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The Knives by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

It's been really fun reading new Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips work as standalone graphic novels. I will always love the individual issue format, but the older I get, the more I come to appreciate collected editions and OGNs, if for no other reason than shelf logistics. I have a closet full of short boxes that represent a hobby measured in cubic feet. The Knives finds the duo (with Phillips' son Jacob on colors) back in the world of Criminal, an off-beat crime series the pair have been fleshing out for 20 years now. Criminal was how I discovered these two, although they both have done work with other characters and publishers and genres. The Knives finds some familiar characters in new situations, and brings the series up to the present in a lot of ways. There will be more books coming, and even a TV show based on the book.

I'm not sure Brubaker translates well to television, but I'm glad he keeps trying. I was excited for TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG, the collaboration he did with Nicolas Winding Refn that streamed on Amazon Prime. Ten episodes of the weirdest, sexiest, most horrific shit you've ever seen on TV, an artifact of when the big streamers were throwing money at auteurs to make 10-hour movies with little or no commercial appeal. It's good, but you can barely see Brubaker through the Refn.

Rabbit Trap

Rabbit Trap is relatively small movie with only a few things to say, but what it does it does well. You had me at Dev Patel folk horror.

A couple, one of which is some kind of recording artist, move a ton of recording equipment to a remote cottage in the Welsh countryside in the 1970s. The cottage is one of those picturesque places that must exist in real life but that I have a hard time imagining isn't surrounded by power lines and cell towers. Maybe I'm just an American in that way. Anyway, I want to go there. They set out to record spooky nature sounds for some kind of project, and stumble across a young boy(?) who proceeds to give away the entire plot before attempting to install himself into the couple's life. The finale is weird and gross and leaves you with more questions than answers. Folk horror should do that. If you feel like the mystery is completely solved at the end, I would probably exclude it from that particular subgenre.

Anyway, if you like watching Patel stroll through lush forests, have psychedelic experiences in faerie circles and spend copious amounts of screen time staring, worried-looking, into the middle distance, then Rabbit Trap is for you. It's available on Kanopy with most library cards, I believe.

Dungeon synth

I'm amazed at how prolific the Heimat Der Katastrophe label is. They put out new dungeon synth cassettes on the reg, many of which include bespoke pen and paper RPG adventures folded in with their j cards. You can of course listen to all of it digitally on Bandcamp, which is what I usually do. I'd go broke if I paid international shipping for every cassette release.

I spent a good part of the last month down with the flu. I'm several weeks past day zero and still waking up with a frog in my throat, although it's a little better every day. I hope you and yours are healthy. This influenza A variant that's going around is no slouch.

I've been collecting tabs and it's time to dump them here so I can close them.

• Strudel.cc is (perhaps yet another) music programming platform. I remember playing with Sonic Pi ages ago, but I like that Strudel seems to be browser-centric.

• I did about 3 days of last month's Advent of Code before getting stumped/distracted.

• I haven't been really into desktop flight sims in ages, maybe ever really. But the open source Flight Gear piqued my interest again.

• Look at these illustrations by Ninn Salaün

• This might be niche, and maybe you don't need shampoo to bring you joy, but maybe you do..

• Wig Shop continues to be a place I browse regularly. Comic shops and comic news sites are absolutely clogged with cape shit, and I have little to no interest in that. But comics as a medium still brings me great joy, and Wig Shop is one of the best online purveyors of the good stuff. Or at least the weird stuff.

• I love weird little online mags. Foofaraw seems like a great weird little online mag.

• Although I've been leaning back toward traditional tools lately, I still dabble with Procreate. I've wonderered if anyone's had success with any accessories like the PenPad? I'm tempted.

• I love a good tutorial, and I love a good web map tutorial best.

• Should I order a $120 Asaro head or ask someone I know with a 3D printer to make one for me?

• f*te seems like a cool kids version of Letterboxd? Here's a list Jessa Crispin made for people that enjoyed No Other Choice?

I've been playing around with the formatting of these link dumps. Do folks like seeing the full URLs when sharing links? Or are hyperlinks OK?

King Sorrow by Joe Hill | ★★★★☆ 4/5 stars

I've been a fan of Joe Hill since I first discovered his Locke & Key comics. He has an ear for dialog and knack for mixing humor and pathos even in horrific settings. His stories can be mean without being sadistic, and there's almost alway someone we're cheering for.

King Sorrow follows a group of bright-eyed, gen x college students who, in 1989, find themselves mixed up with some dangerous people. As anyone would, they summon the eponymous dragon, King Sorrow, who agrees to help them solve their little problem. But of course our heros get more than they bargained for. King Sorrow protects them, defends them, but also requires a terrible annual tribute.

Our protagonists are a delightful mix of gen x archetypes: There's the studious academic with something to prove; the rich kid cum tech bro; the self-loathing, closeted queer; the damaged angry girl; the kindly but ultimately cowardly stoner; the poor but morally correct door mat. A breakfast club if ever there was one. We meet them all in college and follow them into their 40s. Along the way, the burdon of King Sorrow's bargain beats them all down, and they all turn toward their addictions for support, whether it be alcohol, drugs, self punishment, running away or overcompensating. Eventually they hatch a plan to rid themselves of the dragon, but by then their cohort itself is damaged, and trust becomes scarce.

That's the story on the surface, which I think is moderately successful. King Sorrow really does cross over from another reality and scorch the earth. People die in the flames. The public notices, as do some shadowy government types, much to the regret of our protagonists. The book is 800+ pages, and there were huge chunks of it that I flew through because the action was intense and I couldn't wait to read what happened next. The finale accomplishes what it needs to on a plot level, but I felt perhaps on a character level it left a little bit on the table.

There's another story underneath, of course. The allegory. These friends attend an elite college, all but Gwen, who starts out as the daughter of the help that works for the rich kid's family. They're all smart and attractive, they drink expensive scotch and smoke weed in Colin's fancy estate. They have access to just about anything they could want at that age. Then their real lives begin, and it seems like they're always chasing the dragon of the high they achieved in their youth. Certainly the emotional cost of their faustian bargain could be blamed for their shortcomings, but maybe it's the other way around. Maybe King Sorrow is a manifestation of their various addictions. Hill certainly spends pages upon pages describing several characters' descents into substance abuse, and getting clean coincides with defeating the very real dragon that haunts them.

As an allegory for falling into addiction and then getting clean, King Sorrow works quite well.

The following is a total aside, perhaps a connection only I made. I just so happened to be trying to learn how to play Jason Molina's "Ring the Bell" (recorded both under Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co.). It's one of Molina's all-time-great two-chord dirges. Molina notoriously suffered from severe alcoholism, and in fact died from it in 2013 at the age of 39. It's hard not to view all of his songs through that lens, this one being no exception. The fact that it also speaks of serpents doesn't hurt. Anyway, this song was banging around my skull the whole time I was reading. The lyrics couldn't have been a better fit for a person reading King Sorrow, to wit:

I know serpents will cross universes to circle around our necks

I know hounds will cross the universe to circle around our feet

They're always close

Always so close

Step by step one's beside me to kill me or to guide me

Why wouldn't I be trying to figure which one out

Why wouldn't I be trying to figure which one out

Now to return this doorstop to the library.