Little Short One, Pt. 1
Literally only a couple of graphics from the THR newsletter this time; the week before the July 4 holiday weekend — which we obviously took off, like the rest of the country, so no newsletter and no graphics — was surprisingly light on scoops, and there were no last minute reworkings of headlines or images. So this, dear reader, is your lot.
July 23, 2020
Stay At Home Con
The reality of there being no San Diego Comic-Con has fully set in by now, of course; this is the day I should be in the air on the way to Southern California for a week of overwork and panicked socializing, seeing people in person that I’ve only talked to via email or Slack for a year. Alas, this year, it’s not to be, and I’ll admit that I’m still struggling with that in a number of ways.
Don’t get me wrong; with everything happening in the world, I don’t want to be in a packed convention center with hundreds of thousands of other people right now, especially not in all-too-warm San Diego, with everyone sweating over each other — if ever there was a perfect petri dish for infection, it’d be that scenario. (Also, at this stage of quarantine, even the idea of being in that kind of crowd feels unreal and more than a little scary; imagine going from being cut off from the rest of the world for four months to suddenly being seemingly surrounded in close quarters by it!)
But the fact remains that the loss of SDCC feels like the true signifier that this year has been lost to the plague, for some dumb internal system waiting to reach a particular level before sounding the alarm. This is where the true break is for my ridiculous broken brain. If there’s no San Diego Comic-Con, then all is lost, apparently. Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico…?
It’s that the SDCC trip has been, perpetually, the closest thing I’ve had to a summer vacation in — what, a decade, if not longer, by this point…? That’s part of it, and that it is a place (and event) that resonates so strongly for me for a number of reasons, as well; more than any other convention — the others all feel like “work trips” far more than SDCC, even though I traditionally work irrationally hard at SDCC — it’s become a traditional place to see friends and have experiences that are often surreal and heightened and a break from reality in some indistinct, but very real, way.
Perhaps that’s what I’m missing the most from the absence of the show this year — that break from the norm. 2020 is a year that’s “not normal,” of course, but it’s steamrolled everything into this new shape where everyday is more or less like the one before because we’re in the same space, doing the same thing, all the time. If ever there was a need for something unusual and special, it’s now — but, instead, SDCC has been cancelled and replaced by an event online that we watch from the comfort of our own homes, like everything else.
I miss the alternative, is all.
July 22, 2020
July 21, 2020
Don’t Catch You Slipping Now
It’s quite a thing to be as scared for your city as I am right now. To know with actual certainty that federal forces are literally kidnapping people off the streets and pulling them into unmarked vans in broad daylight — on camera, even — and that there’s nothing I can do about it, in a practical sense. The feeling of powerlessness, of helplessness, is the point, of course; what’s happening is entirely about intimidation and fear and trying to push people’s spirits down even further to break them. It’s a show of force, and there’s never a reason for that beyond emotional abuse.
The whole thing feels almost cartoonishly dystopian, even as it’s just a small increase from where we’ve been living for weeks, now. The Black Lives Matter protests have been happening for, what, six or seven weeks by this point, and they’ve been peaceful each time until police have arrived and literally pushed for violence; there was a video from a protest just last week where a cop smacked a protester’s phone from their hand into a store window, with that smashed window then used to justify beating the protesters. It was, after all, “property damage,” and such things take priority over everything else, even if the damage was the result of police actions.
Also this week, there was the confirmation of something long rumored, as court documents revealed that undercover police really are seeding protests and trying to work as agitators, pushing others into acts that will then be used as “proof” that the protests are unjust, uncouth, unconstitutional in some way. That they’re reason enough for authorities to “fight back,” to fight, to become the thugs they declare the other side to be and beat down an argument that they can’t have, have no interest in having. The tactics of bullies in uniforms throughout history.
As reports of what’s happening in Portland started spreading across social media late last week, I saw so many people say things to the effect of, “This isn’t America.” It’s a lie that makes people feel comfortable, and I understand why, but the truth is, this is America. This is what it’s been like for some time. And it’s why it’s all the more important to stand up and do something about it, no matter how scary it feels.
July 20, 2020
July 17, 2020
It Was A Graveyard Smash
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted an image here that isn’t a graphic for the THR newsletter or part of the daily 2020 Visions series, but to be fair, it’s been a long time since I’ve made one. Technically, this was made for a newsletter graphic — you’ll see eventually— and I also used it as the basis of a daily image, but I liked it enough to share the original, too. Have some monsters.
This was speedily drawn on a Friday morning ahead of the newsletter it was going to be used in; I’d created a graphic for a story the evening before at the end of a long day of writing and editing and calls, and I was exhausted; it wasn’t a good graphic, and I woke up the next day determined to do something better. That was channeled into this sketch, which was then screwed with in fake Photoshop, and another (better) graphic was indeed created. Hours later, I screwed with it some more for a 2020 Visions image here. But it all started with this image.