Waydown #26.06.23

My goal is to do this every two months, like we used to do with the print APA, but usually that means, for me, starting it two months after I posted the last one, then however long it takes.

I don't remember how I did that formatting thing from last time where the text wrapped around the image. But it's not important and I'd rather not have to mess with HTML any more than I have to.

Since I retired my iPods and my system of listening to music with them a while back, I’ve been listening to music differently. The theory of the iPods was: think of basically all my music put in a list, starting with the order I started from my first CDs, with those at the top of the list put on the iPod(s), and when that album is listened to it once goes to the end of the list, to create an infinite cycle. It started from stacks of CDs (in 1992) then eventually transferred to iPods from storage on a computer, including literally a list to keep them in a certain order. (That was just for the main iPod (usually an 8-gigger, for about 120 albums (more for the fragments). I also had one that only had new stuff, shared by stuff for bands I was seeing coming up. Another for daily downloads I would get from radio stations (only a few but as many as I could find). And one that had only my top tracks, to be used in case of emergency, which is still an ongoing project and then I plan to keep (and keep around). Then one for audioobooks, but that wasn't about music for this conversation.) Of course I would add to it with new albums (some still from CDs, acquired from the library at a limit of 10 a month; downloaded when I could (never pirated but often for free from some means)); withholding tracks or covers I’ve already listened to; going from choosing whole albums to listen to to shuffled individual tracks for the entire thing (which was surprisingly appropriate for most listening situations). It’s the darkest pit of my methodicism, constantly evolving so it was never complacent or easy. But it eventually got to be too much to maintain. It was a few hours to do every week, usually late at night, and when I had other responsibilities that didn’t allow for that expenditure of time, I had to stop. I put the iPods away cold turkey and figured out another way to listen to music.
I was already in the habit of listening to radio (as I have been my whole life), mostly over the Internet when we were home, then local radio when we were out, since we had little choice with the stereo system that came with the car. I kept our usual channels going for what we listened to throughout the day at home, but I replaced what I listened to by myself in the car, which was when I listened to most of my music, with audiobooks and text-to-speech for articles, and more ambient music when I worked, so I could focus optimally. Since I wasn’t doing visual effects anymore I didn’t need my usual process for listening to music like I’d had for years (though it probably would have been replaced by listening to articles, as it often was anyway even with the old style of music listening).
So now I’m listening to music in a different way. It’s less than it used to be, since a lot of my time in the car is now listening to articles, my work doesn't allow for isolating myself with music, and listening to music without words while I work since it helps focus (but still not in silence). I still love music, I’m just not following it the way I used to, which was generally specifically for bands, or maybe songs or just albums. Honestly, I’ve been listening to all the same stuff for years anyway. A few new bands will break through every once in a while, but not like they used to, in number or the fervor I had to latch on to new groups. Most of the new music I’d get were new work from bands I already knew, inevitably well past their primes, and they’re increasingly less and less as time goes on. For most of that I stick to Spotify, where I grab the new albums that come out, just to leave open the possibility of keeping up, and generally listen to them once, then hope I might come back to the decent stuff when I put the playlist holding all the new albums on random (though Spotify’s wonky algorithm seems to think I only want the singles, which it will  play to the exclusion of the deeper tracks, as well as throw in bands not in the list but it thinks are comparable to what I want to listen to. It’s a way to discover new music, sure, but it also defies hearing stuff exclusively from the list I curated and expect to hear when I intend to listen to that specific playlist. It’s giving me new music when I want to hear new music, but not in the way I intend. It’s two valid methods in contention with each other (not a new thing in my life)).
But my music choices -- and methods of listening to them -- have always been evolving. This is just the newest plateau of evolution. I still feel drawn to the music from my youth -- proving what I heard said when I was younger and strove to defy it, that what you listened to when you were 25 is what you’ll listen to the rest of your life -- but that was when music was truly good, you know. (Even if it’s laughable to say that and targets you solidly as an old person, it was at least more rock music, in volume and thereby choice, than we’ve had since.) I don’t know if it’s my tastes maturing -- at one time I thought only only old people listened to music without words -- it’s at least coming around to the real practicality to it, and still defiantly keeping it in my life and daily practice, when the sign of a true old person would be to stop listening to music entirely. I’m not there yet. This is what fits for me now. It’ll probably change. And I’ll still fight for the old stuff and go to the concert (if they’re even still around).

What I'm Listening To When I'm... (Update):
...Taking a lunch (while sorting through Hotmail)/when some time opens up/when I'm not actively interacting with someone or a task: One of about 16 Soma.fm stations with words, chosen randomly (with the Spin The Wheel app), music ranging from extreme death metal to bluegrass/roots to pop indie to tiki/lounge to bossanova. I put one on and let it play. Most rarely repeats the same tunes (which is the biggest poison to me for anything).
...Sitting at the main computer, doing school work or anything that needs particular focus: One of about 16 Soma.fm stations without words, chosen randomly, mostly ambient, but I can't tell the subtle differences between stations apart. There's a dub station which is energetic, but like the rest, as long as it doesn't have words it's fine for me.
...Driving to work without getting on the freeway/to the gym/around town, through the week, without a passenger: KCSN 88.5, The SoCal Sound (local radio).

...Driving anywhere, usually the weekend, with a passenger: KCRW 89.9 (local).
...Driving to on-site work with getting on the freeway (or 20 minutes or more): The current audiobook, usually proper literature, usually on the Libby app.
...Driving from on-site work: Articles I've saved in Raindrop, using @Voice to read them aloud.
...Lunch at home on Fridays, while sorting and reading articles in Hotmail, then beyond for the rest of the late afternoon into evening: New albums on Spotify then random in the playlist (if it's working like it should, usually not). Goes into making dinner, usually the same.
...Driving back after dropping off kid (1 1/2 hour drive; at night): Current audiobook, not literature/something more fun (even if it's Vachss), off (the wife's) Audible app.
...Driving to pick up kid (Friday afternoon, usually more than 2 hours): Rainddrop articles.
...Getting eBay packages ready to send: Whatever I was already listening to, maybe Pandora if I didn't have something on.
...Making dinner: Flood FM on TuneIn, using Alexa, on volume 5 (if the wife isn't home or in the shower). Alexa stop.
...Eating dinner: Flood FM, volume 3.*
...Doing dishes/cleaning kitchen: Flood FM, volume 4.*
...Into the evening (weekday): Continuing with Flood FM, volume 4 (so I can hear it in the bedroom). If we've already heard the guest DJ (starting at 10, for one week), it's KCRW Eclectic 24 instead.* Also counts as ...Reading (comics), in bed, before [sleep].
...Giving platelets at the blood bank: Now watching shows. NOT ELIGIBLE.
...On the weekend: Probably KEXP, for any task or for whomever is home, though it's not often we're there and not doing anything (like watching TV) for any length of time to make it worth turning on. More likely if it's Sunday, then there's a soul show on. If the wife is also there (and usually is) and she's on the couch first, she'll pick, which is usually her Spotify station, generally newer stuff, and hopefully updated so it's not the same as last time. When I was home on Saturday mornings I'd often put on the Steely Dan Pandora station, but even it was rare, that started getting repetitive.
...On the weekend, doing personal tasks on headphones: Pandora, maybe.*
...Cleaning the house (especially the bathroom): The audiobook on Audible.
...Taking a phone call: Low in the background, depending on the day or time, it's been KEXP. Probably hasn't happened since I wrote the original version of this list.
...In bed, sick: KCRW Eclectic 24.
...In bed, if I'm just not getting up: A random Soma.fm station with words.
...Having guests over: We don't ever have guests over to have to decide. We might not put on music at all, but if we did it would probably be KEXP or maybe the Soma.fm Covers station, just for the novelty of it.
...At the gym: The playlist for the class. It usually doesn't bother me until it starts to get repetitive, but that won't stop me from going.
...At the gym, on the treadmill: Raindrop articles (since I'm probably taking it really easy and basically just walking).
...Going for a walk (around an hour or so): Raindrop articles, saved in a playlist. If I haven't listened to an audiobook in a while, it might be that. This might be when I have the freest choice (though getting out of my methodicism can be paralyzing, worse than being beholden to a regiment). I usually walk more in the summer, but this year I'll be working out during the day so maybe not or as much.

REVIEWS

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (audiobook). The list of books I was supposed to read in school and am now going back to doesn’t seem to end. At least with this one somehow I pulled a B on a paper out of reading only the first page (not much I can remember besides “It was the best of times, it was the worst of…” something, but everyone knows that one without reading it), so it may have been the most successful for skipping (as I think that’s as well as I did in that class anyway). Also, there’s no way I would have finished that book in that quarter anyway -- even if I had no other books to read or studies to do or life to live (though that was college so it was only just so), I’d probably still be reading it. It’s dense AF. That of course gives it a lot of potential meaning and plenty to be dug out of it -- ripe for academic exploration -- but it’s nearly solid matter to get through. Also amazing that it’s a fairly straightforward story and yet it’s still as thick as a tree. That might have been Dickens’s thing (my other exposure to him, Great Expectations, was the mercy of reading a stage-play version of it (and I actually did read that years before, and it was difficult enough)), and it might make for brilliant literature, but it can be a hard read, especially outside of academia. Reading a book outside of a class can be plenty enriching, as you’re left to find what you want, but it can also be wayward without a guide and having some kind of idea of what you’re supposed to get out of it. I looked up a summary for the parts I glazed over (as listening to it on audiobook provided an expedient way to finish it within a lifetime, it also didn’t afford going back to reinforce comprehension (usually my enemy for getting through books I’m legit reading, particularly in print)), but that might be keeping out lazy students when those corner-cutters are available, not for help but to do the work (though at least they're reading the summary) (and we'll talk about AI a bunch more later). It did get me thinking about AIing up a study guide, but I didn’t think about it until I was mostly done, and it had already lost me enough that I figured I might as well continue on how I hadn’t gotten to that point. Though the title holds an inference, one of the cities being London isn’t so obvious that it automatically reveals what the other one is. Even worse, sometimes it can be hard enough to track which city they’re ever in (and maybe it goes without saying that historical context can help, but it would just be more matter to slog through when there’s already more than enough).
There aren’t a lot of characters to track (with this density I would have thought I could claim conquering a Russian novel, but it was merely British), and it’s actually plainly written, it just uses a lot more words than it needs to, not quite purple prose, but overdescribing and drawing out scenes longer than they ever need to be. That means there’s plenty of meat, but you might need some friends to help consume it, and it takes long enough that the taste can start to get stale. If there’s some guidance to know what to get from it it’s probably a rich experience. But it lost me pretty quickly (enough that after I lost track of how far I got into it on the first sitting, I just went back a few random chapters and didn’t feel I had any further idea than if I’d known where I left off), and I just kept going with it rather than trying to recover. I assumed it would get me back on track eventually but instead it just barrels on, and of course keeps building since it assumes you’re with it. And you should be, but you need a saddle for the ride. One I might get next time, if I have to teach this (which seemed like it could be feasible before I had ventured into it, but now that I’ve been there, it seems more clearly a college-level epic (if you can even get college students to legit read it. Some can fake it)). Though I wouldn’t imagine high school students being able to get through it, it would at least give them a few years’ head start for a long, grueling battle if they have to deal with it in college.

The Stranger by Albert Camus (audiobook). Yet another book I was supposed to read in class years ago, and got a cheap copy of at some point, then went back to when my kid had to read it for her high school class. (And the class I was supposed to read it for was the one above all I wish I could re-take: English 102, Composition. Since that’s what I want to teach – at whatever academic level – it would have been good to have gotten more out of it, but instead I took it over summer school at a community college, when I was in school the first time and not nearly as serious about it, and had another class (maybe it was government?) to compete with it. I really didn’t get much out of it. I’d be surprised if I even cracked the cover of the book. Apparently it was enough just to purchase it and fake writing a paper on it, which the teacher marked up to oblivion, which he should have (and which I probably took umbrage at the time), but which I didn’t take for as much worth as I should have.) This print copy probably wasn’t even the one I had originally, but having it and needing something to do with it got me to give it the proper effort, even if that was to listen to it (thanks, Libby app!). But it’s hard to get too much out of it. It’s a classic, presumably just for being called a classic, but it’s the kind of literature that’s hard to get something out of without a guide. Yes, it’s existentialism, maybe the highest text for it – but for whatever that means. The basis of any story is believing that the characters and that world exists – what is this saying about that? As a narrative it’s a tepid story about a guy, with enough depth that a story could give without giving him something to do, then he does something that will substantially change his life, for little explainable reason. Sure, part of the interaction with the book is explaining why he did it. But even in brilliant Lynch movies there’s plenty that happens for little or no reason or connection to anything else but there's some kind of meaning to it, even if we have to fabricate it for ourselves. Okay, that’s the point, probably, but it would be hard to get too much out of this without some external explanation. If it's not supposed to make sense, for absurdism I'll take Waiting for Godot, which commits to it more, as much as anything can. This one takes a linear story but doesn't go much of anywhere with it, and isn't much of anywhere even when it's there. This is the kind of book – like a lot of literature – that greatly benefits from any kind of study guide, probably why they’re parsed in schools, and maybe not read casually for sheer enjoyment, at the risk of not getting the appropriate amount from it, and why it can help to look up something about it before charging into it. As it is, this book is might be too deep to see the bottom of, but it’s also fairly quick so it also doesn't much validate why you need to spend time with this, or why you don't, and what the guy does, and for whatever reason. At least it, like Seinfeld, gets to be the thing that isn't about anything, done only once (since anything copying its singularity would look idiotic).

