Earl Am Canadian, Am You?

Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party government, clearly in the thrall of their Maple MAGA behind-the-scenes leaders, have long been planning to ask Albertans, via referendum, if the province should leave Confederation. Leaving aside the question if doing so would even be constitutional, this unnecessary and divisive proposition should be fiercely rejected. 

Fortunately, former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister and MLA Thomas Lukaszuk has more sense than Smith and the UCP and has beat the provincial government to the punch with his own referendum question: 

Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada? 

Yes I do, and if you do too, please support the referendum here. You can donate to defray expenses, volunteer, canvas for signatures, or simply pledge to sign the petition--it needs roughly 300,000 signatures to proceed to official referendum stage, while Smith's "Let's separate!" petition will require only 177,000--because of course they changed the rules. 

Why does my title sound like Bizarro wrote it? Because we're clearly living in Bizarro World these days. Let's try to round off the corners of our square earth, bit by bit. It can start here. 

The O Squad Masthead

Many years ago, DC Comics published a very amusing short comic story called "Attack of the O Squad!" Starro, the first antagonist of the Justice League of America, gathers other DC villains whose names end with "o" to take his revenge on the JLA. Alas, the whole plan falls apart when T.O. Morrow shows up, for his name ends not with "o," but "ow." 

"But it sounds the same!" 

Not good enough for the O Squad. 

I'm not sure what brought that story to mind tonight, but I began to wonder if the O Squad would ever get their own series. That prompted me to design a masthead for such a comic book. 

My graphic design skills are quite rusty from long disuse, but I think this works conceptually. It obviously needs considerable polishing to meet professional standards. I had fun designing it, though!