Graeme McMillan - The World That's Coming

March 18, 2026March 3, 2026

At some point in the last year or so, I started to feel that streaming wasn’t giving me everything I wanted from music. Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to be said for the availability of having the world at your fingertips, especially and particularly new music that you wouldn’t otherwise have been able to find, and I’m continuing to build out my playlist of such things as I have done for the last few years. But there’s also something… lacking from that, as well.

I’m not just talking about the instability of streaming media, where you own nothing and favorite songs can disappear off a service without any notice, although that’s not a great thing. And I’m not specifically talking about a physical media vs. streaming/cloud media thing, either, although that too plays into it. It’s something that’s harder to put into words.

It’s the fact that so much isn’t available to stream, for any number of reasons — the band was too small and too old to matter to the platforms today; there are rights issues or fights between labels; songs were b-sides and utterly forgotten by anyone besides fans like me, whatever. It’s the fact that, because you can skip around so much and make your own playlists, I’d stopped listening to things as proper albums anymore for the most part. (I don’t know why that makes me sad, but it does; I feel like I’ve accidentally started ignoring the intent of the artists, maybe?) It’s the fact that it makes the act of listening somehow more passive, and less intentional and important, somehow…?

These thoughts were wandering around my head one morning as I was waking up, and then joined by this odd nostalgia that can only be described as I used to listen to music on these big machines that combined record players and tape players and radios and CD players and now I listen on a phone and how can I honestly say that’s progress? And so I decided to buy a CD player again, my first for… realistically two decades, if not longer…?

It’s tiny and surprisingly cheap — it was less expensive to buy this tiny box than it would have been to re-buy just one of the albums on vinyl, to give you an idea of how cheap — and maybe it’s not going to last that long, either in terms of the actual technology or my desire to revisit the bulging folder of CDs I’ve carried with me since I moved to the U.S back in 2002, but right now, I don’t really care. It simply feels nice, and more than that, feels right, to be listening to CDs on a CD player again.

Nostalgia, but make it tangible, perhaps.

March 13, 2026March 9, 2026

Steps In

No matter where I went in Seattle, it seemed, I was walking uphill.

It’s not as if I’d previously failed to notice that the city is essentially built on a series of occasionally ridiculously steep hills, but when I was there for the recent Emerald City Comic Con this year, I was staying in a different hotel than usual, further from the convention center and requiring more of a walk there and back every day. I’m not complaining, because (A) it was a really, really nice hotel and I was surprised by how nice my suite was — including the fact that it was a suite, not just a room — and (B) I could do with the exercise, let’s be honest. Also, I like walking; it’s good for my brain as well as my body.

Or, at least, that’s what I thought until I walked down the hill towards what I thought was the closest coffee shop on the first morning. (It was not the closest; there was one inside the hotel that I wouldn’t discover for another couple of days.) You see, there are hills and there are hills, and this was the latter: a hill that I worried about walking down because it was so steep that I feared that gravity might take over and I’d careen down in a cartoonish circle of energy and disaster. Of course, down was the easy part — walking back up with tea and bagel in hand, I had to take to stop midway through because I was out of breath having forgotten to pace myself when climbing this particular paved mountain.

From that point on, I felt painfully aware that, no matter where I was going, I would somehow have an uphill climb ahead of me. Walking to the convention center? After a three block downhill stretch, all uphill. (And then walking back, that downhill stretch was, of course, uphill.) Going to breakfast with friends? Uphill. Headed out for a work dinner? Okay, that one was all downhill, actually — until, of course, I went back to the hotel after.

All of this came to a head on the last night of the trip, when I walked back to the hotel with a work colleague and we were complaining about the hills. At least we won’t have all these uphill walks, we joked, before getting to the hotel and discovering the elevators weren’t working. How did I get back to my room? Walking up eleven floors in the stairwell, puffing and panting the entire way.

