Jim Aparo and Jimmy Doohan.

I can vividly remember standing in a supermarket line in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico patiently waiting with my mother to checkout our groceries nervously thumbing through a comic. The comic was a Spanish digest size reprint of a couple of DC Comic stories featuring Batman and Aquaman. Reading those stories were a treat and the art was so cool that I would forever remember them. It wasn't until I was older and living in the states that I found out that those cool images were drawn by Jim Aparo. Jim Aparo died this week at the age of 72 and the comics world will be all the poorer for it.

Part of my daily routine when I was a wee lad was to watch Star Trek or "Viaje A Las Estrellas" as it was called in Spanish on channel 4 in Puerto Rico when it ran every day at 4 PM. It was these Spanish re-runs that started me on a dark road to geekdom that I have not been able to escape. You have not lived until you have experienced Star Trek in Spanish specifically a Spanish actor trying to speak in a Scottish accent. James Doohan was and always will be Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the Starship Enterprise but he did so much more during his life. He stormed the beaches of Normandy with the Canadian infantry and was also a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and fought in the skies above England during the famous Battle of Britain. Jimmy Doohan passed away yesterday at the age of 85.