New Shift

03:43 / 25.07.08

and so am Im. G'nght all!

Essential Dazzler

21:46 / 25.07.08

I love that you're Essential now. How was meeting Galactus, anyway?

He's a dude of remarkable focus and drive, and I suppose those are positive character traits that all of should be nurturing, but I think he has difficulty relating to people.

It's a struggle to get a conversation out of him that isn't all "I MAINTAIN COSMIC CONSONANCE", and all that world devouring jazz just gets kinda old after a while, if it isn't really your bag.

I think he might have Asperger's.

22:15 / 25.07.08

I always assumed some sort of divine eating disorder brought on by abusive parents and society's views on what a space-god should be. He's really just justifying destructive behaviours with cosmic platitudes, destructive behaviours that stem from his attempts to fill that void within him. He needs to meet a nice, laidback space-god or space-goddess or non-gender-specific space-deity who can handle him. Sure, he had the Silver Surfer and Nova, but they were really just enablers, you know? Even ol' Reed couldn't see past his problems.

22:38 / 25.07.08

or past his big hat.

22:50 / 25.07.08

Keggers!

Hopefully your entrance heralds a peaceful ten minutes of being on desk at work before I get off at five and get to run out into the warmth and light. Going for beers shortly, but my patience is running dry.

23:09 / 25.07.08

yes, but is your martinini dry? That's what really matters.

Essential Dazzler

23:29 / 25.07.08

I'm just a Disco singer, not a psychiatrist.

01:13 / 26.07.08

But what do you sing about?

00:01 / 31.07.08

It's a small, stupid thing, but I have a T-shirt with a giant robot crushing a city on it. It makes me feel better when I want to destroy the world.

00:25 / 31.07.08

I'm wearing a t-shirt with nothing on it. Apparently the robot on mine had already finished his job totally and gone off for a nightcap.

00:26 / 31.07.08

Your robot is very efficient.

Why did I agree to come into work on my night off again?

00:31 / 31.07.08

Money? Fame?

No, wait... I got it! It's for Batman, isn't it?

00:33 / 31.07.08

Probably. Batman seems to be behind all my problems lately. He never calls me, either. And when I call him, I have to sit there and listen to whine on and on and on about Catwoman.

00:38 / 31.07.08

Well, y'know. He means well.

But, to be honest, I may ring up Bruce, but it's Alfred I keep on speed-dial.

The good news is, today may be my last stupidly schedule-heavy day for awhile. Sweet when-I-feel-like-it from hereon out! Maybe.

01:08 / 31.07.08

Congrats!

I just saw DArk knigh..ugh. most unpleased.

01:13 / 31.07.08

Why so unpleased? I haven't seen it yet, but have heard mixed reviews.

Yay for schedule-light days!

01:18 / 31.07.08

I could tell you... but then you'd have to kill me. For spoiling it.

01:19 / 31.07.08

Enh. I'm fairly indifferent to spoilers, usually.

01:24 / 31.07.08

Warning, Batman is a long movie. Saying you dont drink enough for Batman is an error. Dont drink BEFORE Batman. It'll be the most horrible squirmy time of your life. The action doesnt let up for pee runs.

01:31 / 31.07.08

Duly noted.

23:19 / 31.07.08

The sky is falling in wet debris that splashes, just so, against pavement.

The city's full of anomalies today; the world seems frantic.

I seek solace in the Shift. Anyone home?

23:39 / 31.07.08

Hey, you fifth-dimensional batsprite you!

It's been an amazingly fast day, primarily since I only got about three hours sleep last night, but am too caffeinated and full of radioactive creative juice stuff to crash. You know that slipstream where you're astonished and cackling at your own fiction as you lay out the reveals, set the bait, and then spring the trap to even your own surprise? I'm right in that now, yes.

And revisiting the back issue bins for things like The Establishment, Quasar, and DP7.

23:43 / 31.07.08

God I love that part of writing.

Like a dream, you come to the thread when called. Sweet.

Quasar! So existential, so gripped by defeatism, so beautiful. I loved that series when I was younger, but I only have a few scant issues now to read and re-read. The Greg Capullo artwork was swell, and Gruenwald really knocked himself out with the proto-JMDeMatteis-isms.

23:49 / 31.07.08

Quasar-as-pregnant-Demi-Moore-on-Vanity-Fair being the best cover ever, bar none, of course.

I've been reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union, by Michael Chabon; it contains what must be the best dinner scene between an ex-husband and ex-wife ever, completely accidental. Bittersweet, sad, lonely, hilarious...

Makes me want to write so bad, but here I am, chained and upside-down.

23:52 / 31.07.08

I owe a lot of my continuing-to-write to Mark Gruenwald's encouragement, both personally and in those Mark's Remarks columns he used to do.

Virtually everyone I talked to, professional and otherwise, as a wee lad, pushed me to grow and develop and find myself and he was one of the few (props to a Lazarus Churchyard era Warren Ellis and especially the lovely ubertalent Peter L. Wilson) who encouraged me to just write exactly what I wanted to write, talk about what I wanted to talk about the way I wanted to. Which is probably very bad general advice, but it was substantially encouraging.

It's killing me to see writers my age right now very worried about submitting work that's not aimed at a publishing fiat but just something they wanted to write. I prefer rejection to that (prefering, of course, to have the thing picked up, to any of it - I enjoy an audience and the credit).

23:55 / 31.07.08

I don't think the messiah actually minds if you let them hoist you rightside up.

Chabon's fun, isn't he? I regret that I don't enjoy his work more than I do, but I like it a lot, so...

I think there's a set of superhero-comics-reading literati of the moment who should probably be chainganged into a panel on that, instead of on what it's like to be the young literati, which they aren't any more. Let the fanboyism shine while it's up for vivisection.

23:58 / 31.07.08

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: I really can not wait to see what Lethem has done with Omega the Unknown, when the trade comes out in September.

I like a lot of it, hate some of it, and am uneven with others. Occasionally I feel like they're too busy trying to be important to be fanboys or something. Write comics! Write super-people into stories! Do weird shit! Aaah!

That's what I want to write. Weird shit with defective characters.

Hello...writers.

Weird shit with defective characters.

Every time someone even thinks that publicly, RAW comes a tiny bit closer to resurrection. And the baby Grant Morrison laughs a little, back in says-to-callim-boody time.

Hello, Keggers.

00:10 / 01.08.08

Hello...Keggers.

I never got into RAW. I don't know. Chabon's interesting in that he actually engages with genre -- detective, sci-fi (or, "alternative history"), et cetera -- and manages to make it hip and literate, while still indulging itself.

00:11 / 01.08.08

Hi.

"says-to-callim-boody time." ?

00:13 / 01.08.08

"Call me boody, pwease!" I think is the gist. Babytime.

strange.

I'm the only one who still makes Invisibles references here, aren't I?

'Edith says to call him Boody' was the crosstime mangling of 'Edith says to call on Buddha.' I believe Morrison is on record saying something about that being a direct reflection of something from his childhood.

Right, then. Moving on.

Who'd in in a fight, Lethem, Chabon or Moody? What if there was a no-powers rule?

Sorry.

I'm actually kind of sad that I cannot allow myself to read Lethem's Omega. I'm not calling for his head on a stick or phoning him up to ask if he wishes he'd waited until after Gerber was dead. But, I can't make myself check it out no matter how good it may actually be.

Whisky, O my whisky! why won't you kill these pseudo-morals for me?