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Thursday was a pretty good day. I met a friend visiting San Francisco, talked a blue streak for 3+ hours, caught up on some comics and Christmas letters on the train back to Mountain View, and bicycled down Central expressway shortly before midnight, since it was almost deserted.
One subject of conversation was my future plans, and my desire to move back to Toronto. My reasons are a) it's a city, and b) I still know more people who live there than live here. a) is also true of San Francisco and San Jose, and b) might fairly be said to be due to the fact that I'm anti-social. Back to a), even Mountain View or Palo Alto would be an improvement.
Then I got back to work, fell asleep in my chair, stayed until midnight, fell asleep in my chair again, and then finally dragged my stupid ass out of work, went to the Sunnyvale farmer's market, picked up a pile of peaches and concord grapes (methyl anthranilate, take me away!) and then went home and was a zombie for a while.
Now (hey everybody!) it's Labour day and I'm about to head off to work to catch up on a few things, but just before I go, a brief summary of all the comics I read through on the train to and from SF.
Rex Libris #12, James Turner, SLG:
The confluence of librarians, navy, yetis, and some villainous mastermind whose tinfoil hat looks like an ice cream cone all converge on neo-Cthulhu's island. A mulitude of agendas advance, retreat, or sit and spin. Rex et al get pretty far, but then Rex gets teleported into the midst of Mr. Soft Serve's goons, and that's the end of the issue.
Wonderland #5-6, Tommy Kovac and Sonny Liew, SLG:
This is better than a Disney property really has any right to be. I am pleased, however, that they were willing to see this very different take on their and Tenniel's realizations of Lewis Carroll's characters published, even though for some reason they didn't see fit to publish it themselves. Perhaps they foresaw that the market was limited, and perhaps they're right.
Anyway, Mary Ann makes her way through a series of scene transitions and centrifugally elliptical dialogue to end up at the palace. Learning of various internecine nastiness that explains the absence of the queens of clubs and spades may explain her somewhat striking willingness to go far beyond Alice's original 52-pick-up solution to the kingdom of playing cards. Strangely enough, the cheshire cat seizes the spotlight and executes the most focused and coherent section of the story, before getting turfed and sent away with a consolation prize. Some semblance of order is restored, and Mary Ann, with great relief, goes back to keeping house. Not exactly a feminist role model. I mean, doesn't everyone want to rule the world?
Furrlough #184, Various, Radio Comix:
Any issue that includes Chuck Melville's Felicia is better than average. I suppose "What Good Is Magic?" may be a reprint, but I don't really mind. Robbie Allens' "Shelly Mander" is amusing, extending the slacker ethic into realms of cuteness where it rarely penetrates.
Burn #4, Camilla d'Errico and Scott Sanders, Arcana Comics:
The preceding three issues laid the groundwork for this, a confrontation between an army of machines reminiscent of Eden and a kid who by a poorly-understood process is now half machine. The pure-bred machines don't know what to make of this hybrid, and so fail to wipe out a few human bystanders. Who could have seen that coming?
Local #8-12, Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, Oni:
Megan McKeenan goes from waitress to a job in publishing after two flashbacks prompted by the news of her mother's death, one focused on Megan, one on her brother Matthew. The publishing job (in Toronto!) presages a wrap-up of the series when an art-student co-worker resorts to a wholesale appropriation of Megan's past to complete a term project. The story ends in the house in Vermont that Megan inherited, after clearing out a lot of wreckage, with the statement that she's been travelling and ravelling (as Felix puts it in the Avram Davidson's Limekilller stories), which her mother was never free to do, but now she's done.
Gold Digger: Tiffany and Charlotte #2, Fred Perry and J.L. Anderson, Antarctic:
OK, well, maybe this is my kind of thing, after all. Miss Giggle (urgh) revives the adventurer's club for the first time since the '70s, and we get a flashback to some moderately amusing period characters and their tragic end in a parallel universe. After that and a pseudo-scientific lecture straight out of The Fall of Hyperion, the reality-hopping is set to start up all over again. It's pretty trashy, but fun in a mutant Donald Duck kind of way.