March 11, 2026February 22, 2026

I Can’t Remember Where I Saw The Rain

March 9, 2026March 1, 2026

The Movies of February 2026

A documentary-heavy February, but absolutely nothing wrong with that — especially when the documentaries in question (every single one pop culture related, because I am a man who knows what he likes, apparently) are as watchable as the ones in February were. In terms of fiction movies, I feel like I saw some winners as well: If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Predator: Badlands and Blue Moon were all things I can see myself returning to in the future to appreciate again; Blue Moon in particular really left its mark on me.

Here’s what I watched in February.

March 6, 2026March 1, 2026

The Comics of February 2026

If there’s one thing to report from my comic reading in February, it’s that 30 years later, Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles is still wonderful. Very much of its time — and arguably more enjoyable because of that, from this distance — the comic that was central to my 1990s still held surprises and no small amount of joy when I ripped through the entire time in, basically, a little over two weeks.

By the end of the month, I’d fallen back into re-reading old superhero comics — it’s not even nostalgia, because I’m reading things I didn’t read the first time around, basically lured into by the workmanlike qualities that doubtlessly would have turned me off when I was a kid or a teen. There’s something reassuringly solid about the 1970s Marvel Comics that I’m reading, even when they’re spectacularly shoddy and dull; there’s a joy in and of itself in seeing professionals meet their deadlines with only the briefest spark of inspiration on show. (It strikes me after writing that, that I should probably note that I also re-read Steve Englehart and Joe Staton’s mid-1980s The Green Lantern Corps in February, which is perhaps the definition of a solid, occasionally weird, occasionally inspired 1980s superhero comic.)

