i am david brothers (dot com)

Lately, I’ve been trying to avoid locking in on any single video game by setting arbitrary limits and playing a couple games a day instead of just one. Five sets of Tekken is enough for one day, right? Or two games of basketball. Few rounds of Apex. Then I can pivot to Katamari, or Demon Castle Story, the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo, or something I’ve been neglecting for a while. Will it work? Well, I played three rounds of Marathon earlier and turned it off. So…maybe becoming a control freak will fix me. This is the ninth i david brothers’s newsletters, and it’s about fundraising for At the Crossroads, comics criticism, and martial arts:

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four things of no particular relation:
–Sagrada Familia department: A couple letters ago I talked about Antoni Gaudí and public art. Here in Oakland, we don’t have a Sagrada Familia, but we do have giraffes. Dan Fontes, a local muralist, painted a bunch of giraffes on underpasses near my first apartment in Oakland. I liked seeing them while waiting for the bus or walking downtown. The murals are older than I am. They were here waiting for me when I got to Oakland. Fontes passed away recently. It sounds like he was a boon to the Town.
–NBA update: the New York Knicks must be destroyed and the Atlanta Hawks must be avenged. If the San Antonio Spurs won’t do it, I’ll lace up my high tops. Don’t play with me, New York.
–We Take Those division: There’s a point in every Monster Hunter game I’ve played when the series theme, “Proof of a Hero,” begins playing (youtube playlist). It’s the moment in anime when the theme song of the series or a certain character begins playing in a climactic moment. It’s one weird trick that always works.
–Vince Staples has a new album: Vince Staples has a new album! Here he is performing it live on youtube.

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please help us help other people:
Branwyn Bigglestone and I are doing some fundraising for At The Crossroads, an org that supports homeless youth in San Francisco. I started volunteering with them in 2014 thanks to Branwyn, and taking part in their June fundraiser is a pleasure. I talked about it in the last newsletter, too.

I’d like to raise some money for this cause. I’d like to use the attention I get to make things better for people. We have a modest goal of $2,000 to start with, but if we clear twenty-five grand by accident, you won’t find me walking around upset.

ATC has a little chart showing how far money can go to help someone if you’re curious. The actual event part of things has shifted since I last wrote, but every little bit still helps in this situation. Small dollars can buy food and shelter just like big dollars, if we all work together.

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comics criticism will never die:
I really enjoyed listening to David Harper and Tiffany Babb discuss her kickstarter for The Comics Staple and comics criticism more generally. Both these two have been strong voices for criticism over the past while, and there’s a good dynamic in their conversation. I was slightly ambushed by them saying some very nice things about me. I’m never really sure how other people see me, so that’s neat.

I really appreciate comics criticism, and arts criticism more generally. One-on-one conversations are great, whether they’re in-person or over some app, but it’s nice to live in someone else’s head for a couple thousand words and see how their strong take lands with you. Receiving instead of transmitting, I think. I thought I had a strong and sympathetic grasp of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but this essay by the late Zac Bertschy forever shifted how I talk about that series and the things that happen in it. He blew the doors off, and that doesn’t necessarily happen the same way in a conversation.

Criticism enjoys a longevity that our daily conversations about comics don’t really have, too. Websites go away all the time, of course, but I reach back to see what The Comics Journal had to say about some old faves, or some sites that’ve kept an archive live for years. I have a couple old issues of Amazing Heroes, mostly because they covered my beloved manga localization pioneers Studio Proteus.

A canon is not something that really matters to me, outside of usually quickly discarded thought experiments, but I do like having multiple opinions, and especially years of opinions, to check my own against.

My ideal is having a series of conversations that occasionally lead to longer, more considered pieces (text, video) I can read at my leisure. If I hit that billion dollar Powerball from a while back, I would’ve opened a criticism salon/martial arts temple way up a mountain somewheres.

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there’s a couple excerpts in this bit that are really fun:
Case in point: in July 1983, months before I was born, the late Kim Thompson reviewed Frank Miller’s Ronin #1 for The Comics Journal.

I really enjoyed reading this, even though I’m definitely more into Miller’s work than Thompson was at the time. I think that’s partly due to the gap between what comics were expected to be like then and how they are expected to be now, and especially Thompson’s self-admitted ignorance of Japanese comics. The manga revolution hit this review like a truck, spreading both Japanese culture and new storytelling tropes.

To be clear, I don’t mean “I really enjoyed reading this” in a sarcastic way, nor am I going at Thompson. It’s more like…here’s a perspective that is well-argued and interesting but a victim of history, in a way, and seeing the difference in perspectives held then versus now really gets my brain going. This bit in particular had me hooting:

Miller set himself a formidable task by placing the story in Medieval Japan, a culture that, despite Kurosawa revivals and Shogun, remains profoundly alien to the Western spirit. This is not an insurmount­able problem, but Miller doesn’t even come within a stone’s throw of solving it. He writes the young samurai as a dour, ethically-obsessed, somewhat dim fellow, and then seeks to ease the cliché by giving his aged mentor a more earthy, with-it appeal. I don’t know if playing the samurai within the classic clichés and then mocking him through his master is such a sharp idea: we’re immediately alienated from the ronin, whom we regard as something of a humorless clod.

