Dude, Where's My Update? #12
Labor Day is almost here in the states and I can't think of a more dire year for the state of labor. Stay safe out there folks. Okay. On with the newsletter.
What’ve I Been Working On?
Not much! At least, not in the writing department. I’m working on spinning up some long dormant projects - one audio, one written - and figuring out how to increase readership here in my little corner of the internet. I really hope the solution won’t be to get on social media. Were I doing this as a means to a full-time job, I suspect that would be a necessity. As it stands, I’m just looking to break even - and maybe enough to have someone else edit the podcast.
Anywho, besides Mangaversity and editing some audio, most of the last month has been spent letting my finger heal up. I’ve basically had to learn how to type entirely with my middle finger on my dominant hand and while I can still type pretty quickly, it does increase the frequency with which I make mistakes. Most are fixable. Others less so, like when I smash the still raw top of my pointer finger into the J key and have to stop for a few minutes so that the stinging pain can subside.
I’m sure it’ll just be another week and then I’ll be back to full typing force. Does this mean I won’t end up typing a lot here? Ha! As Kieron Gillen has said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “why answer a yes or no question directly when you can write a 5,000 word essay instead?”
Wait. You Said You Weren’t Writing A Lot? What About All Those Articles?
Thank you for that perfect segue, Zdarsky-style header voice. It’s true! I’ve been releasing some articles over the last month or so that are, shall we say, long as shit? Mangaversity is kind of a staple at this point so I hunkered down and got it done over a few more days than I usually do. I’m thinking about how to make it better tailored to what y’all like so please, please, please comment below or email me with what you like and what makes you swipe away.
Elias Rosner
Interviews! I really enjoy doing them and I should get back to finding webcomics creators to just chat with. Honestly, the rise of Webtoon kinda scrambled my ability do this, despite doing weekly reviews during the rise. That’s neither here nor there. This was me getting to interview the wonderful Lucy Knisley again and accidentally spend a small portion doing literary analysis of someone else’s book that I nearly cut out because I didn’t think it flowed right prior to transcription, only to find it wasn’t too long and felt appropriate still.
I may air my full thoughts on “Gaythiest” once I actually read the dang thing. Or not. Not everything needs to be content and not every work of art I engage with needs to be for critical appraisal.
Elias Rosner
Woof. I’m all over the place today. Turns out reading orders are no joke when it comes to word counts. Those had the benefit of a long-lead time - I’d been noodling and fixing them for the better part of a year - as well as primarily being written in 2023.
That said, I did have to completely reformat them and probably added at least two or three mini essays worth of material to each section. The IDW section in particular got this deluxe treatment, including a sudden, end-of-July rewrite thanks to the SDCC announcements. I really hope I can pin down Aaron and Ba for interviews, on or off the record, about their time during this very short era that seems to mirror the transition from Mirage Volume I to Mirage Volume II in a rather eerie way.
I know I say this a lot but I’m very proud of what I did for these. They are the most research heavy comics project I’ve done and easily the one I spent the most time doing prep-work for.
Elias Rosner
That April Obit was also a ton of fun to write. I approached it as if I were writing for a real person, which is exceptionally difficult to do for someone with thirty-million different backstories and lives and appearances. Sorry if I caught anyone off guard with that.
Getting to stretch those creative writing muscles again was rejuvenating. Since starting as a reviewer, I haven’t done much fiction work, mainly because of how my brain works motivation-wise, but also because a lot of the itch to write and think about writing has been satisfied through analysis (and increased avenues at my main day job.) I hope this helps spark something in my noggin so I can have some new pieces to send out and inevitably get rejected.
Lit mags. They’re brutal.
Elias Rosner
Not SOLRAD though. They’ve been very kind to me, even after my “Mary Tyler Moorehawk” footnote-a-palooza. I’m proud to say I’ve been following Juni Ba’s work since his ill-fated Unbound campaign for “The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macamber” with Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (saved by Dark Horse, as it seems many of those projects have been.) He just keeps getting better and it’s an excellent mission statement book for Goats Flying Press.
What Else Do You Have for Us?
Well, the Eisners happened a couple weeks back and, sadly, SOLRAD did not win so I still cannot say I’ve won an Eisner. However, Chris Chiu-Tabet, former news manager for Multiversity is part of the team that won over at The Beat. Can you believe they’ve never won before? Inconceivable. Same with Clayton Cowles, who I could’ve sworn won an Eisner for lettering while working on "The Wicked and The Divine.” I guess all that (incredibly well deserved) praise we gave him at Multiversity skewed my memory.
Anyway, The Beat deserved the win. Maybe this will prompt them to make their Patreon or equivalent visible again?
SPX
I’ll be at SPX again this year! It’s a yearly ritual and basically the only con I ever attend. If you’re going to be there (looking at you Ignatz-award adjacent followers,) I’ll try to come say hi! If I come across as a complete nervous wreck and a dork, that’s because I am one and I apologize if the conversation ends in an abrupt “I’ll leave you alone now.” I am not nearly as good at conversing in person as I am in writing.
Speaking of…
Ignatz! Get your Ignatz here!
The Ignatz award nominees have been announced and I’m going to try my damndest this year to read as many of them as I can. Usually I’ve read a few, and cast my vote accordingly. No longer! I’m a professional dammit and that means I should track down what I can and be an informed voter.
Thus far, it’s going well. Between physical copies and Hoopla, my library system has a shocking amount of the releases. The rest I’ve either picked up at the Shortbox Digital Comics Fair or will be picking up digitally soon. And before you ask, no. I won’t be reading or reviewing all the 2025 SBCF submissions. I don’t have that kind of money…
Ignatz nominees though? I’ll try my best to give some brief thoughts next time around.
My Cats
My cats!
Catch y'all on the flipside.
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