The World That\'s Coming

February 6, 2026January 31, 2026

The Movies of January 2026

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the variety of viewing experiences January brought me, from the utter disappointment and exhaustion of the series finale of Stranger Things to my crying multiple times while watching Come See Me In The Good Light, which utterly emotionally wrecked me. There was no particular rhyme nor reason to my January watches, but that feels entirely right for the first month of the year. It’s a recovery month, a stuttering-into-life month after the holidays. I watched some good stuff, and I watched some utter trash. (Beyond Stranger Things, let’s call out Tron: Ares for also being terrible; at least the disappointment of A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey was rooted in some kind of ambition that it could never hope to fulfill.) As far as first steps into the year go, I could have made worse ones.

February 4, 2026January 17, 2026

The Future Never Happened, It Never Happened

February 2, 2026January 31, 2026

The Comics of January 2026

I ploughed through a lot of comics in January, in no small part because I obsessed over the Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus volumes 1 and 2, both of which I read in the month. (Between the two, that’s almost 100 comics combined.) I also revisited Rob Williams and Michael Dowling’s massively underrated series Unfollow — someone, somewhere, should adapt it for television, please — and sampled a handful of other old series to see what was going to follow my weird, obsessive Superman binge. As far as starts to the year go, it was a pretty good one, I’m not going to lie.