‘cuz…man. Man!!! Goofy mentors are a dime a dozen in manga, even in serious work, and po-faced samurai stories aren’t half as fun as the ones that poke and prod at the marketing of samurai over the years. But how could Thompson know how things would change?

I’ve said before that I get the most out of reading reviews I don’t exactly agree with, that chasing opposing viewpoints on art helps me figure out my own position. This essay is a great example of what I mean. There are multiple points that make me go “nah, nahhhh,” especially in terms of Thompson’s view on various aspects of Japanese culture, but there are also points that make me sit back and really dig into how I feel and what Thompson is saying. The essay makes me want to take it seriously. For instance:

The artwork is thoughtfully designed and meticulously executed, and virtually none of it is any good. Miller still draws the human body very badly; his characters never balance or move correctly. Now, in a book that is mostly composed of fight scenes, it would seem quite a liability to have an artist who doesn’t draw action well. In a sense, though, Miller doesn’t draw action at all. I had begun to notice this in Daredevil, and it, is even truer of Ronin: Miller’s panels, individually, are usually immobile. They display people posing before and after the action; every move­ment happens between the panels. Signifi­cantly, the few panels where the characters actually do move are among the worst constructed and least convincing.

The first sentence is a banger. Full send, knives out, blood on the dance floor, cancel Christmas. I initially balked at the idea that Miller draws humans badly, then was surprised at the idea that he didn’t draw action, then got a clue when he mentions that every panel is before and after the action. This is probably another manga thing, more Lone Wolf & Cub influence, but it’s a point-of-view that’s never occurred to me. My interest in Miller is frequently about sturdy bodies and people in motion and damned heroes. Thompson isn’t wrong, though I disagree that the drawings has the effect he describes.

I was really glad a friend recommended this review after we talked for a while about Ronin. This is the stuff that makes me sharper.

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paper is not necessarily neutral:
In a very similarly focused but much kinder lane to the late Kim Thompson’s barnburner of a review of Ronin, I really enjoyed Alex Hoffman discussing Mama Came Callin’ by Ezra Claytan Daniels & Camilla Sucre in the sequential.li newsletter. An initially overwhelming part of my day job was learning a lot about paper and treatments for books, and how some things are better for certain types of books or stories than others. Hoffman, a publisher himself, digs into how the production choices (for lack of a better phrase) in Mama Came Callin’ detracted from the storytelling for him.

If you’ve been in or around comics long enough, you’ll trip over someone complaining about reprinting classic superhero comics on glossy paper. (If you haven’t seen that yet, you can claim this one.) The glossy paper has a shine that detracts from art that was originally intended for a more muted, matte kind of paper, adding an unwanted vibe into stories that—listen, never mind. The point is that paper choice matters as much as everything else when it comes to making comics, even digital ones if you’re going for a certain vibe.

Approaching a book from this angle—this worked, this didn’t, and this had an outside effect on the experience—is thrilling comics criticism. I love this stuff. I never would’ve thought of this angle.

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promotion, self-promotion:
Tiffany Babb’s comics criticism broadsheet The Comics Courier is on Kickstarter again, this time for volume four. I’m pretty sure it’s already raised more money than I ever made as a comics critic. Give it a look, and check out The Comics Staple when it drops too. I’ll be in that one, a little bit.

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Dona Maria como vai você?
I passed my tenth capoeira anniversary and didn’t even realize, mostly because I always forget anniversaries. I started training in late 2015, so late I only got a couple classes in before the holidays. I’d been training wushu before that, at a school just off Lake Merritt, with a small side of tai chi. I enjoyed both, but was having a hard time with a few techniques, and the teaching style wasn’t quite working for me. I felt a need to switch gears and try something else instead of not getting it the way I wanted to for another couple years.

A friend recommended I visit Filhos de Bimba Bay Area School of Capoeira. One of his friends ran the school, Mestre Malandro, so he figured we’d at least have some common ground. I went to my first class in a small school classroom in Emeryville and I was hooked.

The martial side of martial arts has a ton of appeal. Knowing that I can do this or that, things I couldn’t have done before I started training, is a thrill. It gives me confidence in my body that I never got from my face, and the ability to help my friends in myriad ways, from moving house to chasing off some creep who should know better.

Capoeira added a lot on top of the kicking and spinning side. There’s a sharp focus on music and culture, which turned learning capoeira into a history lesson in addition to a workout. I learned about Brazil and the people enslaved there. I learned about their resistance to the authorities and the culture surrounding the Orishas. I took part in folkloric dances and sang songs and learned enough Brazilian Portuguese to keep up and even assist a little when teachers would visit for intensive training. I was already pretty pro-Black, but capoeira ramped that up to a new level. I received a nome de guerra, and have been working on making it be a real reflection of who I am.

I got a lot out of capoeira, but life is always happening. I had some deaths in the family and a move to Portland that threw me off my game. I left Portland and got back to Oakland, and spent more time navigating new relationships than working on my meia lua de compasso.

Consistency gave way to inconsistency. I showed up when I could. Then I showed up less. And less. I haven’t gone at all the past couple years, I think. More family stuff crowding out space in my brain. But I’m always thinking about it, and keeping the foundational techniques as part of my workout routine. It isn’t the same as drinking from the source, but it did help me maintain a connection to this thing that I love, even if I couldn’t nurture it properly.

