Each zine doesn’t have to post on the last day of the year. It can be just to make sure I get one in every year (though I already had one up in 2021 so I needn’t had rushed for another, but it was still good to push and get another one in). I have a routine (that’s working well) and sometimes these just come together and they’re ready. And so, this one.
In May I graduated college (Cal State L.A.) and got my degree in English. Then over the summer I took a program from the L.A. Review of Books for publishing & editing, for skills in making books and magazines (and got a story published). I’ve applied to Marvel Comics twice. I’m legit. If you have a project that needs an editor (and if you have something that might, then it does), you only need to contact me. I am a resource. I don’t know why you’d look anywhere else.
I’ve been posting my comics on eBay since the beginning of the year. After we moved I realized just how much stuff I have, even with the storage shed that was one of the perks of the new place. The unease over having so much stuff is what went into my “Bookshelves” piece (in issue #19.08.13) and coming to the realization that all my comics and what I’ve collected over nearly 40 years are just sitting there with no purpose, and the future has settled into the present. What is the purpose of having all these comics? If I’ve read them, it’s not likely I’ll go back to them. It’s even more likely they won’t appreciate in value (at least not enough to compensate for the price of keeping them (let’s not think about how much I paid for a monthly storage space for years until we moved)). If I want to read those books again (not much of a chance since I have plenty of new stuff to get to first), I can get them from the library (a resource I wish I’d discovered long ago) or digitally (largely for free). They aren’t worth much -- the time to sell would have been years before I met someone to move house with -- but whatever value they have diminishes each day when another comics reader goes digital. There are a few books that might be worth a little, but more for old-school collectors that refuse to update to the times, super-cheap art pieces, pop-culture novelties, or books to give to kids (which I can support the most, if it’s not my plethora of Vertigo books), I’ve seen enough people come into the comic store (pretty much every time I’ve been there) with a box of comics, hoping they’ll get $1000 for them, willing to take $100, then taking the $10 they’re offered (with a grumble from the store owner that it’s more junk he has to find space for, if they don’t sell as dollar books). I had a plan to just take everything down to a local shop or the half-off bookstore but as easy as that would be, it would also be pretty much giving it all away, and I already went through that with my CDs. With time while waiting for work and quarantine coming and going, I decided to go for as much as I could get for them and post them on eBay myself. I’ve done this occasionally over the years, getting rid of some extras in my collection (often replacing original issues with trades and collections -- something to come back to bite me), so I have a respectable user rating (after selling what could have been the start of a comic shop with mine and Griesbach’s cast-offs in the late-’90s) and knowledge of how to list and package the items. So it became my part-time job and actually fun, for as much work as it’s been. The plan is to get rid of everything -- not compromising helps to be final with it all. There are a few books I’ll keep -- mostly nostalgic or sentimental stuff, maybe some particularly valuable issues (like stuff signed by Stan Lee), special gifts, possibly some stuff done by friends -- but maybe a short-box at most, something I can stash away in the back of the closet (for, still, no particular purpose). Taking about 20 long-boxes down to what could fit in a backpack is significant. Don’t get me wrong: I still love comics. I’m actually reading more issues now than I have in a while (due to my schedule freeing up a little so I can get sometimes eight pages in a night a few times a week). My plan is once I’m done selling all of it I’ll get a subscription for the DC and/or Marvel digital issues (also to cover the books I’m selling before I read them, which is about half the collection (and what I’m selling last, just in case I can get to it)). And if not digital I can -- say it along with me -- buy them on eBay. I love comics now as much as I ever have, and there’s a lot I still want to get to. I just don’t need to keep piling up print versions that take up a lot of space and irritate people kind enough to help me move. I sold cards first. I didn’t buy completely into the card craze back in the ‘90s but there were some sets I thought were cool at the time, and of course some gaming. That stuff was also the most unwieldy to store -- just stuff in plastic bags and boxes thrown in bigger boxes -- and I didn’t want to have to look forward to getting a small return on it. They actually sold well. An incomplete run of some “deluxe” Marvel cards got the Buy It Now price (about $40). A set of Saturday Night Live cards missing a card (the one for the “Bass-O-Matic” that I might have removed to do something else with) sold. A few Magic: The Gathering starter sets and a bunch of Jyhad/Vampyre cards (a game I sadly never got to play much). Eventually they all sold, some even for more than a few bucks. Relatively it was successful, and much better than I ever would have thought. It could be nostalgia for the ‘90s that’s coming up on the generation of kids in their 20s that now have money and want to buy pieces of their childhoods (from what I can tell, the main engine for any nostalgia market), and material that can’t be downloaded or pirated like books and music can. I didn’t do as well with some really nice CD box sets (mostly Carla’s) and neat music-collector’s items, generally only getting a few bucks at most, but it all eventually sold (as it will when you let it go long enough. EBay doesn’t charge unless it sells, and they make it easy to relist unsold items). I still have a massive Johnny Cash book & box set (that’s almost bigger than a coffee table), but I’m not even sure how to ship that if it sold. My formula for setting prices is usually this: For most books, start the auction price at a quarter of cover. If I took all these books to the half-off book store (actually, that’s literally its name) and they sell this stuff at half of cover, they’re going to give me half of that (on a good day). So I know if it sells for that starting price I at least got that (and can only go up if more than one person wants it). The Buy It Now price is cover, what I paid for it, though I rarely ever bought (or buy, still) anything at full cost, and