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (audiobook). Bourdain’s name was dropped in a random article I was reading and I realized I’d never read this book. I never had reason to, but we’d been a fan of Bourdain, watching his travel shows and even The Taste, and the wife read this a while back. His death was a tragedy (and a reason to change my news-intake routine when I didn’t find out about it until late in the day when it happened), especially since it was by his choice and he seemed to still have so much more to do and live for. He also was a great role model of an adult, a guy who got in and did the work, putting in as much as he had and figuring out the rest. Such is this book, in which he somehow fit in a few lifetimes’ worth of experience for his journey through the restaurant scene, particularly in NYC. Those experiences could fill more than one book, and this one is full to brimming, implying that there’s plenty more he could put in and details he could expose. There’s enough, and it makes for a solid read with very little fat, not even going into his personal life as much as it could, written however he wants to make it (though credit an editor for pulling the it together into such a fine form), sometimes out of order, and classily referring to who could be big names only by a nickname, and it still smooths out as a linear story with just the right amount of details. There’s not as much scandal as its reputation might suggest (though any lids that were blown off from this only helped him), but that there’s any controversy at all in the restaurant scene could be more than enough to make for a satisfying rag. It’s also accessible, with enough interesting details to grab on to without even knowing about running a restaurant or cooking (you just go with all the French and deep chef-ing phrases). Bourdain was a talented writer, able to get the most cogent ideas out of a story and telling it in an engrossing way; he wrote a good book about some interesting stuff from his life and it got traction and did well and propelled him, as by the force of his gregarious personality, dashing good looks, free rock n’ roll spirit, and air of authority (especially as old guys were starting to increasingly be able to hold on to some cultural cache), into the role of a celebrity, beyond even just being a big-name chef and into an rare space of a multi-hyphenate that hadn’t existed so much in that combination before – pioneering it might be a little too much, but considering how many followed, and how desperate The Food Network was to replicate his success, maybe he really did blaze the trail. It’s rare that a book will provide such propulsion, when it’s usually the opposite: just a cash-grab by a celebrity, preying on those who still show up for print. Though I read this as an audiobook (even if it was good enough to read in print if I had to (and knew how good it was going to be)), and with an unavoidably ghoulish spirit when it’s read by Bourdain himself who, predictably, was also a gifted orator (that great voice was only one of his many abilities). It’s like listening to a ghost, especially when you want to relate so much to the material and the author, with all the questions that a suicide leaves behind. It’s the earliest gem in his legacy, maybe the height of all the treasures he left behind, and what infers that what his brand brought forth after it might be worth pursuing and sadly spending more time with a force that got taken away too soon.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (audiobook). This one I actually did read in school, probably because we read it in class (which, as a teacher, I’m generally against, since the students should be able to read a text on their own, but doing it together actually does work to get it done). But it wasn’t one of the ones that convinced me to love literature (no matter how much that teacher put into it). (I don’t even remember how I got the print copy I’ve had on the bookshelf for decades, but I must have picked it up cheaply and casually at some point, in hopes that I would return to it one day to read it properly (not knowing I’d get to an audiobook that would not necessitate a print copy), or have a work of literature on my shelf that I could possibly maybe discuss if anyone called me on it.) I knew in advance it would be a slog so I looked up a study guide, but the best Google came up with is that it dealt chiefly with colonialism, which is an important topic in a historical context but may not mean as much for today, or says much about the human condition directly (except that White men always want to conquer something). It’s not even an adventure tale since it’s just a drag through the jungle, though the text works metaphorically to read as moving through a very dense thing slowly enough to risk losing its purpose. (I recall Apocalypse Now, of course also shown in class as a supplement, being the same, so at least that should be a proper adaptation (and even being a classic work of cinema, still not encouraging me to get around to seeing it, and more appreciative (but I probably should)).) Just like in a jungle, it’s too easy to get lost. I got lost on figuring out if there really was a woman out there, but also confounded in the logic of how that would work. And did he actually find Kurtz or was it all a surreal dream -- again, working metaphorically for losing your mind in the wilderness. If it’s a tale of madness it works fine, if anyone needs that and can’t find it in a more palatable or fun form elsewhere, and it says as much about colonialism as anything (though sadly perennially relevant), but it’s a dense work that would be a hard sell for students. There’s probably a lot to dig into in a high school English class, but it's just as easy to get lost in it no matter when or how it's consumed.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen (audiobook). I did a search for the top literature that a person should read and this came up. Maybe it balances with what would be assumed to be a genre work like Frankenstein, and I would have been hesitant to read what I had known to be women’s lit. Though it’s also considered a classic, and there can be something to be learned from any work. And if I can blow through it by listening to it, I might as well. Then it turns out to be pretty great. Sure, maybe it’s still women’s lit, but only because it doesn’t have to bother with violence or rough edges like masculine or even mainstream lit. If it’s stimulating drama and considered action done well, it can be any form. It’s also a lot of fun, with snippy dialogue and bitchy maneuvering. It could be the equivalent of the worst (which makes it the best?) reality TV, in the old-fashioned format from when people had to get entertainment from reading, of all things. There’s even a scene where the characters retire after dinner to a parlor room to be read to, an even reflection on what this story was probably made for and certainly was used for to some degree, for some length of time. It’s not intense enough to be a heavy drama and not funny enough to be a rom-com, but maybe strikes the middle ground that made it so popular in its time, through to current day (if they’re still teaching it). It doesn’t have the scope to be a soap opera, so it’s as concise as it can be with a wide cast of characters, which can be lost if not giving it some study (which is not always included in the admittedly but necessarily shallow “reading” of listening to it). It’s thick, and it tends to meander, to show its ensemble of characters away from the focus of its main thread of story to, but it makes for a rich narrative as a satisfying read, for any gender. If it’s endured this long it will surely keep going, as a template for so many popular romantic stories -- books, movies, TV, and beyond -- perpetually there for anyone to discover. 

Y the Last Man (DC/Vertigo). All the male species on Earth suddenly dies, except for one guy and a monkey. It’s something that could be turned into a pretty good story, in any format but a comic book. There’s nothing in it that promises any inherent action, the hallmark of the comic book form, and it could far too easily be a lot of drama, with people talking a lot. To say nothing of risking being nothing but cheesy pin-ups that would feign being part of a narrative because those are the only characters, and females are hard enough to do right in comics, much less have a comic that’s almost exclusively females. But that’s all also the challenge of doing such a book, and one from only a writer great enough to guide it, and that at the time was Vaughan, who also happened to be one of the very best writers in comics, and who had earned enough of a name that he had the pull to do a book like it. Not only was this not a minor idea for a short series but it was intended to be ongoing for as far as the eye could see, or as long as sales would let it. From the start it’s a very open-ended concept that could go anywhere, even into action, but Vaughan makes it a character piece, like most of his stuff (and best stuff). Leaving one male seems like a concession to the male-dominated form, both in creators and readers, but it’s also where the conflict and motivation to do anything in the world comes from. There could have been friction from elsewhere -- surely women will fight (since they’re human) -- but for this apparently we need to see it from the P.O.V. of the last male on Earth, in case the readership gets too far from what they know. And yet the story builds out of the women who fill the rest of the cast, since it has to just to differentiate them when gender isn’t the crutch, but the better it is the more it shows how it didn’t need even one man. And a monkey, which would almost seem like a novelty or a joke, but he makes sense later.
It follows a small group constantly either on the run or looking for something, flung to parts unknown to find it or get away from it. It’s an ongoing story that risks becoming a soap opera just because of its seemingly open-ended and dramatic nature, but Uncanny X-Men worked best when it was at its soapiest. This is just a long tale, always with an intended destination, but it winds and wanders, usually being a globe-trotting adventure tale, a shade of a genre that Vertigo hadn’t quite gotten to with a straight face. This had to have been a blast when it was coming out, to get every fresh issue to see what happens next, and it flows well in collected editions packed together (and even better in the deluxe editions, unnecessarily over-sized since no detail was lost, but having some added magnitude for the bigger and more prestiged size, maybe to look good in a library. (The only Vertigo books that my local has (though they also have Saga, so maybe there’s a Vaughan fan around) ). Though to get a book out like takes an art team that can dash out pages, mostly uncommon in mainstream comics, and a quest for the Vertigo office, which had plenty of ongoing series as well as smaller projects, and needed to run a tight ship to make it work. There’s even a fill-in team to take over some of the issues and even arcs, though the styles are so similar that it’s often hard to tell them apart, which is good for the harmony of a flowing story but doesn’t give the work or its artists much identity. Even besides that homogeneity, the visual work is bland, without much character or style, but it tells the story, which is the most important element. It’s a style that would make a shorter story too casual to be worth much, and nothing that would spice up a bad story or keep up with a good one, but for an ongoing story that just needs to flow issue to issue and facilitate the words and sometimes give the various worldly locales some of their own character (which usually doesn’t happen, from all the blank buildings that operate as short-cut backgrounds), it’s fine. The art wouldn’t be the attraction for the book, but it acts as a solid tool to facilitate the story. And if the characters can be told apart, it’s good enough.
Even at 60 issues it seems like it wasn’t enough to get as far as the story could go. All the males on Earth dying is a far-reaching conceit, and one that could reach into countless corners to explore that world. It could be its own Gender Studies class (though too limited to be an entire syllabus, and possibly discounted for being written by a man). There are a few inventory stories that show some tales from elsewhere but they’re a cruel tease when they could have done a lot more with it. They didn’t even get any specials or over-sized issues, which usually go automatically with any series that does well (or even if it doesn’t). It could have been a good side-project to allow some specials showcasing other areas of that world, written by female writers, never touching the main plot so they could be singular. It’s the kind of thing they do in comics, and it could have fleshed out a fictional world that was hungry for it. Vaughan's biggest fault in doing the series was being so selfish with not sharing it. 
Also the rare comics story that is motivated by love (the other most notable one being Preacher, which was a very horrific but valid take, also by Vertigo, showing that even if they didn't know what they were doing with it, they could take a chance on it), and one with a clear motivation to move forward (instead of the endlessly vague “seeking justice”). It even lands a satisfying arrival at its destination, and not in the expected place so it gets to be a stimulating surprise, then a resolution of that since it has the space into the finale, and an ending that bends a bit in a weird way, but also mimics how human emotion rarely turns the way anyone expects. It’s truly a story about people, regardless of gender, though it’s not to see females getting so much spotlight that they have the room and number to express a variety of characterizations and definitions instead of the cliches seen in pretty much any other comic. And written by a man (and well enough in this household that Sweetie, who knows from female characters, was interested enough to read it (after she discovered Vaughan from Buffy books, but her interest also refreshed mine)), but maybe we can say that there can be some understanding between genders, or enough to put in a solid story in a comic (and one that ended up not working in another medium -- that of television, from this series’ adaptation that seemed to disappear before it got noticed (at least by me, and I was (mostly) looking for it) -- after all. If I’m not wrong, it’s on the strength of a great creator, rather than how an idea may fit or not).

