Treason of Words

As I was putting my laptop on my bike to head home today, a coworker I'd never spoken with stopped to talk. I remember noticing the guy with a goatee and long blonde hair, wearing all black every day, who always looked like he'd stepped out of a renaissance fair, or possibly a fantasy romance novel cover (seriously, leather vambraces and boots were common accessories) maybe 10 years ago. Perhaps a year or so ago, this blonde woman of similar height, build, and aesthetic showed up, sans goatee, plus lipstick. Without preamble, she launched right in about how awful the new measures against trans people seeking affirming care are, and how she never saw it coming. It turns out she didn't vote in 2024, and hadn't understood just how aggressively she would be targeted by Trump - not just as a trans woman, but as a veteran. The chaos has her frightened and feeling mistreated by the VA, right down to the needless cruelty of the provider she got her most recent hairpiece from (a...

An abridged version of this appeared as My First Date With Bluestreak on the La Dolce Velo blog in December 2025. Riding a bicycle for transportation is, as much as it hurts my cycling advocate heart to say it, still an unusual choice here in Austin, Texas. More unusual still is to pick a steed based on something other than speed or riding comfort. My house is small, though, and after being passed up by a bus with a full bike rack late one night, I determined that a folding bike would address both issues - allowing it to be stowed in the front closet rather than out in the shed, and giving me the reasonable recourse of simply folding it up and carrying it onto any bus that already has a full house of bikes hanging off its front bumper. Not one to catch as catch can, I researched the topic to absurd levels. I drew up a list of requirements - disc brakes, upright posture, multi-speed, rear rack, rollable while folded, and not too pricey. I was probably days away from committing to a Bro...

The world of Drew Edwards' Halloween Man is, despite it supernatural flavor and horror pedigree, very down-to-earth. Opponents are dispatched with physical weapons, often of the melee variety, and generally have at least one bloody bite taken out of them by the hero. When greater powers do appear, they may be mysterious, but they're not exactly revered . The mystic who made Solomon Hitch into the titular hero, Morlack, is such a greater power, as well as a lush, a slob, and an all-around horse's rear. While Solomon and Lucy do the heavy lifting of dispatching Spring Heeled Jack, whose powers flow from a source similar to Halloween Man’s, the engrossing part of this Samhain story is the embroidering of the universe in which it’s set. While it’s a small window into Morlak’s lengthy past, it helps round out the enigmatic and frustrating character by  adding a few data points about just where his line between right and wrong is drawn, as well as a better idea where his moral c...

When I resolved to rationalize and expand my bicycle stable, I realized that my trusty, elegant commuter and reliable little folding bike would have to go. Ivy Mike was a lightly modified 2011 Novara Fusion that met all my on-road needs in style. However, when he was in the shop, or I needed to be flexible with my transportation plans, it was Nightbeat, a 2014 Novara FlyBy that took up the slack. In order to make room for a folding mountain bike and a folding road bike to explore the many trails in Austin and the many long organized rides around Austin respectively, the roles of my two steed would have to be met by a single new bike. What folds small for logistical flexibility, has multiple internal gears, disc brakes for wet stopping, fenders, and can mount panniers? I'd been pining after the Tern Verge S8i for some time, but at $2,100, it was simply more than I was willing to spend. I examined its features and picked what I could reasonably compromise on. Hydraulic discs were n...

When a superhero title spawns a spin-off, it can usually be expected that the loyal sidekick or even a prominent rival will be the one taking the spotlight. Always exploring new perspectives on traditional tropes, the new special from Drew Edwards' perennial action horror series focuses not on one of his paranormally super-powered friends, but on Lucy Chaplin, nominally his girlfriend, but in the world of Solar City, a personality far better-known and admired than her half-dead hunk. As a whole, the book has a zippy silver age feel to it, featuring a solo adventure with a new threat our heroine is uniquely suited to battle, a fourth-wall-breaking expository piece about Lucy’s professional life & interests, and an in-universe magazine interview with the science starlet herself. The villain of the first piece, Lucy Chaplin vs the Sons of Samson , is the contemporary strain of toxic masculinity personified, which is to say, the sort of thing a woman like Lucy would deal with d...

The second entry in Drew Edwards’ series of Halloween Man specials, Halloween Man versus The Invisible Man melds emotional realism with the titillating and the fantastical to create a gritty and satisfying adventure. Solar City’s fetish community has been rocked by a series of unexplained deaths when the grand dame of the scene, Claudette, comes to visit her old frenemy Lucy Chaplin, or more precisely, Lucy’s beau, Solomon Hitch. Our hero is reluctant to engage in this sort of heroism; while he’s commonly called upon to thwart the ghastly and creepy, the problem is a mystery, and he’s no detective. While comic book heroes often express token reluctance in order to build suspense, it can usually be chalked up to a gruff misanthropic streak or false humility; in this case, Solomon is genuinely out of his depth and has good reason to defer, only taking the case out of a sense of solidarity with a subculture that is marginalized and sensationalized by the media in the same way he is. The...

