Welcome, welcome. We’ve grown this cozy newsletter to a readership of 4. I’ll take it. Apologies for last week, as I said I feel bad about skipping a week when things are so new, but that is the way of things when a virus and a funeral hit you the same week.

Sadly, this is also where I must come to you hat in hand and admit that I was wrong. I just don’t believe that this is going to work. Not the newsletter as a whole, but a weekly list of interesting topics no longer seems as viable as it once did. As I looked over my records of not just one but two weeks, I had a sinking feeling as I realized that there was nothing here that I felt proud to recommend to you, my most faithful of readers. In part, this is due to the hecticness of the past few weeks. I got into less media when I was sick, and had a particularly busy work week this past one. But at the end of the day, these are merely excuses. Despite my best effort, I simply did not consume enough quality content to share with you all.

This is not for lack of trying! I saw a movie, finished a book, watched 7 episodes of television and 47 online videos. I read 13 narrative comics, 27 chapters of manga, and 40 articles/newsletters, and listened to 23 podcasts. And yet in spite of going through all that media, there were only about ten things that broke through the noise. 10 is fine and dandy, but that’s hardly enough to fill a whole newsletter, especially when that’s covering two weeks and I was shooting to do this weekly. Having thought on this over the past two days, I’ve reached the conclusion that this would be best served as a monthly offering. That way I’m really going to be offering you all the cream of the crop, the best of the best. I’ll still be sending out at least one newsletter every week, hopefully two once I get into a rhythm, and who knows, maybe more once things really get going. And I’ll put recommendations to things into those reviews and roundups. But for now, we’re going to scale things back. Better to figure things out while things are still small and it’s just the four of us. But all of this is still just an experiment, so who knows, everything is still subject to change

The next one of these you’ll see will be a write-up of January. Some repeats will likely slip into the list. But you’ll still be getting my favorite TV shows, comics, and Podcasts of the past year to keep you all satiated. But for now, here are my favorite things of the past two weeks.

1)What No One Wants to Admit About Comic Sales by matttt - comic & manga history

I had an absolute blast with this video. The title is pretty misleading and clickbaity, but don’t let that deter you. This is in essence an excellent 30ish minute mini-documentary about the fantasy comic series Bone. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Bone, I highly recommend it, but this video does a deep dive into the wild story of the series’ success and near rescue from obscurity. Bone was one of the first graphic novels I ever read, and this video does a good job of explaining why that was. The title alludes to an initial hook about the fact that who we think of as the major comics publishers in the US (Marvel, DC, and debatably IDW) are in fact responsible for a fraction of the comics sold in the country. The leader, by a pretty wide margin, is Scholastic. And the way that Scholastic and Bone paired together to lead to this is pretty remarkable. The video did leave me feeling somewhat melancholy about the publishing strategies of Adult comics publishers, but I hope that they might see this video and learn from it to realize that a market is out here if they just made the medium a bit more accessible. A great, great doc.

2)Reacher: Season 1

Reacher is a bit premature to be putting on the list as I’ve only seen the first four episodes of the first season, but by golly am I enjoying them. Reacher is in a similar vein to the police procedurals I was trying out last episode, but loses some of the “police” nature to it all, and in doing so makes itself more enjoyable.

Reacher (season 1) follows former military cop turned drifter Jack Reacher as he wanders into Margrave, Georgia. On arrival, he is arrested by the police on suspicion of murder. Reacher is forced to question why he was arrested, who is actually behind the murders, and if his wandering into Margrave wasn’t so accidental.

Reacher is a fun show in part because it is intensely physical in its violence, in part because of the devil-may-care attitude of Reacher, and in part due to the immense amounts of disrespect shown to most cops in this show. Granted, most of the cops are corrupt and incompetent, and Reacher gets rather friendly with the ones that aren’t. But Reacher is a show about a supremely competent man getting to use his skills in a fairly righteous manner. There are some cringy moments where Reacher espouses the virtues of vigilante justice over the proceduralism of the law, failing to consider the justice in the procedures, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not enjoying it. Also, it’s funny to see a big man just solving problems by being big. Not for everyone, but if you’re looking for a show that roughly fits the vein of police procedurals without falling prey to the worst tropes, this is doing that for me.

3)NeverPost: State of the Pod 2025

This is a bit of a niche recommendation, but NeverPost put out an excellent podcast doing a deep dive into their first year, and explaining just how difficult it is to launch a successful podcast in this climate, especially if you want to make it a business.

