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I’ve Read It In Books

I realized, upon seeing the little kid looking around with no small sense of wonder in the bookstore at the SFMOMA, that bookshops have always been oddly safe spaces for me.

I’m not sure that I could claim that I’ve always been a reader, per se; I can remember a teacher at high school pulling me aside at the end of a class to tell me, essentially, that I was too smart for the books I was choosing to read in class and that I needed to challenge myself or else I’d lose the joy of reading for good. But despite that, I always found myself drawn to bookshops at whatever age. There was something comforting about being surrounded by so many books no matter the size of the store, and I’d always go in with the hope of finding something that appealed to my tastes, whatever they may have been in the moment.

More than that, I have always found myself drawn to bookstores as places to kill time, to hang out and just… be. I can remember hours spent in bookshops when I was a teenager, just aimlessly pushing around books on the shelves, hoping to uncover a new favorite based on title, cover, or back blurb alone. (Ideally all three; it’s how I found Jonathan Carroll’s After Silence, which sported a great Dave McKean cover back in… 1991? Something like that, the era when a Dave McKean cover felt like a statement.) Bookshops felt like spaces where you weren’t just invited in, you were invited in to stay awhile. It felt like part of an unspoken, implicit promise from their very existence.

When I first moved to the States, finding a good bookstore was on top of my to-do list, only to discover I lived just a couple minutes walk from a truly great one, Green Apple. (Maybe the first time I’d gotten to visit a genuinely amazing bookshop.) The same when I moved to Portland, and again, there was a Powell’s branch within walking distance from my house. Sometimes I wonder if I’d have been so happy, so ready to settle, if that hadn’t been the case.

All of this came to mind as I watched this small kid navigate the shelves of the SFMOMA store, his eyes wide as he reached for countless books. He gets it, I thought to myself with something approaching pride. He’ll have a life of bookshops if he’s lucky.

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Someday, You Will Find Me

One of the first things I noticed about the differences between the UK and US after moving to the latter — after things like, the sun seems like it’s a different color over here and American cash is really weird to the touch — was the lack of a monoculture, at least when it came to pop music. I came from a country where everyone knew what songs were in the top 10 even if they didn’t like them; where Radio 1 really was a national institution, for better or worse. There was something comforting in that, to me. It was a north star of sorts for me, if one that I didn’t recognize at the time.

I think about that a lot now, in an era where monoculture seems simultaneously impossible — pop culture has fragmented into a million pieces as a specific form of tribalism feels as if it’s taken over in every facet of… well, everything, really — and entirely omnipresent, with Marvel movies and Netflix and whichever pop figure of the moment (are we past the Sabrina Carpenter of it all yet?). Yet, it somehow feels very different from the one I grew up with: there’s no Top of the Pops and no communal in-jokes that everyone just seems to share even without it being properly and officially shared anywhere. No wonder we all liked Twitter before everything fell apart. (I guess that all came from the newspapers and radio, back in the day…?)

All of this has been coming up as I read The Nation’s Favorite: The True Adventures of Radio 1, an oral history of the radio station’s mid-90s/Britpop era that came out more or less as it was happening. (I’m re-reading it, technically; I first read it when it came out in 1998, but that’s so long ago, I’m not sure it counts anymore.) There’s something about the certainty of everyone involved that what they were doing with a pop radio station mattered that feels almost quaint, in retrospect, but I remember what it felt like at the time, and how surreally “important” Radio 1 felt during that odd era. It was a great time to be in your late teens/early 20s, speaking from experience, because pop culture felt new and thrilling even as it regurgitated and remixed the past in such a way that felt as if it moved through every part of the country.

Maybe that is what skews everything in my perspective; that I was young at the last time when it felt as if pop culture, politics, and social movements were all mixed up and playing into each other, and felt as if that was the way it should always be. (Or, perhaps, I’m just old and biased.)

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Foresight, Unwittingly

When I trace the many people I’ve stolen from in building whatever I have that might be called my “voice” when I write for myself — by which I mean, when I write here, these days; I don’t get a chance to write outside of the professional entertainment journalist voice anywhere else anymore — I go to a collection of well-worn references: Grant Morrison’s Speakeasy columns and letters pages in The Invisibles*, Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Carroll books I read at impressionable ages, Bill Drummond’s 1990s writing in things like 45 and the like. A bunch of things I read at the point when I was finding myself writing more and more by mistake and trying to figure out how to present myself on the page that way.

