Posts

Posted on

San Dieg-Oh No

As you read this, I’m in San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con; as I write, it’s still weeks away, which can mean only one thing: the anxiety has started kicking in.

What’s funny is, by the time this runs, the anxiety will be over and done with; once I actually get to San Diego, a zen state overcomes me, and I’m just there, dealing with whatever happens as it happens with an outlook that is, genuinely, surprisingly laid back about the whole thing. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t still get nervous about moderating panels; that’s still very much a thing.) But before the show…?

As I write this, I’m nervous about so much to do with San Diego Comic-Con, but really, it’s being nervous about all these related and connected things that aren’t actually the show itself: I’m nervous about whether or not I’ll buy new clothes and new shoes for the show — the shoes, especially, I need but I also need to get them and break them in, in advance; there’s a lot of walking at SDCC — and whether or not I’ll remember to get a new laptop bag to replace the one that fell apart in the UK. I’m nervous about my workload and if it will be too much, and the timing of my flights in and out of the city; I’m nervous about how comfortable or not the hotel bed will be, and how big the room will be, considering it’ll be both Chloe and myself working there. Will I have enough time to see everyone I want to? (No.) Will I eat well? Will I forget to pack something impossibly important? Will I disappoint my bosses? Will I disappoint anyone?

Traveling is always a Schrödinger experience for me — or, rather, preparing to travel is. There’s all this excitement and eagerness, but everything is also filled with this anxiety bucket of random nervousness and insecurity, as well. At least by the time you read this, all that will be over with.

(And then it’s just the marathon race of a five day convention…!)

Posted on

But the Future

There was a period a few weeks back where this site was getting bombarded by spam comments. Out of nowhere, there would be somewhere in the region of 30-50 spam comments daily, all of them either auto-generated by some nefarious AI that had been fed information on fashion designers of the 1970s and ‘80s — yeah, I don’t know why either, but all of the comments were related in some way to ‘70s and ‘80s designers; go figure — or were cut and pasted from some arcane essay somewhere. Either way, there was one comment that kept repeating, over and over, for the week or so that the spam attack kept happening:

“But the future is fascinating.”

That was it: one line, as opposed to the multi-paragraph comments that surrounded it every time it appeared. “But the future is fascinating.” Everything else would refer to Karl Lagerfeld or Ray Halston or whoever, just screeds of theorizing about what they brought to the fashion scene of the era, but then there would be this singular line that would reappear daily. The future is fascinating.

I love that line; the more I saw it as I deleted the various comments, the more I loved it. Sure, it’s almost certainly as random and automatically generated as everything around it, but it stood out and felt unusually important and filled with potential for something good or ill: “fascinating,” after all, could mean either.

It’s stuck with me in the weeks since, and I keep thinking about it on a worryingly regular basis. Out of a spam nowhere, I think I’ve found my ideal approach to life from now on. If nothing else, dear friends, let us always remember to keep our futures fascinating. We can but hope.

Posted on

Squelchy

After watching the impossibly fun Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One the other day — a movie as fast moving and enjoyable as that title is clunky and awkward — I found myself remembering the fact that, when Tom Cruise’s first Mission: Impossible movie came out back in 1996, it was accompanied by a high-profile version of Lalo Schifrin’s classic theme music by the unfamous half of U2, Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton.

More importantly, that version of the theme (every bit as uninspired and mid-90s as you would expect) was released as a single where the B-sides were remixes by dance producers, one of whom was Dave Clarke. Clarke’s contribution to the whole enterprise was to, bluntly, turn up the bass and make everything sound squelchy. (It was better than the U2 version, if nothing else.) There was a review in one of the music weeklies as the time that likened it to a bunch of spiders running over a synthesizer that had been left turned on by accident, a description that was enough to make me buy the single out of curiosity.

I mention all of this because it got me thinking about how much the music weeklies of that era impacted me: how easily swayed I was by their reviews, sure, but how much of their attitude and (in retrospect, painfully fake) confidence and swagger made me a believer and shaped my future career without my knowing.

It’s the 1990s Britpop era of the NME and Melody Maker (and monthly magazines like Select and Q) that demonstrated what could be done to write about pop culture as it was happening all around you in real time, and how that could be addressed as a fan but also a cynic, and that those two things weren’t really in opposition. That taught me how to temper your love for and belief in something with humor, too — thinking about writers like David Quantick or Steven Wells or Caitlin Moran, and how funny they were, as well as being insightful, angry, or whatever else was in their heads as the deadline approached.

