The trouble with them, of course, is that you spend them waiting for the storms.
Superfudge has opened, and not a moment too soon, as I was feeling the creative card in my brain seriously overheating. The past few months seem to have put a serious strain on it. Then again, I can’t be sure how much of that creative exhaustion is due to the fact that none of the stuff I was working on was truly mine. The scriptwork that occupied the year to date was for a idea I had submitted to the focus groups, sure enough, but by the time its official writer was shuffled off script duties, it was no longer my vision. All I could do was attempt to link the story points in something approaching a logical manner.
One of the unexpected perks of writing so regularly again is my return to the world of reading. Though I still can’t set aside enough time to read an actual book – though several sit by my desk, waiting their turn – I’ve returned to my first love, the medium that taught me to read at the tender age of four: comic books.
I gave up the monthlies years ago, during one of my frequent fiscal crises, and now wait for the trade paperback collections to come out. My wait for some stories to conclude thusly is longer, of course, but there isn’t that agonizing wait between issues. Especially since the higher-profile comics have a way of slipping off-schedule.
Currently, I’m catching up on Warren Ellis. Friends blink at me, the unstated question being, “Catch up on Warren Ellis?” Yeah, I’ve lived in a cave for quite some time. I’m the Unabomber without the body count. Forgive me.
But what a wonderful odyssey it is, finding this wonder in huge, bookshelf-worthy chunks. It started with a recommendation for The Authority – between this and Moore’s Miracleman and Watchmen, I think the revisionist superhero story has reached its zenith. I have chewed my way through Planetary and Global Frequency, re-reading them frequently. My next course is what Ellis refers to as his “2500 page science fiction novel”, Transmetropolitan.
And while not exactly a new discovery for me, I was trolling Half-Price Books during a long lunch and discovered a couple of the small, thick Dark Horse collections of Lone Wolf and Cub. I had read the comic religiously back when First Comics was reprinting them. When First went under (taking with it my beloved Grimjack – a pause, please, for mourning), it was rumored that financial skullduggery had scotched the idea of the series ever returning to this shore. So I was pleased to see these books at my local store, but somehow never managed to pick one up.
Well, now I have to own them all. Good heavens, I had forgotten how masterful a storyteller is Kazuo Koike.
The short story is one of the toughest forms to master, and both of these men excel at it, in a medium that insures I can have a satisfying reading in a half-hour or less, the experience made more dense, rather than simplified, by the accompanying pictures.
In other, nagging, real-life concerns, I have, at least, updated the Upcoming Disc entries at Attack of the 50 Ft. DVD, and gotten the B-Masters site up to date. Still working on my review of The Incredibles, because God knows, what the Internet needs is another review of The Incredibles.
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