The Invisibles (1994) #s 1-4
Green Arrow (2023) #28
Dr. Fate (1988) #9
The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21
Sooner or Later (Milligan/McCarthy)
Avengers (2016) #s 7-8
Champions (2016) #7
Newuniversal #1
The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #240
Absolute Superman #12
Superman (1987) #36
Adventures of Superman (1987) #459
Action Comics #646
Superman (1987) #37
Adventures of Superman (1987) #460
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #201
Green Arrow (2023) #29
Dr. Fate (1988) #10
The Saga of the Swamp Thing #22
The Invisibles (1994) #5
Action Comics #647
One World Under Doom #1
The Invisibles (1994) #6
One World Under Doom #2
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #202
Ultimate Endgame #2
Uncanny X-Men (2024) #23
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #21
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #203
Avengers (2023) #35
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #204
The Invisibles (1994) #7
Dr. Fate (1988) #11
Green Arrow (2023) #30
THUNDER Agents (2010) #1
One World Under Doom #3
Superman (1987) #38
Adventures of Superman (1987) #461
Action Comics #648
Champions (2016) #8
Superman (1987) #39
Adventures of Superman (1987) #462
Action Comics #649
Green Arrow (2023) #31
Dr. Fate (1988) #12
The Invisibles (1994) #8
One World Under Doom #4
Champions (2016) #9
The Invisibles (1994) #9
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #205
The Invisibles (1994) #10
Dr. Fate (1988) #13
Superman (1987) #40
Adventures of Superman (1987) #463
Action Comics #650
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #206
One World Under Doom #5
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #207
Superman: Chains of Love Special #1
Avengers (2016) #9
The Invisibles (1994) #11
Dr. Fate (1988) #14
Champions (2016) #s 10-11
Avengers (2016) #10
One World Under Doom #6
Blood Hunt #1
Avengers (2023) #1
Secret Empire #s 0-2
Dr. Fate (1988) #15
The Invisibles (1994) #12
Avengers (2016) #11
Champions (2016) #12
Forever People (1988) #s 1-2
The Invisibles (1994) #13
Dr. Fate (1988) #16
Superman (1987) #41
Adventures of Superman (1987) #464
Action Comics #651
Avengers (2016) #672 (Series renumbered)
Champions (2016) #13
2000 AD Prog 2470 (Judge Dredd story only)
The Invisibles (1994) #s 14-15
Dr. Fate (1988) #17
Forever People (1988) #3
Superman (1987) #42
Adventures of Superman (1987) #465
Action Comics #652
Avengers (2016) #673
Champions (2016) #14
The Invisibles (1994) #16
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #208
Marvel Graphic Novel #13: Starstruck
Marvel Graphic Novel #20: Greenberg the Vampire
Marvel Graphic Novel #26: Dracula – A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares
Temptation by Glenn Dakin
Judge Dredd Megazine #s 479, 488, 489 (Judge Dredd stories only)
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #209
Adventures of Superman (1987) #500
The Invisibles (1994) #17
Forever People (1988) #4
Dr. Fate (1988) #18
The Invisibles (1994) #s 18-19
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #s 210-211
The Invisibles (1994) #20
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #212
Dr. Fate (1988) #19
Forever People (1988) #5
Avengers (2016) #674
Champions (2016) #15
The Defenders (1972) #92
Nova: Centurion #2
The Invisibles (1994) #21
Forever People (1988) #6
Action Comics #687
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #22
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #213
The Invisibles (1994) #22
Venom #254
Wade Wilson: Deadpool #1
Cyclops (2026) #1
The Invisibles (1994) #23
Judge Dredd: Get Sin (2000 AD Progs 2001-2003, Judge Dredd stories only)
The Invisibles (1994) #24
Green Lantern Corps (2025) #s 10-11
The Invisibles (1994) #25
Champions (2016) #s 16-17
Black Cat (2025) #7
One World Under Doom #s 7-9
The Will of Doom #1
Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #0
Blood Hunt #s 2-5
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #214
The Invisibles (1996) #1
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #215
Dr. Fate (1988) #20
New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident #1
Superman (2023) #35
Justice League Unlimited (2024) #16
The Flash (2023) #30
Batman (2025) #7
Green Lantern (2021) #1
Rogan Gosh
DC K.O. #4
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #216
The Invisibles (1996) #2
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #217
Green Lantern Corps (2025) #12
Green Lantern (2021) #2
Dr. Fate (1988) #21
Champions (2016) #18 (Last Mark Waid issue)
The Invisibles (1996) #3
Storm: Earth’s Mightiest Mutant #1
Sebastian O #1
The Invisibles (1996) #4
Superman and the Authority #1
Green Lantern (2021) #3
The Invisibles (1996) #5
Dr. Fate (1988) #22
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #218
The Invisibles (1996) #s 6-7
