Book: Heat by Jean Wei

Heat
by Jean Wei
published by Peow Books (Jean Wei)
2023

This is a COMPLETELY ADORABLE comic about a fire demon who wakes up on a farm and is adopted by the farm family as seasonal help and a friend.

Auntie Ann and Katy don’t think twice about taking Red in, taking Red to a friend to make some soft clothes suitable for an eight foot tall fire demon. They just… accept Red as they are: a nice, helpful, large, warm being.

Have I mentioned this is completely adorable?

Cats can’t resist Red, a cosy fire demon who is always warm. Awwwwwwwww. Beyond cute!

I can often resist things that are cute, but this is so…. not just cute, but soothing. Sweet. Homey. Gentle.

We could all use some sweetness.

Life: Sleep? What do you mean?

A screenshot from my fitbit showing that I enjoyed four hours and 38 minutes of sleep last night.

I have the nerve to wonder why I am so tired.

The wonderful thing about weekends, though, is that naps are possible if I don’t overschedule myself. Yes, I was up at five something, but by eleven (AM!) I went down so hard for a nap that I considered checking my neck for drugged darts.

I needed that.

Unlike this bottle of Pocari Sweat, which I don’t need, but which I am truly enjoying…

Book: Painting The Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During a Global Pandemic by Paint The Void

Painting the Void Book Cover

Painting The Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During a Global Pandemic
by Paint The Void & Broke But Grand LLC dba BUILDING 180
published by Paint the Void
2024

Once the safety precautions were loosened and we could wander around outside, we were faced with countless boarded up buildings, a sense of emptiness, and finally – art and color.

This is a lovely photo book depicting the art organization that stepped in to brighten SF’s closed businesses with large scale art, and the many local artists who stepped up to the challenge and created bright, hopeful murals throughout the City.

Delighted by the murals as I reoriented myself to the City on foot, I ordered this book ages ago, and am delighted that it was finally released and shipped to me this year! It includes essays on the effort, discussions of how it was received, experiences the artists had as people interacted with them as they worked, adjustments the organizers made to include artists who hadn’t previously worked on murals, and more.

If you’d like a sense of the murals it includes, you can enjoy the Paint The Void mural gallery below:

Great book, great project, highly recommended especially for local public art and mural fans.

Life: The Opposite of Reassurance

I told my mother I felt really bloated.

She helpfully (?) told me that bloating was an early symptom of ovarian cancer for her.

If I’d wanted to be told that any possible symptom is cancer, I would have used a run-of-the-mill search engine to obtain my dread more efficiently.

Book: Creepy Cat Volume 1 by Cotton Valent

Creepy Cat volume 1
by Cotton Valent
published by Star Seas Company and Kodansha
2019

Cover art for Creepy Cat Volume 1 by Cotton Valent

This is an adorable, gothic visual comic collection about a lovely goth girl named Flora who inherits a mansion inhabited by a “cat.”

This”cat” defies the laws of physics, consumes people, levitates, stretches endlessly into room-filling forms, periodically swallows Flora…

Creepy Cat is both adorable and… a monster of some undetermined kind. But it is so… fluffy! (Life lesson: you can get away with a lot if you are fluffy.)

The stories are brief, a few panels or pages long, and are stylishly adorable. The tone is great; Flora is charming; Creepy Cat lives up to its name. Flora is sometimes in danger, and it appears Creepy Cat may periodically eat or harm Flora, but doesn’t necessarily like when anyone else does that. (Yay for possessiveness?)

There is an adorable brief comic at the end in which Valent tells the story of how this comic came to be.

This is a lovely, consistent, stylish, attractive work. And there are more volumes out there, which is good news.

Book (Manga): The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

English language cover of The Summer Hikaru Died by Mokumokuren

The Summer Hikaru Died volume 1
by Mokumokuren
published in English by Yen Press
2023

Hikaru went missing in the mountains. And then… Hikaru came back.

But the Hikaru that came back is not the same lifelong friend that Yoshiki has always had at his side. This Hikaru admits that he is… something else, something that has never been human before. It has Hikaru’s memories, but is feeling everything in Hikaru’s body for the first time. And in a moment of stress, he/it loses some of Hikaru’s form, and Yoshiki can see things he should not be able to see.

But Yoshiki has missed his dear friend so badly, that maybe this other Hikaru is enough. Maybe.

The cicadas chirps fill the air, the summer heat makes the boys sweat on their walks to school, and Yoshiki gets warnings that something dark is taking over the town, from others who have seen the forms the darkness can take…

This is broad-daylight-spooky. I can’t wait to read the next two volumes!

Life: Early August

Two almond milk lattes at Ritual Coffee.
Delicious to look at, delicious to drink: hooray for almond milk lattes at Ritual Coffee!

Update on Facial Graffiti: After using a harsh fading shampoo three times in one day on my hennaed eyebrows, I went to work and… received compliments on my new glasses from a nice young man.

I didn’t have new glasses: my newly visible eyebrows frame my face so well, my glasses look better. All is well that ends with improvements to my vanity, I guess!

I just have to figure out how to avoid that first-day-Sharpie-attack look. And argue with my stylist about her very unrealistic definition of “light brown.”

