2024-01: This Year, at Marienbad
Hello! This newsletter took me longer than I anticipated, but frankly it was hard to get the energy and motivation to write a standard newsletter, because, above all else, my country is doing horrendous, evil, genocidal things. It has been doing these things for decades, and the escalations we've since October have been hard to wrap one's head around. The fact is, I've cut off quite a few people in my local circles, mostly on social media, because the levels of manufactured consent and just sheer bad will are truly bleak. I have no idea what the future looks like for me, but I don't really know that I can stay in this place.
WHAT I'M THINKING ABOUT
KISSINGER
He's fully dead. Ahh, that's the stuff.
UNITED(?) KINGDOM
I went to the UK in November, for Thought Bubble Festival in Harrogate. It was a wonderful time, filled with many a person I love, and I got a lot of comics I still need to get through. Most importantly, I got to see the best part of Harrogate:
It's hard to articulate how much I love Thought Bubble. I very rarely get to meet comics people (or any people, really), so it's the one weekend a year that I get to be basically drowning in comics and related conversation. I wrote a little thing for TCJ about some books I bought there, including one of the convention's highlights, Disorder by Erika Price, but really there's too many books to discuss.
After Thought Bubble I got to spend a wonderful few days in Edinburgh, which is always lovely. I ate approximately ten thousand cannoli there, and now I am always thinking about cannoli.
Finally I got to spend another few days in London, where I went to several museums and saw a couple of plays (including the newest one by Annie Baker, who remains one of the best writers out there, especially as pertains to dialogue), but most importantly I got to go to my favorite restaurant in London, the Italian-Korean fusion restaurant Vegan Yes. Besides the fact that you'd be hard-pressed to find a more charming name for a restaurant, Vegan Yes has the distinction of making the best mochi you will ever eat. That's a guarantee, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise, because it is life-changing. I brought four home for my family. I also brought four more specifically for myself and hissed at anyone who even dared look in the direction of mine.
2023 ROUNDUPS
The year is over, and with it come those wretched things: lists. Over at TCJ, I took part in the best comics of the year list, and, me being me, I wrote more words than I was expected to. You can read the whole thing here (with contributions from a couple dozen other folx), but here are the books I chose (I go into more detail about each book/category in the piece itself):
Over on Bluesky I also did a roundup of all the criticism and interviews I did in 2023, 29 pieces in all. So far I have four more pieces lined up for 2024, so looks like we're not slowing down much.
WHAT I'M WRITING
I have a new comic out, free to read online, the longest I've put out yet. It's titled a smallness, and it was drawn, colored, and lettered by the phenomenal Steph C. It was a fun experiment, inspired by Martin Vaughn-James and Anders Nilsen, and I'm so pleased to have gotten to work with Steph on it. You can read it as a Bluesky thread here, or buy a high-resolution .pdf on Gumroad. There's also a process edition, with additional insight by Steph. And here's the first page:
For criticism, I'm currently working on three reviews, on Liam Cobb's What Awaits Them, Yokoyama Yūichi's Baby Boom, and Léa Murawiec's The Great Beyond, all great books in very different ways. I'm also doing an interview with the great abstract cartoonist Gareth A Hopkins, whose work I strongly recommend to anyone and everyone.
Since we last spoke, I had numerous reviews and essays published; most notable are my two longest essays yet, both for TCJ: one about Fujiwara Maki and Tsuge Yoshiharu's marriage-in-decline as reflected in their autobiographic materials, the former's My Picture Diary and the latter's The Man Without Talent, and another being a deep-dive into alternative cartoonist Ron Regé's cycle of spiritualism-themed works, featuring both aesthetic pleasures and dialectical failings. For SOLRAD I wrote about Ezra David Mattes' A Terrified Child Played by Jeremy Strong, a comic that completely blindsided me in the best possible way, and Higa Susumu's Okinawa, a collection that aspires to present a panorama of its eponymous kingdom but falters in its presentation of its inhabitants as real, three-dimensional human beings.
WHAT I'M READING
Comics
Let's see. I've read a lot of comics since last time, but standouts include:
Panorama of Hell by Hideshi Hino
Oh, I loved this. Horror manga often ends up leaving me a bit cold, but there's a manic, propulsive energy to Hino's storytelling that just works. I've seen comparisons to Al Columbia, though I don't entirely agree with that - Hino is going for something much more "in control," I feel, than Columbia. Be that as it may, I'm kind of annoyed that I got my copy on January first, because this absolutely would have made it into my best of 2023 list otherwise. Great, great stuff.
