September Highlights

Late Due To Being Sick

So yeah, near the end of the month I got what I hope was just a days long cold based on a positive expired Covid test.

More Reading To Do In Off Time

I don’t write so much on normal work days because of a few changes. But after I do all of my tasks, I have nothing but time to catch up on Comixology Unlimited borrows from around Covid’s beginning. Managed to get through different eras of the Flash, one from Mark Waid another from Geoff Johns. Gotta say though, I’m losing interest in Kindle altogether.

Sometimes there are updates I don’t know or care about that take me out of the book. Not to mention when I need a better position, I have to use an external app to rotate.

Biggest pain in the butt though is that a lot of titles just aren’t available through the Comixology Unlimited service as there used to. Not even the continuing series like Witch Hat Atelier. Yet I still have Omnibuses I want to read through there. Mostly Doctor Doom as well as Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four.

At least Hoopla has plenty of good titles to work with. The Bonuses this month did include Steve Orlando’s Scarlet Witch. Even the first two albums of Astro Boy. It’s funny… despite the 50s era sci-fi it was surprisingly dark with its subject matter. Astro’s origin of being sold to the circus after his maker’s frustration of not getting his son back in him. A couple of intense political standoffs about robot rights after bad actors wanting to use them as tools and robots get the worst of it.

Compared to Pluto on Netflix, while there are more out there things, they all felt so intense.

Pacing and Humor: What Makes or Breaks

Between another borrow called Crabgrass, 60s Sabrina The Teenaged Witch, and Netflix’s Way of the House Husband; I just can’t deal with multiple disconnected strips/segments in one sitting. One at a time that’s fine, but I get tired dealing with them all at once.

Staying sick in bed just means finding things to rest as well as keeping yourself distracted. But finding your kind of laughs can be hard. Found more from Zenitsu on Demon Slayers as well as Helluva Boss’s last short release. Over-exaggerated overreactions. Everything else like The Gentlemen and Way of the House Husband has people acting basically normal in mismatched places. Not really into sitcoms like that; a bit too vanilla for my taste.

Posts

Can’t remember if I did any posts this month. Wait… right…

Cameroonian Comics. Still trying to finish a post about comics from different parts of the world. Cameroon was surprisingly a lot. I even added another growing list on here:

But that’s also why I’ve been doing less on Gutternaut and not doing the maintenance as much as I should. Between wanting to get a book together about how comics start, thrive, struggle, and try to adapt.

Not to mention finishing the manuscript to that followup to The Wire Fence.

Am I starting to sound like a broken record to all of you? Because I feel like I’ve said all of this before. Especially since a lot of reviews I’ve done this month had its highlights.

One Last Review

Before closing out and going back to the grind, I might as well add a review for the full album of When The Blood Has Dried.

A suspenseful mirror on the D&D imitators. You’ve got a character you really want to root for, a foil, and a plot about rocking everyone’s world. The dangerous part isn’t the threats that some mercenaries would bring, but the social anxieties of losing whatever place you’ve got left. 8.5/10

Coming Up…

More reviews will definitely be here on Substack. Hopefully finishing that list of comics in the world now that I’m up to Haiti. Because the month after October is going to be busy. New state, new documents that I need to sign, hopefully a new job, and a lot of cutbacks on spending.