Tonight I Dreamt that Someone Sent Me a Good Submission

The stories in my inbox are getting better. I accepted my first unsolicited submission for the next issue of Bust Down the Door. Hurray. It involves firearms.

I think I once saw a movie where one of the characters used a gun to do everyday things like turn the channel on the tv and make a baloney sandwich. I wish I knew if such a movie exists. Because if it didn't, I would steal the gag.

Some doofus keeps turning on the air conditioning at my work. Doofus, it is winter. Or is it fall now? I don't pay attention to such trifles. I just discovered that the air conditioning was on. I have been here for seven hours.

Yesterday, I finished Essential X-Men Vol. 8. I am sensing a severe drop in quality.

Essential X-Men Vol. 8 was written by Chris Claremont. Chris Claremont wrote the X-Men for sixteen years. Chris Claremont wrote 186 issues of The Uncanny X-Men. It was not called Uncanny in the beginning. I don't know when they started calling it Uncanny.

Chris Claremont also wrote one Giant-Size X-Men, possibly more Giant-Size X-Mens, many annuals that I won't bother to look up, a graphic novel which may have been the first graphic novel ever, and maybe some X-Men Christmas Special, maybe not.

The greatest Giant-Sized title was Giant-Sized Man-Thing. I have one of them. The second issue, I think.

Chris Claremont also wrote three issues of a new X-Men title where they dropped the Uncanny before quitting after having a disagreement with the editors. Maybe he went on an editor killing spree? Maybe not, but if I wrote the same comic for sixteen years, I would go on an editor killing spree.

Chris Claremont is not a very good writer. His dialog/captioning is very clunky.

I had an urge yesterday. I could not fight off this urge. It was the urge to write this dialog in my friend's livejournal replies section:

Fools! You have not beaten me! Freezing has only made me stronger! Somehow, this infernal cold has lowered the electrical resistance within my living circuitry! I sense the term -- superconductivity -- enabling my system to work at near ultimate efficiency! I'm thinking with inconceivable speed! Spells, concepts, theorems--my mind is ablaze with knowledge and insight!

He has not responded. I do not care if it wasn't related to his journal entry. I am still very disappointed.

Chris Claremont is awesome. I will destroy anyone who defies Chris Claremont's awesomeness.

Chris Claremont has a few moments of brilliance, like the Dark Phoenix Saga, although John Byrne may be responsible for this brilliance, or the John Byrne-Chris Claremont symbiote (John Byrne drew the comic for a while and co-plotted it, I think)

I have been buying all of the Essential X-Men volumes as they come out. They are released about once a year. They are gigantic phone book-like monsters and are cheap. They are printed in black and white (even though they were originally in color) and on toilet paper. They look awful. They are kind of like the Cerebus collections, except Cerebus is on decent paper and was intended to be printed in black and white.

The art from the earlier volumes didn't look as bad as the newest one. It's like this artist's penciling just doesn't work in black and white, although the inking may be to blame. It would be nice if Marvel Comics actually altered the pages so they would look nice in black and white. They did not. Marvel Comics is not nice. With this newest volume, I often cannot distinguish one character from another.

I have been buying all the Essential X-Men volumes to fill in the holes in my childhood. I loved reading X-Men when I was younger. There were so many things that I did not understand. The thing about Chris Claremont's X-Men comics is that you really need to read all of them from the beginning to know what's going on. He sometimes develops plots from things that happened ten years ago.

During my childhood, these monster books did not exist, so the only way to understand the comic was to buy all the back issues and read them with tweezers. But I never bought all the back issues and read them with tweezers because I was not a kid gazillionaire. Now there's not much of a collector's market anymore, so I could probably get Claremont's entire run for ten grand or something.

I like these monster books.

I think that an issue of X-Men was the first comic that I ever read. It had a fight between Sabretooth and Wolverine (or maybe it was Psylocke?). I did not like the issue. It did not make any sense. I was confused. I did not read another X-Men comic for like five years.

I think I started reading the comic regularly around the time that Chris Claremont's descent into insanity was very noticeable.

There wasn't really an X-Men when I started reading. There wasn't a team. Most of the members died and shit and got resurrected as children or Japanese ninja babes with tremendous breasts. I don't think Wolverine died. I think he was crucified and hallucinated for a year's worth of issues.

So there was no team. The comics were more like solo stories with the members of the team with supporting characters. I think the X-Men thought that their team members where dead or something. I have no idea.

I keep reading these monster volumes, hoping to get up to the point where I started reading the comic. I think this will happen next year. Or maybe I am delusional and it will be many many many years.

I just want to know what the fuck it was all about, even if I am old and wizened when it happens.