FULL BLEED: AND NO ONE BRINGS ANYTHING SMALL INTO A BAR AROUND HERE

Hey, I’ve got a new book out. Okay, not a new new book, but collection of all the Hazeland work so far that’s been published. Nearly 700 pages. Could probably give a grizzly bear a concussion if you hit ‘em right. New introduction. No new anything else. If you have the other books, you don’t need this one.

Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Silence-Hazeland-Collected-1/dp/B0FLYFSWWL

Here’s the cover.

I’ve said this before, but I’m only making this as a thing to bring to shows because apparently some buyers will take a chance on a huge volume like this. I’m not sure I see it, but I’ll roll the dice. Either way, the cover art for the book will be part of an art show being held by the Amygdala Gallery and Bloostone Books in a couple weeks. Put it in a nice frame and matting and everything. I think there’s a reception being held at the store on the 6th, so if you’re in the area of Sacramento and need something to do, there’s an idea. There might even be copies of the collection for sale there, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Spent yesterday out in the wilds of Alameda, drawn down by the Cape and Cowl comics show over at the old naval base there, the Faction Brewery site, in particular. Been a little while since I’ve been to a comics show. I mean, yeah, I went to Wonder-Con this year, but that’s only tangentially a comics show now. This is a different kind of thing, more like the old APE shows that used to happen in San Francisco (as I remembered them) and San Jose (where the show returned for a year or two before coming to a kind of bummer end.)

Of course, I didn’t really know what to expect, having never been to one of these. Think this is the third or fourth maybe? I’m sure someone will set me straight if I get this wrong. Anyways, seemed like pretty good attendance. Lots of folks both inside the building and going through the outer pavilions. Couple of food trucks in the back, lots of seating. Beautiful day. Good foot traffic. But then there was no entry fee, which helps. Make a thing free, put out some nice art and comics, let people buy beer and look around? Pretty solid combination. I didn’t get a read on how many sales were actually being done that day, but there were solid lines for artists like the Dodsons and what felt like a healthy amount of interest in smaller and more idiosyncratic artists.

Saw some folks I haven’t in some time. Saw at least one who I haven’t seen in years, certainly before the pandemic. It’s always weird marking time like this. But then I’ve been around awhile, so there’s a fair amount of time to mark. Lots of different phases and maybe even identities. Maybe not as chameleon-like as Bowie (but who is), but still a number of guises. The latest one being something of a housebound crank. It’s not an unfair assessment, maybe not even inaccurate. There’s reasons. They are what they are. It is something I should probably maybe work to address. At least the insularity of it. Geography doesn’t really help in that regard. Me being an introvert weirdo (ambivalent) doesn’t help.

So getting out is at least a step in breaking that. An ongoing process. Seeing people appearing in text is nice and all, but phenomenologically it’s pretty limited. One thing to intellectually know “Yep, this is another whole human being on the other end of this” and stand in the flesh in a shared environment and shared moment and do that experiential thing, if even for just a moment. Grounds you. And I’ve been ungrounded for a time. And that image of what I am has gotten further removed from an essential being thing. And, honestly, I need to be called on some of the bullshit I get to let myself get away with. That’s easy when you’re sitting like Ozymandias in front of however many screens and getting marinated in those electron baths (I know, they’re LEDs now, not cathode ray bombardment, bear with me.) Also easy when you’re an outsider in your own field of work, finding truck generally only with other outsiders.

And I wouldn’t change that. Not for anything. Being on the outside, you can be clear-eyed about what’s going on. I’m talking in fiction here, folks. In comics, I was accepted by other indie comics folks, but I really haven’t been part of that world for more than a decade. I ain’t cut out for that whole gig, doing the writing, hiring the art, lettering, trying to get the book distributed etc etc. I can barely manage what it takes in writing.

Anyways, being on the outside. Yeah. Been there long enough that I don’t see it changing. Still, good to get among other humans, and not representations of humans as strings of text. Which is funny as I ran into this whole question back in the comics blogging era and there was a concern about I don’t want to say authenticity but maybe as matters of self-representation by way of comics blogging, of maybe acting like something you’re not. Tough issue I suppose, separating what one was writing for largely their own pleasure at the time, knowing it was only going to be read by a small group of others (even when writing for say a small-to-middle sized comics website as I did from say 2004-2014, often with diminishing frequency.) Are you coldly calculating a fuzzy persona to build an army? Are you being a harsh and compromising outsider because that’s the only way to keep it real, maaaaan? When does that crafted identity take over?

I dunno, maybe it did. Maybe I let it. Tough to put a finger on things. And maybe I just am a housebound crank. At least I walked the walk at some point. But I let it walk me out to a point where it wasn’t helping. It wasn’t connecting but separating.

Anyways, so yeah, a friend pointed out, talking at the show, that he’d been meaning to write up a reply to a post of mine where I went after something he’d said online. I like to think that I had enough respect to put that in the form of a direct response and not a subfleep. But I know I’ve taken up the bad habit of engaging with stuff I don’t agree with by way of subposting or starting a rant over here. And if it’s not important enough to talk to the poster directly, then is it that important or is it me just generating big crank energy? Yeah. That’s a question I don’t like the answer to. So, yeah, I’m waiting on that reply and if it points out that I didn’t start from a place of respect, I gotta honor that and do better.