Saga Book Two (Image). I got the second, hardcover collected edition probably shortly after I fell in love with the first volume, and put it on the bookshelf in theory to fast-track it, then got a ragged copy with the back cover falling off from the library to read at the beach (see below). Up to this it had been such a wild, stimulating ride, one of my favorite books -- not comic book, but book -- so I didn’t want to rush the next chapters, but I also didn’t follow it to see how much more there was, though I knew there was at least a next book, and that was enough for me (and not too much to expect that it might end before it started getting lame and lost the magic it had in the first bunch). 
This is clearly the middle chapters, the ones to ride out after the explosive beginning and connect to however they plan to bring it in to land. Those chapters are necessary, even if they’re necessarily what’s left to sag, going through the motions of playing it all out, getting everything from here to there, and not wanting to waste the best bit that might work better with the exposure of the beginning or ending. By here a lot of the best ideas have been used to set everything else up, but it’s got a solid foundation on which to build everything else, even when that ground is unstable from being a new fantasy world that could too easily falter from being too much or having to be explained. Instead, they lean on the universal elements of family and how fresh those aspects seem in a medium that rarely focuses on those themes (unless it’s to leave its heroes as vengeful psychopaths, which has had to play well in comics). By this point, though, they can also dissect some of those elements and focus on the characters as individuals, as it ushers them through situations to separate them, in adventures to develop their individual arcs, stronger for their connections, for what those become when they realize their goals of coming together again. It approaches preposterous how their paths are sliced n’ diced, but it’s usually a wild ride. The combinations of characters it matches up aren't nearly as random as it’s  choreographed to group the most distant characters with one another, and even add an extra group or two outside of that core family, but this could be the easiest and most effective route to get to conflict and sparks that usher it along for the whole volume. It’s almost a disappointment when they come back together (which could be read as a spoiler (though still inevitable)), but how they get there and who they've become when they do is so far beyond how it started that it’s nothing that could be expected, as well as far less important than the journey. Also make a regular practice of throwing in fresh characters to keep it going (while knocking off a few established ones for heightened stakes -- balancing the number so it keeps going while keeping up the drama, bafflingly a rarely used device in comics when it usually tilts to extremes), and it shortly becomes an ensemble and a lot of characters defined by being well-rounded when they could hold their own solo stories  (that could lead to plenty of spin-offs if they wanted to take it out of this (which probably wouldn’t take the focus off the core series, but it’s a regular thing in comics, as well as never holding a promise that it will be any good, so it could be better than just not bothering to to do it)). Just like in Y, Vaughan creates worlds that could spin out to so much else -- more than most comics that do have a right to -- yet he doesn't. It would be plenty more work opportunities to create for himself, if there weren't more worlds to create. 
If the best ideas are spent and the character development slows with familiarity and Staples’s art becomes so solid but consistent that it could be taken for granted, it’s Vaughan’s crackling dialogue that carries it farther, urging along a story that could have been trudging through middle chapters so it could get to better parts. But the words also have a synthesis with the art to a level that it almost seems like just one writer/artist, or at least one artist dedicated to the story and writer enough that she’ll make it work, and find the riches in nuances like irregular design and expressing character through posture, something lost in most comics. Vaughan gets to have fun with the writing through a mastery of dialogue, knowing how to give emphasis and land punchlines through pacing and balloon placement, yet another lost art in comics. It wouldn’t be a throwback to a time when comics were better crafted, since a time doesn't exist when (mainstream) comics weren’t pooped out as swiftly as possible in order to meet monthly (or less) deadlines, and not compulsively filling pages with words to leave the artist with more time to do more art, and when everything isn’t so decompressed as it to give just enough to let it flow smoothly, this could almost be ground-breaking work, or at least more imagination than usually gets in a comic, when one that overflows with it is so far ahead that it should stand out just for that. It’s in service to a grand, thrilling story that is too great a wish that it could go on forever, masterfully executed, and even making something just about as good with the middle chapters.

Reinventing Comics (DC). McCloud’s Understanding Comics was a classic text right out of the gate, if not changing the comics and graphic art world then at least making the form a little more clear and engendering some discussion that wasn’t there before, so it would make sense to encourage a sequel. Though textbooks don’t really get a sequel, unless it’s continuing a line of information, which would be expressed from a lack of completion and signal its intent from the start. But once the foundation has been established then it can be built upon, and if Understanding was looking at the past, as a concern for what it contributes to the present, then looking to the future. And so Reinventing could be taken as processes and techniques for what can be done with comics art and graphic literature, especially hot in the late ‘90s when consumer technology was evolving in long bounds, not ever foretelling how far it could go and how directly it could affect the average citizen, and what artists could do with it. But it’s not that at all, and actually jumps beyond it. It even notes that it could have had that intention, but it also understands how dated that would have gotten, and how continuing to look only at the present wouldn’t progress much. This doesn’t even look at the future so much as gets deep into theories of the comic publishing world and businesses, and what we should be able to do with those as time goes on. 
Of course it’s dated (some 20-something years ago, even now), but there are a few founding precepts that still stand, even if it’s all more academic in study and conversation than anything that can enrich experiencing comics (like Understanding was, and then some). As great as comics can be, the business of them is actually business and not fantasy, and the more for digging into it, the more depressing it all can be. But the book doesn’t even attempt to be the final word, or even an aspiration for any amount of a study of it all, and even stands as woefully incomplete, admitting so, for continuing on at McCloud’s website. It’s not enough to act like an advertisement for the site, though maybe it should if getting the most out of the book requires going there, but it’s another level of the shifting technologies of printed matter, and attempting to be prescient that a synthesis of the two would be where it was all going. That actually didn’t happen, since it all pretty much went online, with the comics form, just taking one but germane to this conversation, as being adapted for comics screens, and maybe the truly epitomized form of comics’ visual literature somewhere out there, but not reaching a mass that would stand as a popular revolution that would supersede any other from of it besides the old-fashioned version for old-fashioned's sake, the version which has been chosen for its own novelty, even if a better version of that format now exists (which it might, but most people decide if they’re going to get their comics on a screen or not and stick to it, if it’s according to their age or not). Maybe it’s around the corner, but it’s been that way for as long as this book has been out, and well before. It’s this kind of conversation that is supposed to sprout from McCloud’s message boards, but if that ever happened as supposed, it might not also have lasted, as it never became a go-to site with comics’ wilderness (at least that didn’t get to me, if that’s a test for how far any of this gets). Maybe McCloud is still keeping at it, tracking the theories in this book and updating them to the ever-changing world of the medium and art in general. It’s a good fight. There was another book in the series, which may or may not have been about making comics, and may have even ventured into looking at what was to come of comics, but even McCloud might say that speculating at the future of comics doesn't much help what's happening now, and might be wildly off, as most theories are. But I'm less concerned about creating comics these days anyway, and I'm one to assume the technology will come to me when it needs to (then I'll still put it off until I have to meet it). I suppose I could still represent that contingent of comics fans keeping with the printed versions, ride-or-die, and following that path for the truest representation of what we knew as comics, even if it’s showing our age and grumbling curmudgeonliness to stick with print even when there’s lots better (and even to carry what was print. I still might get to it)). It would be interesting to get McCloud's take on it, but his view from the last decade and a half might as well be anyone's, and it might be more satisfying to just find a traditional comics story by him instead.

Hellblazer: Original Sins (DC). There was a time when DC doing a comic without a costume or a superhero name must have gone far beyond ground-breaking into just being crazy. But it could  also be a time when they were willing to do something risky, and maybe the sales were low enough that a risk couldn’t have done worse than any other stuff (any of which might not be remembered now, so minor were so many projects). But the John Constantine character in Swamp Thing must have done well enough that they could take a chance on him, even getting a full series (since mini-series were still in a formative, iffy state back in the late ‘80s). It was glomming off Moore when his work was fresh enough to think that it might be the new wave and they were too antsy to get on it rather than wait to see how it all turned out (and if there would be anything left later on), but whether they fully realized it, it could be the foundation of their own imprint (which would be Vertigo), and maybe cracked the door to take a chance on Sandman, which would become their big thing. There was at least story for Constantine, as well as he did in Swamp Thing, and, arguably, provided the secret cornerstone of Crisis as the gate into the crossover then riding out of it into the peak of Moore’s run, itself a peak of the series if not ‘80s comics, if not all comics. Still a risk with a grisly Brit with only a trench coat and cigarettes, but enough set up to provide a deep canvas to add to, define, explore, and continue (the kind of thing that Moore could do as a minor task, to create worlds within a minor element, but so rich for American sensibilities that they would be satisfied excavating (and eventually exhausting) just one of those worlds). At worst it could be an experiment and they’d had worse. They even gave it an edgy author -- of course British (another statement of intent for where they were intending to go with a burgeoning crop of talent) -- and an artist who didn’t need to be flashy but could follow the story and maybe drop some unsettling images. The character suddenly became the mysterious guest as mysterious host to the star, with the filling in of background and immediate environment, but risking any rounded character threatening his own presence, which was still unproven. But the writing is solid and Constantine stays constant as the center. He’s entirely more human than he got later on, especially in the Ennis years when he became a bit of a caricature of anything he could have been, as a selfish cad that would be hard to follow if what he got into wasn’t so compelling (though as a testing ground for the heights of Preacher). Pretty much all of the Vertigo writers took the tour through Constantine (even some non-British ones, and Gaiman, turning in probably his best story ever, in one fill-in issue), but it started with Delano & Ridgway and a few tales that didn’t need to connect to the DC Universe (almost disconcerting that there were ever stories that got to do that) and establish Constantine as the fascinating character he would always be, and the people around him who would suffer (sometimes ultimately), but compelled to do the right thing, for how sideways that inevitably turn out (to make for a story, but also to show that he wasn’t always the anti-hero he might have been made out to be (but also providing much of his magnetism over so many years)). Also a lot of globe-trotting, which is easy in a story when it can just be written that he goes somewhere else, at most drawn from some research, but also a distinct British flair, as has always been fundamental to the character, and a counterpoint to Swamp Thing and the other American characters he would encounter (as well as providing an exotic environment for readers who don’t leave the house). 
In all, a good collection of stories to provide a stronger foundation for a character who would carry a series for longer than even the more popular superheroes (then get turned into something else, more mainstream and digestible to get made into TV shows and cartoons, but I’d stopped years before), then, to accommodate a strict nine issues to be included in a collection before they got the game down (to include story arcs instead of what could fit best in a trade paperback), ending with a cliffhanger that crosses back into Swamp Thing, making the book infinitely incomplete but not encouraging enough to get another big collection and suffering more time in that world, but having a good guide for the moment, for as much as he would allow if not initiate harm coming to the guided.

