One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written on his face. (George Orwell, from 1984)
COMICS
Single issues.
Blood Honey (by Sean Peacock and Sandy Tanaka) is a perfectly fine teen drama amped up to 11 in which a cheerleader and lead fencer at a posh academy who are supposed to be madly in love decide to kill each other. Mayhem ensues. Peacock is a pretty good artist, and the art has a nice, old-school look to it (Benday dots, flat colors, that sort of thing), but the story is pretty slight. Still, it’s mildly entertaining. Unfortunately, Blood Type #1-4 (by Corinna Bechko, Andrea Sorrentino, Dave Stewart, Richard Starkings, and Tyler Smith) isn’t even entertaining. It’s a spin-off from one of Oni’s EC books, and the story of a vampire who gets lost at sea before she’s picked up by a freighter. The original story was fine, but Bechko follows it up with our vampire ending up on a tropical island, where she gets involved with other monsters and vampire wannabes and it’s all just kind of boring. Plus, the main character is just unpleasant, and I know that doesn’t necessarily matter, but sometimes it does, and when you spend the entire series hoping the “hero” just dies horribly, it’s kind of hard to care what kind of trouble she gets into. Oh well. Closer (by Kieron Gillen, Steve Lieber, Tamra Bonvillain, and Clayton Cowles) is a fun examination of, of all things, toxic masculinity, even though Gillen takes a long time to get there and has some fun before revealing it. It’s a nifty little story. Marvel and DC are friends again, for now, so we get Deadpool/Batman, which is a bit goofy. The Joker hires Deadpool to kill Batman, and Wade has fun hanging lampshades about Batman’s entire existence, and of course he turns on the Joker, and Greg Capullo has fun drawing it. The back-up stories are mostly fine — I guess the Wonder Woman/Captain America one is the best one, but that’s damning a bit with faint praise, because while they’re all solid, none really stand out too much. But I’m sure the creators had a good time doing them! In The Hero Trade: Project Chimera #2 (by Matt Kindt, David Lapham, and Dave Sharpe), Hank’s plan to get the kids out of their confinement goes horribly wrong, as we knew it would, but Kindt does a good job building the suspense and he leads us to a bit of a cliffhanger ending which I don’t know if it leads into the trade that’s already out or is setting up future storylines, but it’s still intriguing. Lapham, of course, draws the hell out of it. James Stokoe brings back Orphan and the Five Beasts (why not Orc Stain, Greg asks sadly), and it’s a Stokoe comic, which means it’s balls-to-the-wall in every aspect and very enjoyable. Over in Savage Sword of Conan #10, we get the usual goodies — a good Conan story, a story about cavemen (and -women), and a Sailor Steve Costigan story. All fun adventures! Finally, Robert Kirkman and David Finch (along with Annalisa Leoni and Rus Wooton) have Skinbreaker #1, in which a tribe of human-like people have to decide what to do with their old chieftain — his biggest supporter wants him to continue, but he’s getting old and someone will challenge him, and he doesn’t want it to be the douchebag warrior who will lead the tribe to ruin, he wants it to be his biggest supporter. It’s a tale as old as time, and we’ll see where it goes, but Finch’s magnificent and intricate art is the real star here. You might not love Finch’s art, but you can’t deny that he put in the work on this book.
Collected Editions/Graphic Novels.
