Marie Javins's Blog, page 9

Got No Respect

I'm going to have to start feeding the cats earlier in the evening.

DIY Dentistry

Of course I got a temporary crown the day before San Diego Comic-Con. Of course I did.

I knew it was a bit risky—what if I had a throbbing jaw on Thursday morning on the train? What if my jaw was swollen while I was at an outdoor party? But I wanted to get out the silver filling that was pulling away from the tooth. I probably got this silver filling the same year some of my editors were born, when I was a cub at Marvel. The filling had to go, and it was too big for a replacement, so it gets a kind of new hat for my tooth, a crown.

What could go wrong?

Besides everything, plus the possibility of con covid, and my hurt foot I’ve been getting physical therapy for.

I went back to work on Wednesday after the temporary crown was lodged in, and had no pain at all once the anesthesia wore off. I’d forgotten all about it by the time I was on the Amtrak, all masked up Thursday morning.

We’d decided against having a company booth on the floor, where more than 100,000 people would be wandering around. Masks and vaccines were required, but it’s one thing to run into the con for an hour or two and an entirely different thing to ask staff to be inside all day from Wednesday night to Sunday night. We organized some events outside, a few inside panels, and a nightly open-air drinks event. I tried to limit my walking—my Fitbit usually records over 20k steps a day at SDCC and I was trying to not set back my tendon recovery, as I had on my Guadalajara trip. Of course that went off the rails too, but not too horribly.

My usual con experience goes something like this: “Why am I here, I hate this” followed by “I love this, having the best time” followed by “This is awful” followed by “I wish I could go to cons all the time.” But this time I only had positive experiences as we all buzzed along with delight as we ran into old friends on hotel roofs and in courtyards. Later, many of us came down with covid (not me, for whatever reason), and I’m not sure any of us should have gone, but it’s still hard to walk back the sheer joy of being back in the mix.

My favorite moment was when I was sitting on a patio with pal Shannon, and I took a bite out of an energy bar I was carrying in my backpack. I forgot to only chew on one side, and the energy bar lifted my temporary crown out.

Shannon fetched some water and I washed the crown out in that and tried shoving it back in. It basically fit, but both of us were a little unclear on next steps. We agreed we’d seen emergency dental glue in pharmacies, but Shannon didn’t think I should walk to CVS with my injured foot. He kept offering to go fetch it, and I kept saying no, I could go on my way to a meeting I was attending with four writers and an editor, all with single-syllable first names.

“Okay, if you won’t let me get some, I’ll text someone else to bring you some,” Shannon said. Just then our friend Chip showed up, went for the water in front of me, and I pulled away my crown-washing water.

“No, no, I can handle it…” I told Shannon right as my phone rang. I glanced down—it was an old friend returning my call about the Eisner Awards. I’d sat with one of my writers being shut out at least 7 times over the years for my own titles, and he’d won his first Eisner for the single book from my friend’s company. I was trying to be gracious, but of course I was annoyed. Both the Flintstones book and Snagglepuss were brilliant.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Shannon as I stepped away to take the call. Other friends showed up while I was on the phone. Shannon was letting our pals know we were hanging out on the patio.

When I hung up and headed back to take my leave so I could go to the single-syllable meeting of minds, Shannon told me I couldn’t go.

“You can’t leave,” he said. “Denis Kitchen is bringing your dental glue.”

Denis is a legendary comics figure, and he was bringing me dental glue from CVS. This all went a step farther when Denis showed up.

“I sent my daughter,” he said.

It takes a village, I guess. Eventually, Denis’ daughter showed up with two versions of CVS dental glue, and I went off to have a good laugh with my one-syllable writers. Between this and belonging on the stage with Jim Lee, Denys Cowan, Greg Capullo, and Todd McFarlane, I guess I can’t pretend to just be stopping by comics any longer. This is it. This is my home, even though I meant to be a writer.

I couldn’t be a comics writer, of course. Too many syllables in my first name.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Today I went by Pitfire Pizza in North Hollywood, just to confirm there is indeed a Daniel Johnston replica mural on the patio. 