Goodnight, Starman by Leo Fox
Leo Fox has been one of my favorite cartoonists for a minute now, and this was a pleasure. I try not to think about age, but the fact that Leo Fox is a year younger than I am is a bit maddening simply because I don't think I've ever seen a voice and style so perfectly formed at this point (I know I'm not at that point yet). His work is hard to describe - there's a bit of Michael DeForge in his linework, very fluid and viscous, but more ornate, I feel, than DeForge tends to be; there's a lot going on at any given moment, and the result is a real pleasure, even if I'm frustrated in that "Well, how did you do that?" way.
Melvin Monster by John Stanley
Another form of magic, although in a decidedly different manner. There's the old Charles Schulz quote about a cartoonist being a person whose job is to draw the exact same thing over and over again without repeating themself, and Stanley has perfected that formula; perfect humor comics that transcend time and erosion. Just an airtight bit of work that has made me want to read any John Stanley comic I can get my hand on. It's also interesting to see a certain resurgence in his style, although as subversion rather than straight homage: Tim Hensley, who has been doing humor pastiches of Harvey Comics-style work, and Jay Stephens, whose recent Dwellings is an attempt to do horror in this vein. (I always do wonder what it is that prompts people to try this specific thing, this "cartoons but they're all fucked" school of storytelling, but I admittedly haven't read Stephens' book yet so I can't speak to its quality.)
Prose
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
So this was an odd one. The thing about Zorba is, it's predicated on an incredibly specific fantasy, being "This person can fix me." It sounds like an online-era joke, but really that's what it is: a portrait of profound longing for this outside presence as a healing power. What makes it odd is that, typically, that fantasy is fundamentally viewed as romantic or sexual, and there's definitely some misplaced romance in Kazantzakis' narrator - but this book is, to put it in the most direct fashion possible, simultaneously profoundly homoerotic and incorrigibly sexless. Its eros does not recognize itself as such, and as such is deeply frustrated, is what I felt. I liked it, but it is more interesting to think about from that lens than it is as presented without comment.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
What I'm reading right now. I'm enjoying this, although what I'm thinking about more than anything is its distinctly Irish writing: I'm sure there's been some more academicized/theoreticized writing about this, but the lineage of English-language Irish writers (Beckett immediately springs to mind) has such a specific approach to its language that I find wonderful, if not always easy to read. Lynch's approach to punctuation here is the clearest illustration: a very liberal use of the comma where other writers would use a period or even a line-break into a new paragraph, dialogue presented without interruption (only a single comma separating between one character's dialogue and another's, without any quotation marks); it's a bit of chaos, as everything melts into everything else, but it fits the subject matter well enough that it is not a hindrance from an absolutist editorial point of view.
WHAT I'M WATCHING
Last Year at Marienbad
Watched this on friend Chloe's recommendation. French cinema is generally a blindspot for me, but this was great fun, at least for a certain value of "fun"; its influence on Martin Vaughn-James' The Cage (compare the opening sequence of Marienbad to basically all of Vaughn-James' book) is clear, and it stays just as strong throughout.
The Holdovers
Not much to say about this one, not because it's bad but because it's just that good. I would not change a single thing about it. Just a lovely little character drama that does not miss a step.
Stereo
Cronenberg! Ah, he's a good one. This one was his very first movie, and as a debut it's a stunning one. I love how clearly this feeds into his later work on a thematic level (telepathy playing rather the same role as the overall bodily of Videodrome or even the much-later Crimes of the Future, which is to say as an interrogation of interpersonal intimacy), and on a formal level it is just hypnotic.
(the last few episodes of) Riverdale
Jesus Christ. No comment.
SILLY LITTLE GUY
This installment's silly little guy is this duck that I saw in London. I haven't named them yet. I'm more than happy to take suggestions.
CONCLUSION
That's it from me, I think. I'm still trying to figure out what I want this newsletter to be, so please feel free to tell me if there's anything in particular that you want to see. I hope I'll get to send another one before too long.
In the meantime: peace be with you.