Hey friends,
I just got back home from a few days out in West Texas - Lubbock, to be more specific. After being closed for the last eleven months, the theater I handle the programming and marketing for in Lubbock reopened its doors to guests this past weekend. During the last few months, the location enjoyed a nice little remodel - new carpet, new wallpaper, and some gorgeous new posters.
On the trip up to Lubbock, I stopped by College Station. As a senior in high school, I was reluctant to move to College Station and attend Texas A&M University. I didn’t like country music, I wasn’t eager to find myself a minority again after growing up in South Texas and I don’t look good in maroon. I lived in College Station from 2003 to 2008 and - over the five years I lived there - I found myself growing quite fond of the city. Whether it was the ability to get from one end of town to the other in fifteen minutes, the cheap rent ($600 a month for an apartment!!!), or the sheer amount of beautiful people who went to school at Texas A&M, I began to dig my surroundings.
I haven’t spent a good deal of time back in College Station since leaving. I drive through the city once or twice a year on my way out west but I never outstay my welcome in C-Station. On my most recent visit, I was struck with both how much and how little has changed. Northgate is, on the surface, completely unrecognizable - new towering apartments, trendy chain bars, and fast-casual eateries as far as the eye can see. Dig past the surface, though, and all the old shit is still there. The apartments I lived in are still standing. The bars and restaurants I went to were still there. My beloved Hastings Entertainment is gone - but that chain bit the dust on a nationwide level. College Station may have grown a beard, but it’s still the same dorky hick with a tub of chewing tobacco in its back pocket that it was when I lived there.
I don’t know if my nostalgia for College Station is tied in with the city itself or if it’s more of a nostalgia for the freedom I experienced as a responsibility-less college student. I do miss when the biggest worries I had on any given day involved remembering to buy a scantron before my test or scrounging up enough quarters to do laundry.
I’m sure this nostalgia was why I set my werewolf graphic novel in College Station. That, and the fact that I once read an old copy of The Battalion that had an article about how college students were being attacked by wolves. During the time I spent living there, I would have never guessed I’d have willfully chosen to spend as much time as I have spent writing about College Station. That said, the College Station I wrote about in WHERE WOLF is mostly fiction - it’s the College Station I have remembered, the College Station I was afraid of, the College Station I wished had existed. To my knowledge, there are no werewolves living in College Station.
WHERE’S WHERE WOLF
I’m getting awfully close to finishing the book. Jack Morelli, the book’s letterer, has two more chapters (about 60 pages) left to letter, the exterior of the book needs to be designed and, oh yeah, I need to figure out the publishing approach I’m going to take - but it’s close! So close! I hope to have more news to share about WHERE WOLF in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, I’ve started writing WHERE WOLF, VOL. 2. I’ve written a little under 100 pages of the sequel - and I’m really happy with it so far. The first volume of WHERE WOLF was a novel adapted into a podcast script adapted into a graphic novel - and it shows. Writing something specifically for the comic book medium has been a ton of fun and I’m having a blast really letting my creative inhibitions loose. Get ready for more werewolves, plus my tribute to the cinema classic FLUKE. Seriously.
STUFF I WATCHED THIS LAST WEEK:
I didn’t really watch a ton of films this past week, considering the fact I drove to and from Lubbock. That said, the best thing I saw was MOGUL MOWGLI.
Directed by Houston-raised filmmaker Bassam Tariq, the film stars Riz Ahmed as Zed, a British-Pakistani rapper who, on the eve of a huge career-changing tour, is diagnosed with a degenerative illness. Yes, that plot might sound similar to Ahmed's SOUND OF METAL, in which the actor played a drummer whose career is interrupted when he loses his hearing, but the film's approach the basic idea in wildly different ways.
MOGUL MOWGLI is as much about Zed dealing with his illness as it's about the rapper dealing with his faith and familiar heritage. Zed is haunted - literally - by the weight of his culture and the pressure put on him to be a good Muslim while also stay true to his personal identity.
The film reminded me a lot of RAMY on Hulu in the way it explores the intersection between modern manhood and faith. And, like RAMY, MOGUL MOWGLI is fantastic.
Bassam Tariq was recently hired by Marvel Studios to direct the upcoming BLADE reboot and I totally get it. MOGUL MOWGLI is both super stylish and grounded in genuine emotion. It looks great but feels honest and true. I can't wait to see what Tariq does with vampires.
STUFF I LISTENED TO:
On the way to and from Lubbock, I listen to WIZARDS! The Podcast Guide to Comics. Adam and Michael are the hosts for the first batch of episodes I listened to and, in the show, they explore a different issue of Wizard Magazine every episode, guiding listeners through the nooks and crannies of the early ‘90s comic book boom. I’ve written in the past about how influential Wizard Magazine was to my personality and interests and I really enjoyed the show’s nostalgic look at a period of comic books I was only tangentially aware of. I didn’t get really into comic books until the mid-’90s after Image Comics has already arrived on the scene and during the height of Spider-Man’s Clone Saga and the popularity of the Fox Saturday morning cartoons. WIZARDS begins its journey through pop culture in the early ‘90s and it’s a great tour guide through those early years of comic book fandom. I look forward to making my way through the rest of the backlog of episodes, especially as the show gets to the period of comic books I’m more familiar with.
STUFF I READ:
Man-Bat! I read BATMAN: TALES OF THE MAN-BAT this week.
This collection of Man-Bat stories by Chuck Dixon and Bruce Jones, with art by Eduardo Barreto, Flint Henry, and Mike Huddleston, was a great read. Man-Bat is a character that I’ve always been interested in - mostly because of the way he looks (it’s a giant bat!) but I don’t know much about Kirk Langstrom or his curse.
The book is mostly latter-day stories from the ‘90s and ‘00s - as such, it doesn’t give an origin story but what it lacks in character motivation it makes up for in gnarly artwork and some great horror atmosphere. People are eaten, baby Man-Bats are born and Flint Henry, in particular, draws everybody so dang wet and gross looking. I loved it!
I still don’t know a ton about Man-Bat after reading this collection, but I’m even more of a fan of his visual aesthetic than before. I wish the Batman movies would stop taking themselves so damn seriously all the time so we can get a live-action Man-Bat in a movie.