I hadn’t realized it until I remembered the spiders on the keyboard line, close to three decades later, but the music writing I was reading in my late teens and early 20s accidentally showed me how to do the job I do today, and remember that it’s both ridiculous and oddly important. Another hidden part of my DNA.

Posted on

Power Pachyderms

My brain is turning things over these days, weighing things up and trying to figure things out. I can feel it happening in the background at times; an itching of small electricity somewhere inside, like sparks happening in the dark, things starting to come together.

There’s something I’m trying to do for work — a format I’m trying to work out for something, and a voice I’m trying to find for it — that is, in theory, not anything timely or urgent, but I can feel it shifting around in my head more and more these days, pushing itself around as if to tell me that it’s going to happen soon. It’s not a conscious thing, I feel compelled to clarify; I’m not sitting in a chair and thinking to myself I must break this format or else calamity, because that alone is a recipe for disaster and disappointment alike. I’m staying away from the “dis” words for now as much as possible.

Instead, it’s something I can feel moving when I’m doing dishes or cleaning the house. I’ve been going on more walks by myself lately, listening to music and getting some exercise, but I think that’s also subconsciously an attempt to let my brain wander and find the edges of this particular jigsaw at the same time without putting undue pressure on myself: just trying to clear space and see what happens.

It’s all an odd feeling, nonetheless; this sense of something unfolding in the background and fumbling around without looking to find something I’m not even sure about in the process. More than that, the strange part might be knowing that it’s all happening, feeling it in some weird, inexplicable manner, and trying not to think about it or focus on it at the same time so that I don’t interrupt whatever magic might be taking place.

Don’t think of pink elephants.

Posted on

Why

Every now and then, I ask myself why I’m doing any of this. By “this,” I mean, writing this blog and publishing random thoughts and ramblings when there are countless other things that I could be doing with my time, not the least of which could be sleeping. (Only joking; it’s summer or close enough, which means I’m awake by 5:30 no matter what, now, no matter when I go to sleep. I’m so tired, friends.)

Really, though; there are times when I start typing here and not knowing exactly where I’m going. The thing is, I think that’s the point. I’ve been writing professionally for more than a decade at this point, and writing publicly but unpaid for far, far longer — if we’re counting my student newspaper days, it gets close to three decades, shockingly — and I’ve come to trust in two truths along that time:

  1. I make sense of the world through writing.
  2. Writing is a skill that requires you both to keep your muscles in good shape through practice, but also to play, so that it stays fun and you learn new things to keep yourself engaged.

That’s what I’m doing here: I’m playing — doing this for me, and writing about what I want, no matter how self-indulgent and pointless that will be to others — while also putting things down on virtual paper to try and find out what happening around me and in my head. That other people are reading (I know of three friends who do, although I try not to think of them while writing because this is a space for me, dammit) is something I try to ignore: I don’t want to second guess the rambling, pointless nature of things, I guess.

Welcome to my brain; I’m sorry for the mess.

Posted on

Yesterday’s New

Thinking about comics again, after more time spent revisiting things I’d never read the first time around. This time, it was Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.s, a title that was wildly successful back in the day — one that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and convinced a generation of fans that this was as good as comics could be.

I wasn’t one of them; I was just a handful of years too old to be in that target audience, and instead I was left looking on, confused by what everyone was into and why it worked for them and not for me. Those initial Image Comics titles left me cold even as I paid attention to their rise to fame, bypassing DC to become the second biggest publisher in the U.S. despite only putting out a handful of books. This was the future, or so it looked at the time, and I was standing on the sidelines, feeling old and past it even as I wasn’t even out of my teens yet.

Looking back at WildC.A.T.s. now, I’m struck by how straightforward and traditional it all feels, despite the bombastic, stylized artwork that honestly doesn’t really stand up to the test of time. (Some of those costume designs in particular, woof.)

The basic concept of the series’ mythology is familiar enough to be easily understood and manipulated in any number of ways in later issues, and you can see how old-school writers like Alan Moore and Steve Gerber felt like they could step into the space and make it work. What really stuck out was how open-ended it all was: it’s clear that Lee et al were thinking about something that could continue publishing indefinitely, something that feels particularly rare now, when new comics are telling A Story with a beginning, middle, and end, even if those three things happen to be spaced pretty far apart.

Is it too old-fashioned to come up with a concept that can be folded up indefinitely and used in perpetuity, I wonder? Have comic readers en masse become too sophisticated for such a thing, and instead need to know when an end is near? Sometimes, I find myself wanting something old-fashioned and endless in my comics. No wonder I’m looking back in the past so often.

