2024-W45 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• Drove all the way into East Van to visit Tazmanian Comics again. They were the only LCS around that still had the Raphael enamel pin for the Jason Aaron TMNT promotion. Picked up a whole arc of Green Lantern Corps (2011) by Peter J. Tomasi. Found two issues of Green Lantern Corps: Recharge (2005) as well, the miniseries by Geoff Johns & David Gibbons, and weirdly enough, the two issues I really wanted.
• Went to be bed anxious on Tuesday night, already doomscrolling. Work up at 230AM in a panic-striken anxiety attack, knew I shouldn’t have checked my phone, did so anyway and then doomscrolled further and never went back to bed. I don’t know if “doomscroll” is the correct terminology. It was more like – gather information, research, and figure out where the fuck things went wrong. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on it, but it doesn’t discount the dread of the next four, eight, or forever years. I’ve accepted I will have a conservative Supreme Court for the rest of life. How much damage will be done during the coming adminstration will be a bundle of uncertainty. I texted the CEO of my healthcare business. Do we shut this down? What if they do get rid of ACA? Is it worth trying to help people anymore? We were both incredibly cynical, pessimistic, and angry. Doesn’t help he lives in a red state that, in some twisted logic, always votes for progressive legislation. By Friday, the two of us discussed it further and decided that we can’t just run any business. We have an inherent bleeding liberal hearted need to run a business that does make an impact in this world, that helps people in need, and attempts to be good. So we’re probably going to stick with it and put up with the pain of suffering under a legislation that lives to punish the poor, the vulnerable, and oppressed, and somehow convinced them to vote for them. FML. Fuck all our lives.
• Work has been muted. Most of my employees are shocked as well. Olivia and I barely texted, we can’t believe we’re doing this again. I cancelled our episode of GFP. I’m tempted to kill it altogether. What’s the point. On Saturday morning, attended Sandra Tayler’s Structuring Life to Support Creativity’s monthly group Zoom. Same mood. Sandra did send her draft chapter on creativity during times of existential dread. It was very helpful. One thing. One thing you can do today. One thing for your environment. One thing at a time. Matt Zeigler also sent over some helpful stuff. A great article on seriousness versus fakeness.

Project Status Dashboard

The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote¹

Did another zTHB. This one with Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake (2018) by Mel Kassel. Still not actually turning the THBs I create into actual stories. I catalogued all the THBs I’ve created, several of which are actually really good ideas. I even made a goal in my weekly goals group to commit to a story. But I’m still stuck. Stuck and not moving forward. LJK says it’s not time, or technique, but a fear or insecurity of something else. I don’t know. I journaled about what I could bring to the table that’s different. But I also read what LJK sent me in response to my 8500 word journal from last month… and that’s… actually, I dunno. I’m starting to find more purpose and intention here, especially with what happened this past week. I’ll respond to LJK’s thing and I think I’ll have more clarity.

SIDE NOTE: I am still breaking down almost every single physical comic issue I’m pulling on the second read. I’m learning, but also, it’s become almost a meditative thing for me. To read it through once on the day of, then read it again later in the week slowly, enjoying the art and treading through a familiar narrative path… and flipping through it a third time, but this time, breaking down the plot structure, number of pages per scene in a tiny Muji notebook. I genuinely enjoy it. During the SLSC session, Sandra said having a small thing to look forward to each week is a great simple reward mechanism for coping with existential dread and duress from the chaos and uncertainty we’re about to step into… and I realized how much I was already doing this with my weekly pulls. I’ve noticed it for a few months now… how I’m slightly giddy on Tuesday night, but definitely antsy and atwittered by Wednesday. The walk to the LCS from my office is now a routine I look forward to. It’s such a simple thing, and yeah, slighly costly (averaging $200/month at this point)… but it brings a lot more joy than I had ever thought it would when I got back into this.

Four Thousand Weeks

Two events. On Wednesday night, the middle one had a class-wide presentation called Night of the Notables wherein every student in her and the grade above had to present a notable person. The tens had to get up on stage and deliver a 2-3 minute speech, the nines only a trifold thing in the hallway. As I sat there, exhausted due to being up since 230AM, and watched these brilliant teenagers talking about amazing artists, inventors, activists, politicians, leaders… a blanket of dread fell over me. I teared up, and I was angry. I want to live in a world where NOTABLE people are recognized, and cherished, and honoured like this. I want a world where we have structures and institutions in place to create this FOUNDATION in which creativity, ingenuity, art, inventiveness, and leadership can flourish. I want a world where we actually respect intelligence, creativity, and diverse voices and talent and beauty. I want to live in that world. Not the fucked up chaos teetering on authoritarianism that we’re about to drive headlong into for another four years. Not where idiots dismantle and defund and destroy the institutions that were built, ironically, to protect them in the first place. Not where we shut down borders, kill diversity, oppress minorities, and shun the vulnerable, and be cruel for the sake of being cruel, and force everyone into some delusional fundamentalism, and enrich the billionaires further. After the presentation, I head straight for my daughter’s board, listen to her presentation in the noisy hallway, and then after giving every other trifold a cursory glance, I fell down on a bench. Beat up. Destroyed. My wife tells me to go home to sleep. I’m halfway home when the eldest calls for me to pick him up from his cafe social thing. I get him. On the drive home, he tells me he wasn’t doomscrolling the night before. He just wanted to figure out what happened. He mentions gerrymandering and vote restriction, which is true, but not in this particular election. I share the most cogent Reddit analysis I read that day with him, from a gay Latino Democrat who knew this was going to happen. It’s a sharp analysis. We get home, I crash into bed before the girls get home.