Barstow (by David Ian and Rebekah McKendry, Tyler Jenkins, and Justin Birch) is an odd horror story in which an FBI agent arrives in the town to look for another FBI agent who’s missing and gets caught up in a demon-possession plot. It’s violent, sure, but it can also be goofy, as it’s not necessarily what you might expect from a demon-possession story. It’s fun but kind of forgettable. In Boxed (from Mark Sable, Jeremy Haun, Nick Filardi, and Thomas Mauer), an agent of a Shadowy Government Agency™ is teamed up with an AI woman he had to deal with some years before to stop another AI from basically destroying the world. It’s a cautionary tale, of course, but Sable does some interesting things with it. Caesar’s Spy (by Jean-Pierre Pécau, Max von Fafner, Marc Bourbon-Crook, and Lauren Bowes) is about Coax, a Gaul who enters Julius Caesar’s service so Caesar can find out who killed Coax’s wife and child, and even after he does, he still works for Caesar, fighting a threat from his past and generally stirring up shit as Caesar plans to take over Rome. It’s a decent adventure, with strange art that at times looks like really bad CGI and at times is hauntingly beautiful. Weird. Calavera, P.I. (by Marco Finnegan and Jeff Eckleberry) is about a Hispanic P.I. in Los Angeles who dies in 1925 but is brought back to life in 1930 by his former gal Friday to rescue her son from kidnappers. It’s all about racism and human trafficking and Satanic rituals — you know, the normal stuff. It’s not bad. Christopher Cantwell’s Challengers of the Unknown (with Sean Izaakse, Jorge Fornés, Amancay Nahuelpan, Romulo Fejardo Jr., Matt Herms, Lee Loughridge, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and Steve Wands) is disappointing because there’s not really a villain, so Cantwell sort of turns Mr. Terrific into the bad guy, and it doesn’t really work. There are some nifty parts, but it seemed like more heroes would have suggested to Mr. Terrific that he was being a paranoid asshole. Oh well. Dark Pyramid (by Paul Tobin, PJ Holden, Sara Colella, and Taylor Esposito) is a keen horror story in which a snotty on-line dude disappears while climbing Denali and his equally snotty girlfriend goes out to find him, and she discovers that there’s something horrific inside the mountain. It’s pretty good — Tobin is a good writer, and he throws some nice twists and turns into the story, including the way it resolves — but I’m a bit tired of asshole protagonists who are right about everything so they think that excuses their assholishness. But maybe that’s just me. Still, it’s pretty good. Hornsby and Halo (from Peter J. Tomasi, Peter Snejbjerg, John Kalisz, and Rob Leigh) is a non-Geoff Johns book from the new Geoff Johns Universe, and it’s a fun comic. To keep the peace between Heaven and Hell, and demon girl and angel boy are sent to Earth to be raised as regular kids, with the girl getting a nurturing family and the boy getting parents who don’t really care about him. Now that they’re teens (or tweens, maybe), they start to realize they’re a bit different from regular kids, plus there are agents from both sides who want the peace broken, so that’s a pickle. It’s a good adventure, and Snejbjerg’s art is gorgeous. Ice Cream Man (by the usual suspects, with one issue featuring a bunch of different writers) continues to truck along, and it’s just a lot of fun to read. Tom King stays away from Batman in Love Everlasting volume 3 (with Elsa Charretier, Matt Hollingsworth, and Clayton Cowles), so it continues to be a good read. In this volume, we focus on the cowboy who always shows up to kill Joan, and we find out more about what’s going on, so that’s nice. Metamorpho (from Al Ewing, Steve Lieber, Lee Loughridge, and Ferran Delgado) is goofy fun, as Ewing very much commits to the bit of this being a 1960s comic, even though it’s set in the present, and Lieber goes along with him very nicely. It’s just a good adventure book, with a fun Big Bad at the end. Speaking of Tomasi, he and Francis Manapul give us The Rocketfellers (also with John Kalisz and Rob Leigh), yet another Johns-verse book about time travelers from the future who are hiding out in the present as a Big Bad hunts them. Of course, strange things start to happen, and their relatively stable existence starts to fray. It’s a neat book, and Manapul is excellent, as usual. I’m a bit worried about Brian K. Vaughan’s preoccupation with sex, as his latest book with Niko Henrichon, Spectators, is even more steeped in sex than the early issues of Saga. It’s the story of a horny woman who gets killed and becomes a ghost (which some people do) and her conversation with another, older ghost as they look for the perfect threesome in a world that’s quickly going to shit. It’s beautiful (not surprising) and very well written (also not surprising, as Vaughan can be a really good writer), but man, Vaughan seems a bit obsessed with people doing the nasty, doesn’t he? Sheesh. Finally, the Supergirl back-up stories (by Mariko Tamaki, Skylar Patridge, Meghan Hetrick, Marissa Louise, and Becca Carey) from Action Comics #1070-1081 are collected, and they’re … fine, I guess. More Pollyanna-ish than the first chapter implied, and far less creepy. The story zips along, but Tamaki just makes the same old points about being true to yourself and finding your way and violence never solved anything that we’ve seen a million times before. Not bad, but a bit disappointing.