Update on What I’m Reading: I was going to apologize for going from being the person who only writes about SERIOUS SUBJECTS (oooooh, so impressive) and summarizes US Supreme Court rulings with mildly catty commentary to someone who has 85% graphical fiction content with a trend toward gay male romances, but… why apologize? I’m enjoying myself! That’s what is important. Well, to me, anyway. There are always more heavy books in my pile, and I will get to them when the time is right.

What I’m (Not) Writing: I’m working on notes for the science fiction scenes that I imagine when I’m listening to too much of Massive Attack’s Angel, but I’m not getting far. Someone sits near me, and when he is there, I don’t write. I just… am. I hold the pen; I hold the notebook; words just float away.

The one who sits near me has the best hair. (Ahhhhh.)

Others sit near me and don’t have this effect, so I am not forever sabotaged: it’s just that the scenes that have come to me aren’t all smoothly connected (there is a war, war lacks narrative cohesion and involves abrupt transitions in my view), and it will take some time to connect them with proper bonds.

I’m afraid I’m being influenced by the styles of streaming television, as the wreckage in the first scene makes me want to put up a giant title card that says, “10 days earlier” and launch a flashback… I don’t need to write that way. Unless Netflix has a pile of money for me, in which case, I will happily change my style.

Also: I need to not kill off so many characters so early. Aside from the realism that would bring. (Have you noticed how most named characters survive nearly every improbable thing in American stories? What the hell?!?).

I designed a costume for the character modeled on myself years ago. The left arm of her spacesuit is a different color (red) from the rest of her suit, which is unfortunate, but is based on something she predicts before it happens. Her/My left arm has it EVEN WORSE in this story than it has in real life. Dear left arm in real life, I truly love you, even with the plate and screws (especially with the plate, screws, and the scar!), and I am so sorry for what happens to you in the novella.

COVID Negativity Is The Best Negativity: Stay positive in outlook, negative in fresh diagnostic tests!

Life / Reading Notes of the moment

  • The comics I await most eagerly are:
  • While weekly serialization feels brutal on the artists’ side for being too fast for them to produce the work, this pace remains slow for readers. It is jarring to open a chapter in a middle of a conversation when I can’t remember who was even involved… I’m definitely going to have to re-read many of these to write about them once they are complete. Or delay reading them until I can do so in larger sets of chapters.
  • Most of my comics are about women, and that’s because I’m picking those out of the adventure, drama, and romance sections because action heroines are fun (I’ve had decades of male-centered stories!) and prefer their art.
    • There is more gender balance in the women-led stories – so many male characters all around in various roles (not just as romantic leads, but also as allies, fans, supported, fathers, villains…) where the reverse isn’t always true for the man-led ones.
    • There are more elaborate artsy details in most of the stories I choose. I skim lots of types of comics, and reject many of the heroine stories if the art doesn’t call me (or if they are beautifully drawn but ramble about strategic agriculture!), but I have this problem more frequently with the action hero stories. Those are generally illustrated much more simply, and I’m less interested in those art styles.
  • The ‘boys love’ comics I’ve chosen combine drama and adventure successfully with romance elements. (Love IS love!) As I was telling a friend about them, everyone is remarkably good-looking, plus, there is sex, drama, and adventure – what’s not to love?

Reading current Korean comics has become a proper hobby. And I get excited when I see other people reading comics from the same publisher on the train, but am hold myself back from asking for their recommendations… for now.

Book (Manhwa): Winter Wolf by soonmu, cheong yong, rubyche

Cover art for Winter Wolf by soonmu, cheong yong, rubyche

Winter Wolf
by soonmu, cheong yong, rubyche
published by Tappytoon (2 seasons; 61 chapters, complete)
Undated

I’ve read the first season (through chapter 36) of this spooky mansion romance. Because, as a former redhead, I feel obligated to read manhwa about other redheads. (You know, for the cartoon sisterhood.)

The revolution arrived, and Lysithea is on the losing side. Her family members and others in the nobility have been executed or will be once they are found. She is paying smugglers to get her out of the country by sea, so she can live abroad with a foreign aunt. But while she is exhausted from being in hiding and on the run, her horse takes off, and she finds herself traveling on foot through the snow to an abandoned mansion, where her next ‘broker’ (smugglers are fussy about their professional nicknames) awaits her.

Her broker is expecting her, but her next step required the horse she just lost, plus getting to port before the ice does. Also, the abandoned mansion they are sheltering in has a reputation for being haunted. Her broker insists that the moaning and cries for help she hears at night are just her imagination. As her lack of sleep wears down her sanity, she fears she may need an escape from her own escape plans…

This story has classic horror movie tropes delivered well, and a heroine who is both brave enough to investigate things that go bump in the night and exhausted enough to periodically choose to just stay in bed and pretend not to hear the moaningI respect her deeply for BOTH of these attitudes. There are very few characters in the story, and they are all suspicious! There is plenty of suspense at the end of the first season. (The fact that there are two seasons is something of a spoiler, I suppose. But: you’ll live.)

Season 1 of Winter Wolf is enjoyable.