Note: If you didn't get the Super Extra Obscure shout-out in "introductions", well, here come a few that should be a little more obvious. And Google-able.
Many thanks to UKHoneyB for first introducing me to The Eagle's favorite pilot of the future. :)
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Her grandchildren run out of the kitchen just as her son comes in. He automatically dodges the small bodies hurtling past him towards adventure. "Where're they off to, then?" he asks her.
"Venus, I believe," she says, smiling, offering him the last of the biscuits. "Or Mars. Difficult to tell."
Her son – so handsome; the very image of his da – takes a biscuit, then picks up the topmost boys' weekly from the stack on the table. The yellow eagle of the logo, boldly emblazoned on its red square, fairly glows in the sunlight. "Tell me they didn't make you read all of them."
She makes a noise of assent and sits down at the table beside him. "I didn't mind, lovey. That's what grannies are for."
"What did you think of it? Brilliant art, isn't it?"
"Oh, aye," she says, admiring the beautiful, full-color panels of the feature strip. Her fingers itch, looking at the painstaking detail work in every frame. No two-pence newsprint comic book from overseas, that's for certain, but real art, on real paper. She would love to draw some of those spaceships herself, but the arthritis… Well. It's enough just to look. "Two pages of it, painted, every week – I don't know how Mr. Hampson has the energy. Or the imagination."
He idly flips the pages back and forth. "The stories are good, too, aren't they? The ones with that Treen bloke are my favorites."
She makes another noise. This one is not quite so enthusiastic.
Her son pauses and looks at her sideways, mouth twitching. "Say it, Mum."
"I like it, now," she says, tapping the stack of The Eagle magazines, "no mistake."
Now he's grinning full out. "But."
"But they could give that girl more to do."
