Friday stumbles over the horizon, dazed and wobbly. Is today the right day? Is it really Friday? Or has Thursday lingered over, an unwelcome, obstinate guest? Perhaps Saturday has arrived early and will spin Friday around and away for another week?

Nah. That’s Friday alright. Friend to some. Enemy to others. Simply another day of the week in cultures that don’t give the days names.

The Next Five

Last week, over on Facebook, Jason Levine nominated me to post 10 comic book characters that have influenced my interest in comics. One character a day for 10 days. No explanation, no review, just the character.

So I did. I just posted covers on Facebook but here I’m giving a little context to my choices. I wrote about the first five in last Friday’s newsletter. The next five are below:

6. The Spirit

I read the Spirit in black and white reprints published first by Warren Magazines, then Kitchen Sink Press. The stories were original published in color in weekly installments of Sunday newspapers. It’s a brilliant series with a lot of creative storytelling, layouts and design. (And racism. Sigh.) There have been a few attempts to revive the character but none of the new versions have lasted.

7. Modesty Blaise

I spent a lot of time in the library as a kid. I made it a habit to go there regularly and read The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The comics page. I’m sure I read other parts of the paper upon occasion but it was always the comics that I came to read. If I missed a day the library kept copies of the previous week’s issues easily available. The Chronicle ran the daily Modesty Blaise comic strip. The library also had copies of some of the Modesty Blaise novels. I forget which I discovered first.

8. Den

I read the first 15 pages of Den in the trade paperback Ariel in the same little bookstore that I used to visit to get my comics as a kid. The art blew me away. At the time I couldn’t afford the book. Discovering the extended series later in Heavy Metal magazine further warped me and made me a fan of Richard Corben for life.

9. Zot

Zot! was a fun series. A mix of silly and serious. Not much to say beyond that.

10. Shang Chi

I’m not sure which was the first issue of Master of Kung Fu that I purchased. It’s not this one. I picked this one because it features Paul Gulacy’s art. That’s what attracted me to the series to begin with. Doug Moench’s writing kept me engaged until the series was canceled with issue #125.

The Process

Here’s this week’s process GIF –

Subscriptions Delayed

I’d written last week’s newsletter and scheduled it for publication at the usual time. And then I went poking around in WordPress (this site runs on WordPress) to see if I could find the 530 subscribers that my subscription form claimed I had. In the process I did something that removed the emailing function from my posts. I haven’t had time to dig in a figure out exactly what I did. Apologies to anyone who had to come here to read rather than get this newsletter in their email. I will get it fixed.

And, no, I wasn’t able to find the list of 530 subscribers. Maybe my website is hallucinating.

I hope your week goes well. May you experience joy. May you get rest.

See you in seven!