End sermon.

Also, this same friend said that, or implied that, I was good at hustling my work out there. I don’t know about that. I like to let folks know that the work is out there. But the hustle/grind culture is one of the things that’s really dragging me down about writing. Where the writer has to be the writer, and the publicist, and get all those blurbs together. (Aside on that, I have gotten blurbs on my work, complimentary and from folks whose work I very much respect and I am thankful and amazed that my work could get such a response.) And do the layout. And do the covers. Hustle, though? I do what I can. If I was serious about hustle, I figure I’d be doing submissions more and I’m past that. I like to think I’m past that, anyways. I’m probably not. Still fight with myself over the whole issue of being seen. But the thing is, I wanna be seen for work on my terms. Have some agency in it. Not simply because I managed to figure out how to write something that’ll sell (because, ha). But when I’m out there biting the hand of genre, well, expecting that is dumb. Ah well. Perhaps I can practice just nibbling instead of having the intent to remove fingers.

Grabbed some old comics for cheap. Think the stack might’ve been twenty bucks, bunch of kinda beat up silver and bronze age books, a copy of Eerie from the eighties. A good deal, all told. Grabbed a copy of the updated Pure Trance from Junko Mizuno which should be, ah, interesting. Had an okay burrito after seeing the wait times at the other food trucks around. Saw some pretty art. Picked up a book that Mark Badger had put together as a meditation on the graphic forms of Jack Kirby’s work, which I’m looking forward to spending some time with. All in all, a good afternoon.

Left the titan-scale buildings of the naval base at Alameda for the eight mile drive (as the crow flies) to San Francisco to catch up with another friend. That only took… an hour. Alameda is interesting as access in and out is pretty limited and getting across the Bay Bridge is exactly what it is, sometimes very slow. Just sat in traffic listening to the seethe and whatever was playing over the stereo with the windows down and cool mid-sixties instead of mid-nineties as it would be at home. Shook my head at all the AI business billboards. Those all felt sweaty. I know it’s just advertisement going out to other business leaders, either to flex or to beg for them to buy into these services (much like the media advertising in LA which does the exact same thing.)

Met up, proceeded to spend… a while finding a place to park in the Mission on a Sunday afternoon, which was quite busy. And people talk about how SF is terrible and awful and… it sure seemed like there were lots of folks perfectly happy to be there. Yeah, there’s issues and the place is expensive as all get-out, but seemed pretty nice to me. Woulda been nicer if I could have folded up the Challenger and put it in my pocket instead of sharking out a parking spot, though. Ah well.

Dinner of somewhat fancy tacos (guajillo-beef and beer-stewed-chicken), general catching up. Some discussion in broad terms about the whole notion of “there’s no good music being made anymore” and while neither of us agreed with that term, there’s definitely issues that make it harder for musicians to be heard and to generate critical mass. But then it’s harder to make a living in criticism to have folks able to give platforms to these new bands. And the issue of it’s easy to make a band and hard to make a living in general. But that’s true in all the arts and it’s always been true. There might be that bright period of the post-Depression WPA and federal spending on the arts that hit the Reagan wall and mostly got chewed to bits in the last few years, primarily though streaming setting aside large amounts of money that would have gone to labels and artists and instead go to, ah, streaming services.

And maybe how the perception of criticism as a viable and stable career (much like any writing career) was so much smoke and mirrors and wishful thinking. And what fame today is, and how that bears little resemblance to what we thought of fame when we were younger. Ultimately the world keeps changing and pushing into a new place and you have to step up and change with it or be left weeping and wondering you didn’t catch the wave at the right time.

Not that I’ve ever done… Okay, you got me.

Anyways, it’s a welcome antidote to critics and thinkers who talk about the emptiness of today. How there’s nothing good being made anymore. How the big changes all happened already. Maybe if you look to the mainstream only, I suppose you could think that. Copies of copies of copies. Or you could dig a little. Which is harder. I’d agree that sure, the safe money is always more interested in being safe and going with radio-friendly unit-shifters. But it always was. Just that for a time in the mainstream, the continents got to move in real time and all that’s cooled when everything got bought by a handful of movers. It’s up to smaller eddies and currents now that the lava has crusted over and we’re back to slower moves in the mainstream, safer bets. Even if someone new breaks through once in awhile, and you hope they survive the experience.

And how it’s hard to be in those currents trying to be seen and found and not just gobbled up. Or so tired that you roll over and give up.

Final stop at Mitchell’s ice cream (ask for it by name) for calamansi sorbet, which was a delight. Drive back home over the 80 to the 50 and random tunes from the iPod, some surprises from the past, some former loves skipped aggressively. Taillights and asphalt, V-8 purring until asked to growl some. Windows down in the dying summer waiting out lane losses from nighttime construction. Home. Home and work again.