The best comic I read in September was Assorted Crisis Events volume 1 (Deniz Camp, Eric Zawadzki, Jordie Bellaire, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou). It’s set in a world where things have gone a bit batty, as the narrator of issue #1 explains: it’s a world in which time travelers and parallel dimensions are just part of the landscape, and the people just have to deal with it. I don’t know if Camp named it a “Crisis” to imply it’s what a world would be like if the superheroes never fixed any of the various Crises that DC has pumped out over the years, but that’s what I’m thinking, and you can’t tell me I’m wrong! It’s an anthologized title with that dude on the cover seemingly linking the stories, and they’re very well done. We get Ashley in the first story just trying to deal with the way her reality keeps changing; we have Jesús in the second story seemingly living every moment of his life at the same time; we have the citizens of a town traveling across dimensions to their counterpart town in another dimension, which does not go well; we have a dude speeding through his life and not appreciating any of it; we have a girl who got stuck inside a minute of her life and can’t get past the trauma. It’s kind of a bleak book — the second and fourth stories particularly — but it’s not so bleak that we don’t get moments of grace and joy, and Camp does a nice job highlighting social ills without being too obvious about them, which is often what good science fiction does. Zawadzki has done good work in the past, but he’s brilliant on this book. His linework is as strong as ever, but his imagination runs wild — in the first story, he gets to invent a lot of weird and wacky shit; in the second, he gets to link all the small moments in someone’s life through very neat panel placement and design; in the third, he shows us the story from the perspective of both sets of citizens; in the fourth, Bellaire shines with a stark color palette; in the fifth, Zawadzki uses circular panels wonderfully to show the loop our protagonist is trapped in. It’s a gorgeous-looking book, and the art fits perfectly with the stories Camp is telling. I’m looking forward to more!
TELEVISION
My wife was out of town for a bit in September, so we didn’t quite watch as much as we usually do (plus, one show we were watching lost an episode on the DVR and it’s streaming on Peacock and I don’t want to get Peacock for just one episode and yes, we could do a trial and cancel it, but we moved on and we might go back and do that, we’ll see). So sad! We ended up only finishing one show … I thought it was two, but it turned out that one of them wasn’t quite finished yet, so we have to get back to that one. The only series/season we finished in September was the 10th season of Grantchester, which continues to be a pretty good “cozy mystery” series. What I like most about it is that because it’s set in the 1960s (well, now it is), the writers really can’t shy away from social issues like shows like this can if they’re set in the present. They have to deal with women being treated worse than men, and gay people being treated worse than everyone, and racial prejudice, and the disdain of the older people for the yutes. The murders are almost incidental, as the characters have become so familiar over the years that we care a lot more about Kacey Ainsworth and Tessa Peake-Jones trying to start a business and discovering that banks won’t lend to women and Al Weaver and Oliver Dimsdale trying to work through their relationship even though Dimsdale’s mother disapproves of his sexuality and Rishi Nair running up against racists who can’t accept that he was born in Britain and Robson Green struggling to relate to his son who’s taken to wearing women’s clothing a bit too often for Green’s liking and the always-awesome Melissa Johns trying not to fall in love with the doofus cop Bradley Hall because she doesn’t want to become a housewife. The murders are often connected to these social issues, of course, and the writers do a nice job blending them. It’s just a nice, comfortable show, and I’ll just keep watching it!