Static Shock (2011) #s 7-8 (Series cancelled)
The Final Night Preview #1
The Final Night #1
Extreme Justice #0
Indestructible Hulk #9
Once & Future #1
The Low, Low Woods #s 1-2
Superman (1987) #51
Adventures of Superman (1987) #474
Indestructible Hulk #10
The Final Night #s 2-3
Parallax: Emerald Night #1
The Final Night #4
Green Lantern (1990) #81
Genesis (1997) #s 1-4
Indestructible Hulk #s 11-15
Extreme Justice #1
Vertigo Verite: Hell Eternal #1
Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #3
Action Comics #661
Superman (1987) #52
Extreme Justice #s 2-3
Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #s 1-2
Unfollow #1
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #1
DC One Million #1
Adventures of Superman (1987) #475
Unfollow #2
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #2
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 126-127
Extreme Justice #4
Batman (1940) #411
Indestructible Hulk #16
SHIELD (2014) #7
Catwoman (1993) #s 86-88
World’s Finest: Teen Titans #1
Action Comics #662
Superman (1987) #53
Batman (1940) #s 412-413
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #3
Extreme Justice #5
Unfollow #3
Indestructible Hulk #17
G.I. Joe (1982) #128
Adventures of Superman (1987) #476
Action Comics #663
Superman (1987) #54
X-Men (2024) #23
Venom (2025) #253
Adventures of Superman (1987) #477
Action Comics #664
Superman (1987) #55
G.I. Joe (1982) #129
Batman (1940) #414
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #4
Unfollow #4
Extreme Justice #6
Indestructible Hulk #s 18-20
Hulk (2014) #1
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #88
Adventures of Superman (1987) #478
Action Comics #665
Extreme Justice #s 7-8
Batman (1940) #s 415-416
Unfollow #5
G.I. Joe (1982) #130
Hulk (2014) #2
Superman (1987) #56
Adventures of Superman (1987) #479
Action Comics #666
Unfollow #6
Hulk (2014) #s 3-4
Alpha Flight (1983) #51
SHIELD (2014) #8
X-Factor (1986) #7
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #5
Extreme Justice #9
Avengers (2015) #0
All-New All-Different Avengers #1
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #1
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #s 10-11
Battleworld (2025) #4
Black Cat (2025) #5
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #12
Star Wars (2025) #1
Superman (1987) #57
Unfollow #7
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #6
G.I. Joe (1982) #131
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #13
Adventures of Superman (1987) #480
Action Comics #667
2000 AD Progs 2465-2466 (Judge Dredd stories only)
Unfollow #8
Shade the Changing Man (1990) #7
G.I. Joe (1982) #132
Extreme Justice #10
Star Wars: Han Solo – Hunt for the Falcon #1
2000 AD Prog 2463 (Strontium Dog story only)
X-Factor (1986) #8
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #2
Superman (1987) #58
Unfollow #s 9-12
Adventures of Superman (1987) #481
The Balaclava Kid OGN (Kevin O’Neill)
Feartreland OGN (Kevin O’Neill)
Extreme Justice #11
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 133-135
All-New All-Different Avengers #2
Action Comics #668
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #3
Superman (1987) #59
Adventures of Superman (1987) #482
G.I. Joe (1982) #136
G.I. Joe (2024) #17
Transformers (2023) #28
Unfollow #13
Extreme Justice #12
Alpha Flight (1983) #52
X-Men: Age of Revelation #0
Justice League (1987) #s 1-2
Action Comics #669
Battleworld (2025) #5
Black Cat (2025) #6
Dungeons of Doom #1
The Ultimates (2024) #20
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 137-138
Avengers (2023) #34
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #4
Unfollow #14
Extreme Justice #s 13-14
Superman (1987) #60
The Filth #1
Unfollow #s 15-18
Uncanny X-Men (2024) #22
All-New All-Different Avengers #3
G.I. Joe (1982) #139
Justice League (1987) #3
Adventures of Superman (1987) #483
Action Comics #670
SHIELD (2014) #9
All-New All-Different Avengers #4
Alpha Flight (1983) #53
Clean Room #1
Red Thorn #1
G.I. Joe (1982) #140
Justice League (1987) #4
Justice League Annual (1987) #1
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 141-144
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #s 14-18
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #5
Superman (1987) #61
Adventures of Superman (1987) #484
Red Thorn #2
Justice League (1987) #5
Booster Gold (1986) #1
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #19
The Beauty #s 1-2
The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #238
Action Comics #671
2000 AD Prog 2467 (Judge Dredd story only)
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #6
Superman (1987) #62
Adventures of Superman (1987) #485
Action Comics #672
Justice League (1987) #6
Justice League International (1987) #7
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #7
Superman (1987) #63
The Power Fantasy #15
Adventures of Superman (1987) #486
Action Comics #673
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #8
The Filth #2
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 145-146
The Filth #3
Extreme Justice #15
All-New, All-Different Avengers #5
SHIELD (2014) #10
All-New, All-Different Avengers #6
Superman (1987) #64
Adventures of Superman (1987) #487
Action Comics #674
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #9
The Beauty #3
The Traveler #1
All-New, All-Different Avengers #s 7-8
G.I. Joe (1982) #147
Sword of Sorcery #0
Assorted Crisis Events #7
Superman (1987) #65
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 148-149
The Traveler #2
The Beauty #s 4-5
Adventures of Superman (1987) #488
Action Comics #675
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #10
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 150-151
Secret Origins (1986) #44
Power of the Atom #1
Superman (1987) #66
Adventures of Superman (1987) #489
DC K.O.: Knightfight #4
DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1
Batman (2025) #6
Power of the Atom #2
G.I. Joe (1982) #s 152-155
Justice League Quarterly #3
Mister Miracle (1988) #s 1-2
Transformers (UK) #113 (Transformers story only)
Action Comics #676
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #20
Captain America (2025) #6
Fantastic Four (2025) #7
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #11
Superman (1987) #67
Justice League Spectacular #1
Justice League America (1987) #61
SHIELD (2014) #11
All-New, All-Different Avengers #9
Adventures of Superman (1987) #490
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #11
Dr. Fate (1988) #1
Starman (1988) #1
Star Brand (1986) #1
Untold Tales of the New Universe: Justice #1
Psi-Force #1
Justice (1986) #15
D.P.7 #1
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #12
Green Arrow (2023) #s 18-19
Action Comics #677
2000 AD Prog 2468 (Judge Dredd story only)
X-Men (2024) #24
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #12
Dr. Fate (1988) #2
Hero Squared X-tra Sized Special #1
Green Arrow (2023) #20
All-New, All-Different Avengers #10
SHIELD (2014) #12
Amazing Spider-Man (1962) #239
Superman (1987) #68
Adventures of Superman (1987) #491
Action Comics #678
Green Arrow (2023) #s 21-22
Dr. Fate (1988) #3
All-New, All-Different Avengers #11
DC K.O. #4
Titans (2023) #32
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #48
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #13
Superman (1987) #69
Adventures of Superman (1987) #492
All-New, All-Different Avengers #12
Action Comics #643
Superman (1987) #34
Adventures of Superman (1987) #457
Action Comics #644
Green Arrow (2023) #23
Dr. Fate (1988) #4
Extreme Justice #16
Aztek the Ultimate Man #1
Superman (1987) #35
Adventures of Superman (1987) #458
Action Comics #645
The Infernal Hulk #3
Action Comics #679
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #14
Iron Man (2026) #1
Inglorious X-Force #1
The Mortal Thor #s 1-6
G.I. Joe (2024) #18
Dr. Fate (1988) #s 5-6
Green Arrow (2023) #24
All-New, All-Different Avengers #s 13-15
Avengers (2016) #1
Champions (2016) #1
Spawn #1
Star Wars (2025) #2
Superman (1987) #70
Adventures of Superman (1987) #493
Absolute Batman #16
Action Comics #680
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #15
Dr. Fate Annual (1988) #1
The Spectre (1987) #12
Champions (2016) #2
Avengers (2016) #2
Brink Book Six
Avengers (2016) #s 3-6
Infernal Hulk #s 1-2
Superman (1987) #71
Adventures of Superman (1987) #494
Green Arrow (2023) #25
Dr. Fate (1988) #7
Champions (2016) #s 3-4
Cyclops (2010) #1
X-Men: First Class (2006) #1
Uncanny X-Men (1963) #14
Action Comics #681
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #16
Superman (1987) #72
Avengers (2016) #s 1.1-2.1
Green Arrow (2023) #26
Dr. Fate (1988) #8
Adventures of Superman (1987) #495
Action Comics #682
2000 AD Prog 2469 (Judge Dredd story only)
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #17
Superman (1987) #73
Green Arrow (2023) #27
Avengers (2016) #s 3.1-5.1
Champions (2016) #s 5-6
Detective Comics Annual 2025 #1
Adventures of Superman (1987) #496
Action Comics #683
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #18
Justice League America (1987) #69
Superman (1987) #74
Adventures of Superman (1987) #497
Action Comics #684
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #19
Superman (1987) #75
Adventures of Superman (1987) #498
Action Comics #685
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #20
Superman (1987) #76
Adventures of Superman (1987) #499
Action Comics #686
The Legacy of Superman #1
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #21
Superman (1987) #77
Supergirl and Team Luthor #1

