#nerdom

Besides time with the fam, I am thinking:

Binge Boruto, I need more Otsutsuki content (and Chojuro and Gaara - I haven't completely forgotten about them!)

Catch up on Obi-Wan (and maybe read some dark dark angsty fics since I'm too much of a wreck to write that myself)

Watch @lesyarei7 's video on how she renders drawings and learn something new!

Read Gaara Shinden

I need to eventually get back into the routine of waking at 5 for exercise/Oculus but *sob* I'm not ready

What are you guys currently doing/wanting to catch up on?

Tagging some folks but no pressure: @nightingaleflow @lemony-snickers @whiskers-the-lyxra @kiyoshy @justafrange @hetaonikidd @coyest @chojuuro @fatherandersonstan @ghoulgaara @justmyownreality @kabutoliker @otonokuni

In that environment started writing comic reviews for Comics Nexus and Spider-Fan. I attained a great bit of a following for my reviews of Daniel Way's Venom, a book that I still consider one of the all-time hilariously bad comics of the era. Years later I met Daniel Way at a comic convention after he had largely redeemed his reputation with a successful run on Deadpool. As a young writer Way was in a position by Marvel management where almost ANY writer was doomed to fail. Basically Marvel signed him to write a new Venom comic only to be informed he couldn't use Eddie Brock. Way set out to write a horror comic inspired by The Thing only to be informed that it was going to be part of a PG-rated comics line aimed at Manga readers. When the series became the highest selling book in the fledgling Tsunami line by sheer virtue of being the first solo Venom comic released in several years Marvel asked him to shoehorn Wolverine (and subsequent guest stars) into the story at which point Way was like “sure why not.”  

Flash forward a decade later. Once again “angry reviewers” are in vogue as The Nostalgia Critic is at peak popularity as is Red Letter Media's Mr. Plinkett character. Even CinemaSins hadn't devolved into the complete clickbait that it is today. Marvel comics debuts a book called Avengers Arena which teenage heroes from several previous books: Avengers Academy, Sentinel, and Runaways were first to duel to the death by Arcade who very abruptly went from Marvel's most fun villains to least fun villains. It was a shameless Hunger Games cash-in that was one of the most thoroughly unpleasant comics I've ever read.  I started blogging on Tumblr as a way of venting and it brought me a bit of catharsis.

However with a decade of hindsight I realize that I was probably too hard on writer Dennis Hopeless. Remember Hopeless’ original pitch for the book was a new version of Excalibur consisting of teenagers mentored by Captain Britain. It simply wasn't the book he had wanted to write but the book Marvel editorial wanted. He was in a lose/lose situation. It was only a run on Spider-Woman that was generally well regarded and a WWE tie-in Comic that was much better than the actual WWE television product that I really appreciated how talented he was. Like Way before him he was just a guy doing a job in a lose-lose situation.

I stopped doing my “Worst Comics of the 2010s'' series around the time that Marvel's Secret Empire event came out. The story was largely the victim of terrible and I mean TERRIBLE timing. The people involved didn’t predict the rise of Donald Trump and just how quickly everything would go to shit. In 2015 “dude what if Captain America was like the absolute worst” villain must have seemed like a can't miss idea. In 2016 it was a heart-breaking reminder of the country's wounded psyche and in its promotion of the event Marvel basically left writer Nick Spencer to be hung out to dry. While I find Spencer's body of work to be staggeringly uneven, he was ultimately just another work for hire talent in over his head.  With the benefit of hindsight I would have handled things a lot differently. 

With years of hindsight I probably would have voiced my views differently. It's tempting to blame the current abysmal state of comics discussion on the endless cycle of corporate reboots and gimmicks or reprehensible movements like “Comics Gate” but the roots are much deeper. In fact in some ways it might have been worse. Over on his blog Mark Evanier talked about how Mark Robbins became one of the most controversial Batman artists of his day simply because he didn't draw like Neal Adams. As hard as it might be to believe there was a generation of comics fans who called Jack Kirby “Jack the Hack” because they didn't like his later works like Machine Man and The Eternals. Then you have the whole sad backlash to Ron Marz and the H.E.A.T fan movement. 

It is too tempting to write creators off without looking at their whole body of work. Steve Englehart is simultaneously one of the most important comic creators of his era AND the writer of the hilariously clueless New Guardians. I dislike many of the comics Brian Michael Bendis has written but I respect the importance of Ultimate Spider-Man and still look back fondly on his Daredevil run. Howard Mackie who became fandom's shorthand for “Hack” because of his Spider-Man runs recently made a comeback of sorts for Marvel on a Danny Ketch: Ghost Rider-Mini series and having read the first two issues it's a lot of fun! I'm rooting for him.

Hank and John, through their vlogs, have made me laugh, think deeply about things, and even sometimes cry.

The Nerdfighter community has helped to accept my nerdom - embrace it and be proud of it! I’m so thankful to have found crazy, passionate people like myself :)

but right now I’m sharing my haul from the secondhand bookstore I went by on the way home from the event, because I’m incredibly excited and happy with the things I found there and I need to gush over these lovely new (to me) books with some other people who can appreciate them—

first, the Regular Normal BooksTM:

and second, the Entirely Self-Indulgent Nonsense stack:

yes, I really did find—and purchase—five X-Files tie-in novels. no, I do not expect them to be anything even approaching Good Quality LiteratureTM. however, before you judge too harshly, they were all less than $2 a piece (and the Fight the Future novelization was actually $0.10. I am not joking. this fact is slightly hysterical to me.)

—not pictured are the four very nice copies of Lemony Snicket books I also got but have already entrusted to the care of my sister, who has our slowly-growing Snicket collection on the bookshelf in her room. I did buy these slightly as a peace offering for my sister, since she wasn’t able to come on the trip and therefore wasn’t able to go to the bookstore, and it’s one we both absolutely love—