Fit And Working Again aka What I'm Up To (June '24)

Hello lovely patrons!

This is a catch-up post, covering present circumstances and future plans, including a NEW PROJECT and a shift I'm going to try in how I structure my blogging work (which will mean more early posts here, if it comes off). First, a personal bit.

You may have noticed - do Patreon actually tell you this? - that I didn't charge for this month. That's because, obviously, I haven't done anything for a while. What's been happening instead is that my son has been doing his GCSEs. My older son is an amazing, practical, drily funny, quiet, smart dude but he was badly bullied a few years back and his mental health suffered a lot, and he's been home or online-schooled for a while now, which it's fair to say none of us have found easy. He's doing a lot better now, and I'm very proud of him for getting through the GCSEs, however he actually does in them. But the process of getting them done has been arduous. It has involved us going by car or train the 50 miles to Southampton (and back) multiple times a week, a commute which (combined with keeping up the day job and other family health issues) has left me basically fried.

The final exam is tomorrow. He's going to deservedly relax, so am I, but I'm itching to write stuff again too.

But what stuff?

Popular, obviously. The next entry is on Akon's "Mr Lonely" and it's mostly written. I say this not because it's some kind of fiendishly complicated entry (it really isn't) but because it was midway through writing it that I realised I was so frazzled from the exams commute that I could barely even handle an Akon post.

I also realised my other big productivity problem, which is that after a couple of years of frankly not very faithful service, my chromebook is dying on its arse (if there are missing letters in this, I apologise, I tried to catch 'em all). Buying a Chromebook was an experiment in going for a lightweight, lower-spec, less expensive computer than a laptop, and I've found a lot of things about it aggravating. The time is right to move on while I can still buy a machine that doesn't want to be my friend (or stalker).

When I get the new computer I will be using it for the NEW BLOG PROJECT. As I've hinted on Bluesky this is going to be about the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, 2000AD. I've wanted to do something on the first 10 years of 2000AD for ages, and have held back from it because it's such an obvious nostalgia trap. But I found writing the Cerebus reviews that I really enjoyed writing about comics, so it felt like an opportunity to get that idea out of my system.

I Initially thought about calling it Won't It Be Strange When We're All Fully Grown? but that's too long for a blog series. So it currently has the rather weaker working title of Discourse 2000, subtitle A Critical History Of 2000AD.

What's the approach? Well. It seems to me that there have been several excellent histories and memoirs of 2000AD (I've been reading some of them this week), and lots of critical writing about individual stories. What I want to do is simply write about every 2000AD strip, in the order they appeared, within the context of their time. The focus will always be mostly on the stories - what are they doing? Does it work? Does it matter? etc. But the entries will be built to bring in the context, and by the context I mean anything from office politics to pop music to TV to wild flights of connective fancy and personal memories. I'll see as I go. Like Popular it's a way to put the British pop culture of my lifetime (in this case a formative part of it) under the microscope a bit. Like the Cerebus posts, it'll be written for people with no intention of reading the comics - everything you need to know will be in the posts. (Unlike Cerebus, I DO strongly recommend you read some of them too)

The first post in this will be about Dan Dare, David Bowie, alien aesthetics, the long legacy of 50s boys' comics, and whatever else occurs to me as I read (there's even a Cerebus link!).

One of the immediate problems with this project, as you'll realise if you know anything about the comic, is that some stories last a handful of episodes, and some go on for several years. Initially I liked the perversity of spending as much time on The Amazing Maze Dumoir as on Judge Dredd, but I realised a better way to tackle it was to look at the comic on a year by year basis. So - assuming I get through the first 10 years, which is the plan - there will be 10 pieces on Dredd over the course of the project and 1 on Maze.

It then struck me that this was a way out of my usual blogging problem - life intervening, meaning irregular posting schedules (to say the least) and short bursts of activity followed by long gaps. If that's the way I'm working, why not formalise it? It worked for the intensive production of the Cerebus posts, after all. (And it's working for Bec's excellent I, Claudius recaps, which are currently running on FT).

So Discourse 2000 is going to work on a "season" basis. I'm going to get all the 1977 posts done then post them to the site on a regular, 2-3/week basis, before taking a break then starting work on 1978, and so on. This will hopefully maximise interest and comment and make the thing easier to promote.

I also want to shift Popular to a similar "season" basis - a tranche of posts going up in a short space, like I did in November last year. The beginnings and endings of the 'seasons' here are a bit more arbitrary (the first is probably going to run from Oasis to the Arctic Monkeys).

What does this mean for you, o patient Patrons?

For Discourse 2000, not much - it's a Freakytrigger jam, though I might post occasional work notes here. (If a lot of people WANT to see the work in progress stuff I can do it, and I might formally expand the Patreon's scope if the series is a success.)

For Popular, at least once I get this bloody Akon entry done, you will continue to get entries as I write them, though this may occasionally be out of order within a 'season'. But I won't be running any on FT until I've finished the batch. This means you'll get more things early, and they'll mostly be earlier. There will be chunks of downtime in between, which I will try and fill with the "Popular Crystal Ball" write-ups of current No. 1s, and other music bits and pieces. And, of course, updates like this.

Cheers

Tom