#4 Life Update And Comic Books
Hello and welcome to another issue of Notes From Table 30. Some of you may have noticed that there was no newsletter last week. It was one of many things that got missed. In the past week I have missed two birthday parties, an anniversary party for two of my oldest friends, my stepbrother’s annual Halloween party, and today I’ll be missing a potluck at my local comics shop that is sadly closing.
I miss a lot these days. It’s not exactly intentional. I’m doing something I’m not very good at and it takes time to find balance. A little over four years ago, I returned to college after a twenty year break. For two decades I told myself that I couldn’t go back to college. I was raising kids. I had bills to pay. I had obligations. I had many excuses.
I came back to college expecting I would become a therapist. I enjoy talking to people and it’s a profession that won’t hurt my back when I’m sixty. But after a fairly straightforward two years at Tacoma Community College, I went to Evergreen Tacoma and thanks to my mentor, Dr. Peter Bacho and my own determination, I found that my love of the written word refused to take a backseat any longer.
So now I’m nearing the end of the first semester in a low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College. This is technically my fifth year of college but in reality it has taken me twenty-five years to get here. My son is an adult now. And I have let all other priorities fall away. I’m currently unemployed. I recently lost my apartment. I’m staying at a relative’s house most nights. And I miss birthday parties I haven’t seen a movie in the theater since Summer, and I don’t always get my newsletter out on time.
But I’m making a lot of progress on my work for Goddard. I am not someone known for his incredible focus. It does not come easy to me. And I acknowledge that balance is necessary. I have pushed things to the extreme because, well, that IS something I’m known for.
And now it’s time to regain some equilibrium. I’m back in the job market and have a couple of promising leads. I have only three weeks left of the first semester and then I have a three month break before the second semester. This should be enough time to get back on my feet in a real way and better prepare for the new semester.
I honestly don’t know how much you want to hear about my personal life, but at this early point, many of you subscribers are personal friends and this is the easiest way to let you know why I missed your latest thing. Believe me it’s not personal.
Writing News
I do have some writing news. I’ve been approached by a local magazine to write an article for them. I’ll tell you more about it as soon as I’m able.
Also below you can see an image of the cover for this Spring’s issue of The Pitkin Review. This issue will have a fiction piece by me as well as some incredible work by some of my colleagues at Goddard. You can order a copy from Amazon as soon as it is published this Spring.
Comic Books
Jonathan Hickman is a comic book creator who never escapes my attention. His stories tend to be both complicated and nuanced. When it was announced that he was taking over the X-Men line, I started buying X-Men comics again for the first time in years.
Hickman begins his X-Men run with two intertwining six-issue limited series called House of X and Powers of X. It’s basically a 12-part story establishing the new status quo for the team.
I’ve been thinking about how to write this in a way that might entice a non-comic book reader to think about actually reading it, but without spoiling anything, but I’m not sure how to do that. I’ve been trying to convince my Dad to read comics for thirty years with no luck.
Let me put it this way. In 12-issues he tells a story that spans ten lifetimes and over a thousand years. It’s a story that includes the X-Men fighting a suicide mission on a space station in orbit around the Sun. It has Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Mystique, and every other mutant you can think of all fighting on the same side for the first time.
Oh, and then there’s this. He takes fairly simple concept of the Phalanx, a robot hive mind that has a habit of infecting living creatures so that it can absorb them. And….well…just read below (both images from Powers of X #5 with art by R.B. Silva and Marte Garcia. Words by Hickman). If you like super-science-fiction with your X-Men, you’re going to love the hell out of House of X and Powers of X.
There’s even a hardcover coming out in December. Add it to your Christmas list and read some comics.
Thanks for sticking around. I’ve got to get back to the work. It would be terrible if I didn’t love doing it so much.
See you next week.
- Jack Cameron