As part of Bike Month, and a few days ahead of National Bike to Work Day, I gave a presentation focused on best practices for transportation cycling and aimed at allying misgivings potential bike commuters might have about giving the pedal life a try.

Fred Rogers counseled that, in times of tragedy, one should always look  for the  helpers as evidence that all goodness is not lost, nor in vain. Drew Edwards’ Solomon Hitch and Dr. Lucy Chaplin are just such heroes. As Halloween Man, Solomon doesn’t patrol the streets fighting crime, journey toward a goal or away from danger, or planet-hop in search of adventure. He’s  beholden to no overarching mission, working in service of no agenda more elaborate than fixing the problem at hand. Lucy’s science may be a bit on the mad side, but it’s usually on the problem-solving end of things rather than stirring them up. Trouble seems to find them, delivered either directly by the troublemakers themselves or by those desperate enough to turn to Solar City’s creepiest and brightest for help. Fairy Tale,  the first story in  The Halloween Man Christmas Special  (available, for now, exclusively on  comiXology ) ,  finds Halloween Man called to the bedside of...

The public’s current awareness of dubious law enforcement killings of black Americans seems to date from Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, and the rise of Black Lives Matter in the ensuing protests. Medina’s story synthesizes the details of about a half-dozen of these tragedies into the vessel of Alfonso Jones, and uses the journeys of his shade to unlock a greater, longer, sadder history than most are aware of. Set to play the Old Hamlet in a hip-hop inflected high school production of Shakespeare’s play, Alfonso Jones is killed by a security guard who claimed to mistake the suit hanger in the teen’s hand for a gun. Instead of playing a ghost, he becomes one himself. The severed threads of his life – the crush he was shopping with and about to confess his feelings to, the soon-to-be-released incarcerated father he’d never met, and his friends and frenemies at school – carry on in various ways as he watches his name become famous around the world even as it’s dragged throug...

In a future wasteland, a family of four contends with familiar obstacles to make ends meet, eventually leaving the teenage children to care for themselves while their parents travel to find work just as their eldest discovers a wondrous ability and their youngest gets into trouble. Leila del Duca’s Afar draws from many recognizable sources and lovingly twists them into something unexpected that should reach new audiences. The parents, facing both the father’s unreliability and the mother’s bouts of depression, recall overmatched caregivers from fairytales whose struggles open the door to adventure for their offspring as well as well-meaning but often helpless parents from emotionally realistic sci-fi young adult graphic novels like Space Dumplins . The tale woven for Boetema and her brother Inotu is interesting in that it could easily play out in a more familiar world; the specific sci-fi elements have very little bearing on their relationship or how they interact with their world. Th...

Couri Vine #1: Young People for the Leader This is a fine introductory outing for Couri, combining tropes of children’s literature with good old-fashioned pulpy sci-fi. An outsider ripped from her everyday school & community life by revelations about her family and her world that she alone can resolve, Couri follows in the footsteps of Monica Huges’ Olwen in Keeper of the Isis Light with many of the lunar trappings of Paula Danziger’s This Place Has no Atmosphere. Lovise’s character designs are distinct and her linework approachable without being overly cute; rendering of sci-fi stables like robots and spacecraft bear recognizably classic influences, often with a whimsical twist. Panel structure is regular and easy to follow, generating some of its own vernacular for communicating speed and flow. Couri Vine #2: Journey to the Planet Earth Couri’s adventure takes her far from home in pursuit of her history and a way to rescue her grandfather as they tale takes on both the timeline o...

I was selected by my supervisor to attend the annual ESRI User Conference in San Diego this past June. Much geospatial fun was had, as was a surprising amount of fun with the marketing crew. Story Maps were on everyone's lips, and I set out to collect material to make one upon my return. Life ensued, as did laziness, but I've finally produced my first original Story Map, combining my interests in mapping, transit, beer, and some fun writing to string it together. View it below or click here to view it in a new tab.

In the tradition of graphic novel journalism such as Sarajevo, Fixer and Palestine, Rolling Blackouts takes the reader into a world touched on only lightly by the nightly news. Glidden chronicles her travels with friends in a journalism nonprofit as they follow the aftermath of the Iraq war from Kurdistan to Syria, picking up stories from those they meet along the way as well as from the group itself as they contend with what it means to be journalists, friends, and Americans in the modern era. The key to the tale is transparency; it seems that practically everything makes it onto the page in one way or another, and Glidden scrupulously details when dialogue comes verbatim from a voice recorder, and when it is condensed from multiple episodes into one. This comports well with the general behind-the-scenes nature of the action taking place. Even as the author discusses the challenge of making the work itself, she is presenting her journalist friends grappling with similar issues of the...

  Dare to Disappoint: Growing up in Turkey felt like it should have been a longer tale. Özge Samanci’s early ears are richly detailed; as the protagonist ages, though, the granularity of the narrative stretches out, with discrete events replaced by more overarching sketches of longer periods of time and emotion. This may simply be an artifact of memory: disjointed and episodic recollections of early years giving way to more comprehensive understandings of later phases of life. This flow breaks down, though, near the end of the book when Özge decides to break with her and her father’s expectations to pursue a career more meaningful to her. She reaches her decision point, but the audience is left with an inspiring moral on the virtue of risk-taking, but little evidence apart from the book in their hands as to how it unfolded for the protagonist. The narrative is snappy and funny, with an informed but child’s-eye view of the dynamics of Turkish society in the waning days of the Cold ...

