Seems we're a li'l late again this month... Sorry 'bout that - just had other matters to deal with here... But that aside, about this month's calendar: I recall back in the early '80s, at one of the earliest San Diego Comic Cons that I'd attended, that I stumbled across Trina Robbins in the art show... She pulled me aside to show me the "sickest" thing she'd seen (at least that day)... it was an oil panting of Mermaid bondage... So here I am a couple of decades later, and what am I doing for this month's calendar... Yup, Mermaid bondage... (Sorry Trina)...

The logic behind this pix may escape you... it almost escaped me... The image sort of came to me one day in that half-waking stage between awareness and dreaming... I don't know why... I don't know the logic of it... Just in my "dream" I saw a camera's-eye view move across the gloomy ocean floor, till out of the murk this anchor emerged, with the Mermaid attached... and that was it... I woke up... Later I sketched it up and liked the image enough that I eventually did a more finished rendering -- and here it is...

For whatever it's worth: This is also our tenth anniversary calendar - it was back in June of 1998 that we moved the calendars from just being posted on Compuserve to a real Website: The calendar for June of '98 was "Surfing Omaha Beach" (somewhat commemorating the Normandy Invasion of 1944)... And in an odd way, this month's calendar somehow reminds me of another great naval battle: 66 years ago, in June of 1942, the two most powerful navies the world had ever known converged on Midway Island, where they slugged it out in pitched battle for dominance of the Pacific...

The Battle of Midway lasted about three days, from the 4th to the 7th, and when it was finished the Pacific had been divided between the US and the Japanese... Spruance gave Nagumo the bottom half...

When you look at the order of battle, it seems the Japanese should have won: Four of their most powerful carriers, the Pearl Harbor raiders: Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu, with highly trained aircrews, some of the best-designed fighter and attack planes and the best aerial torpedos, were matched against the three US carriers Enterprise, Hornet and the patched-together Yorktown, which had limped into Pearl with a hole in her side from the Coral Sea battle, had been given a three-day patch job, outfitted with squadrons from the Saratoga (undergoing repairs from a torpedo hit) and rushed as fast as she could steam to support her sister carriers...

But a series of bad breaks for the Japanese Mobile Fleet, and the surprising success of the aging SBD Douglas dive-bombers from the Enterprise and Yorktown, led to total disaster for the Japanese carriers... When it was over, the Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu were all on the bottom - as well as the Yorktown, which had taken all the damage for the US carriers... And in the end, it seems, it was all futile... A lot of brave men, on BOTH sides, died - and for what? So that 66 years later, we can be friends? Couldn't we have managed that without all the killing?

All in all, 1942 was a rough year for carriers. Previous to Midway, the US Lexington and the Japanese carrier Shoho had been sunk at the Coral Sea battle, and before the year was through, both the Hornet and the Wasp and the Japanese Ryujo would also be sunk midst the fighting around the Solomon Islands... In fact, only two of the five US carriers that were operational when the war broke out (and none of the Japanese carriers) survived till the end: The Enterprise CV6 was eventually scrapped in '57 - While the Saratoga CV3 is now lying on the bottom of Bikini Atoll harbor... During the war, the tough old carrier absorbed two torpedo and numerous bomb hits - it took two atomic bombs to finally send her to the bottom... But that's a story for another time - look it up on Wikipedia, if you're interested... JQ