Well, Now What?

A few thoughts as I approach the end of the sixth year of my project. I know I've been away a lot the last few years - honestly, it's been a pretty bad time. But we're all going through a bad time right now, and if you're reading this, like me you're at least fortunate enough to have access to the Internet to help you through what feels to me like the most stressful few years I've ever experienced. Well, on a communal level, perhaps.

I think that in stressful times we're driven by two equal but opposing forces. The one is to shutter ourselves in and ride out the storm, keeping our heads down. The other is to reach out and help each other up, keep one another from stumbling through the dark times we navigate. One of the great critiques of Capitalism, from day one, is the way in which it separates us, dehumanizes us, and makes us look out for number one. I keep seeing glimmers of the the better ways we could be. Like the poet says, "War is over, if you want it." Enough of us just have to want it. That's how change works. That's how Trump got a presidency.

Which has what, exactly, to do with a terminally-late blog about comics?

Everything, really. As writers, we take in and synthesize everything around us and then, in our work, present that synthesis publicly. Be it a 6-novel fantasy series or a three panel web comic, whatever is around us, whatever surrounds us in the Infosphere, is reflected and refracted in the work we produce. I think this is true of all work that humans do, though it may be easier to assess in artistic/creative outputs. But as far as the idea of the author goes, smarter guys than I have held forth about it. I find them pretty convincing.

And have you checked out our Infosphere recently?

(BTW, read about the Infosphere here, and about the informational entities called "Inforgs" that live in it. *sigh* I miss this kind of stuff.)

I'll add to this that I've been struggling to write due also to chronic pain. Fuck chronic pain. It sucks.

But I want to. I want to write, more than just my daily comic reviews, but so many other things, because where, oh where, if not on my own personal and maybe read by, like, 10 other people, blog, else can I write about these things? Or even talk about them?

It's more than that, though, really. It's taken me some time to crawl out from beneath the wreckage of my time in the PhD program at U of C. One of the things that's really helped me to put my head back together is realizing all of the good that came out of my time there, despite everything else. I love the language and the knowledge I have been given, the perspectives they've granted me on the world. I think that they make me a better person, in that I am so much happier with who I am now than I was, in retrospect, in the past. In it's own gross way, grad school also teaches you to have firmness of convictions that I never used to have, and definitely, definitely teaches you how to express those convictions in clear, though not always concise, terms. Witness this rambling blog post 🙄 So good came out of a time that I have for many years characterized as one of the greatest failures of my life.

And what was good that came out of that time are things that I think are worth sharing. That was why I briefly taught college, worked for the museum. The things I learned in university are things that I think have enriched my existence, and I feel like I ought to share them with anyone and everyone who hasn't had the chance, desire, or privilege, of going to university themselves. I don't think that they're ideas that ought to be confined to the forum of the university. And, to finally get to the point, I honestly think the best way for me to share these ideas is through writing about comics.

Fuck the Infosphere. Fuck what it's telling us about the shit state of the world. We make the world. We do. And if enough of us want a thing, it'll happen. I think that, perhaps, as writers it is incumbent on us to be painfully aware of the Infosphere and to write despite its contents, rather than as a result of them.

Okay. If you've sat through all that, thank you, you're a trooper. I promise that whenever I hold forth like this, I will finish off with some comics-related stuff. That's what you're here for, after all.

READ THE ORLANDO/ACO/PETRUS/BLANCO run of Midnighter and Midnighter and Apollo, now and for always some of the greatest, gayest comics I've ever read. If you've been reading my erstwhile blog, you know I love the series, the former running 12 issues, and its 6-issue follow-up. The solo series is part action movie and part queer rom-com. It's fucking great and real and sexy and so, so well written and rendered. If you're on the lookout for a queer writer of comics, Steve Orlando is worth checking out. His run on Supergirl for "Rebirth" is excellent, and he cemented himself in my heart when he co-wrote the Milk Wars crossover with Gerard Way and the Doom Patrol. The follow-up, Midnighter and Apollo is, simply put, a great romantic quest story. Just great. The series has caught enough of my attention that I'm putting together a list of Mr. Orlando's previous stuff to check out. He's a very, very good writer, and he knows how to write queer stories.

Okay. The 40 Years Project will get somewhat more on track, but not daily, for sure. But other stuff, too. More stuff. I have so many ideas and if I get them out of my head then there's space for the others.

More to follow.

My Life With Comics: Superman, Anger, and Grad School

(Note: I think I wrote this back in May, but I never posted it. Not sure why.)

Though infrequent, I sometimes like to use this blog to share some of the ways that comics intersect with my life. Probable TMI warning.

(Retroactively, it occurs to me that it's about a year since I officially quit the PhD program.)

I have to admit that it's really nice to be getting back into Superman. I've not read him for some time, not properly.

His story, of course, was of primary importance to the dissertation I was going to write, and to the book I still intend to write. But distancing myself from that stuff for a while was, I think, a necessary part of moving on from being a grad student.

I was pretty angry about my withdrawing from the PhD program for a long time. I am still angry about it. But I'm getting to recognize that I was even angrier while I was in it, and perhaps that should have been indicator enough that I wasn't cut out for academia.

I'm fascinated by the iterations of Superman. In a recent issue of Doom Patrol, a metavillain shows a potential buyer of dimensions the "map" of superheroes, their genealogy from the God of Superheroes on down. Superman's is the most direct line to this god, and has little, perhaps no, lineage in the way that Batman (Midnighter, Nighthawk, Daredevil) might. But we still see iterations of the character, both through his own stories, and through those of the Superman variants that appear in the stories of other publishers. Supreme. The Sentry. Hyperion. The Plutonian. Samaritan. Every single one of these stories is chronicling the joining of human and divine being, considering the ramifications of transcendence. Ben Saunders likens Superman to the Platonic notion of The Good, which is often why I'll tell people I believe in Superman. In the Good. And I try my very best to understand, like each of those iterations, just what that means.

I think about myself and my temper in grad school, and I do not think Superman would have been at all impressed. My counselor told me I should journal these sorts of things, but I also think it's very important to talk about. I'm ashamed of how I was, and how I treated people close to me, and I'm in the process of installing what John Lilly would have called a new metaprogram. It basically boils down to doing something that I think I stopped doing in grad school: giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Saving the world, if Superman has anything to teach us, isn't always a Cosmic Battle of the Ages!!! Sometimes it's just taking a deep breath and looking square in the eyes of whatever ridiculous, fucked-up, weird, horrendous, unfair thing the Universe has manifested in your lap. And it's not letting that thing keep you from being you.

Now I love what I do. I get to teach, and I think I'm really pretty good at it. I always wanted a way to change the world, to do Good, and teaching provides that. Teaching has helped me to become a better human being. I think Superman would see this as a good start to becoming my best self, so perhaps his stories have started talking to me again. And if you think that sounds a little bit like the way people talk about religious stories, then you and I are on the same page.

Alright. Back to the comics stuff. Thanks for your attention.

2016 University of Calgary Free Exchange Graduate Conference

Hey all.
This is a plug for my lovely colleagues who are organizing our annual graduate conference next March. Have a look at the Call for Papers, and then come and join us for what promises to be an interesting and fun weekend of scholarship. Having run this conference for a couple of years, I know how much time and energy is devoted to making it a fantastic experience for all involved. You won't regret your visit to Calgary.

For more information, about the conferences and those past, check out the Wordpress site.