i am david brothers (dot com)

Hello, this is the fifth I am David Brothers newsletter! I took a break, had a grand time with friends, then came back to work and daily life and immediately crashed into a wall. I would like to politely decline this funk, but in lieu of that, I’m gonna write and exercise my way out of it. On a completely unrelated note, here’s a newsletter, which will hopefully not have another two month hiatus after this:

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four things of no particular relation:
–Death Stranding update: I have two more essays written about this series, but they don’t feel very newsletter-y. I’m just going to post them plain on the site here, starting toward the end of March. Stay tuned.
-KENTA Fan Club: March 5 was the anniversary of KENTA versus his mentor Kenta Kobashi. Similar to the Katsuyori Shibata vs Alex Coughlin clip from a previous newsletter, this is a great example of a student trying to overcome a teacher and that teacher trying to put their student in the ground. There’s a lot of unsafe stuff in here that doesn’t happen too often any more for really good reasons. It’s a classic NOAH match for sure. KENTA trying to pin his mentor with just a foot is amazing disrespect, but seeing him fail to hit the Go 2 Sleep at one point is a thrill too. You can feel the struggle. Seeing Kobashi’s Burning Hammer is a delight. KENTA setting up the Go 2 Sleep like it’s a Burning Hammer is one of several reasons why he’s my fave.
-Comic-Con Oakland: I’m going to be a guest at Comic-Con Oakland. ccOAK is a new show debuting this May. I’m really grateful. (Sorry if that’s not the right acronym, but it looked nice.) I won’t have any new work out, just books from last year (most likely) but I love working a table and chatting with people. Some real friends in this list of my fellow guests. Oakland has been really kind to me. Boy, I hope I can sell some books. Maybe I should make a Death Stranding zine? Another ultra-limited Brothers Books project.
-2026 plans: I’m trying to figure out what my year is going to be like. You know. Mental health-wise. Trying a new workout routine/schedule and making bike rides a regular thing on off-days. Drawing most days out of the week and trying to be a bit more structured with what I’m studying instead of flitting here and there. I’m finding a balance.

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you’re dead, I’ll be like you. you’ll be like me, I’ll be dead too:
I’ve written two-thirds each of a couple general essays about Romeo is a Deadman, the latest release from Grasshopper Manufacture. It was written and directed by the team of Goichi “Suda51” Suda and Ren Yamazaki. Neither of the pieces I wrote have hit a mark I’m happy with, though, so I should probably call them “drafts,” even though they’re pretty different from each other.

This newsletter is round three, then. The game is stuck in my head as something that’s worth writing about and something I’d like to write about, so it was just a matter of finding an angle for an interesting train of thought.

Romeo is a Deadman is kind of a funny game in that the combat is okay-to-good, the story is good, and the music and aesthetics are off the charts, and somehow that results in me having a really good time with it. The first thing I did after beating it was to start New Game+ on the harder Orange Chocolate difficulty, a step up from the default Milk Chocolate difficulty I  originally completed, so there’s definitely something about this game that’s hooked me. I just haven’t figured out a way to express exactly what it is about the game that makes it feel like more than sum of its parts in the way that it does to me.

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I ain’t happy. I’m feeling glad, though:
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the Gorillaz a lot lately. The virtual band fronted by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett (with musician Remi Kabaka Jr taking a more background but still vital regular role) has been a fave since high school and especially since Demon Days came out. I like each of their albums in their own way, and I probably don’t go longer than a couple weeks between spinning or thinking about something from the Gorillaz. I’ve been learning “Feel Good, Inc.” on guitar for basically a million years.

They have a new album out, their ninth. The Mountain. It’s about death and our relationship to it, and several of the features are from friends they’ve recorded with who have since died. They’re using unused vocal takes for features rather than simple rehashed verses, a nice change from the usual (aggravating) approach to posthumous collaborations. The album is partially inspired by the deaths of Albarn and Hewlett’s fathers and their shared travels in India, and The Mountain continues the delightful trend of every Gorillaz album sounding nothing like the other Gorillaz albums.

The Mountain sounds good after my first couple weeks with it, though I’m sure it’ll still grow on me in surprising ways as I digest the lyrics and music. I mean, I didn’t know the album made a perfect loop until after my first week with it, because I was so preoccupied with the obvious feelings it was sparking in me. I’m learning.

The diversity of the album is a nice reminder of how far-reaching Damon Albarn’s musical collaborations have been over the years, both within Gorillaz and outside projects like Rocket Juice & the Moon and The Good, the Bad & the Queen. His projects routinely deliver a mix of people I know well and folks I’ve never heard of, which makes them very interesting to me. I almost always have something more to chew on after finishing listening to a Gorillaz record.

After thinking about it for a while, I realized that my Gorillaz fandom satisfies a cratedigger impulse within me.

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hip-hop and comic books was my genesis, blah blah blah:
As a kid, one of my favorite things to do was check out the liner notes for the albums I picked up. From there I’d find out who my faves were friends with (as a kid, I figured anyone who made a song with someone else had to be friends) and spiderweb my way out from there, finding new and exciting people to listen to by way of a cosign from the artist that I like. This old approach parallels how we used to consume superhero comics, with editor’s notes and cameos that pointed the way toward new and exciting things or stories.

I found out about cratedigging as I got older, sifting through the oldest, dustiest, most asbestos-filled box at the record shop to find the one record that has a fire break or was the source for a tune. I love WhoSampled—even though you could make an argument for it being kinda like snitching from the right angle—because discovering samples reveals new dimensions of songs I love. There’s nothing like being in a store or hearing a car drive by and hearing something familiar-but-not. It’s like my brain skips a beat, and I have to find out what the gap between the familiar and the unknown that I’m suddenly hearing is.

Digging in the crates is, at its heart, research. It’s seeking satisfaction and indulging curiosity by way of learning something new, or adjacent to something familiar. It starts with a question and ends with putting familiar things in order or finding something new. Either way, there’s a measure of revelation involved.

I say “interesting” a lot, and I’m a little self-conscious about it. (It made me laugh  in recognition when a friend mentioned sharing that minor anxiety.) But the thing is, “interesting” is great word. It’s a fine compliment. If I see a thing and it makes me want to continue thinking about that thing, I reckon that’s a success.  And that is “being interesting.” Seeking things I find interesting has pushed me along in life, and introduced me to video games, music, movies, and culture I wouldn’t have otherwise found.

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I got curious and counted:
I say “interesting” eight times in this newsletter, including this sentence. I probably edited out at least six dozen other instances.

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from one thing, know ten thousand things:
Gorillaz is satisfying because it’s full of on-ramps and off-ramps. The nature of the project means that you may be pulled in by the familiar sounds of Yasiin Bey and Bobby Womack on “Stylo,” and then find yourself trapped by the notes of Little Dragon on “Empire Ants”. Bey and Womack got you in the door, and now you get to explore Little Dragon, too. Familiar on-ramp, interesting off-ramp.

I came into the self-titled Gorillaz album familiar with Del the Funky Homosapien and Dan the Automator because of underground hip-hop and Dr. Octagonecologyst, and came away from the album blown away by “M1 A1” and “Latin Simone (¿Qué pasa contigo?)” I wasn’t really hip to Ibrahim Ferrer in high school, you know? Similarly, I knew De La Soul going into Demon Days, and left that album interested in Neneh Cherry and Shaun Ryder. Funnily enough, I didn’t get into Damon Albarn himself until after Demon Days. He was just “the Gorillaz guy”; I didn’t know about his long career until I tripped over Blur.

Every album, a new find. Horizons expanded. New artists mean new subject matter, languages, ideas, and ways of being. New vibes. I rely on friends for music and movie recommendations in similar ways. The novelty of something outside my wheelhouse is cool, but so is the chance to add something to my rotation and learn something new about a friend and the art that they’re into.