usually I’ve gotten a 20% discount, so getting that means I’m turning a profit above what I even paid. And, amazingly, I frequently get that, even for books that are surely still in print, but I won’t question why. EBay also offers the price an identical item sold for, so I’ll go with that, if it’s higher, but usually the market will set the price anyway (one of my favorite things about eBay. I could never be a salesman). Then I think I get a buck or two when eBay overcharges for shipping. It’s not a lot of money, and far less than I paid for, but it’s something, and I can get slightly more than a pittance for all of it. I’ve gotten good at packaging (a lot of cheap bubble envelopes, and I’ve become a scavenger for cardboard, to use as reinforcement), eBay calculates shipping, and I can drop off anything at the post office a block away any time before 4pm. I posted maybe 20 Batman books (the best stuff I had wanted to keep) a couple weeks after the Pattison movie was out. I didn’t think anything about the timing and how it might help to sell books when the property is hot, but the books sold really well. I think there was a set of The Long Halloween that went for the Buy It Now price within 40 minutes of it going up (always at 2:00 on Sunday afternoons, so I can get them ready to post at any time and not have to think about scheduling to end at a certain time. Starting then, in a 10-day auction, they end on Wednesday afternoon, which accommodates half a day for last-minute bids, and, with a 3-day handling period (which I set) I can package them to send out on Saturday afternoon (sometimes earlier but that’s as late as it would have to go (assuming they pay on time))). Just before posting my ‘90s Nightwing collection (with #1 going for $100 on Mile High), I suddenly realized that I could do better with putting up auctions when there’s the most attention for the property, and I have so much to post that I can wait on as much as I like for the right time. This also did well for my Sandman-related books posted the weekend the Netflix show came out. I actually only had a half-dozen periphery titles, but they sold well (and I probably could have gotten more for that Corinthian mini-series, which went for the BIN price -- only cover -- within minutes.) (And I already sold my Sandman trades in a complete set earlier in the year, for a little more than cover, which I thought was pretty good at the time, but that was before I even knew they were shooting a Sandman show, much less that it would be out in a few months, and I could surely have gotten more if I’d waited. Oh well.) I sent my Suicide Squad/Doom Patrol Special to the Warner Bros. prop department and they said they wanted the issue for an episode of Young Sheldon. After the Peacemaker show had been out for a while I put up a complete set of the original Vigilante series (52 issues, including Annuals), and, after a bidding war, ended up going for over $200, which was shocking. I think I got those issues off eBay years ago for $30 or so. Profit! (Also sold a complete set of Sandman Mystery Theatre (for the Sandman connection) which got the BIN price, over $110.) So it’s my part-time job when I’m between gigs and when I have a few hours on a weekend (which is infrequent). Right now I have up JSA trades (update: half of which have sold) and a few single issues, to coincide with the Black Adam movie (which may have done better before it's out for the hype or when it’s out when buyers can be excited about something they know -- I still haven’t decided which is better), and next a complete Morrison Doom Patrol run (which has probably passed its peak in popularity but I’m sure it has its fans now), then probably my (complete, through the ‘90s) The Question run and the rest of my Vertigo stuff, then Dark Horse, Image & indie books. The Marvel stuff will sell perennially so I don’t have to be in a rush (though I might move up selling my Thunderbolts issues, to strike when the hype-iron is hot). Carla said it would take me five years to sell all I have. Probably not a bad guess. It's maybe an average of 15 minutes for each posting and on a free day I might have six hours, so I can get a dozen listings up on a decent day. But it’s the kind of detail-oriented task that for some reason I enjoy, and it’s fun to see how much the stuff goes for. The sooner I'm done the sooner I’ll have a much wider selection of stuff to read (and far less to find room for). Of course: mar93 on eBay.
I went to a Live Talk with Grant Morrison. They talked about their new book and mostly explained the pronoun thing (slightly less pretentious and maybe a little more commendable than it would seem), but didn’t do a signing, because of Covid protocols. (I didn’t buy the book because if I’m going to read it it will be with the audiobook, so a print version would be a waste (as has happened before).) It was a 40-minute drive into L.A. then back. It was good to get out of the house.
Another issue of reviews that corresponds to a semester of college for me, this time Spring ‘21. (I squeezed in another class in the Winter ‘21 intersession (while our house was going through post-Christmas throes of Covid), a Sex & Gender class for a Communications requirement (another major I might have considered if I hadn’t been so set on writing when I started), and I learned a lot. Every day (of three weeks) was covering a different topic -- gender inequality, discrimination in prisons, gay rights, transgender issues, intersectionality, take your pick -- in videos, documentaries, online articles, John Oliver clips, etc. (still -- and always -- in remote learning), then write a 1-page paper (that I of course made in multiple pages). It was a lot to stack up but I wasn’t working so I had the time (and half the house was getting over being really sick and the other half was avoiding it, so I could bear down and focus on it, especially on my own time (which was usually after getting up around 2pm, then school until turning in the paper literally just a minute before it was due at midnight)). It was a lot of engrossing material and I picked up a lot, with real-world topics and painfully current events (a great contrast to the stale and crusty texts we read for literature). There was a textbook for the class but it was very much a textbook, as dry as it could be, and didn’t connect to much in the class more than an obligation to get us to have to buy a book for the semester and read some of it (though of course I went with the approach of listening to it). But it was a great class and I learned a lot well beyond literature (especially in getting so much material in multimedia formats, an advent for me) and got to see Paris is Burning, which should be required viewing for anyone who has ever claimed themselves as an outcast).
