Finally working through stack of comps sent from DC; Gone to Amerikay and Batman Earth One were both far better than I’d expected. The new Guy De Lisle is, of course, wonderful.
Recently Read, Prose (6/13/12)
366 Songs 129: How Deep Is Your Love
More proof, I think, that I have no taste, and also that – even if you don’t like the Bee Gees as vocalists (They overused the falsetto, I think; sorry), they were amazing songwriters: The Take That version of “How Deep Is Your Love,” which I unashamedly adore, and prefer to the original. It’s more 1990s easy listen-y in its arrangement, sure, but nonetheless, there’s a relaxation and calmness to it that I find weirdly appealing here… Plus a video that features the death of the band’s lead singer and songwriter, in what was – at the time – their farewell single. More boybands should have such a sense of humor.
And here’s the original, for those who’d rather have the classic version:
366 Songs 128: Pure and Simple
Continuing, for a second, my recent trend of pop-related reminiscence, this was the band that won Popstars for the first year it ran in the UK (called “Hear’Say,” with a misplaced apostrophe that was once seriously suggested as the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to punctuation and its downfall), and their first single, rush-released to tie-in with the end of the series. When you listen to it now, it’s stunningly dull and as generic as you’d expect from five strangers thrown together by a TV contest covering a song written for anyone to perform, but at the time the excitement about this took it to the top of the hit parade, as the kids used to say.
There’s something to be said for the collective desire of the record-buying public to want something to be a success, purely because they’d had the smallest of parts in making it happen, isn’t there?
366 Songs 127: Thank You Hater!
Last week ended surprisingly roughly; it wasn’t just work burn-out – That happens every Friday, now – but some behind-the-scenes Internet drama that was at once funny and ironic while also being really frustrating, depressing and difficult. In one of those unrelated-but-weird-coincidence moments, late on Friday, I found this song and felt that it applied quite well to my situation with a couple of minor exceptions. It’s not necessarily big nor clever, but “Thank you, beautiful stranger” may now be my default to dealing with certain trollsome Internet companions.
Thank you for this, Isabel Fay.
My Unfulfilled Dream, Starring Chris Claremont
If there’s one thing that I wish I could do as a “comics journalist” (although, now that I’m on io9, I wonder if I still earn that title or if I’m “journalist who occasionally writes about comics”) it’s write the definitive Chris Claremont BDSM story. Everyone has heard the rumors and innuendo – and if you haven’t, I’ll point you to Google and wish you good luck – but there’s no denying that there are some interesting and unusual recurring themes throughout Claremont’s writing and especially his original 16-year run on the X-Men that suggest some familiarity with S&M and control and submission and all of that kind of thing. It’s something that he’d doubtless never agree to, but I’ve often wished that someone was able to sit down and just talk to him about it without any sensationalism (Claremont is Fetish Pervert Corrupting All Of Us When We Were Children!) or judgment or whatever, just to… well, get to the bottom of it. No pun intended.
Of course, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m convinced that he did terrible things to my libido when he turned Madelyne into the Goblin Queen during Inferno and I want some kind of payback.
(A side note: One of the reasons Morrison’s NewXMen run felt so faithful to Claremont’s was that it, too, seemed to acknowledge a certain transgressive nature in its treatment of the Scott/Emma relationship, and the idea that, by being “naughty” outside of his marriage to Jean, Scott could be “himself” in a way he couldn’t be with Jean. But it was an interesting – and very Morrisonian – take on Claremont’s “I am evil and it’s so freeing!” idea, because it ended up (a) sticking, and (b) not being part of an evil mind control plan, but a genuine emotional need that ended happily – or, at least, as happily as these things end in superhero comics.)
(Originally published July 16, 2009 at iamgraememcmillan.com before it got retrofitted as a work site. I’d still love to do this, one day. Also amusing: Despite the writing I do for Newsarama and Comics Alliance and Robot 6, I’m now firmly in the “journalist who occasionally writes about comics” mindset; I’m pretty sure that happened at io9.)