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soy un vato bien tranquillon abajo de este porte malandrón:
A friend introduced me to Grupo RYE last year. I wrote about it in the previous newsletter, and in February, I used their song “Carnal” as the soundtrack to another season of Apex Legends highlights with the homies. I’ve done several of these now, for seasons 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, and now 27. I do them to practice editing for future video projects and intentionally mark some fun times with friends. Dual-purpose reps. Every video, I learn something new about using Adobe (spit) Premiere and get to re-live some good times.

Apex Legends season 27 (Amped): Rólate otro, carnal (youtube)

I didn’t realize it til I looked at the calendar, but this season of Apex was a real bummer in real life for me, though it was fun as ever with the trio, matchmaking depending. We ended up with a respectable four wins across 11/24, 12/8, 12/22, and 1/27. I missed a couple weeks due to travel, so maybe we could’ve gotten five? Or six…? I’ve had so many games with randos end up being one or two people hiding and unable to revive the squad that I’m always struck by how so many of our wins involve all three of us being alive, even if we get shredded in the final ring before lucking out and catching the W. It’s a good vibe. Teamwork, dreamwork, yada yada.

Looking back at these clips, my play style is “Hey, I think I can get away with this. I’m going for it” lately. A martial arts movie side character that’s capable of caution, but weak to his own killing intent.

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every day with morrissey is probably like monday:
The gameplay of Romeo is a Deadman is my on-ramp. It’s an action game that doesn’t really demand a whole lot from me, so I can successfully mash my way through or chase effective combos and win that way, if the mood strikes. There are elements and segments that are reminiscent of other games, most notably horror, which makes a few of the stages very nice departures from the others. In general, the visuals mash up several eras of video games into a shockingly coherent mix. The influences of the writers and artists are somehow more naked than naked, delivered in ways that are so blatant or obvious that they end up feeling positively conversational, and depending on your temperament, inviting. “So, what’s up with the elephant in the room?”

Instagram-ready quotes from Oscar Wilde open each chapter of the game, juxtaposed with an edit of the cover the London Calling by The Clash. A certain number of bosses and locations are named after songs by The Smiths. An ad in the mall stage (which feels like Dawn of the Dead [1978]) is rendered in a high-contrast style that, with the knowledge that Travis Strikes Again was partly inspired by Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, makes me go, “Oh, this feels like a middle-era Frank Miller nod.” One character does a Shining Wizard so hard that another character evaporates into the ether, something that hasn’t happened in decades in the world of pro wrestling, ever since Keiji Mutoh nerfed the technique for the safety of others.

At the end of the day, I think Romeo is a Deadman was a great success to me because it appeals to the cratedigger inside me. It feels like a game that has a lot to offer, a remarkable density compared to a lot of other things I play. It isn’t going to punish me like Elden Ring or blow my mind like Death Stranding 2, but it is going to sit in the back of my head, suggesting things for me to chat about with friends or research on my own.

Romeo is a Deadman is a game for people who know about pro wrestling and The Smiths and Leiji Matsumoto and indie video games and rakugo and and katsu and DIY electronics and zombie movies and so much Gundam that I’m honestly surprised it’s legal. You would think this makes it narrowcast when it comes to audiences, but it’s the other way. It’s a feast.

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a quick sidebar, featuring more Grasshopper/Suda51 context:
For a little more Suda51, check out this video by Kelzor Gaming on youtube about Killer7. It’s about 80 minutes and really digs into the game, breaking down the approach of Grasshopper Manufacture and the things that Suda51 and company successfully predicted in our world today. The video is a really fun ride, and very clarifying in the wake of Romeo is a Deadman. You can see the evolution from there (Killer7) to here, and how much more free the team feels to be incredibly self-indulgent while also making a fun video game to be sold.

I know the rep of Grasshopper Manufacture is that they make games that are fun but kinda janky, but they’re a great example of how free games can be, too. They make games that sit just outside the mainstream with an indie sensibility and attitude. It feels very good to have these kinds of games out there. Grasshopper’s lane feels like an interstitial place between major camps.

Killer7 predicted the political world we live in (youtube)

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psyche, that was all I had to say about Romeo for now:
I forgot to link this but I was reminded of how good a time it was recently—me and Nick Dragotta did the Off Panel video podcast with SKTCHD’s David Harper five months ago, trying to get people to buy Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil (available now at your local comic shop, evil and probably less evil online booksellers, and various digital places too).

I love stuff like this. I used to call it “live comics criticism” when I was the one asking the questions, but now that I’m on the other side of things…it’s the same. Rapid-fire interpretation. It’s such a pleasure.

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all the youtube links in this newsletter reminds me:
I can’t embed youtube videos in this newsletter because email clients strip them out, and then it just looks like I’m talking about nothing, instead of everything/nothing. I really am figuring this out as I go. I’m basically using this like a sketchbook, only for writing. That should be a thing—some kind of book you can put notes in. Anyway, enjoy the links and listening to them at your leisure. It’s like the old internet over here.

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listen to The Mountain:
I’ve only had the new Gorillaz album The Mountain for a couple weeks. I’m still organizing thoughts on the record, but if I had to review it in one sentence, I would say,

“Wow, the Damon Albarn who wrote ‘Tender’ with Blur really showed out on this album, huh?”

Here’s a short film they made to go along with the project. It’s kind of silly how well Jamie Hewlett can draw, isn’t it?

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it’s a cold world out there:
If you’re at a place in your life where you can help others, I think it’s a good idea. I got here thanks to the kindness of others at places like the Boys & Girls Club, and I imagine a lot of you have seen similar stuff growing up. I think supporting people working locally, both non-profits and more guerilla efforts, is a good idea. If that’s off the table, finding a bigger org can be good. I like Doctors Without Borders.

If that’s off the table, buy some Girl Scout Cookies from a Girl Scout face-to-face, outside of a grocery store or whatever they happen to be lurking with their boxes of cookies. It’s the season.

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stuff I wrote when I wasn’t writing this:
Retro Game Zine 2025 Annual is out! You can get it in print here or in Darren Shupke’s Patreon shop. I’m in there talking about Snatcher, one of Hideo Kojima’s early games, and how it felt to read about the game for thirty years before I finally played it.

February was pretty slim for me, but I saw some solid movies in January. Highlights included Ghost in the Shell (1995), 28 Years Later (2025), All You Need Is Kill (2025), 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026), and Katsuhiro Otomo’s Memories (1995). Getting back on the horse in March, starting with Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudí (1984). Gotta get back in a theater and write about a comic book at some point, too.

Story of my life: writing more will fix me. I would like to feel confident enough with video editing to do maybe six videos a year in addition to writing as the spirit moves, but that’ll come with time and reps.

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jumping jehoshaphat:
No, wait! More Larry David will fix me! That’s way easier!

V-J Day: Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness (youtube)

What was all that I was saying about a funk? Forget it! Depression is canceled, baby! Between Larry David and David Harper, Davids are always looking out for each other.

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That’s it.

