What It Is: 9/20/10

What I’m reading: The Iliad and about 500 pages of Jaime Hernandez’ Locas comics.

What I’m listening to: Not much of anything, sad to say.

What I’m watching: Not much of anything, sad to say.

What I’m drinking: Bluecoat & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: A Sunday grey-hike, demolishing new squeaky-toys, and not getting used to their new beds.

Where I’m going: New Brunswick, for Contracting & Outsourcing 2010!

What I’m happy about: Getting called up for an aliya during Yom Kippur services and not embarrassing myself. Although I can’t remember if I started the blessing with “barchoo” or “baruch” . . .

What I’m sad about: Not being able to cajole my dad into coming along for any of the high holiday services besides his annual prayer for his departed parents’ souls. Also, that I’ll never dress as well as Brad.

What I’m worried about: Getting most of my October issue together before our conference starts Wednesday night. Gotta transcribe two interviews, start writing another story, and lay out the rest of the articles and columns in the next two-and-a-half days.

What I’m pondering: Whether Jaime Hernandez’ comics had a downturn or “treading water” phase in his career. I’m not in love with the Ti-Girls story he recently did, but I respect it as a working-through of his longtime love for superhero comics. Reading his stuff from 1984-1999, as I did this weekend, I’m inclined to think that he’s been on an upward trajectory pretty much since Love & Rockets debuted in 1981, which means he’s been getting better for nearly 30 consecutive years. The most recent issue, as I mentioned last week, was mind-blowingly good. I was worried that the melodrama qualities of some of the story, with their native emotional hooks, were magnifying the overall intensity of his work, but there was so much more going on in those stories, so much economy in the writing and art, and so much intelligence expected of the reader, that I’m still floored by it.

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