Remember when it was exciting to get mail, or messages, or emails? Well that feeling is back again now that you’re a member of the Turtle Club. Thanks for reading and following both these letters and my site!
Shameless plug, if you like what I’m doing you can always support me on Ko-Fi. I’ve thought about trying to set up a Patreon but that seems like A: a lot of work and B: something I should probably not bother investing time into unless I had more frequent readers/engagements. I mean, I DID set up the Patreon but I haven’t used it.
What’s New?
Thanks for asking. On the site—Uhhhh, not a ton. The week before last I posted a fiction short story. I am pretty proud of it. You can read it here:
This story is a coming together of a lot of different stories I’ve been drafting and re-drafting since I was in college. In many ways it is the closing of a specific chapter in my life as I approach fatherhood. It’s about living with Crohn’s Disease, being 20, in college, and the feeling that the future is still wide open. I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t.
Random Comic Panel of the Week!
Bonus: last week’s Random Comic Panel of the Week!
Coming Up
I’ve been hard at work diving into research on literary theory and particularly semiotics for a piece on one of my favorite single issues in I do not know how long, James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno’s THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE at DC.
This has been a lot of fun, digging into theory in a way I have not in a long time. I also have a piece in CBR on the Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton coming up that dives in to some of this a bit more obliquely. I am incredibly grateful to one of my college professors for dropping off a couple of theory textbooks for me to use after I lamented not paying enough attention in his class.
If you want to get a head-start preview of the NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE piece, I have posted a portion of it as a preview on my Ko-Fi.
Urbane Turtle On the Web
Over at CBR the last couple weeks I’ve written a few pieces. Here are some of what I consider the highlights:
I continue to lament the quality of Nick Spencer’s time on Amazing Spider-Man.
Comics Stuff in General
Tom Taylor’s NIGHTWING is really good right now. You might remember I wrote a lot about Nightwing after reading every gosh darn issue of the solo titles, so I have strong opinions. So far Taylor and Bruno Redondo are doing the best work on the character, easy.
As you might guess since I’m writing about it, THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE is an incredible debut issue. I really recommend reading it. I’m not a horror guy so I have no affection for the “genre,” I just love this as a comic book.
Listen, I’m not an X-Men X-pert. Many people on the internets love them a lot more than me. I hated X of Swords. But things are cooking right now in this line, which are probably my favorite of the Big 2 titles so far. Hickman is leaving the main X-Men book after the Hellfire Gala, but his big penultimate issue teased a Big Mess courtesy of Mystique, one of my favorite mutants, and I cannot wait to see it followed up on in the upcoming Inferno book. Marauders has been my favorite X-book over the last year or 2 so I’m excited to see Duggan take over the main title after the Gala. Way of X continues to be pretty good. So, I would recommend reading about some mutants.
Back over at DC, Detective Comics with Mariko Tamaki & Dan Mora is really solid. This is the first creative team ever on the title that does not feature a white man in any of the major creative roles and it has a distinct feel from a lot of what we expect out of a Batman book.
What Else?
I’m gonna be a dad soon (a couple days, a couple weeks). It might throw a wrench into all my big writing hopes and dreams for a while as I adjust. We’ll see. I love sharing my thoughts on comics with everyone so I’m sure I’ll keep doing it in some capacity. It’s not like urbane turtle dot com has been churning out content lately anyway.
Talk to you all later.