Hello, this is the fourth I am David Brothers newsletter! I’m taking a vacation. I’m hoping to do a lot of figure drawing, practice with ink washes, finish a book a friend sent me (on paper!), and catch up on Tsutomu Nihei’s Tower Dungeon. Have you seen how he draws noses in that book? Like a vertical line and two periods? Unbelievable. Nihei is such a beast with a pen, and constantly evolving too. A dream. Anyway, here’s the newsletter:

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Four things of no particular relation:
-Katsuyori Shibata update: Katsuyori Shibata held a position as trainer at NJPW’s LA Dojo for some time, and trained some of the most interesting wrestlers in recent memory, for my money at least. Alex Coughlin was one of those guys. An injury took him out of the industry and into retirement, but not long ago, he gave one of my favorite pre-match promos. It’s around an hour and twenty-eight minutes into the press conference for G1 Climax 33 (linked to the time), and he lays out his whole story in such an engaging and sad way that I instantly became a lifer. He’s that dude. A little before that, Coughlin and Shibata met in the ring, student and teacher, as part of Shibata’s run as Ring of Honor’s PURE Champ. Revisiting the highlight reel is a good time, from the story they’re telling together to the individual feats they both pull off. Coughlin is much missed, a beast that could’ve become anyone and anything if not for injury.
-More Shibata: The thing about this kind of encounter between the two of them is that it’s a story I love a lot. It’s not good or evil, right vs wrong. It’s “I need to beat you to move past you” and “I need you to hit me harder than that,” with a light topping of a teacher giving his student a platform to excel. There’s a moment where Coughlin is giving Shibata a series of chops in the corner, and Shibata growls his way out of the corner, demanding one more good one.
-One More Good One: Whenever I play games with the homies, we usually end on “one more good one.” It’s so that our last game of Apex Legends isn’t a three-minute drop and loot session before getting annihilated. We don’t necessarily need a win, but we do need to feel a little effort. Competition is nice. It’s very satisfying when it hits. (We do want a win, though. Unload your guns when you see us.)
-Death Stranding update: a few sections down is around a thousand words, give or take, about the way music is deployed in Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. It’s spoiler-free, in that I don’t mention any characters or plot and am mostly just talking about walking around in a game, listening to music, and having some type of reaction. Please look forward to it.

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I see where you’re coming from, Brain, I disagree:
The way my particular brain chemistry works is that in a year where I saw beautiful friends, took my teen siblings to their first concert, and had four books come out, my main impression of 2025 was that it was a long, lonely year. This runs counter to how I feel about my relationships, family, and life, if you’ve ever heard me talk about that stuff. Life is good. I’m doing things. My brain just happens to vehemently disagree with my self on occasion, and drags us both into the mud.

But life is good. I am surrounded by art and artists. I am loved. There are a functionally infinite number of books for me to read before I die. Writing feels amazing. Lots of things are bad, but lots of things are good, too.

I’m working on it.

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$hort Dog, that’s Oakland, baby:
Here’s a picture of some birds in Oakland that I took before Christmas. I love living near Lake Merritt.

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By the way, those four books are:
–Time Waits, drawn by Marcus To & Marvin Sianipar, colored by Matt Wilson, lettered by Ariana Maher, and written by me and Chip Zdarsky. Chip is currently also writing Captain America despite secretly being Canadian!
–Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil, created by Nick Dragotta and I over the course of a few years. Nick, of course, is tearing it up on Absolute Batman. Tegan O’Neil gave us a great review. I’ve been reading her forever.
–Perfect Crime Party, an anthology project featuring a short comic about a young criminal who is haunted by her father (in a shonen manga kinda way) by Alissa Sallah and myself.
–All-Negro Comics, edited by Chris Robinson. I have an essay in here, and I love this project so much. FUBU pre-FUBU, you know what it is, especially if you’ve seen the prior newsletters.

I feel really grateful that I’ve gotten to do comics with friends, starting with Apollo KIDz with Caleb Goellner (of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Naruto, which is wild!) up through now. This is what I mean when I say that life is good. I’d like to do more.

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Breaking wrestling news:
I’m watching Pro Wrestling NOAH’s The New Year 2026 event on Wrestle Universe (the best wrestling app for the subscription price) while I write this to see what my beloved KENTA is up to lately. His new faction is called White Raven Squad, with a roster of the man himself, Tetsuya Endo, Ulka Sasaki, and HAYATA. They’re wrestling against Team NOAH, a team which does not feature KENTA and is therefore not as good as any team that features the Black Sun KENTA.

Look forward to me saying hyperbolic and borderline untrue things about WRS in the future. They’re a team of hard hitters and MMA maniacs, which feels like a perfect fit for NOAH, and leading a group is a nice evolution for modern-era KENTA. Honestly, they’re the best crew since Takeover, right? nWo can’t compete, DX can’t compete…who better?

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More NOAH The New Year quick reactions:
-The Good Brothers? I disagree.
-Tetsuya Naito in a NOAH ring is something else. The crowd cheering hard really made me smile. “Kirby is here!” vibes. I hope this works out for the Ark. Naito is in rough shape but still a star, and it would be nice to see this go to really interesting places considering the weight of his legacy.

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Writing about writing before you can read the writing:
Death Stranding 2 was a hard game to crack, writing-wise. I knew from the general thrust of the game that I’d have some kind of emotional reaction to write my way through, but (speaking generally) the game was aimed at its target in such a way that I took a full-spectrum lesson from it, not necessarily one thing I could narrow down into one essay. It gave me a lot to digest, which is the beautiful thing about art and something I’ve chased my whole adult life.

I’m less interested in talking about how weird and out-there Hideo Kojima and team’s writing is, in part because I don’t think it’s an entirely fair assessment when compared to other stories. However, I am very interested in talking about how those same things that feel out-there and weird meshes with the emotional resonance and storytelling techniques at play in the games. Basically, I think they’re normal. What’s a weirder name, Duke Nukem or Solid Snake? You know what I mean? I’ll probably come back to this with a real argument in the future.

Anyway, Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 are about a lot of things, with an exploration of human connection being the fundamental core that everything else radiates out from, and I wrote myself into understanding what I wanted to say. I found my way into talking about the second game by talking about the music in both games. In the first essay, below, I approached the music in a general sense. I focused on the needle drops as you approach new areas, which isn’t particularly spoiler-y or relevant to the plot. Then, in the second essay, coming later, I found my self digging into the soundtrack to a scene that made me cry (essay two, coming soon). That gave me the experience and perspective I needed to do a longer third essay about the greater themes of the game and series and how it made me feel.

My little Death Stranding 2 essay cluster. They’re all written and intended to run here, but I’m going to space them out to avoid spoiling a few friends who haven’t made their way through the game yet. I’m figuring the game out, not to solve it, but to understand it for my self, and the best tool in my arsenal for doing that is trying to write about it and seeing where that goes.

This is what I mean when I say writing is like breathing to me. I need to do it.

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On Death Stranding: it’s hard to fall believing
(Please listen to this Death Stranding playlist while you read this. There’s a lot of nice tunes from Low Roar and other bands.)

The Death Stranding series has a fascinating and cinematic approach to integrating music into the games. After a more traditional developer-controlled musical experience in Death Stranding, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach introduces a much-desired menu-based music player, allowing instant access to the songs featured in the game as the player, Sam Porter Bridges, wanders around the landscape. Players can also assign songs to the customized structures that dot the landscape, bursts of music that ring out as you pass by while carrying deliveries. My favorite feature of both Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 is how game director/music producer Hideo Kojima uses the soundtrack to create a pleasant moment at the end of certain missions or episodes. It provides a sense of grandeur and adds a little juice to a moment that would otherwise be remembered as Yet Another S-Rank Delivery.

Speaking generally, the average Death Stranding 2 gameplay loop involves going somewhere to meet someone new, connecting them to a network, and then taking packages from them to a new location off-network, with the intention of connecting the person at the new destination and then continuing on to the next. When you’re inside the chiral network, you can build high-tech roads and structures to help support your deliveries, in addition to taking advantage of battery chargers or other valuable utilities. A wonderful endgame experience in either game is zip-lining around a mountain range that previously felt impassable, an awkward number of boxes carefully balanced in Sam’s carrier. It reminds me of riding a bike downhill in the summer, when movement itself feels like the most important thing in the world.

