So.
Here’s what I’m trying to do.
I’ve said many times over that I want to use my blog more, so I want to start doing that. All the stuff that I naturally post on Twitter? Let’s see if it can go here. I want to live here again, if I can.
I’m also trying to restructure the theme of this blog to take advantage of the new block site builder. But I’m doing that on a local WordPress instance rather than assaulting your eyes with it, so you’ll probably see it in a few weeks.
I’m writing this on Friday, at my parents’ place, right before I meet a few friends for an uncle bar session.1 My cat Loki is snoozing on the desk behind the laptop, fur gently ruffled by the windy evening. It’s a good day.
I’ve been going to this particular one with my friends for nearly two decades, since we were in college, and the last time we were here, we noticed that the average age at our table was 35, so we’ve decidedly grown into the uncles this bar is for.
Work-wise, it was a light week. I wrapped up an upcoming edition of True Weird for James’s Substack and delivered print files for w0rldtr33 #4 to Image. I also lettered issue #5 of a project that’s yet to be announced. This project is still some way from launching, but we’re trying to work as far ahead as possible, which I like since it gives us time to tinker with things and go back and change stuff if we want.
I was supposed to work on one more issue of a different upcoming comic, but my hip injury from last year suddenly flared up, and I decided to cool it, since this one isn’t due till July at least.
Last week, I wrote about being strangely blocked on an outline and trying to figure out why. I also realised that at least part of the reason I was reluctant to finish the outline was that by the time I’d written 80% of the outline, I knew that a lot of things from the first three issues needed to be changed, and I felt trapped by the older version of the story.
So this week, I started rewriting the outline from scratch, and today I finished issue #1 of the new version. This one reads tighter, crisper, and more like an outline than a ramble. Sure, the first draft of an outline is you telling yourself the story, but no reason that shouldn’t read like fun too. So, things are looking up on that front.
DC Comics solicits for September came out, and here’s the one for Harley Quinn: Black + White + Redder #3:
Written by GAIL SIMONE, ADITYA BIDIKAR, and CHRIS CONDON
Art by DAVID BALDEON, JUNI BA, and JACOB PHILLIPS
Cover by CLIFF CHIANG
Variant cover by MIRKA ANDOLFO
1:25 variant by SANFORD GREENE
$4.99 US | 40 pages | 3 of 6 | (all covers are card stock)
ON SALE 9/19/23Three all-new short tales of Gotham’s most unpredictable antihero in only black, white, and red ink! In this issue: Superstar writer Gail Simone returns to DC with a hilarious story sending Harley Quinn to Rann, with Domino artist David Baldeon riding along on the zeta-beam! Monkey Meat and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles breakout Juni Ba teams up with writer Aditya Bidikar to give Harley the perfect cure for the breakup blues: a kitten. Plus, That Texas Blood hitmakers Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips tell a tale of twisted fate where Harleen Quinzel never fell for The Joker!
Yup, that’s me and my pal Juni Ba, writing and drawing a Harley Quinn short story respectively. I spoke about doing my first corporate comic in my newsletter – this is what I was talking about. I’ll say more on this once the story is out, but basically, Juni and I came up with the story together over Zoom calls, then we worked on it Marvel-style: I did a page-by-page plot, he drew the thumbnails, which we discussed, and then finals, and I wrote the dialogue over the final art – editing it to oblivion since I was lettering it as well. It was one of the most fun ways I’ve worked on a comic, and I think the story came out really well. At least I got to write a lot of fun images for Juni to draw, which was my devious goal all along!
Many thanks to editor Chris Conroy for commissioning it. Look out for this in September!
On the personal front, like I mentioned above, my hip injury suddenly played up this week, possibly because of elevated blood sugar, or just age. After months of ups and downs, it felt like this one was gone, and it’s annoying that it came back. Still, I appreciate the reminder – I was getting complacent about my stretches and exercises. It was the kick in the butt I needed to be more regular with taking care of myself.
This did mean that I had to step away from the computer a lot more, which was also a good thing because it allowed me to watch two films this week – Reality and The Loved Ones, both excellent in very different ways – and to make most of my way through Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.
McCarthy is a writer I’ve always respected but never been able to read. I tried three times before, with The Road, All the Pretty Horses and more recently with Blood Meridian. I found his style dense and intricate, but just a bit too obtuse and repetitious to grasp what was going on. I’d given up at this point, content to say, “Not my thing,” but when he passed last week, I figured I owed him one more go.
So this time, I picked up a book whose story I’d already enjoyed in its adapted version, and what do you know, being familiar with the story helped me immerse myself in his style and his way of looking at people. It also helps that No Country for Old Men is regarded as one of his most straightforward books. I’m thoroughly enjoying the read, and should be done over the weekend.
Stepping away from the computer and enjoying my time away has also made me look at my work schedule for the rest of the year and ensure I’m not overcommitting myself just because I feel I’m in better health. I need to remember that recovery is a long road, and I need all the rest I can get.
That’s my week. Have a good weekend, folks!
- For those unfamiliar with the term, an uncle bar is the Indian (or at least Maharashtrian) version of a dive bar. They’re mostly not underground, but they’re shady places for cheap alcohol and food. So called because you usually find “uncles” there – middle-aged men trying to escape their homes and lives for a quick drink with friends or often alone. It has only recently become respectable to drink in middle-class Marathi society, so a lot of uncle bars are slowly becoming non-shady places. Also known as quarter bars (because they serve in quarter/nip measures and not just singles and doubles) or R&Bs, because they’re traditionally called “Restaurant & Bar”s. ↩︎