Category: Uncategorized

Something someone said to me lately has been sticking in my brain a lot. We were talking about how people had reacted on social media to one particular piece of news, and they said something along the lines of, “Everyone is just mean now. This far into lockdown, we’ve gone from trying to be polite to just being feral.”

It was one of those things that just flipped a switch in my brain. I wouldn’t call it an epiphany, because it’s not as if it translated immediately into any kind of concrete realization, but it’s been pinballing around inside my head ever since. It feels as if it touches on something true about the transformation we’ve all been undergoing since we first closed everything down and hid in our homes two years ago now.

(It’s two years! Well, almost We went into lockdown in March 2020, and here we are now. I can still remember people saying with all seriousness that lockdown was only going to last two weeks, and here we are now.)

I’m not sure that I buy that we’ve all gone feral — in fact, I’d pretty aggressively push back on that idea, to be honest — but the idea that we’re all somehow at our worst after two years of COVID is something that has just been stuck inside my head. Something that I’ve been struggling with over the past few months has been how to express how difficult it’s been to just… do the usual stuff in the halfway house between what used to be normal and the full lockdown of March 2020.

In theory, people are “returning to normal,” and businesses certainly would like us to believe that’s the case, but it’s clearly not; the dissonance between what we’ve been told and what’s actually happening has been wearing in ways that I never could have imagined, and I’m pretty sure it’s changed me in the same way that I’ve watched it changed other people around me.

Does that mean that we’re all worse for everything that’s happened? I genuinely don’t know. But even the hyperbole of talking about people being feral feels like it’s a step towards some essential truth, that we’re all different now, in ways we won’t properly appreciate for years yet.

If there’s something that I’ve become increasingly impatient with in pop culture spaces over the past couple of years, it’s an attitude that can best be summed up by a quasi-mathematical  mad-lib formula: “[Pop Culture Property X] was good when [I was young], but now it’s bad because [it’s not aimed specifically at me and what I want from my nostalgia].”

I try to stay away from people who offer up this line of thinking as much as possible, because it’s exhausting and disappointing — especially when coming from people whose golden era for whatever they’re complaining about was as dissonant from an earlier incarnation as whatever they’re complaining about. It’s a common complain inside sci-fi circles, especially: you can see people saying it about Star Trek and Star Wars and Doctor Who all the time.

That’s not to say that I’m a fan of all of those things even today; I was left relatively cold by recent Doctor Who and I thought The Book of Boba Fett was pretty much a mess, and I’ve been disappointed in the current season of Star Trek: Discovery as much as I’ve watched it. (I’m weeks behind, I shamefully admit.) But in each of those cases, I find the easiest thing to do is just… move on and look for something else to watch, instead?

Here’s the thing: I can always go back and rewatch the episodes that I do love whenever I want. (And, in the case of Doctor Who, at least, I do.) Even if I didn’t want to do that, though, there’s so much out there that I do want to watch and enjoy that I don’t feel the need to hatewatch anything to fuel my anger. Instead, I can just go, “well, this really isn’t my bag” and leave it to those who really love it.

This is either maturity, or a sign that I’m a really bad nerd. Not that those two things are mutually exclusive, of course.

I was never going to be a musician — my utter lack of ability to play any instrument, nor hold a tune when attempting to sing put paid to that dream upsettingly early in life — but I have long held a fascination with the very concept of an E.P., and what it must be like to release one.

I can’t explain why the E.P. — that’s “extended play” if you’re the kind who likes to use non-acronym names for things — has been the object of such interest for me as long as it has; it’s basically just a stopgap between single and album in terms of musical release formats, usually for something that had four or so songs on it. (As opposed to CD singles when I was younger, which often tended to have three or four songs on there but never got described as E.P.s; look, I don’t make the rules, I just get really obsessed by them.)

Nevertheless, I loved the idea of it; the very notion of creating an entire format because it didn’t fit into one category or the other. I loved the idea of it being too long and too short at the same time, and just being this other thing, instead.

The closest thing to an E.P. in terms of the written word would be… a novella, I guess? Or, in this day and age, probably something like a Kindle Single, not that that’s a format that anyone really refers to these days anymore. (Oh, the internet and digital publishing, the many pieces of wreckage you’ve left behind…!) I’ve often wished that there was a proper E.P. format for writing, and that I could release things in that format over and over again. It’s this genuinely random, inexplicable ambition that I’ve held for decades by this point, destined to never be fulfilled. And yet.

And yet.

My brain is trying to readjust to being work-busy again. If there’s one thing I’ve realized about myself in the last year or so, it’s that my head is a metaphorical vacuum that can and will be filled by whatever is around to fill it, especially workwise. If I have one big story to do, then that one story will take up my entire day. If I have three, then those three will find ways to coexist and share space. It’s just how it is.

I didn’t expect this to be the case. When things started to slow down for me last year, I had this moment of thinking, well, at least I’ll be able to get all these other things done as well. I imagined being able to finish work by lunch aAnd then step away to take care of something, anything, else that required attention — housecleaning, my permanently overdue organization of my finances, literally anything that didn’t involve me sitting at my desk in my office until 5pm every day, as I’d become used to doing. That didn’t happen, though; instead, I found myself slowing down in terms of productivity — in part due to self-consciousness over not having enough work, asking myself if I wasn’t good at it anymore — so that one task would take the time available, no matter what.

