Monday, April 24, 2006

What I Did On My Blogging Vacation

I've always maintained that when I decide to close up shop here, there will be no final firework tirade. No last screed against the establishment, no lament for a lost Golden Age. I'll simply disappear.

As evinced by posts like this and this, that's horseshit of a terribly pure variety. Comics bloggery isn't publishing, it's community. I missed y'all ... but needed a few weeks to deal with lifematters. Crushing deadlines to vacations, I saw it all:

  • Does not the phrase "Controversial Sports Videogame Review" seem oxymoronic? Yet, in the wilds of teh IntarWub, such things exist. I, in fact, created one my own self: go, see for yourselves. Only in the strange world of the die-hard sportsgamer is it controversial to point out "the game crashes frequently".

  • On our way to the zoo, we stopped by 2005 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award Winning Night Flight Comics and had a family comics day. I picked up a couple of weeks worth of books. My eldest daughter (age 6) picked up Justice League Unlimited. My youngest (age 3) used a radar known only to little girls and immediately located her purchase within seconds of entering the store: My Little Pony. I think they both made excellent choices, and we're all looking forward to a return trip on May 6th ... perhaps with some nephews in tow.

  • Some rehearsing was also being done, for Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. It's just a staged reading, but I hope to make a full return to the acting this fall. I'm enjoying myself tremendously. I did this role in scene study class when I was 21, and the characters' concerns about age seemed completely alien to me. I said at the time that I needed 15 years to begin to appreciate the character. 15 years later, I'm getting the chance to revisit the role and beginning to get an inkling of how the character should be done.

  • I missed much controversy and conversation and even the solicits. Did I notice JSA is ending? I assume it's going to relaunch immediately, but what's the story there?

  • It's back to full steam here this week, and I hope to get around to a look at the last issue of Desolation Jones, a review of The Lost Colony from First Second, and a partial redress of the shocking silence which greeted the delightful Strangetown.

4 comments:

Greg said...

I wondered where you were. Welcome back.

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez said...

Welcome back!

Nice little ruckus you have going there with the review. Never been a fan of videogame baseball myself, but not being able to complete a full game would garner a 1/10 from me, too. Always nice to see that comics don't have the market cornered on whackjob fans.

As for the acting, I did a couple of scenes from Hatful of Rain a few years back in an acting workshop and remember feeling like I didn't quite have the emotional connection to completely pull off the Johnny Pope character. Now, married with a couple of kids and a whole lot more perspective on life, I think I'd nail the part. Good luck to you with the reading!

collectededitions said...

Yeah, I was remarkably surprised there wasn't more fanfare about the end of JSA, too -- a DC press release, a Newsarama article, something! Could it be we're all finally so jaded now that you know JSA will be back, I know JSA will be back, and everybody else knows JSA will be back (as with Flash, Wonder Woman, and Justice League), that it's no longer news?

Mark Fossen said...

Yeah - since JSA Confidential is continuing, I assume JSA will be relaunching. You're right - we probably all assume it's an instant relaunch.