Very excited to present this at CSS today! A bit of a departure for me, this is heavily based in close reading rather than research.

Today's real find, first appearance of Super-Hip and a pop culture artifact that feels like it needs a couple hundred words of annotation to explain

Lovely morning at the Merril Collection, viewing the manuscript for one of my favorite novels, Kim Stanley Robinson's THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. I don't have huge revelations (they caught the typos apparently)> but it was a lovely experience.

Oh No! This Article I'm Writing is a Book In seriousness having a really long draft I cut down to size is my preferred way of writing, but I like to keep some good bits around when it comes time to talk at length.

It's me, talking SCTV and our campus! www.instagram.com/reels/DXevFs...

I used "KINDA" from Doctor Who as a unit in my TV production course, and it is very entertaining to read a bunch of exams talk about the jungle planet setting of Deva Loka (one student even correctly recognized the name as an allusion to Hinduism!).

wouldn't it be funny if EVERYONE blocked this Attie AI account @ bsky.app/profile/atti... before they could do anything with it

Now I know Bluesky is going to make it, because I've finally started to see that old Twitter hallmark—people posting as though we're all part of the same conversation and definitely already know what they're talking about. 🥲

Oh heck yes I bought this, it's like the manifestation of bubblegum becoming a nostalgic simulacrum! And it was the last one at the Walmart checkout

SCTV is streaming for the first time! Here's three choices Amazon Prime has made: 1) mostly following the US syndicated versions of episodes (this is of little interest to anybody); 2) somehow scrubbing the (unlicensed) music from the key examples I've tracked down, which is honestly impressive 1/2

Just a quick reminder that, after user/public pressure, Firefox did add an AI killswitch to Firefox 148—it's under settings—>"AI controls" and it's obnoxiously labelled "block AI enhancements" but I'll take it.

Since I gained a bunch of new followers today, I'll drop a little pop culture tidbit that didn't quite make the cut in my book! I always tell people that even if you don't like the rest of the book, there's a pretty concise history of bubblegum and chewing gum in there that brings together 1/?

Sequential Scholars with a lovely write-up on my book! Great pictures too!

Hey it's me talking about The Greatest Show ever filmed here!

Part of my secret origins as a comics scholar was a paper I wrote in late grad school about medievalism in this abortive Swamp Thing arc, so it's pretty neat to find out that it will be published. Very sad that Michael Zulli didn't live to see it.

ive been on-and-off trying to write a story about AI for a couple of years, and I think i finally cracked it with WIRE MOTHER, which is out in @clarkesworldmagazine.com (tw in the post below). also hey, this issue is stacked?? clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_10_25/

My forthcoming television course (Broadcasting to Screen Cultures) got a lovely write-up in the university newsletter! www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/202...

I wish I'd had this when I wrote my book—transcript of a Korean War-era Soviet news article. It's very sensationalistic but they do have a point about the weirdly violent chewing gum cards (later to culminate in, of course, MARS ATTACKS).

I didn't win but the nomination was an honour and it was lovely to attend the Eisners in San Diego! Where else am I gonna hear Eddie Campbell read my name?!

got a new bookstand for convenient perusal of key texts

I am (accurately) named as a Canadian finalist for an Eisner! Great company on this list as this nomination continues to blow my mind.

My book FROM GUM WRAPPERS TO RICHIE RICH has been nominated for an Eisner Award! What an honour!

I just noticed that the DC Universe Infinite app version of MAD Magazine #122 uses the "RFK" version of the cover—the one that was never circulated due to Kennedy's murder. I believe the original cover was only recovered later. This couldn't possibly be by accident. But... why?

I've always had a soft spot for this song, from the megaflop West End Robin Hood musical TWANG!!—both because it's way better than Long John Baldry's biggest hit "Let The Heartaches Begin" but also because at the end he does a laugh which foreshadows his performance as Dr Robotnik in the 90s.

Today at 7 PM GMT, I'm guesting on the excellent Centuries of Sound radio/podcast, talking with the great James Errington about the music, popular and otherwise, of 1942!

ICMYI! I returned to Hannah and Marcelle's podcast to talk memes, comics, and Richie Rich! www.ohwitchplease.ca/all-episodes...

There's a scene in the live-action 1964 Tintin movie TINTIN ET LES ORANGES BLEUES where Captain Haddock is sitting in front of a portrait of Sir Francis Haddock, and it's painted to look like an Hergé drawing—I wonder if this inspired the caricature gag at the beginning of Spielberg's TINTIN.

I finally got to see Y2K (2024)—I quite like Kyle Mooney’s work but this felt like a huge misfire. The big picture problem is that the premise (Y2K… uh, happens) is so goofy that the movie’s attempts to be serious don’t even reach I.e. The World’s End. Much preferred the silly, stupid, gory moments.

After years away, I return to the world of Marcelle and Hannah podcasting as a guest! *mumble mumble* current events, surprisingly, come up but the episode is mostly about my book chapter on Richie Rich and What It All Means! pod.link/979059619/ep...

This term's assigned reading!

Looking through some boxes and forgot I had a copy of this pivotal issue (#66, November 1994); this is the first "advanced computer modelling" cover of Nintendo's in-house magazine. From this point on, they're going to sideline the idea of visualizing games using other techniques such as cartooning.

My book's first legitimate review! Very exciting and flattering!

My book about materiality and comics has... materialized! Wonderful to hold this in my hands at last. And the graph looks pretty snazzy too!

My forthcoming book is on a sale! A good deal in my opinion, and still hundreds of times more than the gum on the cover! www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/F/From...

It's really happening! My book about cheap comics is coming this summer.

Spending all week indexing my book. it's tough work but there's a lot of fun juxtapositions. For example "Iron Man" directly follows "Iran-Contra"

Great moment in my last substantive Comics class of the term (and year)—we flipped through the September Scholastic catalogue and considered what if any of these are the most successful comics of our time. Making undergrads feel old by showing them Dog Man, that's my pedagogy right there.

After years of students telling me it was the main comic they'd read, I finally got around to Kazu Kibuishi's AMULET today (...uh, because I'm teaching it tomorrow morning). I liked it a lot and I wish it hadn't come out when I was in my mid-twenties! My Scholastic comic was those 3-pack Garfields.

Hey it's my book! Book history about comics that don't often get a book history. To answer your question yes: I ate more than a kilogram of gum for this. www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/F/From...