Putting In A Little Thought Apparently Pays Off
Lookit me at #2 for the day:
Seriously, these Time Entertainment pieces are some of the most… frustrating, fulfilling things I’ve written in the longest time, but seeing them be so warmly received on the site is such an amazing feeling you can’t believe. It’s like the opposite of writing for the Comics Internet, I’m telling you.
(The story is here.)
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
I have trouble admitting to myself (and others) that I’m a professional writer. On some level, I know that I make my living from putting one word in front of another and doing it until I make sentences and then making enough sentences until there are paragraphs, posts, essays and thoughts, but on another, I still don’t feel like a professional writer. There’s part of my head that thinks “Well, you’re only a blogger, and that’s different. It’s not like you’re a novelist or playwright or a real writer like that.”
(Our next door neighbor, having seen me sitting at my laptop typing many many times, asked Kate if I was working on a novel. “He seems to always be working,” he apparently said, and I am. I had to bite back the response that it feels like a professional blogger seems like more work than writing a novel, sometimes. All those ideas, all that brevity! On an unending daily basis!)
I have trouble remembering when writing became my “thing”; I went to art school for years because drawing was my thing, and the only writing I did was to support that, whether it was stories to illustrate or essays or whatever. But somewhere along the line, making images became less fun and more exhausting, more competitive, and I was always surrounded by people who could do what I could do much better, and so I retreated into words: My final MA show was a book, which I had illustrated, yes, but which was about the words as much as the way it looked. Self-expression through language.
From there, writing was a hobby, a way of blowing off steam, I guess; an all-encompassing way, sometimes, but still. When I started writing for other people – at first, the audience I realized I had, then for Brian (My first paid writing gig!), for Matt, for others – it became this responsibility, scary in its expectation. But by the time Annalee and io9 came around, I’d gotten over that (Well, for the most part), and the idea of making a living as a writer seemed like a dream come true.
It still does, I should add; doing what I do for a living is amazing to me, even now, more than a year into it. But, for some reason, I still feel that there is a distance to go before I become a professional writer.
(Originally published July 12, 2009 at iamgraememcmillan.com before it got retrofitted as a work site. This is very funny to go back and re-read now, considering that it’s three years later and I am far more jaded about being a writer by this point, even though I now write for Time.)
Rediscovered From 2009, But Well Worth Revisiting
I swear, I didn’t Photoshop this in any way. For those who may not know, Brian Michael Bendis is one of (if not the) most successful, senior, writers at Marvel Comics and works as part of the publisher’s Creative Committee shaping Marvel Studios’ movie output. He likes saying things to make people upset online.
Not All of Us Have An Ace Rock and Roll Club
There comes a point in everyone’s life, I’m convinced, where they fall victim to their own self-mythologizing. Or, at least, start their own self-mythologizing, which is practically the same thing as far as I’m concerned; that time in life when you become convinced that everything is exactly right, that your life is full of fascinating things happening and interesting people and that this is the moment that you’ll always remember and that other people would want to know about.
This may, of course, just be my own rationalization for having done it coming into play; my personal self-mythology begins around 1995 and ends about three years later, spanning the end of my art school experience (as a student, at least; the dark lost years of teaching followed, thereby firmly ending a period I’d like to remember). I’m not necessarily sure why I was convinced at the time that those were going to be the Best Days Of My Life – they weren’t, by the way, and I’m still unsure that I’ve found those particular days yet – but I was, and because of that, every day was lived in some strange mix of expectation of the amazing and constant feeling that I should try and remember everything for posterity… both of which held me back, ironically, from actually doing that much worth remembering years later. Instead, I lived a familiar routine of friends and relationships that were almost certainly doomed from the start, of studying during the day and going to the same clubs at night with the same people and listening to the same music week after week.
To put it like that makes it sound more depressing, more mundane than it was – definitely more than it seemed at the time. But when I think back at everything that was happening, and how caught up in it all, I wonder whether the reason I was so convinced that everything that was happening was so special was because I was trying to make it come true by believing hard enough.
(Originally posted July 6, 2009 at iamgraememcmillan.com before it got retrofitted as a work site.)