2024-W49 EOW Report

Highlights This Week

• This week was incredibly diffficult. Started off in limbo on Monday as I stayed home to wait for the delivery and installation of my new induction range. I hate waiting. I hate the wide windows of time contractors give you. I hate trying to work when I’m also waiting for somone before a meeting. And delivery/contractor jobs are all three of those things. And then Wed/Thu I had a crick in the neck, which lasted until Friday, and my energy levels are just completely off. A lot of this has to do with the stress of work and a January 1st deadline. With that deadline, I have not done ANYTHING fiction related because I have to sacrifice my mornings to keep this project moving until it’s done. I’m so very tired of needing money, capitalism, never feeling like there’s enough. ANYWAY – ended up crashing and napping midday a lot this whole week, only to get up, and get back to work. It was exhausting.
• Regardless, it’s Xmas and this year, we’re going to expand who we invite to our family dinner. Should be interesting, or a really bad mistake. lol. We’ll see.
• We may have a positive exit for PHC. Don’t want to share details on… I mean, my fiction blog, first of all. Why have I talked about my business so much here, but secondly, it’s also stuff I don’t want to share publicly either. Regardless, surprisingly, as LJK had hoped for me, there might be a different iteration of it that survives in 2025 and onwards.

Project Status Dashboard

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

Did NOTHING. Ugh.

Four Thousand Weeks

The January 1st, 2025 deadline for the project mentioned above. That is all. It will consume me all month until it’s done.

With that said, two energizing calls this week. Reached out to an Early Modern European Harvard historian and professor I met in 2021 through some Slack Server for Silicon Valley types, and getting an opportunity to talk about history reminded me how much I loved and enjoyed that period of my life. Academia. It was just.. stimulating. Which just adds to how much I hate that what pays money and gives you a comfortable life is not things you’re actually passionate about. Second call was with client B. Some very interesting moves in 2025 for taking down an embedded competitor. I’m so excited to be part of this potential strategic takedown.

Finally, a colleague from the eBay days, who I haven’t spoked to since 2008 reached out. Seems like this happens every year around this time. People reflect on their past year and previous relationships and they reach out. I mean I do it too. Didn’t I hit up the old eBay team I’m still in a lottery group with? Didn’t I wonder about some old high school friends and was tempted to reach out? Didn’t think about friends I don’t talk to enough and thought to send a text?

Book Reading

• Caught up with as much Leah Williams’ Power Girl as I could on DCUI. Now semi-regretting not picking it up when #13 rolled out. I think this is one of those rules I’ll keep breaking and regretting. The one where you should “Follow Creators, Not IPs”. I have never been disappointed by Leah Williams, Kelly Thompson, Geoff Johns, Benjamine Percy, Eve L. Ewing, Jonathan Hickman (minus Wolverine Revenge), Ram V, and Gail Simone since getting back into comics. So whatever else Leah Williams is working on, I really should just buy it.
• So during my second reads of my floppies, and specifically NYX’s reintroduction of Kiden Nixon, who I knew was a big deal but I never read the original NYX, I did last night. ALL OF IT. I mean, it’s not a lot. The 2003 run was seven issues that took two years to come out, and the 2008 run was six issues. It wow, it goes hard. Yes, early 2000s edginess. And yes, I can see how all the X-23 fans who was introduced to her character via the cartoon (which I did not watch, because I would’ve been 19 when it came out) are justifiably angry at the comic backstory Quesada adds. Like, if you think about it, there was zero reason to make Laura Kinney a teenage prostitute was there? It doesn’t glorify, nor villify, nor does it add anything to the story aside from the pimp being the villain and it could’ve just as easily been a different toxic relationship. So why was that the backstory decided upon? Pure edginess? It also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as she would have so much more potential as a hired killer? Regardless, what makes NYX work, for me, is that it is so matter-of-fact. Or maybe I am a child of early-2000s comics and therefore, I am attracted to pointless edginess? I mean, all the creators I loved in the early 2000s are now “milkshake ducked” (<- new terminology of the week I learned).
• Made a concerted effort to read all the Wonder Woman (2006) before Gail Simone’s epic run begins with issue #14. A lot of it was good. I was surprised to see novelist Jodi Picoult in the mix. The Amazons Attack! (2007) event was the thing that was extremely mid. I have come to the conclusion, as many other comic fans have maybe, that events are often very much hit-or-miss, and more often than not, ruin a good arc or run when every writer on the line has to interrupt their plans just to “tie in” with said event. I just didn’t care for this at all. I thought I had to get through it in order to prep for Simone’s run and I’m realizing I didn’t have to now. The Amazons imprisoned in #14 has nothing to do with the whole Amazons Attack! event at all. So ugh. Burnt through a six issue event and didn’t care for it.
• This week’s pulls: OK, yeah, I’m pulling too much. I am ready to admit I have a problem. As such, I have dropped more titles. X-Force, TMNT: Nightwatcher, and Two-Face. They weren’t bad. They just weren’t good enough to keep. I enjoyed the issues I read. But I didn’t want to drop them without fully dissecting myself and my subconsciousness and tastes. So I journaled about it. At first, I thought maybe it’s because I have shiny-object-syndrome. After all, my pulls are now what 70/30 DC/Marvel? I continue to look forward to JSA even though the story is confusing AF. (The Olortegui art helps a lot). But am I doing this because the JSA characters are new to me, with a weight of history behind them, and part of the appeal is in me learning about them? Possibly. But I refused to accept that simple of an answer and dug deeper. This is important to me. I really want to examine why I like or dislike something, why I pull or drop these things. The comics medium where I’m consuming an issue in ~10m is allowing me to iterate and experiment at a rapid rate on what stories work for me and what doesn’t. So yeah, I dug deeper, and while journaling I think it comes down to the characters and my empathy/sympathy for them. I just don’t care about the protagonists. I haven’t had a single moment of frisson. The MECH/concept of the three books I’m dropping are brilliant. I love the White Court or whatever it was named. I think the fractures is a smart, easy way to do case-of-the-week. I like the overt social commentary in the TMNT universe. But I didn’t care about the protagonists. The only character I’ve cared about in these three titles is Nori/Surge. She tried, she was earnest, she had a tragic backstory, she was a hero. Yes, yes, I get it. Forge is cold and calculating. But you can do that and still create “quiet moments” where we feel an ounce of sympathy for who they are and what they’re trying to acheive and what they think about their failures, right? And I’m not getting that. Another thing about the MECH/concepts used in these three books is how they “weave” with the PROG/ARCs of the characters and they just… well don’t. The mutants in TMNT are simply a stand-in for racial inequality, prejudice, and oppression. But it doesn’t go deeper than that. It doesn’t twist and mold it into something more. The fractures and the analog seems more like an excuse for them to go on missions than teasing the overall arc in a way that makes you want to find out more, and it doesn’t tie into Forge’s arc in a way that lends itself to deeper character analysis. Granted, I barely gave Two-Face a chance. Maybe the court plays into his character arc more. With that said – another reason is simply the art not speaking to me as much.

Comic Book Issues Tracking

Archive of all EOW reports here