Run
Been a while, .
A whole... a whole bunch of stuff has happened here. Hopefully we'll be able to catch you up on the details soon. What have you been up to? Things good with you?
x We usually put a picture here. x
- matt fraction -
I have started to run. At the end of July I started to run and now at the end of September I can run fourteen miles in under two hours. I even look forward to it most nights. I run at night. This may be as close to a miracle as I will see in my lifetime.
I started to do it because I was down and wasn't getting up again. And I know a big part of my mental health maintenance means a regular dose of aerobic activity so of course when I get stressed and need more hours in the day it's the first thing to go. This time though I've stayed with it, longer and stronger than I really ever had before.
The first time I ever ran on a running track was in the middle of a panic attack. I felt like I'd peeled off my skin and my whole body was on fire so I ran out of my apartment -- door open, middle of the night -- and started to move through the night air in hopes of dousing flames only I could see and feel. I looped 3, 4 times around a mile long path until I was retching and soaked with sweat then walked home to burn some more.
I've gotten better at it.
And I keep getting better at it. I keep doing it more. That's new. I've done stuff like this before but never on a progressing scale past a certain point. I'd run forty-five minutes, or bike an hour. And that'd hold until a deadline would crush me again and then I'd stop until the heavy boots found their way around my ankles one more time and I needed something to help shake them loose.
They're not loose yet but they're getting looser. Which is something, I guess. It's the only time of day when I know I can't fuck something up. All I have to do is put one foot down in front of the other and keep breathing. The rest takes care of itself and what a goddamn relief that all is to be sure.
I've been running enough, and for long enough, that my body has begun transforming. My eating and eating-discipline, two things I never have ever really and truly had a good grip on, has moved to repair itself as my body's needs become more, uh, productive. My sleep, in spite of what the Fitbit shows, feels better and deeper than it has in years. A thin layer of cookie dough I kept right beneath my skin has evaporated. I can see musculature that I've never had before. Clothes fit differently, hang differently, drape differently. Pants are all different now. I'm growing a butt. I don't recognize the photograph from the back of SEX CRIMINALS #2 as my body anymore.
To make sure I kept my foot on the gas I committed to running in the AVENGERS half-marathon at Disneyland this November. I'm going to deck myself out in #TEAMHAWKGUY purple and grey (a plaster across the bridge of my nose will perfectly cover a breathe-right strip) and run 13.1 miles through the Magic Kingdom. The idea of that -- of me, running, outside, in public, through fucking Disneyland, in November, dressed kind-of as a kind-of superhero is funnier than anything I've written in SEX CRIMINALS. It is in fact the funniest thing of all time. I mean, like, funnier than HOLY GRAIL funny.
At first there was lung capacity stuff; I'd pant and lose my breath and my chest would heave. I skated up to the nausea line a few times in the early going. Now I turn into a machine. I find my pace and my breathing starts and the only thing I have to fight is boredom -- always my nemesis -- and pain in my knees. Even my legs go along with it now (although I'll feel fatigue there first on a long haul, my hips and thighs bark at me with ever footfall). Knees is it. The next day I make Dad Noises when I get up or down from chairs, is all. And the day after long runs, I wake up, eat everything I can, and then go back to sleep for a few hours. I find this hilarious.
I don't know why I'm talking about this exactly. I can hardly speak with authority as a runner. I suppose because it's a thing in my life now, a thing eating up time and real estate, a thing that I can do now, a think I never thought was possible before. Maybe that was thinking with heavy boots on and maybe it was just my nature. It doesn't matter now. For the first time in my life, and not because I'm being chased, I run.
- my dumb bullshit -
THIS WEEK:
Nothing. Sorry.
SATELLITE SAM #10 was last week, or the week before, though. That was fun, right? Been waiting eight issues to get Mike outside of that door. We'll be back in February (which sounds like a long time but, believe me, it's not) to wrap the New York chapter of SATELLITE SAM up with our final five issues in an arc called SATELLITE SAM AND THE LIMESTONE CAVES OF FIRE.