This title was provided to me at no cost for review purposes by the publisher. Fears seem to share some properties with dreams, as both spring from similar irrational, twilight corners of the mind. While it's practically axiomatic that among the most boring things one can discuss is the weird things seen while asleep, I've long found discussing fears to be far more interesting and instructive. Unless one subscribes to the notion that they're somehow prophetic or expressive, a dream is easily dismissed as random in origin and meaningless without some kind of post-hoc rationalization. A fear, though, whatever its murky provenance may be, is important. Fears shape the way we act, which shapes the world. They can also be illuminating about their owner, as one's fear may be another's fancy. Krause explores 100 fears in all, each a tidy first-person narrative expressed in a handful or two of panels. The linework is soft and casual, colored as with watercolors, pairing wel...

After a phenomenon like Scott Pilgrim , anything Bryan Lee O’Malley did next would naturally invite comparison. Seconds certainly has some things in common with Pilgrim , particularly by way of personalities, and even in terms of conventions which replace conventional exposition with a pithy caption. Our protagonist, Katie, is seemingly the polar opposite of young Mr Pilgrim, though: a skilled overachiever, career-focused to the point of self denial, and about to open the restaurant of her dreams after years of work running Seconds, her first popular and well-regarded eatery. What she does have in common with the previous spawn of O’Malley’s pen is an unusual living arrangement — she lives in an apartment upstairs at Seconds — and an uncanny ability to adapt in all the worst ways to bizarre situations. O'Malley's characters are highly stylized, in a much-hipper-than-reality sort of way, but still able to convey emotion well. The story mechanic breaks the narrative at critical ...

David Smith is a sculptor at the end of his rope, having blown his moment in the spotlight of the New York art scene and possessed of little save his idiosyncratic set of promises to himself. While spending his last few dollars in a diner, he is joined by his uncle, who he soon realizes is not the man he remembers. Death, bound in human form until its last link to the living is broken, offers his host's nephew the power to make the shapes in his mind reality in exchange for a hard limit on his remaining time among the living: 200 days. By the end of the first part, David is a real character. Not simply a sad sack, nor merely a victim of his own introversion and iconoclastic tendencies, his backstory and path to the state in which we find him are crisply laid out, but not with the excessive precision often lavished on exposition to get it out of the way; the other characters draw these details to the surface for us as the tale progresses. His chance transformation into a viral video...

My familiarity with the Pixies' music is shallow at best, and nonexistent when it comes to Black Francis' solo work, so I can't speak to The Good Inn  as a work reflective of any lyrical tendencies. In fact, when the characters break into song (as they do occasionally), the tunes I found myself reaching for to make words into music in my head were nursery rhymes. Nonetheless, this is an interesting work, taking on shades of Stoppard and Gilliam in following Solider Boy as he traverses newly-minted fiction, lost fiction, speculative reality, and known reality. Based on what the introduction claims is the first known narrative adult film, now known only from stills and remakes, this tale in screenplay form fleshes out the skin flick by giving the male character a life before he comes on screen, and continues as he tries to move beyond it. It's convoluted and even confusing at times to be sure; I'll admit to backtracking more than once to suss out what was happening; e...

This post also appears on the Deep Stacks blog at  Round Rock High School Library . It’s not news that comic books, or at least stories and characters that were born in that medium, have become more and more visible over the past several years. Even if you’ve never darkened the door of your local comic book shop (which you should, even if — especially if — you don’t think you’d be interested), you’re doubtlessly at least somewhat familiar with the exploits of Scott Pilgrim, Groot, or Enid & Rebecca. But even with their renewed cultural currency, comics are not without their detractors. In recognition of this, the American Library Association's Banned Books Week 2014 is focusing on comic books and graphic novels which have have been challenged in our school and public libraries. The Guardian published an interview on Friday with acclaimed comic book writer and artist Jeff Smith in which he discusses his views on challenges to library collections and his feelings about his best...

The integration of the internet into day-to-day and now moment-to-moment life continually narrows the distinction between still relatively abstract actions mediated by the network and those taken apart from it. Stories told since the popularization of the internet, especially those about young people, often include an element of moral panic, a concern that the new facet of modern life will somehow damage or corrupt the innocent and impressionable. In In Real Life , Cory Doctorow spins a compelling tale of ethical reasoning and moral awakening out of several popular bogeymen of the past generation: Stranger Danger! Video Games! The Internet! (No drugs, though). His protagonist, Anda, is an authentically drawn girl gamer (MMO & tabletop) and budding coder, invited to audition for an all-female guild in a popular MMORPG. Recognizing her skill in the game, an elder guild member invites her to turn that ability into cash by disrupting the activities of other players who sell their in-ga...