Things were looking better in the spring, but we were still stuck in the house (and I got a job about halfway through the semester, though that didn’t impact my classes, especially without a commute (probably the saving grace of my entire latter college experience). As usual I took two classes: World Literature (which is astounding I hadn’t taken it before, but I might have approached it with a more narrow view 25 years younger (and somehow even less world-experienced) and Readings in Theory, which was basically philosophy as an English class. It was a lot of dense, heady material, often too much to get my head around, and not much to glide around like through a narrative where you can pick up a few broad themes and say you got it. It was also the class where I bombed my first quiz (getting lost in my notes and having to recalibrate how I learned the stuff), and skimmed too many B+ grades that another A was in question. (I eventually got a 90.3% for the class -- barely by the skin of my teeth. Certainly a little lower than that would have been acceptable to anyone else (and would barely be a blemish on my GPA that would make any difference) but I had dedicated myself to getting As because I knew I could, and it would have been crushing to have dropped below that, so I’m gracious for whatever fortunate or what I could find within myself to pull out the grade I wanted). There was no easy reading in the class (though listening with text-to-speech helped (but work to cut-n’-paste from the (digital) book)), but I can say that my college experience exposed me fully to Plato, Aristotle (still don’t know those two apart), Horace (a lot of great stuff about writing and creating), Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge (not making me love the Romantic poets any more by going for the most difficult parts of them (again after the Brit Lit class the semester before (and also the first time I was in school (then also in high school)))), Nietzsche (twice), Eliot (having the distinction of getting in as more than just a poet), Brooks, Saussure, Barthes, Freud (a great essay analyzing The Sandman (not getting into his sexual analyzation perhaps being the biggest consession to this being an English class)), and Gilbert & Gubar (some feminist stuff that shouldn’t be lost today). I won’t go into all those. Though “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a gem in the reading, like a treat at the end to reward that we got through all the stuff, though I now recognize references to it, so it’s a monumental work. It actually was a narrative piece, connecting mainly to Gilbert & Gubar, and expressing a feminist view on historic literature (mainly that of a woman being trapped in the role of her gender and writing and imagination being a narrow form of escape), but more a wicked story that starts a little messy then twists into a horror story as moving as anything I’ve read. It would be a compelling thrill as pleasure reading but it became an assignment and discussion, which felt like I was getting away with something, but also to show that there could be non-academic adventure in reading, even in the morass of heavy, philosophical texts. When literature isn’t seen as a chore, there can be some great reading to find (good enough to survive long enough for us to study and appreciate it after all this time).
The Immoralist by André Gide. The World Literature class ended up having a routine: take a week or two to read a book, watch a YouTube video for context, write thoughts about the story on a discussion board, then explore a couple themes for the mid-term (which could also be on another book we read). There was no live discussion (in class or on Zoom), and only an obligation to reply to what a couple others had written on the boards. There was hardly any interaction with the professor (who I found later was going through some family crises in the depths of the pandemic), but it actually worked great for me: read, write, read, write, write more -- that was a process I could do a lot with, and on my own. Some students (of any schools) said they didn’t do well with remote learning and they couldn’t get into it, but I thrived, much like I always knew I would if that was my opportunity in going back to school and doing as much as I was able to do online. I could do the work on my own time (usually at night) and could read the books at my own pace (usually reading along with an audiobook or text-to-speech (except the last one which I couldn’t track down but it was actually refreshing to go back to raw-reading it like back in the day)). For a class that went for a few months, having assignments for only four books seemed thin, though the hope was that we could get deep into them, but it was really just a survey in the sparsest sense, reading these things because they’re a few of many substantial books and writing on them because that’s what you do. It worked for me but I didn’t have anything to compare it to (or complain to if there had been a problem with it). I was just happy that I didn't have to commute to class (or, in this class’s case, even put on clothes to show up for a Zoom session).
Our first book was from 1902 (though no threat that all of them were going to be old and out-of-touch since the other readings were relatively recent). This was a North African piece as distant from its age as its culture, which is actually to say not so alien when there are themes that resonate to today. It can be obtuse, even when decoding its world and the issues of postcolonialism [a subtle introduction to that topic; more on that later], not as brisk for being a relatively slim volume, also translated, but getting lost in it reveals a hidden layer that would be easily lost with a quick, surface reading. It’s a sinister vein going through it, something I questioned finding, then realized I was right and was sickened by my discovery (my fault for getting so into it). For taking place somewhere so abundant in sun, culture, and history (northern Africa and southern Europe)) it’s subversive and monumentally dark, but the form in crafting its construction is exquisite, and almost a trick to pull off, hiding such machinations within its words. It leaves a feeling of ickiness like seeing a Todd Solondz film, but it’s compelling when you’re drawn in enough to fear what it has to offer. Of course there’s the function of showing the conflict between French Algiers and Europe of that time, but while it’s a rich setting it’s the background of an eviscerating drama at the front of the story (or behind its curtains).
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee. This one is a fairly simple story narratively, but the human complexities fly off with it and it goes far. It’s also a story with a sudden and moving scene that sums up then perpetuates the story, but the real intensity is in the emotional violence that runs through much of the whole thing. For the context of the class this ran parallel with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, which stretches an allegory and is a bit too easy to reach since the author is South African, but then it’s a local story with a broader implication, and a closer look at the trials of that country during such a turbulent and singular time. Before and after a particular scene that sets that parallel its metaphors can shift, but it also becomes a story about reconciliation with others and the self as well as the limits to which that can reach, no matter how genuine the personal intention is. So like much of the best art it works on a number of levels, more than I was able to soak up on just one reading (being that I skimmed the intended connection with the South African hearings) in favor of the personal arc of the main character. The writing is also sparse, deliberate but not finicky, just enough to get the story out, and the potency of the writing from that concentration helps move through pages. It’s a book that’s a wonder to be considered literature since it’s so enjoyable, but it attains its lofty status (as well as having won a Pulitzer) for working on levels and saying something about the human condition (like most good art). This book also made me an instant fan of the author and finding that many of his other works were as well-regarded and taught in other classes for other contexts. This might have also been when I started to come around to realizing I could read more diverse authors, and even though this one is another white dude, at least he’s isn’t American or British (another point of the class). I even read another of his books as extra, unofficially assigned for another class, even after that class was over [and I’ll get to that one later].
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry.. The context for this one is the generations of people living after the Indian Partition of the ‘40s, into a ground-level view of working-class families in modern-day urban India (though we might be led to believe that the entire country has been taken over by urban sprawl). It’s about a family under stress, grappling with their circumstances and the ghosts of their own histories, that approaches a farce (as many families will be) then twists into tragedy and cuts deep. It’s also an intimate look at the culture of the country, especially in family structures (which are more essential, for practicality if nothing else, than much of the rest of the world), and just scraping by as a citizen or human being. The context for this became more of a setting to the events than a shaping for a metaphor, but it worked to give a view of the cultural and financial issues there and transposing them into personal and emotional circumstances, as well as the difficulties of family dynamics that are universal. A common theme from these stories around the world is that of occupation by a greater power (often the British) and stories told from those occupied, which can be a more sentimental and potent view than the superiors. The writing isn’t elaborate but it accounts for an entire family of characters so it becomes a chunk of a book that needs to be powered through to get the broader themes (of life, of living, of struggling with yourself and your past and your present and others, to reconciling with the long- and recent-dead). It’s a lot to get lost in, but leaving it can give a new perspective on familial relationships (and seeing how similar anyone’s situations are, no mater where in time or the world).