I flew to Georgia in May. When I visit Georgia, I generally go straight to my hometown from the airport, but this time, I spent a few days in Atlanta before riding south to talk with students at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Portfolio reviews and networking.

Mestre Malandro moved away from Oakland and opened a new school in Atlanta a few years back. I thought him doing the reverse of a move I made in my twenties (from GA to the Bay) was a little funny, but in a melancholy way, because he wouldn’t be around Oakland very often any more.

As it turns out, Capoeira ATL trains about fifteen minutes from the hotel I was in.

On my last day in Atlanta, I booked an early afternoon ride to my hometown instead of first thing in the morning, and caught a cab to capoeira practice for the first time in two years.

To say I got my butt kicked would be an understatement. I’m rusty but still mostly in shape, thanks to my home workout habit. But you know what I don’t do at home? Cartwheels and squats. I was gassed, and fast, but who has time to quit? Instead, when I felt the wall, I’d pause for a handful of seconds, breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, and get right back into my ginga and resume the training.

I got out of the class alive, but more importantly, I came out of the class alive. Know what I mean?

Capoeira is a communal thing. The more experienced teaches the less experienced. When playing a game in the roda, you are expected to not just throw kicks and flips, but to take care of your partner’s health as well. We sing together, some of us playing instruments and some just use clapping hands to keep the rhythm. We sing loud and we clap to support the berimbau player, and together we give the players music to follow and react against. You can train capoeira by yourself, but the full experience comes in a group.

It was a real pleasure to see Mestre Malandro had built another community of people who love capoeira. There were people in the class who had been training for a long time and relative newbies. The atmosphere was great.

There’s this thing in Black American culture, borrowed from West Africa. There is a symbol called a sankofa, and the meaning attached to it is that “it’s never too late to go back and get it.”

Newburn, the crime story by Jason Phillips and Chip Zdarsky, had a rotating backup story slot. Nick Dragotta and I did a story for it called “Go Back,” where a young and nameless man must navigate a city full of people who aren’t his friends in order to get back to his hometown and find out what’s wrong with his mom.

In Good Devils: Don’t Play Fair With Evil, we collected that story with two others and updated the title of the short story to “Go Back (and get it).”

Do you see the vision?

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other writing, further reading:
Back in April, Steve Shelfdust published a little bit I wrote about Ginger’s Revenge by Victor Santos. I mentioned it back in newsletter #002. I wrote it, put it aside, and then circled back to it with fresh eyes a few months later. It’s not half bad. Really fun comic. I need to find something else to write about next.

I’m still posting to Letterboxd, but haven’t really sunk my teeth into anything lately. It’s fine. It beats not watching movies. That’s when I know I’m really in trouble.

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some recent photos I liked:
Carrying around a camera is a good vibe. Stay strapped.

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That’s it.

I sort of trapped myself with the newsletter format. Where do normal essays go when I don’t want a full newsletter? What about titles? Should everything be a newsletter, instead of an essay? Then I realized: it doesn’t matter. It’s a difference without distinction. I’m making this up as I go and rules are fake. Sometimes a newsletter is about one thing, sometimes it’s about a lot of things. This one is about one thing. The next one, probably lots of things. The joy of everything/nothing. This is the seventh i am david brothers’s newsletter. Let’s talk about Marathon and the beautifully nasty feelings it gives me:

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On Marathon: mors vincit omnia. sum quod eris. (about 2500 words)
In Bungie’s Marathon, released March 2026 (eight minute cinematic reveal, minute fifty gameplay overview), I am a runner, a digital consciousness that is, as near as I can tell, in a completely terminal amount of debt and thus forced into a life of constant exploitation.

A few universally sinister and incredibly stylish mega-corporations of the far-flung era of the game have tasked me with incarnating into a biosynthetic device called a shell to complete tasks for them. As a runner inhabiting a shell, I’m expected to investigate, explore, and scavenge what’s left of Tau Ceti IV, a deep-space colony that has gone dark after alien attacks and a few mysterious circumstances on top of that. Whenever my shell is destroyed or succeeds at its goal, I return to orbit to wait for the next mission.

Being a runner is corporate contract work in a setting where my humanity is a stumbling block, not an asset. The UESC government has sent security robots to manage Tau Ceti IV. My corporate overlords disagree, and have authorized me to destroy the bots as required by my missions. They invested in the colony project, and so feel a great measure of ownership over whatever remains.

In addition to battling the government, these mega-corps require me to cede bits and pieces of my self to get access to their missions, inventory, and upgrades. Some require a partition in my brain, while others want me to kill a rival runner before they can exfil and complete their own mission. I can work for them or their rivals, but in the grand scheme of things, everything I do benefits a mega-corp, and nothing I do is free.

In Marathon, I am a runner and I am expendable, just like my two teammates and our infinite rivals and enemies.

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Walter Simonson, Orion

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This kind of human-hostile setting is one that really appeals to me. Citizen Sleeper provided a very definitive experience in this realm, maybe the best ever. Nier: Automata digs into similar themes, and Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is a titan of the sub-genre. (I did a video essay here, and a music video here.) Like Marathon, Armored Core 6 gave me a chance to inhabit a blank slate of a player character, rather than a more concrete one like 2B of Nier: Automata. There’s less of a filter between player and character in games like this. I can insert my self into the story and explore my own decision-making in the scenarios created by the development team.

