Author: Graeme McMillan

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Friendly Neighborhood

If there’s been a running theme in my life over the past few weeks — the past few months, perhaps — it’s that things have just kept happening, and time has sped past without me being fully aware of it. Just the other day, I made some reference to someone that I couldn’t believe that it was the start of April already, to which they gently reminded me that it was actually the middle of April.

Reader, I quietly shuddered.

Is this old age, or the sign of a busy life? The answer could be “both,” of course; certainly, I’ve had a particularly non-stop time of things recently, with the metronome of my life seemingly amped up to “Spider-Man levels,” where it seems to fluctuate between work drama and personal stuff at alarming speed, with something always happening in one of them to occupy my mind. (Not even necessarily bad things, or bad things for me, at least, but just things, and things that need to be acknowledged and addressed by me in some manner.) I fully understand the idea of “The Parker Luck” now, that there actually is balance in my life, it’s just that the balance is “something will always be happening that needs your attention in one part, while everything else backs off.”

The only time this gets to truly be an issue is when, like last week, it involves me getting overworked, specifically. Last week, I worked from 7:30am through 6pm (ish) for a couple of days in a row due to a confluence of events — it wasn’t intended to be that way, but things happened and it was the best course for everyone — and found myself feeling the effects of it for a couple of days afterwards; it wasn’t helped by the fact I was also worried for a friend’s health during this time, and all three added together to lead to a sleepless night between these two days, but I spent the next two days in recovery mode, feeling low-key sick and as if my brain was an overworked muscle.

This too might simply be the result of getting old, of course, but there’s something else that comes with age: recognizing your limits far more easily. On that second night after, I climbed into bed at 9pm and was asleep almost immediately, crashing out for a full nine hours. I can’t control the speed of events around me, but I can at least know when to call it quits for the night and hide under the cover for a bit. That feels like something approaching progress.

But seriously: how is it the middle of the month already?

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Who Knows If It’s Real

At some point in what I have taken to relatively unselfconsciously taken to calling my “career”, I became someone who obsessively takes notes, especially during the (increasing) number of meetings and calls that I end up taking on a fairly regular basis. It’s become second nature: if I am on a call of some kind, I’ll end up scribbling away, longhand, in a spiral-bound notebook, as if I was back in school and making sure I had all the important details from a lecture, or whatever.

I’m not entirely sure when this started happening, but it’s fairly clear why, at least: so’s that I could keep track of any and all necessary developments that I’d need to either remember later, whether it’s because I need to do something about them or because I might need to remind someone else to do something about them. (In some cases, it’s simply paranoia about whether or not I might need to know things later; the number of times, especially in my first few months at ReedPop, where I realized I could remember being told a piece of information but couldn’t remember the information itself was… not zero, shall we say.)

There’s only one problem with this new habit: my notes are, very often, indecipherable, even to me.

I don’t mean that in the sense of, “I can’t read them,” because a lifetime of reading comics means that my notes are almost always in ALL CAPS and perfectly legible. What I mean is that, for whatever reason, the words I choose to write in the moment might not have any particular meaning to me even days after I wrote them.

Take, for example, the notes I made from a recent editorial meeting for Popverse:

  • STARTING TO WRITE 3RD BOOK
  • ESSENTIALLY FLAT MOM
  • NEWS IMPORTANT INCREASINGLY
  • BREAKOUT
  • LIVESTREAMING 1 WEEK???
  • DONE AT 7:20

I have no doubt that each of these things meant something at the time. Now, though, I have no idea who is starting to write a third book, or a third book of what. I can make a guess what was “essentially flat” month-on-month, but I might be wrong, and I’m assuming MOM is “month-on-month” and not, you know, mom. (But whose mother is essentially flat?!?) What is the breakout? What is livestreaming in a week — and is that what that note means, or is it something livestreaming for a week? What was done at 7:20? Everything is lost in a haze of bad memory, with these notes just serving to confuse the matter.

Maybe I should just accept that some things are meant to be a mystery, for now and forever.

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The Corner of My Eye

I had this moment the other week, catching sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, when I realized that I really could see my dad stare back at me. It was a disorienting instant, because for the most part, I don’t think that he and I look that alike at all — but I think that’s as much rooted in a misremembering of what he actually looked like versus the version in my memory, and my own mild body dysmorphia. (I say that somewhat glibly, but I always imagine myself taller and skinnier than I actually am.)

