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.

in the company of plastic people

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Carded and/or otherwise and possessed of deep, animate personal meaning: the more I've added (the more curtain rods too: curtain rods + zip ties + ceiling = wonderful display unit), the more I've found a set of specific avidities: Batman (McFarlane releases of odd variants, the Black and White statues, especially – though a recent find of four carded figures from the '93 Kenner BATMAN: TAS line was a pleasant-enough surprise that it might've triggered a new seeking); SUPER POWERS (particularly my prized, unpunched original 1984 Superman – though I now have almost a complete set of the current McFarlane releases too: love the new Batwing next to my original issue '84 SP Batmobile); Dick Tracy (such a deliciously weird line – I WILL FIND CARDED BLANK); Universal Monsters (NECAs and Megos - just added Hammer's 1962 Herbert Lom Phantom - great flick); and the recent Marvel Legends 60th anniversary Spider-Man (and a yellow-suited Daredevil) figures (the Japanese Spidey variant is wonderful and I'm thrilled to have a Spidey 2099 figure) – which has added three of the 1984 SECRET WARS line to my carded seekings: red & blue Spidey (I think one of mine became a (horribly failed) attempt at a custom 2099 Spidey 30 years ago or so), symbiote Spidey, and Daredevil; an uncarded and plastic-sealed Captain America SECRET WARS figure is currently on the shelves next to a VHS copy of the 1944 CAPTAIN AMERICA serial – I like to pretend that it's "frozen in ice" Cap with immobile preservation action.

As to the origin of this particular encircling, all I can surmise – other than the labor pains of a potential midlife crisis (though there are far more deleterious things to be wasting my midlife on) – is that it's an extension of a period I've been in since my mother's death featuring, among other things, this reclamation of plastic people – not necessarily the exact same plastic people, mind you, only the aforementioned lines, some new, some old / all obtained via a "that's neat" principle having no rhyme or reason other than that – many of the pre-Boston era's having been thrown out when I moved to the land of dropped R's as part of a concerted effort on my mother and (Step-He)’s part to eliminate all traces of me from their new lives; a reversion, perhaps, to a form that once upon a time kept me happy and creative and sane here in this bucolic hellhole – though far less of one in my forties than in my teens –; a reversion to a me surrounded by comics and action figures, toiling away at things and at writings that will go nowhere amidst a (re) discovery of the zen (and the art) of bagging and boarding comics, fake plastic friends reclaimed, reorganized – a reversion to a previous iteration with the experience of the last 20 years as a way to move forward into the next whateveritmaybe or whateveritmaybenot.

All this being the current operating theory, anyhow; maybe it is, indeed, a midlife crisis – but fuck if I know, fuck if I care: I'm rather fond of my toiling away at these things no one reads back here among my plastic coterie.