2025-W22 EOW Report

Anti-Goal Cycling

• Got another scene and a half done on prj:WAITE. It’s going so slow… even though I know the arc and ending, or most of it anyway. And this weekend was no good. Garage Fiction on Saturday morning, and too exhausted to write at Toyota while my car was in the shop, and then slept in on Sunday despite intentions to write in the early morning at Starbucks. So this weekend was no good at all. Maybe I can still salvage it later this afternoon… I’m so close to finishing the fourth scene. It’s because I added three new side characters, isn’t it? Ugh. Yes. I know.
• Garage Fiction check-in this month was 50% figuring out the retreat. We did a little writing progress checks, but the last few minutes were story dev on Bryan’s second novel. That was actually quite fun now that I feel more confident in actually CONSTRUCTING fiction as opposed to the 99% of BS teaching out there where you’re really only analyzing and DECONSTRUCTING it. Hoping maybe we do more story dev convos moving forward in GFP.
• Had a wonderful conversation with Michael Tworek re: The Cheese and the Worms (1976). I’m glad I got the time to read it a second time before our discussion. I’m also glad (humblebrag) that he found my insights fresh and something he hadn’t heard of before despite teaching this class on EME multiple times. Maybe I should go back to university and finish one bachelor’s or another. If only.

Four Thousand Weeks

• Booked tickets to Japan last weekend. It’s going to be hot af in August but that’s what we settled on.
• Also nailed down the writers’ retreat for Garage Fiction. L.L. just took charge and moved everything along so fast. It’s been almost a decade that we’ve been together. Only met Olivia once in 2023. Haven’t been in Bryan’s presence since… holy fuck… eBay? So 2008? Maybe even 2006 because didn’t he leave before they laid everyone off? So that’s weird. And I have never met L.L. in person. A part of me is now wondering if that period… that period from 2000-2020 is now going to be a “unique period in human history” where we found complete strangers on the Internet, became actual friends who talked every day, and don’t meet physically until an event, convention or something like what Garage Fiction is doing. I mean, I know in the professional world, this will be the norm as more and more companies become “fully distributed” or remote if you don’t speak “silicon valley”. But I don’t know about the personal relationships. Or I could be wrong. Maybe there are still a ton of pockets on the Internet where you find niche communities and you find friends.
• Who hijacks their own birthday dinner by paying the bill and not letting others? My father-in-law. That said, my god. Dinesty on Kingsway. So many dishes that we just haven’t had in such a long time.
• Saturday was Super-Errand day. GFP in the morning, groceries managed to be done in an hour, nap, Prius check up, bought walking shoes (On Cloud… not Cloud 6, but the waterproof one… Horizon? I’ll need to look), and then said birthday dinner above.
• Sigur Ros is on their final tour? What? No. Sorry. Misread. Final tour with the Wordless Music Orchestra. OK. June 4th. 10AM. Tickets go on sale.

