I've really been 'feeling' CDs lately. I think January/February always inspires me to return to a state of mind that reaches through time and connects to the mid-to-late 00s, when the internet was amazing, and the world hadn't yet shifted into a post-apocalyptic paradigm.
At the time, shortly before I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, I was finishing up years of playing in bands and gigging pretty regularly. I met a lot of bands this way, and one of the fiercest was Amherst, Massachusetts' Read Yellow.
I either saw or opened for these guys at Chicago's Fireside Bowl. Read Yellow had a big, noisy sound slightly reminiscent of Sonic Youth, but that comparison sells Read Yellow short. This band has such energy! When you exist for an extended length of time inside a live indie circuit, one thing you often find - and it definitely plagued a band or two of my own - some bands who have fireball energy live don't always find a way to translate that to a recording.
NOT the case here.
Although Read Yellow broke up years ago (I just double-checked), their website is still up, which definitely suggests someone in the group understands the need to keep their flame burning, even dimly, for future generations to find.
NCBD:
BIG week this week at the comic shop.
Larry Hama's GIJOE: A Real American Hero hits another milestone, and to celebrate, he's apparently introducing two new Joes! Being that we're free and clear of toy tie-ins, unless Classified wants to take a nod from Hama, I'm pretty intrigued. What would two new Joes in 2026 look like? We'll find out today!
Watch:
As I alluded to in Monday's post, my ventures into the DC Absolute universe have dovetailed with something... else. Let me explain.
This past Sunday, I woke up feeling burnt out. Reading a Substack newsletter from John Pavlovitz about the absolutely blatant racism of the *ahem* superbowl halftime alternative cooked up by magacunts and kid rock,* I found myself overwhelmed again by the "We can't fix this" mantra that has pretty much played on a steady loop in my subconscious since 2018. I don't doom scroll; I don't really 'scroll' all that much at all anymore, but what I have been doing is looking through the various newsletters I receive in my email. I happened on a new one from Grant Morrison's Xanaduum, and falling into the prosiac embrace of a man whose writing I was once obsessed with, I felt the urge to walk over to the bookshelf and pick up his 2011 treatise on Super Heroes as hopeful, psychological antibodies for the modern disaster.
Not looking to add yet another book to the "currently" or even "soon to be" reading piles, instead, I re-read the introduction and was reminded why Morrison once spoke so strongly to me. The bomb had begun as an idea and humanity had worked to give it material form. So too, could another idea - one infinitely more powerful than a mere bomb - be conjured into our lives to stave off the destructive potential assailing us?
Being that Morrison wrote about this way back in 2011 - when things were infinitely less F*cked than they are now - I had to ask myself, might I not need something like this now? Might I not benefit from exposure to something all-powerful and brimming with, of all things, hope?
It was with that in mind that I hit play on James Gunn's Superman laster that day.
All I can say is, always happy to be proven wrong.
In my defense, I have long answered the friends who assured me this film was great and that I was missing out with a patented, "I know it's great, I just don't care." So I simply reached a point in my lfie when I do care, and the film definitely worked its magic on me.
My good friend Chris Saunders asked me to elaborate what I liked about the film and I rattled off the following list:
- That Nick Hoult's Lex Luthor was clearly designed to look like Grant Morrison was the film's evil doer
- That Coresweat somehow managed to avoid all the stupid foibles all other good-natured attempts at Supes have fallen prey to (from what I saw in Snyder's Batman V. Superman, his wasn't good-natured or cloddish, he (and Snyder) just had too much to prove by taking the chacter dark.
- That Rachel Brosnahan was born to play the role of Lois Lane
- That Gunn cast Wendell Pierce as Perry White
- That Edi Gathegi's Mr. Terrific stole every scene he was in
- That Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner cut and attitude were spot on
- That Pruitt Taylor Vince played Pa Kent
- The Monkeys!
- "Thanks, bitch!"
Honestly, I'm shocked how much I liked this, but I'm not sure why. Apparently, my love of James Gunn far outweighs my detestation of Superman as a character.
For more, Mike and I discuss the film at length in the latest episode of Drinking with Comics, which I'll embed here in a few hours when it posts to youtube.
* So proud that my long-time friend Cap'm Jack once cut KR's tires in a Michigan venue parking lot! I loved that story at the time - back when this cunt was first getting national exposure - but I love it even more now.
Playlist:
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
Drab Majesty - Careless
Mr. Bungle - California
Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante
Mr. Bungle - Eponymous
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol.1
Mountain Realm - Rustborn
Mountain Realm - Frostfall
Atrium Carceri - Kapnobatai
David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat EP
David Lee Roth - A Little Ain't Enough
Helmet - Aftertaste
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance
sunn O))) - Glory Black (pre-release single)
• XX: The Aeon
• XXI: The Universe
The reason I waited to discuss this was so I could have already talked about James Gunn's Superman, Grant Morrison's Super Gods, and this idea that I might be able to use these larger-than-life characters to help assuage the fears and neuroses.
The Star - thinking bigger can act as cleansing. The figure on the card is literally washing themself in the rivers of cosmic confidence.
The Aeon - Pass from one ruling paradigm to another, or it's never too late to change, no matter how difficult it is. No matter how big a change it requires.
The Universe - Think macrocosmic, not microcosmic.
I'm going to pursue an interest in superheroes again - especially Superman - as a way to try and tip the scales and shake off some of the unhealthy mental 'doom plaque' that's built up since, oh, 2016. I'm going to read and enjoy in an active, not a passive manner, where I imagine the foes the super gods are fighting are the foes to the healthy world I want to inhabit, both in my head and outside the walls of my house. It might be a fool's errand, but it's what Superman would do. (since when do I say things like that? Well, maybe it's time I incorporated that kind of thinking into my life.)