January 30, 2026January 17, 2026

Self-Directed Whimsy

I mentioned the other day in passing to a friend about my increasing awareness of a need to spend time by myself. I didn’t mean that in a generic sense — there are plenty of times every week where I’m “by myself” as I work, for example, or moments when I’m the only one watching a TV show or whatever as other people are elsewhere in the house, but that’s not the kind of thing that I mean. Instead, I’m talking about… finding time to intentionally alone, for want of a better way to put it.

For me, it’s going for walks and listening to music. I’ve written before, I’m sure, about my love of the Situationist dérive, the act of wandering with no intent or destination in mind and seeing where you go, and that’s become something akin to a weekly act of self-care to me as I plug myself into my phone and listen to whatever I’ve been obsessing over lately. Occasionally, I tell myself that there’s something about it that’s an exercise routine of sorts, and sure enough I’m getting some exercise, but the true appeal is the space it gives my brain to just… free associate and work through whatever has been lying there ill-considered and needing some time to marinate.

There is always something, somewhere, to take your time and attention if you let it, I’ve come to realize; there’s always a deadline or an obligation or reason to pay attention to something that someone else wants. (I’m speaking not just of work obligations, of which I have so many, you understand, but also family and just, you know, making sure you’re paying the bills and have food and everything else.) Sometimes it feels as if there’s no space to just… be selfish enough to let your mind wander, for want of a better way to put it.

Something I’ve heard a bunch of different people talk about in the last month or so, in a bunch of different circumstances and a bunch of different situations is their desire for “whimsy,” and when I’ve asked them about it, it’s translated into variations on the idea of “I wish I had time and space to be silly and joyful but I don’t.” That’s what these walks are for me; finding that time and space, surrounded by people but still very much for myself and by myself.