Outside the chiral network, players are on their own. There are ladders, ropes, and climbing equipment to help Sam get around, and players do have some access to some battery-operated technology that can help carry packages. Once the battery runs out or players run into an area haunted by BTs, the supernatural obstacles of the game, things get a lot more tough in a hurry. Maybe the right choice is to leave a package behind and to prioritize delivering the more important ones. Maybe the move is to stash a fully loaded backpack out of sight and provoke a fight with the monsters or humans from a position of strength, then work your way back to your hiding spot later. Either way, something has to be done and you have to do it.

Expanding the chiral network requires reaching a new city or compound. While making deliveries, Sam must endure long treks through hyper-aging timefall rain, ghostly BTs that have breached into our world of the living, and the homicidal/suicidal terrorists Homo Demens. Upon reaching the beginning of the final leg of the current journey, the soundtrack triggers and a predetermined song begins to play. The song accompanies the player as they finish the delivery, eventually fading as the song or the moment reaches completion. Once the person has accepted the delivery and consented to joining the chiral network, the songs are then unlocked for the music player in the menu.

The majority of my history with music and video games is less about specific, engineered experiences like these, and more about music that was present while gameplay was happening at the same time. Does that distinction come across? Both approaches to music enhance the gameplay experience, but the execution and effects are different for me.

The boss theme “Scream” from Final Fantasy XIV, part of the Pandaemonium raid series, is a personal favorite. I rarely grind in games, but I did grind just to get a reward that let me play that song whenever I’d like. But I don’t love it because of the sense of accomplishment I felt beating thee raids, and eventually learning them well enough to heal other players instead of playing a purely damage-dealing role. I love it because the chorus is a banger and super easy to sing along to. The song helped make playing those stages over and over a delight instead of a slog. I feel similarly about Yoshimitsu’s theme from Tekken Tag Tournament (I made it my menu music in Tekken 8), or “This Is True Love Making” from Capcom vs SNK 2 (here’s a sick cover). These songs were there for really fun times in my life, and represent a kind of exuberance or excitement in my head. It’s a combination of a good song and good gameplay, but the song doesn’t quite feel like part of the gameplay.

The way the soundtrack is used in Death Stranding 2 has elements of that approach, in that you can listen to whatever you want whenever you desire, but that first hit of a new tune is almost always paired with a traversal experience. The storytelling is zeroing in on the feelings that come when the player crests a hill and sees the goal in the distance. The city may still be a mile or two away, but the way is clear from here to there, and this new tune provides the perfect walking around music as you find your way.

As a result, when I hear those songs again in other contexts—in real life, in the game, whatever—my first thought is often the warm feeling of accomplishment and a beautiful vista, rather than a pleasant blur of trial and error gameplay. It doubles the impact of those songs, weaving a burst of surprise or satisfaction into my memory of the song.

I spoke to my younger brother for a video about Death Stranding earlier this year, a conversation about where his and my interest in games intersects. He mentioned that hearing “Asylum for the Feeling” featuring Leila Adu by Silent Poets in episode two of Death Stranding felt like the natural end of the episode. There was still more to do, but the hard part was over.

His reaction makes me think that it serves as a kind of victory music, a sign that I’ve done whatever it is I set out to do. I really appreciate the fact that my brother having a similar feeling means that it probably wasn’t just me reading too deeply into the work. There’s something happening here that we’re responding to, despite the twenty-some years between us.

This style of needle drop is a remarkably effective technique, and my approach to the gameplay evolved as I began to look forward to those moments. Rather than rushing to the destination and dropping off my packages to get on to the next mission and make a series of numbers go up, the reward music compelled me to slow down, to take in the sights, to try to time my arrival at the city with the climax of the song.

The music made me want to find a way for my gameplay to better intersect with the art of the musicians, which was in turn intersecting with the art of the developers. All of which created an artistic experience in my head that was and remains unique to me, but is still shared on a certain level by millions of others. None of us took the exact same path, and it’s possible to miss the song queue entirely by taking a circuitous enough route, but the intention on the part of the developers is that we still share that strong connection between song and sense of accomplishment.

I want to savor the music in the Death Stranding games. I love a lot of the songs individually, but there’s nothing like that moment when a song triggers and takes a simple delivery from a mission to an experience. It feels like exhaling.

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If things are getting worse, then it’s good to help someone:
It’s still winter and it’s still cold. Do you have a food bank nearby? A shelter, something like that? They’re taking donations and orgs like this can be an easy way to help someone who needs it. Depending on where you live, there may be groups that aren’t non-profits helping too, if that’s more your bag. There’s someone helping, and if there’s not, maybe you and a friend or two can do something nice for someone else. Good things really only happen when we make them happen.

—

Rólate otro, carnal:
A friend of mine has been putting me onto some real tunes lately. I’d seen him and another friend talking about Health, an industrial noise/rock band, and thought it sounded interesting. I listened to their album Conflict DLC and “Trash Decade” made me feel like I got jumped on the first listen, and then “Don’t Kill Yourself” came around and sucker punched me as I was getting to my feet.

I’m a hip-hop guy to the core of me, but I’ve flirted with industrial over the years. I remember being a kid and playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert for the first time, still an all-time fave, and listening to “Hell March” as much as I could. My go-to is that I like songs that sound evil at first glance, and Health more than fits the bill. When they hit “I don’t wanna kill myself, but I don’t wanna live this way” on “Don’t Kill Yourself”? Whew, doggy. Yeah, that’s music, baby.

I like songs that are less evil and more of an overall good vibe too. Grupo RYE are a group of Mexican-American cats from Atlanta who specialize in mariachi. When I say they’re from Atlanta, I mean that they’re “shot a music video for their song ‘Carnal’ at Magic City” from Atlanta. They were chanting “ATL HO!” at a performance in Ibiza. Personally, I’m not from Atlanta, more from the country a bit further south than that, but these dudes are my people.

—

Further reading:
I don’t know how to write about music and video games. Before writing about Death Stranding 2, I asked some folks on bsky for nice essays about music and games. Cartoonist Gale Galligan shared these two, which are doozies. Great reads, the Untitled Goose Game one especially.

–VGM Review #5: “Journey” OST

–Untitled Goose Game and the Magic of Reactive Soundtracks

I can’t personally write this way, but what at thrill to read it. The expertise and perspectives are delivered so well here.

—

Happy new year.

—

That’s it.

Hello, this is the third i am david brothers newsletter!

I originally intended to make this a biweekly thing, then immediately sent two in a row and wrote a third. I’m trying to measure my pace so I don’t burn my self out and lose sight of what I’m trying to do here, so I made my self take a break. Wait, what am I trying to do here? Listen to this:

—

Four things of no particular relation:
–Katsuyori Shibata update: I watched Katsuyori Shibata vs Tomoaki Honma from 7/3/2016, Kizuna Road 2016, for Shibata’s NEVER Openweight championship. It’s a bruiser fest. There’s a good bit where Honma is asking Shibata to hit back, but elbowing him before he can. Shibata eventually answers with a flying guillotine, and Honma answers that with a brainbuster. Beautiful.
–Death Stranding 2: I went to a Death Stranding concert in LA and ended up writing three essays about the game that weekend. I don’t want this newsletter to be only about Death Stranding, and I have friends I don’t want to spoil just yet, so stay tuned while I figure out what to do here. I mean it, for real this time. I really do have three joints in the hopper! There’s a google doc and everything!!
–GES Draw Party: Do you do figure drawing? You should do figure drawing. It’s really pleasant, and sometimes you really nail what you’re going for and have a good day. GES Draw Party is one of my favorite ways to get some practice, especially their super-short bean fests with twenty-second poses.
–Elden Ring: Nightreign: I took a long break from Elden Ring: Nightreign right before Deep of Night came out, the extra-hard mode. I picked it up again with this week’s new DLC and hoo boy is the new Undertaker character a ton of fun. The fun of the game has really come back in a short period of time, though the long runs mean that I can only do a couple in a session. I wrote about Nightreign back in July. Knowing my luck, I’ll end up writing about it again, based on how much I like this DLC.