Transmetropolitan (DC/Vertigo). Science-fiction doesn’t always age well. Even if its predictions aren’t laughable later on, it’s often so reliant on imagined technology and tech theories, in looking forward from the increasing past, that a theme can fall apart and leave it as regretful as if it didn’t risk the ambition of guessing at a world that probably won't happen (since it will probably just keep being the same crappy place). Though Vertigo made a point of covering as many genres as they could reach, as if it disprove that it was only about the mystical hoo-doo of Gaiman’s The Sandman (though they didn't stray if they didn't have to), there was a check on the list that would be sci-fi, and even in a medium that could have conducted sci-fi as well as superheroes if it ever really bothered to try after superheroes became the thing, Ellis was the most popular of those writing comics with a consideration of sci-fi in the work, not shying from its adjacency in genres but actually doing the research to connect the dots to make it work. So he was the good choice to do the sci-fi book, and this book seemed radical (as much as mainstream comics could be) back in mid-’90s, not for the effort in doing but what it could do being on the precipice of that precarious time just before the full explosion of the Internet, especially as it came to the popular culture. I, for one, was taken with the book, and I loved the audaciousness of its subject matters, the lack of limits with the characters, and something that might even dive into cyberpunk once it got its feet. (I only got through about the first third of the series back then, though kept all the books ready). Unfortunately, it hasn’t aged well, though not for its sci-fi trappings or Ellis’s questionable personal exploits, but because it wasn’t fully realized and the execution was rushed and more anemic than it should have been. Though I didn’t know all that in the time since, assuming it was as good as remembered it, and I wanted to go through it again to finish it this time, not realizing it would bring such a negative reaction looking at it from a current perspective and, maybe more, as an adult.
It doesn’t have a bad premise. It’s a near-future sci-fi thing with all the flexibility that can enable, and even threatens to be cyberpunk, if it could get there. It’s the usual city-state hyper-metropolis setting that Judge Dredd and countless other works (if just in comics) did better, but also a predictable state for anyone considering the future, though it’s as good a base as any. At the center is Spider Jerusalem, a character that could stand out if Ellis could come up with something for him, since he’s just a proxy for Ellis in a world that he finds more interesting than this one. He goes between standing on a soapbox and throwing a tantrum, which are impotent to rail against topics that were too easy and broad to yell at then (religion, government) and aged now, as if they were ever going to stand up later on, when the era has caught up to it and finds the subjects as unrelatable relics. Ellis also tries to sell Spider as a journalist as rock star, which was laughable then and even worse now, but it’s the main point that Ellis pushes beyond all other themes, that a writer can be so popular as to have widespread influence over the culture and people as befits a real celebrity, but you have to buy into it for the story to work at all. That print would have any enduring strength is also a miss at predicting the future, when it was falling apart even in the ‘90s. The same thing with smoking, as what every character is doing (even making a joke out of anyone having a mouth full of cigarettes) and the dearth of anyone smoking these days, though that's more recent and maybe anyone could imagine that people would keep smoking like they used to. As it is, it’s a visual detail, not vital, but enough to cover some background (and come up as an error when the smoke doesn’t move along multiple stat panels, as if time itself has stopped instead of the action halting -- a rookie mistake for an artist who should know better). And everyone using telephones, actually speaking to each other at a distance, which could be a forgivable error if the world shortly after that wasn’t overrun by text messages, which might not have worked as well in a visual narrative like comics but might have been more believable. These could be forgivable in the chosen reality that the creators make, except that the execution is so poor. Spider gets a lot of his rants out in the beginning, then is tempered with the addition of The Filthy Assistants -- arguably more interesting characters than the main one, especially when his complaining and Ellis lacking at capturing a point gets tiring -- but it’s a lot of rants that go into the ether without a better cause to fight for. It starts with a blast of bile at the obvious topics then starts to drown without a greater narrative purpose, but finally starts doing something around the third book when it actually has a clear antagonist and reason for anything happening. That suddenly producing a plot is enough of a bolt of lighting, not enough to save it but to infer that there might finally be something worth following and that it could be the way to go, but it eventually sinks back to being a platform for a lot of words that trail into the void and not enough to actually affect any world. It’s also an amorphous setting, referred to as The City but never offering any context about what that is or what it means, no comparison to anything in the real world to give it even a vague shape (even when other real-world locales are cited), and where cities are often characters unto their own selves, and one that is supposedly vital to the political railings this story wants to partake in, it’s a cloudy blob that means nothing, which leaves an enormous space in any kind of grounding for this world. Even the most destructive stories will give some definition to its world, as the fundamental element of a setting or a context for themes, but here there aren’t even rules to what a city/state could be in the future, much less define the one it’s in, or say anything about the real world (which is supposed to be the most basic point).
Most of the time it’s Ellis ranting just to rant, and eventually it degrades into silliness, revealing the whole thing to be a comedy, whether it’s intended to be or not. The whole thing becomes a cartoon, though an ineffective one since it’s not supposed to be overly funny; it wouldn’t have taken much to become a cyberpunk thing, which would have forgiven any failure to actually execute anything being funny on purpose, but any edge it has comes in the throw-away details (but not in the sheer amounts of the Judge Dredd or Marshall Law greats), and there aren’t enough great ideas to carry it beyond more than sit-com-like scenes for Spider to do something silly. But also not quite vacant enough to have to note that Ellis's rants are inherently silly, just that the schedule is was on didn't give it long enough to bake properly, or even make the creators think they needed to do more, or that those rants were enough (though it came in the wake of the '90s, when angst was more of a thing and the Internet hadn't yet fully arrived to deflate it by giving it a voice). 
Ellis is even known for putting some heart into his stories, not making them as bleak and grim as the worst that comics want to get, but any automatic reliance on that comes out as forced sentimentality and silly on its own but more embarrassing. It could have worked better with some grimness if he was going to take it all the way, gritty comics from the ‘90s already being far overdone but not as many with a sci-fi bent so it could have feigned originality; played as an unfunny comedy doesn’t get it anywhere and it could have worked better without the light tone it adopts too often. Themes of fighting against the system and one voice causing a revolution (which doesn’t really happen, even in real life, and a comic isn't going to do it) don’t land (and he (Spider) starts with a privileged head start that we’re just supposed to accept (but it could be Ellis too), especially when so much of it is told rather than shown, another disability of the series, that we just buy that this journalist -- of all professions -- deserves rock star status. Looked at it from today’s view of world events doesn’t help Ellis making his characters come across as bastards -- which he literally admits to, encourages, and splashes across the covers of the book -- when Ellis himself got nabbed for indiscretions that the book would want to forgive but don’t in real life.
The art could arguably have saved it, but it doesn’t. Robertson has proven over decades that he can tell a story, but his expedience (surely an editor’s dream) also makes much of his stuff so thin as to threaten being lifeless. He still produces the story well enough, but there are no extras to give it any punch, like metropolitan details that British artists would litter their post-modern work with (graffiti is easy but it takes a few minutes to come up with), and it all comes out as breezy when it should be heavy, and too unadorned to look like anything but, again, a cartoon. The lack of grit is in sync with the writing, unfortunately, and too many in-jokes that are willfully obscured but not interesting for suspicion of what they could be, or not enough of them to give it any fun secrets. A layer of grit just to give it some character could have gone a long way, though Ramos’s inking is solid and offers some personality if only to give the lines some balance (making up for some of the expedience). Though Robertson has an extra style that comes up for a page or a cover every so often, when his lines get really thick and shadowy and the images are weighty (beyond what the inker would throw on it except at random). Maybe that style came up in his later work, but the rarity shows a shame he didn’t do more like that (unless it slowed him down. That that style is an occasional indulgence makes it all inconsistent except for its lost opportunity to do better by using it more). But overall his art is too light and soft to make an impact, and a missed chance when a really strong style or flair for doing something futuristic (as that’s usually imagined as being gritty, but never light) could have made a difference in the book, maybe pushing it enough to be a classic (and not another forgettable Vertigo series by a good creator who did better work elsewhere). It’s commendable that it got out monthly (at least I don’t remember it being known for lateness issues), but some extra effort from any of the creatives beyond just getting it out, as if its main value was sticking to a time-table, that might have worked at the time but now leaves a series, collected in various volumes, as a middling effort at something that could have been great, if it had more consideration in its execution.
The extra volume, I Hate It Here, is just that: extra. But it’s the best space for Ellis to finally get creative, without need of a narrative structure (or purposely disregarding it, as ill-advised as that can be). It’s the trap of writing about a genius writer, when you better have the ability to match the genius they’re known for writing if it’s going to be at all believable. Spider is a fictional amalgamation of Ellis and Hunter S. Thompson -- as if those two figures could be compared enough to be combined -- but the writing can’t help but fail at coming anywhere close. Thompson made his name being a writer by starting from the ground up and expressing his ability, when Spider, even as a fictional character, has the narrative contrivance to be labeled as genius, until Ellis has to actually show, not tell, that his character's -- and also his own, in an expression of ego -- writing deserves it. In, say, movies, that brilliant work could be a painting that’s never shown, but in something like this, in reading so-called brilliant writing, it’s expected when we finally get to read the writing that’s supposed to be so great. For the most part, save for snippets here and there, like a tease alluding to something much greater, they leave it for the end, accompanied with art by anyone/everyone but Robertson (except for one random page (not the last one) and a cover they reused for the trade (collecting two prestige-format books, which seems like a cheat (especially when for some reason I bought all of them)). Even in the original read I considered how they could reconcile that gap between told of genius and being shown as genius, but no-prized it by explaining that the standards for writing and art in this future are far lower than now, and that anything Ellis could write could, in the story, be accepted, on a curve, as brilliant (and as brilliant as he commands it to be, even if it’s mainly the fictional figures in the book that are actually consuming it). It’s… okay. There’s nothing special in the writing -- especially not anything to base a character’s brilliance off of -- but Ellis gets to stretch out narratively and be more adventurous than he has pretty much in the rest of the series, as well as being a breezy read (as most of the series is, by virtue of how quickly the creators got through the pages to fill up an issue with something and hit their deadlines. Not a hard or often deep read). Also a lot of art by a lot of the biggest comics artists at the time (and not all Vertigo, but at least Vertigo-approved), though none of them doing their best work, or even anything that matches the text (this also applies to the covers of the series, with a few at a time by a lot of big names, though they missed their best shot by not getting Darrow to do more, if not all, since his style worked best with any of it (or its intentions)).
In all, not actually an awful series but with so many missed opportunities that what actually came out is a damp try and no do. There’s a better story in there, and something that today’s Ellis could probably find better than he ever could, if he could recover his name (not happening as of this writing). There’s something open for a sequel, though the fact that that’s never been floated and that it would depend on anything done with that main character (or, actually, The Filthy Assistants, maybe even better choices for a continuation), not that world, might say enough, or that Ellis did his creator-owned series as only a means to get it out and apply it to his name, like all the big writers got an ongoing series at Vertigo, but not with a lasting affection for the material enough to continue to carry on (in the way that anyone wants Gaiman to return to The Sandman, not just because of his name but for the agelessness of the material, ideas, and purpose. Maybe Vertigo should have done more with that (oh, wait, Gaiman got canceled too)).

Human Target (1999); Human Target: Final Cut (DC/Vertigo). Once Vertigo had enough muscle behind them with The Sandman and Swamp Thing they did the artistic thing and branched out to as many other genres as they could cover, and it seems like Milligan got to write most of whatever they were grabbing at (in addition to the regular Shade, the Changing Man gig). Spy and human action seem to do well in comics so that would be a natural choice (though never as much as it could, to even threaten overtaking superheroes at any time), so they did a few of those before finally getting a hit with 100 Bullets, action-in-comics finally done right. DC were also reinventing obscure characters from years ago, and The Human Target might as well have landed with Vertigo, if a mainstream take wasn’t going to make much noise. Milligan seemed to regularly get first dibs on any property, judging by how much work he got (or first shot from an editor idea, rather than necessarily coming in fresh with his own idea like others did), and his work was generally MOR enough to handle whatever genre fell to him, arguably being able to take it a little further than a completely uninspired take, but also that his work could handle such a range that it often ended up being bland (especially for as much work as he was carrying overall). There have been various version of THT but they usually end up being some modern spy who is a master of disguise, something that could and has come from any other corner, and often done better than in comics. Here it’s the same thing, though transplanted into Los Angeles as if that’s some revolution in the concept. It’s still spies and disguises, with a shell-game of identities that also fumbles into being confusing for the reader. It also throws in a street take on the concept but gains nothing from it (except seeing a Brit pull off urban dialogue, which is impressive, for as much research as he had to do into wherever he got it). If it’s not confusing it’s bland, never taking much of the advantage of the genre in comics. If the beginning has enough to imply that it could take its meager set-up and actually make something worthwhile from it, it only trails out with it, becoming increasingly predictable (even for when it’s going to get confusing), and leaving out any kind of twist that could have made it the least bit interesting. Yet the first book went somewhere enough to have gotten a follow-up graphic novel and series (though that’s not to say it was great enough to earn those), so this might just be a very modest and hesitant intro purposely bunting for what could be better ideas later (at least that was the hope). The treat is art by Biuković, who had a minimal style that still conveyed a lithesome dynamic with action, though what was striking in the first issue is watered down in the rest, presumably due to quicker deadlines, but he hits it with some great action shots and a touch with a sexy dame, a secret in his arsenal. This should have been just another project on the way to something bigger (like his take on Batman, always the test to see what an enduring icon can bring out in a visual style, and something so regular in comics it’s a shame they didn’t swoop in to get him to do it when he had had any time at DC)). His art is now rare due to his too-early passing, but this is a nice visit to see what he left behind. His style has been matched by various artists in the time since, not all Eastern European folks but more than a few, and if he was any influence at all it’s good that it has tended toward the minimal rather than choking on detail like so many comics do. 
Then Milligan got to do more Human Target (maybe even a series. Is this about how sales are based on people just buying all the comics that come out instead of specific ones in particular, thereby stopping the best stuff from regularly selling enough?). It’s the continuing story of the character like any other comic (mostly mainstream, as they base their sales on offering an endless soap opera that readers could be compelled to pick up (and pay for) every chapter of) and a new adventure, rolling on with something that should have been deserving of a hardcover edition. It’s a story that doesn’t need to stand out, but it seems to want to go farther with developing the arc of the main character, even though it can’t twist out of being flat, with an identity crisis plot that has been done to death with superhero characters with alter egos, and a persona that is stale for this character in particular. It’s a lot of personal turmoil, mostly in interior monologues that’s a lot of tell-don’t-show, and action that never gets interesting (despite what Vertigo was doing elsewhere at the time). It actually has a decent ending (a tiny twist that works best if you don’t care enough to be looking for it), but it’s not enough make the whole thing great (or to raise it above a middling story balanced out with serviceable art). That it takes place in Hollywood could have been the spice to give it some life, but even that’s been done enough to dilute this (even in this series already). There are references to the previous story, in another mini-series, enough that this barely seems a complete story, a rip-off for being a singular edition that aspires to be on a bookshelf. But even when referencing that past story, the two barely connect for being such fundamental divergent styles, enough to take it into affecting tone, as if they weren’t part of each other at all. (And while the art in this one, minimal and cartoonish but with a flair for action, is solid enough, it’s in dust compared to Biuković.) That this ongoing story would be so incongruous (as well as divided among many irregular collected editions (as well as short, with four issues being a decent length for a mini-series, but paced too strictly and short for much of an arc that would go anywhere), and with a stale character living a tired story, is too much to ask for a series that doesn’t bring anything else of note with it. It could have only have done better if Biuković had stayed the artist (or stayed alive), just for the art if nothing else (even if he’d be wasted, being kept from higher-profile work more deserving of him). It’s acceptable that it could keep going after this, if there ever was a need for it to, but if Chiang is a prestige artist who mainly does shorter stories, then the art changed again, and knowing Vertigo, probably had a completely different style (with how varied the ranges of artists went in their stable, an argument to be made against having any homogeneous house-style, but making the comfort of a steady style a foregone conclusion), leading to a series that was too inconsistent where it could matter (the art) and too consistent in an area when it could have gone wild and done something new and fresh (the writing). Worse, I think I still have another trade of this.