With 2B, I’m inhabiting a character, right? “What would (my version of) 2B do here?” I’m role-playing as 2B, in the same sense that I am role-playing as Mario Mario of the world-famous Mario Brothers when playing New Super Mario Bros. In AC6 or Marathon, the choices the characters make are almost entirely my own. That little bit of possession goes a long way. It lets me make the story mine, for lack of a better phrase. I buy in a bit more deeply than I do when I’m playing as someone else.

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The loop of Marathon encourages me to use my items, whether I came in with them or found them in the field. Am I gonna hang onto that thing and risk my life to make a hundred bucks, or am I going to full send and do what I need to do to get out alive, to secure an opportunity at further success? There’s no point to hoarding megalixirs for a later battle, or saving a certain weapon for a big fight. There is only the fight in front of me and the challenge it presents.

The items are meant to be used like money is meant to be spent. If someone has water, they should drink it. If I’m not willing to use what I have, I’m setting my self up for a rough time.

At the end of it all, nothing I gather is mine. The design of the game encourages me to use items rather than hoarding them like megalixirs in a Final Fantasy game. There is no “What if I need this later?” There is only “How will this help me convince this company to chip me a couple bucks to get this upgrade I need to finish this contract for someone else?”

Is that a win?

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I used to write video game guides for a living, and it taught me a lot about being good at games. Quitting that job taught me to embrace being bad. Nothing happens if I die in a video game. Mistimed jump, wrong turn, mistaken input. Whatever. I may waste time or an item, but what’s really lost? I’m playing a game that I find fun and I’m getting closer and closer to my goal. There are moments when replaying a segment can be frustrating, but as a general rule, I play games that are fun whether I’m winning or losing.

I don’t mind dying. In fact, there are times when dying is strategy. When I can’t hack a boss in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice or Elden Ring, I’ll take some time to learn their patterns and how to counter their techniques. This too, going from overwhelmed to being untouchable, is fun. I’ll spend my lives until I get the result I want. There’s no downside at all, outside of some possible frustration when things truly aren’t going my way and I can’t figure out why.

Losing, whether I’m killed by a runner or simply fail to exfil, is part of the game. So, I accept it and move past it. When my runner falls, I check my gear, pulling more things out of my vault, and jam the re-queue button. When my runner falls, I want another go, another trio, another chance at the slot machine. Each shell has specialized abilities, and sometimes I swap around if I’m not finding any joy with the one I chose first. There are six core shells and a special solo-only one.

The different shells are tools for me to use, and one way or another, I’m getting home with some loot, and it doesn’t really matter what it costs me. Dying in a video game isn’t intimidating enough to stop me from going back into the field. Dying in video games hasn’t been a real problem since arcades died. If I die on a mission, I hydrate, spin up another shell, and get back at it. It costs me nothing but time. None of this matters, not really.

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The first cuss words and violence comic I ever read made a big impression on me. Frank Miller’s Sin City: The Big Fat Kill #5. It exploded my idea of comics, and in large part because of the inclusion of Miller’s keynote speech to Diamond Comic Distributors from a retailer summit in ’94. I was eleven. Miller talked about credit and art, Jack Kirby and work-made-for-hire. He loaded up a cannon and took a shot at Marvel over their treatment of a wide variety of creators. I only barely knew what the different roles in comics required at that age, and here I was, being introduced to an idea I wouldn’t understand for ages: independence.

Four or five years later, a friend introduces me to underground hip-hop and the website Underground Hip-Hop. I heard Company Flow, a trio composed of DJ Mr Len, Bigg Jus, and El Producto (currently one-half of Run the Jewels), and they instantly became a favorite. The CD case for Funcrusher Plus said they were “independent as fuck,” and the instrumental album Little Johnny from the Hospitul flipped it to “independent as fox.” I scrawled both of these on my brain as a teen, mostly because they sounded cool.

A dozen years after that, I’m working at Image Comics, which was founded specifically because of how Marvel and the comics industry at large was treating its artists. I was there when creators were putting out books that were creating huge fan bases. The Image Revolution really seemed like a turning point.

A dozen years after that, and things have somehow suddenly gotten much worse from where I sit on the comics industry side of things, but being truly independent is more feasible than ever before. I’ve had a website of my own since 2005, first 4thletter! and now this unnamed thing you’re reading here. After over thirty years of following these breadcrumbs, there’s clearly something about independence that became very important to me.

I’ve been working since I was 14 years old, and the exploitation threaded throughout Marathon speaks to me. I’ve had jobs I appreciated and jobs I came to loathe, and I find a lot to relate to when it comes to how the runners are abused by the mega-corps. It’s an easy entry into the game, the most obvious metaphor in the world, but still a good one, a satisfying bit of texture.

I inherited my work ethic from my grandfather. A job isn’t over til it’s done, and you gotta do whatever it takes to get the job done. This is great for finishing projects around the house but makes me so vulnerable to overwork at someone else’s request that I now draw a hard line between church and state, to the point where I’ll rarely, if ever, talk about the job when I’m not on the job.