But, no: there he was, for the shortest of seconds. I could see him not only in my face (and in the whiteness of my beard, something that’s consistently a surprise to me; I feel like that went so white so quickly, as if it were just waiting for an excuse and then it received one in the stress of the past few years), but in my belly, my posture, my body as a whole. I looked in the mirror, and there he was, looking back.

It was something that stuck with me for awhile afterwards, as the shock of the moment mellowed out into something at first less stressful, and then almost grateful and happy for the feeling of continuity in my own life, and my family. A long time ago — a long time ago now, a lifetime, it feels like — I fretted and worried about essentially leaving my family to move to the States, and what that meant in an existential sense for me as… well, as a “McMillan,” whatever that might mean. Was I surrendering some essential part of me that I couldn’t put my finger on, in leaving my home country?

Seeing myself transform, even for the briefest of seconds, into my own father in the mirror was a surprise, welcome reminder that some things linger and remain, even when you’re not aware of them, even when you don’t think that they’re there.

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The Movies of March 2024

Lord, I think this is the first time a post has run late in… months? Longer? The key to the problem, as silly as it sounds, was that I needed to edit two different screenshots together to make the image below and I kept putting it off because my attentions were elsewhere. I should know better than to do such things, and yet, if I don’t procrastinate, who am I…?

Anyway: here are the movies I watched last month — of note should be the fact that I binged the entire Ocean’s series over the course of a few mights, but also that I finally managed to check out Dune: Part Two at the local theater, and it was every bit as good as I could’ve hoped; I keep thinking about the way in which director Denis Villeneuve managed to communicate a real sense of space throughout the movie, including in the climactic battle, with minimal signalling. It’s a movie I’m going to return to over and over, I suspect.

But what else did I watch? Well… this:

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The Comics of March 2024

In which I spent a surprising amount of time (to me, at least) visiting a lot of 1990s output from DC that I hadn’t really spent a lot of time with before: Priest’s The Ray, for example, I’d stayed away from because I wasn’t a fan of the art, even though the earlier Joe Quesada-illustrated mini had been a favorite of mine at the time. The Alan Grant-written L.E.G.I.O.N. was similarly something I dipped into and then almost immediately back out because I wasn’t so enthused about Barry Kitson’s art at the time, but looking back now, maybe I should’ve spent more time realizing that the story is… not the best, shall we politely say…?