My Top Billy Joel Songs:
20. "Allentown"
19. "Just The Way You Are"
18. "Leave A Tender Moment"
17. "She's Always A Woman"
16. "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"
15. "Don't Ask Me Why"
14. "We Didn't Start The Fire"
13. "Piano Man"
12. "New York State Of Mind"
11. "I Go To Extremes"
10. "Say Goodbye To Hollywood"
9. "You're Only Human (Second Wind)"
8. "My Life"
7. "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)"
6. "The Stranger" 
5. "She's Got a Way"
4. "You May Be Right"
3. "Big Shot"
2. "Only The Good Die Young"
1. "Pressure"

My Top Albums of 2025:
10. I Quit- Haim.
9. I'm Only F***cking Myself- Lola Young.
8. Man's Best Friend- Sabrina Carpenter.
7. The Art Of Loving- Olivia Dean.
6. Bleeds- Wednesday.
5. More- Pulp.
4. Mayhem- Lady Gaga.
3. Welcome to My Blue Sky- Momma.
2. Moisturizer- Wet Leg.
1. Snocaps- Snocaps.
1,000. West End Girl- Lily Allen.

RAVES (or just one)

Lunch. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for about 10 years now. I generally only eat between 4pm and midnight, usually not eating until well after work/school, and ending after we have dinner (around 9:30) then a snack before bed. It’s done some good: I don’t get that weird cold I used to get every few months, my weight is (relatively) under control, and I don’t have to spend much time or money making or eating food. But control over my blood sugar level can be precipitous, and it’s easy to get grumpy in the  afternoon. That was one thing when I had a solitary job where I didn’t have to deal with anybody but now I’m interacting with usually upwards of 35 people at a time who can be very sensitive, it may not be a good idea to be grumbly. So I’ve started eating lunch, which I haven’t done in years (and don't even think about breakfast). It’s usually a large apple or a (relatively, for me) modest bag of baby carrots (after starting with trail mix or Cheez-Its, which usually dragged me down instead), so it’s just enough to stave off an energy drop and keep me level enough to not be a terror more than students. Eating something around noon extends my window, but I’ve also mostly stopped eating anything after dinner (when, especially during the lockdown, I was staying up well past midnight and used the energy of a late-night snack), which is probably an even better idea. I haven’t seen a spike in weight or felt worse so it seems to be working. More than one meal a day and level energy is a revolutionary concept.

By the time I get ready to post this I'm usually sick of the material and my brain has moved well beyond it. When I've done my final edits -- not usually the last thing I do before posting -- I've flushed it from my memory and moved on, so finally posting it feels like a superfluous chore. But it gets done.

As always, there's more. Next time will be the books I read last year when I was teaching. Then I've been reading omnibus editions so lately there are fewer complete books to review, but I'm backlogged so there should still be plenty. And I have a system now where I'm editing new zines on weekends (after they were written a while ago), so it  might not be long before I'm here again.

Waydown #25.12.31

One more by the end of the year (within hours).

Usually I put six comics reviews in here, with as many prose books as I’ve read since last time. Six just seems like a round number, not too much, not too little, as simple as that. My gut says that’s a good number. This time there are a few more, just to complete a period in time. This is stuff I read earlier this year, mostly what I was putting up on eBay (and now mostly sold, luckily). I have a system for reading this stuff before I get rid of it (mostly), though it shifts, and sometimes I get stuck on a longer work that blocks getting more stuff read, especially by volume. This period was just a lot of books. Most of it is minor work, and no further theme than stuff I had next on the list to read, but there are a few nuggets in there. I had actually been so caught up on prose books that I nearly didn’t have one to post for last issue (until I got one done as I was producing it), then I started listening to audiobooks (the way I get through prose books these days) on the way to work, and for a gig that went a few weeks I burned through a number (most that I ripped from library CDs some years ago). If that gig was longer or I had other gigs like that I’d have a flood of book reviews like you’ve never seen (since I could get through, on average, about a book a week. Among these here are four books I finished in less than one single week). But I’m doing other stuff now and not listening to as many, so not getting through as many books, back to listening when I’m giving platelets (at the Red Cross blood bank -- ask me how!) or driving back from dropping off The Kid. (No further update of what I’m listening to or how than that.)

(The above was written at the beginning of the year, maybe January, and I haven't gone back to this zine since. I've read plenty more and I've even written some more about it all, but haven't gotten back to this final form until now, in late December, and only doing it now before the end of the year so I can say I've put out at least one zine a year for the last 30-some years. I've had this deadline before. I also left the above largely untouched, but you won't be able to gauge progress from it until the next issue (which hopefully won't come in late December again).)

The new formatting was an accident. I couldn't get the images to center as usual, and on my way to getting it to work I stumbled upon how to insert it into the text, and I probably like that better. I'm still not comfortable with how they're not all aligned with the first line, but I'm not sweating it (another display of my dwindling perfectionism in this age).

REVIEWS

Clandestine by James Ellroy (audiobook). Back when I was seriously getting into crime fiction, James Robinson recommended Clandestine as his favorite Ellroy book, which I kept in mind even as I read most of everything but that. But I eventually circled back to it, more because I found access to the audiobook rather than the paperback copy I got for a buck. It’s closer to Ellroy’s first, Brown’s Requiem, as a straight detective novel, sometimes too straight, but solid enough to get him more work and possibly give him the artistic freedom to develop the crazy style he developed and made a wider name on. There’s a story-within-a-story that threatens to eclipse the rest in which it’s couched. It’s Ellroy going with the story, digging into a particular character, without the structure of an entire novel. If Ellroy could be accused of style over substance in his later work (not actually the case, but the style has a way of going so far that it can look like it), this micro story is him relying entirely on plot -- just a character’s very involved life-story, sprawling but with  a minimalism of only the essential details -- very oppositite of the style he would develop later, but still existing in this and the past work. These first two of his are solid, and even a great entry in modern detective fiction, but Ellroy gained his notoriety when his writing became electrically charged from The Black Dahlia and on, and this is a fleeting vestige of a pleasing but temperate style and what he could do without as much verbosity for provactivity’s sake. It’s a combination of these factors that make his work so compelling, but it’s equally compelling to see how he started, and maybe even connect to where he went after that (though I’m not sure if I’ll go back and re-read the next ones, as great as the L.A. Quartet are, but also a toss-up between also checking out anything past American Tabloid, which is where I stopped (not completely on purpose, I just didn’t notice as much of his stuff, and even get to keep getting surprised that he kept putting out books over the last 30 years. (But it also could have to do with My Dark Places, one book I went to to continue, but also how far that one went to amounting to very little, expect for the story of how they did a lot of work to amount to nothing, that maybe at least subconscioiusly I was done with him, until I could get back to this, based on an aged recommendation hanging around like an obligation.)) Also, the title seems more like something to do with spies, but it’s still a good word, and might as well work for this if there’s not a better one.

Hard Candy by Andrew Vachss (audiobook). The next for me in the Burke saga. I know I had the printed book on a bookshelf, and may have assumed I read it years ago, but listening to this now, nothing registers in my memory of having had it before, which also means that I jumped from the one two ahead of this, to the one before this, then way ahead to the ninth in the series, which is astoundingly unlike me, to consume them in order but to also leave out so many between. It’s fine to go back and do the whole thing properly in order now, except for whatever time I lost back then reading these when I could have been on something else (though that could have been books that wouldn’t have nourished me, like the Wild Cards series). This one is a lot of the same joyless grittiness as they ever were, but pulls most of its plot as threads from before, very purposely connecting back to anything that has been established, and hopefully laying it to rest since it doesn’t go forward with anything. Though even wallowing in familiar ground is satisfying when it’s so gritty and richly rendered, with Burke as consistent as he ever needs to be, though with his tangents not yet as fully realized. That the book takes a good third if not half to even arrive at a story is a given at this point, especially when that catching up stretches beyond even that to most of it, and all of it grinding so low that peaks and valleys in the narrative barely register, like the quiet killings that happen regularly. The rare new character that comes in is a standard femme fatale, who connects in the series of previous femme fatales (who all show up) as only a purposeful definition as distant from the others as possible, which is pinning down a shape connecting them all that might run out of this (though that new character could be left out as to not be another piece to slow it down). Knowing there are more significant spots coming up, this is just some connective tissue, leading away from what came before, but maybe also summing it up, as if the entire Burke saga is a series of quadrilogies. Though knowing this is going to end eventually -- another dozen books -- is a dark delight, that surely how it wraps up will only be tragic, but wondering how bad it will get by then, and how awful it can be until it gets there.

Let's Go (so We Can Get Back) by Jeff Tweedy. I finished this quickly and unexpectedly (since it was an audiobook and I had no way to find how long it had left), and it was a weekend at work so I could jump on another book. I had this in print from a gift a few Christmases ago (never a great idea for a present for me these days since I’ll only get through a book if it's available on audiobook. The audiobook works best for me, especially when it’s readily available on Libby (like most music bios are, like the Beastie Boys and Lanegan books -- out of everything, they seem to always be available)). I didn’t have high expectations for it, and at worst it would be just another rock bio with more personal details about a musician’s life than anyone would need, since I’m only about the music, especially with Tweedy’s band Wilco of which I’m a fan but not so much that I need more background on them than I have (and yet I do for Pixies, who are at least as boring as people). But Tweedy wrote it like he read rock bios and only did his own if he could do his own thing, so the historical facts are just background for general ideas, more concerned with how he feels about something and how he’s living the life, with explanation of how he got there instead of detailing what’s happened in his life. His other motivation is also clearly to answer the questions he’s had to answer in every interview since the beginning, to put a definitive end to the same responses he’s had to give for years -- about the drugs, the firing of Jay Farrar from Wilco, breaking up Uncle Tupelo, his migraines, why he’s more involved with his family and solo work than doing more Wilco. Also a look into his creative process, though not enough on their masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which is so monumental a work that it could barely be enough no matter how much he wrote, and probably more than he needed to), but also too much on A Ghost is Born (what I was so excited for in a follow-up to YHF that turned out to be a little too experimental, and too much noise and near-blank space). It’s fair, and well-constructed to keep a narrative going. It doesn’t meander so much, helped by going chronologically through the events of his life that resonate with where he is now, which is fairly recently, but before a spate of Wilco activity, after he did some side-projects with family, and, especially with this paved and behind him, on to the next phase in his creative life. It’s a relatively light and breezy book, but matching Tweedy’s public and creative persona, as any easy-going guy, and here he’s explaining how some things have gone and how he got there. It’s actually a refreshing break from the typical rock bio which is the first half being from their birth to when they got big, with far more details than anyone would need from a place in time when no one needed to know what they did (from an effort to build them to how they could get big (and get to write a book about their life) then disconnects when they became the person who consumed far too many drugs), then gloss over the height of their fame, which should be the most exciting part, then hit rock bottom and probably almost died, then cleaned themselves up and are living great, even if they’re not doing work anywhere near what they used to (with or without the drugs), and now they just want to tell you about how great their family is (without trying to convince you of their sobriety since it’s a given if they’re doing a book). Tweedy has a lot of that but he’s much more casual about it, and doesn’t want, or need, to get into details, especially knowing he didn’t live a rock n’ roll lifestyle even when he did. He has some stories, though none all that sordid, and he realizes that he could be considered a rock star, and he’s gracious that he gets to live making music (and gets to write a book about his life that people will buy and read), so he’s as pleasant as anyone could imagine, and it comes through in the writing. He also narrates his own audiobook, giving it an immediacy and warmth that would be lost if anyone else read the words, like trying to live someone else’s life -- it probably wouldn’t work (though getting an audiobook from print is like having a script in a conversation around a campfire, though it doesn’t change the content). It’s an easy read (I got through the whole audiobook in less than 24 hours), but the print version doesn’t have any pictures, which seems like a miss when there are so many available (and accessible. But it would be the kind of addition that makes most bios complete, archiving some images with the memoir details). Such breezy writing wouldn’t make most rock stories -- especially when the drugs are harder and the events more tragic -- but something like this once in a while, especially when it fits its author so well, is a delightful effort.

