Roundup! Yee-haw!

Due to work and my personal life getting remarkably intense at the exact same time, I've been a little slack on posting to Filing Cabinet. In lieu of a witty and insightful post,* here are a spatter of random thoughts.

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The novel writing is behind schedule, though not cripplingly so.

Quota: 36,674 words
Actual production to date: 34,093
Word debt: 2,581.

That's not great. But Thanksgiving entails a long trip to visit the in-laws and not a lot to do. I'm bringing my laptop and going nuts. With luck I'll be over 50,000 words by Monday, two days ahead of the deadline. Last Saturday I crunched out 4,300 words, so I can do it if'n I want.

By the way, the novel sucks ass. Fortunately, I don't care much.

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My wife is from the deserts of West Texas, and that's where we're headed tomorrow. Fortunately, as I know much of the world through comics, I expect my holiday to go a lot like this:

Sweet.

I haven't confronted a murderous stone totem in years. It's not something you think you'd miss, but you know what? I do.

Life is funny sometimes.

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Two books for future discussion:

Silent Dragon by Andy Diggle and Leinil Yu doesn't live up to all the hype I've seen. It's okay. More than anything it feels like a manga drawn in a western style. Killer robots, man-into-machine, the spunky girl sidekick who tries to look tough, doomed love, the yakuza, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not bad, just not great. I don't see the appeal. To each their own.

Godland by Joe Casey and Tom Scioli has grown on me a lot. The first two issues did little for me, but dang it, either the book's picking up speed or I'm getting accustomed to it.

Though I do have one question: Scioli is very clearly a Kirby disciple, and I can appreciate that. But why late-period Kirby? Instead of the Marvel-era Kirby or the New Gods era, Scioli is drawing heavily on the Kirby's late seventies work like The Eternals, 2001, and Devil Dinosaur.

(Note the villain whose head is a green skull floating in a fishbowl on a robot body. There is only one word to accurately describe that: ROCK! Click on the picture to enlarge.)

I suppose if you're going to follow in the old man's footsteps, why not use him at his most idiosyncratic. As my college friends said so often, "If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly." I dunno.

The book's a hoot. Casey and Scioli are not aping Big Epic Seventies comics. They're aiming at the same goal as the Big Epic Seventies comics. I can dig it.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

And don't let the giant mutant turkeys of the pampas rampage in your hometown. (They can be distracted with Hostess Snack Cakes. So stock up and be a hero. Chicks dig a man who can think quickly on his feet and save the day with a fistful of Twinkies.)


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*Also in lieu of my normal posting style. Ba-ZING!