NeverPost in general is a strong recommend for me. Mike Rugnetta was hugely influential in shaping my thoughts on media in running the youtube show PBS Idea Channel which ran from 2012-2017. By looking at the internet and internet culture through through a philosophical lens, Idea Channel helped me appreciate and recognize the value in both the mundane and the absurd, as well as seeing how frequently the two overlap. NeverPost is in many ways a continuation of the values of Idea Channel, if not a continuation of its messaging. NeverPost treats the internet as its own sort of country, with sites and communities functioning as cities or neighborhoods. NeverPost finds interesting stories going on here, and then shares them with us. It’s less of a news show than other type of commentary I see such as Power User or Panic World. Instead, NeverPost is about finding the most interesting stories online, such as how social media is changing the way we grieve, or the episode that explored the declining quality of dating apps.

Hearing from their roundup that this team of five who consistently put out quality content only made about 10K in the past year (leaving them 40K in the red), even with Mike to pull in some audience left me a bit despondent. If these talented folks can’t make things work, what hope is there for us average joes? But they’re keeping going, and so will I. All we can do is to keep honing our craft, to keep putting ourselves out there, and to keep creating. Because creation itself is a valuable act. So do yourselves a favor and check them out.

4)Recurring Dream - Mattie Lubchansky

This is a short one, but excellent cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky put out a short little comic that was part comic part poem about dealing with dysphoria. Some may recognize Mattie from her time at the Nib making excellent political cartoons, which she continues to do. But Recurring Dream really got to me as someone who goes through waves of dysphoria myself. Even if you haven’t directly dealt with dysphoria, I think there’s something to this comic that many people can relate to. And while you’re on her page, check out Mattie’s other work. If you like what I do, you should enjoy Mattie.

5)Heritage Foundation Plans to ‘Identify and Target’ Wikipedia Editors by Arno Rosenfeld at Forward

Finishing things off with a bit of a downer, but I can’t stop thinking about this news article about how the Heritage Foundation plans to dox and harass Wikipedia editors for not being conservative enough. Maybe if conservatives could cite sources, Wikipedia editors wouldn’t have to correct them so often. But what really got to me, other than the casualness at which this harassment campaign was planned, was that it was under the guise of preventing antisemitism. The absolute gall. The way that conservatives have used antisemitism since October 7th to portray themselves as bastions of moral righteousness has always been laughably evil, but this just takes the case. To try to burn down one of the greatest bastions of information of the modern age is just truly some cartoon level villain bullshit.

If You’re Interested in Videos

When I was sick and couldn’t eat, I got really into the videos of Adam Witt. There’s nothing particularly special or different about the style of food videos he’s making, with the trademark cringe millennial humor so often seen in the food creator space. However, it still scratched an itch for me, especially a pair of videos he did on Eastern and Western European sandwiches.

I’ve also been having a fun time watching the internet’s favorite streamer and philosopher NorthernLion recently. I’ve watched NL for over 10 years at this point on and off depending upon if I’m interested in whatever game he’s hyperfocused on in the moment. I’ve always admired NLs willingness to create hundreds or thousands of videos on a single game, and he’s got some of the most absurd content output in the creator space. Recently he’s gotten into an interesting game called The Bazaar, and seeing the humorously antagonistic relationship he has with his chat throughout has been really doing it for me.

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this past weekend saw the return of European League of Legends and that this has been occupying a good chunk of my time. I’ve been watching League since 2013, and I’ll be the first to admit that it is an obtuse and unfriendly hobby to get into if you aren’t also dedicating time to the videogame. But I still enjoy it, and if the recent season of Arcane made you interested in this world, the team at Riot Games has been trying to tie more story into both the game and viewing experience. I’ve long felt that Europe is the best league for English speaking viewers to watch, and if you’re interested, game highlights are pretty easy to get through.

If You’re Interested in Manga

It was a slow week for manga with Shonen Jump taking a week off, but Kaiju Number 8 saw its main character go super saiyan in a pretty entertaining fashion as the series approaches its conclusion, the wacky comedy series Bug Ego by the creator of Onepunch Man continues to delight and horrify with the glitches its characters are finding in the world, and Show-ha Shoten managed to build a pretty emotional message on personal growth into a comedy routine.