2000 AD Prog 2471 (Judge Dredd and Tharg’s Terror Tales stories only)
Ghostbox #1
G.I. Joe (2024) #19
A Brief Introduction: How to (Start to Think About Learning to) Draw Comics (Kevin Huizenga minicomic)
Groupies #1
The Invisibles (1996) #8
Dr. Fate (1988) #23
The Invisibles (1996) #9
Dr. Fate (1988) #24
The Invisibles (1996) #s 10-13
Wonder Woman: Black, White and Gold 2026 Special #1
Groupies #s 2-5
Superman Unlimited #10
Sirens: Love Hurts #1
Green Lantern Corps (2025) #13
Nightwing (2016) #136
The Invisibles (1996) #14
Superman and the Authority #s 2-3
The Invisibles (1996) #s 15-16
Sebastian O #2
Avengers (2023) #2
X-Factor (2024) #1
Detective Comics #1090
The Invisibles (1996) #s 17-22
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #219
The Invisibles (1999) #s 12-10 (Numbered backwards from 12 to 1)
Superman and the Authority #4
Sebastian O #3
The Invisibles (1999) #9
Avengers (2023) #3
Detective Comics #1091
The Invisibles (1999) #s 8-5
Detective Comics #1092
The Invisibles (1999) #s 4-2
Predator: Badlands #1 (Prequel comic)
Predator versus Wolverine #1
The Invisibles (1999) #1
Detective Comics #s 1093-1096
Batman and Robin (2023) #25
Avengers (2023) #4
Captain America (2025) #7
Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon #1
Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) #24
Assorted Crisis Events #8
Fantastic Four (2025) #8
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #22
Inglorious X-Force #2
X-Men (2024) #25
Uncanny X-Men (2024) #24
Star Wars (2025) #3
Detective Comics #1097
Savage Tales (1985) #1
The Traveler #3
Fall of the House of X #1
Rise of the Powers of X #1
Fall of the House of X #2
Rise of the Powers of X #2
Millennium #1
The Traveler #4
Iron Man: The Iron Age #1
Adventures of Captain America #1
Wolverine (1988) #44
The Savage Hulk (1996) #1
Detective Comics #1098
Batman and Robin (2023) #26
World’s Finest: Teen Titans #2
Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia #1
The Question (1986) #1
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #1
Iron Man: The Iron Age #2
Adventures of Captain America #2
Millennium #2
The Power Fantasy #16
Batwoman (2026) #s 1-2
Lobo (2026) #1
Deathstroke the Terminator (2026) #1
The Fury of Firestorm (2026) #s 1-3
The Question (1986) #2
Firestorm (1978) #1
Electric Warriors (2018) #1
Detective Comics #1099
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #2
Kids Rule O.K.! (Original aborted 1970s run in Action)
Millennium #3
The Question (1986) #3
Firestorm (1978) #2
Electric Warriors (2018) #2
Detective Comics #1100
Adventures of Captain America #3
Iron Man (1968) #86
Avengers (2016) #675
Thunderbolts (2016) #1
The Question (1986) #4
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #3
Detective Comics #1101
Thunderbolts (2016) #2
Iron Man (1968) #87
Adventures of Captain America #4
Daredevil (1964) #74
Detective Comics #1102
Thunderbolts (2016) #3
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #220
Millennium #4
Secret Origins (1986) #22
Millennium #5
The Question (1986) #5
Electric Warriors #3
Detective Comics #1103
Thunderbolts (2016) #4
Daredevil (1964) #75
Iron Man (1968) #88
Detective Comics #s 1104-1106
DC K.O. #5
New Titans (2023) #33
Action Comics #1096
Supergirl (2025) #11
Superman Unlimited #11
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #s 45-47
Captain America (1968) #s 222-226
Millennium #6
Iron Man (2026) #2
The Infernal Hulk #4
Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral #1
Millennium #7
The Mortal Thor #7
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #221
Millennium #8
Thunderbolts (2016) #5
Iron Man (1968) #89
The Question (1986) #6
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #4
World’s Finest: Teen Titans #3
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #222
World’s Finest: Teen Titans #4
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #223
The Question (1986) #7
Thunderbolts (2016) #6
Iron Man (1968) #s 90-91
The Green Lantern Corps (1986) #224 (Final issue)
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #5
World’s Finest: Teen Titans #s 5-6
The Question (1986) #8
Thunderbolts (2016) #7
Iron Man (1968) #92
Captain America (1968) #227
Daredevil (1964) #76
World’s Finest Comics (1941) #303
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #1
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #6
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #2
Teen Titans Spotlight #19
The New Guardians (1988) #1
Super Creepshow #1
Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #7
Deadline Magazine #50 (Wired World strip only)
Legends (1986) #1
Deadline Magazine #s 1-3 (Wired World strips only)
Tank Girl All Stars #4 (Wired World strip only)
The Question (1986) #9
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #s 3-4
Thunderbolts (2016) #s 8-9
Iron Man (1968) #93