I’m confident that every job I’ve ever had and will ever have would work me into the hospital, as long as the projects were done on time.

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My experience in Marathon isn’t unique, nor is the resonance I feel radiating from it. I can see elements of it in how other players relate to their own runner and rival runners. The runners, and through them the players, are incredibly easy to identify with. This adds islands of ambivalence to the aggression that permeates the game. Rival runners are in my way, but if we’re both being exploited…then what?

(Youtube embed: “They Don’t See You As A Person”)

In the youtube video “They Don’t See You As A Person”, peterspittech explored the isolation and alienation that Marathon inspires. He says, “I killed this guy and…I don’t even really know why I did it” at the top of the video, and then goes into a tight spiral about what it means to kill people trying to survive, just like him, in a world where our jobs take advantage of us and underrate our worth. Why are you fighting each other, when the real exploitation comes from above?

(Youtube embed: “Is that knife in your hand for me?”)

Similarly, Austin Walker released “Is that knife in your hand for me?”, a video that explores one tense and mildly puzzling interaction with one other player by way of in-game proximity chat. It made me think, why are we fighting each other? One big reason is that all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk. You never know who you can really trust. Suspicion permeates Walker’s video, even as he’s trying to negotiate a truce for mutual benefit.

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It worked out for Walker, but his video still makes me ask why should I trust these people I run into? Trusting people to keep their word is hard enough without adding competing interests and untrustworthy employers into the mix. Instead of trusting them, I can be sure, be safe, and shoot them down before they shoot me in order to take what they have for myself. That is something I can trust. Reality.

Alongside all that stuff about independence, I spent my childhood listening to Scarface, and he has advice for situations like this:

“I got a brick from a sucker that he wanted to move, but the whole while I’m cooking, I’m like, ‘Fuck this dude.’ It’s on, thirty-six zones of my own. Keep the money for myself, and take the work back home.”

Marathon, even with all the opportunity and personality, is a cold world, and I don’t know if my heart is warm enough to melt it. If I really want and need to get something done, isn’t taking someone out part of the game? I am loyal to my self, first and foremost.

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A troubling train of thought, then:

I identify with the runners. But I am not a runner.

I am a gamer. I control my runner. I send him into battle, I give him a voice, and I decide where he goes and who he kills. When I fail, my runner dies and I send him back into battle. When I succeed, my runner lives, and I still send him back into battle. I want to know what happened to Tau Ceti IV, I want to know what’s going on inside Marathon, and I definitely want to catch someone slipping before they can catch me. Just as my runner spends items and ammunition to get my job done, I’m spending my runner’s lives.

Dying in Marathon doesn’t bother me like it does some people because I brainwashed my self into believing that dying isn’t failure. I talk about the importance of reps frequently enough that it probably annoys my friends, and spending a runner’s shell over and over just to get three unstable diodes so I can have a slightly bigger vault so I can hold a couple more items is an easy trade. I’m not even losing time, because Marathon feels great to play.

I identify with the runners, but the truth is, I’m just another mega-corp. I’m CyberAcme, who controls the runner and provides the tutorial. I’m NuCal, sending my runner into the field to bring back plants I can presumably turn into medicine to sell. I’m MIDA, pushing my runner to wreak havoc on Tau Ceti IV and to disrespect any UESC materiel they come across.

I am Arachne. My runner gives you the gift of silence.

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The narrative of Marathon and its gameplay loop emphasize and represent the exploitation your runner experiences. My runner experiences a life of total corporate control and un-personhood. There is no peace beyond the quiet valleys between life-threatening runs, and no achievement beyond what my runner can accomplish for their mega-corps. Items and equipment are subject to churn, functionally temporary. Things pass through my hands and into the hands of other runners, if not my own masters.

The experience of playing Marathon—the act of sitting on my couch and pressing buttons, rather than the act of lurking around Tau Ceti IV and looking for randos to shoot—adds another layer onto the narrative. What I do is effectively identical to what the mega-corps are asking my runner to do.

I got Marathon thanks to a spare gift card and twenty bucks. With that twenty bucks, I get to send my runner on trip after trip after trip. My runner’s life is cheap to me as it must be to the mega-corps, considering the method and number of shells deployed on Tau Ceti IV.

For all I may identify with my runner, I’m still not giving him a break. I’ve tethered him to every corporation I could find in order to maximize my returns. I send him to work with good guns and lousy ones, and I frequently cause his death thanks to a combination of blood lust and overconfidence. (“Oh, there’s more people in here than I thought.”)

Thinking about this has introduced a more-than-welcome nasty flavor to the game. My runner is much more alone than I ever realized, back when I thought we were both falling into the clutches of Marathon‘s mega-corps.

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Anyway.

It’s almost time for a new season of Apex Legends and a new music video/highlight reel. I need more video editing reps, because I have one project that’s currently kicking my butt in that realm. But I also don’t want to make this into something that’s strictly work, so I make AMVs as the spirit moves. It’s not quite the same as criticism in my head, but it’s definitely a similar muscle. “How do I get across what I like about this game in concert with this song?”

Here’s “Date With the Night” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and a lil low-level highlight reel featuring Marathon.

