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Temporary Outage

And then I ground to a halt, reluctantly.

The way I put it in a message to my boss was, “I’ve been fighting a cold all week, and the cold’s winning.” That’s maybe a little too cute, but it wasn’t untrue; by the time I called out sick last week, I’d been feeling sluggish and tired and dealing with a persistent headache for four days, and my traditional approach of What if I just ignore it and then it’ll go away, because that’s certainly how you’re supposed to deal with illness wasn’t paying off this time.

The problem — well, the problem that wasn’t the fact that I had a cold and I didn’t want to have a cold, which was also the problem — was that it was one of those weeks that just felt as if it didn’t end; everything kept happening, and almost all of it demanded my attention in one way or another. I felt as if I was constantly “on” from waking up to falling asleep, and then sleeping badly because of the cold, just to make matters worse. Every evening, I’d find myself thinking some variation on the thought of, “I wish I could just hit pause, just for a little bit, to regain some strength.”

To any regular person, that sounds like the ideal time to call out sick from work and give yourself a day to recover, but friends: I am a workaholic and that’s not how my brain works. I knew it was the right idea and something I should do, yet I kept finding reasons not to call out — there’s stuff that needs to be done, I’ve had a couple of four-day work weeks in a row and I should work a full week, it’s not that bad when it comes down to it — all the way up until actually calling out at 7 in the morning.

What pushed me to finally do the obvious thing was receiving a text from my sister at 5:30 that morning — to be fair, she’s in the UK and time zone math is hard — telling me about a family thing that just made me think, Oh, there’s another thing, of course, before realizing I really should just be kinder to myself and take the damn day off.

The day was spent, instead, on a couch and in a bed, relaxing and suggesting to the animals that maybe they too should calm down and let me rest. All things considered, it was the day I needed: the temporary stop that let me keep going. Maybe next time I’ll get there without being sick and/or trying to convince myself that pausing is a luxury on the way.

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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.

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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.

