Status:

Recovery day again, mostly spent reading Elizabeth Sandifer’s huge chapter on Alan Moore’s From Hell which dropped last night (35,000 words - estimated reading time: 192–244 minutes), part of her insanely long series about the UK comics scene framed by the work of Moore and Grant Morrison. It’s the kind of epic fan work that fascinates me (see also Tom Ewing’s monstrous recounting of 2000AD and Douglas Wolk’s All Of The Marvels, to name two others that spring to mind) for its attempt to contain everything in the hope that some sense might emerge from the telling.

I don’t know if there are similar styles of long form writing in academia-proper. I have a sense that academics start with a theory and then bring in texts to argue for and against it. This type of writing feels closer to the travelogue where the writers is walking a marked path, a road trip to “find the real America”, an attempt to decode the meaning of the mountain by climbing it. The path, America, the mountain, is fixed - the work is the work. All we can do is experience and explore the minutiae.

(Sidebar: yes, Sadifer does mention the Koch Snowflake. No, I’m not sure she see’s the application to her own work.)

Anyway, I’m more a casual reader Sandifer’s work in general and tend to skim read a lot, but the fractured publication of From Hell occurs alongside significant parts of my comics education, from those early issues of Taboo blowing my teenage mind in 1989 through to my selling the first collected edition through my small press distro in 1999. I have a personal stake in this particular narrative and thoroughly enjoyed revisiting it, along with the bits of back story I didn’t already know.

Could it be edited down to a manageable length, comprehendible by casual readers? Certainly. But there’s something to be said for editing up, for including everything and letting the narrative emerge on its own, even if it’s not something I would recommend any of you read.

Overnight listening:

• Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince - the chapter on relationships rang a few too many bells…

Reading:

• Chapter Three: The Ordering and Reordering of Data (From Hell) - as described above, I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’ve spend a fair bit of time reading and thinking about Alan Moore’s From Hell.

Watching:

• SCTV High Q Night School sketch ‌(7:29) - RIP Catherine O’Hara
• You are being misled about renewable energy technology. ‌(1:32:00) - I have lots to say about this subject but it will have to wait for another day.
• Pöpcørn with The Swedish Chef ‌(3:38) - I strongly recommend you switch on the captions.

Telly:

• Amadeus - I genuinely don’t know if this was worth it. Great performances and I’ll watch Will Sharpe in anything, but why was it made? Remaking a bonafide classic needs to be done for reason, to say something new about the current moment. I don’t think anything new was said here, and certainly nothing about the now. File under “content” I guess.