 

(Youtube embed: Date With A Knife: A Marathon AMV (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Date With The Night”)

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Help somebody, if you can. Here in Oakland, we’ve got groups like the Urban Compassion Project, which is working to fight illegal dumping locally, in addition to provided support to our unhoused neighbors. The UCP has done a great amount of work cleaning things up and trying to bring attention to the effect illegal dumping has on the town and the people who live here. The city and state haven’t been helping like you’d expect. This is another way we-the-people fill in the gaps. Maybe there’s something similar near you, or maybe it’s worth taking a sharp stick on a walk with a small bag and gathering some litter on your block.

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What makes you, you, tourist?

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That’s it.

Before getting started on this, the sixth edition of i am david brothers’s newsletter, I watched one thing that sparked wonder, another that made me a very little bit judgmental, and a third that made me grateful to have seen the three in sequence. They all triggered thoughts of living, of being. In the sense of “living somewhere,” I mean. What’s it like to be in X? Who are you when you are in Y? I guess it’s an existential week. Not really sure how that’s different than normal. Anyway, enjoy this newsletter:

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three things of one particular relation, and one of none:
-Leila del Duca’s Serpentine: Leila del Duca is kickstarting a 48-page comic set in the Afar universe, a graphic novel she co-created with Kit Seaton. You maybe know Leila’s work from Sleepless or Shutter. Her line art is always really interesting to look at, full of texture and personality, and it’s cool to see her continuing Afar in this way. She did a Youtube video for the Helioscope channel talking about the financials and other behind the scenes stuff that I appreciated, too. She made this one on her own time, in-between a day job and freelance. Well worth supporting.
-Asante Amani’s Troubled detective: If I had a time machine, crime comics would currently have the dominance in the comics market and wider culture that superhero comics and sci-fi have enjoyed for the past however long. You would be sick to the gills of the Eddie Coyle Cinematic Universe. Decades of Doctor Who? No, decades of Easy Rawlins. Anyway, Asante Amani’s Troubled detective is the exact type of book and creator I’d want to take a chance on in my fantasy world. This is early work for him, and it’s cool to see that he has an interesting point of view, a cool and evolving visual style, and a keen eye for interesting situations and dilemmas for his characters. This Kickstarter is an easy back.
-Tiffany Babb’s The Comics Staple: I used to write about comics! I still do sometimes. Tiffany Babb has been running a grant for critics and generally been a booster for criticism online, which has been really nice to see. I’m going to be a small part of her new project, The Comics Staple, a true-blue comics zine live now on Kickstarter, folded and shipped from her living room. You love to see it. (there’s a digital version too.)
-From GA to the Bay: Bob Wages designed the best logo in all of basketball, the 1972 “Pac-Man” logo for the Atlanta Hawks. This instagram post pays homage to the designer and the team. The Hawks had this logo for my entire childhood, only changing up when I moved to the Bay Area in 2007. (Coincidence?) I have a tattoo dedicated to my hometown that uses the font from that era for sentimental reasons.

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I love how much he loves him, basically:
I became a fan of Catalan architect/designer/artist Antoni Gaudí because manga artist Takehiko Inoue is one of my most favorite comics creators. Inoue’s Slam Dunk is good, but as I’ve gotten older, Real and most especially Vagabond have really begun to hit the spot. I enjoy the way he tells stories, the way he draws in general, and the way he made it a point to emphasize that Shonen Jump is a platform for your work, not vice versa, an interview alongside Akira Toriyama with Shonen Jump. Basically, “Your work is the goal. Jump’s not the goal.” The interviewer immediately shut it off after that.

“I don’t read a lot of today’s manga, so I shouldn’t talk as if I know everything, but I think there’s a trend of viewing Jump as the goal. However, it isn’t the goal at all. Instead, they should see it as a place for presenting their work. Some people think that appearing in Jump itself possesses a value, but I’m not so sure about that.”
-Takehiko Inoue

Anyway, Inoue is a fan of Gaudí, and because he got super rich making manga, he can afford to really and genuinely indulge that fandom. He traveled Catalonia and walked the places Gaudí walked, studying the lands and skies that birthed Gaudí. This journey was documented in Pepita: Takehiko Inoue Meets Gaudí, which also served as my introduction to their relationship. (This is part of the same as digging deeper for more art from the last newsletter.)

It’s hard to describe how romantic I find this whole thing. I would love to be able to go on a similar journey, to study and sit with the things that informed the things I love. Inoue’s love for Gaudí’s work struck me hard enough to break skin, and I found myself even more curious about Gaudí’s work. I knew of the famously unfinished and famously beautiful Sagrada Família in Barcelona, but never visited when I lived in Spain during high school, nor had I really read up on it at all.

Years later, and I keep an eye out for Gaudí even still. I was at loose ends the other day and found myself watching Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film Antonio Gaudí (1984) on the Criterion Channel. Seeing the people lounging and living on Gaudí’s creations was really heartwarming and fascinating. It made me think about my hometown and Oakland, and the relative lack of similar features these days. There are places to hang out, and Lake Merritt is as beautiful as ever, but there’s something really neat about Sagrada Família and Gaudí’s work, and what both mean to the people who live there.

