Dennis O’Neil: The Nibbles Of Monsters
Hours and hours and hours phone talking with customer service for whatever’s gone wrong this time and the wrong gets righted — for a while. Then more and more and more. And things never stay fixed. And my soul (where/what ever that is) grows weary.
As a chap I once shared an office with — that would be our own Mike Gold — can testify, O’Neil is not a technology dude. Not big on toys, either. I just want the Whatever to do whatever task I need done and I don’t require a foot rub to accompany said task. Just, please, do the job and then, please, stop existing until I need you again.
Some of the niggly chores that have been eating my lunch are part of the process of publishing a novel in paperback. I thought I was finished working on that book, but…What! Amazon wants more information? I wonder if Mark Twain had these problems! (Actually, he probably did have a nineteenth century version of them. He did lose a fortune on a typesetting machine that never did work properly. Early instance of Malevolent Technology. One Missouri scrivener to another: I feel for you, brother.)
As of right now, what you’re reading is…I don’t know…48 hours overdue? Very late, anyway. If it struggles into print it won’t have given the editor time to do his job properly and that is an industrial strength no-no.
(The bottom of the page is rising slowly, slowly.)
I suppose that I should mention comic books somewhere in here. Not too long ago I was reminded that ComicMix is a comic book site. Problem is, what to say? A lot of you guys probably know more about the current comics scene than I do. And I don’t want to become one of those duffers who beatifies days of old. (When I was a boy, we had decent funny books!) And anyway, the superhero action seems to be concentrated in theaters, not bookstores. Big movie mojo. Finally, the long-awaited and gossiped-about Justice League flick is scheduled. (Some of us will tiptoe past the box office because we are not optimistic and we don’t want anyone to know we’re there.) Other comics-derived films are on the way, including the one I’m most curious about. I’ll heed the film folk’s example and call it Shazam, but you and I both know that it’s real title is Captain Marvel.
Have I done my duty? To comics? To what’s on the news?
No, not to the news. I considered writing about the domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, but I have nothing to add to what’s already been said.