The end of the year is always a time for me to make lists of my favorite stuff, and one of the lists I enjoy as much as dread making every year is my "Favorite Comics" list. Why? Well, not sure you noticed, but I read a lot of comics.
Same thing as last year. Some REALLY great books in 2023, so as usual, this was not an easy list to assemble.
2023: Caveat
Maybe this is just my way to get an extra entry onto this list - it has been a wonderous year for comics - but due to my difficulties procuring copies of Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips' That Texas Blood spin-off/prequel series The Enfield Gang Massacre, I still have not read the entire series and thus, cannot in good faith add it to this list. There's nary a doubt that it belongs here with the best of the best, though.
The climactic Issue Five came out two weeks ago, and with me now spending most of January in L.A., I probably won't have it in my hands until February or March, whenever I return to Chicago. This means I won't be able to actually read this series in its entirety until then. Condon and Phillips show no signs of relenting in their ability to turn out one of the most interesting mixtures of Weird Fiction/Crime/Noir around, now adding Westerns to the list of genres they can effortlessly tackle.
Favorite Comics of 2023:
10) The Ribbon Queen
It is so good to have Garth Ennis working in Horror again, especially when teamed with Jacen Burrows. The Ribbon Queen does what Ennis does so well - takes topical stress points from the headlines and juxtaposes them with ancient, otherworldly forces that ultimately just want to do horrible things to human flesh. In the case of this book, that methodology feels especially fresh and, dare I say satisfying. Nothing like seeing terrible humans suffer a brutal punishment. What makes this a cut above, though, is the added moral quandary of whether or not revenge is the answer, even if it feels like it is.
9) The Bone Orchard Mythos: Tenement
You might recall that I added a caveat to last year's list that stated I would hold off adding Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Bone Orchard Mythos until this year. Some might say that required a lot of faith, however,I did this primarily because, although we had received several entries into this mythos by the end of 2022 (The Passageway, Ten Thousand Black Feathers and the NCBD single) word was Tenement would really kick the doors open on what Lemire and Sorrentino are building. Happily, this book has more than lived up to any expectations set by those previous entries. What's more, as a standalone Horror story, Tenement excels. As with the duo's previous book, Gideon Falls, the frayed realism and vibrant humanity they bring to Horror, and the veil they reveal beneath the modern cityscape create such an otherworldly yet still relatable feeling that you're never quite certain what you're looking at, of, more importantly, if it will hurt someone you've grown to care for.
8) Popscars
Thanks to a chance meeting in the spring of 2022, I watched Pat O'Malley's Hollywood Revenge series Popscars go from a successful Kickstarter campaign to worldwide distribution via Behemoth (now Sumerian) Comics in 2023. This book is gritty and pretty at the same time - which is exactly how Pat and artist Santi Guillen planned it. A macro view of the illusory facade of Hollywood undercut by the stark, cold reality that lies in wait beneath it. Also, just about the coolest, most iconic character I've seen in a long time.
7) The Seasons Have Teeth
Gentle, brutal, horrific, serene, but overall sublime, The Seasons Have Teeth's high concept and eye-catching art grabbed me from the first issue and pulled me into a story that moved me to tears by the end. Dan Watters, Sebasián Cabrol and Dan Jackson's harrowing tale of Earth's mightiest retort to humanity's apathy is unlike anything else I've read and probably an annual read from here out. Now, what season should I associate with it?
6) Phantom Road
Leff Lemire and Gabriel H. Walta's Phantom Road is a book that brings me nothing short of pure joy. The story of two regular folks traversing a "between place," slipping in and out of the world they know and braving an unknown liminal space is so right up my alley that it kind of feels like it was commissioned by an alternate timeline version of myself. These are ideas I hold near and dear to my heart, and while I've certainly seen the themes of "Thin Spaces" and what lies in wait within them explored before, no one except Stephen King has ever come so close to capturing it the way I 'see' the idea.
5) X-Men: Red
X-Men: Red is a BEAST. I've made the statement multiple times now that this book feels so much like Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's fantasy epic Seven to Eternity that I have to keep reminding myself it's an X-Book. This is where the Krakoa era - if it is truly on its way out - took some of its biggest swings and made the most impact. The ideas and concepts, characters and evolution have been nothing short of staggering, and I for one will be devastated to see this go.
4) Void Rivals
The only thing that could have made this book better is if I'd followed a fleeting impulse and picked it up before I knew it would tie into Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe. This book sets an EPIC stage, and I have no doubt that Kirkman will deliver. After all, this is the man who kept The Walking Dead series my "MUST READ RIGHT F*&KING NOW" book every month for nearly sixteen years. I have no doubt he can do it again while mixing new characters and concepts with ones I've loved almost as long as I've been alive.
3) Haunthology
Jeremy Haun put all of his hopes, fears and nightmares during the COVID lockdown into this collection of stories, so it resonates on its own level. There is an elegant simplicity to the storytelling here that absolutely blows me away, and I don't believe a single story herein ever pull their punches or take the easy way out. There's so much relatable pain in here, it's still a touch difficult to read, however, if you love Horror to pull your strings the way I do, there's no better tome in recent memory to go to than this one.
2) Something is Killing the Children
This is really the first year I've been a SIKTC fan, and I went all in. This book is so worth every bit of hype it receives, and the rabidity of the fanbase is earned. Hard Earned. The arcs fly by, no one is safe, and all manner of hell breaks loose over and over again. The fact that the first three trades or fifteen issues are all one location, one event essentially, is amazing when you stop to think about how much suspense and horror just explode from every single issue. And it's never slowed down since.
1) Night Fever
I have thought about Brubaker & Phillips' Night Fever every day since I read it back in May.