City of Quartz by Mike Davis. A friend got me this book back in the ‘90s, when it was still relatively new and print was revered, and we were both in L.A. and young enough to be in love with the city. My friend even inscribed it (making so I probably won’t sell it). I just knew it was a big book that would probably get bigger once I started it, then get stuck in it for who-knows-how-long, but feel obligated to read it since it was a gift. I kept it (and its sequel) on a bookshelf for nearly 30 years, wondering when I might actually have the wherewithal to ever get to it, and if I was even capable of earning such a thing. But then audiobooks became my thing, and I was getting through stacks of books that had been languishing on my shelves, finally getting through them in a fraction of the time it would have taken me to read, and maybe even getting more out of them when I wasn’t dragging through looking at print. I was surprised to even have found it, since it seemed more like a textbook, but once it came up on Overdrive/Libby, I could wait patiently for my turn with it (and baffled why an item that can easily be digitally copied has a finite amount of copies available), and finally it came up. I started digging into it over a weekend when I had to work, giddy that I could finally consume this book that had waited so long for me. By that time I had moved out of L.A. (though adjacent) and my friend had found more love for San Francisco (which probably has an even better book about it), but I still held it as an obligation to explore, if to respect the time I’d had as part of it and how that time had formed me and where I got to by then. It was hard to know what kind of context I needed for it, but I hoped it was user-friendly enough that I could dive into it like any book. It is certainly something like a textbook (then finding out my wife had to read this for one of her classes at UCLA. (Before his passing, the author even appeared in a documentary on the L.A. riots in the ‘90s, showing his relevance and even getting a glimpse of an update on his perspective of the city (though almost equally as old as the book)). It could have had the easier title of “A Secret History of Los Angeles,” and maybe that would make it less obtuse, if not for the thousand other books that took that name and probably weren’t nearly as trenchant in their study. This actually doesn’t express a broad explanation of what went before in the city, as if to excuse that place's excesses and what it became, and there might not even be any shocks (especially now), but it drills into a few events of the past, especially how CalArts helped build L.A.’s creative community and how special-interest groups took a fast grasp on much of what want on in the city (and particularly, of course, the money), and how (its own story, obviously). Bafflingly it even spends a good chunk concentrated on Fontana, which might be just another sub-city in the abstract to anyone else in the world, but the locals know it’s an hour outside of downtown (if there’s no traffic), far on the edge of the county (nearer to the warzone that is San Bernardino, no less), and squarely in the middle of B.F.E. (though it’s tried to come along the last few years, it’s only swollen to match the the surrounding environs, so as it be nothing more when equal). It’s a look at how a relatively few people helped shape strategic parts of the city, and enough detail so as to make it lush, and to paint L.A. as a fairly wondrous place (if that’s not a given even when not adroitly described). But being nearly 30 years old, the book is a relic, and it seems even dustier in that era before the Internet. It’s a capable landmark of time, capturing glimpses of representative pieces of the city and its historical culture, but it seems like only half a history when there’s so much that has happened since, up to now. Though there’s a second book, Ecology of Fear (an equally obtuse title), which was also gifted to me at the same time, it has to be only as dated. But it’s an overall stirring look at a city of wonder with a rich and sometimes sinister history (though little that’s particularly scandalous). It’s a dense book but a worthy look at the city from a unique and learned perspective, one not necessarily affectionate toward it, but maybe contributing to a love that could already have been there.

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk. It’s a delight to have been reading Palahniuk for over 20 years and still have some books he’s done to get to (though we won’t get to the Fight Club 3 comics, after that travesty was revealed). The audaciousness of this one comes out in the plot rather than the story devices or its spirit, being about a porn shoot with 500 men and one actress (a feat that’s already been done in the real world, if I recall, and surely has been copied elsewhere just because it could be possible). To lead with stating it’s about a snuff film rather than a porno, when it’s so clear from the jump, that it’s almost a spoiler in the title, or at least a blemish when it’s a reveal that could have been delayed or even excised since it doesn’t stand as much of a support in the story or a necessary element. It’s told from varying, shifting points of view, a bit of a miss when it focuses on only a few of those when a greater range could have exploited the device more dynamically, but its limit is the worst thing in the story because the rest is a lot of fun. Pahalniuk over-researches, something he only hinted at with Fight Club, putting in great details like a proper author, but even leaving in a few that are just for fun (and only probably believable, but if they’re not, it’s a testament to Pahalniuk’s imagination and prowess that they could be). A lot of it is left to Pahalniuk’s imagination, especially in conjuring euphemisms for a male who engages in the sexual act (with someone else or with themself; also someone who aspires to do such). Like Pahalniuk relished using the term “dog” in Choke (to refer crudely to a penis), he “gun finger”s in this one so much that it becomes a distraction more than a pattern or callback. It’s often unsurprisingly gross, and it mostly stays on track, though when it wanders is when it gets its best jolts. Also amusing when Palahniuk writes so vehemently about sex, but it would be necessary in a work like this. It’s comical enough as to be breezy, though a few hard turns-of-phrase are heavy enough for a reaction, then back to funny in its audacity. It doesn’t have the grit or anarchic spirit of Fight Club, and its twist is so minor as to be just a turn of the story rather than a reveal that undoes the whole thing, as well as too focused to allow tangential elements that added a richness to his other books (lke Bob and his bitch tits), but as a drunken story that promises again to get sober tomorrow, it’s fun enough for as long as it isn’t required to leave a deep impression.

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis. I casually picked up an Ellis work since I’d never read anything by him, but he’d come up on my cultural radar on occasion, and I could get through an audiobook by him if he turned out to be all hype. I’d only ever seen Less Than Zero in my adult life, and it hadn’t done much for me. It turned out that this book is a sequel to LTZ, a fact I only happened upon when I was having a conversation about it with a co-worker. I had already been well into it (most of an hour’s drive into work), and the characters did not make a difference for the connection, but I suddenly had a context that ultimately didn’t matter in the first place. I barely remembered the LTZ movie, except maybe that it was something about class conflicts, in an market where that was a theme that rarely came up (as Americans can always assume their aspirations to a higher class are as good as being in them, and don’t want to be reminded when they’re realistically in a much lower class), but was more for seeing how well-off people might act and what drugs they had access to, and the combination of a few great, young actors, somewhere near their primes (or at least before RDJ melted down). The book eschews those class displays and just stays high up since that’s easier, never exiting its bubble of wealth and maybe what a reader might be most interested in, if that translates in text better than on screen. Also none of the drugs that were prevalent in the movie and probably the original book, so it leaves out the depravity that finally made drug-use the least bit unsexy, but also removes a chance they might have to travel outside of their circle to score when they can’t in their exclusive sectors of L.A. and Hollywood, just to give it some air. It’s another dull sequel to a story that might have had some vim, enough to get acclaim and be adapted into a memorable movie (if for being a supremely undiluted relic of an ‘80s fantasy). Ellis’s concession for having to live with every fan and reporter asking if he could do a continuation, then finally dragging out the characters to do something with them, even if it’s not much, and nothing to match any heights they reached to afford him the opportunity to do it again. It starts with a mystery coming from a narrative cliche -- the mysterious figure following mysteriously -- at least amid the dearth of anything else happening beyond location-dropping (for places mostly no longer there) and slogging some exposition for what the characters have been up to since last time, which isn’t much. Then the mystery is revealed too early (if you hadn’t already figured it out) and it lurches into drama, no longer even interested in the details that gave it any voyeuristic vigor to that point, but the characters banging into each other as a means of conflict enough to give the story something with which to progress, and a new mystery that doesn’t get resolved but gives at least one character their ultimate end (another missed opportunity to end all of them, correcting the mistake of letting them live in the first book (though I wanted to recall at least one of them not surviving the movie, enough that it was a surprise when they showed up in the book, that the overriding continuity was from the book)). That this is just those characters hitting middle age is nothing, even less when compared to younger characters that are too flat to deserve notice anyway -- yes, yes, they were desperate at that age too -- and it says nothing about that era unless the characters meant enough to be able or want to compare to. Ellis takes out his own challenges with that era by making a work that expresses it as boring as aging itself. Having familiarity with the characters adds nothing, and trying to connect the actors from the movie to what they’re made in this story can only be confusing, as they would prove to be fatally miscast. Even imagining the actors as those characters in reading (listening) became the most confusing thing in the experience, especially since the story doesn’t go deep in the first place. It could be a coup to have gotten Andrew McCarthy to narrate the sequel to the book that made the movie that made his name in Hollywood, if this wasn’t possibly the biggest project he’s had since. It’s the most disastrous miscast of a character, from the most intriguing character in the story, enough to earn the book’s POV, enough that it could be Downey if you didn’t know who’s supposed to be who (from the movie), but then a disappointment to find that such a dull actor is supposed to be a far more interesting character, as a lead, no less. Spader’s character gets close to being just as slimy, but this version of Julian would be far too dull for RDJ to return to -- there’s nothing in this story that deserves to be made into an LTZ sequel flick in the first place, and probably why it wasn’t broadcast as being the sequel (enough for anyone to be able to take note before they started reading/listening to it). But a good introduction, especially if to halt reading more by Ellis, if this is the best he can do (or the best has already been a more-easily digestible but no more worthy movie).

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao made me a Diaz fan for life. If for no other reason than the references, but it was also a warm and moving book that got to a place that usually doesn’t get to with me. Any book would have to be lesser than that (since none of his other stuff won a Pulitzer), but even a fraction would be headily potent. So I found the audiobook and, even casually, it could be something. It’s a short story collection so it's not the same kind of sustained story that gets to develop a character and their world fully over time, and the tales seem choppy in comparison (since TBWLOOW worked so well drilling into one protagonist), but it’s just as potent, and there’s more, but there’s just less of each. It’s also a range of characters so they don’t always have to be heroic (to keep us with them), but they’re human and entirely compelling. He still keeps some of the same tropes (just enough obscure fanboy references to make them a gem to unexpectedly uncover), but he also digs into his own Dominican-American culture, making it as vibrant and fantastical as it is real, in our own world already if we hadn’t already noticed; it wasn’t until just a few years ago while taking a World Literature class (in college at an advanced age) that I realized how limited my own reading was, as far as diversity goes (but also in all the other categories, especially genre, with all the cyberpunk and horror fiction I’ve filled my time with). I read some Anne Rice (including one book I couldn’t finish), but the rest was cis White middle-aged males (even though they were a lot of big names that all readers have read). I hadn’t realized how limited my scope was (including comics, too), but I found so much treasure with these authors from other backgrounds that I’ve been encouraged to find more, and Diaz, one that I had discovered on my own outside of that inclination to be more inclusive of writers (and also my wife’s recommendation), was the peak (and maybe could have gotten me to look broadly on his own (such was the strength of TBWLOOW (though I never would have thought that book would have been written like that))). This makes me want to seek out even more Diaz books, or maybe even expand my interests to catch even more references. By the way: Led from the title, it’s not about losing someone, or instructions for doing it, or being aware of doing it, or even more than one story about that… unless it is, and it’s just a challenge to figure out how they all connect around that theme. There’s a lot to it so you have plenty to work with.

1984 by George Orwell. For as much as I love Animal Farm (even reading it twice, then a third time, a super-rarity for me), I never got around to Orwell’s other blockbuster, though it could be argued which is more prominent (Animal Farm was shorter and more digestible, at least). Somehow the nudge I needed was that this was my daughter’s boyfriend’s favorite book, in high school, and I felt I should get around to it finally (especially since I’ve made a ruckus about reading the classics, then possibly teaching them before long. Even if I have to go in deeper with them, this is a good primer to at least get through it as a story, especially when I’m only doing it with the audiobook, which can necessarily preclude a deep reading). It’s as great as anyone would say, and earning its status as a classic. More than anything its themes -- of greed, power, history written (and rewritten) by the winners -- applies to any time after it was published and initially celebrated, a mildly subversive move by schools to get this kind of thinking into a curriculum, then spread like a virus it deserved to be, even if the students will see it as yet another assignment they have to slog through instead of a weapon. There might have been the hope that much of this could be resolved by the time it reached the titular year, as if lust for power was a thing that could ever go away (or ever has, for even a moment in all of recorded history), or at least to reach that checkpoint and we could see some progress. But instead, it’s more trenchant today -- in the year 2025 -- than maybe it even was when originally conceived. It won’t be the first time that anyone has compared the current state of the world to 1984 (even by me. I made it a point to reference it in a paper for a class on diversity). It’s rather frightening that it got so close to predicting the future so many decades ago, and that that future could even exist, and that we’re there now (or at least close, as any opponents would have to admit). This is almost a blueprint for what was to come, and as everyone (except me, apparently) had to read this in high school, you’d think they’d be more aware of reality reflecting art, or that they could be so blatant in perpetuating some of the crimes in the story. Alas, it’s not an adventure tale, much like Animal Farm isn't really a story about animals, and doesn’t end with the right side claiming a clear victory. It’s the ideas, as a warning, and its own reflection of reality, then imprinting them on what could come. There aren’t enough exciting ideas to float anyone having to read it as fiction, something that means the most when studied and dug into, not an action tale. There’s a character who moves through the world, but only as a witness to explore it, which Orwell constructs expertly, as its own blueprint for world-building, with wide concepts and some nuance to make it feel like they’re actually living in it and not just to carry concepts. It’s depressing, especially when the most powerful forces cannot be resisted (only one of the themes), but this isn’t that kind of story. It also doesn’t resolve, another point that there’s truly no fighting these agencies that can crush opposition on a whim, but there are plenty of other corners that could have been explored in that world. Just one reasonably-sized novel can almost contain those potent ideas, but there’s a lot of it that was co-opted into other futuristic stories anyway (fitting comfortably within a cyberpunk franchise somewhere, better than what they imagined 1984 to be, which wasn’t nearly as advanced in technology as the jump from the ‘90s on). But not every book, even a classic, has to offer a fulfilling ending, and this one is appropriate, merely reflective of a world that started okay (since the past is always better) until those who got a little bit of power became perverted in the name of acquiring more power, and taking it for themselves. It’s sad, but truer than most of what we get IRL. In fiction we can at least see the inner processes, when in the real world we only see the consequences, and believing what we want (even guessing) about the inner workings, it’s our reality. The book also has a scene where the two main characters make love -- nothing explicit, but certainly not just implicit, and enough, to my mind, that would keep it out of anything but the most advanced high school English classes, and even then. If it still got into secondary schools with that in there, it might be another level of subversiveness, and it’s a faily minor point anyway, just an act of contact between the two (and something that happens plenty in the real world, even to high schoolers), but it could easily be imagined that more coservative communities, especially those that are so vocal these days, would not accept the work (unless they forgot that part from when they were supposed to read it, if they even read it, and didn’t bother to read it again or at all before they brought a case against it).

