First off, I'm kind of... not around because I *still* haven't finished that one freaking essay, arrgh. It's like every time I think I'm nearly done I accidentally open a new can of worms, sort of on the home stretch, making another day of work for myself. Very frustrating. Plus, as a consequence it's now so late I'm not sure they'll still accept it. They usually do, this being the German university system which is somewhat more lenient about stuff like this than, say, Britain's, but... you never know. Very nervous here!
In addition to this I'm angsting about my thesis again. I just talked about it to a rather skeptical friend and that reminded me how little of an idea I have yet about what I'm *really* going to do with it. And how much theory I still need to read, and how little idea I have where even to start on *that*. And how badly I need to read a whole lot of older indie and small press comics to understand the context better. Will I have to shell out for the ten Cerebus 'phonebooks'? I am afraid so. And Cerebus isn't even the biggest problem; at least that's *available*, if rather pricey. A lot of the other stuff - even the stuff I sort of know about - isn't available at all anymore. Not to mention that I only have a vague idea of indie and small press books of the early 90s and earlier, because that's way before I ever started reading comics. And with this kind of stuff you can't just go to a library, you need to buy it or you need to know someone with a huge collection. Arrgh. I need to befriend my local comic shop guys, I think. (In fact, I *am* planning to talk to them about this; at the very least they should be able to give me a better idea of essential titles etc. They're pretty good with American indie and small press stuff. - Oh, and I'll try forums, too.)
I'm thinking of really just focusing on Finder now. I just received my copy of the recent Sin-Eater hardcover and that reminded me rather forcefully how Finder is *teeming* with stuff to write and think about. Finder alone is probably more than I can handle, to be honest. (I just still lack a lot of the necessary background to say much of academic worth about it.)
The most interesting and most worrying thing my friend (who has a Ph.D. in American studies) did regarding my thesis was questioning my choice of doing a thesis about these comics at all. How could I be sure, she asked, if there was really something - or, perhaps rather, 'enough' - there that was worth talking about in an academic way; could I be sure that, as a fan, I wasn't *putting* things there that I *wanted* to see but that weren't really present in the material? Which, yeah... may be a good question. Although I'm fairly certain that Finder is of academic interest, really, because it tickles all my academic bones, so to speak - it really speaks more to me as an academic, almost, than it does to me as a fan. Still, I'm setting myself up for a fall here, potentially, as I will have to go that extra length of convincing the readers of my thesis not just of the worth of my own ideas but also of the worth of the material I've chosen to talk about. This is something you don't have to do if you write about something that already has academic acceptance.
***
To balance all that angst, here's your daily dose of squee:
As I said, yesterday I got my copy of
this, and - the image there doesn't do it justice. It's an artefact of superb beauty. It's smaller than your usual comic, somewhere between American comic size and manga format; it's hardcover, satisfyingly thick and solid, and - literally - very shiny. Very white paper, very black print, and the artwork 'shrinks' surprisingly well, although some of the smaller bits of lettering and a few details do get very tiny. The overall effect is positive, though, and somehow the composition of many of the pages works better in this format (probably because you tend to look at the whole page at once, whereas with the usual format you tend to look at the top half first, or at least I do.)
It's also superior to the previous version of Sin-Eater in two trades because it also collects the 'lost issue'
Fight Scene, plus nine new pages.
I could go on, but I have to go - work calls.
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