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You may have noticed that I didn’t spend a lot of time on reviews this month. That’s partly because this world is just crushing me, and I don’t often feel like writing reviews. There are other reasons — I’m trying to buy fewer comics, which doesn’t always work out, and this month, only a few really struck my fancy — but mainly it’s because I’m bummed out around 90% of the time, and that’s no time to write reviews of things. The fascism that is seeping into every aspect of our lives is so soul-crushing, and I can’t believe someone hasn’t stroked out yet or been murdered by any number of the people someone has hurt, and it’s just shitty all around. Every time someone opens their mouth, what comes out is the stupidest thing someone has ever said, which seems impossible, yet it keeps happening. How is it possible?!?!?
This month, of course, saw a racist, sexist podcaster who loved preaching violence toward everyone else suffer violence himself, and the MAGA crowd lost its fucking mind. Here’s the thing: Out of a population of 340 million, maybe 10 million even knew who Charlie Kirk was? And that might be generous. He was nothing, yet his fans are acting like he was Jesus. Here in the desert, they want to rename a freeway after Kirk, and of course we had the Wrestlemania-style memorial service at the football stadium (the field of which is named after Pat Tillman, who was surely spinning in his grave). In Oklahoma, they want to put up statues of Kirk at every public university, and they want to incorporate his organization’s view of education into high school curriculum. What I don’t understand, though, is this: Charlie Kirk never did anything. He was a podcaster who “debated” high schoolers and preached hatred of anyone who was even slightly different from what he perceived as the “norm.” He didn’t work in government, he didn’t work to get legislation passed, he didn’t serve the country in the military. Who gives a shit about him? If JD Vance drops dead tomorrow, as disgusting as a human being he is, I can buy lowering flags to half-mast — he’s the vice-president. But fucking Charlie Kirk? He didn’t do fucking anything. You will notice, of course, that only a few weeks later, nobody is talking about him. The left never cared all that much about him, and someone keeps fucking talking and saying, as I noted, the stupidest shit, while the MAGA crowd has moved on to other stupid shit. Such is life.
I don’t know what to do, honestly. I have no hope that elections will be held next year, and I have no hope that someone won’t fix them so any opposition loses, and I have no hope that on the off chance the Democrats actually do get control of the Congress that they won’t be spineless cowards like they’ve been for the past decade. In my own, small life, I have no idea what to do. I can’t really do too much, because we still have to care for our special needs child, who takes up a lot of time and money. That’s what’s so frustrating about living through perilous times. The world has become the haven of the super-rich, and anyone who’s not is just trying to keep their house/apartment and keep their family fed. And so the super-rich cackle like hyenas and keep feasting on the world. Fuck them.
I’m also tired of the monetization of everything, which is tied in with our kleptocrat-in-charge. I know that human society has always been geared toward money, but in ages past, it was harder to reach as many people as it is today, so it didn’t feel as prevalent. Now, it’s just so annoying. I watch some of the shows on ESPN, especially when the Eagles win, and I feel so uncomfortable when they dive into gambling, because it feels so smarmy. I get that podcasters talk about their sponsors as a way to cut down on intrusive ads, but it still feels yucky. I hate that every web site — even this one, which, believe me, nobody is getting rich off of — has ads everywhere and you’re constantly having to close them (if you don’t have an ad blocker) or just endure them if they’re just there in the middle of the text (I apologize for the fact that we have them, but I don’t think they’re too intrusive). The entire world feels cheaper because everyone seems to be out there hustling, and while I don’t blame the hustlers, necessarily, because employment sucks so much, it just feels like everything in the world has a dollar sign attached to it, and it makes me sad. I really like playing tennis three times a week, because you’re just playing tennis and there’s no expectation that anyone is going to try to sell you something or that you’re expected to buy anything. It’s just depressing doing anything that makes you interact with the world, because everyone is trying to separate your from your money.
