The World That\'s Coming

June 4, 2025May 16, 2025

Got A New Life And The Family’s Fine

June 2, 2025May 31, 2025

The Comics of May 2025

My nostalgic trip through the comics that I grew up with continued unabated in May. If anything, it got worse; by mid-month, my “I’ll read an issue of Fantastic Four every night” had metastasized into “I’ll read an issue of Fantastic Four and, sure, then The Thing and Avengers and West Coast Avengers too, every night.” And when I wasn’t doing that, I was working my way through the (very cheap) back issues of Alpha Flight I’d bought months ago, or using Hoopla to finally properly dig into the new Conan comics, which help me finally understand the appeal of the character for the first time… well, ever. (I actually bought all of the Alpha Flight issues because I figured they’d never be reprinted or released digitally; a week after buying the last batch, Marvel announced they’re doing a big reprint in September. I feel like I accidentally made it happen.)

There’s something to be said for doing all this, though; I’ve learned to appreciate the workmanship of the comics I grew up on and breathed like air. When I was a kid, these were magical objects that I worshipped, in my way, but appreciated from that point of view primarily. Looking at them now from my older, jaundiced eyes, I can see the formulas and the shortcuts and the men behind the curtain, but I find myself almost loving them more for all that.

So, what else did I read in May? Quite a lot. Take a look:

Fantastic Four (1961) #261
The Thing (1983) #7
Captain America (1968) #383
Captain Marvel (2000) #15
Alpha Flight (1982) #29
Fantastic Four (1961) #262
Captain America (1968) #384
Alpha Flight (1982) #30
Captain Marvel (2000) #s 16-19
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #39
Superman Unlimited #1
Batman & Robin: Year One #7
Wonder Woman (2023) #21
Titans (2023) #23
The New Gods (2024) #6
Alpha Flight (1982) #31
It’s Jeff! Infinity Comic #49
Alpha Flight (1982) #32
Fantastic Four (1961) #263
The Thing (1983) #s 8-9
Captain America (1968) #385
Captain Marvel (2000) #20
DC All In FCBD 2025 Special Edition #1
Fantastic Four (1961) #264
The Thing (1983) #10
Fantastic Four (1961) #265
Alpha Flight (1982) #35
Fantastic Four (1961) #266
The Thing (1983) #11
Captain America (1968) #386
Captain Marvel (2000) #s 21-22
The Batman Adventures (1992) #s 26-28
The Batman Adventures Annual #s 1-2
Batman & Robin Adventures #s 1-2
All-Star Comics #s 69-70
Abslom Daak: Dalek Killer
Fantastic Four (1961) #267
The Thing (1983) #12
Captain America (1968) #387
Captain Marvel (2000) #s 23-26
It’s Jeff! Jeff Week #1
Star Wars (2025) #1
Captain Marvel (2000) #s 27-28
One World Under Doom #s 1-3
Fantastic Four Fanfare #1
Fantastic Four (2022) #s 27-31
West Coast Avengers (2024) #7
All-New Venom #6
2000 AD Progs 2431-2432
Captain Marvel (2000) #s 29-35
Alpha Flight (1982) #36
Fantastic Four (1961) #s 268-269
The Thing (1983) #13
Captain America (1968) #388
Captain Marvel (2002) #1
Alpha Flight (1982) #s 37-38
Fantastic Four (1961) #270
The Thing (1983) #s 14-15
Captain America (1968) #389
Free Comic Book Day 2025: Amazing Spider-Man/Ultimate Universe #1
Free Comic Book Day 2025: Fantastic Four/Giant-Size X-Men #1
Free Comic Book Day 2025: Star Wars #1
Captain Marvel (2002) #s 2-6
Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #285
Fantastic Four (1961) #271
The Thing (1983) #16
Captain America (1968) #390
Avengers (1963) #241
Captain Marvel (2002) #s 7-12
Alpha Flight (1982) #s 39-40
Fantastic Four (1961) #272
The Thing (1983) #17
Captain America (1968) #391
Avengers (1963) #242
Captain Marvel (2002) #13
Plastic Man No More! #s 1-4
Legion of Super-Heroes (1980) #286
Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #1
Detective Comics (1937) #411
Fantastic Four (1961) #s 273-274
The Thing (1983) #s 18-19
Detective Comics (1937) #425-427
Alpha Flight (1982) #41
Energon Universe 2025 Special #1
Transformers (2023) #20
Fantastic Four (1961) #275
The Thing (1983) #20
Avengers (1963) #s 243-245
Captain Marvel (2002) #14
Captain America (1968) #392
Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #2
Alpha Flight (1982) #42
Fantastic Four (1961) #276
The Thing (1983) #s 21-22
Fantastic Four (1961) #277
Avengers (1963) #246
Captain Marvel (2002) #s 15-19
Captain America (1968) #393
Detective Comics (1937) #428
Fantastic Four (1961) #278
Avengers (1963) #s 247-248
West Coast Avengers (1984) #s 1-2
The Thing (1983) #23
Star Wars (1977) #50
Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #3
Detective Comics (1937) #429
Captain America (1968) #394
Fantastic Four (1961) #279
The Thing (1983) #24
Avengers (1963) #249
West Coast Avengers (1984) #3
Defenders (1972) #s 12-13
Star Wars (1977) #51
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #5
Alpha Flight (1982) #43
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #s 6-7
West Coast Avengers (1984) #4
Avengers (1963) #250
One World Under Doom #4
Godzilla vs. X-Men #1
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #8
Justice League Unlimited (2024) #7
Superman (2023) #26
Mr. Terrific: Year One #1
Batman (2016) #160
Metamorpho: The Element Man (2023) #6
Defenders (1972) #s 14-15
Alpha Flight (1982) #44
Fantastic Four (1961) #280
The Thing (1983) #25
Avengers (1963) #s 251-252
Astonishing Spider-Man Infinity Comic #27
Avengers (1963) #s 253-257
Alpha Flight (1982) #45
Fantastic Four (1961) #s 281-282
The Thing (1983) #s 26-27
Avengers (1963) #s 258-259
Alpha Flight (1982) #46
X-Men and Alpha Flight #1
Thunderbolts (2006) #102
Alpha Flight Annual (1986) #1
Fantastic Four (1961) #283
The Thing (1983) #28
Avengers (1963) #260
West Coast Avengers (1985) #s 1-2
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #s 1-2
Fantastic Four (1961) #284
The Thing (1983) #29
Fantastic Four Annual (1963) #19
Avengers Annual (1967) #14
Avengers (1963) #261
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #s 9-12
Fantastic Four (1961) #285
Marvel Graphic Novel #18: The Sensational She-Hulk
The Thing (1983) #30
West Coast Avengers (1985) #3
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #3
Avengers (1963) #262
Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #s 0-1
Superman: A Friendship Unleashed #1
Alpha Flight (1982) #47
Avengers (1963) #263
Fantastic Four (1961) #286
The Thing (1983) #31
West Coast Avengers (1985) #4
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #4
Star Wars (1977) #52
Thunderbolts (2006) #s 103-104
Captain Marvel (2002) #21
Green Lantern (2023) #23
