Almost two years to the day since I wrote my last newsletter, so I don’t blame you if you forgot this existed. I was reminded a while back that this existed, so I figured I’d dust this off (read: forgot my password, ran into 5 Heroku application failures, and several “We were unable to save your draft. Please try again.” error alerts. Great to see that enshittification has also reached this place) to serve as a late Christmas card of sorts.

I’m still Lan, and I:

• got laid off in 2023 (on the same day Microsoft laid off 18000 people! I didn’t work at Microsoft, but rather a smaller company that timed their layoffs in a way that’d get overlooked thanks to Microsoft doing the same thing, on the same day).
• found a job after about a year, which I’ve been working at for almost a year now.
• (unfortunately) read more than 0 Venom comics.
• am still doing a podcast that recently hit its 100th episode, a milestone I could’ve never foresaw it hitting two years ago. I’m proud of the work that my brilliant co-hosts and I have done to get it past that mark.
• turned 26 two months ago; young by old people standards, old by young people standards, “Wow, younger than you look!” by my coworkers’ standards.
• have logged 272 movies (definitely significantly more by the time the year ends), played and finished 58 games (maybe more by the time the year ends), finished 32 seasons’ worth of shows, and read 311 comics (according to spreadsheets I made).

If a year’s success is measured by the amount of media consumed, I’d consider this a moderately successful year. If it’s measured by life achievements, I’d still consider this a moderately successful year. There’s a meme I saw about a cinephile lamenting that they didn’t watch enough movies on their deathbed, and I can’t help but cringe thinking of that whenever I look at that last stat-point.

"It's been a while". I found myself saying that a lot at my make-up Convocation Ceremony two weeks ago, as I greeted people I'd gone to university with, yet hadn't kept in touch in the two years since I'd last been a student. A lot's happened in the year that's passed since my last newsletter, but before I get into any of that, I wanna talk about the thing that spurred me to write this one.

Bayonetta 3 and the 3 Scapegoats of the Multiverse

Warning: Much of Bayonetta 3 is gonna be spoiled here, so read ahead at your own caution, or skip ahead to the next part.

The Bayonetta franchise holds a quaint place in my heart. I remember successfully smuggling in my copy of Bayonetta 1+2 for the Wii U beneath my parents' radar, lest they caught me buying a game with such a provocative (by Brown immigrant parent standards) in 2014, then successfully smuggling in my copy of the Bayonetta 1+2 remasters for the Nintendo Switch beneath my parents' radar, albeit for different reasons (they didn't want me spending my money frivolously when I was in university).

Welcome

This newsletter was originally meant to go out on October 30th, but then things got busy and I kind of just lacked the motivation to write in general (Read: Seasonal depression, various other depressions). But as the year comes to a close, I figured I’d kick my ass back into shape to fire one last newsletter out before the year ends, two months after the last one.

It’s All in the Helmet

I’ve been getting around to catching up on all the media that came out this year that ended up going onto my various to-read/view/play piles, and in that conquest, I finally got around to finishing Himitsu Sentai Gorenger (lit. Secret Squadron Five-rangers), which, as far as I can tell from my quick research, is the third of Shotaro Ishinomori’s to be legally translated to English, the first two being Cyborg 009 by Tokyopop way back when, and the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past manga. Feel free to correct me if there’s more. I’m not going to join the choir of critics who parrot echo the sentiment that Ishinomori is Japan’s Jack Kirby or anything, but to think that we Anglophones currently only have four translated works from the holder of the Guinness World record for Most Comics Published by One Author (of which only 3 are in print) is a disservice to both Ishinomori and ourselves.

Welcome

This was originally gonna be about a whole other topic, but I figured I'd shunt that off to the next newsletter and use this one to get out some thoughts about things. So here's part 1, with part 2 hopefully coming later this week.

So It's Been 3 Months Since I Stopped Writing Comics Crit

And it's been great, honestly. In retrospect, there's nothing that I really lost in exiting comics crit; at least, not that I hadn't already lost when I chose to quit. But while I went into some of the causes for me leaving the community in my July newsletter, I never really went in deep about the various things that concerned me about comics crit as a whole in that newsletter. Three months deep into my "Poker King Piano Player Phoenix Wright" era, I've had time to reflect on things.

Welcome

I live. The intro is often the last part I write whenever I draft up a new edition of the newsletter, and I’m fully out of steam this week so....yeah. Just read what’s below.