In my life, too, things are fine but a bit trying. My older daughter is about to go onto the state health care, which is fine, but it means she’s going to stop paying me to take care of her and we’ll have to rely on the state for that, which means I’m getting a pay cut. That’s fine — the benefits for her far outweigh the money I get to care for her — but it means I have to get a full-time job, and that’s not going well at all. Meanwhile, a few months ago our younger daughter totaled our car, which was not fun at all, especially because it would have been paid off by the end of this year. We didn’t buy a new car for a while, but this past weekend, we got a 2022 Honda CR-V, which means … a car payment! Just as I’m not getting any money from my daughter anymore and I don’t have a job! Yay! As I noted, I am trying to cut back on comics, but we’re still going to have some issues with money for a time. Because of course we are.
So. You can see why reviewing comics is not at the top of my mind, can’t you? I still like reading comics, and I still like writing longer-form essays about them — check out my latest Comics You Should Own! — and I’m working on a new series of posts that should be fun, but writing regular reviews has become a bit more difficult, because it’s a bit time-sensitive and often, I’m just not in the fucking mood. I also have a treat for you guys, starting tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it! The calendar is turning to October, and the weather is slowly getting nicer, so maybe I’ll be in a better mood going forward, especially if someone keeps getting thwarted in someone’s dictatorial intentions and actually does stroke out because of such thwarting, but we shall see.
If you meet me in real life, I’m not this bitter, I promise. I still have a wonderful family and a nice place to live, and I get along with the people I hang out with, and I’m healthy. I’m still reading comics and books (once again, I’m being slow with my prose reading, so no book reviews this month!), I’m still watching weird movies occasionally (recently, I watched both the 1980s Red Sonja and the 1970s Doc Savage, both of which were terrible), and while I’m tired all the damned time, that’s nothing new. A few years ago, I tracked my weight loss here at the blog, and I was down to 250 pounds. At that point, I had lost about 45 pounds since I was at my heaviest, and I was feeling pretty good. I couldn’t get below 250, though, and it was annoying. Then, in the second half of last year and the early part of this year, I gained about 35 pounds, and I told my doctor I’m sure about 95% of it was stress eating because of the shitty state of the world. I’ve buckled down over the past few months and have lost 15 pounds, and now that the weather is getting nicer, I can exercise some more, but my anxiety over my weight isn’t helping anything. Still — I’m not as unpleasant in person as I might seem in this post, I promise!
How are you doing? I hope life is going well for you, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not! Let’s try to make the rest of the year good, shall we? Start by having a nice day!
Oh, man, first, I have to ask: is the younger daughter o.k.? (I’m assuming yes as you probably would have said something otherwise, but still…).
But yeah, the pall of fascism in America is really soul-crushing, even when you’re far away from it. (And like you, we’ve also been dealing with some personal stuff that makes everything seem more oppressive.)
As to a certain racist/sexist/homophobic/etc. podcaster, I was additionally annoyed by the fact that I had to explain to my partner who he was and why news of his shooting is headline news in the ‘global events’ section of the local news.
Yes, she’s fine. Thanks for asking — I was on a roll, so I forgot to mention it! She was just a bit freaked out, but nothing physically wrong with her. She hit a light pole trying to turn left a bit too quickly on a slightly wet road. She’s fine.
I can’t even imagine what living in another country and watching this from the outside is like, because I’m sure there’s just so much anxiety!
Man, car accidents are scary, so sorry you have to get a new car(I mean, a new car is nice, when you are budgeting for that new car). I see our car and pray that it holds for a few years more.
From outside the US, from inside a non-english speaking country: I didn’t knew who that dude was, I got a glance of who he was and I have nothing good to say. 99.999% of people here doesn’t know who he is, and that is a good thing. I think.