January 28, 2026January 17, 2026

The Better Better Better It Gets

January 26, 2026January 17, 2026

Got A Feeling In My Pocket, Going Way Home

I suddenly remembered, the other day, something from 30 years ago. I was in my final year of my Bachelors degree at art school, and nearing the end of the course, and the world was electric. My final year of that degree was a big one for me in all kinds of ways — aside from the stress of will I get my degree or have I screwed up and wasted the last four years of my life?, there were also the facts that I spent much of the year in my first proper extended relationship (which went south before too long for reasons that were as much “I didn’t know what I was doing” than anything else; I was a bad boyfriend), I was slowly beginning to realize that maybe I wanted to be a writer instead of a graphic designer or visual artist, and I was dealing with the fact that, because it was the last year of my degree, I’d soon be saying goodbye to people I’d grown close to over the past four years and didn’t quite know how to deal with any of that.

In the middle of all of this, the music scene of the time was in flux in ways that felt exciting and explosive — part of it was that Britpop was dying although we didn’t necessarily realize it at the time, and the death throes were offering up some of the more interesting music of the movement, but there was also the truth that I was looking outside of my relatively narrow parameters of the previous few years and finding things I’d ignored or never discovered at all years prior. Added up, it felt like the perfect soundtrack to a life that felt perpetually in motion at the time.

The thing I remembered was checking my bank balance in the town center, and seeing that I had, essentially no money. I literally had just over ten pounds and I knew no money would be coming in for at least a couple of weeks, and I needed groceries and, you know, money to just get by. Instead of doing any of those things, I withdrew ten pounds and went to buy an album for myself — Supergrass‘s In It For The Money, perhaps ironically given the title — entirely secure that I was making the right decision and everything else would fall into place and be fine.

Here’s the thing: I was right. Things did fall into place, and everything was fine. And the opening three songs off that album were exactly what I needed to hear at that point in my life, and I made the right decision, at the time and even looking back now. But when I remembered all of this, the thought came to me not that I was dumb and should’ve bought food or whatever, but that I miss that utter sense of security and belief in the universe that everything would work out. Remember when you could make bargains with life like that and they’d pay off?

January 23, 2026January 17, 2026

Bring Out Yer Dead

A thing that I always promise myself that I’ll do during the holiday break is “tidy up.” Not in terms of the house, because I do that on a regular basis anyway — I get amusingly upset if the kitchen or living room in particular are left in too much of a state for too long; it’s amusing to me, at least, albeit in retrospect — but tidy up my workspace and my laptop, which by the end of each year tends to be crying out in desperation for attention and a little care.

The problem isn’t that I use it basically every day for hours on end; that’s what laptops are kind of meant for, after all, and I’m happy to report that Apple hasn’t let me down on that front yet. No, the problem is that I don’t empty my digital trash can. This is, in part, by design — more than once in my life, I’ve accidentally deleted a file that I wasn’t actually finished with because I like to try to free up my desktop at the end of each day, and sometimes get a little overzealous in doing so, only to then empty trash and discover the next morning that I’ve deleted something I was 90% done with and needed to complete in the shortest possible time that day. (Yes, I’ve done this more than once. You don’t need to judge me that harshly.)

My solution, I decided the last time I found myself gesturing silently in frustration to the heavens, wasn’t to simply be more careful in what I put into the trash bin. Instead, I decided, what I really needed to do was not empty trash until I could feel confident that I didn’t need anything in there. In theory, this means that I’d check the bin at the end of a week, say, and then empty it after saving anything that had been placed there by accident.

Note that I said, “in theory.” In practice, I went through my trash bin the Monday between Christmas and New Year and realized with no small amount of horror that I hadn’t actually emptied my digital trash since June. The past six-and-a-bit-months of my digital life were remaindered there, from old work stories and images to PDF review copies of things, screenshots of any number of random things I’d sent to friends or family and hundreds of other files. I’m being literal when I say that; there were more than a thousand files in the trash, waiting patiently for me to do something, anything, with them.

