“something more ‘inward’…”

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Pleasant Monday surprise: something I wrote appearing elsewhere (that elsewhere being Kevin Hodgson’s always-excellent Kevin's Meandering Mind blog) along with a super-cool graphic version of same and generous linkage to the newsletter! Super-cool graphic version:

And I loved Kevin’s rumination on it (a sentiment I wholeheartedly echo) about blogs now being an inward space:

Tyler’s piece had me thinking (yet again) of this blogging space, and how my view of it has changed over time. It used to be more of a space that I imagined as “outward” facing — sharing with other bloggers, and being connected into larger blogging networks — but now I see it more as a reflective space, something more “inward” where I am curating my writing and thinking. My audience may be smaller (I may be my only audience) but I still keep the door open for others (you, perhaps?) to peek in and see what I’m up to.

Also happy to find myself sharing space with James Shelley's excellent piece, What's the fun in writing on the internet anymore? Many thanks, my friend.

… and the two-way wrist mystery (SOLVED)

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Purchased this small kid's Dick Tracy Two-Way Wrist Radio plastic toy (it's just a chunk of plastic, no workable radio bits) and have no clue of when it was released or what it's from. Had to be at least after 1946 (when the two-way first appeared in the strip) but beyond that I haven't a clue. Can't find it anywhere in Crouch and Doucet's AUTHORIZED GUIDE TO DICK TRACY COLLECTIBLES. Thoughts?

  • UPDATE/202309222028: huge thanks to Sean Kleefeld (of the essential Kleefeld on Comics blog) for finding that it is part of a 1950 badge/watch set from Gaylord. Mystery=solved.

  • UPDATE/202309221143: A double take of my collection of radio premium / detective club badges found that I also have the badge that came with the set…

sharing is caring as that one plugin used to say

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As we slip and slide and stumble and fumble into the post-SpaceKaren social media paradigm (still love Mastodon and it was fun, Threads, but you're reminding me of a one-night stand that I'm glad happened but still, one night stand; and BlueSky, well, you strike me as the colonial village reenactment of old Twitter – and all of its malign idiosyncrazies), I want to do a quick PSA on the importance of sharing work you dig.

I can post what I'm working on, my little narrative experiments and mental gesticulations, until the end of time – which I'm happy to do, toiling in my own obscurity as I've been doing for the entirety of my 20+ year process of public processing – but the truth is that the only way my work (or any of our work) finds more eyes and/or brains is by someone else sharing it: With rare exceptions, I've never picked up a book or a comic or watched a film or listened to an album because the artist themselves posted about it. You and your reach are the other 50% of the equation, of the deal: a link on your blog or in your newsletter or in your social networks, along with saying something nice (or not nice, if that's your thing) goes further than you can possibly imagine.

I'm trying to get better about it myself: the EarBlisses are part of that, as was the podcast and as are the Postscripts and other random things I share; but I do want to include a blogroll and favorite newsletters and such. I make it a point to share only work I genuinely dig – I don't do transactional shares and I rarely write about work I dislike because a.) I won't waste my time with something I dislike and usually know within the first ten seconds or words whether I'm feeling it; b.), it's a lot easier to piss and moan about something you dislike than it is to be enthusiastic about things you do like; and c.) if I dislike something, chances are I’m going to shape my current work or elements therein to be a reaction against the disliked thus making it actually useful to me.

Here endeth the PSA. Do with what you will.

attendance cards + ds106 daily create

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Very excited to see my little daily Attendance Cards being used and remixed via my good friend Kevin Hodgson and others as part of the DS106 Daily Create, a “a space for regular practice of spontaneous creativity through challenges published every day.” Here's my original, from the end of April:

And the first remix:

Followed by this fantastic bit of trippy by Alan Levine:

Which was made even tripper by John Johnston, in GIF form:

Which itself was then given a soundtrack in video form by Kevin:

So very, very cool: you may consider me duly honored and thoroughly chuffed.

🔗 “Why was ‘The Fourth World’ called ‘The Fourth World?’”

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Better late than never, but I only just stumbled across Mark Evanier’s amazing News From ME blog by way of his “Jack F.A.Q” about Jack Kirby and, as The Fourth World is one of my Kirby obsessions, had to share this bit about where the name originated:

I can give you about eleven answers to this and if you'd asked Jack eight times, you'd have gotten eight more.  Len Wein, who worked at DC at the time, says that it was a cover blurb intended to only appear on the covers of the fourth issues.  It referred to the fact that every issue of a Kirby comic was like a world unto itself; ergo, each #4 was a "Fourth World."  Folks then adopted it to refer to the whole epic that flowed betwixt Jack's books.  Meanwhile, Steve Sherman — who worked with me as Jack's assistant at the time —recalls Jack coming up with it as a variation on the term, "The Third World," as used in a socio-economic context.  It was Jack's way of transcending that term, as Jack transcended everything.

That may be true but I don't recall that.  Apparently, Jack also told a few folks that he considered the material his fourth universe in comics.  The Marvel books would have been "Kirby's Third World" and I've never quite gotten clear what the first two were. There are other answers, even less credible.  Personally, I buy none of them.  I don't think there was any logic behind it, at least when Jack first used it.  I think it was just a term that popped into his head and he liked the sound of it.  Later on, he came up with several different retroactive explanations.


The whole blog is an amazing resource and has been duly added to the RSS reader for daily brainfood.