Pillars of Salt by Fadia Faqir. This one dealt with the plight of Arab women from the time of the British Mandate in Jordan. The story has a compelling structure, with two women imprisoned in a mental hospital telling each other their personal histories and struggles while developing a trust between them. What these women endured could be considered fiction only to give it some distance because it’s brutal, though it infers that even worse has happened to comparable people, then and since. (And this was produced in the mid-’90s, and likely little has changed.) It’s also a view of the conflicts with British colonizers, which motivates the abuse inflicted upon the women, as pain rolls downhill from the powerful to the weakest and women, trapped in the lowest class, is where it stops, sometimes horrifically. It makes for an intense read, made more difficult but intimate by not being able to move through it briskly with an audio aid (some books just don’t get an audiobook. And yet Billy Idol reading his memoirs is available), but focusing on the words for my own immediate comprehension. Though the context for this didn’t go into the British Mandate, it required our own research, which also notes how this was the study that came up with the least consideration at the far end of the class. We went instead with our personal knowledge and perception of Arab people, which for the others mainly started and ended at seeing Aladdin as kids then reevaluating the stereotypes in it from a modern, Gen Z approach, but as for me (who was already in college when they were watching cartoons), it was mainly the Fables story and what I picked up of Ramadan from that year it shared a hotel with us for Chicago Wizard World. (This study into the Middle East, along with One Thousand and One Nights, was also a context that came back later in another class with the same teacher, as he was very fond of it, but couldn’t necessarily make a connection between all the books apart from it (but saved me a little bit of time when I had to study it for context a second time).) Along with the lack of added context going in to the study of this book, it also got the shortest shrift of discussions, even less than the rest, as the class schedule was shortened somehow and we barely had a discussion on the boards, along with less time to read and process it. Needless to say I did not use it as a reference for my final paper. (That would have been on Family Matters, which ended up being one of the best papers I wrote for school, enough that I used it as part of my senior project.)
Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen. Another of The Kid’s books for school, but not a Newberry Award-winner, which sets off some suspicion, since there are plenty other books that have been more prestigious. As it is, it’s squarely a young-adults read, with characters relatable to a certain age and themes within their limits. The main character starts as such an asshole you know there’s only redemption as a climax, which can leave hopes for the rest of it pretty flat. An early and pivotal event is so graphic that it would be easy to doubt that it was meant for kids or surprising that articulating it has to be part of the fabric of the story in the first place. But it’s in there and it gives the story more of a pulse than a tale with a moral center too strong for younger readers to care about, which makes the last third pretty mushy, for as much as the story thinks it needs some swerves. It becomes predictable at the worst points, but even though it tells more than it shows and blows through the plot in a breezy manner, the intended visuals of that central event are strong enough to keep the entire thing from dragging itself down, and it can mostly trudge along. There’s something happening under the surface, but the book might come too soon for a unit on deep subtext. Still, it’s nice to see a story offer something beyond shallow heroes that are so easily likable that they can be hard to stomach, and if a kid can get a lesson out of it, when it’s not acting like it’s preaching to not be an asshole, that’s better than any award.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Another hole in my past education, that I never read this in school (and apparently it doesn’t get into college). It’s a classic, and it should be on any reading list. Though its best aspect is capturing a moment in time, in Alabama in the Civil Rights Era when racial tensions were at a boiling point, it’s best as a photograph of that time, and a reference to what America (and not just in the South) was and even still could be (especially recently) It’s popular in schools since it can teach about racism without having to see its true ugliness first-hand (depicted in the book as only a glimpse that can be held at a distance as fiction). The writing is evocative, placing a reader right in that place (whether it’s a place you would or wouldn’t want to be), compelling with the big failures and small victories, and also from the point of a view of a kid whose consciousness is clear enough that they haven’t had racism or bad politics imprinted upon them, to give a student a point of view to relate to. Even throw in some sexual violence to give it an edge, and it amounts to pretty heavy stuff to give to kids in school, much less to be taught for the last half-century (and could probably be more of a weapon if those kids knew what they had access to). This is probably one of those books that has come up on lists of literature to be banned, likely for its racial epithets, though if they really wanted to take care of those, maybe they could stop using those words. It’s such a solid book, there might even be reasons to keep teaching it even if/when we all get along.
Sissy Spacek reads the audiobook, or at least one version, though I can’t imagine someone putting the heart and twang into a more precise interpretation.
Animal Farm by George Orwell. The Kid got to read this one for school, and not only is it one I’ve actually already read but it’s also one that I enjoyed enough back in my freshman year of high school that I would even read (or listen) to it again. It was one of the first books I got a deeper meaning from, even though I didn’t get the greater, historical metaphors; I felt I understood it better than I had a book previously, especially being literature assigned in school. Books assigned in class before then had been a chore at best, but this might have been the first book I read that made me think there could be value in literature, not just reading shallow stories for pleasure. That it was an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist era was lost on me, and still is, and probably is for kids, unless they’re taking an English class mixed with history (more than just for a simple context), which would be a rich experience, but that period seems a minor era to study, especially for an American audience. I connected to the themes of power and the abuse of it, which was potent, and a good vs. evil fable that was sharp enough to give it more depth than superheroes, if not for shading along a moral spectrum but to see how political abuse slowly corrodes after taking advantage of a situation. But if I’m really being honest, it was a quick read that I finished on the school bus way back when, and I don’t recall it being taught in class, but I’ve recalled it fondly as being a painless assignment. I didn’t get much more from it on the recent read, even less by being able to breeze through it on audiobook, but it was pleasant to revisit it knowing what I know now (having stronger and more considered morals, but knowing no more about Russian history). If it’s a wonder they haven’t put together an animated version of the book that could stand up in modern times, it’s because the Russian historical context is unappealing (both from the distance in history and also being Russian these days). There’s still plenty to get from it to illustrate, and you’d think more kids who are now artists would have been influenced by it from school (since it could be the most interesting and easiest book to read).