What this has meant now that things are changing again (however long term that change may end up being) is that I’m having to relearn how to juggle projects, how to switch mental gears from one thing to the next without too much effort, and how not to drop balls along the way. (This year, that’s been more difficult than I’d like to admit, alas.) It’s an unexpected lesson to have to relearn, and one very unlike riding a bike as much as I might wish differently, but if 2022 is going to continue along the lines of these first few weeks, it’s one that’s going to become increasingly necessary.

This is a good thing, I’ll tell myself over and over.

I didn’t really set out to make February almost entirely a month of image-only posts, with the exception of, what, two written pieces at the very start of the month. I promise, it wasn’t some kind of smart and secret plan for the final written piece for the entire month to be talking about how I need a break, and then I take a pretty-much-month-long break from writing here. I wish it had been; then I’d look like I knew what I was doing.

Instead, it’s genuinely just the result of February being an unusually busy month, mentally, if not in practical, physical terms. There was a lot going on in a lot of places, and I spent much of the month thinking about things, instead of writing posts here. That sounds more intentionally teasing than it should; it’s really just that it’s a lot of personal stuff that relates to other people whose laundry I’m not willing to show here, is all.

I mean, it’s still true that the newsletter is something that takes up more brain space than I’m entirely comfortable with, but that’s also something that I’m getting a hold on as it goes along. Somehow, I’m into my third month of doing it, and I remain more than a little surprised by how much I’m enjoying it and how rewarding it feels after the not-rewarding-at-all experiences of work in almost the entirety of 2021. Turns out, I can still write about comics and have fun with it while also doing actual reporting about things I think are important! Who knew?

(I’m making a joke out of it, but the newsletter really is something that I find myself getting a lot out of, in ways and to extents that I hadn’t really expected. If only I could work out how to monetize it in ways I’d feel comfortable with, everything would be going swimmingly.)

All of this is to say: Even though my March is already filling up with more writing gigs/better writing gigs than I’ve enjoyed in awhile, I’m going to try and find the time and brain space to write here more often than in the last month. After all, this place is like self care, when I do it right.

If there’s one thing I didn’t expect from running my own comics journalism newsletter, now that I’m five weeks in, it’s just how much brain space it would take up on a regular basis.

When I was first considering the possibility, the math in my head was pretty simple: “What if I did roughly the equivalent of a couple of longform THR pieces a week? That would only take the same amount of time as it would to do a couple of THR pieces per week!” Oh, what a sweet and innocent child I was, on a number of fronts.

Firstly, there’s the work behind the scenes to make sure everything happens and happens on time, given the Wednesday and Friday schedule that I’ve set for myself. (Why those days? Because Wednesday is still New Comics Day for all publishers aside from DC, and because Friday is when the THR newsletter goes out, and it feels like a good place to send a “week round-up” mailing. I wish there was more thinking behind it than that.) Chasing up stories and sources and trying to make everything happen for those two days is more time consuming than I’d initially expected.

Also more time consuming: the formatting, editing (as much as I edit), and image work that I’d previously been lucky enough to have others handle while at THR or other sites. I should, in theory, put “promotion” here, but I really haven’t promoted the newsletter in any appreciable manner. I should fix that, I know.

Worst of all, each and every newsletter has run roughly twice the length of a long form THR piece — more, on the occasions where I’ve ended up rewriting at the last minute and essentially junking an entire draft, which has happened more than once. There’s no reason for this, other than my own head: I am my own worst enemy, for sure.

In terms of workload, it’s actually closer to the equivalent of writing a longform THR piece every day of the week, on top of whatever else I’m supposed to be handing in as a freelance project. And yet, despite all of this, it’s still one of the most thrilling things I’ve done professionally in a long time.

Like I said, I’m my own worst enemy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about housecleaning lately, not least because there’s a lot of cleaning that we need to take care of in this house. (January’s been a strange month, everyone; things have fallen behind, and I’m not afraid to admit it, even if I am somewhat ashamed.)

When I was a kid, I was almost the dictionary definition of “messy.” My bedroom was a disaster site roughly 99 percent of the time, with a floor near-permanently hidden underneath debris consisting of discarded toys, comics, scribbled-upon papers and anything else that had at one point slipped through my fingers. I was more than okay with it, though; I knew just how messy the room was, and also how frustrating it was for my mother, who’d perpetually complain about it before eventually just tidying it herself. I just didn’t particularly care.

Somewhere along the line, that changed; decades later, I find myself tidying and straightening up as a form of therapy, although actually putting it in those terms makes me feel self-conscious and a little bit ridiculous. Nonetheless, on days when my stress or anxiety are peaking, I’ve discovered that something as simple as doing the dishes or folding laundry can help me feel more relaxed and more human.