Story Introspection

• Uh oh. Despite being a paying member of DCUI, I’ve fallen into the rabbit hole of hunting down Compacts, Finest, and Compendiums. I can’t help myself. It was this temptation that was teetering on the edge, thinking of all the justifications to do it (e.g. I can get a stronger grasp of the page layout, I can get away from the phone, I can not spend a thousand on an iPad just to read comics, I can refer easily back to the issues instead of using DCUI’s shitty search algorithm, which btw, really really really sucks ass, etc. etc. etc.) Point is – in the last two weeks, I have purchased the Silver Age Omnibus for Superman, DC Finest for Supergirl, DC Finest for JLA v. JSA, the Kyle Renner Compendium, and told Simon Chadwick to order in The Death of Superman compendium. It’s a lot. And I’m still eyeing the two Green Lantern DC Finest collection (despite hating Hal Jordan), the Superboy one, and the family one where Jimmy Olsen is a giant ass turtle on the cover. A giant ass turtle! (Plus Doctor Fate, Hawkman, The Spectre, and Starman). Point is – I think I’m going to work on reducing monthlies and transition to these books. I think monthlies have to be GREAT in order for me to keep pulling. Which means, I might end up dropping all Marvel minus Gail Simone and Eve Ewing. On the fence about Murewa Ayodele… I mean, Storm is just a few steps beneath “great”. And that’s it. Well, I guess Hickman’s Imperial is coming out. But that’s all the 616 stuff I got. Ultimates is only two titles (Spider-Man and Ultimates). On the DC side… can’t stop, won’t stop with the Absolutes. Never gonna give up on Birds of Prey as long as Kelly Thompson is writing it. Still iffy on Supergirl, but it’s only issue one and I kinda love it. And then the indies/Image. I love all of them I think. Hyde Street, Power Fantasy, Assorted Crisis Events, TMNT. We’ll see. Huge ramble, but ultimately, let’s transition over to collections.
• And on that note, I have burned through 250 pages of the Silver Age Superman already. I seriously, unemphatically, unquestionably have not had THIS MUCH FUN reading something in a long, long, long fucking time. I actually find myself giddy and GLEEFUL when I read these stories from Otto Binder. They are silly, and funny, and just so FUN. Like it genuinely makes me happy inside in a way I can’t describe. It brings me back to when I was ten or eleven reading Calvin & Hobbes. I just love the “sitcom-ness” of these stories. They are obviously trapped in a certain time, right? Quick search, I Love Lucy (1951-1957), Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), The Honeymooners (1955-1956). There is just whimsy and mirth and joy in these stories. I mean, Clark Kent is literally breaking the fourth wall in the final panel of several of these stories… winking, shrugging with palms up, or placing his head on his head in resignation. And the thought bubbles! The ruses inside the ruses inside the ruses. The comedy of errors. The mistaken identities. The catchphrases. My god. Catchphrases! We don’t have those anymore. Great guns! And Lois Lane, girl reporter – always casually sexistly pointing out that she’s a girl – constantly pining for Superman, hoping to marry him. I mean. I find it funny. I know others might find the casual sexism of the time offensive. But it’s also really funny to have someone pine for a person non-stop and never getting it OK? That’s just funny. It doesn’t have to be a girl reporter pining for a superhero. The role could be reversed and it would just be as funny. A superhero, who as their secret identity, who keeps pining for someone who’s in love with their superhero identity would be just as funny. Oh an my favorite issue has got to be the one where Lois is in a coma and becomes “Power Girl” and gives her powers to Clark Kent and Lous’ conception of Clark is this bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right as a superhero… and Lois keep berating him for being clumsy, stupid, and a waste of space. I am chuckling as I write this as I recall that issue. It’s just so fucking dumb. It is inherently a sense of humor that just no longer flies and maybe that’s another reason why I love it so much. It’s a sense of humor that’s just “stupid” in all the best ways. I mean… Power Girl Lois lording it over Clark and calling him a buffoon for wasting his powers is just so fucking hilarious. Is it mean? Yes. Is it juvenile? Yes. Is it basically bullying? Yes. OMG. I sound like an old guy pining for a time that no longer exists.
• I finished Planetary. I finally finished it. Did I ever pull them? I forget. Maybe I just got the trades in the early 2000s? I stopped before volume 4 I believe. But it’s 2025, sixteen years after it wrapped up, and over two decades since I stopped reading them, and I finished the omnibus. The last seven or eight issues were… great in a way (just like above), trapped in its time, but also trapped ineluctably to Warren Ellis’ voice and POV. Each issue is this spectacle that combines bleeding edge sci-fi with mysticism/occult, with characters that mistreat each other with insults and kicks in the butt and threats.
• This week’s pulls were all exceptionally good. I think I’ve curated my pull list very well now.
• Couldn’t help myself. Saw Rogue: Savage Land on Marvel Unlimited and read it. Like so many my age who grew up on the X-Men cartoon and Jim Lee’s drawing of her in a “swimsuit”, I will always be horny for Rogue dressed in tatters. The story was entirely forgotten afterward of course.

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