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Who Knew?

I’m getting around to this later than intended, for the simple reason that I forgot. In the immediate aftermath of San Diego Comic-Con, there was a lot to take care of, not least of which was a sense of exhaustion that meant that I was able to take care of the most immediate business on any given day for a week or so before settling down to simply feel tired and watch TV for the night. (On the plus side, I enjoyed both the Wham! documentary and the series about the background of American Gladiators, so it wasn’t a complete loss. At some point, I’m also going to sing the praises of the extraordinary second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as well.)

Nevertheless, this year’s San Diego Comic-Con left me with the realization that I’m actually pretty good as a panel moderator, something that I’d never previously felt comfortable or confident enough to actually admit out loud. It was a strange and welcome realization, if one that I still feel uncomfortable sharing because of humility and being Scottish, and yet…

Don’t misunderstand; I’ve been moderating panels at conventions for years, and I knew I was that bad at it even before SDCC this year. The thing is, I’d convinced myself that I was good at doing a particular kind of panel — one that’s somewhat freewheeling and conversational — and that I’d suck doing anything more structured or official… and then I got asked to do two structured and official panels.

To my surprise, I didn’t suck at them. In fact, I actually… enjoyed doing both, even with the added complications of having official announcements to make at one (and giveaways to the audience that I had to declare, as well!) and slideshows and/or multimedia components at both. The two “other” panels, the ones that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, definitely required parts of my brain that I’m not so used to using when moderating — being more professional, less playful, sure, but also having to think about schedules and objectives in a way that was more akin to interviewing than moderating, for me — but I came away from both with that sense of, Did I do okay? I think that went well? Did that really go well? in somewhat mild disbelief.

I wasn’t entirely alone, at least in the sense of thinking things went well; both panels were complimented afterwards, with the publishers attached to each asking if I’d do it again at future conventions. It’s nice to know that you don’t screw up, for sure; it’s also nice to know that you can do more than you thought, and that you might actually be good at it, as well. If there was one good thing to take away from San Diego Comic-Con this year, I’m happy for it to be that.

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Sense-Surrounded by Pies and Books

Beyond the new Blur album, much of my walking about out in the real world recently has been soundtracked by the first three albums by Super Furry Animals, a firm 1990s favorite that I’ve been revisiting with no small sense of wonderment.

This was a band who, after a fun but uneven first album — 1996’s Fuzzy Logic, at turns fueled by Prog Rock, folk, and the confused directionless Britpop zeitgeist of the time — immediately reinvented itself with a single made from a discarded B-side and quickly became part of my musical and spiritual identity for a good five or six years afterwards. Listening back to all this stuff now is a weirdly, strongly nostalgic experience where specific lines or guitar licks feel like sense memories is the strangest of ways.

The discarded B-side was “The Man Don’t Give A Fuck,” built around a looped sample of a single line from Steely Dan’s “Showbiz Kids” — “You know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else” — that is repurposed as an anthem against cultural and societal oppressors that feels relentless and undeniable. It fed into the next album, Radiator, released a year or so after Fuzzy Logic but sounding like almost an entirely different band: one more comfortable in their own skins and happier being more esoteric and angry even as the hooks and the catchiness in every track only increased.

There are lines throughout Radiator that I can tell now pushed my head in certain directions at an impressionable time, listening back now: the nervy contrarian attitude of things like “Why do you do/What they tell you?” sure, but also the humor and silliness of “Marie Curie was Polish born, but French bred/Ha! French bread!” in the same song. That’s also the song that says, entirely seriously, “I live my life in a quest for information,” which to this day feels like a key to everything in my head.

All of this against music that reached outside my traditional musical interests of the era and retired my head to some degree: there are echoes and influences of dance music, of Can, and Arthur Lee and Love, and Sun-Ra and mariachi music and all of it felt like a puzzle to track down and work out at the time. Radiator came out in the same year as Primal Scream’s similarly restless, inspirational Vanishing Point, and the two together were endlessly important in pushing me out of my comfort zone.

What’s been so rewarding about revisiting this stuff (and their third album, Guerilla, which is sonically even more diverse) is that, thankfully, it still sounds as fresh, as catchy, and wonderfully, as fun as it did when I first heard it, a quarter century or so ago. It’s not the same as stepping back into my own history, but it’s at least a sign that not everything I was thinking back then was the product of an eager, impressionable, and naive mind that should’ve known better.