Mujirushi, Billy Bat, Saint Young Men, and the woes of Localization

A little while back at this year’s SDCC(@Home!), there was a manga publisher roundtable with one person from five of the big Western manga localizers/publishers talking about the current state of the North American manga industry. It’s a good, insightful talk, which you can find (cliffnotes by ‘s Deb Aoki ), but the reason why I bring it up now is because it got me thinking about localization, and gets chosen to be licensed for North American audiences.

Welcome

Life moves fast, but Sonic moves faster. It's been a while since the last newsletter, but rest assured, I've been doing absolutely nothing in the interim to make up for it. Kidding, kidding, but I said last time that this edition of the newsletter would be the one where I detail where my life and work is headed next, and I'm here to do so.

I timed this with the release of my final (I'll get to that) piece for Comic Book Herald (I'll get to that too) so everything ties up nice and neatly. Just like the classic New Year's tradition of stripping to the nude and entering the new year without any of the baggage (literal, figurative) from the previous year, I'm closing up whatever loose ends I've got with this era before I move onto the next. Anyways, let's get into it.

The Long Goodbye

Welcome

*Chanting* TRAINS! TRAINS! TRAINS! TRAINS! It’s been far too long, but it’s finally here. The one about trains. Gonna try and keep things as brief as possible outside of this week’s topic because the next edition’s gonna be a big one.

The #1 Transit System in North America

Welcome

Writing a newsletter is a great exercise in maintaining a consistent periodical practice of one's writing. However, much like actual exercise, sometimes you fall off the schedule because you lack motivation. Anyways, good thing this didn't fall off schedule yet! wink, wink, anyway, onto this week's topic.

Desmond Amofah (1990-2019)

As I write this, it's June 19th, which marks not only the first official recognition of Juneteenth as a national holiday in the United States, but also the second anniversary of the death of Desmond Amofah, better known as Etika, a relatively well-known YouTuber and streamer. I figured I'd shelve my original topic for this edition (sorry to everyone who wanted trains, come back next time) to reflect a bit on the loss, especially as it pertains to loss of innocence.

Welcome

I live. The intro is often the last part I write whenever I draft up a new edition of the newsletter, and I’m fully out of steam this week so....yeah. Just read what’s below.

Rapper:Producer::Writer:Artist

For the past few months, I’ve had , an album by 21 Savage and Metro Boomin (and several others who you can find in the credits of the album), in frequent circulation. Every day or two, I’ll take some time out of my day to listen to the intro track, simply titled , and take in the passionate sermon delivered by none other than Morgan Freeman himself. I don’t think was the best album to have come out in 2020 by a longshot, but I do think it’s the greatest album of all time.

Welcome

It's been quite the past two weeks. As I write this issue of the newsletter, I've grown two new arms, lost the muscle mass in my right foot, and have something that I can only describe as "a growth" near my right ear. It whispers to me at night, but that's neither here nor there. Nevertheless, I persevere, and bring you this week's topic.

Outward Bound

As an immigrant child, the dynamics between parents and kids is a decades-long process. Immigrant parents take years and years and years to open up to their kids. I'm at a point in my life where my parents are feel comfortable opening up with me about a lot of things, which has been a great boon with regards to learning about, well, everything that came before me.

Welcome

It's biweekly now! I swear this'll be the last schedule change (and hopefully only schedule change), just so that I've got more to talk about in the "What I've been" section. But in the meantime, here's this week's topic.

No Exit

Saying no is hard. I've been regularly going to my LCS (Local Comic Shop) since around early 2018, I wanna say. It's a nice little shop in a plaza out in the middle of Scarberia Scarborough. It used to be two separate shops, a book shop and a comic shop, with the LCS owner Troy, a very nice and kind gentleman, running the comic shop in the basement of the store, and his mom running the book shop up top.

Welcome

If you're reading this, I'd like to thank you for taking a chance on this newsletter. The idea came to me some time ago as I came across a realization:

Twitter sucks as a platform to be voicing my genuine thoughts and feelings.

It simply is not a platform built for discussions, or waxing poetic about whatever topic I want; at least, not for me. The format is too short, and I can't be arsed to divide my thoughts out across multiple 280-character chunks in a way that won't be misconstrued by some stranger on the internet. Twitter's for me being an absolute dumbass, my serious thoughts are for my articles that people (usually) pay me for.