Dude, Where's My Update? #14
Looking back at 2025 personally before I look back at all the comics I read....Oh god, I still have to look back at all the comics I read.
2025 is on its way out and 2026 is looming in the distance, teeth sharpened, eyes glinting, hands suspiciously open. The 2020s have disabused me of the notion of a better year on the horizon. I have no doubts the year to come will be full of strife and misery and hardship and it’ll be harder and harder to hold fast. Still, I still have hope. Hope is a hard thing to destroy.
Past, Present, Future
As I talked about in my last big update, it’s been a tough season. In spite of my love of writing, doing this kind of journaling in public doesn’t come naturally to me. Journaling in private doesn’t even come naturally. Bounds and external accountability are my biggest motivators so a big, big, big thank you to the people who have joined as paid subscribers this year.
Your presence means I feel way more anxiety about not putting out piece but also gives me clear and present deadlines that are psychologically more sticky that's great but also sticky in ways that I don’t like. I should feel just as motivated by all of you amazing, wonderful subscribers who have said they want this to come to your inboxes every week (or so) but my brain is three pieces of cheese strung together with some floss and a hamster on a treadmill so….
Before the year is out, I wanted to take stock of 2025 for me here and then in a couple weeks, I’ll be back with my official 2025 Year in Review.
What in the Heck was 2025?
2025 was a year of rebuilding. The house I live in required a lot (a lot) of TLC in 2025 and we still have a hole in the ceiling below where the pipe behind our tub decided to burst and some busted shingles from where the tree fell. Grief razed my nerves to the ground and required that I slowly, carefully, tenderly nurture my emotions back to something resembling a healthy garden
New routines became necessary, partially because I’m in a new location and partially because I needed change. I started going to the gym more earnestly. I started going to a weekly minyan (and waking up at 6:30 am those days!!! Hate it.) I tried to figure out how much time I spent reading comics vs writing vs reading books vs watching TV vs playing video games vs hanging with friends vs… well, you get the drill. Didn’t always work and wasn’t always a success but I think I’ve come away with a better understanding of myself and how I tick.
I went on my first real vacation in a while - two, in fact, though one was just a weekend - with my wife and attended the wedding of a long-time friend out in Portland. Did it rain? Yeah. Was it still beautiful and meaningful? 1000% And we successfully kept the ketubah dry (mostly.)
I got to play photographer and videographer, a very gratifying experience for someone who’s not actually all that good at it. It was also on his recommendation that I walked into Books with Pictures and discovered how vibrant a comic shop could feel. No shade to my LCS - a more traditional back issue store - but BwP is something special.
Speaking of, I started purchasing print single issues again. Outside of what I would get at SPX and kickstarter comics, this is a huge change. I’ve said it before that I prefer digital for singles for convenience and space reasons but with no real DRM-free options out there for day and date singles, it felt like the thing to do.
I can already hear the calls. “What about platform X?!” Globalcomix’s layout baffles me and I cannot tell what is DRM-free when purchasing and what is not, Neon Ichiban is still fairly new and, sadly, has some spottiness on this issue (WTF IDW and Dark Horse!) and Sweet Shop still has yet to launch, much to my chagrin. The rest are all the same-old nonsense platforms (Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo, Kindle) whose practices and readers I don’t trust or like.
It’s certainly been weird having to learn FOC right as Diamond died. Same with having to spend the time going to the shop, bagging and boarding, and figuring out if I’m going to bind these comics when I’m done, sell them (I do not want this hassle, let me tell you,) or leave them in short boxes/the random plastic bins I currently have.
What a joy to be able to talk with my comics friends and feel somewhat plugged in rather than be six to twelve months out of date on every comic. I forgot how much of a delay there is between the final issue of a trade coming out in singles and the trade release. You’d think publishers would want to make it easier to convert trade readers to singles Marvel. (BOOM! used to be the worst offender. A year and a half! A year and a half!!!)
As this newsletter blossomed into its first full year, I managed to update my TMNT reading order - thanks again to IDW’s help in procuring some out-of-print review PDFs for my research - get out twelve Mangaversities, four interviews, and finally finish that “Heroes in Crisis” three-parter that had been haunting my hard-drive for the better part of three years.
Make Mine Multiversity made a triumphant comeback and I’m excited to keep it up in 2026. I really like the new remit and hope to have a nice range of guests soon. Plus some returning favs, of course.
Elias Rosner
That said, I don’t think I accomplished nearly as much as I wanted to. I never finished my revision of “Climbing the Tower,” which fell by the wayside as my ambitions for it outstripped my ability. Turns out trying to remember what the hell I was talking about this many years removed from reading and watching the original works is a challenge on par with climbing the tower itself.
I also did very few current periodical or OGN reviews and I feel like my review muscles have atrophied a little, having been out of the weekly game for more than two years. I am not built for short reviews, it seems, or at least short reviews of anything longer than eight pages. I have to come to terms with that.
I have a draft of a con diary that I suspect will never see the light of day. There’s little I think could be interesting in it, even though I have quite a corpus of photos from SPX this year I want to share. I’m sure I’ll find a use for it. I’ve also been sitting on another review that’s half done for one of the Ignatz nominated books (it didn’t win) that…felt too mean-spirited to post and finish. I want to put it out there - reviews shouldn’t be flattering PR pieces - but not in the hastily done, angry screed it is now.
The book is fine but its issues run deep and are emblematic of a larger trend in comics storytelling that pisses me off and doesn’t seem to be given much discussion. I don’t want to name the book without giving it its proper due, though. Same for another comic, this one a mini from a few years back, that everyone seems to love and I think is overrated claptrap. Email me if you want my thoughts on that one.
I also had some pieces published at Shelfdust and SOLRAD, which I’m very proud of, even if they don’t have the same formal experimentation and density of footnotes as my final 2024 review had. Always happy to do something a little different and have an editor again. In fact, I just had a new piece out a couple weeks ago. Have a read!
Elias Rosner
What else…oh! I started catching up on a bunch of series that I’ll talk about in my Year in Review. I put a lot of emphasis on reading through the books I have on my shelf and filling in some of the gaps in my comics knowledge.
So…2026?
It’s gonna be a different year for sure! No SPX for me this time around, which means no Ignatz coverage either. As Warren confirmed for me, SPX falls on Rosh Hashanah this year. I’m bummed. I love this little con and this’ll be the first one I’ve actually missed. No “Spitball.” No “Datura”. None of my staples or the random books I find and artists whose work I fall in love with.
I hope to get a monthly paid supporter exclusive post series going. Don’t worry if you’re a regular subscriber. I plan on making these available to everyone down the line, probably six months or so after release. I’m hoping it’ll allow me to create some stability in releases, reward y’all who have been generous with your money, and have an enticing corpus of past material for new subscribers without sacrificing the openness of my writing.
Permanent paywalls feel unethical, even if for some, they seem necessary.
As for my comics reading, who knows! It’s a brand new year and I want to enter it fresh.
Anything else?
Have you been reading the “2025 Creators’ Year in Review?” It’s good stuff! I definitely got a few recommendations from there (plus, very happy to see the “Billy Bat” love.) Sadly not as many people from past years as I would have liked participated but I understand why. This was a bad year and it’s taking all we can do to stay afloat. I’m hoping to expand my network for next year and get even more amazing answers.
Oh, and paid subscribers? Give the posts a second look. I had a few more answers come in since the first post went up.
My Cats
Let’s close things out with my cats! That seems like the right thing to do.
Catch y’all on the flip side.
Comments ()