—

Brothers, Bowie, Byrne: Beloved Brotherhood
According to Apple Music, despite my top genre, as usual, being hip-hop, my most-listened artist this year was David Bowie and my second most-listened was David Byrne. Considering I named my first website “4thletter!” and this one “i am david brothers,” I did kinda laugh at the coincidence. The brand is beloved.

Bowie isn’t new to me any more, though I’m still discovering new-to-me songs. I found him in my late 20s or so and really latched on in my 30s. I’m very much a Station to Station, Diamond Dogs, Ziggy Stardust kinda guy, though as I’ve been listening to his work and filling out my knowledge gaps, I’m finding something to enjoy about all of it.

As a human being, as a (learning) musician, as a creative person, I found a lot to admire in Bowie. “I am not David Bowie, but we have the same initials” is a half-joke I say to my self sometimes, based on an old Pulp song. The cleanest way I found to express how I felt about Bowie at the time was that I wanted to feel as free to be David Brothers as David Bowie felt free to be David Bowie. That feeling has evolved over the years from deeply aspirational to a more broad, full-spectrum appreciation. I don’t really need the example nowadays, but I did need the nudge that his presence on Earth provided.

I listen to Bowie on shuffle a lot. I’m generally listening to albums if I’m listening to music, sitting with one artist through a project and then moving on to the next, whether I’m sitting around, on the bus, or working. But I like Bowie’s stuff enough—and have found interesting songs frequently enough from shuffling his work—that it’s almost like a nice grab bag of things I know well and things I’ll one day know well.

I’m not too surprised that Bowie was tops for me. I’ve been making comics with friends (buy Time Waits and/or Good Devils) and I’ve been getting used to the idea of signing comics after a lifetime spent behind the scenes. When I needed a cool signature that wasn’t my actual, real-life cool signature, I scrolled through a Google Image Search of his name until I found something I felt that I could make my own, but also borrowed a bit of his flavor for my self to enjoy on my own.

—

Rap music made me love obfuscation:
I’m realizing as I write this that I do this kind of oblique reference all the time. I have two tattoos, one for my hometown and one for Oakland where I live now. The Oakland tattoo is in the same font the Golden State Warriors used when I became a fan of that team. The hometown tattoo is in the same font the Atlanta Hawks used when I watched them as a kid. It’s not a big secret. I don’t mind telling people when they ask about them, but I think I do like having my inside/outside jokes when I can get them.

—

Visiting a new church:
David Byrne is more new to me, but it turns out we have the same initials, too.

I know the Talking Heads, in the sense that I have sung along with their songs on video games here and there, but I haven’t dug into them the same way I have Bowie, or Joni Mitchell, or whoever. A friend showed me David Byrne’s film True Stories (1986) last year, and I came away from it really impressed…with John Goodman, who I loved in his role. Don’t get me wrong—I thought Byrne was great and the movie was interesting, and it stuck with me for a while. But whenever I thought about it, I’d think about certain aspects of Goodman’s performance that struck me more than Byrne’s direct contributions.

That doesn’t mean that Byrne was far from my mind, though, and when I saw that he was coming to town to perform a new album, I reached out to the friend who showed me True Stories. I was thrilled to hear that they were going to the show and got a ticket next to them. I basically didn’t go to concerts really at all until 2021, and a big part of the whole experience for me is experiencing the faves of my friends through their eyes. What do they respond to, what trivia do they know, what’s their relationship to this band and their music? Everyone’s a critic, if you live your life the right way.

The show was my motivation to get familiar with Byrne, with a focus on the upcoming album when it dropped. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but I spent time listening to the Talking Heads, and was really blown away by the performance of American Utopia (2020) that Spike Lee shot for HBO. I assumed I’d like the music at the show, but I was starting to figure out the finer points of his work that appealed to me. A small list of “Oh I hope he plays this.”

The new Byrne album Who Is The Sky? came out in September and fell on me like a ton of bricks. I went into it cold, not reading any interviews or doing anything but listening to the exuberant lead single “Everybody Laughs.” I found the album very agreeable, in the sense of “You know what? This guy sounds like he was very recently depressed and is working through it.” Which is projection, and I knew it was projection, until I got to “My Apartment is My Friend,” which is the most I used to be depressed song I’ve ever heard in my life, a phrase I mean in the most admiringly complimentary, real-recognize-real way that I can muster.

“My Apartment Is My Friend” hit me in a metaphorical big flashing red boss weak point button that I didn’t even know I had. I live a couple thousand miles from family, and while I have great friends here in the Bay and elsewhere, it’s still sometimes quite lonely, even after all this time. It’s one of those unsolvable problems—life is what it is, and you gotta keep on living it. You do what you can.

One thing I’ve done is really try to make my apartment into my friend. It’s been a pretty grim year for mental health, but I know if I push, there’s someting in here that’ll get me back on my fight. I need to draw, write, read, fight, or play my way out of my funk, treading water long enough for my brain to start acting right again. Part of that means making things convenient, like finding a rice cooker that works for one, instead of a family. A bigger part of that is making things feel good, like owning a purple couch.

(Years later, I spilled paint on that coach and had to replace the cover. And then I did it again. It’s green now, 12 years and two covers after I got it.)

The thing about “My Apartment Is My Friend” is that I never really thought of my own situation that way, but after I heard it, it’s absolutely true and applies to me. It’s a light animism, an endearing anthropomorphism, and I really appreciate how Byrne apologizes for being sad, but still proud that his apartment is his friend.

Explaining this, it sounds like the saddest thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a way of coping, of wrenching my life onto a track I enjoy more than the one my brain sometimes leads me down. I listened to this song and I felt happy that Byrne found his way to cope too.

I was impressed with the concert this past November, from the dancing to the design. I was thrilled that he performed not just “My Apartment Is My Friend” (fan video) but also “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” my favorite tune off American Utopia. In that film, he explained that he originally wrote the song from a place of anxiety:

About a year ago, I invited a high school choir in Detroit, Michigan, to do an interpretation of this next song. The song’s called “Everybody’s Coming to My House.” (audience cheering) Thank you. And in my version, and that’s the version you’re gonna hear… (scattered laughter) It…it kinda sounds like the singer is not sure how he feels about everybody coming over to his house. And you can sense, although he never says it in the song, you can sense that he’s thinking, “When are they gonna leave?” (audience laughing) In contrast, their version… And this was kind of a profound thing for me. They didn’t change a single lyric. They didn’t change the melody, and yet their version has a completely different meaning. Their version seems to be about welcome, inviting everyone over, inclusion. I kinda liked their version better, and I didn’t know how they did it. Unfortunately, I am what I am. (audience laughing, cheering, applauding) Not sure how to take that applause.

I found this really endearing. It was easy to see my self in it. Someone at work once called me the most anti-social social butterfly she knows, and I totally got what she meant as soon as she said it. I can turn it on until I can’t, so I totally grasp how “Everybody’s Coming to My House” is sometimes “Everybody’s Coming to My House! D:”, even if you’d rather it be “Everybody’s Coming to My House! :D” every single time. I am what I am.

With that said, he did follow “Everybody’s Coming to My House” and close the show with “Burning Down the House,” so…I feel like he’s trying to tell us something about overstaying our welcome.

—

I accidentally organized my life so that everything is reps:
Similar to David Bowie, David Byrne is another guy that’s remarkably comfortable in his skin to me, with a clear idea of what he wants from art and an open mind when it comes to the alchemy that happens between music and performer. Getting to know his work to the extent that I have this year has been a real pleasure, whether I’m recognizing a kindred spirit or puzzling out my reaction to unfamiliar tunes. “Who Is The Sky?” is definitely my fave amongst his catalog so far, but I have a lot of learning to do.