Believe Me by Eddie Izzard (audiobook). I got the book as a gift but, as with most books, I knew it would be a while before I could get to it (maybe even in my lifetime), but I could move up listening to it. The book version could have been enough: Izzard, a gifted comedian who has also done well in acting, taking those talents to be a writerly storyteller of his own life story, with as much detail as these things have, including how so much of his personal as well as professional life revolves around his loss of his mother at an early age, which he nearly confronts but mostly leaves for interpretation by the reader since they’re going to anyway, not going over a few hundred pages with it all but dropping in some good stories and some perspective and humility, and generally funny, though not to the degree of what he’s made his name on. It could have been a dry read, with the words of someone else’s story, and humor doesn’t always survive in print. But the audiobook takes it to another level, maybe a few of them. Izzard himself reads it (as if anyone else would) and he transforms the work into its own version of his story, using the book as a loose guide at best, and interjecting extra material and observations and updates and footnotes (which he notes as being, then almost becomes its own running gag) and some bits funnier than he could put into text. Of course much of it is in his delivery, but the work shows how limiting him to something as potentially dimensionless as a book could lose something of his essence. He saves it by basically making the whole thing into an unofficial stand-up special (as he would) and almost a send-up of these celebrity auto-bios and audiobooks, more as a comedy performance than even spoken word. Especially seeing a few of his last few shows, I might even say this audiobook is the best performance he’s had in the days since we’ve known who he is.
I know people who bristle at the thought of an audiobook comparing to the actual printed version, as if the book spoken is an inferior product, but if this isn’t a suitable replacement just for reading the book, it can considered its own work, as superior over the original material and of its own form as it is. Usually I could see how folks might prefer experiencing the book as the purer form of reading, and that an audiobook may just be a matter of convenience, but in this case there really is something lost in not getting the spoken version (but thanks for the present anyway). Izzard throws in so many footnotes -- that may or may not be in the print version, making clear indication of each one -- that it’s like he’s updating the book or expanding what was already published, as well as benefiting from his delivery and the intimacy of his voice. There’s no reason to follow along with reading while listening (as I often do, especially with books for school), but easier just to let go and listen to it like it’s one very long, sustained, and very personal stand-up set.
Blue Belle by Andrew Vachss (audiobook). In Vachss’s Burke series, this is the third book, and the first one I read (or listened to) a second time. As I’ve said, the ones I read years ago were out of order, and didn’t read a lot of them relative to how many there are in the series, and I’ve intended to go back and read them chronologically, though I originally planned to get a synopsis for those I’ve already read, I couldn’t find any online (even on Wikipedia, which loves to give away plots of stories), but then I figured I could blow through them listening on audiobook (which gets as much attention as ones I haven’t already read, but you’re either going to do it or not). And for this one the thing that anchored me back to reading it before was the female lead. Vachss’s books are hard-boiled detective stories that might be a little more hard than others, and more active criminal than private dick, but he can’t escape the femme fatale trope, whether he wants to or not. Just noting “femme fatale” in a description of a detective book is enough to make it a cliché. But of course Vachss won’t leave an element of his books as standard, and he takes this one to an extreme, not shying away from the sordid details of her sexual relations with the main character. If it wasn’t in such an ugly environment with its main thrust being gritty street-crime it could border on porn, but given its context the nearer-to-reality it subscribes to makes it only dirtier (in a bad way), uglier, and intentionally far less sexy. The character isn’t much better, though she’s a heart that comes from a prettier place, but her presence sets off a chain of events that would have been better without her (though it’s good for a plot if not character development). There were some sexual notations that stuck with me all through the years, since I read this the first time when I might have been too young to appreciate all the dirty realness that was going on, and I had some anxiety revisiting that, even taking it quickly, but it turned out to be much of the same worn path that many of Vachss’s books settle in to shortly from there, which is welcome for the familiarity and realiable guide through the unpleasantness rather than boredom with the same story. There’s the usual grit and plenty of it, still starting out on the long road that is this series, with plenty of promise and iffy characters but honest for its brutality and maybe some heart at the bottom of it all. It’s why I read it (even a second time).
Justice League of America/Justice Society of America: “The Lightning Saga” (DC). I’ve been vocal about how I’m more interested in comics written by someone from another discipline -- novels, TV, etc. (usually not wrestlers) -- since those authors developed their writing from something other than comics and they usually turn in stories more narratively sound, as well as being a wild card not bound by the usual (and tired) limits for comics stories and their work has a good chance of at least being something new. Not that it’s difficult to get either DC or Marvel to restart one of their biggest series for a big creator, apparently they had enough faith in novelist Meltzer to do something with the JLA so he got a new #1 for it. It didn’t start well (as I may have already said elsewhere), then he disappeared back to novels, leaving comics behind and DC to do something with that fresh start that became a crash, and this crossover was what was in-between. No surprise that it’s as awful as the beginning, but you could have hoped that it might have been averaged out by Johns holding up his end on JSA, but it’s not the case. It’s not revisiting the classic JLA/JSA summer crossovers (which had a great article in Back Issue that I’ll tell you about later), just a lot of heroes crammed into pages. Just to put it over the top, they even contrive to put the Legion of Superheroes in there, just to include the one group who didn’t get around to showing up in the classic issues (though at least a way to get the Legion going again, even if it didn’t seem to help, at least they got a good version of them). The only homage comes from not getting more than a gridlock of characters, that you can’t put that many personalities together for a satisfying story, probably something the writers & editors of the original crossover discovered (coming up with the stories that worked maybe only by luck), but the new ones only discovered as they were doing it, far too late since there’s a schedule to keep. Though the idea of a tribute is nice, there’s no point to it. The Justice League team here sucked then that Justice Society had a few of their issues wasted that they could have been doing something better. And the Legion have been tossed around in differing versions for so long, it’s hard to remember when they had any stability. Then they didn’t do that again (and even the JSA have been discarded for quite a while), and now we’re so many generations past and what were once special crossovers are no huge company-swallowing events that are usually a dud (see below), so it’s just as well. Then there’re the covers: Alex Ross gets to do portraits of the obscurities that are Justice Society members (and also anything else he wants to do), and there was probably someone who bought them for the Michael Turner art, also portraits but just static images with a dearth of any real flair (and we already know all the females look exactly the same), but they add nothing to the stories within except what a few (but not all) of the characters might look like if they had standing constipation. Those visuals probably work better as back-matter in a trade with a more exciting cover. I often like comics written by writers from other disciplines, and novelists doing comics can do well (unless they get too wordy), but stuff I've read by Metltzer hasn't been great. With a good editor to tighten the story and help straighten it out, this might have been a good series. Instead, it's a writer who was regarded well enough that he could take a fantasy trip with his favorite superheroes from being a kid, then leave the wreckage for someone else not long after.