  1. Static Shock (2011) #s 7-8 (Series cancelled)
  2. The Final Night Preview #1
  3. The Final Night #1
  4. Extreme Justice #0
  5. Indestructible Hulk #9
  6. Once & Future #1
  7. The Low, Low Woods #s 1-2
  8. Superman (1987) #51
  9. Adventures of Superman (1987) #474
  10. Indestructible Hulk #10
  11. The Final Night #s 2-3
  12. Parallax: Emerald Night #1
  13. The Final Night #4
  14. Green Lantern (1990) #81
  15. Genesis (1997) #s 1-4
  16. Indestructible Hulk #s 11-15
  17. Extreme Justice #1
  18. Vertigo Verite: Hell Eternal #1
  19. Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #3
  20. Action Comics #661
  21. Superman (1987) #52
  22. Extreme Justice #s 2-3
  23. Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #s 1-2
  24. Unfollow #1
  25. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #1
  26. DC One Million #1
  27. Adventures of Superman (1987) #475
  28. Unfollow #2
  29. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #2
  30. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 126-127
  31. Extreme Justice #4
  32. Batman (1940) #411
  33. Indestructible Hulk #16
  34. SHIELD (2014) #7
  35. Catwoman (1993) #s 86-88
  36. World’s Finest: Teen Titans #1
  37. Action Comics #662
  38. Superman (1987) #53
  39. Batman (1940) #s 412-413
  40. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #3
  41. Extreme Justice #5
  42. Unfollow #3
  43. Indestructible Hulk #17
  44. G.I. Joe (1982) #128
  45. Adventures of Superman (1987) #476
  46. Action Comics #663
  47. Superman (1987) #54
  48. X-Men (2024) #23
  49. Venom (2025) #253
  50. Adventures of Superman (1987) #477
  51. Action Comics #664
  52. Superman (1987) #55
  53. G.I. Joe (1982) #129
  54. Batman (1940) #414
  55. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #4
  56. Unfollow #4
  57. Extreme Justice #6
  58. Indestructible Hulk #s 18-20
  59. Hulk (2014) #1
  60. Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #88
  61. Adventures of Superman (1987) #478
  62. Action Comics #665
  63. Extreme Justice #s 7-8
  64. Batman (1940) #s 415-416
  65. Unfollow #5
  66. G.I. Joe (1982) #130
  67. Hulk (2014) #2
  68. Superman (1987) #56
  69. Adventures of Superman (1987) #479
  70. Action Comics #666
  71. Unfollow #6
  72. Hulk (2014) #s 3-4
  73. Alpha Flight (1983) #51
  74. SHIELD (2014) #8
  75. X-Factor (1986) #7
  76. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #5
  77. Extreme Justice #9
  78. Avengers (2015) #0
  79. All-New All-Different Avengers #1
  80. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #1
  81. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #s 10-11
  82. Battleworld (2025) #4
  83. Black Cat (2025) #5
  84. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #12
  85. Star Wars (2025) #1
  86. Superman (1987) #57
  87. Unfollow #7
  88. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #6
  89. G.I. Joe (1982) #131
  90. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #13
  91. Adventures of Superman (1987) #480
  92. Action Comics #667
  93. 2000 AD Progs 2465-2466 (Judge Dredd stories only)
  94. Unfollow #8
  95. Shade the Changing Man (1990) #7
  96. G.I. Joe (1982) #132
  97. Extreme Justice #10
  98. Star Wars: Han Solo – Hunt for the Falcon #1
  99. 2000 AD Prog 2463 (Strontium Dog story only)
  100. X-Factor (1986) #8
  101. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #2
  102. Superman (1987) #58
  103. Unfollow #s 9-12
  104. Adventures of Superman (1987) #481
  105. The Balaclava Kid OGN (Kevin O’Neill)
  106. Feartreland OGN (Kevin O’Neill)
  107. Extreme Justice #11
  108. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 133-135
  109. All-New All-Different Avengers #2
  110. Action Comics #668
  111. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #3
  112. Superman (1987) #59
  113. Adventures of Superman (1987) #482
  114. G.I. Joe (1982) #136
  115. G.I. Joe (2024) #17
  116. Transformers (2023) #28
  117. Unfollow #13
  118. Extreme Justice #12
  119. Alpha Flight (1983) #52
  120. X-Men: Age of Revelation #0
  121. Justice League (1987) #s 1-2
  122. Action Comics #669
  123. Battleworld (2025) #5
  124. Black Cat (2025) #6
  125. Dungeons of Doom #1
  126. The Ultimates (2024) #20
  127. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 137-138
  128. Avengers (2023) #34
  129. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #4
  130. Unfollow #14
  131. Extreme Justice #s 13-14
  132. Superman (1987) #60
  133. The Filth #1
  134. Unfollow #s 15-18
  135. Uncanny X-Men (2024) #22
  136. All-New All-Different Avengers #3
  137. G.I. Joe (1982) #139
  138. Justice League (1987) #3
  139. Adventures of Superman (1987) #483
  140. Action Comics #670
  141. SHIELD (2014) #9
  142. All-New All-Different Avengers #4
  143. Alpha Flight (1983) #53
  144. Clean Room #1
  145. Red Thorn #1
  146. G.I. Joe (1982) #140
  147. Justice League (1987) #4
  148. Justice League Annual (1987) #1
  149. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 141-144
  150. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #s 14-18
  151. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #5
  152. Superman (1987) #61
  153. Adventures of Superman (1987) #484
  154. Red Thorn #2
  155. Justice League (1987) #5
  156. Booster Gold (1986) #1
  157. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #19
  158. The Beauty #s 1-2
  159. The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #238
  160. Action Comics #671
  161. 2000 AD Prog 2467 (Judge Dredd story only)
  162. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #6
  163. Superman (1987) #62
  164. Adventures of Superman (1987) #485
  165. Action Comics #672
  166. Justice League (1987) #6
  167. Justice League International (1987) #7
  168. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #7
  169. Superman (1987) #63
  170. The Power Fantasy #15