  1. Kingsman: The Red Diamond #s 1-2
  2. Somna #1
  3. Kingsman: The Red Diamond #s 3-6
  4. Superman (2023) #12
  5. The Flash (2023) #7
  6. Green Arrow (2023) #10
  7. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth #1
  8. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #1
  9. Captain America (2023) #3
  10. Project Superpowers (2018) #s 0, 1-6
  11. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #s 2-8
  12. JLA/Avengers #4
  13. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #s 9-12
  14. It’s Jeff! #32
  15. Void Rivals #s 1-6
  16. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #13
  17. Prodigy #s 1-3
  18. Alan Scott: The Green Lantern #5
  19. Amazons Attack (2023) #6
  20. Spider-Man Annual (2023) #1
  21. Iron Man Annual (2023) #1
  22. Fantastic Four Annual (2023) #1
  23. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #s 14-18
  24. Blood Hunt Diaries #1
  25. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #s 19-33
  26. Prodigy #s 4-6
  27. Ordinary #s 1-3
  28. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #s 34-50
  29. It’s Jeff! #33
  30. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 1-4
  31. Transformers (2023) #6
  32. Batman (2016) #146
  33. Birds of Prey (2023) #8
  34. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 5-8
  35. Nacelleverse #0
  36. Petrol Head #5
  37. Cobra Commander #2
  38. Duke #3
  39. 2000 AD Prog 2374
  40. Judge Dredd Megazine #466
  41. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 9-10
  42. Radiant Black #s 27, 27.5
  43. The Hawk and The Dove (1968) #s 1-4
  44. Prodigy: The Icarus Society #1
  45. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 11-18
  46. Adventures of Superman Annual (1987) #2
  47. L.E.G.I.O.N. Annual #1
  48. Prodigy: The Icarus Society #s 2-5
  49. Aquaman: Rebirth #1
  50. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 19-26
  51. Mysterius the Unfathomable #1
  52. The Invincible Iron Man (2022) #13
  53. X-Men (2021) #29
  54. Daredevil (2023) #4
  55. Fantastic Four (2022) #14
  56. Avengers (2023) #8
  57. Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1982) #s 1-4
  58. Sentry (2023) #1
  59. The Darkstars #s 1-10
  60. The Ray (1994) #s 1-2
  61. Legends (1986) #s 1-6
  62. Underworld Unleashed: Apokolips – Dark Uprising #1
  63. The Ray (1994) #s 3-6, 0
  64. Deathlok (1990) #s 1-4
  65. Deathlok (1991) #1
  66. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 27-35
  67. Jughead #1
  68. L.E.G.I.O.N. #s 36-41
  69. The Ray (1994) #s 7-8
  70. It’s Jeff! #34
  71. Astonishing X-Men (2004) #1
  72. Shazam! (2023) #10
  73. Green Lantern (2023) #10
  74. The Ray (1994) #s 9-18
  75. Cobra Commander #3
  76. The Ray (1994) #s 19-20
  77. Justice League Task Force #s 0, 17-21
  78. 2000 AD Prog 2375
  79. Silver Age: Green Lantern #1
  80. All-Flash (2007) #1
  81. DC Comics Presents (1978) #s 12-13
  82. The Maze Agency (1988) #1
  83. DC Comics Presents (1978) #71, 79
  84. The Spirit (1984) #10 
  85. DC Comics Presents (1978) #81
  86. The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior #3, 8
  87. Justice League Task Force #s 22-27
  88. The Maze Agency (1988) #s 4-5
  89. Justice League Task Force #s 28-29
  90. The Maze Agency (1988) #s 8-9
  91. Alien: The Illustrated Story
  92. Swamp Thing: Green Hell #1
  93. The Maze Agency (1988) #17
  94. The Punisher (2023) #2
  95. The Immortal Thor #5
  96. Captain America (2023) #4
  97. X-Men Red (2022) #18
  98. Guardians of the Galaxy (2023) #s 8-9
  99. Weirdworld (2015) #s 1-3
  100. Action Comics #1064
  101. Batman and Robin (2023) #8
  102. Justice League Task Force #s 30-37
  103. The Maze Agency (1988) #s 18, 20
  104. The Ray (1994) #s 21-28
  105. JLA #s 28-31
  106. Trinity (2008) #1
  107. Moon Knight (2021) #s 28-30
  108. Spider-Gwen: Smash #1
  109. Con & On #1
  110. It’s Jeff! #35
  111. Trinity (2008) #s 2-6
  112. DC Comics Presents (1978) #73
  113. Vigilante (1984) #s 1-3
  114. Vigilante (1984) #s 4-19
  115. Thunderbolts (2023) #1
  116. Thunderbolts (2006) #101
  117. Dark X-Men (2023) #5
  118. What If…? Dark: Tomb of Dracula #1
  119. What If…? Dark: Moon Knight #1
  120. What If…? Dark: Loki #1
  121. Ex-Con #s 1-5
  122. DC Comics Presents (1978) #43
  123. Justice League: No Justice #s 1-2
  124. 2000 AD Prog 2376
  125. Duke #4
  126. The Six Fingers #2
  127. Local Man: Bad Girls #1
  128. The Maze Agency (1988) #21
  129. The Maze Agency Annual (1990) #1
  130. DC Comics Presents (1978) #s 50, 58
  131. Detective Comics (1937) #s 569-754
  132. Justice League: No Justice #3
  133. Trinity (2008) #7
  134. JLA #s 107-109
  135. Captain America: Cold War Prelude #1
  136. King of Spies #s 1-4
  137. Vampirella (2001) #s 1-6
  138. Justice League: No Justice #4
  139. Justice League Odyssey #1, 25
  140. Justice League of America: The Nail #s 1-3
  141. Justice League of America: Another Nail #1
  142. DC 2000 #s 1-2
  143. Uncanny Avengers (2023) #5
  144. The Incredible Hulk (2023) #7
  145. Wolverine (2020) #40
  146. Doctor Strange (2023) #10
  147. Original X-Men (2023) #1
  148. Superior Spider-Man (2023) #2
  149. G.O.D.S. #3
  150. Star Wars: Revelations (2023) #1
  151. Alien (2023) #s 1-5
  152. Alien Annual (2023) #1
  153. Alien (2023 2nd series) #1
  154. Superman (2023) #13
  155. Titans (2023) #10
  156. Nightwing (2016) #113
  157. Crucible: The Final Impact #s 1-2
  158. Action Force (1987) #s 1-2
  159. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #26
  160. Wonder Woman (2023) #8
  161. Alien (2023 2nd series) #2
  162. Crucible: The Final Impact #s 3-5
  163. Justice League of America: Another Nail #s 2-3
  164. Jay Garrick: The Flash #6
  165. Crucible: The Final Impact #6
  166. Aliens: Horror Show
  167. Aliens: Earth Angel
  168. Aliens: Sacrifice 
  169. Green Lantern: War Journal #8
  170. The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom #s 1-4
  171. Aliens: Rogue #1
  172. Aliens: Rogue #s 2-4
  173. Aliens: Taste
  174. Aliens: Backsplash
  175. Daredevil: Black Armor #s 1-2
  176. Iron Man & The Armor Wars #1
  177. Memoir of a Man in Pajamas OGN
  178. Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12
  179. It’s Jeff! #36
  180. Titans (1999) #1
  181. Titans Secret Files & Origins #1
  182. The House OGN
  183. Batman, Incorporated (2010) #s 1-6
  184. Aliens: Labyrinth #s 1-4
  185. Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Echoes #1
  186. Justice League International (1989) #s 51-55
  187. Justice League Spectacular #1
  188. Action Comics (1938) #674
  189. Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #9
  190. Superman (1987) #65
  191. Adventures of Superman (1987) #488
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Shit Shit Shit

