Please come join my vibe
I got back issues, I got some music.
Usually I don't share it, but today?
Please come join my vibe.
FAQ: who’s your favorite comic hero?
A: Jack Kirby.
I don’t really follow Heroes in comics. If you follow characters, you are bound to be disappointed at some point, because every character when popularized becomes a brand allowing a company to commercialize, and with any commercialization’s success, well, there’s going to be more brand management occurring in their stories rather than change and artful ideas.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any good “hero” comics. Just that my favorite heroes are the ones who write and draw and color and letter the stories themselves. Given enough time, historical figures become mythic, as un-knowable as a fictional person, anyways.
More than any other time in my reading history, though, I’ve really gotten into following specifically the Marvel Universe circa 2004-2008. A promise I made to myself back in the middle of “Civil War”s initial publication was to never read Marvel or DC comics. It was an ultimatum made when a plethora of tie-ins made me feel like all marvel wanted was my money, and the snap happened when a specific comic, She-Hulk #8, was incredibly expensive the day of release but also diegeticly integral to the civil war storyline… that I did just give up trying to follow them.
And I dove straight into indie comics. I saw people I knew making them and self publishing them, self marketing them was the coolest of all.
Eventually, I found newspaper strips and archival collections, and at some point in college I re-discovered Jack Kirby while catching up on fifty issues of Savage Dragon to race up to “Emperor Dragon”, and, I suddenly got that “Hero” comics themselves were artists and writers making interesting decisions, too, sometimes.
Right now, I’ve been picking up the Marvel universe where I let it lay more than a decade ago. I’ve marveled at JMS’ short and incredible Fantastic Four run, completely picked my jaw up off the floor four or five times in the first twenty issues of Bendis’ New Avengers and the Secret War/Pulse.
And I think from the last writing, you’d believe that I have really gotten back into old Justice League comics. I left the DC Universe during 52/One Year Later, and through an appreciation of Denny O’Neil’s writing that developed from reading the Knightfall novelization into his stupendous bronze age World’s Finest, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and Justice League runs, I’m even there for Gardner Fox and Otto Binder silver age captions that overtake the illustrations.
FAQ: What’d you read last?
A: “Little Bird”! Let me share what it’s about by sharing a string of quotes from it, like in that Mike Allred THE WRITER appreciation post a while back:
Between everything we're searching for and the things we find in their place, there are a thousand stories waiting to be heard. And a thousand more willing to listen. Some of them end before they should. Some we hear and never forget. Others we know, but choose to leave behind. And some remain a secret.
No matter where we run. Here we are. Awash in the blood of those that came before us. Trapped by the illusion of what lay ahead. It is only in our sleep we find the promises we keep.
I wanted to keep my promise. I wanted to let go of all that's happened. Rise above the hatred that fuels me. But the need is too strong. The stakes too high. The hunger too great.
The first instinct every creature must respond to is hunger. Without it, there can be nothing else. No chance for something more. Life itself is not enough. We want a life worth living. Without it, there an be nothing else.
Too bad we're all grown up, and no one gives a **** what Santa says.
Nobody works for themselves anymore.
Welcome to Elder's hope. The last place on Earth you can think for yourself.
I chose a path. And that path became yours as well.
I was lost in the thickening shadows of civilization. The vacuum that Hope had left behind. But I had to keep going. If not for myself--then for you. After many weeks alone, I found something I hadn't anticipated. Kindness.
I am so much more than what I'd been told. I needed answers. And so I searched. And searched. Until I found a piece of my past buried in a box. A clue as to who I really was. What I really am. And where I came from.
You're safe here. The world you know is only an island, the peak of a mountain sitting above the surface of our perception. What you see and feel now is everything that lay beneath that surface. A world within you. Death has delivered you to the eye of the owl. Through this passage time splits in many directions. Each nerve a winding bridge back to the events that shaped you. A living map of where you've been, and--if studied closely--where you're going.
The elders say that during our youth part of us still remains in the dream, A home to distant memories comes when we need them once more.
Tell him... Hope Exists.
Fetch my robe. A new era calls for a new look. My voice, my words must be the sword with which I fight now.
This doesn't end here. Not like this.
Little Bird was written on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam People.
