TAKING STOCK OF 2024

 I've mentioned in previous year-summaries that I've been sharing some of my essays on the comics-site BLEEDING FOOL. My most ambitious project for 2024 was an essay-series entitled HEROES BY THE HUNDREDFOLD: 100 BEST COSTUMED-CRUSADER FILMS, based on one of the categories I've been regularly exploring on the GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA blog. The final section finished up in December 2024 here, and the series of course has received thunderous acclaim. ***JUST KIDDING.*** But it was an enjoyable undertaking, worth doing for its own sake. It gave me a chance to exercise my ability to suss out superhero movies with respect to other potentialities than the kinetic one for which the public knows them. The essay-series is partly a response to the anti-superhero polemic of Martin Scorsese, last addressed here.                                                                                                                                   Meanwhile, back at the ARCHIVE, my most challenging project was probably to define the nature of literary (as opposed to real) evil in the EVIL, BE THOU OUR GOOD series, beginning here. This occasioned a small return to the poetics of Bataille, which might spawn some future ruminations down the road. Second on that list would be the formulations on my category of "magical fantasy stories," using the conceptual framework of Mircea Eliade to arrive at a concept of a pure magical fantasy in contrast to those rendered impure by intrusions of modernity, or non-magical nonsense-concepts. Though I've seen a fair number of critical studies that privilege the appearance of magical fantasy in archaic societies, I think MIND OUT OF TIME PT 2 might be unique in stating that the archaic society is part of the equation that allows for conviction in the magical rationale.                                                                                                                                                                                                           The "phase shift" is probably the only significant term introduced in 2024. I furthered some of my investigations on durability, ravishment, and ontology, any of which may breed more involved ruminations later on.                                                                                                                                                                                                   I produced in 2024 a handful of overviews of either serials or concepts. My examination of the Lovecraft "mythos stories" was tabled for other projects, but hopefully I'll finish it up this year. I provided a fairly detailed analysis of Chic Young's BLONDIE here, as a means of providing context for the particular type of "sadism in domesticity" myth I've found in that franchise. In contrast to Young, who found his metier with BLONDIE and stuck with that strip until his passing, the manga-artist Nanashi brought his serial NAGATORO to a conclusion in 2024, and though I wasn't satisfied with the serial's conclusion in every respect, I noted here that the artist's determination to bring closure to his teen-romance brought forth Nanashi's only mythopoeic narrative, which is no small feat since his dominant focus was upon the dramatic potentiality.                                                                                                                            In addition to the Nagatoro and Blondie "1001 myths" entries, I also particularly enjoyed working on those for Tezuka's UNICO, Nagai's KAMASUTRA, a Binder MARY MARVEL tale, Druillet's DELIRIUS, another wacky WONDER WOMAN from Marston, and one of Gardner Fox's classic sensawunda tales for ADAM STRANGE. No new non-fiction reads in 2024 that really set my brain afire, but there were some worthy new fiction reads, like the original Pinocchio, and the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden, which I started reviewing here. It's not that I didn't keep busy reading various new works in my three book-groups, but there just wasn't all that much I could build upon, aside from my observations on Dotoyevsky's NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND. I suppose I'm glad I read Wyndham's TRIFIDS, Rohmer's GREEN EYES OF BAST, and Barker's SCARLET GOSPELS even though I found all of them not-as-mythic as I could have wished. In addition to my long-form attempts to suss out the Lovecraft mythos, I probably put in the most effort to explicate both Faulkner's LIGHT IN AUGUST and LeFanu's CARMILLA.                                                                                                                                                                                       Over on the NUM blog, I like to think I elucidated some interesting myth-tropes (even if sub-concrescent ones). Some reviews of possible interest: WATCHMEN (2009), HIS NAME WAS HOLY GHOST (1972), TOWER OF SCREAMING VIRGINS (1968), LITTLE MISS INNOCENCE (1973), THE THRONE OF FIRE (1983), THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), WANDA THE SADISTIC HYPNOTIST (1969), CUTIE HONEY (2004), SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE (2012), THE BLACK SWAN (1942), LUPIN III: FUJIKO'S LIE (2020), THE FISH WITH EYES OF GOLD (1974), HEY, GOOD LOOKIN' (1982), INVADERS FROM MARS (1953), GHASTLY PRINCE ENMA, BURNING UP! (2011), and, just to round out the year with something I'd been seeking for some time (but didn't want to pay for on streaming), THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU (1980). Though I also completed a good number of series-reviews, there wasn't much to explicate in GOTHAM, THE TICK, INVINCIBLE, or even STARGIRL, though I very much liked the latter show providing a final decent three-season run in marked contrast to the horrible idiocies of so many other CW shows. There was more to analyze in the six seasons of XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS, though also a lot of formula junk to sort through there. TEEN TITANS probably was more rewarding in terms of providing more fair and good stuff to offset the weak sauce. I also finished Season 2 of SMALLVILLE, but who knows when I'll find time to do individual show-critiques of the later seasons.                                                                                                                                                        So Year 2024 offered quite a bit of variety, and maybe 2025 will at least keep pace. I would be remiss not to mention one dominating political event: the re-election of Donald Trump. Though I believe none of the fervid fantasies of the Far Left as to his assumption of power, I also don't believe that the next four years will be smooth sailing, as Trump's adherents imagine. He's going to mess up on one thing or the other, maybe several things. But the change was necessary, because the Democrat Party had just become such a polluted mess, and I think that no matter badly Trump does in some particulars, the alternative would have been far worse-- though of course, no one will ever truly know what might have been. We will be living in interesting times, to be sure.