So, I watched the Ocean’s series again recently.

If we judge the idea of our “favorite” movies by the number of times we’ve watched them, there’s a very strong argument to be made that Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen are three of my favorite movies of all time. Certainly, they’re movies that I probably watch once a year if not more often than that, despite not owning them. (They’re always streaming somewhere, somehow; you just have to look and see where.)

It’s neither the writing nor the acting that brings me back to these movies over and over again, as good as both are throughout the trilogy. Thirteen is a bit ropey in terms of writing, but apparently the version people see on screen is very, very different than the original screenplay, being the result of significant after-the-fact edits and reshoots in order to make something that moved faster and had a significantly different tone; when you know that, you can see the joins pretty easily on a rewatch. Instead, it’s the sense of style that both Soderbergh and soundtrack maven David Holmes bring to proceedings.

(Holmes’ music — his score, but also the tracks from external sources that he brings in, especially in Twelve, the ultimate style-over-substance installment, and my favorite of the three — cannot be overestimated in how much it impacts the final product in these movies; I’d argue that Thirteen only gets away with working because of his contributions.)

The concept of “cool” is, at best, a fool’s errand, because it’s so subjective and equally so changeable — what’s in today is, as everyone who watches Project Runway knows all too well, out tomorrow. Despite that, there’s an inescapable cool to Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movies that, the more I rewatch, seems to come down to the purposefully relaxed feel of all three movies. For heist movies, it’s impressive how not tense these films really are, how the audience is never really able to believe for more than a couple minutes that any of our heroes is actually in trouble. Instead, each of the three feel like you’re getting to hang out with a bunch of people who have just worked out some cosmic truth and are just breezily moving through the world in an entirely different way than you and I, and you get to ride in their slipstream for a few hours.

What’s instructive, though, is to see the way that Ocean’s Eight, the after-the-fact spin-off/sequel to the trilogy centering around Danny Ocean’s previously unmentioned sister, fails to match up to its predecessors. Again, special attention should be paid to the music, with Daniel Pemberton (the man behind killer scores for both The Man from UNCLE and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) understanding the assignment, but director Gary Ross just fails to make the movie as weightless and stress-free as Soderbergh did the earlier trilogy, and as a result, it drags and ultimately fails to match the energy of what came before. You get the feeling that everyone involved isn’t just trying, but visibly trying too hard, and that’s just not what people come to Ocean’s for.

(Of course, now I want to re-watch Soderbergh’s own Logan Lucky, which I suspect might more readily match Eight. Hmm…)