The Hot-Doll index confirms that COMICS is (just!) the most popular label on this blog. Not a surprise, really. It sometimes feels like my university years have been less about reading Gregory of Tours or John Locke, and more about sinking to new depths of comics nerdery. During the honeymoon phase, this stuff was seriously addictive.
But maybe that phase is now over? I've been trying to get into Charles Burns's Black Hole, which like me slobbers all over Lynch and Cronenberg, but somehow I can't get myself to care. Turning to Final Crisis, I'm once again confronted with Morrison madness at a hundred miles per hour. But instead of being flattened into submission, this time I'm asking: what is the point of all this?
On the singles front, Sparta U.S.A. and Stumptown were diverting, but didn't give me anything Lapham or Rucka haven't given me before. Daytripper had a great penultimate issue, but the end was on the soggy side. Kill Shakespeare is treading water. Buffy Season 8 stopped making sense a while ago.
Maybe I'm not patient enough. Maybe this ennui is itself a phase. There are things to be excited about: Bendis's Scarlet, Ellis's Supergod, Morrison's Joe The Barbarian, Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D., Milligan's Greek Street, Carey's Unwritten. Ultimate Spidey and X-Factor still deliver monthly hits of hilarity. That's quite a long list. (Paul Morley, what have you done to me!)
Still, I've been thinking for a long while that I should wind down this strange, niche obsession, not least because it's ridiculously expensive. So this is just a note to say that the Hot-Doll Pages will shift tenor slightly, away from comics and perhaps towards film and literature.
Or not. Mercer Finn breaks promises without a thought. He also rhymes. Sometimes. And he doesn't know when to let things... drop?
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