If You’re Interested in Comics

Yet again a pretty slow week with many comics on hiatus. Rose Tide Rising managed to finish out its current story beat in just the perfect manner, Gunnerkrigg Court is starting its new chapter in a way that is sure to please longtime fans but lives little room for new readers, and The Order of the Stick saw the return of fan favorite villain Nale if you’re willing to read through 1300 pages of comics to see why that’s satisfying. In my opinion its worth it.

If You’re Interested in Books

Not much to report here. I read The Midnight Library (2020) for a work book club and I found its optimism and message about making the most of the life we’re living to be a bit too cloyingly optimistic and to take a pretty gross approach to suicidality. On the backburner, I’m making my way through a reread of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain and sadly finding experience in the first book a bit disappointing; I’m trying to finish out R.F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy and hoping the final book manages to tie things together in a way that the first two books absolutely did not; my reread of the Dresden Files is about to take me back to my favorite book in the series (Death Masks); and I’ve enjoyed reading the first couple chapters of Ancillary Justice and it’s take on AI.

If You’re Interested in TV

Reacher is by far the best show I’ve seen recently, but I did watch a few other things. The long awaited Abbott Elementary/It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover (on Hulu or ABC) sadly failed to wow me, but did have a pretty funny storyline about Charlie not knowing how to read. Will Trent (Hulu/ABC) is a police procedural I mentioned in the last weekly list that didn’t quite wow me, but was decent enough and has a new season out. I also tried to watch the start of Crime Scene Kitchen (Fox/Hulu) which is a show I appreciate more in theory than in practice, but you do get to see Joel McHale bully some bakers who don’t have media training, and there’s comedy in that.

If You’re Interested in Articles

Vanishing Points, the substack by famed Tiktok lawyer and leftist Loloverruled had a pretty good interview with Hasan Piker if you’re a fan of annoying guys like I am. But in all seriousness, it was a decent conversation in the wake of a disappointing election about the types of things we can do to keep our heads up and build towards a better future in the next few years. Matt Stoller continues to break down why monopolies are so terrifying in his newsletter Big, which is one of the most accessible ways to learn about antitrust from both a legal and policy perspective. He can be annoyingly centrist, but most of his ire is turned towards big business, so I let it slide. Lastly, while reading a separate newsletter, Patrick Klepek of Remap and Crossplay linked to a separate piece he’d written in 2017 about the end of The Leftovers and losing his dad. He lost his dad in a very different way than I lost mine, but the way he talks about grief in the piece I found extremely resonant. On an entirely different note, he wrote a great peace recently on Crossplay, his newsletter about the intersection of parenthood and gaming, about why kids are obsessed with Squid Game.

If You’re Interested in Movies

I’ve been pretty out of tune with movies lately, but I did get to see the Latvian animated movie Flow this past weekend, which has also been getting a decent amount of awards buzz. While I appreciated and marveled at how much of this movie was done by a single person, I struggled to truly get drawn in. The graphics felt a little to video gamey to me and I felt the story would have been better served as a tighter short film. But then again, plenty of people have been loving it, so go and decide for yourself.

In other news, the Kiki Palmer/Sza movie One of Them Days has dropped to pretty rave reviews. The story follows two friends trying to make rent, and as a Kiki Palmer fan I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, and it sadly isn’t coming to my preferred theater, but with what little I have to recommend in this area, this feels like a safe bet to go see.

If You’re Interested in Podcasts

Better Offline did the herculean task of documenting CES 2025 and putting out 1-2 podcasts a day on the show. It was a great insight into how divorced the tech industry is from every day people. Also for my work book club, I started listening to Hysterical, an investigative podcast into the largest case of mass hysteria documented this century. Gender Spiral had a chaotic and excellent interview with Honey Pluton about gender and spirituality. The Video Game History Hour did a breakdown of a symposium dedicated to game preservation that was unfocused but still neat. Lastly, Panic World did an episode about the long term consequences of January 6th that I don’t know if I agreed with, but still found fascinating.

The Music that Fueled This

Lucy Dacus released two singles and announced a new album coming out this March. I’ve been really enjoying Ankles. Also, when putting together my top manga list, I was reminded of just how good the OP for the Dandadan anime, Creepy Nuts, is.

And that’s everything for now. I hope that when I’m back in two weeks to summarize January, I have a bit more quality content to share with you, but for now hopefully you find something fun to look into. See you all next time.

Soma