and i am not bleeding!

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Behold, the new binding for PRESS (A) TO START: all future editions and issues – unless format dictates otherwise – will be bound in Japanese Stab Binding-style:

Or, rather, all future editions and issues - unless format dictates otherwise – will be bound in my iteration / improvisation of Japanese stab binding (meaning it involved three holes instead of four and a power drill in conjunction with the awl).

Either way, proud of this one, considering the last time I tried to thread a needle I was in a state of inebriation at 2AM and convinced I needed to sew a button back on my shirt. It took two hours to thread that needle. But that button held.

black and white

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From my first – Kelley Jones (who remains my favorite Bat-artist; come on, we need a CRIMSON MIST, emaciated creature of the night statue) – to my latest – Mike Mignola's GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT Batman – the Batman: Black and White series of statues have become the other manifestation of my passion for being surrounded by plastic people. Reasonably certain that this passion for this particular line comes not only from their stunning physical attributes – seriously, these things are gorgeous – but because the series from which they take its name, BATMAN: BLACK AND WHITE, has remained one of my favorite Bat-projects since its first release nearly 30 years ago: there's little I love more than a well-done short form comics story – especially when those stories are such fascinating experiments in character and taut storytelling.

Bringing that storytelling and design aesthetic to tactile sculpture is catnip to my procurement proclivities: where else can Jiro Kuwata's Bat-manga Batman and Paul Pope's YEAR 100 stand side by side in glorious black and white?

THE VVITCH (Eggers, 2015)

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(Written and directed by Robert Eggers; starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Skrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson. Released 27 January 2015; watched thu/2023019 via HBO Max.

Last of the Eggers trifecta and, were it not for my adoration of THE LIGHTHOUSE, it would certainly be my favorite of his oeuvre. Far more conventional in composition (the stark, natural lighting was particularly potent) and in structure than the LIGHTHOUSE feverdream and, to a less-feverish extent, THE NORTHMAN (which I wish I liked more than I do). Worth noting that, as amazing as Anya Taylor-Joy was in one of her first roles, all of the cast, particularly Harvey Skrimshaw as Caleb and Kate Dickie as Katherine, deserve plaudits. Profoundly disturbing in horrors of the physical and horrors of the fundamentalist Puritan zeal and, yet, as I remarked to a friend (and edited here to make it sound better) I’m deeply moved by how the pure artistry of Eggers et. al made THE VVITCH’s horrors so compelling.

cybersigilism

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People often dedicate tattoos to outside influences—loved ones or songs or works of art that carry deep significance. Cybersigilism, with its exaggerated, techno-biological grace, feels more like a radical acceptance of the sensual, wordless, often-dark, extremely complex self.