Posted on

Here’s to Swimmin’

I’d never, until yesterday, realized how utterly ruthless Jaws is when it comes to getting the viewer’s attention in the first place.

I’ve been watching a host of 1970s movies over the last year or so, filling in a decade’s worth of blanks in my cinematic education and finding a long list of new favorites in the process. (Most recently, Klute, which feels impressively contemporary in its approach to sex work in some respects, and shockingly old-fashioned in others.) Filled with a new appreciation for what’s apparently called the New Hollywood era by those in the know — and remembering the season — it felt like a reasonable idea to revisit the movie that arguably ushered in the blockbuster vogue that would dominate the ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond; a favorite of mine as a kid.

When I was a kid, though, I like Jaws for the idea of it: the exciting threat of John Williams’ theme, the visual of the poster, and the polite remix of the horror monster concept at the heart of the movie. It wasn’t really liking the actual movie at all, which is a shame; it’s such a fun, well-crafted piece of movie-making, and such an odd beast, as well.

As a kid I’d not realized, for example, that the first death comes within five minutes of the movie’s opening, wasting no time to tell the audience, “this is what we’re watching, get in or get going.” All of the movie’s metaphors about how America reacts to terror — the bravado and belief that nothing bad will happen to us — was lost on me entirely; similarly, the quiet exploration of masculinity in the second half, when everything slows down and it’s just Brody, Quint, and Richard Dreyfus’s character (who can ever remember his name?) on the boat together.

Maybe all of this is what makes Jaws so good; that it can make the kid me so excited with nothing but the tease of undersea terror and some great music, and the old man me sees it as something else entirely, and neither of us are wrong. Maybe none of that really matters, and I should just stop overthinking and promise myself that Jaws becomes a July 4th staple just because it’s a good movie for whatever reason.

Posted on

The Comics of June 2023

Suddenly, it’s July! And that means we get to revisit what comics I’ve been reading in the past month, which is definitely good news for anyone who’s been wondering if I’ve been reading some Green Arrow comics. Or Bill Mantlo-written Cloak and Dagger comics. Or WildCATs, for that matter. (But really, I read all of the Mike Grell Green Arrow run, and then finished the Kevin Smith/Brad Meltzer/Judd Winick run, too. I think I really like Green Arrow now…?) Yes, I read a lot of comics again in June. I’m… sorry, maybe…?