March 4, 2026February 16, 2026

Right Twice A Day

March 2, 2026March 1, 2026

Will Evolution Diminish Right In Front Of Us?

I remember when the Gulf War started, and I was 16, I think, watching news reports endlessly with a sense of confusion and anxiety: what was happening? Why was it happening? Was this the start of another world war? Would it ever end? Although I was years away from being 18, I imagined a world where National Service — the British version of the draft — was reinstated and I went to war, entirely unprepared and unwilling, unable to avoid it. It was a nihilistic time, not least because I was 15 and didn’t know any better, but the war war war of the media at the time felt like it was projected directly into my brain, and I didn’t know what to do about any of that. (What I did was start reading Kurt Vonnegut; so it goes.)

I thought of that this past weekend, waking up on Saturday and finding out that the US had launched a war with Iran while I was asleep. Relaunched a war with Iran? Rebooted it? Whatever you want to call it; it feels like the US has been at war with Iran for years and this is just the latest episode. It was at once unthinkable and entirely unsurprising, and left the same pit of confusion and anxiety in my stomach that I felt more than three decades ago.

I spent much of Saturday looking at the news, checking back in over and over as if doing so would somehow uncover a layer of common sense and morality I knew wasn’t really there. It wasn’t as if anyone in the US Government was going to suddenly realize they were breaking international law and care about it, after all, and even if they did, what could be done about what was already happening? It’s not as if an apology and promise not to do it again was possible. There’s no use crying over split milk, or hundreds of dead kids because you bombed a school, as they saying famously goes.

There’s an element of political watchers who look at what’s going on and say, the cruelty is the point, or he’s only doing this to distract from the Epstein files, and both of those things are almost certainly true and I understand that, but also — there’s a point where you have to ask yourself how much that matters, in the practical sense. Whatever the motives, however bad and inhuman and cynical they certainly are, people are dying and it’s 1991 again, 2003 again, and on, and on, and on.

February 27, 2026February 5, 2026

My Shadow Came This Morning

Occasionally, I think about my relationship with death, and how unusual it seems to be compared with almost everyone else I know. I talk to friends, to peers, and it strikes me that I became aware of mortality younger than they did, or at least personally acquainted with it in a way that most people are lucky enough to wait decades for. (This is neither a boast, nor a humblebrag; I’m not sure it’s anything good in any way, really.)

All of my grandparents were dead by the time I left high school, for example; half of them were dead by the time I entered high school — maybe three-quarters of them? The timeline of my life feels moveable and shifty before I hit, say, 15 or 16; I remember that things happened here, but they actually took place a year earlier, or two years before that. I had a head start, though; my father’s father had died, back when my father was a kid himself. The Second World War was cruel, that way.

I remember my mother’s mother dying when I was a kid, not because of the event itself but because my oldest sister’s reaction was so big and dramatic that I felt at sea; I couldn’t really comprehend what had happened, but I looked at her and thought, is that what it’s meant to be? Should I act like that? In reality, I didn’t feel that depth of loss, that shock and numbness until the last of our grandparents died years later, with me in my final year of high school and her tripping outside our house, falling and splitting her head open on the pavement. Her being taken to hospital and all of us waiting to hear the bad news in a room from a doctor who told us as if it was weightless and meaningless, just a minor update that pulled the floor out from under us.

But at that point, I’d known someone far closer to my age — a friend of that same sister — who got cancer and died, so I already knew that death wasn’t something that stayed close to older people. Within a handful of years, one of my own friends was dead after surgery failed to save her; the friend who passed on that news was dead himself not too long after.

Both of my parents were dead before I was in my 40s. (Before I was even in my mid-30s, shockingly.) I think about that sometimes and feel this strange sense of sadness towards the me I was then, because even then I’m not sure I knew how to navigate any of that, the decimation of the upper echelons of my entire family. I wish they’d lived to see what happened to me, to my sisters, to everyone. I wish they could see me now.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, there was the time when I was in art school and a doctor accidentally told me I had leukemia and it was likely fatal, even though it wasn’t true. (A botched test was to blame; I found out the truth before too long, but we’re talking weeks rather than hours.) Having that weight on me, suddenly aware of how short all of the time was, all of the time.

All of this comes to mind as I read a book where the author talks about having to deal with loss for the first time in their early 40s, and it feels impossible to consider, to me. How could you get to that point in your life before knowing just how fragile we all are, when it comes down to it?

February 25, 2026February 8, 2026

Author: Graeme McMillan

I’ll See You There

While I’m Balancing My Mind