Every. Day.
I love this book more than I can even begin to explain. Part Noir, definite 70s influence from the likes of Friedkin and Costa-Gavras, not to mention the cinematic flourishes and predilections of Kubrick and Mann, this one is, to me, the pinnacle of what Brubaker and Phillips have done to date.
I'd never heard Rina Mushonga's music before two nights ago when I watched Carter Smith's new film Swallowed. More on that in a minute, first I want to open today with the track used in that film. Taken from the 2019 album In a Galaxy, this entire record is fantastic. My elevator pitch would be Tracy Chapman meets Tune-Yards, but that's just meant to whet the appetite; comparisons really do Rina's music no justice, as it is extremely unique and wonderful.
NCBD:
Another light NCBD this week, which is fine since Night Fever dropped last week and that was a $25 cost I hadn't figured into my initial budget. Light maybe, be it's quality that counts, right? Yeah, and it's a good week:
Saga #65. Lying Cat on his back begging for belly rubs! Looks great, until you remember this is Saga and that means there's probably more horrible stuff for the people I love who live this book.
The first issue of the newest series in Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Bone Orchard Mythos, I'm pretty psyched for this one. I loved Ten Thousand Black Feathers but felt it ended just as it began to build into something revelatory. I guess that was intentional, as Lemire has said Tenement is the book where all the disparate pieces begin to connect. There are only three issues solicited so far that I see, but whether it's three or thirty, I'm on board.
Read:
I'd had Carter Smith's new film Swallowed on my viewing list since hearing him interviewed on the Colours of the Dark podcast a few months back. MAN did this blow my expectations away, which, incidentally, were fairly high.
Not for everyone, but if you're willing to take the ride promised by the trailer, this is a super solid flick, with great performances from everyone involved. Like, really great performances. Also, great to see Mark Patton kicking ass and taking names in a flick. Very cool.
Playlist:
Godflesh - Purge
Fen - Dustwalker
Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
Rina Mushonga - In a Galaxy
Tune-Yards - WHOKILL
Pastor T.L. Barret and the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship Without a Sail
Isaac Hayes - Truck Turner OST
Ghost - Impera
Theory/Practice:
• Eight of Swords - Interruption
• XV The Devil
• XI Lust
This one's all about distraction. I've found that writing for long stints over successive days equals an eroding lack of attention that actually manifests physically as an almost obsessive/compulsive awareness. This "distraction radar" widens my attention to include anything and everything, which in turn gets me out of my chair and away from my work for things that a moment later, either seem unimportant or I forget completely. This is all compounded by a generally erratic nature when in this state, which is the very definition of counterproductive.
All this just means I'm on the correct path.
I haven't had this in a long time, and it means I'm expanding my writing stamina. At my peak performance, I remember sitting down and writing a script for someone in a little over a day. That happened two times, I think, and in doing it, I remember the process that helped me build the 'muscles' to get there. It wasn't easy, because it was a lot of fighting the exact behavior I mentioned above. Which is actually a lot like Yoga, Meditation, or any aspect of Magick in general.
Years ago, when I went through a period of reading works by Aleister Crowley's works on Magick, I began trying Raja Yoga. I believe Crowley talks about this in The Book of Lies, (or it might be Aha! - been a minute). Crowley introduces the idea of Raja Yoga, then talks about how to start practicing Yoga, one must first learn to sit completely still for long periods of time. The idea is, Stillness is a first strike at the crazed torrent of Horror the modern body feels at being asked to sit still.
Think about that for a minute.
No matter how old you are, or how educated, or successful, if you have no practice in keeping still, your body will act like a child and find a way to make you move. A tiny itch on your nose, a cramp; in more extreme cases, you'll hear things like a knock on the wall, or the snap of a twig. These aren't necessarily auditory hallucinations - although sometimes they might be. This is what happens to our brains in Stillness: we begin to hone in on our surroundings and seek beyond the filters that usually buffer our consciousness, so we can concentrate on the 'important' stuff. Once we can successfully apply the Will to keep Still for a considerable amount of time, we can then focus on controlling our Body in other ways, ie Raja Yoga. To paraphrase the most important morsel Crowley offers on this, "How can you hope to affect change on the Universe with your Will if you can't use it to keep still for five minutes?"
The joke at the time I implemented this was, I had no experience with any Yoga, so beginning with a considerably more severe form like Raja was doomed to fail. That said, man - I could almost perform and hold the Thunderbolt. That shit ain't easy.
All this Theory/Practice I'm talking about above is what led to me being able to sit at a desk for an entire day and write a script from scratch. One of my favorite writing memories, even if that project went nowhere. This is a great example of why I'm reformatting this section of the page to dip back into these ideas. If I am to look at my Practice as having built the life I have, then it makes sense that some of the systems I've put in place would need a tune-up now and again. Although I have maintained a ritualized practice of writing every day for close to a decade now, the duration of the sessions has dwindled. Time to rebuild this engine. In that, I've also added a Duration section to end the page with. This section (below) will be my personal journal of how long I wrote the day before. No hiding my failures now.
Duration
I have long used an app called ATracker PRO to 'punch in and punch out' for writing sessions. I get sloppy about using it sometimes, and when I'm as distracted as I was yesterday, I have to turn it off and on as I flit away and back again. In that, I have to get better. I want truthful accounts of solid writing time. I have never used the export function, so I'll probably tweak this as I go. Looks like dedicated time yesterday was roughly two hours and twenty-four minutes.
2:24 Hours
I use another app called Focus Keeper concurrently with ATracker for sessions within the overall session. This allows me five-minute breaks - which I often skip if things are rolling - after 25 minutes of dedicated writing.