Yeah, a new car is annoying when you’re not expecting it!
The thing about Kirk is: I’m convinced, like you noted, that the vast VAST majority didn’t know who he was. Then they saw that a dude who, through carefully curated clips, “just wanted an honest debate” (even though that’s the exact opposite of what he did, when you see longer video of him), is killed and aren’t his kids sad, and they posted how sad it was that someone who just wanted to debate was killed and they never delve into how much violence he actually promoted. I’ve seen people that I thought were reasonable lamenting his death like it was the worst tragedy in the world, and I really hope it’s because they didn’t know anything about him, because it would depress me if they did and still felt that way.
Glad for the confirmation that your daughter’s fine – I assumed she was and didn’t think you were being insensitive or anything for not saying so explicitly. I know from personal experience that you can often walk away from a totaled car with nary a scratch (I crawled out of a car that flipped over onto its roof and my only injury was a cut finger from a shard of glass as I made my way out).
On watching the Trumpenfuhrer’s takeover unfold from afar – yes, it’s anxiety-inducing, but there is also that extra dismay that I feel as an American. It’s so sad and infuriating at same time.
As for Kirk, don’t really have much more to add but f*** that f***ing guy and everybody trying to whitewash what he was really about.
Cars are designed these days to crumple and to keep the people inside safe, so she was ok. The front part was completely caved in, but the cockpit was unscathed. She was just upset that she didn’t just stop and not try to beat the light, but such is life.
Yeah, I can’t imagine it’s fun being American and living abroad right now, because everyone’s probably looking at you askance! 🙂
TYG got hit when a cop car plowed through the intersection against the light, not giving warning (which they should have done). Car was badly beat up, she was just bruised (thank god).
We could shake hands Greg. Life seems to suck at the moment in Holland too.
Nicoline had her 6th r/chop this monday and now all food tastes like plastic again. Thanks to the mtx chemo she now has a chemical pneumonia. We were at the hospital yesterday and saw the scans of her lungs. Instead of black it looked like the milky way. This friday she´ll get a bronchoscopy. Results will be a week later and also a pet-scan in the coming weeks and than we’ll hear if there will be more mtx chemo or not.
There was only 1 concert we went to together. Ayreon played in Tilburg and people from 71 countries came to see the 5 shows. Even some Americans with taste, but not you. 😉 I went to the other concerts alone and I felt a bit sad about it.
The whole situation takes a lot of energy and it’s take a lot to read something at the moment. Nicoline has the same. It’s mostly looking some stuff on her phone. Not even games at the moment. Even going to our car is too much for her so we’ll use a wheelchair for that.
Politics in Holland isn’t fun either. I honestly don’t know who to vote for in 4 weeks. I can’t support parties that don’t want Hamas to put down their weapons. On the other side parties that fucked it all up the last 12 years and some religious parties. We’ll have 27!!! parties to choose from and none will get a majority and it will take forever to get a coalition. Faith in politics is 4% at the moment. Insane.
The looney in command is a lot in the news too in Holland. Personally I can’t understand that a lot of people don’t seem to care if there will be a dictatorship within a few months. He wants to rewrite the truth and almost nobody seems to stand up to him. And if someone says something about getting political gain with the Kirk shooting the person was put of the air for a while.
Jon Stewart had a good point about the shootings you seem to have almost daily. It has become a blaming game from both sides, and not thinking how it is possible to stop them. Sickening.
And now you have a shutdown too.
It’s really a shitty world we live in.
I really hope you’ll find a job soon and that all of your family will be ok.
God, Eric, I hope she gets through this ok. Cancer sucks so much. We’re sending you good thoughts!
Your point about Hamas reminds us that politics is so complicated, and people want simplicity. So when they don’t get it from their politicians, they get angry, turn to crazy people who promise simplicity (like our Tangerine-Faced Baboon-in-Charge), and then get even angrier when things don’t get better. The Israel-Palestine situation is a complete mess, and everyone thinks it’s so easy to fix. More sighs.
