Month: October 2019

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Are You Receiving? Are You Receiving Me?

This year’s New York Comic Con was a genuinely odd one. It was, curiously, unusually busy — I found myself working far more than at previous NYCCs, and for far longer, and I’m genuinely unsure how that happened: the first two days of the show, I worked 18 and 16 hour days, respectively, and filed somewhere in the region of 20 stories (and some graphics for the THR newsletter, too). All of this while recovering from being sick.  Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how I did it.

Admittedly, when I say “I worked” those hours, not all of it was writing — it includes the being at the show aspect, the talking to people parts, the whole convention experience that is this indefinable thing that is certainly not not work, for all the fun that it might be. This year, all of that was… strange, is really the best way to put it.

For one thing, I feel like I barely saw the show — I was so busy on the first day that I really didn’t, I missed the show floor almost entirely outside of saying hello to a friend and doing an interview, and I didn’t make it to Artist’s Alley at all until a quick walkthrough on the second day. But throughout the whole thing, the convention center was so off-puttingly busy that I felt claustrophobic and grumpy the entire time I was there: Why is there a line for everything? Who are all these people who can’t walk more than three paces without needing to stop for no discernible reason and why are they exactly in front of me?

I also managed to fail to see almost everyone I knew there, somehow. Part of it was my schedule and workload — traditionally, I overwork at NYCC, being one of the few THR people there, and this year all the more so, without meaning to — but that added to my feeling of disconnect and discomfort, as well. It was a strange year, and I’m left unsure if it was me or the show, and either way, whether or not I want to return next year.

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Here I Am, Lord, Knocking At Your Back Door

As you read this, I’ll just have returned from New York and New York Comic Con for the year. It’ll have been the… fourth one I attended, I think…? Maybe the fifth; time and memory are weird that way. It’s a show I enjoy, but the reason for attending each year — besides the fact that I’m there for work — is that it allows me to fly to the other coast and spend time in New York City for a few days.

The first time I was there was in 1998, on a trip with art school. I was somewhere between student and teacher on the trip; I was studying for my MA and was unofficially helping the actual teachers keep track of all the other students, which basically amounted to being available in case of emergency. (The closest thing to an emergency was when a gang of students got in trouble for drinking out of open containers on the street; in the end, they apologized and promised to behave, and almost fulfilled that promise.)

I remember wandering the streets, listening to music a lot. I was listening to Primal Scream, David Holmes, that kind of urban sprawl of music and feeling very in tune with everything going on around me. The city felt alive, but unsettling, dangerous and filled with potential of anything and everything happening at any point. I’d search out bookstores to recharge and feel comfortable, I remember; they felt familiar and alien at the same time. It was thrilling.

I went back to New York a number of times after that, periodically, but the circumstance was always different. Last year’s NYCC trip was, oddly, the first time it felt like that 1998 trip again; two decades later, but feeling as simultaneously lost and full of potential as I has 20 years earlier. I walked the length on Manhattan the first morning I was there without realizing, thinking, this is how everything is supposed to feel, and once again listening to Primal Scream on my headphones.

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Signs and Wonders

It’s that time again. As you read this, I’m in New York for New York Comic Con, but that doesn’t mean that the graphic magic stops for THR’s newsletter. Take a look, enjoy, and think of me in Metropolis…


The above was a last minute redo of this one, which just felt off to me.

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What I Don’t Know I Don’t Know

I was talking to my therapist about the ways in which my brain forgets things to protect me.

Specifically, we were talking about the fact that I can’t remember the exact date that I moved out of the house I shared with my ex-wife. It’s something I could work out if I had to, if I sat down and really thought about it, but instead I identify it as if it’s a physical location I’m giving directions to to a stranger; I describe it in proximity to other landmarks that are more easily identified.

In telling her this, she asked if there was a reason I don’t pin it to a specific date, and I made the comment that my brain was stopping me from obsessing about the details; that, if I did automatically think of the date, I’d be unable to stop counting down to the anniversary, or thinking about it nonstop on the day itself.

It was one of those things you say in the moment that may or may not be true, may be a joke, but feels real, if that makes sense…? In the days since, though, I keep returning to that idea — that my brain knows the dumb, unhelpful stuff that it does, and sometimes steps in to prevent those things from happening.

Despite the fact that I even have a therapist — someone I now consider pretty essential to keeping me running, if I’m honest — I don’t really think too much about how my brain actually works, or the things that my subconscious (or, occasionally, conscious mind) does to get me through life. The notion that , on some level, my head is aware of how screwy and obsessive it can be on certain subjects, and has built a way around it, feels at once surreal and literally awesome to me.

It makes me very aware, briefly, of how little I truly know what’s happening inside me to keep me going, mentally and emotionally just as much as physically — the last of which has been a longtime mystery and marvel to me, this thing of continual aren’t bodies incredible? — which, in turn, makes me feel at once very small in the grand scheme of things, and also immense and amazing.

Thank you, brain. Thanks for all your work, I guess.