Final Crisis; Final Crisis Companion (DC). If I’m not reading a lot of comics, and even fewer of those are superhero comics, then I’ll opt to cover as much territory as I’m able, as big and broad as possible, and that usually leads to big event stories, which in comics is usually crossovers. As poor as they usually are as stories or examples of comics as art, they usually cover a lot of ground. And as much as they’re too often used as tools to fix continuity (and still don’t usually work), they at least have superheroes doing something. The intention with Final Crisis might have been to bring some prominence to Third World characters, which wax and wane between insignificant and forgotten over the years, and usually only come up by creators with enough pull to make them pet projects that can get published, and this is this decade’s attempt to resuscitate them, though it doesn’t work any better than any other. But this time it’s not because of lack of purpose or good creators only tracing what Kirby had done, but falling to ignite when good creators get too ambitious, in this instance Morrison going far beyond where they should have been allowed. The New Gods are traditionally resistant to reinterpretation, and Morrison goes all out with reconstituting the whole thing, not concerned with the risk of going too far rather than not going far enough. The problem comes when the distance becomes a garbled mess that makes little sense. It’s a lot of action and things happening, but none of it connects, even as stilted fight-scenes, since it’s hard to tell what is ever going on. There are far too many scenes with far too many characters that pop in out of nowhere for a few pages then switch to a fight and never return to what it started, being an ambling mess that got written as weird whims came up then never adjusted before those ideas got on paper then published. A self-contained mini-series might have helped it focus but in being a crossover it has its threads going to and from, having to get another series -- created for this or in an ongoing -- to see where one thread went, if it even did and wasn’t just a tangent that Morrison drew out because they got distracted. It also has very little purpose beyond a cash cow, which would be insulting if so many fans didn’t consistently fall for this kind of thing. DC hasn’t ever stopped making these things, but at least something like “Zero Hour” was trying to fix a (perceived) problem (whether it did or not (it didn’t) being less important than making a story out of the attempt). A way to read it is as a coda to Morrison’s Batman run, since this was the end of that character (or at least we were told to believe, then lasted for all of about 47 seconds), but even that is a desperate clutch when it’s much more likely that killing off (as believable as that could be (it isn’t)) DC’s most popular character is just a stumble to give the climax any kind of weight, to give the villain any kind of power, and to make any of this seem like it had any reason to happen (which it did not). The consequences were swiftly disregarded when the New Gods came up again and they continued to swim in a murky sea of anonymity until Tom King came with the same intention of taking them somewhere else but did it with a moving, relatable story that worked, and worked well, with an actual story structure, from beginning to middle to end, that also included character arcs that followed through (what every story needs) and no stunts. Morrison has always done best with strong editors (as well as female ones), especially on mainstream stuff (leading to what has often been their best stuff), and here what could have succeeded from able oversight instead got the head of DC’s editors (but not really an editor himself) putting all available muscle behind a half-formed idea then pushing it to be the big event that guided DC as we knew it (and might have driven it off the cliff when it itself would need continuity overhauls). The art doesn’t save it either. Having JG Jones handle the series would lend it the importance that DC intended for it, but then, predictably, he gets out exactly one issue (which also isn’t his best stuff), then in come the usual stringers to make it look like any other typical DC comic (though they occasionally wrench out a few flashes of comprehensibility). Did Morrison ever say that they stopped drugs? Even if it could be believed that they did, this could be blamed on flashbacks if not a once-rich imagination that has faltered into a confused (and confusing), incomprehensible swamp.
The Companion volume does better, if only because its stories make sense (since they don’t have the weight of a name not to). Of course it lacks the (failed) ambition of the main story but the stories are readable, albeit as forgettable as the event, especially to the continuity that would be overshadowed then wiped out by Flashpoint and the New52 (then going back mostly to the original continuity). It can at least be a breath of fresh air after breathing the garbage ashes of the main story, and picking up the loose threads of its theme and taking them somewhere familiar on the ground instead of the drug-flashbacks of someone’s imagination that escaped the leash that kept it safe. This would get at best a middling score, but then the fact that that would overwhelm where Final Crisis itself lands shows how that one got nowhere near where it imagined it could go or where anyone could accept it.