It’s 2026 and we have an evil version of architecture here in Oakland, lurking alongside regular construction. It’s the kind that puts a big, heavy box full of plants in the place where an unhoused person’s tent used to be, you know what I mean? It’s an ugly trade. But we have wonderful things too, and Antonio Gaudí (1984) made a very convincing case for going outside and figuring out what’s delightful about where you live.

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this is way more narratively convenient than a true big deal:
The second thing, the one that made me low-tier judgmental, was an Instagram Reel from a rando that the algorithm thrust into my timeline. In it, someone basically did a kind of melancholy take on “Why Bay Area Rapid Transit sucks compared to the trains in Tokyo, Japan: a list.”

(a photograph of Iidabashi Station in Tokyo, Japan)

I get it. I really do. The vending machines on the platforms in Japan, especially the ones with the hot lemon tea. People mostly keeping to one side or the other and letting people off the train before they get on. There’s a lot to love about riding trains over there. But I still had a reaction that boiled down to “Aww, hey, don’t do that.” Not because I was upset or offended (they were fair points, even if I do have a higher personal opinion of BART) but because if you only ever describe the place where you live as a place that sucks, it’ll only ever be a place that sucks. (Which isn’t really what the person was doing, I think.)

That was basically the extent of the train of thought, a passing sad face as I scrolled to see pictures of friends instead of videos from random people I don’t know, but the reaction I had did stay with me. There was something funny about it. Funny-hmmm, like I’d tripped and gotten close to making a new connection in my brain by way of something that was super duper not a big deal. I’d chalked my reaction up to annoyance at how Instagram works and a general bad mood, but there was a kernel of something in there worth thinking about too.

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2 elementary schools, 4 middle schools, 3 high schools:
I moved around frequently and went to a lot of new schools as a kid. I had to learn how to make friends and enjoy new places quick, fast, and in a hurry. I’m from a small town in Georgia and I live in a big city in California, sitting by the dock of the bay when I can steal a free moment. There are things that are bad about everywhere that I’ve lived, but I think I accidentally grew up in a way that makes me want to be able to see the things I might love about where I live. My hobbies recently, drawing and photography, are all about looking at familiar things with a new intensity and focus. The bad stuff is still there and ready to be acknowledged, but I don’t let it overwhelm the beauty.

I’m not a very “look on the bright side” kind of person, so this was a very surprising train of thought for me to follow when it first occurred to me.

The youtube channel Step’n Out recently posted a video called “Walking the Long Way from Oakland to San Francisco”. This one made me grateful for the combo of Antonio Gaudí (1984) and that one Instagram video keeping the idea of places and being in my mind. The host walks 48 miles over three days, starting from an Oakland pizza place I’ve drawn while standing across the street. (I should’ve gotten a slice but I was doing a round of DriftBook, a dice-rolling game meant to change your relationship with the geography around you) He then begins traveling north, then west, and then south into San Francisco before eventually settling in the Richmond.

(an unrelated photograph of Lake Merritt, in Oakland, California)

The host opens his video by saying, “If you live here, I probably saw your everyday world in a way you haven’t,” I knew I was in for a grand time. He walks streets and bridges I know well, sometimes from angles I’ve seen myself and sometimes from angles I’ve only seen while speeding by at 70mph. He points out things he thinks are interesting and lets the music drive the show in equal measure. His video is a great example of the objective truth that there are a functionally infinite number of interesting things to see around you, if you’re willing to go looking for them.

When I finally read “Sous les Pavés, la Plage!” in my twenties, I thought I got it. I appreciated it from the angle that there is beauty just out of sight, beneath the unpleasantness of a city. Later, I got it more in the way it was intended, but I’ve held onto the alternative way of seeing I originally thought it meant. A change in perspective leads to revelation and, maybe, happiness.

This video is a great example of what that slogan ignited in me, a curiosity and hunger for the local that I think has served me well as an adult. There are a lot of things about life that are terrible and extremely dislikable, to leave it very understated, but there are so many cool things on planet Earth, even right around the corner from wherever you are.

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I forgot about seeing tadpoles as a kid:
I took my little brother and sister on a walk by a lake recently. The locals have done a pretty good job of leaving various wrappers, bottles, bags, and cans near the water, but the local frogs recently spawned a bunch of tadpoles, and a few turtles like sitting on a log out in the middle of the lake. It reminded me of being a kid and catching tadpoles with my hands, and seeing the baby frogs grow into adults.

(a photograph of one thousand tadpoles underwater)

My sister pointed out the red ground we were standing on, and I told her it was red clay. My brother asked if it was made by people, since it was clay. I told them it was a Georgia trademark, one of the beautiful things about the state I grew up in. My sister fished some bait out of the water with a stick and we walked home after playing with some pinecones. Sometimes you have to dig deep beneath the paving stones to find the beach. But it’s there, if you look from the right angle.

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this is like the opposite of my relationship with Takehiko Inoue:
I liked this interview with Jaÿ-Z about being…well, old. He’s survived a lot, his perspective has shifted in a variety of varyingly interesting and repellent ways, and he’s still a great interview.

I think my favorite part of the interview is how often he says, “I’m fucking Hov.” That’s the boastful king of New York rap speaking through the elder statesman’s vocal cords. It’s arrogant, but it’s so necessary, too. Sometimes you have to remind people who you are, especially when they suggest things that are beneath you. Deciding what you’re owed and getting after it. It reminds me a bit of older black people requesting to be called Mister and Missus as a way of making sure that they get the respect that they were so rarely shown when they were younger. Sometimes a little distance is good.