It’s a reminder, in its own way, that I got into writing by mistake. It was the thing I did to give myself something to illustrate in art school, and even before that, in high school — my final year in high school, I failed to do any proper final project for my art class all year and so handed in this comic strip I’d been writing and drawing for myself in desperation; the feedback was more or less, “We don’t get comics, but the writing isn’t bad,” which was probably a sign I didn’t pay attention to at the time. (All of that work was left behind when I moved to the U.S.; it’s probably a good thing. I think I might even have thrown it out, when I think back.)

Writing was a fallback, a means-to-an-end that I didn’t think twice about, until I did. I can remember interviewing to do the Masters degree program in my final year of art school, and them asking me what I’d do if I got accepted into the program. I didn’t have a real answer, beyond “I don’t feel like I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing now, and I’m too scared to go out there and fail to get a job,” but I offered up a jumble of sentences and ended with something along the lines of, “and I think I should write more, I think there’s something more I can do with writing,” and that was the part of the interview where they seemed to relax and get animated about the prospect of me continuing my education.

At that point, I was in love with language and the potential it had to thrill and amuse and educate, but I couldn’t have told you that at the time. All I knew was that I’d read something occasionally and think to myself, oh, there’s something there I need to remember for some reason, and fold it up and put it into a filing cabinet in my brain. I knew I was studying and storing, I just didn’t know what for. No wonder, given that experience, I find myself fetishizing following gut instinct today. I knew my future career decades too early, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

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The Movies of June 2025

Fewer movies than I might have expected for this month, but I got distracted with television — hi, new seasons of UK and US Love Islands — and also by travel, headed back to the Bay Area for five days at the end of the month. That said, that did allow me to watch some movies that otherwise I probably wouldn’t have checked out by myself, thanks to the cinematic influence of Mr. Jeff Lester, which was a good experience not just because the movies were good. (It’s never a bad thing to step outside your preconceptions, after all.)

Anyway, as we head into another weird month — San Diego Comic-Con is going to ensure that I don’t really see anything for a week or so, TV or movies, because I’ll be so busy working — here’s what I watched in June. (Not pictured, purely because I forgot to add it to the list: Final Destination 2.)

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The Comics of June 2025

And this was what I read through in June, a month that saw me busier than the average bear between work and a short (too short!) trip to the Bay Area to see my best friend. For the most part, nostalgia was reigning supreme as it has been doing in the last few months, not least because I finally completed by collection of early 1990s Green Lantern and spin-off books and fully dived into that cosmology. (There’s so much to talk about there, all of it overshadowed by the fact that the writer was later jailed after pleading guilty to possession of child porn. Yeah, I know.)

I also worked through a re-read of Squadron Supreme and its follow-ups — a very strange fan-fic as officially published comic from Marvel in the 1980s, based around the seeming pitch of “What if we published DC characters? And… yeah, that’s it, I guess” — and a bunch of assorted superhero comics of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s; it’s an accidental re-education on the genre’s development and the tricks lost and left behind as tastes changed. Sometimes, I think about wanting to write a really wonky book tracking those shifts in methodology and trickery, in part as a guide to see what could be re-adopted or re-explored, but then I remember that no-one would want to read such a thing.

Anyway: June’s comics looked like this.

