Last week you may have noticed a disquieting absence in your inbox… a gaping maw of sadness and ennui crying out inside of you (distinct from the normal gaping maw of sadness and ennui crying out that is normally there)… because there was no EM DASHES newsletter to read and enjoy. My deepest apologies. I was at HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC to crash my pal (and collaborator) Dave Chisholm’s table as we foisted Spectrum on an unsuspecting public.

I’ll be honest: my passion for all things comics has been waning over the last few years. The gap between the medium’s potential—and what you find on the shelves every Wednesday—grows wider every year. Even the titles that are held up as “the A24 of comics” leave a lot to be desired, IMO. Kind of like most A24 movies.

But there’s something about being in a giant convention center filled with other creative weirdos that breaths a renewed sense of purpose over the fading embers of my heart.

Dave and I met several Spectrum fans (see ’s post below), as well as other creators and new readers. I came home with a staggering stack (a stackggering?) of graphic novels, zines, and prints.

It was an inspiring weekend. When I got home, I bought some new pens and drawing tools, ready to get back into the discipline of daily practice just for fun. Here’s a Bong Joon Ho sketch:

Speaking of director Bong…

This week, in between publishing op-eds from some of the worst people alive (Andrew Sullivan, Bret Stephens), fawning interviews with right-wing lunatics (Peter Thiel), and fear-mongering headlines about Zohran Mamdani’s primary win, the New York Times thought it perhaps wise to balance it all out with something actually worth reading. A powerful denouncement of our current descent into totalitarianism? Nope!!!

Instead, the paper of record gave us something frivolous but enjoyable: The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century.

Everyone loves a good list. They are fun to argue over, fun to dissect. They are snapshots of an ever-evolving canon. It’s been interesting to see my generation (Millennials) now fully at the center of driving mass/critical consensus; I have seen 92 of the 100 movies on this list1. Most of my all-time favorites, the movies that mean the most to me, fall within this era.

What stood out to me:

• Most happy/surprised to see: The Lives of Others, Let the Right One In, Arrival, The Florida Project, A Serious Man, Under the Skin

• Least happy to see: Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Her, TÁR, Gravity

• The top ten is pretty hard to argue with. I also guessed it almost exactly (I forgot about The Social Network.)

• The Zone of Interest was the only movie from our current decade to crack the top 25. And I have a feeling it’s reputation will only grow.

• Five Christopher Nolan movies! Yet somehow they didn’t have room for the steampunk classic The Prestige?

• I am patiently waiting for Hirokazu Kore-eda to get his flowers. The most consistently underrated and underappreciated director of this century.

• Most bonkers ranking: Anatomy of a Fall at 26 (too high); The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring at 87 (too low).

• Biggest omissions? No Spike Lee is baffling (both Bamboozled and 25th Hour deserve to be here.) I think when Gen Z does their version of this list (five to ten years from now), at least one of the Spider-Verse movies will be on it.

What’d you think?

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