Similarly, the idea that the house needs some attention is something that I find almost… comforting…? That’s not the right way to put it, I know, and I’m sure that when it actually comes to the time to, you know, do the cleaning, I’ll find ways to grumble and complain, but still: I am almost looking forward to the idea of putting on some music and getting down to work with broom, dustpan, cleaning sprays and paper towels in metaphorical hand. The very thought makes me smile, as if it’s some kind of strange meditation I can look forward to, somehow.

The moral of this story, perhaps, is that someone needs to invent time travel so I can go back in time and clean up my own childhood messes, and enjoy doing so.

One of the stranger things about the variety of media available to us in this, our digital era, is the ways in which you can find objects of utter nostalgia without meaning to. Simply scrolling through Netflix or HBO Max, or Spotify, or whatever, it’s all too easy to discover that movie or that song that meant so much to you at one point in your life and be flooded by the feelings that surrounding you at the time. It’s a strangely passive form of nostalgia-seeking, in that it’s not the same as going through old photographs or even record collections, yet the end result can be exactly identical.

I’m thinking of this because I was looking for something in DC Universe Infinite of all things — the digital comics subscription service for, unsurprisingly, DC comics — and came across an Aquaman cover from the mid-1990s, and found myself nearly overwhelmed with the memory of a comic shop where I’d bought that particular issue, despite not having thought about the place since… well, probably since I bought that issue, almost three decades ago. (On a related note, I am old. Three decades? Jesus.)

It’s a strange thing to remember, not least of all because it feels so very removed from my day-to-day existence today. I don’t just mean that in the sense of, I don’t buy many Peter David comics these days, but in the sense of… well, almost missing the feeling of being able to wander into stores and browse, if that makes sense. We’re approaching the two-year mark of COVID lockdown next month, and with the exception of a very limited number of non-grocery store trips, it’s not as if I’ve been into many (any) stores during that time.

There’s a whole process of discovery and love of ambiguity and not knowing exactly what I’m doing every time I step out the door that is entirely missing from my life these days, and it’s an absence that I feel on a deep level more and more. Accidentally stumbling into nostalgia via streaming services is a poor substitute, but at least it’s what’s available.

Let us, for a brief second, appreciate the stillness that comes from a moment of silence. Not in the “let us all have a moment of silence to appreciate the dead” sense, I should add as quickly as possible; I literally just mean, a break from the chaos and cacophony that feels near constant in this ever-changing world in which we’re living.

This weekend was, despite all odds, utterly chaotic for me. The surprise that was a relaxed, low key and utterly enjoyable Friday afternoon proved to be a red herring for the way things were to unfold for the next couple of days, as events — and the ever-present need for Stuff To Be Done — meant that it was all go for two days, with little time for quiet contemplation or reflection.

At the time, I just kept my head down and took care of what needed to be taken care of, with only a small amount of grumping and grumbling. (Okay, maybe not the smallest amount, but it could have been so much worse, I swear.) It’s only today, as things calm down somewhat — helped, oddly, by the daily grind of the work week and all the things it includes — that I find myself with the space to appreciate, well, the space to appreciate things.

There’s something to be said for silence, in both the literal “oh, there’s no loud noises happening” sense, as well as the “I can think clearly and I very much appreciate that” one. There’s something to be said for the way in which it can help everything feel more centered and in its place, even if the place in question is scattered all around with small dogs gnawing on things quietly by your feet.

For the first time in days, I find myself just… sitting down and appreciating everything, feeling my stress levels falling and smiling at the way of it all. Silence might not be golden, but it’s better than the alternative sometimes.

Once upon a time — and we’re talking some time ago; I was living in Scotland at the time, and this year marks two decades since I moved to the U.S. — I prided myself on enjoying the dour autumns and winters that surrounded me every year.

The seasons would slip from summer into something colder, darker, and more permanently overcast, and I would find myself thinking, finally, this is what I’ve been waiting for for so long. I have a particularly vivid memory of walking along the street where I was born, the leaves all off the trees, turning the branches into some kind of gothic silhouette against a particularly grey, cloud-filled sky, and feeling as if this was the ideal environment for me at that point in my life. There was something beautiful about it, beyond simply whatever adolescent or post-adolescent angst I happened to be living through at that moment.

Even after I moved to the U.S., I found myself enjoying the colder, more overcast weather when it arrived. When I first lived in San Francisco, it was in an apartment that basically straddled the line between the foggy side of the city and the sunny side; if I looked out the living room window, everything was grey, but out the kitchen window, there was sunshine and warmth. I spent a lot of time looking out of the living room window, feeling particularly at home.

With this in mind, of course Portland, Oregon was a fine place to move to. The weather here reminds me of Scotland at many times each year, and it’s arguably one of the reasons why I love the city as much as I do. Each fall arrives and brings with it darkness and a coldness that feels seasonal and appropriate. You know what time of the year it is, based on what’s out the window, no matter when you look.

I mention all of this, of course, because the past week has brought with it more sun than we’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve been surprised by just how much it’s lightened my mood and made things feel more possible by implication. Perhaps this is me aging, or simply a sign that even the most weather curmudgeon of us all needs a little bit of solar power every now and then; either way, there’s something to be said for seeing your shadow after so long of it being a faint blur.