“Every time someone opens their mouth, what comes out is the stupidest thing someone has ever said” I think in some ways that’s an advantage. People keep trying to make sense of it because he can’t possibly be that stupid, right?
I think what we’re seeing right now is a version of “soft times make weak people.” Not in the sense that everyone becomes the Eloi from the Time Machine but that we forget how good the present is compared to much of history (which is not to deny the massive problems, as you point out). We’re healthier than we’ve ever been (RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again pretends the past was healthier. It wasn’t), we have treatments for disease, we have amazing technology and services, crime is at record lows, but too many people figure this is just a feature of the landscape and doesn’t take any work or systems to keep running.
Likewise a lot of the people who dream of a Christian nation don’t realize how much separation of church and state has protected us from religious wars, oppression and theocracy (some of them are just straight up power hungry of course).
That’s not to say there aren’t shitty problems of a hundred kinds but none of them will improve by smashing the current system.
Also, AI.
It’s a technology which accomplishes nothing except in small, limited ways. It isn’t transformative like cars or computers, gives shitty answers (OpenAi recently conceded it’s built in to the system), drains power, worsens the environment, and it benefits nobody but techbros when they flood the zone with AI songs, podcasts or now actors.
But they can’t stop because that would mean not becoming even richer, and that they’re not brilliant tech geniuses standing up to Cro-Magnon Luddites who can’t see the point of replacing the horse and buggy with the car (in reality, they’re the crackpots who promised nuclear powered vacuum cleaners and jetpacks). And because they have the wealth and influence to make the economy bend the way they want it.
Don’t even get me started on AI. But you’re right — I love the people on Facebook who rant about never getting measles or smallpox so why do we need vaccines because they’re just too dumb to realize that vaccines are the reason we don’t get those anymore. It’s not difficult to understand, people!
It’s partly nostalgia, which is possibly more insidious today than it’s ever been. Everyone wants to return to a time when they were “safe,” and these days, it’s much easier, thanks to technology, to spread that doctrine. It’s also the point that the people who were victims of all the terrible stuff that happened in the past can’t remind everyone about it today because, well, they’re dead.
You’re not alone, Greg. I also feel the constant weight of existential despair at all times! Thankfully now it’s due to external forces and not internal ones. I have the opposite of stress eating, though– when I’m this riddled with anxiety I struggle to eat. At least I was able to make sure my parents and I all got our Covid shots this year.
As far as comics, I read some of these, my favorite of which was Love Everlasting. Looking forward to Metamorpho and Assorted Crisis Events. In terms of other stuff: Space Opera Xanadax was fun but slight. New Gods underwhelmed me. Absolute Superman is a story about techno-fascism, climate collapse, and AI manipulation of information. Hurray, escapism!
Have a Twinkie, Bill! 🙂
I’m looking forward to New Gods, but now I’m trepidatious about it. Thanks, sir!!!!
About politics: At least Trump didn’t bomb us in September, that’s a win in my book. Yay?
To be honest, is ok to be exhausted about politics and feel that everything sucks because, well, I don’t live in the US and what information reaches us sounds really exhausting and awful. Some of those decisions have repercussions here and that is really annoying(to say the least).
Politics in my country: Well, things are…¿ok? I mean, the right claims that we live in the most awful dictatorship ever imagined but at the same time, they call degrading nicknames the barely 18 year old son of the previous president(but honestly, that is not great news because they started doing this when the kid was 12, so…¿fair game?) and claim that the previous president is running the show, but at the same time they ask the current president to do thing differently(how is she going to do things differently if she is just a puppet and has no power? who knows). To be honest, I always assume that every politician is deeply corrupt and will stab everyone if it benefits them, but at the moment things appear to be so-so. So yay for the so-so times!