Captain Marvel (2002) #s 22-25
Avengers (1963) #264
Fantastic Four (1961) #287
The Thing (1983) #32
West Coast Avengers (1985) #5
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #5
The Sandman Universe presents: Hellblazer, Dead in America #11
Justice League America (1987) #0
Star Slammers (1994) #s 1-4
Star Slammers Special #1
Blasters Special #1
Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone #s 2-4
Savage Sword of Conan (2024) #1
Alpha Flight (1982) #s 48-50
Alpha Flight Annual (1986) #2
Jack Kirby’s Secret City Saga #0
Bombast #1
Captain Glory #1
Justice League America (1987) #93
Avengers (1963) #265
Fantastic Four (1961) #288
The Thing (1983) #33
West Coast Avengers (1985) #6
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #6
Avengers (1963) #266
Secret Wars II #s 6-7
Justice League America (1987) #99
Fantastic Four (1961) #289
The Thing (1983) #34
West Coast Avengers (1985) #7
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #7
Secret Wars II #s 8-9
Justice League America (1987) #104
Spider-Man and Wolverine (2025) #1
Avengers (1963) #267
Fantastic Four (1961) #290
The Thing (1983) #35
West Coast Avengers (1985) #8
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #8
Astonishing Spider-Man Infinity Comic #28
Superman (1987) #s 28-29
Adventures of Superman (1987) #s 451-452
Justice League America (1987) #s 105-106
Avengers (1963) #268
Fantastic Four (1961) #291
The Thing (1983) #36
West Coast Avengers (1985) #9
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #9
Superman (1987) #s 30-31
Adventures of Superman (1987) #s 453-454
Action Comics Annual (1988) #2
Thunderbolts (2006) #105
The Amazing Spider-Man (2025) #4
Fantastic Four (2022) #32
The Incredible Hulk (2023) #25
Iron Man (2024) #8
Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #4
Thunderbolts: Doomstrike #5
The Ultimates (2024) #12
Justice League America (1987) #107
Avengers (1963) #269
Fantastic Four (1961) #292
West Coast Avengers (1985) #10
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #10
Superman (1987) #s 32-33
Adventures of Superman (1987) #s 455-456
Action Comics (1938) #643
Dark Days: The Forge #1
Dark Days: The Casting #1
Fantastic Four (1961) #s 293-295
Justice League: The Atom Project #6
JSA (2024) #8
Absolute Green Lantern #3
Action Comics (1938) #1087
Batman and Robin (2023) #22
Absolute Batman #9
Supergirl (2025) #s 1-2
Avengers (1963) #270
West Coast Avengers (1985) #11
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #11
West Coast Avengers (1985) #12
The Vision and Scarlet Witch (1985) #12
The Man of Steel (1986) #s 1-4
Avengers (1963) #s 271-272
West Coast Avengers (1985) #13
Avengers Annual (1967) #15
West Coast Avengers Annual (1986) #1
The Man of Steel (1986) #s 5-6
Superman (1986) #s 1-2
Action Comics (1938) #584
Fantastic Four (1961) #296
Fantastic Four (1998) #60
Assorted Crisis Events #3
The Power Fantasy #9
G.I. Joe (2024) #7
Void Rivals #19
Death of Inhumans #s 1-5
Fantastic Four (1998) #61
Avengers (1963) #273
West Coast Avengers (1985) #14
Adventures of Superman (1986) #s 424-425
Action Comics (1938) #585
Guy Gardner (1992) #s 9-10
Green Lantern/Green Arrow: World’s Finest Special #1
Green Lantern (2011) #s 21-22
Green Lantern (1990) #1
West Coast Avengers (1985) #15
Avengers (1963) #s 274-277
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #40
The New Gods (2024) #7
Batman and Robin: Year One #8
Wonder Woman (2023) #22
Titans (2023) #24
Detective Comics (1935) #1098
DC vs. Vampires: World War V #10
Green Lantern (1990) #s 2-3
Fantastic Four (1998) #62
West Coast Avengers (1985) #16
Superman (1986) #s 3-4
Adventures of Superman (1986) #s 426
Action Comics (1938) #586
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #13
Green Lantern (1990) #4
Marvels Annotated #1
Green Lantern (1990) #s 5-6
Fantastic Four (1998) #63
West Coast Avengers (1985) #17
Astonishing Spider-Man Infinity Comic #29
Green Lantern (1990) #s 48-50
Guy Gardner: Warrior (1992) #21
Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004) #s 1-6
Green Lantern (1990) #7
Giant-Size X-Men (2025) #1
Fantastic Four (1998) #64
West Coast Avengers (1985) #18
Adventures of Superman (1986) #s 427-428
Action Comics (1938) #587
Convergence: Crime Syndicate #s 1-2
Fantastic Four (1998) #s 65-66
Human Torch (2003) #s 1-7
Spider-Man/Human Torch #s 1-5
West Coast Avengers (1985) #19
Avengers (1963) #278
Fantastic Four (1998) #67
Superman (1986) #s 5-6
Adventures of Superman (1986) #429
Action Comics (1938) #s 588-589
Conan the Barbarian (2023) #14
West Coast Avengers (1985) #20
Avengers (1963) #279
Fantastic Four (1998) #68
Batman: Dark Patterns #1
Fantastic Four (1998) #s 69-70, 500 (Series renumbers)
Batman: Dark Patterns #s 2-3
West Coast Avengers (1985) #21
Batman: Dark Patterns #s 4-6
Superman Unlimited #2
Avengers (2023) #26
Wallace Wood Presents: Shattuck
DC Pride 2025 #1
Green Lantern (1990) #8
Avengers (1963) #s 280-281
West Coast Avengers (1985) #22
Avengers (1963) #282
West Coast Avengers (1985) #23