On Friday night, I decide for some reason it was important to take my entire family to Mr. Tonkatsu in Surrey. I wanted a dinner out with my family. I wanted them to experience this amazing restaurant that I went to once during the waning months of the Pandemic when a friend was living in Surrey due to mold in his Vancouver apartment. I just wanted an hour with them after this week. And it might genuinely be one of the first times that I needed this. And maybe this is it. If we’re entering this world where it’s on the brink of leaning into authoritarianism, where the Experiment is coming to an end, where isolationism and balkanization of the states, where more wars will happen, where the Global Superpower stops wanting to be one as Peter Zeihan predicts, and the rest of the world has to figure it out on their own again, and geopolitically, we’re going back to a constant tug-of-war and balance of powers, where we’ll need an Otto von Bismarck to keep everyone happy but when he dies, we get a world war… then maybe the only thing that matters, that ever mattered, are the closest ones to you. Forget idealism, forget forward momentum on progressivism, forget socialism. I’m being bleak right now, in this moment, I know.

Book Reading

• STILL NO NOVEL READING - I wrapped up the Court of Owls arc for Snyder’s run of Batman, and the Joker one after that as well. OMFG, the Court of Owls would make for an amazing first season of television. But no, instead, we just get shitty origin stories over and over and over again. And despite only just starting to seriously read Batman comics for the first time in my life, I, too, am already sick of The Joker already. Just stop. Just move on.
• The Green Lantern Corps (2011) run I got from Taz Comics is so good. I don’t really care for Hal Jordan. But Guy, John, and Kilowog and all these various alien species as Green Lanterns? Yes. The department politics of a force? Yes. The rookie-veteran and team dynamics of working together? Yes. The fact that races that hate each other are forced to work together? yes. The fact that some lanterns don’t want to be called into the force? Yes. The duty, loyalties, and the obligations of serving a force? Yes. The culture and institutions and regulations of a force? Yes. The Guardians being these conniving assholes? ALSO YES. I mean seriously… they’re the worst. They’ve attempted to replace the lanterns with robots, with frankensteins, with whatever else will show up in this run? They’re like the assholes of today attempting to replace their workforce with A.I. Good luck guardians when the universe is destroyed.
• Holy cow there were a lot of pulls this week. And while everyone else in the comics-universe is going gaga over Absolute Superman, which was good, don’t get me wrong… I’m not so sure it was this amaze-balls thing. I liked it. I didn’t love it. I loved Absolute Wonder Woman. I am genuinely curious where Snyder will take us in Absolute Batman. Absolute Superman? Not so much. Maybe I just don’t care for dark, edgy, emo Superman… and Aaron is so very good at writing dark, edgy, emo rogues (see Raphael, see Wolverine, see Men of Wrath). Enjoyed Poison Ivy and Batgirl… although, not much plot happened in Batgirl. This being my first meeting with Cassandra Cain though… I’ll probably need to check out her older stuff. I have Detective Comics 934-987 and Batman and the Outsiders 1-17 to get through for her story. But I’m also so fascinated by JSA too now. This issue #1 was confusing AF, but mostly because one, Lemire decided starting in media res was a good idea (even though a ton of new fans are probably jumping on this book), and my god JSA has a lot and I mean A LOT of characters. And yet, I really want to tackle getting to know them all and suss out this team. I was also extremely satsified with all three X-titles that came out this week. Enjoying Russell’s X-Factor more and more, think this week’s adjectiveless is one of MacKay’s best issue yet, and despite the unnecessary plot meandering of X-Force, it stuck the landing of showing how cold Forge is. I’m still not 100% convinced I’m going to keep pulling it though. I’m doing it more out of loyalty to the entire line. FINALLY, Hickman’s AVA #2. Got zero complaints. It’s all the sci-fi I ever wanted from Hickman. And #3 won’t come out until February now. OH WAIT – I also ended up picking up all the back issues of The Ultimates. Dammit. I spedran thru them on Thursday evening. I don’t think I have cogent thoughts yet. Literally burned through 3-6.

Comic Book Issues Tracking

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