The year was The Early Nineties. The place was An Elementary School. I was a little boy, in grade four or five I think. I don’t know why we were watching a movie in class, maybe we had a substitute teacher who didn’t want to do real work or maybe it was the last day before March Break and they wanted us to just shut up for a while. Whatever the reason, another student had brought in the movie Hard To Kill on VHS and whatever adult was meant to be in charge put it on for us.

The movie did not shut us up. A short way into the movie there is a sex scene and the class went wild, hooting and hollering, the kid who brought in the movie shouting “They don’t show it! They don’t show it!” but the adult just opting to turn the movie off instead. The near-nudity occurs about 15 minutes in, so I had officially begun watching this thing when I was rudely interrupted. For decades I didn’t bother to finish watching it. I lived across the street from a video store for years, and the Internet made it easy to watch whatever I wanted, but even as a kid who loved action movies I never cared much for Steven Seagal, who lacks a single drop of the charisma of Sir Schwarzenegger, and there was no science fiction twist or anything to make it spark my imagination. But even though I didn’t feel compelled to seek out the movie, the thought did often occur to me that it was a movie that I had failed to finish.

What if I died suddenly and this was my unfinished business? Did I want to be a ghost left eternally wandering in the hopes that I might chance upon some television playing Hard To Kill? No, I said! I must prevent this fate! So anyway, I watched it before I went to sleep this morning.

It was about what I expected.

Seagal plays Mason Storm, a decent action guy name ruined by being attached to Seagal. He’s a cop, the kind of Cool Tough Cop who if he stumbles across a liquor store robbery in progress he will absolutely fail to save the life of the liquorstoreman, but then he will show how cool and tough he is by painfully dispatching the robbers while being a jerk about it. He’s a living embodiment of the dreams of those who want to cause pain to criminals while being a prick but not actually solve any problems.

But he’s also a Family Man. He has a young son and a wife who is so sexy that her naked back will drive an elementary school class insane. Tragedy comes when the baddies, corrupt cops working for a corrupt politician, try to kill Storm. The attack leaves Storm in a coma, his wife dead, and his son on the run from the criminal organization. Storm spends seven years as a John Doe in a hospital where a nurse named Andy falls in love with him because she likes looking at his dick (that is actually a thing she is shown doing in this movie).

It’s all pretty standard stuff after that. Storm wakes up and learns that the corrupt politician is now the senator (and he’s played by William Sadler, which is neat), so he has to bring him down. There’s a bit of “Oh How Times Have Changed” stuff as he watches television, and the training he needs after the coma actually takes more time than I would have guessed which is neat. Obviously he and the nurse hook up (though he does miss his wife). Anyway, he is reunited with his son and kills his way through waves of the Senator’s goons. Then, just to mix things up, he does NOT kill the Senator himself, just gets him arrested and makes a prison rape joke. And the nurse says “I love you, Storm” as they hug on the way to credits. It’s ridiculous stuff.

It’s important to note that the movie wants us to think Mason Storm is a cool guy. We’re supposed to be impressed not only with his badassery, but also how he speaks other languages and can do acupuncture on himself. What a man of the world, right? But we have to keep in mind that during his rampage on the Senator’s mansion he took the time to write the phrase “anticipation of death is worse than death itself” on the inside of a toilet seat so that when a bad guy opens it up to pee he will see the phrase written there on the toilet seat and be scared. Mason Storm is the kind of guy who does that. Mason Storm is a weirdo.

A pretty standard episode of The Invaders, with the new status quo of David Vincent having allies. It’s so standard that remember how last episode had one of his allies, named Bob, get killed in the line of duty? Well in this episode one of his allies, named Bob, gets killed in the line of duty. Related to that, in this episode Vincent says the group (I don’t know that they’re called The Believers, but that’s what they episode that introduced them was called) has seven members. This was also what they said last episode before First Bob died. Did they bring in Second Bob specifically to replace First Bob? Better crack out Third Bob, I guess.

Actually, if we’re not told otherwise, I could see the “Believers” being a larger group then seven people, but they’d have Scoville in charge and six “leaders” each representing a cell of sorts, to keep things simple.