  1. Money Shot #s 1-5
  2. Conan the Barbarian (2023) #s 15-16
  3. Avengers (1963) #s 283-285
  4. West Coast Avengers (1985) #24
  5. West Coast Avengers Annual (1986) #2
  6. Superman (1986) #s 7-8
  7. Adventures of Superman (1986) #430
  8. Action Comics (1938) #590
  9. Legion of Super-Heroes (1984) #37
  10. Green Lantern (1990) #9
  11. Albion #1
  12. Action Comics Weekly #601
  13. Superman (1939) #371
  14. Justice League Europe Annual #2
  15. Superman (1939) #391
  16. The Spirit Casebook 
  17. Green Lantern (1990) #s 10-11
  18. Avengers Annual (1967) #16
  19. West Coast Avengers (1985) #25
  20. Avengers (1963) #286
  21. Fantastic Four (1998) #s 501-502
  22. Defenders (1972) #s 46-47
  23. West Coast Avengers (1985) #26
  24. Action Comics (1938) #591
  25. Legion of Super-Heroes (1984) #38
  26. Superman (1986) #9
  27. Adventures of Superman (1986) #s 431-432
  28. Green Lantern (1990) #12
  29. Marvel Knights: The World to Come #1
  30. All-New Venom #7
  31. Defenders (1972) #48
  32. Ghost Rider vs. Galactus #1
  33. Green Lantern (1990) #13
  34. Fantastic Four (1998) #s 503-508
  35. Green Lantern (1990) #14
  36. West Coast Avengers (1985) #27
  37. Defenders (1972) #49
  38. Green Lantern (1990) #15
  39. Imperial (2025) #1
  40. Immortal Thor #s 23-24
  41. X-Men (2024) #s 10-17
  42. Action Comics (1938) #s 592-593
  43. Superman (1986) #s 10-11
  44. Adventures of Superman (1986) #s 433-435
  45. Fantastic Four (1998) #s 509-511
  46. Green Lantern (1990) #s 16-17
  47. Avengers (1963) #287
  48. West Coast Avengers (1985) #28
  49. Defenders (1972) #50
  50. Justice League Unlimited (2024) #8
  51. New History of the DC Universe #1
  52. Uncanny X-Men (1963) #137
  53. Green Lantern (1990) #18
  54. Avengers (1963) #288
  55. West Coast Avengers (1985) #29
  56. Superman (2023) #27
  57. Green Lantern (1990) #s 19-25
  58. Green Lantern Annual (1992) #1
  59. Green Lantern: Mosaic #1
  60. Avengers (1963) #289
  61. West Coast Avengers (1985) #30
  62. Fantastic Four (1998) #s 512-513
  63. HERBIE Infinity Comic #1
  64. Green Lantern: Mosaic #s 2-4
  65. Transformers (2023) #21
  66. Green Lantern: Mosaic #5
  67. Guy Gardner Reborn #s 1-3
  68. Avengers (1963) #290
  69. West Coast Avengers (1985) #31
  70. Fantastic Four (1998) #514
  71. Doctor Who: The Cruel Sea
  72. Avengers (1963) #s 291-297
  73. The Mighty Thor (1966) #s 396-400
  74. Solo Avengers #1
  75. Fantastic Four (1998) #s 515-516
  76. West Coast Avengers (1985) #32
  77. Green Lantern (1990) #s 26-28
  78. Avengers (1963) #s 298-300
  79. Action Comics Annual (1987) #1
  80. Superman Annual (1987) #1
  81. Adventures of Superman Annual (1987) #1
  82. Fantastic Four (1998) #517
  83. Green Lantern (1990) #29
  84. Fantastic Four (1998) #518
  85. West Coast Avengers (1985) #33
  86. Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment OGN
  87. Astonishing Tales #s 1-3
  88. Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up #1
  89. Mephisto vs. #1
  90. The Last Avengers Story #s 1-2
  91. Mephisto vs. #s 2-4
  92. Hawkeye: Earth’s Mightiest Marksman #1
  93. Avengers: Infinity #s 1-3
  94. Avengers: The Ultron Imperative #1
  95. Avengers (1998) #1
  96. Squadron Supreme (1985) #1
  97. Death of the Silver Surfer #1
  98. Fantastic Four (1998) #570
  99. West Coast Avengers (1985) #s 34-37
  100. Fantastic Four (1998) #519
  101. Giant-Size Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #1
  102. One World Under Doom #5
  103. Giant-Size Dark Phoenix Saga #1
  104. Runaways (2025) #1
  105. Storm (2024) #s 7-9
  106. Star Wars (2025) #2
  107. Trinity, Daughter of Wonder Woman #1
  108. West Coast Avengers (1985) #s 38-39
  109. West Coast Avengers Annual (1986) #3
  110. Green Lantern: Mosaic #6
  111. Green Lantern (1990) #s 30-31
  112. Guy Gardner (1992) #1
  113. West Coast Avengers (1985) #s 40-43
  114. Squadron Supreme (1985) #2
  115. Fantastic Four (1998) #520
  116. Squadron Supreme (1985) #3
  117. Guy Gardner (1992) #2
  118. All Star Superman #5
  119. Fantastic Four (1998) #521-524
  120. Guy Gardner (1992) #3
  121. Green Lantern (1990) #32
  122. Squadron Supreme (1985) #4
  123. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #s 1-2
  124. Avengers: Loki Unleashed! #1
  125. Avengers: Infinity #4
  126. Avengers: The Origin #1
  127. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2005) #1
  128. Squadron Supreme (1985) #s 5-6
  129. Adventure Comics (1938) #210
  130. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #3
  131. Squadron Supreme (1985) #s 7-10
  132. Green Lantern (1990) #33
  133. Squadron Supreme (1985) #s 11-12
  134. The Squadron Supreme: Death of a Universe OGN
  135. Quasar (1989) #13
  136. Green Lantern (1990) #34
  137. Quasar (1989) #s 14-16
  138. Green Lantern (1990) #35
  139. Avengers (1998) #s 2-4
  140. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #4
  141. Avengers (1998) #s 5-6
  142. Avengers/Squadron Supreme Annual #1
  143. Squadron Supreme: New World Order #1
  144. Green Lantern: Mosaic #s 7-8
  145. Avengers: The Origin #s 2-5
  146. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2005) #2
  147. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #5
  148. G.I. Joe (2024) #8
  149. Batman Family #2
  150. Batman Eternal #1
  151. Tom Strong #1
  152. Green Lantern: Mosaic #9
  153. Green Lantern (1990) #36
  154. Guy Gardner (1992) #4
  155. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #6
  156. Marvel 2-in-One Annual (2018) #1