Filthy Rich (DC/Vertigo/Crime). DC did a sub-imprint a few years for black & white crime comics. It was a better idea than deserved to be forgotten, but it was dead before it started. Most of the publishers seem to venture into crime comics eventually, hopefully because creators want to give the genre a try rather than believing that it’d be easy to do as well as Sin City, but they can’t make a pet project into its own imprint. This one was spearheaded by a book by Azzarello, arguably at his height, and a Hellblazer book (apparently not having as much freedom as they wanted in regular Vertigo), so it could be suspected that they built the line around too-safe and pedestrian bets (as good as the books might have been), then it fizzled as quietly as it came in. It’s hard enough for a comic to move in black & white, and even harder for DC to sell something that isn’t superheroes solidly in continuity, but they shouldn't be faulted for trying. Anyone knows that crime stories are my thing, and yet I didn’t notice this line coming and going. (This book was borrowed.) Generally I’d pick up something Azzarello wrote, even at the risk that his harsh, frank writing might not translate to another genre and ruin the stupendous batting record he’s built over the years, but this one seemed almost too safe. This was during a great run on 100 Bullets (well, all of it was) and seemed like just a reflection of that book but with a different artist who could never possibly be Risso, but sure would try. And indeed I was exactly right: It’s a counterpart to 100 Bullets but without the character development, or even much in the way of character in the first place. Azzarello might be good enough to be able to do as well with smaller stories than longer ones, but here he’s just doing a hard-boiled detective story and doesn’t have the room to turn it into something particularly special. It seems more like scratching an itch, not caring if the higher standards for his stuff make it seem like a weaker work, then moving on as swiftly. It could be forgiven for being only to do a detective story as straight as possible (missing the wilder elements Azzarello would throw in to twist his superior work) or getting out a nagging idea, as it’s structured as solidly as anything Azzarello has done (which shouldn’t have to earn a point just because he can put together a story, but seeing how uncommon that can be, he and his editor deserve recognition for the effort), the art drags it down, dismally ripping off RIsso when it can, turning in some ugly and inconsistent images the rest of the time. Though the art carries along the story as well as it has to, and maybe the artist earned his name on something spectacular somewhere else, it’s some stark work that doesn’t have anywhere to hide and plays like someone owed him a favor. Still, it could have been a line that deserved more, if just for some stories by worthy creators wanting to try their hand at the genre (for better or worse). Maybe there could have been a diamond in there, but this one isn’t it.
Modern Masters Vol. 01: Alan Davis (TwoMorrows Publishing). I’ve read a few of these now and they could follow the same pattern: with Garcia-Lopez, a dynamic storyteller who could talk about the years he’s been drawing; Romita Jr., who can talk about how much he’s drawn, giving more thought to the hustle of getting the pages out more than what they mean (since he’s not the writer); Byrne, who has done so much work, as a writer and artist, that just to give a passing mention to most of the stuff he’s done is enough to fill a book, though without a lot of thoughts on it -- and none of them giving much space for the craft of what they do since they barely have to think of it anymore (since they are, after all, modern masters). Alan Davis hits a much richer middle ground: he’s been a writer though never as acclaimed for that as an artist, he’s done plenty of work for both of the biggest publishers, and he doesn’t quite have the history to spend much time talking about the past. I was never a huge fan of Davis, though I liked his stuff fine when it was in front of me, and I knew when he was drawing a book that by the end would hold up, even if it wouldn’t set me on fire. His edges were always too curved, there wasn’t enough grit, and he relied on too many of the same stances and expressions for his characters (though those grievances were in the past, and more than made up for in craft). Though his stint writing Excalibur was a fun exercise in just running with it and making it up as it went along without thinking of what it all really meant, and his Justice League: The Nail was one of the best straight-superhero stories of the ‘90s. I read this less as an exploration of the storytellers and more because I had the book in the series and I had some familiarity with him, and it turned out to be the best one I’ve gotten to, at least in the interview (though the art is fine, I’d rather stare at the other ones I’ve collected). Davis gives some history of Marvel UK and some gossip here and there, but he’s left more space to talk about the projects he’s done and get into his process. He could often be counted on taking projects for a while, instead of turning over a few issues then switching to something else, so he has some room to talk about what he’s done, less in the context of whatever was going on outside that book and more what he put into it. The interviewer even shows his best ability, guiding the conversation instead of trying to wrench something out of an artist who’s not used to having to talk. Davis is a lively storyteller and instructor, showing how he pulled off many of his greatest pages and projects. There’s even space to give some interviews to Davis’s inkers, often equal collaborators to make his art shine like it does. For the ancillary material and depth of conversation, as well as the motherlode of sketches and best examples of finished art (in black & white, no less, to see the original intent), they set a great pace from the beginning of the series, even though they ended up putting in a bit less from artists in future artists (or got less out of them).Unfortunately, there’s time that’s occurred between this book and now, and some projects that might have fallen between the cracks, and now Davis might be less of a respected legend and more a go-to for Marvel to push out books for deadlines in unsteady hands. But he’s a worker so he’s got to work, though there’s the hope that, like the mentions of various, monumental projects he had on the backburner for years while he did journeyman comics work, he’s just getting by with pedestrian Marvel books while he does the next iconic project.
Neuromancer (Marvel/Epic). Marvel would be lucky to be called experimental, but there have been times when something fresh could get through, even though they have to shunt it to one of their imprints. An adaptation of Nueormancer was a small jump to cyberpunk science-fiction in comics, a genre that should have had more done with it (if American comics weren’t dominated by superheroes). Gibson's book was a sea change for sci-fi, so selling it in another medium was an easy shot with no competition (then or now), if it was going to be done. It’s still a monster to this day, so the graphic novel version actually still holds up as well as it ever did (and maybe that TV show will actually get made). Marvel’s adaptation is as flawed now as it was then, being barely an introduction to that world with just the highlights of the story without the nuance, though it occasionally catches some of the details. The choice of painted art is an interesting one since it was an archaic style even in the mid-’80s, though one that would denote prestige to sell as a higher-end product, and it would have been more appropriate to go with something tech-forward with computerized art (which Marvel even tried to do, also within its graphic novel format), but that looked just as bad back then as it would look dated now (and also bad), not excused for taking the chance. Most painterly artists have done well when their art avoids being stiff, and while this artist, whose work on static sci-fi book covers didn’t guarantee would translate to interior art and storytelling, doesn’t dodge that, there are some nice moments, especially when some color pops to bring the story alive in a way that prose text can't. The original book still worked better forming images in the imagination, but for a visual guide to a few of those moments, this works well enough. The best thing is that it evokes the original novel, hopefully not as a simplistic replacement for lazy readers but an interpretation of the initial ideas and putting them into a new, visual world. The worst thing is that it was never continued, to pay off on the graphic novel-style entry, and that it's another potentially ambitious project that could have made a splash (to encourage more cyberpunk comics, not just for me, but because the genre would work so well in that format) but got dropped. Even as it was wholly unnecessary, it had the potential to be a stylized distraction, instead to be forgotten as another beginning that's broken its promise, and frustrating that it didn’t catch on enough. And maybe Gibson was a little too enthusiastic in his introduction.