Okay, the actual plot to this one: there’s a publishing company, Mace Publishing, that is supposed to be the best newsgathering organization in the world. Vincent and his allies are worried that the Invaders are trying to take over Mace Publishing and it turns out they’re correct. The owner of the company is killed and it comes under control of his nephew Jeremy. The Invaders control Jeremy by threatening the lives of his remaining loved ones, so they have essentially conquered the company. Good thing David Vincent and Second Bob (RIP) were around to help Jeremy cast off the shackles.

And boy do they ever cast them off. The episode climaxes with the leader of this alien scheme falling from a helicopter. That’s right, another episode with a helicopter! This show has helicopters! It’s cool.

So yeah, as I said, standard stuff. I did wonder why the Invaders didn’t use their hypnotism crystals on Jeremy. It got me wondering if maybe every time they use those they draw on a finite source of energy that they have to replenish with regular saucer deliveries. That’d be neat. They’d have to save the hypnotism for either short-term use or emergencies, but an attempt at long-term control like this would be more sensibly done other ways.

It’s October! If I were forced to choose, probably my favourite month. Let’s see what I did with it:

• THE THIRD FLASH FOSTER STORY: The third and final comic about the High-Gear Hot-Shots unequivocally gives us the most action of the three. It’s a shame these kids never got to come back because presumably the ’50s Captain America killed them all for being Commies or something.
• THIS PAINTING COSTS $5000 AND NINETEEN CENTS: This month I made a painting. The painting costs $5000 and nineteen cents. Is it worth that much? That’s in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think it is, but that’s because it hasn’t sold yet. But that’s what it costs, it says so. Really makes you think about the value of art, doesn’t it?
• BACK TO GURX: I asked on Patreon which of several PDR ideas I should commit to and the choice was that I go back to planet Gurx. This post here is just a look at the evolution of the Strondovarians, but I am going to do at least a few months of posts about the planet and its lifeforms. I’ve also begun making a dedicated page on the site on the topic that will hopefully be easier than going through all the individual posts I’ve done so far.
• SUPERMAN VS HALLOWEEN 2026: Over at the Avocado I wrote about Superman again, but instead of focusing on his work against bigotry, I looked at a time he fought some ghosts. I’m gonna try to do this yearly after this.
• BEEKEEPER REVIEW: ALESSIO: Not all Beekeeper Reviews are of interesting characters, unfortunately. I’m in this for completeness, after all. My 97th such review comes from a movie I realized part of the way through I had actually seen before and completely forgotten, and I think that’s a fair response to it.
• MUSING ABOUT CHAMPY THE USELESS VAMPIRE: In the hopes of starting the month with some Halloween flavour, I decided to play an adventure game about a vampire. It turns out to be a very short game, clearly a labour of love by amateur developers, but it had its charms and it had at least one mechanic I would steal if I am ever lucky enough to make my own game.
• OBSCURE MARVEL CHARACTER PIXEL ART: Trying to stay on the theme of the spooky-style season, I decided to draw a character from a Marvel horror book. Specifically, I’ve drawn Professor Louise Hastings. She was a character in Darkhold: Pages From The Book Of Sins, which came out in the early ’90s as part of the Midnight Sons line. The Midnight Sons/Suns brand was largely about (and have become even moreso about) supernatural-flavoured superheroes, but the fact that this was a team of relatively-regular people facing off against unfathomable evil forces, it appealed to me a lot. Spoilers: Louise didn’t make it through alive, but that the fact that such a cool character could be killed off made the book feel like everyone was at risk. My stipulation to have the art done within a 24-hour window really feels crueller when drawing someone who is not wearing a superhero outfit, though.

• PODCAST QUESTIONS: One neat thing this month is that I had a question answered on the podcast Least Haunted (the specific episode can be found here). It’s an excellent podcast that discusses folklore and paranormal legends but doesn’t fall into the trap that I’ve seen other podcasts do and believe in them. It’s a smart show by smart people. This reminds me that a few months back I had a question answered on another show, Final Girl After Dark, which is a horror movie podcast (episode here, since neither show’s website seems to want me to link directly to the episodes in question). And thus ends the section where I act like listening to podcasts counts as something I accomplished this month.
• EXPENSIVE CAR REPAIRS: Well, I mentioned my victory against my student loans last month, so naturally I need to mention that I had to put about $1500 onto my credit card this month to repair the car (mostly the suspension, some other minor things that are actually what I brought it in for). I won’t lie, when something like that happens, it hurts. My entire life is based around my debt and has been for about a decade, so every big setback like this feels like I’m being dragged back a year or so. Still, the car is fixed and that’s something, right?
• CONTINUED COMIC SECTION BEAUTIFICATION: I am still trying to make the site in general more presentable, with a focus on the Comics section first. Among the things I did there this month was a cover for what are potentially the oldest comics I have on the site, the Space Army, as seen below:

Look, I’ve probably enjoyed things I’ve watched, read, listened to, and eaten. All that stuff. But I also watched the movie Shadow In The Cloud, so all that other stuff has been pushed out of my brain. Look, it’s not a great movie. I like the synth in the soundtrack (you wouldn’t expect it from a movie set in WW2), but overall I was bored with most of it. I say MOST of it because there was one very important exception.

There’s a scene where the gremlin on the plane has stolen the main woman’s baby (the baby is in the box) and stuck it down under the wing of the bomber. Naturally, she has to crawl on the bottom of the bomber while the plane is being attacked to save the baby. But then she has to climb back into the plane. That’s when this happens:

What else could compare to that?

Why are swordfish good orators?
They always have a point.

This one has David Vincent on a mission with Bob, who is a guy he met with the Believers group last episode. I was impressed to see that Bob made it into a second episode. He dies in this one.

Anyway, on their mission Vincent and Bob capture an Invader and intend to take him to Washington for questioning or whatever. The thing is, we’re told, this Invader holds a special rank in Invader society, so they will stop at nothing to get him back. As they run with their captive, the heroes find their way to a cabin where an elderly poet and his granddaughter live. Bob, as I said, dies, so we’ve got Vincent and the old man and the young girl and the Invader Leader Guy prisoner and they’re surrounded by Invaders coming to get their guy back. It’s a siege situation. And to make things even more tense, if the Invader Leader Guy doesn’t get to one of their regeneration chambers within a couple hours, he’s going to die.

We get all these people arguing their various points of view. In particular, the Leader offers Cyrus Stone, the old poet, the chance to rule over humanity in the Invader-controlled world. Stone is a cynical man who is tired of the world as it is, saying of the Invaders, “compared to what we have here, they might not be so bad.” One misstep that the Leader makes is that he praises Stone’s poetry and is asked “Are there poets on your planet?” he says there are, so Vincent says “I’d like to hear one of your poems” and the Leader has nothing. It’s all good stuff until David Vincent gets killed. That’s right, our hero, who we’re followed for all these episodes is having a fight with some Invaders and gets thrown into some sort of generator and is electrocuted. He is dead.

Stone asks alien leader a question. He’s heard them talk about the wonders that their technology can do, including their regeneration chambers, so can bring David Vincent back to life? The leader admits they can, if it is done quickly enough, like within the next couple minutes. Stone says that if they bring back David Vincent, then the Leader is free to go. The Leader agrees, but can’t understand the motivation of the human, giving up a chance to rule for one life. Stone says “We value life, that’s why we endure.” By the time David Vincent is awake again, though weak and confused, the aliens, including their Leader, are gone.

I always like when we learn a bit more about the Invaders. Their lack of poetry doesn’t surprise me at all given their lack of emotion (and I have my doubts they even use a spoken language in their natural forms), but this guy being a “Leader” is something new. He doesn’t phrase it like he is the boss of this operation or whatever, he says “Where I come from, I am a Leader. There is no equivalent here.” He makes it sound as if the word “Leader” is a compromise of language and that he is actually something more important. We probably won’t learn more about this, but I’ll keep it in mind.

Other things I bothered to note: Edgar Scoville, the rich man who runs the Believers group, seems to be very rich. When Vincent was on his own, he worked with the military, sure, but Scoville requests soldiers and gets them. That’s impressive.

Also, they’ve turned up a couple times, but the Invaders have these handheld communicator devices that are just little circles things that light up while you’re talking into them. They’re not particularly special, especially considering the devices we have now, but every time I see them I imagine a world where the people who would go on to create our cell phones and stuff were more inspired by this than the communicators on Star Trek.