  157. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2005) #s 3-4
  158. Avengers (1998) #s 7-8
  159. X-Factor Annual (1987) #3
  160. The Punisher Annual (1988) #1
  161. Silver Surfer Annual (1988) #1
  162. Aliens vs. Avengers #4
  163. Guy Gardner (1992) #5
  164. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #s 7-10
  165. Fantastic Four (2018) #1
  166. Green Lantern (1990) #37
  167. X-Men (2024) #18
  168. West Coast Avengers (2024) #8
  169. New Avengers (2025) #1
  170. Godzilla vs. Avengers #1
  171. Fantastic Four Fanfare #2
  172. Bring on The Bad Guys: Doom #1
  173. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #6
  174. Fantastic Four (2018) #s 2-3
  175. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #11
  176. Avengers (1998) #9
  177. Captain America (1998) #1
  178. Iron Man (1998) #1
  179. Guy Gardner (1992) #s 6-7
  180. Marvel 2-in-One (2017) #12
  181. Fantastic Four (2018) #4
  182. Showcase ‘93 #s 1-5
  183. Avengers (2023) #27
  184. The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #s 1-5
  185. Avengers Assemble (2024) #s 1-5
  186. Non-Stop Spider-Man #1
  187. Green Lantern: Mosaic #10
  188. Fantastic Four (2018) #5
  189. Fantastic Four Wedding Special (2018) #1
  190. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2005) #s 5-8
  191. Green Lantern: Mosaic #11
  192. Non-Stop Spider-Man #2
  193. Captain America (1998) #s 2-3
  194. Astonishing Avengers Infinity Comic #1
  195. Fantastic Four (2018) #6
  196. Non-Stop Spider-Man #s 3-5
  197. Black Widow (2016) #s 1-2
  198. Green Lantern (1990) #38
  199. Astonishing Avengers Infinity Comic #2
  200. Black Widow (2016) #3
  201. Future State: Green Lantern #s 1-2
  202. Green Lantern (1990) #39
  203. Black Widow (2016) #4
  204. Fantastic Four (2018) #7
  205. Captain America (1998) #s 4-5
  206. Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes II #s 1-2
  207. Green Lantern (1990) #40
  208. Guy Gardner (1992) #8
  209. Captain America (1998) #s 6-7
  210. Black Widow (2016) #s 5-6
  211. Green Lantern: Mosaic #12
  212. Captain America (1998) #s 8-12
  213. Fantastic Four (2018) #8
  214. Black Widow (2016) #s 7-12
  215. Astonishing Avengers Infinity Comic #s 3-4
  216. Avengers (1998) #11
  217. Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty (1998) #s 1-4
  218. Iron Man (1998) #s 2-3
  219. Fantastic Four (2018) #9
  220. Green Lantern: Mosaic #13
  221. Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty (1998) #s 5-7
  222. Iron Man (1968) #s 201-207
  223. Green Lantern: Mosaic #14
  224. Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty (1998) #s 8-9
  225. Iron Man (1968) #s 208-210
  226. Avengers (1963) #s 105-108
  227. Green Lantern: Mosaic #s 15-18
  228. Green Lantern (1990) #41
  229. Avengers (1963) #s 109-111
  230. Fantastic Four (2018) #s 10-11
  231. Green Lantern (1990) #42
  232. Avengers (1963) #112
  233. Fantastic Four (2022) #33
  234. Green Lantern (1990) #43
  235. Ultimate Spider-Man (2024) #18
  236. Deadpool (2014) #15
  237. Green Lantern Annual (1992) #2
  238. Guy Gardner (1992) #s 9-14
  239. Green Lantern Corps (2011) #0
  240. Fantastic Four (2018) #12
  241. The Darkstars (1992) #s 17-24
  242. Green Lantern (1990) #s 44-45
  243. DC Universe: Trinity #2
  244. Green Lantern (1990) #s 46-47
  245. Fantastic Four (2018) #13
  246. Avengers (1963) #113
  247. Iron Man (1968) #211-213
  248. Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #1
  249. Guy Gardner: Warrior #s 17-21
  250. The Darkstars (1992) #s 0, 25-27
  251. Avengers (1963) #114
  252. Justice League (2011) #40
  253. Justice League: The Darkseid War – Green Lantern #1
  254. Fantastic Four (2018) #14
  255. Avengers (1963) #115
  256. Defenders (1972) #8
  257. Iron Man (1968) #214
  258. Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #s 2-5
  259. Green Lantern (2005) #s 1-3
  260. Iron Man (1968) #s 215-217
  261. Void Rivals #s 1-6
  262. Avengers (1963) #s 116-117
  263. Defenders (1972) #9
  264. Fantastic Four (2018) #15
  265. Iron Man (1968) #218
  266. Green Lantern (2005) #s 4-6
  267. Transformers (2024) #s 1-6
  268. Star Trek: Defiant #17
  269. Defenders (1972) #10
  270. Avengers (1963) #118
  271. Fantastic Four (2018) #16
  272. The Beast (1997) #1
  273. Magneto (1996) #1
  274. 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 2025
  275. 2000 AD Progs 2439-2440
  276. Star Trek: Defiant #s 18-21
  277. Green Lantern (2005) #s 7-8
  278. Transformers (2024) #s 7-12
  279. Fantastic Four (2018) #s 17-19
  280. Invisible Woman (2019) #s 1-2
  281. Green Lantern (2005) #9
  282. Invisible Woman (2019) #3
  283. Fantastic Four (2018) #20
  284. Iron Man (1968) #219
  285. Empyre: Avengers #0
  286. Empyre: Fantastic Four #0
  287. Invisible Woman (2019) #s 4-5
  288. Green Lantern (2005) #s 10-11
  289. Avengers (1963) #119
  290. Defenders (1972) #11
  291. Transformers (2024) #s 13-18
  292. Energon Universe 2024 Special #1
  293. Iron Man (1968) #220
  294. Action: The Story of A Violent Comic
  295. Green Lantern (2005) #s 12-13
  296. Green Lantern Corps (2006) #1
  297. Assorted Crisis Events #4
  298. We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us #s 2-4
  299. You’ll Do Bad Things #s 2-4
  300. Iron Man (1968) #221
  301. The Legendary Lynx OGN
  302. Iron Man (1968) #222
  303. Green Lantern (2005) #s 14-15
  304. Iron Man (1968) #s 222-225
  305. Green Lantern (2005) #s 16-17
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The Next Stop Is Arguello

