Healy's Journal

Today, September 25, is my birthday. Happy birthday, me! To celebrate, I'm gonna talk Gravity Falls for a minute here.

Last Wednesday, Alex Hirsch teased the possibility of Gravity Falls comics. Most people asked for typical pie-in-the-sky stuff (Ford's adventures in the Portal! Stan O'War II adventures! Dipper and Mabel's next summer at Gravity Falls!). Me, I tried to temper my expectations; I figure we're not getting anything with Ford solo so soon after the Journal, and sequel stuff is probably best left to, like, an actual new cartoon. The most likely scenario is old storylines from the show they considered but never actually did, like the one where Stan and Wendy rob the museum. Not that that's such a bad deal, mind! Just so long as we get more of Stan.

But I've also been considering a different tack they could take with this. Consider, if you will, a Gravity Falls anthology series. Each issue, we'd get a couple stories about various characters from Gravity Falls. Maybe Wendy's mom would be the focus of one, perhaps we'd get Gideon's full origin story in another. It'd be a good chance to look at some underused characters, too, like the Manotaurs, or Wendy's teen friends. Best of all, this approach wouldn't preclude the occasional foray into any of the above-mentioned approaches.

But of course, we all know the truly best way for this to all go down: 12 issue Quentin Trembley maxi-series.

So! It's been a while since I've done this.

I actually finished this book a while ago (in fact, I first checked it out in February), but... currently I'm rereading Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks (edited by David Lavery), a book of essays on Twin Peaks, published a few years after its first run in the 90s. I first got it because I was making a Twin Peaks-inspired game for the Veeder Expo, and reading some books on the show would have been faster than actually watching all 30-something episodes of it. It's sort of a dry book; most of it is made up of essays on psycho-analytical and post-modern readings of the series. But there is one article that I keep coming back to: "'Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?': alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery" by Henry Jenkins, a rough overview of the Twin Peaks fandom on Usenet. Theories of literary criticism, it seems, may come and go, but fandom ethnography is forever.

( Click here to see me blab about Gravity Falls )

I'm also reading The Simon and Kirby Library: Horror! (By Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, natch.) It's a bunch of horror stories written before the Comics Code kicked the industry in the keister. They're all weird and nightmarish in a way that kinda bridges the gap between the Golden and Silver Ages. It makes for an interesting contrast between the stories in The Jack Kirby Omnibus Volume One: Starring Green Arrow, which were all written post-Code. The stories in the former get to be gritty and rough in a way the latter never attempts to match. I think my favorite of the collection is a story called "The Head of the Family", which is... well, I'll try not to spoil it for you, but let's just say it's about one of those Kirby-esque weird families that really deserves their own ongoing series. Highly recommended.

First things first, I'm sorry I've been away for so long. It's been kind of a hectic past few months (including a death in the family early in the month, although everything's back to normal around here), and updating this blog hasn't been a big priority. So, I bet all (most (some)) of you are wondering, "Healy, whatcha been up to since then?"

Well, as it turns out, not much, but there was something I was working on in the meantime: a drabble series for the Gravity Falls fandom called With Friends Like These, Who Needs Anomalies? It stars two characters who are very spoilery, each in their own different ways, so I'm reluctant to recommend it to folks who haven't seen the show yet, or even tell you who those characters are. (Seriously, don't click that link if you're not caught up on Gravity Falls.) But I can tell you it was pretty fun to work on! I wrote all twenty drabbles for the 31_days comm, and it was a lot of fun thinking up stories for the prompts. I had a lot of trouble in the later days of the project, though, when it seemed like I had used every single one of my good ideas. Like, originally I was planning on doing a story where character A makes fun of character B's comic book collection, but then I thought, "Wait, isn't this just like the one I did where A makes fun of B's record collection?" Even so, I wish I did more of them; you miss all of the one-shots you don't take, after all.

"So what are you doing next?" Well, the XYZZY Awards just put out the nominees for 2015. Looking at the list, I count about 15 games I haven't gotten to yet, and I think I can knock that number down before voting ends on the 14th. I'll be playing some of those games and writing them up on my blog for the next two weeks; let's give myself a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule to start out, and see if I can increase it the next week.

I'm also thinking of making a game for the Tiny Utopias game jam, so look forward to that as well.

Well, it seems the wifi on my computer stopped working; I'm connected to the internet right now through a wire connected to the router. Looks like we're about to reach Computermageddon slowly but surely. Least it's taking it's sweet time. I figure I can wait it out until the newer model laptops come in. In the meantime, here's what I've been reading the past couple weeks:

Infinity Gauntlet, by Jim Starlin and George Perez: I'm not a big Marvel fan, but after seeing this in the library one day I thought, why not? It turns out it taps into all the weird, off-the-wall ballistics I love superheroes for. It got a bit repetitive, though, and I couldn't help but be amused by the fact that almost the whole plot is about Thanos trying to impress some lady with his god-like powers, with Mephisto egging him on ("you should totally fight that group of superheroes at like half strength! chicks'll dig it!").

Snarked, by Roger Langridge: I got the first and second volumes of this out of the library a few years ago, but only recently was I able to find the final volume. This is a delightful romp through the world of Lewis Carroll, starring the walrus and the carpenter as two con-men who team-up with the young queen Scarlett (about 8) and her little brother, Rusty, in order to save the Red King from his untrustworthy advisors. It's a very funny series that's poignant in places, especially near the end; I highly recommend it.

Adventure Time: Sweet Shorts v. 2, by various: This is a collection of short comics featuring the Adventure Time cast by a wide variety of comic writers and artists (Frazer Irving draws a story!). I particularly liked the cute little comic by Kory Bing about the Earls of Lemongrab having a picnic at the beach. Most of the stories are of pretty good quality, but I'm not sure how much a reader who isn't already familiar with Adventure Time would like them.

Due to some difficulties getting my pep in gear, my weekly feature Currently Reading Wednesdays is being postponed to this Friday. Fortunately, I plan to make up for my lateness by reviewing not one, not two, but three different books! One of them is the book about adventure games I mentioned last time, but the other two are a mystery. In the meantime, you can watch this video:

(I've watched this so many times today, you have no idea.)