—

I don’t really have a better place for these semi-relevant digressions:
-Speaking of concerts, the Gorillaz are touring next year, including two days in LA. They’re one of my favorite bands and I’ve never seen them live other than on a livestream, so let me know if you see any good banks to rob. The new album is about coming to terms with death and dying, and features appearances from their deceased friends. I’m usually vehemently anti post-humous stuff but this one feels respectful in a way that (for instance) that one robot in Aliens: Romulus (2023) didn’t.
-Seeing music through the eyes of my friends—did you ever go to another church when you were a kid? It’s the best analogy I have for the experience, visiting a place where the rules for everything are different and you don’t know the history. I hesitate to use the word intimate for this kind of sharing, but it does feel deeper than just hanging out to me. I’m always grateful when people meet me on this level.

—

Other things I’ve written over the past while:
-I double-featured Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986) and Jay Kelly (2025) and wrote about both of ’em. They’re very different movies but it was a fun compare/contrast.
-Scattered thoughts on One Battle After Another (2025), including a detail about black hair that touched me and is probably also a bit of projection. I dunno. It’s been a long month.

—

It’s good to help if you can:
I don’t have any friends on Kickstarter at the moment, at least that I can recall. If you’re in the giving mood, let me suggest the Alameda County Community Food Bank here in the Bay or the West Valley Food Pantry down in Southern California. Better yet, you probably have a local food bank or similar outfit near you. Someone over there is helping people. If you can’t help out directly, try to donate money or attention and spread the word. Every little bit helps.

—

That’s it.

Hello, this is the second i am david brothers newsletter!

If I’ve rigged it right, replies to these emails go to me directly. How long should these be? Should I pick one subject and stick to it? Is there anything beautiful left in the world? Is the new Danny Brown album good? Did I remember to tick Open in a New Tab for all these links? These questions and others go unanswered below.

—
Here’s four things of no particular relation:
–KENTA vs Satoshi Kojima at Wrestle Kingdom 15: I have a lot of affection for Bullet Club KENTA. KENTA is probably my favorite pro wrestler, and this era featured effective heel tactics and backstage promos that have me convinced KENTA took a ton of improv classes while WWE was wasting his time. He was a jerk as a young guy, but in his middle age? He’s a monster. His entrance tune Cicatriz is a good workout tune too. I wore a KENTA shirt to the signing yesterday.
–I have been slacking on finishing painting a model kit for over a month now. I just need to paint Hyaku-Shiki’s chest blue! Get on with it. I’m doing the entire kit drybrushed over black primer, for a nasty metal look. I have a hunch it won’t photograph well but it’s looking good. When I do it.
–Death Stranding 2, (from Hideo Kojima, et al.): I sorta-kinda beat this in the middle of the night on Twitch the other day. I’ll have thoughts on this next time, but my shortest, spoiler-free take is that Hideo Kojima saw what Konami was doing with Metal Gear and decided to show them the limits of imitation. I’m talking David Mazzucchelli drawing Batman: Year One compared to the last time I myself (a fellow David) tried to draw Batman.
–I’ve got just enough Chrome tabs open that youtube videos only play with a choppy framerate. There is no lesson for me to learn here because they play fine on my TV and my phone, so I’m gonna keep on stacking tabs until the sun turns cold. It’s you or me, Google, and it ain’t gonna be me.

—
With a Triple Take, my confidence explodes out of control:
I’ve been playing Apex Legends for a few years now, almost twenty of the “seasons” of the game. It started as a solo thing I did during the pandemic to be doing something instead of nothing and eventually morphed into the Monday Night Game With the Trio. Parallel to that, I’ve been learning Adobe Premiere for video editing for various reasons, mostly talking about comics or video games online.

I’ve been merging the two interests by making a little highlight reel—we’re okay, these are just nice bits and wins to celebrate—set to music. It’s not quite full AMV status, but I’m always thinking of anime music videos and (don’t laugh) Koyaanisqatsi (1982) when working on these. “What technique do I need to know to get this idea across?” is heavy on my mind, and that movie really rearranged my brain when I finally saw it.

I finished the video for Apex Legends season 26 a couple days after the season ended, blending my footage with their footage into what’s hopefully a pleasant sequence. Either way, it’s great practice and a good vibe, similar to how editing the Mangasplaining podcast (working on the backlog!) is mostly about listening to my friends laugh while they talk about comics.

Here’s “Apex Legends, season 26 (Showdown): Have you heard iron sound?”, featuring Alafía’s “The Blacksmith.”

“Apex Legends, season 26 (Takeover): Have you heard iron sound?” [embedded video]

On to the next. I’ve been slacking on playing a bit on my own, but seeing how my friends are performing makes me want to start getting reps in again. Luckily there’s 25 hours in a day.

—
Tens of people have been asking, what is David genre:
I recently read Victor Santos’s Ginger’s Revenge, a one-shot story published on Panel Syndicate. It’s a story about a teen girl who has turned herself into a killing machine to get revenge on her absent father, who has himself become a major figure in organized crime. It’s set in the United Kingdom, so guns are treated with all due respect, and it is a fairly dense 57 pages.

I think I’d like to write about it at length in the near future, because I had a hoot of a time reading it. A “hoot” is a term critics use when a book keeps pushing all their buttons and they spend as much time laughing as reading a story. Do non-critics know about this? Calling a story a hoot is one of the highest honors.

I’ve been joking about how some stories are “David genre” for more years than I remember now. Enough that friends and readers have brought me books they think might be David genre and been absolutely right, even if not for the exact reasons they imagined. It’s a fuzzy category because I’m a fuzzy guy, but the loose idea is that it’s something like John Wick (2014) or The Killer (1989), but also like Jiro Taniguchi’s A Journal of My Father, or The Wrestler (2008), or Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail. I can do one of those conspiracy wall things when discussing the appeal of any of this stuff.

David genre is about masculinity and growth, complicated father-and-child relationships, and people dying in acrobatic or inventive ways. It’s the end of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” when The Misfit says, “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

The stories aren’t dumb. They may be direct or unsubtle, or maybe I’m responding to a perceived subtlety in a mostly unsubtle work, but there’s real texture there. Not really a lot of sex, I guess, now that I’m listing things off. Wonder what that’s about…?

Anyway, David genre is a very tongue-in-cheek thing, basically “hey this seems like something you’d like” from my friends, but it’s been fun trying to discover the edges of it for my self, what qualifies as a David genre story and what’s just a cheap holiday in somebody else’s misery. “Writer, know thy self,” right? What do I like and why?

Ginger’s Revenge is a great example of a David genre book, from the storytelling on down. I’m the son of a single mom, so there’s a real charge to fatherhood revenge tales, even if my own relationship with my father is good. It’s not a clear-cut good versus evil story, a conceit I think is pretty lousy in stories about normal people. Ginger isn’t perfect and her father isn’t Lucifer. She is tremendously competent though, a power fantasy I truly enjoy. She came to do a job and is focused on the job. There are other bits and pieces throughout here that click with me, elements of hard boiled storytelling and more extreme action stuff.

The visual storytelling is extremely David genre. Santos is working with a limited palette, making Ginger’s shock of orange hair a compelling design element. Other colors squeeze in as needed—blood red, moody yellow, a very appealing tracksuit green—but the comic feels great, like a speedy black & white comic even with all the color. There’s something special about black & white comics that really play with spot blacks and contrast, and Santos has an excellent grasp on both. The color isn’t icing on the cake or a flourish. It’s something more substantial than that that I haven’t put my finger on yet. It’s like a spoiler on a car, maybe. It has great aesthetic appeal that sometimes obscures what the functionality it brings to the total package…? I’m figuring out how to say how much and why I like this still.  That’s not quite it. To be continued.

