three quick notes on SECRET INVASION 03 + 04

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  • While I loved the first 1/3, I can't, at this juncture, figure how they intend to wrap up this story in a satisfying fashion with two episodes to go. Perhaps the plan is to kill everyone on the show one by one and then, when everyone's dead, the show ends?

  • Thusly, the final episode will be Gravik killing all of the Graviks until there's none left except for himself...

  • But, in the post-credits sequence, Nick Fury emerges from the pile of Graviks, points his gun at final Gravik and says, "Now go the fuck to sleep." Smash cut to black.

reMarkable 2, ctd

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A few more impressions as I cross the halfway point of my first week:

  • 99.8% certain that it will fully replace my paper journal: briefly returned to paper and went back to the reMarkable. Love writing in / on it: feels like a Papermate Flair / fountain pen mix without the waste of blowing through a box of Flairs a month. Lamy stylus supposed to arrive today. Have a feeling that that will clinch its victory.

  • Very nice to have gotten a handle on the touch gestures. Less friction = more brain.

  • A workflow is emergent.

  • Still haven't read anything on it. Or signed anything. Should have caught me a year ago, then it'd've been a different story.

  • The focus that writing on it instills transfers well to working on the Mac.

  • K was so fascinated by it that she bought her own for teaching. Have a feeling that it will be even more useful for her than for me (though it has already cemented its position as an essential brain extension in (what passes for) my creative practice).

  • My handwriting is and will remain shit but I learned to live with that long ago. In other words, text-type conversion isn’t in the cards and won’t be and I’m fine with that: I’ve been deciphering my scribbles since time immemorial and it’s not like I’m a doctor or anything important.

SUPERMAN, No. 664 (Busiek / Pacheco, Merino; DC, 2007)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

strawberry slices fly as superman face (and body)-plants into a giant pie.

(Box17): Now entering the weird, post-INFINITE CRISIS / pre-FLASHPOINT back half of the DC naughties when nothing quite clicked though, in theory, it should have: Busiek and Pacheco (RIP; if there was anyone born to draw Superman) are a phenomenal team but even they couldn't bring magic to the character and his world as it was then. Not that this is a bad issue – it isn't, not by a long shot – but I won't remember any of it after writing this; starting to lose some of it even a few moments after reading it: it was wholly there in its thereness.

(IIRC, Morrison and Quitely's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN was unfolding in stuttering release parallel, an unenviable position for any team on the main books to find themselves in.)

If anything, this makes evident why the New52 (and the ensuing decade+ of rebirthing and rebuilding) came into being: there was clearly a need to revitalize the line (though the Bat-line came through unscathed, as it was quite good then, IIRC: Morrison again); it was only in the shoddy, haphazard execution via "editorial bloodsucking" of said revitalization that the New52 failed to leave little more than a bad taste.

Though I'll admit, the pie was a nice – if unsubtle – touch.

remarkable 2: first work session

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Majority of first impressions have been altered: while I initially thought the remarkable would be a replacement for the Drafts app and not a journal, it's already proven to be the opposite; I'm giving it this week to replace my paper and pen journal (which, unless things drastically change and/or it decides to erase my jottings, it's already done); figured out the left-hand thing and am now a leftie writing on a leftie-oriented device with a digital Papermate Flair (I've found a setting – marker, medium, black which makes it so) and have ordered the Lamy stylus that's basically an AL-Star with a stylus nib so I can fully merge both worlds; a leather cover, not dissimilar to my journal one, is on its way. Hopefully will find a way to keep index cards, post its, and perhaps my CW&T Pen Type-C in there alongside for quick notes and jottings. Once the Lamy arrives, it'll be quite something, I think.

File system so far:

  • Journal: one notebook per week – pretty similar to what I do here – with one page per day (scrolling journal is fantastic!) and written in the same scrawl as with my 14+ years of paper journals. When the week is done, I'll transfer a PDF over to Obsidian and save it there and start a new one. Given that I've never gone back and consulted one of those journals in the 14 years of their existence, I see no reason that I'll start now: their purpose is to get the shit out of my brain. Hopefully, as I get more acclimated to creating with it, the notebook there and the notebook here will more fully merge. Biggest thing: I didn’t miss the paper journal, not once.

  • Legal Pad: so named, ruled, for when I need to draft things or think things through on the Main Things.

  • Considering adding "Whiteboard" for mindmaps, etc - though I could do that on the Legal Pad, IDK. Doubt I'll save these, as I tend to manually add to Obsidian / main project doc as I go.

  • Quick sheets for quick jottings - sticky notes section, accessible from the main doc, would be great, but that does, I suppose, go against the guiding ethos of deep work / thinking that the remarkable inculcates. A little too much friction between brain and scrap in this case.

I've neither found the typing function / typefolio to be very useful since I'm so used to speed-freak/mistake-laden huntnpeck on a Mac with my split keyboard (if I want to add typed text, I can always add it to the note via the app and move it over) nor have I tried reading or marking up PDFs, though I've a feeling that it will be a fantastic editing and revising tool.

Battery power is down from an unboxing 67% to 28% at the time of posting this - that whole purported "two week" battery life must be in a constant period of sleep – so I'll have to plug it in in a bit but that's nothing I'm not used to: I, do, after all, have to plug in my cyborg pancreas every few days so I can stay alive so I suppose I can live with plugging in my cyborg brain as needed.

Love love love.