Into The Pride-Verse
So I took a week off! It was bound to happen. Luckily, it was a week where no new comics by me dropped, but that's not the case this week - as in tomorrow - so...
WHAT'S OUT THIS WEEK?
Venom #20, that's what!
"Let's get physical, physical, I wanna get physical," Olivia Newton-John once sang. "Let's get into physical.," she continued. And she was right! Venom is a physical comic about physical people, and physical goo monsters, and it's about time we embraced absolute physicality in the form of bloody resurrections, naked prison escapes, mass brawls with bikers and Eddie Brock going Full Eighties Action Hero, all wrapped up in a "Himbo Frankenstein" t-shirt that I'm attempting to manifest in the real world. (Standards and Practices asked me if the t-shirt had a hidden meaning. I want one, is the hidden meaning.) Art is by the redoubtable CAFU, who brings every move in his ultimate fighting style to this rip-roaring, rib-cracking, skull-shattering, cross-country odyssey into old-school video violence. And this is only the prologue! Next month, we fight for real!
THEY SAY IN HEAVEN, LOVE COMES FIRST
This past weekend was my local Pride March and festival, and I did the march with a placard I made myself - it said "ALL THE LETTERS STAND TOGETHER", with LETTERS colored in with a selection of individual pride flags and TOGETHER colored in with the big ol' Progress Pride Flag. What's that about? Solidarity, essentially - there's a lot of online talk, especially on Emerald Enoch's Fash-Boosting Birdcage, about how they'd tolerate those cuddly Ls and Gs and maybe even the very occasional B - not those "spicy straights" though, only the real proper bis. the ones who've got the special little stamp of approval from Head Office - if only we could cut away those Ts, Qs, Is, As, NBs and anyone else the Face-Eating Leopard Party has labelled a More Edible Face.
And honestly, to hell with that.
So I marched with my sign, and having marched, I did a hell of a lot of dancing and my fair share of bashful smiling at hot guys, of which there were many, because the other side of Pride is celebration and affirmation and generally Not Being Ashamed. And Claire from Steps did a set! Maybe the 21st Century disease is replacing community with consumption, but I did feel very much part of my local community as I bopped with my people to this classic number:
Anyway, plenty of Pride month to go and I plan to get some happiness out of it in between all the work stuff and life stuff and the general sense of doom, so expect more rainbow sprinklings in this space.
WHAT A SWIZZ!
Wot, no Marvel Panel by Panel? Bah! Humbug! What can I say, it's a busy time and I've got to get my beauty sleep. But I've had a lot of thoughts lately about Marvel Snap, so maybe next time I'll offer a few of those inamongst the regular dross and drivel.
For now, we're back after our break and this is once again the place to find me! Love and strength to all those who need it, and I'll play us out with my personal anthem whenever I'm writing queer icons Wiccan and Hulkling - "Somebody Loves You" by Betty Who.