When I hit “empty trash,” you could almost hear my laptop breathe a sigh of relief; the available space on my machine went from something like 8GB to 131GB immediately. Maybe I need to get a little better about paying attention to this stuff in the future.

January 21, 2026January 3, 2026

Panic on the Streets of

January 19, 2026January 17, 2026

Countdown 2026

The first couple of weeks of 2026 have followed a similar rhythm that, I can only hope, will not be repeated throughout the rest of the year.

If I had to define this rhythm, it’s be that Monday is a day of low dread — a day where what needs to be done for the rest of the week slowly becomes clear and it’s more than I expected, with at least one surprise waiting for me that comes entirely out of left field and leaves me trying to work out what I need to do with it. Tuesday is then a day of feeling of feeling overwhelmed by the weight of expectation and/or deadlines and/or things that simply need to be done, and then Wednesday is that but more so, and with a side order of resentment that it’s quite so much. As I’ve said for the past two weeks, Tuesday evening feels like a Thursday, and Wednesday feels like a Friday is never going to arrive.

Then, on both weeks, Thursday proved to be surprisingly easy — a through line in whatever is lying ahead of me appears, or I figure out a solution to whatever the biggest problem facing me, or something similar. Thursday turned out to be a respite, this odd moment where everything feels better than the last three days and I have a moment at one point of thinking to myself, wow, I can’t believe tomorrow’s Friday, that’s so great, I’m so close to the weekend with no small sense of relief.

Where the two weeks did differ was the Friday. The first week, the Friday followed through on the easy feeling of the day before, and I just slid into the weekend was gratitude and relief. And last week, it was just the opposite: Friday was a fight, and I struggled through the entire day like it was quicksand, wondering if there was something worse waiting for me that I couldn’t see just yet. All things being equal, I preferred the week before.

And yet, the two weeks felt the same, by the time the weekend arrived. The shape of them, the to-and-fro of it all. It felt like something, somewhere, had decided this was the calendar of events and I was just learning about my new schedule. The second week had a surreal Groundhog Day feel to it that made me nervous. Surely, I thought, this isn’t what it’s going to be like the entire time. This can’t be right.

I said something similar at this time last year, that I hoped January didn’t set the tone of the year to follow; in the year’s defense, it didn’t. It was arguably far worse. Here’s hoping that doesn’t repeat itself, either. We’ll see. 50 weeks to go.

January 16, 2026January 3, 2026

The Never-Ending Relax

I’ve been thinking a bunch lately about the concept of a comfort read, in large part because I’m working my way through Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus Volume 1, which feels like the platonic ideal of a comfort read for me specifically. I don’t mean that purely in the sense of, “I feel nostalgic for these comics, which I first read as they were coming out 35 years ago,” although, yes, there’s obviously the comfort of familiarity and nostalgia at play here.

Even when I was first buying them as a teenager, though, these were comfort reads to me. There were American comics that I bought at the comic store, and ones that I’d buy in the local grocery stores and newsagents; the distinction was that ones from the comic store were (a) two to three months newer than the ones in newsagents, (b) more reliably available, as newsagent hauls were based entirely on what backstock they had available, and (c) twice as expensive, if not more so, if my memory is reliable. That said, the cost was more than worth it for the comics I was truly passionate about, the ones I self-consciously told myself I “collected,” as opposed to the other ones, which I just… read, I guess…?

All of the Superman comics fell into that latter category, but I bought them every month without fail, and read them and re-read them. They were reliably entertaining, if rarely thrilling, with a mix of relatively low-key stakes and soap opera that made them simultaneously essential and inessential reads: something that I wanted to keep up with, without question, but not to the point where I felt like I had to rush the experience or, for that matter, pay extra for it. They were just solid, enjoyable, reads. The very definition of a comfort read, even back then.

I say that not as faint praise, but as praise, entirely: reading the stories today, I’m finding myself charmed by how low intensity they are, but perfect popcorn reading even now. More superhero comics should remember that not every story needs to save the world, and not eery story needs to be top of the stack reading, as long as it’s in the stack somewhere.

The World That's Coming

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