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Tired, Stressed, Dehydrated

If anyone asks how my weekend went, this is what I’d want to tell them:

I spent much of Saturday and pretty much all of Sunday worried that my dog was going to die, or that something was very wrong with him; he had dental surgery last week, something that I was deeply worried about ahead of time because that was exactly what killed his brother a little over a year ago and the fear that history could repeat itself was real. In the days immediately following the surgery, he seemed to be okay and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, things had all worked out.

And then it was three days after the surgery, and he hadn’t eaten. I mean, he’d had a couple of bites of food, but otherwise, nothing. I’d been told his appetite would be back to normal by the day after, the second day for sure. So, the worry returned.

Of course, by this point, it was a Saturday — a Saturday afternoon, in fact, and his regular vet was closed, so I spent an hour or so calling other local vets who told me variations on, Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all, but we’re full up so we can’t see him, but he should probably be seen in case it’s something very serious indeed. Let me tell you, that did wonders for my mood. Eventually, one place told me to call the next morning to set up an appointment for that day, and promised they’d have space; I’d just have to keep trying to feed him in the meantime. He continued to refuse food.

Sunday came, after a restless night in which I tossed, turned, and enjoyed dreams where he got sick and died like his brother. I called and made an appointment, and felt restless and unable to relax while I waited for it. I overanalyzed everything the poor dog was doing the entire time: was he more energetic than normal? Did it mean something that he was drinking more water?

Turns out, the answer to that last question was yes: after a marathon session and a bunch of tests, it turned out that Gus was so dehydrated as a result of the anesthesia during the surgery, and that dehydration was in turn hindering his recovery. All of this was because of his age (he’s 14) and the simple fact that old dogs and surgery really don’t mix. He was given IV fluids, a dose of pain meds, and the hope was that he’ll start eating again within 24 hours or so.

By the time I got him home, it was after 9pm.

I feel like I didn’t have a weekend; I feel exhausted and stressed, still, and I’m still worried about his little dog self and will be until he eats. I’m wishing I had a weekend to recover, it it’s Monday morning and everything starts again right now. I’m very much not ready for the week.

Instead, if someone asks how my weekend was, I’ll probably just say it was fine, and ask them how theirs was.

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It Pays Us All to Forgive

Still thinking about the new Blur album; I read a review that quoted an interview with Damon Albarn where he said, bluntly, that it was a sad album because he’s a sad 55-year-old, and that you don’t get to 55 years old without being sad unless you’re very lucky. That stuck with me for days after seeing it for the first time, playing on my mind as I listened obsessively over and over to an album that is, very clearly, about loss and missing people.

Those feelings are both something that I am all too familiar with; I’m not 55 yet, but close enough, perhaps — I’ll be 49 later this year — and also Scottish, which I feel is a shortcut to saying that I have a particularly melancholy disposition. That’s been especially true over the past year or so for reasons I’m not going to share publicly, but it does explain why I found myself nearly in tears while listening to “The Swan,” one of the tracks off the so-called “Deluxe” version of the album, the other day.

As self-conscious as I felt by the near-outburst — I was walking to the library in the middle of the day, which really doesn’t feel like the most appropriate time or place to just start crying, although perhaps that’s my age and upbringing showing, who knows? — there was something almost comforting about the whole thing, too: I felt so moved because there was some innate sense of recognition with the lyrics of the song, even if I couldn’t map my own life onto the them directly.

Nonetheless, there was something in the crack of Albarn’s voice as he sings, “Know that I will always be here for you/Even when I’m gone, gone from this world… What do you really want/What do you really need…?” that I understood deep inside my heart and my bones; a feeling of such intense recognition that it honestly, effortlessly, almost brought me to tears. There’s something to be said for the feeling that you’re not as alone in your feelings as you might think, sometimes.

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The Comics of July 2023

Yet again, a comic convention left me… not really reading comics for a week, because so much was going on with everything else? Thankfully, I bounced back pretty strongly afterwards, even if I ended up reading a lot of Mark Millar comics towards the end of the month for no immediately apparent reason… Anyway: here are the comics I read in July.