May 30, 2025May 24, 2025

Garbage In, Garbage

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s been half-paying attention to the latest generations of AI stories, which have moved past both the obvious (and horrific) practical effects on the environment and the existential “what does this mean for the future of art” questions to a new place that’s part-acceptance that this isn’t going away anytime soon despite what we all want and part-but what the fuck does all this mean?

Specifically, I’m talking about two threads of stories that have been popping up in my various feeds lately. The first has been countless variations of stories about people suddenly deciding that AI is less an algorithm that has learned to basically translate Google into something approximating a conversational voice and more an actual deity in digital form. It sounds like a joke, but apparently, this is happening all over; people are so surprised/impressed that AI doesn’t disagree with them or say things like, “No, that sounds like a half-baked idea and maybe you need to take a break and step back for a second” that they start to think that AI is, in fact, God who’s taking directly to them and gets it in a way no-one else does.

This is, of course, a nightmarish commentary on the loneliness people are feeling and their search for higher purpose and deeper meaning in all the wrong places; alternately, it could be a commentary on how eager people are to have their own opinions parroted back at them and the way in which they receive that. Either way, it’s not a good thing. Especially in light of the second trend of AI stories I’ve started seeing more and more often — that AI is increasingly starting to just… make shit up. Not even in the sense of, it got a small fact wrong when someone asked it a question, but in the sense of, “AI is apparently increasingly just fabricating entire fictions whole cloth when asked a simple question.

(This is not an entire surprise, because, well, the entire way AI works, but it’s apparently a bigger and bigger problem as more schoolkids are apparently relying on AI to do their coursework and the information they’re receiving is entirely incorrect.)

Combine these two things together, and we have a world that is increasingly looking to a nonsense machine as God. It’s either a Star Trek episode or a Douglas Adams plot. Whichever one, we’re probably in for an interesting few years as this develops and things get worse, I guess.

May 28, 2025May 24, 2025

Touch Grass

May 26, 2025May 24, 2025

Grab Your Popcorn

I’ve become one of those people, it seems; people who think about the formats in which movies are “meant” to be watched and have opinions on the subject. I didn’t intend this to happen; I quite liked being agnostic on the subject, and watching movies at home on streaming because I didn’t want to go see it in the theater. But then I watched that damn Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and had thoughts.

This isn’t intended to be a rave review of that film, which has serious pacing and exposition problems and doesn’t really come to life until halfway through it’s outrageous-almost-three-hours runtime. But, at the same time, I can’t deny that the second half did absolutely everything I’d wanted from the movie as a whole, and the final big stunt sequence, as Tom Cruise hangs onto a biplane for dear life… well, that’s what got me thinking, you see.

In the theater, I was into this sequence, in a big way; I was gasping, tense, and practically yelping as I watched the whole thing unfold. On some level, I knew that everything would be fine because, well, it’s a big Hollywood movie, they’re not going to include it if someone died, but at the same time, my disbelief had been suspended entirely: I was not thinking about it as a movie, I was thinking about it as oh my God, he’s hanging onto a fucking biplane and shit the biplane went upside down what if he can’t hold on.

I had a similar excitable reaction to the big train stunt scene in the last Mission: Impossible movie, Dead Reckoning; that, too, had me on the edge of my seat, simultaneously gleefully thrilled and hoping nothing went wrong… or, at least, I did when I saw it in the theater. When I watched it at home, later, I found the impact significantly dulled. Was it because I’d already seen it? Perhaps, but I can’t help but wonder if the fact that I wasn’t being utterly overwhelmed by the image was part of it, as well.

Things do play differently when they’re smaller, especially when those things are pretty much entirely reliant on spectacle and putting the viewer into a state of awe. It’s been more than 30 years, and I can still imagine being entirely stupified by seeing the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. On a TV, it just looked… fine.

Of course, watching something on the big screen doesn’t mean it’s automatically a winner — because of my job, I see a bunch of the Big Genre Blockbusters in theaters, and a lot of them are just as bad in cinemas as they are at home (Some might even be worse; Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, maybe a small screen would have made MODOK look less unfinished) — but I find myself grateful for the opportunity to see so many movies in the theater the more I think about it. Not because Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise really wanted me to do so, but because, the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a chance to meet filmmakers halfway in offering them the best chance to succeed at what they’re trying to do.

(That said, Lovers Rock is still made for TVs and intimate viewing, I don’t care what you say.)

May 23, 2025May 10, 2025

Not For You

I worked another weekend, recently; there was another convention, and again I found myself in the chair at home while others were at the show itself; editing, traffic-managing, and filling in the gaps where necessary. This isn’t me complaining about this part of the job, because both it’s part of the job and I knew that when I took it and I actually like this part of the job, in a lot of ways; instead, it’s me being amused that, as the days led up to the Saturday and Sunday I was working, my brain steadfastly refused to believe that I would be working.

I can’t think of a way to better describe the experience than to say that, utterly unusually, I’d find myself at multiple points during the weekend fantasizing about what I’d do with the time off at the weekend, only to then suddenly remember, oh, I have no time off, I’m working this weekend. It’s not even as if I was thinking about doing anything particularly interesting or fun; I’d think things like, oh, maybe I could head down to this store and pick up that thing I was just thinking about, no wait, I have to work. It was as if my subconscious was determined to just cue up different reasons to play that trombone wah-waaaaaahhhhh sound.