Highs and lows. He explains that billionaires don’t care about “eat the rich” rhetoric on account of being super rich. He talks about finally feeling comfortable because he’s surrounded by love. Black liberation through capitalism. The highs and lows of rap beef in the social media era. If you like pinwheeling between good and bad vibes—and boy, do I!—this is an interesting, medium-length read. Despite that, I’ll continue to player-hate Jaÿ-Z for the rest of my natural life, except when one of the dozens of great songs he’s made is currently playing. I should probably re-listen to 4:44 and see how it feels in 2026.

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a very predictable follow-up:
I re-listened to 4:44 while cleaning out a garage. It’s a real mixed bag. “The Story of OJ” has some surprising anti-semitism, and also Jay’s amazing delivery of a verbal shrug with “OJ like, ‘I’m not black, I’m OJ.’ …okay.”

“Kill Jaÿ-Z” is pretty unimpeachable, at least, and makes it obvious why he had to make this album. 4:44 is a necessary refutation of some of his earlier work, as he moves from being a hustler to a family man. “Kill Jaÿ-Z” is about his immaturity and mistakes, up to and including egging Solange Knowles on about something he did that was objectively wrong to the point where she swung on him in an elevator, despite him “knowing all along all [he] had to say was [he] was wrong.”

The song’s full of if/then structures, things that he would have missed out on if he keeps going in the direction he’s been going. I liked these early bars for that reason:

How can we know if we can trust Jaÿ-Z?
And you know better, nigga, I know you do
But you gotta do better, boy, you owe it to Blue
You had no father; you had the armor
But you got a daughter, gotta get softer

Becoming a husband and father demanded a shift in his perspective, one that he absolutely did not rise to until he risked everything he’d grown to love. A big part of growing up for me has been figuring out which adaptations I picked up to survive as a kid are actually bad for me as an adult. I still love sarcasm, I think it can be very funny, but you know who sucks to be around? Mr Has A Sarcastic Reply To Everything To Shield His Earnest Feelings.

There’s something here about “bastard” and “father” needing to be mutually exclusive states of being. You gotta shed one to become the other. The armor he built up to protect himself as a result of not having a father to protect him are counterproductive when it comes to protecting someone else, a life that he’s responsible for.

I identify with this texture a lot, and it’s spread throughout 4:44. “You know better, nigga, I know you do” is extremely real, as is the point that he owes it to his daughter. He helped bring her into this world—the very least she deserves is his very best. The way he’s been doing it isn’t going to get it done. The way I’d been living wasn’t going to turn me into the person I wanted to be.

I really hope he finally killed Jaÿ-Z. Going by the GQ interview, with all its highs and incredibly aggravating lows, I think he succeeded at his goal.

—

credit where it’s due:
“Shawn was on that gospel shit…I was on the total fuckin’ opposite.”

I feel like I have to player-hate on Jaÿ-Z a little because of his stature, his disingenuous thing about not writing raps, and because of the stranglehold New York had on my favorite art form for most of my childhood, but man. Shawn Corey Carter can really write. Great understanding of delivery and clever bars.

The peak of the album is “Smile,” featuring his mother Gloria Carter. It’s inspired by her finally being able to be open about being a lesbian.

So all the ladies havin’ babies, see a sacrifice
Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian
Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian
Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate
Society shame and the pain was too much to take
Cried tears of joy when you fell in love
Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her
I just wanna see you smile through all the hate
Marie Antoinette, baby, let ’em eat cake

But he still delivered a terrible verse on the remix of Juvenile’s “Ha” and I’ll never forgive him. It’s on sight, man.

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I know I’m not built for this life, and yet:
Too many of my friends are playing Resident Evil: Requiem and it’s making me want to get it, even though I generally don’t play those games. Thank goodness for Twitch!

I actually reinstalled Resident Evil VII: biohazard, which I tried to play with some friends in Portland back in 2017. I’m trying to find some dog head key items or something after running a guy over in a garage. I like the idea of this newsletter as a sketchbook, a place to be perfectly unformed and honest about who I am and what I’m up to, so listen:

I’m not gonna make it to the next save point.

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many hands at work:
Big Brothers Big Sisters is a 1on1 mentorship program that pairs adults with kids in need of guidance. This isn’t for everyone—I liked the Boys & Girls Club a bit more as a kid cuz it was more open-ended—but if this sounds like something you’d be good at, it could be a good way to give back to your community. There may be a local chapter or similar group in your area.

For instance, a friend works with Skate Like A Girl here in Oakland. It isn’t the literal exact same type of mentorship, but it is showing kids an example of what their future could look like, and demonstrating that they are loved and appreciated by the people who are responsible for them.

If you’re the type of extrovert that loves kids, hey. This is for you.

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some brief thoughts on movies:
I typed about Antonio Gaudí (1984) on Letterboxd, and a little about this movie Perfectly A Strangeness (2025) too. I really enjoyed Perfectly A Strangeness. It invites interpretation in a way that’s very satisfying to me. Short film, strong impact. Turns out three donkeys go a long way with me.

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That’s it.

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.

—

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.

—

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.