  1. Green Arrow & Black Canary #s 1-30
  2. Justice League: Cry for Justice #s 1-7
  3. Justice League: The Rise and Fall Special #1
  4. Green Arrow & Black Canary #s 31-32
  5. Justice League of America (2006) #s 41-43
  6. Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal #s 1-4
  7. Green Arrow (2010) #1
  8. Titans: Villains for Hire Special #1
  9. Home Sick Pilots #s 1-15
  10. A Contract with God OGN
  11. Green Arrow (2010) #s 2-15
  12. Green Arrow: Rebirth #1
  13. Green Arrow 80th Anniversary Special #1
  14. Justice League (2018) #75
  15. Dark Crisis #0
  16. Tarzan of The Apes #s 207-214 (First Joe Kubert DC issues from 1972)
  17. Divinity II #s 1-4
  18. Divinity III: Stalinverse #s 1-4
  19. Divinity #0
  20. X-O Manowar (1992) #s 0, 1-2
  21. Ninjak (2015) #1-9
  22. X-O Manowar (2012) #s 1-8
  23. Daredevil (2022) #s 7-9
  24. Clobberin’ Time #1
  25. X-O Manowar (2012) #s 9-29
  26. Armor Hunters #s 1-4
  27. Unity (2014) #s 8-11
  28. Armor Hunters: Bloodshot #s 1-3
  29. Armor Hunters: Harbinger #s 1-3
  30. Armor Hunters: Aftermath #1
  31. X-O Manowar (2012) #s 30-38
  32. X-O Manowar Valiant 25th Anniversary Special #1
  33. Invincible Iron Man (2023) #4
  34. X-O Manowar (2012) #s 0, 39-50
  35. X-O Manowar 2016  Annual
  36. X-O Manowar: Commander Trill #1
  37. Bloodshot (2012) #s 1-9, 0
  38. Bloodshot and HARD Corps #s 0, 14-19, 22-23
  39. Bloodshot (2012) #s 24-25
  40. Bloodshot Reborn #s 1-13
  41. Bloodshot Reborn 2016 Annual
  42. Bloodshot Reborn #s 14-18
  43. Bloodshot USA #s 1-4
  44. Bloodshot Reborn #0
  45. Psi-Lords (2019) #s 1-8
  46. Nailbiter #s 1-15
  47. Nailbiter #s 16-25
  48. Room for Love OGN
  49. Nailbiter #s 26-30
  50. Rogues (2022) #s 1-4
  51. Aquaman/Green Arrow: Deep Target #s 1-7
  52. Aquaman: Andromeda #s 1-3
  53. The End of the Century Club: Countdown TPB
  54. The Sixth Gun #s 1-2
  55. Sinister Romance (1988) #1
  56. The Sixth Gun #3
  57. Four Color #882 (Alex Toth Zorro)
  58. Joe Fixit #4
  59. Wolverine (2020) #32
  60. Spider-Man (2022) #7
  61. Venom (2021) #18
  62. Immoral X-Men #3
  63. X Lives of Wolverine #s 1-5
  64. X Deaths of Wolverine #s 1-5
  65. Wolverine: Patch #1
  66. Danger Street #7
  67. The Sixth Gun #s 3-6
  68. Wolverine: First Class #1
  69. Gag! (1982) #1
  70. Titans (2008) #s 24-27
  71. The Sixth Gun #7
  72. Titans (2008) #s 28-38
  73. The Brave & The Bold (1955) #69
  74. Wolverine: First Class #s 2-6
  75. Superman vs. Meshi #1
  76. Wolverine: First Class #s 7-16
  77. Planet of the Apes (2023) #1
  78. Star Wars (2020) #33
  79. Star Wars: Crimson Reign #s 1-5
  80. Star Wars: Hidden Empire #s 1-5
  81. Wolverine: First Class #s 17-21
  82. The Second Death of Eddie Campbell OGN
  83. Sweet Paprika #1
  84. Void Rivals #2
  85. Local Man #1
  86. Mega-City Max #1
  87. Ninjak (2015) #s 10-15
  88. Local Man #s 2-5
  89. Ninjak (2015) #s 16-27, 0
  90. Ninja-K #s 1-5
  91. Coyote #1
  92. Ninja-K #s 6-9
  93. Ninja-K #s 10-14
  94. Shadowman (2012) #0, 1-16, 13X