  171. Adventures of Superman (1987) #486
  172. Action Comics #673
  173. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #8
  174. The Filth #2
  175. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 145-146
  176. The Filth #3
  177. Extreme Justice #15
  178. All-New, All-Different Avengers #5
  179. SHIELD (2014) #10
  180. All-New, All-Different Avengers #6
  181. Superman (1987) #64
  182. Adventures of Superman (1987) #487
  183. Action Comics #674
  184. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #9
  185. The Beauty #3
  186. The Traveler #1
  187. All-New, All-Different Avengers #s 7-8
  188. G.I. Joe (1982) #147
  189. Sword of Sorcery #0
  190. Assorted Crisis Events #7
  191. Superman (1987) #65
  192. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 148-149
  193. The Traveler #2
  194. The Beauty #s 4-5
  195. Adventures of Superman (1987) #488
  196. Action Comics #675
  197. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #10
  198. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 150-151
  199. Secret Origins (1986) #44
  200. Power of the Atom #1
  201. Superman (1987) #66
  202. Adventures of Superman (1987) #489
  203. DC K.O.: Knightfight #4
  204. DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1
  205. Batman (2025) #6
  206. Power of the Atom #2
  207. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 152-155
  208. Justice League Quarterly #3
  209. Mister Miracle (1988) #s 1-2
  210. Transformers (UK) #113 (Transformers story only)
  211. Action Comics #676
  212. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #20
  213. Captain America (2025) #6
  214. Fantastic Four (2025) #7
  215. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #11
  216. Superman (1987) #67
  217. Justice League Spectacular #1
  218. Justice League America (1987) #61
  219. SHIELD (2014) #11
  220. All-New, All-Different Avengers #9
  221. Adventures of Superman (1987) #490
  222. Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #11
  223. Dr. Fate (1988) #1
  224. Starman (1988) #1
  225. Star Brand (1986) #1
  226. Untold Tales of the New Universe: Justice #1
  227. Psi-Force #1
  228. Justice (1986) #15
  229. D.P.7 #1
  230. Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #12
  231. Green Arrow (2023) #s 18-19
  232. Action Comics #677
  233. 2000 AD Prog 2468 (Judge Dredd story only)
  234. X-Men (2024) #24
  235. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #12
  236. Dr. Fate (1988) #2
  237. Hero Squared X-tra Sized Special #1
  238. Green Arrow (2023) #20
  239. All-New, All-Different Avengers #10
  240. SHIELD (2014) #12
  241. Amazing Spider-Man (1962) #239
  242. Superman (1987) #68
  243. Adventures of Superman (1987) #491
  244. Action Comics #678
  245. Green Arrow (2023) #s 21-22
  246. Dr. Fate (1988) #3
  247. All-New, All-Different Avengers #11
  248. DC K.O. #4
  249. Titans (2023) #32
  250. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #48
  251. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #13
  252. Superman (1987) #69
  253. Adventures of Superman (1987) #492
  254. All-New, All-Different Avengers #12
  255. Action Comics #643
  256. Superman (1987) #34
  257. Adventures of Superman (1987) #457
  258. Action Comics #644
  259. Green Arrow (2023) #23
  260. Dr. Fate (1988) #4
  261. Extreme Justice #16
  262. Aztek the Ultimate Man #1
  263. Superman (1987) #35
  264. Adventures of Superman (1987) #458
  265. Action Comics #645
  266. The Infernal Hulk #3
  267. Action Comics #679
  268. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #14
  269. Iron Man (2026) #1
  270. Inglorious X-Force #1
  271. The Mortal Thor #s 1-6
  272. G.I. Joe (2024) #18
  273. Dr. Fate (1988) #s 5-6
  274. Green Arrow (2023) #24
  275. All-New, All-Different Avengers #s 13-15
  276. Avengers (2016) #1
  277. Champions (2016) #1
  278. Spawn #1
  279. Star Wars (2025) #2
  280. Superman (1987) #70
  281. Adventures of Superman (1987) #493
  282. Absolute Batman #16
  283. Action Comics #680
  284. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #15
  285. Dr. Fate Annual (1988) #1
  286. The Spectre (1987) #12
  287. Champions (2016) #2
  288. Avengers (2016) #2
  289. Brink Book Six
  290. Avengers (2016) #s 3-6
  291. Infernal Hulk #s 1-2
  292. Superman (1987) #71
  293. Adventures of Superman (1987) #494
  294. Green Arrow (2023) #25
  295. Dr. Fate (1988) #7
  296. Champions (2016) #s 3-4
  297. Cyclops (2010) #1
  298. X-Men: First Class (2006) #1
  299. Uncanny X-Men (1963) #14
  300. Action Comics #681
  301. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #16
  302. Superman (1987) #72
  303. Avengers (2016) #s 1.1-2.1
  304. Green Arrow (2023) #26
  305. Dr. Fate (1988) #8
  306. Adventures of Superman (1987) #495
  307. Action Comics #682
  308. 2000 AD Prog 2469 (Judge Dredd story only)
  309. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #17
  310. Superman (1987) #73
  311. Green Arrow (2023) #27
  312. Avengers (2016) #s 3.1-5.1
  313. Champions (2016) #s 5-6
  314. Detective Comics Annual 2025 #1
  315. Adventures of Superman (1987) #496
  316. Action Comics #683
  317. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #18
  318. Justice League America (1987) #69
  319. Superman (1987) #74
  320. Adventures of Superman (1987) #497
  321. Action Comics #684
  322. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #19
  323. Superman (1987) #75
  324. Adventures of Superman (1987) #498
  325. Action Comics #685
  326. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #20
  327. Superman (1987) #76
  328. Adventures of Superman (1987) #499
  329. Action Comics #686
  330. The Legacy of Superman #1
  331. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #21
  332. Superman (1987) #77
  333. Supergirl and Team Luthor #1
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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.