One of the things I realized when revisiting San Francisco for the first time in more than a decade — and only for the second time since I lived here, I think — was how much the city hasn’t changed compared to the period from 2002 through 2008 when I called it home; I came back with my headspace very much informed by what happened when I went back to Scotland after more than a decade, and found it so different from what I remembered (and expected) that it left me uncomfortable and adrift. The same was surely true of SF, I was convinced, steeling myself for that off mix of disappointment and confusion that I’d felt in my home country. But it… wasn’t…?

That’s not entirely true; there are certainly parts of the city that aren’t the same, and many of the places that formed core landmarks and memories of my city as I lived in it way back when just aren’t there anymore. (Park Chow, how I miss you…!) But I was consistently surprised by how many are, how entire neighborhoods have so many of the same stores and places to eat, how so much of the architecture hasn’t changed in all this time. I went back to the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to the city (to the country), and it felt as if almost no time had passed; it wasn’t just that my old apartment building was unchanged, but the restaurants and stores around the corner were the same, and the laundromat where I’d spend Sunday afternoons was still open. I walked up and down Clement Street, the mix of Asian markets and restaurants I killed so much time in seemingly strangely intact, with places like Green Apple, Hamburger Haven, and The Bitter End all still there too. How did this happen? I thought to myself. Shouldn’t most of these places have disappeared by now?

I took the same buses (and MUNI trains!) around the city as I did when I lived here, unconsciously knowing exactly where to catch them and what numbers of buses to go for; when I rode on them, the announcements of the next stops sounded like poetry I’d learned years ago that was resurfacing in my head, and the view out the window looked entirely familiar. I went downtown and wandered the streets around where I used to work, and that looked the same, as well, more or less. (Downtown SF, I realized, felt like downtown Seattle to me now that I have more familiarity with the latter city; that feels like an insult, in a way, but one that’s not undeserved.)

It felt good, going back. Better than I’d expected, and a trip that made my head buzz with thoughts and possibilities and nostalgia in a way that felt welcome and filled with potential, instead of melancholy like my Scotland revisit. It felt like something necessary, in some inexplicable, welcome way.