  95. Shadowman: End Times #1-3
  96. Punk Mambo #0
  97. Ninjak (2021) #s 1-4
  98. Eternal Warrior (2013) #s 1-8
  99. A Terrified Child Played by Jeremy Strong #1
  100. Sweet Paprika #s 2-5
  101. The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage #1
  102. Fantastic Four (2022) #6
  103. Predator (2023) #s 1-2
  104. X-Men (2021) #s 20-21
  105. Captain Marvel (2019) #s 46-48
  106. Sweet Paprika #6
  107. Hallow’s Eve #2
  108. Captain America: Cold War Alpha #1
  109. Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1
  110. Knight Terrors #2
  111. Peacemaker Tries Hard #4
  112. Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent #6
  113. Justice Society of America (2022) #5
  114. Knight Terrors: Action Comics #1
  115. Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1
  116. Knight Terrors: Titans #1
  117. Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn #1
  118. Knight Terrors: Detective Comics #1
  119. Knight Terrors: Batman #2
  120. Knight Terrors: The Joker #2
  121. Knight Terrors: Ravager #2
  122. Knight Terrors: Black Adam #2
  123. Knight Terrors: Poison Ivy #2
  124. Strange Adventures (2019) #s 1-12
  125. The Punisher (2022) #11
  126. X-Force (2019) #39
  127. She-Hulk (2022) #12
  128. Conan the Barbarian (2023) #1
  129. My First Paying Job as a Comicker (Eddie Campbell/Phil Elliott collection)
  130. Heavy Rotation
  131. X-Men: Hellfire Gala (2023) #1
  132. Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers/X-Men #1
  133. Hellcat (2023) #2
  134. Justice League of America (1960) #s 171-172
  135. The New World: Comics from Mauretania (hardcover collection)
  136. Earth 2 (2012) #s 1-4
  137. The Vallars: Episode One (3W3M Substack comic)
  138. Temptation (collection of Glenn Dakin comics)
  139. Eden’s End (Morrison/Sharp Substack comic)
  140. Earth 2 (2012) #s 0, 5-8
  141. Knight Terrors #3
  142. Superman Annual (2023) #1
  143. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #18
  144. Knight Terrors: Green Lantern #2
  145. Knight Terrors: The Flash #2
  146. Knight Terrors: Robin #2
  147. Knight Terrors: Shazam #2
  148. Knight Terrors: Zatanna #2
  149. Danger Street #8
  150. Knight Terrors: Superman #2
  151. Tales of the Titans #2
  152. Earth 2 #9
  153. Nemesis #s 1-4
  154. Nemesis Reloaded #s 1-5
  155. Knight Terrors: Catwoman #2
  156. Knight Terrors: Nightwing #2
  157. World’s Finest: Teen Titans #2
  158. Knight Terrors: Punchline #2
  159. Knight Terrors: Wonder Woman #2
  160. The Authority (1999) #s 13-29
  161. The Ultimates (2002) #s 1-2
  162. The Great Unwashed (Collection of Pleece Brothers material)
  163. The Ultimates (2002) #s 3-6
  164. Irredeemable #s 1-8
  165. The Ultimates (2002) #s 7-13
  166. The Ultimates 2 (2004) #s 1-2
  167. Invincible Iron Man (2022) #5
  168. Hulk (2021) #14
  169. Wasp (2023) #4
  170. Daredevil (2022) #10
  171. The Ultimates 2 (2004) #3-13
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Hated and Feared