Silver (Dark Planet Comics). Another spontaneous buy to compensate for looking through a shop’s new comics, but everyone should buy something that just catches their eye every once in a while. Just taking a glance at it, the book is filled with angular, kinetic art, in black & white, not always the easiest sell but with one less element to get in the way. It’s somewhere like a cartoon hybrid of Mignola and Sale, then evens out to something less jagged but also less ambitious later on, likely because of deadline rushes, but it still carries. The style doesn’t owe as much to the usual American comics clichés and not even to manga but the animation background of the artist (he has a prominent credit on What If...?), a fun exercise that doesn’t come along often enough in a world clogged by the same uninventive superheroes and their continuities. With art that earns the occasional thrill it’s not even important what the story is about, though it’s something to do with a heist and vampires, things that don’t need to mix, and enough casual adjustments to a period story to make it look cool rather than accurate (nobody wore that many pouches in black back in the ‘40s), but somebody might as well do it, damn the glaring plot-holes when it comes together. Then there’s a tough chick with a sword as if by obligation, though they can skirt that cliché by not making her the main character and having less depth than anyone else, but it’s made up when she gets the best action scenes. It’s a nice book for a breezy reading and enough of a personal statement for an artist to earn writing his own stuff. There might not be room for the challenge of drawing someone else’s stuff but that could be what could make his later projects get the artistic recognition they deserve.
My Top Albums of 2021:
8. 30- Adele.
7. Chemtrails Over The Country Club- Lana Del Rey.
6. Medicine At Midnight- Foo Fights.
5. Planet Her- Doja Cat.
4. An Evening With Silk Sonic- Silk Sonic.
3. Happier Than Ever- Billie Eilish.
2. If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power- Halsey.
1. Sour- Olivia Rodrigo.
My Top Pet Shop Boys Songs Of All Time:
20. "In The Night"
19. "Two Divided By Zero"
18. "The Theatre"
17. "My October Symphony"
16. "Can You Forgive Her?"
15. "Heart"
14. "It's A Sin"
13. "Suburbia"
12. "Shameless"
11. "How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?"
10. "So Hard"
9. "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"
8. "Red Letter Day"
7. "Domino Dancing"
6. "It's Alright"
5. "Love Comes Quickly"
4. "Left To My Own Devices"
3. "Being Boring"
2. "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)"
1. "West End Girls"
All I Want:
1. A house
2. Some time to myself
3. A decision
4. A backrub
5. Someone to play Marvel Villainous with
If I had given this more than 30 seconds thought it probably would have included Appetite For Destruction, Behaviour, Chrome, and Gentlemen. Check out the official list here.
RAVES
Highlighting the main points in a paragraph, particularly e-mails, in bold. It can help forgive extraneous information and provides a way to get right to the point, if need be
String cheese. Growing up the only cheese we ever had in the fridge was Colby (anything more was an unnecessary luxury, like lettuce), and Colby sucks so I never got into snacking on cheese. We got a pack of string cheese for our SuperBowl snackaganza and I got hooked. The traditional stuff is low-fat mozzarella but TJ’s has a variety of others that’s also good. Eating straight cheese is a revelation. And goes well with crackers, as it turns out.
My “Progress” doc. I’ve usually been good with keeping my schedule straight in my head, and I’ve kept a paper calendar for as long as I can remember (mostly for concert dates), but when I started school I had to keep track of assignments and due dates so I needed a better method. I initially went straight to Google Calendar, which Carla had gotten me on a while back, but it’s so much a better appointment book that it’s not a great calendar, and I usually just used it to share events with her. I could put lists of events and deadlines on Google calendar but it was unwieldy, then I toyed with Evernote for a while, which worked all right even with splitting my lists into separate files, but the introductory period ran out and I was limited in the devices I could access it with to two (and I needed at least three, to go between a few computers and my phone), and it wasn’t worth however-much-a-month (even if I could write it off). I was making lists of upcoming events and I already lived by Google Docs, so I just transplanted those then put everything in one doc, for ease of use. Now I keep everything in a list, which works for me to see it all in order, and I keep it at a week in advance, to make it tidy, and since that’s all I can put in my head anyway (though stuff farther out is another list). I list every day with any tasks I need to do (no matter how minor), errands to run, upcoming events (no matter how far in the future), concert dates (for shows I’m going to (though I still keep an actual calendar for concerts)), stuff to review, lots of notes for later on, random bits of writing (that I’ll put somewhere else later), deadlines, bedtimes, schedules, and whatever text I want to keep for any reason. It’s the first thing I check when I get on my computer; it’s the tab I always have open (second only to Session Buddy, to save my tab set-ups), and I have a direct link from my phone. It also saves copies automatically (haven’t lost any writing in years [until last week -- speak of the devil -- but that might be chalked up to an old computer working (or not working) with a spotty Internet connection]), I can access it from any number of devices (even ones on foreign computers), and it’s free. It baffles me why anyone and everyone doesn’t use it or anything and everything (or Google docs in general).
[In the time between writing this and posting I discovered the three-column view in Google Docs, to fit even more plans on a page. HUGE.
Then also landscape view.]
Drinking out of metal or glass, not plastic.
I've got two more zines with material written, probably enough for three or more by the time I get to it (with only two semesters of school (and only one of those with material substantial enough to review)) and catching up on The Kid's books), and with my current system as efficient as it is, and as long as I keep up with movie & TV posts, I might have another of these ready and posted in two months (that was the time between the issues of the printed version, wasn't it?). Until then I'm looking to doing a lot of work on my concert blog, which has gone untouched for too long. So, staying busy with it. All writing can go somewhere.
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