I had no idea about this history, and I think it’s fun!

Very happy to learn that the whole run of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is now available through my library. I am several years behind and eager to catch up.

Je suis impressionné par le nombre de BD francophones disponible aux bibliothèques du Kentucky, mais c’est quand-même hyper decevant de lire une BD francophone en traduction.

Since April, I’ve gotten sucked into the Slow Horses British spy series after really enjoying the Apple TV+ adaptation. I’ve been powering through all the full-length novels and am now reading 2021’s Slough House, which features a character who’s survived a bullet wound to the head. Her description stood out to me for one particular detail, though:

Her hair was different. Maybe that’s what death does to you. I twas still mostly red but now punkishly short, with a white stripe across her left temple where the bullet had passed…

I’ve been a big fan of audio-only media for a big chunk of my life. I grew up listening to NPR radio shows like Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on Saturdays while my dad drove us around to do errands. TV wasn’t allowed in my family on Sundays, but the NPR Sunday Puzzle was—depending on what time church was that year, we’d listen to it on our way to Sunday meetings. I discovered podcasts in their infancy, during my final years of high school, and started really getting into them near the end of college.

Great news for a tough Monday! This is one of my favorite comics, I love podcasts, and North is writing scripts. Perfect combination.

Wolk read 27,000+ Marvel comics to write this book, an attempt to trace the most important part of the Marvel universe over the past ~60 years.

I love the book for a few reasons. First, it takes comics—and Marvel Comics in particular—seriously, examining their sense-making and stories. Second, there’s a deep love of comics that’s evident in the book. Not a stilted, defensive love, but a mature one that knows what’s wrong with them but champions what they get right.

Maus is one of the most important graphic novels that has ever existed—on one of the most important subjects for our students to learn about. This is a mind-bogglingly dumb decision.

Tentatively excited! Such a great comic—they’d better do it justice.

This weekend, after over a decade of off-and-on attempts, I finally read the entire run of Y: The Last Man. Turns out the upcoming Hulu adaptation was a good motivator.

Great conversation in this podcast about the danger of dismissing comics as simply “easier to read.” I appreciated the discussion of the literacies needed to understand a comic.

Just reread “Superman Smashes the Klan” after a day that involved checking up on Gab for research purposes, and I believe more than ever that this is one of the best and most important comics of our time. 📚

Highlight of the morning: Hearing a translator for the interviewee on a France Culture show about comics struggle to remember the French neologism for “spoiler.”

Libraries are beautiful places: I just left one with four volumes of Star Wars/Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics and a copy of Dr. Wil Gafney’s “Womanist Midrash.”

Today, my kid grabbed a TPB of Ms. Marvel I had checked out from the library, hugged it tight, and announced that she loved it, so I’m feeling pretty good in the parenting department right now.

I tried to explain to my kid the premise of “Guantánamo Kid” (a comic about the innocent 14-year old Mohamed Al-Gharani’s incarceration in Gitmo). Her response: “A little boy shouldn’t be in jail!”