As much as I don’t want to admit it, the most surprising thing about last week’s X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1 is how much it surprised me.

I don’t mean that in the sense of, “The plot twists were so shocking that I didn’t see them coming.” Really, the X-Men franchise has maybe three go-to comic central plots when it comes to its big twists, and the one at the center of this particular issue is the one that I feel has been most overused in the past 20 years: “ALL OF THE MUTANTS DIE.” It’s a cheap shot at the reader’s sympathies — who doesn’t want to root for the underdog survivors of a literal genocide, after all — and, in part because of its scale and also the fact that this is the third time we’ve seen it in the last two decades, the cheapest… and yet, here it is again.

Even that wasn’t the most surprising thing about the issue, though. (It is, nonetheless, surprising that we’re going back to that well that has been demonstrated twice now to not be quite the nuclear option that it would appear: who knew that it was so easy to reverse. genocide?) Also surprising, but not that surprising: that there are something like six different art teams throughout the issue, as if everyone were running to make the print deadline at the last minute… which is probably the case, let’s be real.

No, what’s so surprising about Hellfire Gala is just how obviously cynical the entire enterprise is. There’s no… spirit or soul to it; it’s workmanlike and there purely to hit specific moments to sell future comics. Why is Ms. Marvel resurrected and given so much prominence at the start of the issue, when it has little bearing on the larger story? To sell the Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant comic advertised in the back pages. Why do some mutants inexplicably survive the genocide? Because they’re the ones in the spin-off books. Why is the genocide created in such a way that there’s a blindingly obvious get-out clause? Because this is going to be reversed because nothing is permanent or has meaning beyond selling the next quarter’s worth of comic book issues.

I’m not surprised that all of this is the case; I’m surprised that there’s no real attempt to hide any of it, that there’s only the lightest attempt to weave the mandated targets and jumping-off points into an actual story, as opposed to a series of barely connected sales pitches to keep buying and buying and buying. In that respect, perhaps X-Men: Hellfire Gala is the endpoint of contemporary superhero comics: one that dispenses with the pretense and just embraces that you just want an excuse to keep going. And that, maybe, is the most surprising thing of all.

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With Headphones On, You Won’t Hear That Much

In one of the least surprising developments of the year, I have become utterly obsessed with Blur’s new album, The Ballad of Darren. It’s a new Damon Albarn project, it’s a new Blur project, and it’s a melancholic album about aging and loss and regret; it’s absolutely catnip for this particular droog, which feels entirely appropriate on several levels.

I’m telling you this not to exhort you to give it a listen yourself — although you should, of course; it’s a genuinely lovely, gentle middle-aged album, for want of a better way to put it — or to pick apart the ways in which it both sounds like and unlike Blur as they’ve traditionally presented themselves. I’m not even writing this to point out the really odd, unexpected influence of late-era Bowie on the album even though I’m very curious where that’s coming from and who’s bringing it. (Albarn? Graham Coxon, maybe?)

Instead, I’m sharing this because I heard this album for the first time during San Diego Comic-Con. It was released on the Friday of the show, and I first heard it wandering through the San Diego streets walking to and from the show, and I wonder if there’s something about that experience that’s changed the way I heard it, and will always think about it from now on.

It’s not simply that it was an odd show that for many reasons — primarily, the emotional state of those around me, and my own aging and aching — left me at times in a melancholy mood of my own that echoed the album’s tone and left me receptive to everything it’s all about, although that counts, of course. It’s that there’s something about hearing music almost ambiently initially before you have a chance to really pay attention to it is a strangely, wonderfully hypnotic experience. I didn’t have a chance to properly listen to The Ballad of Darren until I got back from the show, by which point I already had memories and experiences attached to it: “This sounds like that moment I was turning onto Fifth Avenue, and the crowds started picking up,” or “This is the walk back to the hotel at midnight, when the streets started transforming into local party people instead of nerds up late,” or whatever.

There’s something about this feeling, the immediate nostalgia that feels at once authentic and lived-in that I’m trying to fully understand with as I listen to the album over and over right now. The feeling that it’s at once brand new and already part of my personal history.

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It Must Be (1)

As I write this, it’s 3AM on Sunday, July 23rd. It’s my last night — well, last morning now — in San Diego, and insomnia has struck.

I could blame the hotel bed, which is almost the archetypal hotel bed: a little too soft, a little formless and with pillows that are more like suggestions of pillows that are somehow too soft and too hard all at once; pillows that you almost have to ignore in order to sleep in the first place, never mind struggle against when your mind won’t stop talking in the middle of the night.

Or perhaps I could blame the fact that it’s a Saturday night/Sunday morning, which has meant a lot of noise in the corridor outside in the last few hours as people return back from drunken nights out and slam all their doors and giggle loudly, in both cases fully believing that they’re being really, really quiet. That was fun to eavesdrop on, and truth be told, it was what originally woke me up an hour or so ago.

That’s not why I’m still awake, though. My mind is racing because I’m headed into the final day of San Diego Comic-Con and it’s been a weird, busy — very busy — and emotionally taxing show, one that’s left me at once exhausted and oddly exhilarated. I both can’t believe it’s almost over and can’t remember fully what life was like before this, if that makes sense.

By the time you read this, it’ll be tomorrow and I’ll be back in Portland again, likely better rested and reality will be reasserting itself. That’s why I wrote this, though; to record a moment in time when I couldn’t sleep in San Diego, and I realized that all I really want to do, despite everything, is just read some comics. I guess that shows the power of Comic-Con, somehow.