Hmm, I wonder how many newsstands displayed these books next to each other:

Flash Comics 6 Smash Comics 16 Crash Comics 5

An explanation: I recently stumbled across a mention of Smash Comics, a series from Quality Comics that ran more or less concurrently with the more familiar Flash Comics. Just for kicks, I searched the Grand Comics Database (which is where I got the cover images) for Crash Comics, and found Crash Comics Adventures, which ran for 5 issues in 1940 before spinning off a series on the original Cat-Man. So the three books would have been on sale at the same time!

I couldn’t find any other books with the same pattern in the title. The GCD does substring matches, and “ash comics” only brought up variations on these three series. Though it did remind me that DC resurrected the Smash Comics title for one chapter of the 1999 The Justice Society Returns! event.

Yesterday, President Bush reportedly said, “Politicians in Washington shouldn’t be telling generals how to do their job.”

I guess he’d better recuse himself from any further military decisions for the rest of his term. Commander in Chief or not, the President of the United States is a politician in Washington.

Hmm, maybe he can give orders while traveling?

Someone walked into the restroom talking on a cell phone, explaining, “it’s going to sound really bad now, because I’m in the executive washroom.”

Executive washroom?

Sure, if by “executive washroom” you mean first-floor lobby restroom that’s available to anyone who walks into the building.

I couldn’t tell whether he was joking, or trying to impress the person on the other end of the call.

Opera BrowserThe Opera Web Browser is in the news today. First, they’ve just released version 9.20. In addition to the usual security, stability, and compatibility fixes, they’re promoting a new feature called Speed Dial, to make it easier to reach your most-frequently-visited websites.

Meanwhile, a recent survey by NetApplications and Surveyware found that while Firefox is widely considered the best browser, Opera’s users are more satisfied than users of any other browser. NetApplications’ current marketshare shows 79% IE, 15% Firefox, 4.5% Safari and 0.8% Opera for March 2007. (via OperaWatch)

While Opera is an excellent browser, this high level of satisfaction may be in part because of the size of its userbase. Often, when something is only followed by a small fraction of the potential audience, it’s mainly the hard-core fans. The only way to grow past that size is to bring in the casual users, who are less invested in it. Only time (and increased marketshare) will tell.

Webuser decided to lead with the Opera findings, which is great news for what they call “one of the internet’s best-kept secrets.” But they made an odd choice on the image to run with the article:

Screenshot of WebUser Article: Opera headline, Firefox Logo

Maybe they figured the Firefox logo was more recognizable, and would get more people to stop and read?