Scene of the Crime: A Little Piece of Goodnight. If the best writers in (mainstream) comics take a trip through Vertigo at some point, Brubaker did his with crime-fiction. He’s always been a solid writer, and even his superhero stuff had a healthy dose of crime-fiction (so you’d think I’d be a really big fan, especially of his work on Daredevil, which I have, but I just haven’t caught up to much of his wider work, until this, which I got a while ago with the expectation of it being decent crime-fiction in comics, then sold it after I finally read it). It’s commendable that Vertigo would publish something outside of their own usual genres -- horror, mild sci-fi, LGBTQ-leaning -- even if it’s a genre that doesn’t work so well in comics. In the way that superheroes rely on their visual aspect, and why they don’t work well in plain text, crime-fiction relies on creeping notions, which can be more effective in imagination, as well as usually working best being plot-heavy, which can be exposition, so it loses something in the graphic format of comics. Seeing it illustrated makes it too literal, that we can’t fill in the darker corners that the best crime prose lead to. This isn’t a bad story, and it’s solid enough for Brubaker to earn the promise of more work in his early days, as well as forging relationships with his artists (Lark & Phillips) that would pay off bigger later, but it’s not exceptional for crime fiction, and the graphic format brings nothing else to it. Also clearly not intended as a franchise, as so many new comics strive to be (whether it works for them or not), since the main character is utterly forgettable, with his own particular distinction being a physical deformity that somehow doesn’t come out in the final printing. A fine experiment, if it has to be, and another genre that Vertigo can say they covered. Brubaker did plenty more crime-fiction later on, as solid for that genre as comics could be, with Phillips, but presumably they had the freedom to put something else in them then, maybe play with its inherent reality in a way that can conform better with the strengths of comics, but here it’s pretty straight, and with no particular charge to it it’s pretty flat, though relative to Vertigo, which had high enough standards that it’s still decent.

Untold Tales of Batman (DC). I had these comics as a kid (or at least my uncle did, and since he kept his comics in better shape than I did, I could return to them more often than my own). The biggest distinction this series had was that it was a limited series, in the early ‘80s when anything not numbered for the newsstand was a rarity. As such, it works as a separate story outside of the ongoing Batman books, and even a primer to readers new to the Batman mythos (which could have been slightly less familiar than he is today). This was well before any consideration of collecting books for a second run with the same material, but since it feels like that could only have been the intention, it was well ahead of its time, especially for also being a better All-Star Batman than Miller & Lee could put together (though anything could be). Maybe it was just its own experiment, or a one-off that they had an idea for but discarded. As it is, it’s a self-contained Batman story that plays with all his trappings, including monkeying with his origin, maybe before they did that regularly as a matter of course. To dare to change the foundation that Batman was built on could have been audacious enough to carry the series, but today it goes like an isolated, quick read that doesn’t connect to anything. And yet more art by Aparo, who was probably the ideal Batman artist for getting regular books out, but he did enough of them that those books decades ago weren’t special just for having him. And with this he does the same journeyman work that all the regular books had, nothing to make the mini-series any more special, though there’s a credit to Byrne in the first issue and some infrequent hints of his style throughout, so the secret intention of this one could have been that it was going to be Byrne drawing it -- a huge draw for the time when he was doing Uncanny X-Men, and enough to warrant its own stand-alone series -- then when that didn’t work out they dumped it on Aparo for it to become just another Batman book. Its main strength is being its own book, a story that could have been more easily an Annual, and hitting on a lot of the Batman staples, the most sensational being a splash page of headshots for all of the Batman villains laid out to blow the mind of a boy too easily stimulated by images of as many super-powered characters as could fit on a page (even though getting headshots of those villains, especially all done up for their various villainy, would make no sense). The collection of this (inevitable when they found those could sell and started looking through their archives for more) would be a fine artifact of superhero books from the early ‘80s, a casual read but hitting the expected hallmarks. Digging up these issues I got years ago (separate from my uncle’s) and getting them ready to sell also gave me the chance to finally finish the story, after going a few decades never realizing I didn’t have the last issue. It probably wasn’t important for anything, and even the closure didn’t outdo Garcia-Lopez covers and that headshot page.

Modern Masters Volume 02: George Pérez (TwoMorrows). Another standard book in this series, with an iconic comics artist giving a lengthy interview and a lot of art, in black & white, some of it very early in their career and/or unreleased. Though neither of those are ever enough, so with the amount included compared with how much work they’ve done and experience they’ve had, this almost seems like a sampler, or a modest introduction to them and their work rather than a deeper dive, as far as art goes. This one doesn’t have a particular distinction for being first in the series, like it needs to establish the format, since it follows the same straight-forward format all of them had (better to express the words and art of the subject). I was never a huge Pérez fan, at least not as much as I should have been, for as much as I loved any great amount of superheroes packed into a comic, which doing so was Pérez's trademark, since his work could also be over-stimulating and overdone and sometimes without the character that a more focused or sedate artist could bring. But I’ve also become a fan of this series of books, and if they’re not going to keep doing more than I’ll get the ones they’ve already done, just for some casual fandom or to pick up some insider knowledge or techniques, even if I’m not necessarily there for the particular artist. Specifically for Pérez it’s a look at a lot of his art without color, so as to see the detail (though he’s always gone up to where more is way too much), though the usual color work, having to match the detail of his pencils, is often what gives it a pop. Also a slight loss without a solid inker to give it some needed depth, but the pencils here show how much more detail he would give, even beyond what would be printed. Most of the artists who got enough of a name to be the feature of one of these books were big enough to also be offered a writing gig, even outside of just writing for their own art, and those have brought wildly varying degrees of success, and since it’s not their main thing they usually don’t give it much space in the interview or refer to it as just part of the project, but Pérez goes on for a while about some of his attempts at writing without the art, particularly during his Wonder Woman run, and some of his problems with writing and working with a co-writer, and some of the behind-the-scenes of works he headed as a writer/creator, as more essential to the inner working of the projects, but also vulnerable to the politics of it, rather than just being hands to draw. He also goes on more about his writing craft, as modest as it was, than his drawing craft, save for a few mentions of his tools. This was also around the time that Pérez was with CrossGen, and they talk about it like that company wasn’t going to be a minor footnote before long. It really doesn’t matter so much what Pérez's gig was at the time, since he had the same distance from Marvel & DC even if he was working at either of those, but there is some mention of how they did business differently (though also changed some practices just to accommodate him) (then shortly after those practices were irrelevant anyway), but it places it in a very particular context (especially showing off some art that will never get re-released again (if anyone even has a lingering interest in CrossGen anymore)). It's more verbose than these need to be or usually are, but if you're interested in Pérez as a writer, for whatever reason, this is as much as anyone would need.

Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman (DC/Vertigo). Vertigo stretched again with a new genre and creator just to see what happens. It’s all in the title: something close to a hard-boiled detective story, set in pre-tech Siberia. It’s certainly a novelty but it’s true to both of those traditions, even if the detective story is mostly such only because it’s initiated by a voluptuous dame (who betrays later, as the cliché goes) and the hero is kinda grizzly. Shamanism makes little difference whether it’s made up or researched. It’s a slight story, and nothing that needs to go anywhere. It’s a shame it’s not a whole work by Laban, who is also an aritst, though his style would have made it a little too cartoony. Instead they got Parkhouse, whose style is just a touch rough and abstract, which fits, except that he’s also British, which is a strange counterpoint to Laban’s brand of hippie/counter-counterculture that comes with his stuff even when he’s purposely avoiding it, like here. But there’s something in Laban’s work I connected with before this, since I had issues of Cud and Eno & Plum (even had some signed, so I must have met him as well), though picking up this book could also just as easily have been just because I often bought anything that Vertigo put out. This was them checking off another genre, which could be commended as much as it could be a calculated play at running down a list, and Laban’s further work for them was beginning the The Dreaming series, which was already promised some kind of success for its association to Vertigo's flagship, so this book could have been a vocational crossover to or from that, but anything else might have been too risky for someone whose limits might have worked better a few decades before with the underground comix.

The System (DC/Vertigo). Yet another instance of Vertigo whipping out a new sub-imprint for a different vein of a project (only for it to disappear after the initial releases), this time what could be considered an art piece (as opposed to the work of traditional comics artists, where art isn’t really the type of material that could go up in a gallery. There’s a line, even if no one seems to know where it is). This could even be Art for no other reason than it has no dialogue, a format that’s been done before plenty, and not saving it from the perception of comics as something low-brow just because it’s sequential images in pages presented simply, with or without words. It’s even been done to this length (probably by a lot of artists who don’t want to deal with a writer and can also be a writer for their project without having to write words out or risk ruining it with bad dialogue), but it’s a welcome experiment even if it’s been proven it can work as well as anything, and this was only the newest shot. Kuper might also be considered one of the finer artists to have done comics, as he could have a gallery show of his work, or at least the infrequency of it could lend it some prestige, and maybe some legitimacy outside of comics since he at least never did the traditional comics, not even a Batman story (which is alarming if you know that pretty much everyone in comics has done a Batman story). This one is a sustained story about New York (though it could maybe be any metropolis (except maybe Metropolis)) and all its colliding people and elements crashing into each other and everything else constantly. The story is so direct it doesn’t need words, but there’s a throughline that carries it as well as a comic with words, maybe even better for needing to focus on holding the narrative without a crutch of dialogue. It gets a bit cartoon-y but there are also some images and themes that could be a minor shock if you’re only expecting a simple narrative with no words for edges. It’s really a complex story, with a lot of buried details and callbacks to parts that would be easily glanced over, and not suffering for having no dialogue. All the themes and characterization are there like any other story, but taking an abstract approach that feels fresh even now (though the art, for representing familiar ideas like human form and structure, is hardly abstract). There’s also dividing the story into three parts, to make for a three-issues series (a concession to the comics form, as well as to Vertigo, getting to sell it once individually -- three times -- then again in a collection), but it can do with a breather between parts, or at least a moment to put down one issue and pick up the rest, since it can be consumed in a flash. Of course it’s a quick read, but more to leave further time to gaze at the images. There’s not much detail in Kuper’s work but he does texture like it’s rarely been seen, not just in a tactile sense but also with color and shading. It’s the kind of book that would make sense to come from fine art, but it’s also the kind of limit-pushing that comics could ever use more of (and more than just Vertigo making a meager attempt just to see if it will stick, but at least they did it with some regularity, and maybe success, even if none of it lasted long).

Black Orchid (1988) (DC). Early Gamian work, pre-The Sandman but a set-up for that series (as he carried a lot of extra ideas from this series to the later one, and probably wisely). Though this one is more about McKean’s work, who rarely turned up on interiors even then, but at least still did them on occasion. Gaiman’s work is relatively primordial, with some of the purple prose that his rip-offs would be chastised for later (but would still get plenty of work at Vertigo), but it’s also trying to fit in with the work of McKean, who would often go for the more atmospheric image rather than one that would convey the story, whether Gaiman was putting in dialogue post-art (Marvel style) or McKean was following his own whim more than directions in a document. Gaiman also was fairly conservative with his wording (also in opposition to many later Veritgo writers, who sure didn’t hide that they might have been getting paid by the word), and some of it flows like the poetry that Sandman would be known for later. It’s primitive work for the heights that Gaiman would develop in to later, challenging Alan Moore as the most ground-breaking and monumental writer in what would be the Vertigo stable (but outside of it as well), and this is a good warm-up for getting in to The Sandman (with even the bridge of a Swamp Thing appearance, as if who would be the early-Vertigo flagship character offers to hand off the torch of DC’s weird-stuff corner if this landed, until The Sandman wrenched it from him), even though it would be a jump backwards in the art department. McKean’s work could still be abstract, emboldened by the success of The Sandman so he could do whatever he wanted with the covers, and they got downright weird, if they even had anything to do with the story inside at all, but it’s a joy to see him following some kind of imperative for a narrative of some kind, when clearly both creators had their freedom to do some satisfying work (including having three issues, as if it to earn the prestige format designation, deserving more than what could have been a Special on the usual crappy newsprint). McKean showed even more freedom on Arkham Asylum, but if he hadn’t gotten his name by that time then that would be a work that assumed all the abstractness, if not for its subject matter but for being written by Morrison, with his own early brush of earning the creative freedom of risk (that, arguably, that story needed). Black Orchid could only benefit from tigether art to reveal more human nature to contrast when it gets weird, but at least McKean can keep it consistent (and colorful, until a lot of it becomes every shade of green imaginable), and this can be an artifact of an iconic artist doing the grunt work of sequential comics pages as if it were already a dying form. This was also a try-out in resurrecting an obscure character and it doing well enough to warrant an ongoing series, though there’s no reason to continue on if this one draws in anybody for a buried Gaiman story (and I sure didn’t. I had that whole series (much more just because it was Vertigo) and never got around to it then eventually sold it on eBay (so maybe they’ll read it)).