Ginger’s Revenge is an excellent example of the David genre, and I’m probably gonna have more to say about it soon. Please start using David genre in conversation with friends and family so that I can get some leverage in Hollywood and wherever it is they make comic books these days. I want to curate something.

—-
I don’t have a good subtitle for this one but it’s a pleasant anecdote:
In the last newsletter, I mentioned having a signing with some fantastic artists. James Harren ended up not being able to make it, but Nick Dragotta and Daniel Warren Johnson came to Oakland’s very own Cape & Cowl Comics for the signing. Getting a face-first look at what Absolute Batman means to people was really enlightening. There were new readers, lapsed readers, and ones who were just like, man, this is the perfect escalation or evolution.

Absolute Batman was definitely a huge deal at the signing, but it was nice to meet readers of Time Waits and Good Devils while I was there, and especially people who picked up All-Negro Comics. A few of them mentioned that I’d talked them into it back in August, which is amazing. Variants and cape comics are buzzy right now, so independent, creator-owned work can be tough to market. It really means a lot when someone walks up and say that they catch what you’re throwing. I was one of several people who told DWJ that Do A Powerbomb! made me cry over the course of the day. (I don’t write tearjerkers, but people said nice things to me too.) A good story is better than just about anything, is what I’m saying. Connecting via art.

The signing ended up being seven hours, from 1400 til just after 2100. I’m typing this on Sunday evening and I’m still beat. (I did technically go for a bike ride earlier today though.)

My first signing ever was the Image+ release party at Cape & Cowl ten years ago, and I’ve done a few cons and a couple signings since then. I’m still working with single digits here, and more than anything else, it’s always really nice talking to people about comics and things they like. I was really feeling it by the end, and I really need to do a better job of remembering I have an occasionally bum knee in the moment, but man, the good vibes were off the charts. I drew a lot of Snoopy heads for a lot of people. (You gotta be a real brave soul to draw Batman next to these dudes.)

Another reason I feel fortunate in life in general is that I’ve made friends with people who are ludicrously good artists but still very free with their time and experience. I’m always mooching tips off people, and I like seeing them work with readers too. A highlight of the signing was seeing a ten year old girl with a sketchbook held close to her chest and getting to flip through it. That’s the stuff that gets me and keeps me hyped up about comics.

We hit the Art of Manga exhibition earlier that, my second time seeing the exhibit at the DeYoung and first time since it opened. It was medium-high packed at ten in the morning over a month after it opened, which was great to see. I was trying to profile the crowd, seeing if younger readers were responding to Jiro Taniguchi or who was blown away by Mari Yamazaki. I didn’t learn anything though. It was really mostly just looking at people and making up stories about them in my head. “Oh that kid would probably love Hotel Harbour View. That old lady, she seems like a real One Piece fan.” Bad methodology but I saw a bunch of people with sketchbooks walking around.

I had a good time on Saturday. Please buy one hundred thousand copies of Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil at your earliest convenience so I can do it again.

—
Here are some quick hits for you to check out:
–Claire Napier’s Cosy Witch Book (Brutal) chapter 1: I’m a Claire Napier fan. There’s a drawing of a house in here that’s great, and “It was a dark and normal night” is the kind of caption that makes my eyes narrow and makes my interest pique.
–Robert Wilson’s “Dreamhouse”: The Kickstarter for Robert Wilson’s graphic novella “Dreamhouse” is a good one. Get in there. A24 is a good point of comparison for fans of that lane of scary stories. Unrelated to “Dreamhouse” beyond a craft level, I bought this screenprint of the best mecha in Gundam from Wilson a long while back and got it framed. I really dig it and like his work. Please give the “Dreamhouse” Kickstarter a long look.
–Giannis Milonogiannis’s sketchbooks & new game: Artist and game designer Giannis Milonogiannis has been a creator to watch for years. Old City Blues is a favorite. Such clean, cool designs. You can download his sketchbooks if you scroll down here a bit and you can download Birdcage, a story-driven arcade shooter, on Steam a little later this month. Wishlist it. It looks dope. I am very bad at these kinds of games but I’m gonna cop this.
–Lupe Fiasco’s “WAV Files”: “WAV Files” is a song where the sea, stars, and trees apologize for their role in being slave ships, carrying them on their waves, and twinkling on them from above. Listening to nature apologize and beg forgiveness is a nice train of thought. There’s a roll call of slave ships in the middle of the song that made me feel pretty bad (complimentary).

—
Actually I want to zoom in on that one a little bit:
I liked the trees portion of “WAV Files” a lot, actually. There’s something about the apology here that’s really stuck with me, and Lupe’s delivery throughout the song is great, but really clicks here for me.
Summon the forest
Talkin’ to trees, “Now, how could you be in the chorus
With something so horrid?
You became boards for the floors and the doors of the warships”
Anthropomorphic, the forest returned with a match
Made from itself and said, “Burn us with that”
Then left again and came back with a axe
“We can serve you as furniture or furnace us black,” ayy

—
If you haven’t had enough, here’s a few thousand more words:
–I wrote about Jorge Jimenez & Matt Fraction’s Batman #1 for Steve Morris at Shelfdust. I take what feels like a big swing but your mileage may vary if you aren’t an ’80s baby like me.
-I’ve been doing letterboxd as a way to warm up. I started with a rigid format and now I kind of just do whatever, like a thousand words on a few aspects of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025). I’m usually good for a couple reviews a month.
–I mentioned Mon Oncle (1958) last week. I forgot that I said it could momentarily cure depression when I wrote about it. It’s true though.

—
A medium-length bike ride the day after a long signing…I did this to my self:
The new Danny Brown is good btw. He’s the latest rapper I enjoyed when I was younger who ended up finding some kinda peace as they got older. It’s great when black dudes get to a stage where life is good.

That’s it.

Hello, this is i am david brothers’s newsletter!

An awkward name, but is it a memorable one? Will I be able to hit a weekly pace? What kind of newsletter will this be? How stripped back and lo-fi can I make it? Let’s find out together.

—

Here’s some stuff I liked recently:
–Mon Oncle (1958). Banger comedy. Wish I heard of Jacques Tati as a kid.
–Friendship (2025). Banger comedy for completely different but also similarly awkward reasons.
-David Byrne’s American Utopia concert film, directed by Spike Lee. Team Beloved stays winning.
-Shinsuke Nakamura’s King of Strong Style: 1980-2014. Please…please…let Nakamura be Hiroshi Tanahashi’s final opponent.
-Charlie Huston’s Catchpenny. This guy’s prose is really pleasant. I’ve been a fan for ages.
–Death Stranding 2. More on this soon.
–Absolum. Someone said “influenced by Streets of Rage 4 and Dragon’s Crown” to me and I woke up a week later with hours of co-op time logged with a friend. Great game. Had to make myself put it down at one point.
-Katsuyori Shibata vs Yuji Nagata during New Japan Pro Wrestling’s 2014 G1 Climax 24. Black trunks forever, but Nagata really brings it.
-I got a bike, after eight years without one. Turns out the wind in your face is still a great feeling!

—

This is some stuff that’s been on my mind:
The ways we experience video games and difficulty is something that’s really interesting, in part because the specific ways we usually discuss it online are kind of insufficient to me. It makes for a strange experience as a reader, with tomfoolery like arguing against an essay you vaguely agree with because the way they approach the subject is repellent. Crossing your arms, “Not like that.” And so forth.