  1. Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters #s 1-3
  2. Green Arrow (1987) #s 3-8
  3. She-Hulk (2022) #s 1-6
  4. Green Arrow (1987) #s 9-13
  5. Marvel Graphic Novel #18: The Sensational She-Hulk (1985)
  6. 20th Century Men #s 1-2
  7. She-Hulk (2022) #s 7-10
  8. Green Arrow (1987) #s 14-16
  9. Icon vs. Hardware #s 2-3
  10. Micronauts: The New Voyages #1
  11. Dazzler (1980) #s 21-23
  12. Star Trek (1984) #s 18-21
  13. Dazzler (1980) #s 24-34
  14. Marvel Graphic Novel #12: Dazzler the Movie (1984)
  15. Dazzler (1980) #s 35-37
  16. Beauty & the Beast (1984) #s 1-4
  17. Dazzler (1980) #s 38-42
  18. The Defenders (1972) #94
  19. Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad (collected edition)
  20. Alien: The Illustrated Story OGN (Simonson!)
  21. Green Arrow (1987) #s 17-18
  22. The Defenders (1972) #s 95-101
  23. Star Trek (1984) #s 22-25
  24. Micronauts: The New Voyages #s 2-3
  25. The Defenders (1972) #s 102-105
  26. Why Art? OGN (Eleanor Davis)
  27. The Defenders (1972) #s 106-109
  28. Micronauts: The New Voyages #4
  29. Green Arrow (1987) #s 19-20
  30. Spider-Man (2022) #6
  31. Venom (2021) #17
  32. Hallows Eve #1
  33. Murderworld: Moon Knight #1
  34. Murderworld: Game Over #1
  35. Star Wars (2020) #s 31-32
  36. Green Arrow (1987) #s 21-25
  37. Death Bed #s 1-6 (Josh Williamson Vertigo mini)
  38. Frostbite #s 1-6 (Josh Williamson Vertigo mini)
  39. Unfollow #s 1-4
  40. The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye OGN
  41. Green Arrow (1987) #s 26-28
  42. Dark Days: The Forge #1
  43. Dark Days: The Casting #1
  44. Nightwing (2016) #17
  45. DC Pride Through The Years #1
  46. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #16
  47. Superman (2023) #5
  48. Green Arrow (2023) #3
  49. Titans (2023) #2
  50. Wonder Woman #800
  51. Green Arrow (1987) #s 29-38
  52. Detective Comics #s 1069-1072
  53. Action Comics #s 1054-1056
  54. Green Arrow (1987) #s 39-42
  55. Detective Comics #1073
  56. Green Arrow (1987) #s 43-50
  57. Unstoppable Doom Patrol #4
  58. Star Trek (1984) #s 26-28
  59. The New Teen Titans (1980) #s 1-2
  60. WildC.A.T.s (1992) #s 0, 1-9
  61. WildC.A.T.s Trilogy #s 1-3
  62. WildC.A.T.s Special (1993) #1
  63. WildC.A.T.s (1992) #s 10-13
  64. The New Teen Titans (1980) #3-6
  65. Void Rivals #1
  66. Fantastic Four (2022) #5
  67. Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #s 64, 69-70 (First appearances of Cloak & Dagger)
  68. Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976) #s 81-82
  69. Cloak and Dagger (1983) #s 1-4
  70. Marvel Team-Up Annual (1976) #6
  71. Year Zero: Volume Zero #s 1-5
  72. The Flash (1959)  #214
  73. Bob The Galactic Bum #1
  74. Cloak and Dagger (1985) #s 1-3
  75. Marvel Fanfare #19
  76. Cloak and Dagger (1985) #s 4-11
  77. Bob The Galactic Bum #s 2-4
  78. Cloak and Dagger: Predator and Prey OGN 
  79. Strange Tales (1987) #s 1-6 (Cloak and Dagger stories only; end of Mantlo run on C&D)
  80. Cloak and Dagger/Power Pack OGN
  81. Marvel Super-Heroes: Contest of Champions #1
  82. Showcase #100
  83. World’s Finest Comics #300
  84. Knight Terrors: First Blood #1
  85. Knight Terrors: Batman #1
  86. Knight Terrors: Black Adam #1
  87. Knight Terrors: The Joker #1
  88. Knight Terrors: Poison Ivy #1
  89. Knight Terrors: Ravager #1
  90. Knight Terrors: Green Lantern #1
  91. Knight Terrors: Shazam #1
  92. Peacemaker Tries Hard! #3
  93. Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent #5
  94. Judge Dredd: One-Eyed Jacks pt. 4-5 (Megazine serial)
  95. Marvel Team-Up Annual (1976) #1
  96. Adventureman #1
  97. The Bojeffries Saga TPB (Top Shelf edition)
  98. Dredd: Underbelly 
  99. Dredd: Uprise 
  100. Cyberforce (1992) #s 1-3
  101. Green Arrow (1987) #s 51-62
  102. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 100-106
  103. Judge Dredd from 2000 AD March-June 2023 progs 
  104. Smash! (2020 2000 AD spin-off oneshot)
  105. Junkyard Joe #s 1-6
  106. G.I. Joe (1982) #s 107-110
  107. Immoral X-Men #2
  108. Secret Invasion (2022) #s 1-5
  109. Green Arrow (1987) #s 63-68
  110. Nightwing (2016) #105
  111. Green Arrow (1987) #s 69-81
  112. Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley pt. 1-12 (Ennis Rogue Trooper revival)
  113. X-Force (2019) #s 7-20
  114. The Spirit (2007) #1 
  115. Wolverine (2020) #13
  116. The Spirit (2007) #2
  117. X-Force (2019) #s 21-28
  118. X-Force (2019) #s 29-38
  119. Wolverine (2020) #s 26-32
  120. Knight Terrors #1
  121. Knight Terrors: Zatanna #1
  122. Knight Terrors: Robin #1
  123. Knight Terrors: The Flash #1
  124. World’s Finest: Teen Titans #1
  125. The Spirit (2007) #3
  126. Hulk (2021) #s 9-13
  127. Cyberforce (1992) #s 4
  128. Cyberforce (1993) #s 0, 1-3
  129. The Spirit (2007) #s 4-8
  130. Divinity #s 1-3
  131. Rogue Trooper: Blighty Valley pt. 13 (Final chapter Ennis revival)
  132. What If…? (1989) #54
  133. Divinity #4
  134. The Spirit (2015) #s 1-4
  135. The Book of Death #s 1-4
  136. The Book of Death: Harbinger #1
  137. The Book of Death: X-O Manowar #1
  138. The Spirit (2007) #9
  139. Ultimate Invasion #1
  140. The Incredible Hulk (2023) #1
  141. Green Arrow (2001) #s 11-23
  142. The Spirit (2015) #s 5-12
  143. Vertigo Quarterly: Cyan #1
  144. Vertigo Quarterly: Magenta #1
  145. Vertigo Quarterly: Yellow #1
  146. Vertigo Quarterly: Black #1
  147. Green Arrow (2001) #s 26-32 
  148. The Spirit (2007) #10
  149. Green Arrow (2001) #s 33-46
  150. The Incal: Dying Star OGN
  151. The Spirit (2007) #s 11-12 (End of Darwyn Cooke run)
  152. Prism Stalker: The Weeping Star OGN
  153. Green Lantern/Green Arrow #s 76-77
  154. WildC.A.T.s (1992) #s 15-20
  155. Wildcats (1999) #s 0, 1-10
  156. The Shadow (1987) #5
  157. The Flash (1987) #s 1-15
  158. She-Hulk (2022) #12
  159. Joe Fixit #3
  160. Wasp (2023) #3
  161. Punisher (2022) #10
  162. The Flash (1987) #s 16-24
  163. The Shadow (1987) #1
  164. The Flash (1987) #s 25-29
  165. The Flash Annual (1987) #3
  166. The Flash (1987) #s 30-40
  167. The Flash (1987) #s 41-52
  168. Green Arrow (2001) #s 47-50
  169. The Flash (1987) #s 53-61 (End of William Messner-Loebs run)
  170. Archer & Armstrong (2012) #s 1-5
  171. The Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #s 21-22
  172. The He-Man Effect: How America’s Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood OGN
  173. Archer & Armstrong (2012) #s 6-13, 0
  174. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #17
  175. Hawkgirl (2023) #1
  176. Archer & Armstrong (2012) #s 14-17
  177. Archer & Armstrong: Archer #0
  178. Bloodshot and the HARD Corps #s 20-21
  179. Archer & Armstrong (2012) #s 18-25
  180. Harley Quinn: Black, White and Redder #1
  181. Tales of the Titans #1
  182. Knight Terrors: Superman #1
  183. Knight Terrors: Punchline #1
  184. Knight Terrors: Wonder Woman #1
  185. Green Arrow (2001) #s 51-55
  186. Green Arrow (2001) #s 56-75
  187. Black Canary (2007) #s 1-4
  188. Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special #1
Posted on

