Words Seem Out Of Place

As much as I love writing for my own blog, it's incredibly gratifying to have stuff I've written published elsewhere also. Case in point, Sequart posted two more of my recent essays. First, an appreciation for Christopher Priest's landmark run on Black Panther , a years-long story told by Priest and artists such as Sal Vellutto with careful precision and an extreme flair for bringing down the house with one big moment after another. I really hope Marvel at least partly models their film version of Black Panther on Priest's run. They'd be foolish not to. The second essay is a review (and sort of yet another appreciation) for the film The Purge: Anarchy . The fact that Sequart is so receptive to essays like this one focusing on a genre movie that isn't typically critically examined speaks volumes about the kind of boundaries-breaking work they're doing over there. I'm not saying I'm contributing to that, just saying I'm happy to be allowed to s...

Recently, I wrote an essay with the intention of submitting it to Sequart . Would you believe they actually published it? It's called " On X-(Wo)Men and Third-Wave Feminism " and it's about as nerdy as it sounds. I'm thrilled it found a home on Sequart, a site  dedicated to the study of popular culture and the promotion of sequential art (hence Sequart) as a legitimate art form. Sequart—like another site I read and recommend, HiLobrow —does smart work breaking down the barriers between high and low brow art, showing that they can and should all exist in the same spaces, because they're all worth examining and thinking about critically.  Why they let this clown join their party, I can't tell you, but I'm humbled to be in their company. And I hope to write more for them in the future; I have ideas about a couple of movie articles that I'd like to submit. If they publish more of my work I'll link to it here. In the meantime, go read my essay...

"Touch Me I'm Sick" is a Mudhoney song with a title so absurd you can't help but laugh. Seeing as I've been fighting off one cold after another this winter, along with one particularly nasty stomach bug in the middle of all those colds, it seems like the perfect blog post title for my mood this week. Only I'm not really laughing as I type out the song title right now. I'm sick of being sick. All winter I've been coughing and hacking and sneezing and blowing my nose. I've coughed so hard my muscles ache now, giving me the feeling of having the flu again. Delightful. Like most men, I suppose, I'm a terrible patient. I have asthma and allergies, so common colds can sometimes morph into upper respiratory infections, hanging on for much longer than colds usually do. I've been really healthy for a good long time, but then this winter our kids started daycare. Everyone warned us: "Oh, they'll catch everything going when they start, an...