The Jelly of Doom" from Daring Mystery Comics #5, June 1940. Script by George Kapitan, art by Harry Sahle.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Some scribblesJan 15, 2020 8:41 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Sketch for a reader supporting the comic through my Patreon campaign : D :
 

 
Thanks to everyone contributing, you are helping me keep A* going! : )
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Dork's TowerJan 14, 2020 9:12 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "The Jelly of Doom" in Daring Mystery Comics #5, June 1940. Script by George Kapitan, art by Harry Sahle.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  A new view of the core, and old space dustJan 13, 2020 10:17 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Mini space news roundup!
 
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First, NASA rolled out a new, sharp composite image of the core of our galaxy—that's where A* is, right in the middle—as seen from Earth. The image consists of infrared data, in blue and green, from SOfIA—a 'scope mounted in a 747—with previous infrared data from the Spitzer space telescope, shown in white, and the ESA's Herschel space observatory, shown in red (Herschel stopped operating in 2013). You can see Spitzer and Herschel images of the core separately, here (that's from 2006) and here. Here's the new composite image:
 

image by NASA/SOFIA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Herschel
 
You can view a larger version in the article, or...well heck, let me just turn it sideways (the telescope is sideways in the 747, so there) and jam it in here:
 

 
While I'm at it, here's the 2006 Spitzer image:
 

 
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The other item is that scientists found grains of space dust in a 1960s meteorite that are 7.5 billion years old—which means they formed in a supernova and were drifting in space for billions of years before our own Sun (4.6 billion years old) even formed, and are over half the age of the universe itself (13.8 billion years). It also means they're the oldest known material on Earth—but the scientists say it's quite likely there are other meteorites here with even older dust grains in them, they just haven't been found yet.
 
The scientists dated the grains by measuring how much Neon-21 they contained: that isotope forms when the dust is hit by high energy cosmic rays in space, so the more Ne-21 a grain contains, the longer it was drifting around.
 
The lead scientist added that "Thanks to these grains, we now have direct evidence for a period of enhanced star formation in our galaxy seven billion years ago with samples from meteorites." This helps answer the question of whether the rate of star formation in the galaxy has varied over time, as current theory would have it, or remained steady—based on this new evidence, it's looking like it has varied.
 
And, they also learned that "pre-solar grains often float through space stuck together in large clusters, like granola."
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  "Food from air"Jan 11, 2020 10:55 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:The BBC ran an interesting article recently about a project by Finnish scientists to create a protein "flour"—which they call "Solein"—from bacteria grown on electrolysis-produced hydrogen.
 
That type of process is pretty much how I've figured a lot of the food eaten by the populations in A* would be produced—"grown from microbes" was more or less as technical as my thought process got ; )—so, nice to see it making some progress in our time. : D
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  I wink at you, good readerJan 09, 2020 11:08 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Running a bit late today—the drawing phase took longer than anticipated. -_^
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  They say you shouldn't overdo facial linesJan 08, 2020 10:09 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:You can help me keep bringing you fresh A* comics each weekday, for as little as $1 a month, through my Patreon campaign! : ) Here's an ink sketch I got to send to a reader for their support:
 

 
Even $1 a month makes a big difference! A big thanks to everyone who's helping me keep A* going! : D
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Supermassive black hole hits 99%+ light speedJan 07, 2020 9:29 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:NASA scientists have measured particles of matter shooting through space at greater than 99% of the speed of light—these are charged particles shot out of the jet emitted by the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87, 55 million light years from Earth; the great apparently speed of plasma in the jet had been observed previously, but this is the first time scientists have been able to confirm that it is matter moving that fast, rather that separate clumps of matter being lit up by a moving wave of energy.
 
M87's supermassive black hole has 6.5 billion times the mass of our Sun—and 1,625 times the mass of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Lug a lugJan 06, 2020 10:12 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:
 
From "Crime at 2,000 Feet" in Black Cat #13, September 1948. Art by Lee Elias.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  Also, "fuel cell" just sounds coolJan 03, 2020 9:48 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:The BBC has a recent article about a new hydrogen fuel cell reactor developed for drones: the big difference here is that the hydrogen is stored as a solid, rather than a gas—it is converted to gas just a little at a time, and that goes through the reactor to generate electricity—so in theory there's a much lower risk of a highly flammable, Hindenburg-type situation.
 
The only by-product of a hydrogen fuel cell reaction is water, which is pretty much as good as you can possibly get from a not-screwing-up-the-planet-more perspective as far as fuels go. It also generates more power than typical fossil fuels.
 
Cost is an issue with hydrogen, though: it has been expensive to generate it from water by electrolysis, but the cost is gradually coming down as technologies improve and become more widespread.
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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  202020Jan 02, 2020 10:03 PM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:Happy New Year! Back at the drawing board making new A* pages. : ) I'm going to be starting a major new initiative for A* over the course of this year, but there will be plenty of time to talk about that down the road a bit. For now, how about we just get some pages done? = D
 
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The original 16" x 6.75" watercolor art for today's new A* page is up for auction on eBay. : )
 
 
 
 
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