As an example (with peace and love!!), I didn’t much like this essay on the Innerspiral blog by Alli, titled “Difficulty Isn’t Everything.” It sorta lost me by the end of the first paragraph, but I saw it through to catch the perspective and follow the conversation. I did like this essay on a tangentially related wave by Chris Person on Aftermath, “I Love Silksong Even When It Bugs Me”, which is about a friction in game I don’t even plan to play. (I didn’t really play the first one.)

I think “I Love Silksong Even When It Bugs Me” succeeds by drilling down into specific experiences in Hollow Knight: Silksong, while the other essay falters due to being so broad that it just barely coheres. “Difficulty Isn’t Everything” has an aside about how difficulty is the result of capitalism and we shouldn’t prize it so highly accordingly, and that’s not wrong, but it ain’t exactly right enough to be true, either. It feels a bit like arguing against the worst possible person’s points on a subject, like a weird detour in an argument I’d like to understand better.

I liked one, disliked the other, and sharing both of them with friends who share a variety of perspectives with both pieces led to an hour or two of good conversation about disability-related accessibility and basic access, elitism, difficulty, personal capabilities, and the importance of arguing your points well, rather than trying to cover everything in one big whack. I came away feeling the same away about the pieces and their perspectives, but bouncing those ideas around with my own and those of my friends for a while made for a very enlightening and good time.

I think these two were a good point of comparison because they aren’t talking about the same thing at all, outside of the general idea of a conversation about difficulty. It’s more like, these two are tackling difficulty from different angles, and one was successful than the other for me in ways I didn’t expect, due to my lack of familiarity with Hollow Knight.

I think the crux of my dissatisfaction with the overall difficulty argument is that, for the most part a lot of it feels like jabbing at easy targets or strawmen, as if normal people don’t play these games too. It doesn’t always feel like a real argument online so much as a bloodletting where two sides take aim at the worst of each side. It’s good to get granular on this conversation. I think difficulty as a concept is frequently so broad or personal that we aren’t always talking about the same thing either, but I’m grasping the argument better than I have been. I plan to keep reading essays from both sides and seeing how things go, because I heard once that if you keep touching a hot stove, you eventually develop an immunity.

Me, I just think it’s good if there’s games for everybody, including games that are made for people who need to be punished in order to have a good time (sickos, with peace and love). That game Absolum that just came out, it has an Assist Mode with some pretty nicely varied options for making the game easier/more exciting for yourself, which was cool to see even though I mostly just play with default settings on almost every game. It does a good job of cleanly expressing what kind of game it is and who it’s aimed at, even if it doesn’t scratch the same sicko itch as, say, Sekiro.

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Picking this thread up again a few weeks later, because I started writing this newsletter in the summer when I watched Mon Oncle and am finally finishing it in the fall:
After spending an hour streaming Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for the first time in a while, just running through some familiar challenges and exorcising a long day, a different difficulty-related question came to mind: what makes the difficult games still fun once you’ve learned the fight that was so difficult in the first place? Sekiro is still a challenge, but now I fight Isshin Ashina on purpose for fun, not because I’m trying to climb his mountain and complete the game. There’s something that draws me back to this game in particular.

FromSoftware is good at making fights that are always a threat, but once you grasp the threat, you can dance around it. Ten, fifteen minutes into my stream, I was remembering old tricks, taking big risks that would mostly pay off, and making things harder on myself with different items. I mostly play without buffs and just swordplay, but I wanted to mix it up and play with some effects more. I kept falling back on old tricks or finding out that my big idea was actually just a good way to get triple smacked by the Corrupted Monk.

It’s still punishment, but punishment of a different stripe, right? The risk of taking a big L is always going to be there, but the nature of the achievement when you win has changed. I don’t think you can separate the knowledge check and DPS check aspects of these fights. “Do I know what’s going on enough to survive the fight?” and “Can I do enough damage to kill the boss before they kill me?” are still the foundation. But completion adds a third pillar.

Honestly, it’s probably similar to the ghosts in Mario Kart or something. “Here’s what I did last time. Can I do better this time?” Doing a 5K again and again, shaving time. It doesn’t quite feel like that, but it’s gotta be in the ballpark.

Anyway, it turns out Sekiro is comfort food, similar to Tekken. I felt good after playing in a way that I usually don’t even after playing other games that I enjoy greatly. Great games to toss on for five, ten, twenty minutes or a few hours after work on a Friday night. Speaking of, my, look at the time…!

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Okay, here’s some more stuff to check out:
-I like Ben Passmore’s work, and his new book looks good. Cheryl Klein speaks to him at PW in brief about his new book.  Check out his Instagram too, he does this weekend culture Q&A bit that I try to catch each week.

–Final Fantasy: The Ivalice Chronicles came out recently. It’s great, a worthy remake/remaster of an all-time favorite game. I’ve been playing it on Tactician difficulty, less for sickos reasons and more because I think FFT is probably my all-time most-played game outside of the Madden franchise circa ’94-’08 and NBA 2k ’10-’16 or so, and switching it up sounded nice. I breezed through Dorter Slums, a notorious early difficulty spike, and then got bopped in a random battle right afterward. I’m having a great time. It’s like putting a puzzle together in a new configuration but still quite achievable. I hate grinding, so I’m really discovering the limits of my cleverness. I don’t think I’ll get spoiled on this one, so I’m really spacing this one out, just doing a couple battles a week.

Do me a solid and pick these up:
–Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil one-shot: Since 2021 or so, Nick Dragotta and I have been doing little comics, homages to our faves and fresh tales both. We put them together in a package called Good Devils, named after the opening story in the mix, and Image Comics published it. We’re grappling with Fist of the North Star and ducking Hajime no Ippo in this one. Get it from your comic shop, as an ebook, or on the Hoopla library app, my main way of reading comics. I chatted with James Boyce of the FAQs Project about it, and Nick and I both talked to fellow Team Beloved MVP David Harper for Off Panel.
–Perfect Crime Party: This one is a collection of stories about the perfect crime. Not a murder you get away with—softer stuff than that. It has a short story that was drawn by Alissa Sallah and written by me, and comes via Iron Circus Comics. You can check out more of Alissa’s work on the VIZ one-shots platform. She did one called “Sun Tribe: Waffle Shack Index” that’s a lot of fun. Our two stories are very different from each other, too. She’s got range! Follow her on instagram.
–All-Negro Comics: This one was edited by Chris Robinson, and published via Image Comics. I contributed an essay to it, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it at all. You can listen to a podcast conversation between Chris Robinson & James Boyce of the FAQs Project here.

Here’s something that really blows my mind:
Years ago, I was on staff at Image comics, and one duty I ended up with was running a magazine called Image+, sort of a catalog/preview/hype machine. We did a launch party for it at the then-newly founded Cape & Cowl Comics in Oakland, California. It was a nice time, and certainly the first time I was the center of attention in that specific way.

Years later, ten of ’em in fact, and Cape & Cowl is celebrating their anniversary on November 8th, and I’m re-invited! Nick Dragotta and I released Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil via Image Comics in October, and it seems like people dig it. (I’m hoping we eventually do Absolute Batman numbers, personally.) Nick’s coming to town to celebrate the release, and Daniel Warren Johnson and James Harren are coming with him.

Cape & Cowl puts on a good show. I’ve been behind a table at two of their Cape & Cowl Cons, been to a couple drink & draws, and did a big signing there with Chip Zdarsky for Time Waits. (We wrote that one together. Marcus To drew it.) I’m looking forward to the event and hanging out over there a bit more. It’s an easy bike ride for me.

I’m saying, check out these promo posters:

 

Look, ma. I made it. Sometimes life is good.

Does helping people make you feel better?
The Alameda County Community Food Bank is going to be pretty crucial in the Bay Area this winter, I think. Check them out here and look around for a local org that serves a similar purpose. Somebody out there is helping, and can help you help others.

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That’s it.