What was particularly strange about the experience — beyond the fact that it kept happening across the week leading up to my working weekend — is that I generally don’t think about the weekend in that way at all; I’m not someone who finds myself “working for the weekend,” or even particularly planning what to do on time off, traditionally; and yet, on this one weekend I was going to be stuck in a chair for 10 hours or so a day, it was as if all I could think about were the other things I could be doing.

Of course, as soon as I got a day off again, I did none of those things. Instead, I just collapsed, exhausted, my mind blank when I thought of things I could get up to with the time off stretching ahead of me.

May 21, 2025April 27, 2025

I Did Some Drawing Again

The fruits of an hour or so on a recent Sunday afternoon. DC’s Cosmic Boy, Steve Moore and Steve Dillon’s Axel Pressbutton. (Yes, I know that Axel is really the product of Steve Moore originally, then Steve Moore and Alan Moore, and then Steve Moore and Steve Dillon, but this is basically Steve Dillon’s design for the character.) Some wackiness going on with Cosmic Boy’s hands, but I resolved not to fix it in Pixelmator after the fact when I was coloring.

I should draw more often.

May 19, 2025May 6, 2025

A Game of Two Halves

I have found myself recently thinking in terms of cliches such as it’s a marathon, not a sprint and slow and steady wins the race when it comes to work. Not that I am in any way sports-adjacent nor even one for the sports metaphor in general (I’ll be honest; almost all such metaphors are lost on me, the boy who never really got into sports enough to even learn the rules or anything), but still: I am trying to learn not to become hyper-reactive, and to better pace myself and my stress, and such sayings prove to be useful, if unfortunately attached to activities I would otherwise reject wholeheartedly.

The problem for me, I’ve discovered, is that my latest tendency to become a workaholic overwhelms almost any more sensible response to any given situation or hiccup. Traffic is down? My first impulse is just to work more to make up the gap. Someone is out sick, or on vacation? I’ll work more so that we’re still publishing as much. We need a story on a particular topic and everyone is busy? What if I just stay an hour or two later to get it done?

This (not good, somewhat unhealthy) mindset is both a hangover from the always-hustling freelance brain that I had for more than a decade before my current position, and also the desire to magically be able to fix problems through effort and force of will, instead of… well, actually trying to address the problems.

What I’ve learned through a couple of months of trying things that way was twofold.

It doesn’t work, but it sure is exhausting.
It’s infinitely more productive to actually try to think through the situation and see if there really is a problem, or I’m just overreacting to something that will either sort itself out in time or be taken care of by someone else.

So, now, I’m trying something different: teaching myself to not panic react, but to try to sit back and take a beat to work out what the best thing to do will be. The frustrating thing isn’t that it’s seeming to work from my admittedly limited experience so far. (I am less stressed and things appear to generally be working! Who knew?) Nope, the frustrating thing is that all of this is still so unnatural to me that, in order for it to work, I need to constantly think things like it’s a marathon, not a sprint in order to get where I need my head to be.

Surely there’s a less cliched way to do this. Surely.

May 16, 2025April 26, 2025

The Coconut Grove

I am, I’ve discovered, a practitioner of a particular form of procrastination ; one that I didn’t even realize I was doing for the longest time, but also one that is (worryingly) deceptively convincing to fall for. I am someone who doesn’t actually do a thing, but thinks that they have, and so certain things just… don’t get done.

That’s not the full story, of course. What actually happens is this: I have a task that needs done — and this is always “a task that needs done,” as opposed to something that just pops up or happens — and, because I think about it for a second and identify what needs to be done, part of my brain just moves it to the file marked “completed” and moves on. Because I’ve identified the problem, the problem is solved, my head goes, and that’s that. Even though, you know, the actual practical aspect of the whole thing, that whole “really doing it” part, hasn’t actually taken place.

This is a trap that I build for myself over and over again, without knowing it. Why were there uncashed checks lying on my desk for three weeks? Because I had thought, oh, I need to take those to the bank and then assumed it had already been taken care of. What about the library books that were overdue for pick up? Well, I’d remembered that I needed to do it, so it was as if it was already done, right? Right?

I’m not entirely sure what this says about me, beyond the fact that I clearly conceptualize tasks as being primarily problems to be solved in my head and then everything that follows is an unnecessary afterthought, but it’s something I need to work on if I want to, you know, stay financially solvent and avoid late fees on everything in my life on a regular basis.

For now, just know that if I’m late or seemingly absent from an obligation we’ve agreed on, chances are I’ve already given it some thought and then just moved on, unwittingly. That’s got to be worth something, surely.

May 14, 2025April 26, 2025

The World That's Coming

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