Convergence: Suicide Squad (DC). Luckily it was the fact that this was a Suicide Squad book for why I got it more than curiosity if they changed the “Convergence” formula, and I would have been disappointed yet again if it were the latter. It’s the same as in every one of these “Convergence” books: the first issue is a set-up, the second issue is a big, pointless fight scene. There was no reason it couldn’t be one oversized issue, since the division between issues only emphasizes how specific each part is to what could charitably be called a story, and this one doesn’t even do much with those parts. The first issue at least isn’t establishing a past version of the title’s stars, and in this case it’s the usual mish-mash of villains that have made up the Squad, indistinct from any other, and not being affected by what version they are (so they might as well be the newest). The whole issue is introducing some kind of major threat they have to deal with, and the plan to get there. Very little real action or character, and we’re probably supposed to assume they’re leaving that for the second issue (even when it leaves this one damp and empty). The second one finally gets to some action, but it’s a lot of traveling to the threat rather than actually fighting it, and as the pages turn, it’s closer to the end and winnowing space for the real fight, then when that finally happens it’s pretty much just a splash page to contain all the action, climax, and whatever narration it can claim. It’s the poor craft of bad comics-writing -- poor pacing that squishes what should be the best part into a minimum of pages (if that much), even worse when it ends sooner to leave the last few pages of the issue for some backmatter. And again no resolution of the story from that battle (which apparently continues in the main Convergence series, likely relegating these characters to the background). DC seemed to be a little careful about doing much with the Suicide Squad immediately after Ostrander left, but with enough writers that came up loving his SS there have been a lot more hands on it, and this one went to a writer who hopefully can claim that it was a last-minute rush job akin to a fill-in issue rather than admitting to botching it with such poor work. Mandrake was an indelible partner to Ostrander on their majestic Spectre run, but here his style is too stylistic to capture the grittiness of the characters or even present them as anything like a realistic human being, which it depends on if their lives and deaths are to have any weight, otherwise it’s too abstract to care, and dealing with rendering so many characters just becomes messy (especially when wrapping up the entire two books in a few wide shots). Luckily there’s been far too much Suicide Squad material post-Ostrander to bother to keep up with, though I thought maybe an occasional nip in wouldn’t be too bad (for yet another resurrection of a beloved but canceled series, as if it's anywhere near a fresh idea to do so). Unfortunately it’s more crossover crap and a defilement of what could be some good characters (if it even had a place in proper continuity in the first place).

Red: Eyes Only (DC/Wildstorm). Not every artist should be a writer, no matter how well they can fit their art to the story they want to tell. Most artists who make a name get a shot at writing, especially their own stuff, and getting to write and not have to draw a book isn’t always an indication of the quality of their writing (since the bar is often (too) low and there are too many other factors that go into the success of a project), but it’s a means of establishing them as a writer alongside any other creator, especially one who writes and doesn’t draw. They might also have started their entry into comics as a writer/artist/overall-creator, so doing one of those is just compartmentalizing, and maybe they have an affinity for the other task, but it can’t be counted on in comics, and there have been enough issues from a good artist who became a so-so or just bad writer that anyone can be suspicious of an artist making the transition. It can be a lot for a creator to earn if they commit to it (though probably still less work than drawing an issue). Sometimes a creator even gets some choice when they own the property. Hamner did the Red book with Ellis, and it was a pretty minor action book that could transition easily enough into a movie property that it actually happened that also picked up being a comedy on the way (as if nothing could be adapted for the mass-market from a comic book without a slapstick tone that no one who has ever looked at a comics assumes they’re filled with as a matter of course). DC would have made an effort to put out Red-related material when the (first) movie came out in case it went big, but maybe it was also a chance for the creators to return to a property they particularly liked. This would have been a period when Ellis was overworked, which left Hamner to do a book, maybe as much as he wanted. Getting a different writer would be a violation of their control over their material (though the writer staying on with a different artist wouldn’t have roused comment), and the artist might as well get his day, with his own property. Unfortunately, it’s poorly written and not much of a story. A bad writer might be such because they’re boring, but at least most who know their craft can structure a story. This one is haphazardly done, with pacing like the whole thing was plotted randomly, and sequences that are so jagged and ill-fitting that it’s a wonder if there was a thought for a plot in the first place. Hamner had to have some idea of how to lay it out since it was going to end in the space of a standard comic book (not lurching on forever toward a vague ending like in a regular series), so within known confines he could take it wherever he wanted, which could have been more action when he could choose what he was going to draw and the story wasn’t going to matter anyway. Instead, an abrupt, unsatisfying ending puts paid to how little care went in to the construction of the story.  It’s a tepid sequel for returning to the characters rather than expanding their story, and nothing that anyone in comics couldn’t get better elsewhere (and outside of superhero comics) and no fan of the movie big enough to get a comic if they didn’t already plan to. Hamner can still do great art -- the reason above all I got the comic (even without the assurance of a proven writer like Ellis on it) -- but in the time since he’s been just a fill-in artist here and there, having lost the prestige he might have had for at least being a veteran who lasted by having a unique style and an ability to tell a story, when it was someone else’s story.

Kid Eternity (1991 series) (DC/Vertigo). DC has never had a lack of obscure characters they couldn't make some attempt at doing something with, and for a while it seemed like they had no new ideas from anywhere else. Some of those old characters might not have been as great a concept as needed to be updated, but maybe the writers needed the work and could really pitch it, maybe attach a good artist who could hold it up, and maybe it didn’t seem like such a bad idea at the time. Even better if they were British in the late ‘80s. Morrison was hot from Animal Man -- another obscurity that got revived well -- and there was any sign that he (their pronoun at the time) was going to keep being great and probably wouldn’t leave for Marvel if DC gave him enough to do. Gaiman & McKean had made something great out of an obscure character that didn’t need to come back with Black Orchid, and there’s not much success in comics that won’t be repeated. Morrison probably had his pick, but especially if he could do something weird and trippy, even farther out than Animal Man and his British work. The ground was far less solid within continuity, but he had enough bonker ideas to stuff it with, even if it spun out of control and ultimately didn’t go far. They brought in a young Fegredo, who might have been used just because he was a painter (to mimic McKean before McKean went on to be multi-media, and for Fegredo to change to not painting interiors again), so the book could have worked as well as anything. But then it gets too druggy to follow and doesn’t make much sense or have much purpose. The best part, somewhere near the middle, is Morrison doing his own spin on Dante’s Inferno, which might have been the point in the first place for the story but it becomes some empty homage that doesn’t add anything to anything. The whole thing spins around without much objective, and the chaos isn’t very much fun when it’s hard to tell what’s even going on (also from the looseness of Fergredo’s work). The set-up to continue it on in its own series might have been explicit, but it’s also not exciting enough a character to want to see more of (and they changed him pretty well in the ongoing anyway). Something in his powers about bringing lives back from the dead, as if that would be the least bit interesting to anyone who is looking for anything but a history lesson in their comic books. Morrison wasn’t necessarily going in that direction, but it’s also hard to tell where he was actually going. These books could have done relatively well because fans may buy a book just because it’s DC or an imprint or a moderately promising creator or a chance on an old character, not always because it’s a great book that deserves to be supported. DC might have gotten the wrong idea at the time and green-lit a regular series which became a train that had to keep going, through diminishing sales, until they could finally cancel. It's hard to imagine that book being so great, especially from this start, even with or despite a different creative team (though one that included Sean Phillips churning out quick, monthly work before Hellblazer), that it needed to exist and keep existing. (I had the ongoing series and read most of it before, decades later, I read this mini -- possibly for reasons of availability, or just assuming that the concept was enough to carry the series without whatever set-up the mini provided -- but I also didn’t finish it, and didn’t bother to go back to it after reading the mini, then sold the issues on eBay before I even wrote this. Just because it was Vertigo, or something made into a series from an initial work, doesn’t mean it needed to keep going.)

Some years after both of the above projects, Hamner drew another resurrection of Kid Eternity, along with some other properties that dredged up in the rotation to come back, but no more inspired. They got the “kid” part right, which only works when there’s something exciting to relate to (like spellcraft, which must seem like it would be enticing to young people), but the “eternity” is just permission to have ideas that fly into the atmosphere with little direction. Hamner’s art is solid enough to ground it, along with a mainstream take that doesn’t fake out getting to push any limits with its freedom, but it’s a one-off that doesn’t seem like it even intended to go anywhere. And my first experience with Lemire’s work, though it doesn’t encourage me to see what he got to do with The Question.

My Top Nine Inch Nails Songs:
20. "A Warm Place"
19. "Last"
18. "Terrible Lie"
17. "The Great Beyond"
16. "We're In This Together"
15. "Maybe Just Once"
14. "The Hand That Feeds"
13. "Copy Of A Copy"
12. "Dead Souls" (Joy Division cover)
11. "God-Given"
10. "Happiness In Slavery"
9. "Mr. Self-Destruct"
8. "March Of The Pigs"
7. "Closer To God" (NOT "Closer")
6. "Heresy"
5. "Gave Up"
4. "Burn"
3. "Head Like A Hole"
2. "Sin (short)."
1. "Wish"

My Top Albums of 2024:
10. The Tortured Poets Department- Taylor Swift
9. No Name- Jack White
8. Songs of a Lost World- The Cure
7. Brat- Charli xcx
6. I Got Heaven- Mannequin Pussy
5. All Born Screaming- St. Vincent
4. Chromakopia- Tyler, The Creator
3. Hit Me Hard and Soft- Billie Eilish
2. Romance- Fontaines D.C.
1. Short n' Sweet- Sabrina Carpenter

RAVES

Bleeding Cool as news. I've read Comic Book Resources as comics news for years, but of course I went to Bleeding Cool for the gossip. CBR always had a lot of content -- sometimes I'd spend an entire evening just sorting through (and saving, to read later) the week's news (comics and movies), and it took me too long to realize that most of it was trash. What Batman "just did" in the newest issue is not news. And most of anything that would be of note would be posted on a better site (even on Consequenceofsound.net, where I got my music news). Far too recently I cut out going to CBR weekly and just get their e-mails, which is a fraction of the number of stories (and I think I'll live if I miss a too-obscure story or some other site's news broken into multiple click-baits). I still want to stay up with what's going on in comics, though (even if I haven't read a regular series or comic newer than a decade old in years now). Then I realized that Bleeding Cool pretty much has all the news, in a gossip context, but it's still there, as informative as on CBR (and as well written, if not even punchier and more clever with their commentary). So I might as well just get it there directly, especially if I'm there already. I don't need all the stuff about Doctor Who and Pokemon and auctions and solicitations, and I already have the SNL news, but that's easy enough to sort out. I wish the e-mails didn't also have links to the stories from five years ago, since that's just an enticement for me to spend even longer with it, but eventually I'll get caught up and only parse the new stories. And maybe one day pull the trigger to have Johnston post about one of my projects, in exchange for the stories I've given him.

Taking breaks before getting to work. Once I start working, I’m not going to want to stop, even if there’s something I want to do during my break. When I get into a zone with work -- which wouldn’t always be a guarantee, except that I’ll keep pushing until I get there (since there’s work to do) -- I don’t want to get out of it, and sometimes it’s difficult to do so even when I’m done. And there might be something I need to get done during the day, for which I could/should take a break. So I’ve found it’s better for me just to get it done before I start, so I can get it out of my head, and I can focus more fully on the work. Then I can also just work right up to the deadline (and you know I do). Though it’s good to have a limit for how much you want to do that’s putting off getting started on work, but if that’s the trick, figuring it out can pay off with better focus, and hence, more work.

Homemade T-shirt dispenser. Take a large, draw-string bag ($5.98 for two on Amazon) and cut the bottom out of it. Then turn it upside down, hang it from my clothes rack (with a carbiner, from a 6-pack ($9.99)), then fill it from the top with T-shirts, specifically used as pajama tops. Since they don't have to go in any order and can be smooshed together, just grab the one on the bottom to wear for bed. Then go to sleep. (This is actually solving a need when I used to have them piled under other clothes. Now much more accessible.)

I still have lots more after this but I can't guarantee it'll come out too much before the end of next year. But I've got a deadline.