I’m also trying to lose weight, I weight like 202 lbs, and man even losing a pound is hard, but who knows, maybe I’ll lose weight in november(when my wife and kid have birthdays) or in december(when there is basically a buffet from december 12th to january 6th).
Whenever the U.S. doesn’t bomb you, that’s win!
Good job being so-so!!!! 🙂
Yeah, the end of the year is not a good time to lose weight. So much eating times!
Well, my constant thrumming level of anger from the state of the world has been impacting my relationships in a not great way!
As comics go, I’ll have to check out Spectators!
Highlights of my September reads were The Power Fantasy Vol 2 (asfjdskljfkasdf!!!), Love Everlasting, and the continued return of Lazarus…the rereading of which has made me realize that “Year X” was a while ago.
I also mainlined Slott’s Silver Surfer – absolutely gorgeous book, with an insanely perfect ending, along with Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui and Medalist by Tsurumaikada. The latter especially is just ALL of the happy tears.
That’s too bad, sir. It’s tough when you find out some people aren’t who you thought they were.
Spectators is pretty good — it’s a bit bleak at times, but not too bad, but I’m not kidding: it’s very porn-y!
Oh, it’s more about me being angry all the time and not great to be around than anything to do with my friends being Trumpers.
Starting a new job on Monday after a year of making half of what I had been before in a role I didn’t like, so here’s hoping that fixes some of it!
Oh, I get it. Yeah, I can see that. I try very hard not to be angry around others, but it seeps through occasionally!
Good luck with the new job!!!!
Hey, at least the Birds are undefeated and looking so very, very dominant. No stress there! 🙂
Yeah, the Eagles are looking strong this year, as are the Bills unfortunately.
I’m still getting over the Chargers loss to the Giants, so frustrating, and the Dolphins are as bad as ever.
I’m doing okay, however, the housing association that owns the building my flat is in has seen my comics collection and wants it removed. Fortunately, there is a self-storage site less than 5 minutes walk away.
I was unaware of that podcaster before he died, though from what I have read since I understand
1) he championed the availability of firearms and was okay with the occasional gun murder
2) while not engaging in violence himself, he engaged in hate speech encouraging hate and violence from others (and it seems that this is what motivated his attacker)
so it seems he reaped what he sowed
(This obviously does not excuse his killer, murder is wrong, so the murderer should face the same legal consequences that he would if he had killed anyone else)
In general, I am concerned about the current situation in America and worry if we head in the same direction. We had enough problems with an incompetent government, worse alternatives (including a new party which is constantly struggling to disassociate itself from racism) but now there is a wealthy South African teaming up with a rabble rousing bigot in an attempt to stir up riots.
In addition to this rise of fascism in the real world, I am also listening to a fictional version – an audio remake of V set in modern day Britain ( V – UK)- retelling the original mini series and beginning to move beyond with new material. Kenneth Johnson is involved and it is being kept true to his vision. I’m hoping sales are good enough for a third volume
Well, that sucks about your comics collection. Do they have any justification for it, or are they just tools?
That V thing sounds neat. Good thing it’s not relevant anymore! 🙂
I hear you about the existential dread of the present day, and I hope things get better for you.
I have avoided talking politics with my father for about 10 years- he’s a very Catholic Republican. At a family dinner, my 10 year-old nephew asked if Trump hates gay people. I said, “yes” at the same time my father said, “no.” Things got loud and then awkward…
My dad has gotten a bit better about discussing politics in recent years. He never liked Trump, but I’m pretty sure he and my mom voted for him in 2016, but I don’t think they did subsequently (my mom has a weird pathological hatred of Hillary Clinton). Over the past five years, though, it’s become a bit easier to at least discuss politics with them, even though they’re very much the “I don’t want to talk about politics” people that kind of got us into this mess in the first place!
I don’t know why your dad would say no. Of course Trump hates gay people!!!!