08/16/21: More comics and a podcast
TLDR
Update: Job interview and a new semester
Listening: Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi
Reading: Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans
End Notes: You can contact me at jadettman@gmail.com
THE UPDATE
Not a lot to update this time. Britt is getting ready for the new semester that starts next week. I have an interview next week for a job, which is not 100% what I want but at least it’s likely to involve mostly vaccinated people. I did apply to a job with the city that is closer to what I’m looking for, so maybe I’ll get an interview for that in the future.
I’ve been looking forward to having friends over to play games for a while now but, with everything back on the upswing, I think we’re going to have some conversations and do some calculations to see if it’s going to be safe.
LISTENING
I started listening to Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi a couple months back; it’s a relatively new podcast. As the title says, it is a podcast about systemic racism, historic racism, and how we can work toward a future that lessens the impact of historical racism and, hopefully, go forward without it.
The most recent episode I listened to was about Prison and Police Abolition and I definitely think that it is a conversation worth listening to, so I’m not going to summarize it for you. Seriously, here is a link so you can listen for yourself:
https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/prison-police-abolition-finding-true-safety/I always think that it is important to get different perspectives on the world. Whether I agree with them or not, I always learn something even if it’s just that we don’t agree.
READING
Still talking about my comic book binge, in between waiting for Wic+Div trades from the library I also read Die by Kieron Gilen and Stephanie Hans. When I began, I thought this was a reread, since I own the first two trades, and that I was only catching up with the third but, it turns out, I may not have read the second before.
The premise of Die is that six kids in England got together in the 90s to play a roleplaying game and disappeared. Years later they are found and they either won’t or can’t talk about what happened to them. That’s, like, the first five pages. Flash forward, now they are middle-aged people apparently haunted by whatever happened. And then, it happens again.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler (it says it on the book blurb) that the kids were sucked into a weird fantasy world and some bad things happened to them. So, there is a lot going on when they get pulled back into the fantasy world.
When I started reading this series a few years ago what really pulled me in is the art. It is really amazing and feels very different to me than a lot of other comics art (context: I haven’t been reading many comics lately, so what I probably mean is comics from the 80s and 90s, when I was a regular comics reader). I mean, I’ve read / seen this set-up before (spoilers: it’s the premise of the D&D cartoon from the 80s) so I wasn’t expecting anything mind-blowing (and, it’s not). But it is a much more adult take on idea than I remember seeing before because the series is mainly about the feeling and relationships of our protagonists and dealing with the legacy of their previous visit to the world.
So, it’s good. A little dark, but good.
END NOTES
If you’d like to send me some feedback or discuss one of the topics I’ve talked about here (or even a different topic), email me at jadettman@gmail.com
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