The second SAM trade, SATELLITE SAM AND THE SNUFF FUCK KINESCOPE, will be on-sale 10/15.
We've begun soliciting the cycle of CASANOVA hardcovers. We'll do all three volumes extant and then roll into volume 4 in January. These books will be oversized, have the full color and remastered lettering, as well as all of the extras the original collections ran AND, for the first time since publication, ALL of the backmatter that appeared in both the Image and Icon editions, as well as new commentary about that stuff. It's as close to "compleat" (yes, 'ea', google it) as we can manage and will, I think, be beautiful to behold. It certainly feels like an "at long last" kind of thing for me, personally.
I mentioned V.4, huh? ACEDIA. Me and Moon, Bá and MICHAEL CHABON.
How's it going, you ask?
and here's what the mysterious IMG_5244 was:
so to answer your question: it's going great.
HAWKEYE V3: L.A. WOMAN hits next week. This collects the annual and then the Annie Wu-drawn "Kate" issue that take place in Los Angeles. When HAWKEYE #21 and #22 are done -- and 21 is getting there -- the "Clint" side of the story will be collected (along with the Chris Eliopoulos-drawn HAWKEYE HOLIDAY SPECIAL) as HAWKEYE V4: RIO BRAVO. And that'll come out like three weeks after #22, whenever that may be.
SEX CRIMINALS #8 is out next week too. It is called "Robert Rainbow." I think it's the very best thing Chip has done and I cannot believe I have fooled that sweet-natured, incredibly gifted, Canadian idiot into being associated with me.
Chip's work takes a weird direction this issue though. FYI.
We are "hard" 'at work' on JUST THE TIPS: a collection of beloved and brand new sex tips, advice, letters, positions, and everything else. This will "come" in November, just in time to have a real 'White Christmas.' Want to get a "taste" of it?
And our second collection TWO WORLDS ONE COP hits on New Year's Eve. Now there will be more than on "ball drop" on Dec. 31. Collecting SEXCRIMS 6-10 with new back matter. We'll probably do a con-exclusive hardcover for this, too, for the spring. That was fun.
ODY-C #1 drops in NOVEMBER. It is maybe the most remarkable thing I've ever had my name on.
Tell your store you want it. There's an 8-page foldout in the first issue so we're not going to have the freedom to reprint quite as much as we would were this a usual book -- we'll do our best to overprint -- but if this is something you might be interested, now might be a good time to investigate pre-ordering.
I'll be getting my NYCC schedule together soon. Watch my site or this right here.
Keep moving, y'all.
- kelly sue deconnick -
Fraction bought me a copy of IT AIN'T ME BABE Women's Liberation comic for our anniversary. It came out July 1970 -- exactly the year and month I was born (It doesn't say what date, but... July 15th, 1970 was a Wednesday, so...).
I have no point to make, I just like the symmetry.
If you're in PDX, I'll be a guest on Late Night Action tonight with Alex Falcone tonight at 8pm. Tickets are here.
(More PDX: if you're a fan of John Darnielle's (aka The Mountain Goats), Fraction is hosting a thing with him at Powell's tomorrow night to talk about his new book, The Wolfe In the White Van. Link is down there in the tl;dr section.)
Congratulations to our friends Scott and Elisabeth Allie on the birth of their daughter Sarah Jean Ruth Allie yesterday. Scott's waiting on some script from me and he said the baby knows where I live so I gotta leave it at this for now.
tl;dr
September 29 - DeFraction Wedding Anniversary
September 29 - KS on Late Night Action
October 1 - Fraction with John Darnielle at Powell's
October 8 - Hawkeye: LA Woman tpb & Captain Marvel: Higher Further Faster More tpb in stores
October 8 - Captain Marvel 8 & Sex Criminals 8 in stores
October 10-13 - KS & MF at New York Comic Con
November 12 - Casanova: Gula HC in stores
November 14-16 - KS & MF at Avengers Half Marathon (Disneyland)
November 26 - ODY-C #1 in stores
November 26 - Just The Tips in stores
November Something: F4/FF Fraction Omnibus
December 10 - First issue of Bitch Planet on shelves.