And Turned Around, Sooner or Later

The other day (as I write this, weeks before you read it), I was having a conversation about the importance of failure — the idea that it’s not only okay to fail at things sometimes, it’s probably necessary on some deep, inexplicable emotional level.

This was treated with no small amount of cynicism by the person I was talking to, and I get it: failure is meant to be a bad thing, and certainly isn’t the goal of any particular enterprise, especially in the early days. Moreover, I can remember surprisingly clearly how strongly I felt about the idea of failing at something when I was younger: how scary it felt, how overwhelming and horrifying the very concept of people seeing me not do the thing I set out to was at the time. How could I face them if they knew how badly I fucked up? I’d ask myself, mortified at even considering the possibility.

Since those days, I’ve failed at a lot of things, professionally and personally. I’ve screwed up, and I’ve been screwed up by others; it’s been difficult and awkward and, sure, utterly embarrassing at times, too; I’ve dealt with a lot of it badly, and with less grace and goodwill than I’d have liked, looking back, in many cases, too, to my regret… but I can’t deny that a bunch of those failures have been for the best, in the long run.

Not in the, “every failure was a step on the path here” way, exactly — but also that, as cliche as it is — but in the sense of, it’s good to learn your limits and find out what you can’t do as well as what you can. It’s worthwhile to step out of the wreckage and go, “Well, I’m never doing that again,” and know exactly why. There’s value in fucking up and learning from your mistakes, even if sometimes the real lesson is that someone else is a real dick.

I’m not sure how much of this translated to the person I was talking to, or how much they realized that (a) they’ve failed at something and that’s fine as long as they accept it, and (b) it’s better to fail and move on than pull everything down around them in an attempt to disguise the failure from themselves and others. I know that the me of even a decade ago might not have been ready to accept that. Nonetheless: sometimes it’s good to give in and admit that you made a trash fire.