 Why? Google didn't want to tell me anything except "Architect Barbara Bestor’s eye-catching design stars a sprawling, light-strung gravel patio and square bar backed with Daniel Johnston’s iconic “Hi, How Are You” frog mural." 

Maybe the idea is to imply this pizza is quirky, hip, outsider cutting-edge. I dunno. Maybe the owner likes Daniel Johnston. Maybe he has indie rock clients. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 I'll have to go back and ask someone official.

At SDCC 2023

Look what happened yesterday! It's for contributions to comics/lifetime achievement.

But Did the Circuits Count?

I found my Fitbit clipped to the bulletin board in the complex laundry room. My Fitbit is now very clean.

Someone's Knocking at the Door

She wants to visit me! That’s disconcerting.

Prelude to Invasion

I called the spotted lanternfly police to find out how to eviscerate spotted lanternflies but no one called me back. 

JC is crawling with the things.

Happy Birthday, America

 This is us.

Regrets

Former DC Executive Editor Pat McCallum has departed this mortal coil, and I have a jumble of thoughts to sort through. Some are about Pat. Some are about me, or maybe they’re about Pat, or maybe they’re about our colleagues. Honestly, in moments like these, it can be hard to tell what is self-serving and what is genuinely about the departed. I do know that when I became EIC of DC, I had no idea how much death would be part of my new life. Making the calls to his close collaborators to get them updated ahead of the headlines was hard. Hearing voices cracking was heartbreaking. Hearing my own voice was weird too. All that is about me—much of a person’s loss is about the prism through which an individual experiences the news.

Pat often spoke to me of his dream of getting a dog—a German Shepherd. I hassled him relentlessly about this for a while, sending him links to Petfinder pups, but he wanted to get a house with a yard first, so the big dog wouldn’t have to live in an apartment. Less than half a year after he left the company, a global pandemic kicked in, and then we were all shut-ins, which can’t possibly have helped.

Pat had a hard job at the office, a kind of consensus builder caught between staff and management who had to first earn our respect. He approached it with humor, and he was at his best creating a magazine about our upcoming comics alongside his friends from his Wizard magazine days and some new colleagues. My favorite Pat story was when I was briefly his subordinate, and he came into my office to sincerely say he was looking forward to supervising me. I laughed and said “I don’t really do that.” He was shocked by my response, and beat a hasty retreat to try to figure out what was happening, but within a few months, we’d look back on that moment and laugh and laugh. “You were right,” he’d say. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Pat was always there for me when I had to work through a conflict or plot how to get someone promoted or give hard news to editors or talent. He was a kind and friendly ear, the guy who quietly left doughnuts in the kitchen every Thursday morning and fed feral cats outside the office. He was as silly as the rest of us, but he took it to new levels with props and antics.

I’d been meaning to text Pat and check-in, which is the same story most of us have. I’ve been Outside enough times to understand that Inside, everyone is busybusybusy, and time moves very differently when there aren’t enough hours in the days versus far too many hours to fill. I’ve been Outside enough times, though, to have learned that while people move on and it feels like they aren’t thinking about you, our world creates mini-families where you can walk away and not deal with this world for years, then drop right back in and pick up where you left off. I wish Pat had known that. I wish pandemic hadn’t presumably exacerbated his demons. I wish he’d followed up on his plans to head back to the East Coast where some of his closest friends were. I wish he’d known we all would have been happy to follow up on those texts about meeting up. And I wish he’d gotten the dog.

Ouchie

Y'all remember when I had plantar fasciitis after moving all those boxes, and I went to a Burbank podiatrist and got a shot of cortisone, some exercises, some Hoka sneakers, and some fancy custom insoles?

Maybe you don't remember that much detail but anyway, it seemed to get WORSE after doing all that, and the pain migrated and evolved a bit, so I made an appointment with a fancy-schmancy foot doctor in Manhattan, flew East for the July 4th weekend, and got a foot ultrasound and rock star foot guy said...

...I have torn my plantar fascia. His assessment is the cortisone made the pain go away and I then proceeded to walk all the heck over the place and not take it easy (which is true). He also said the custom insoles are basically garbage and the shoes are fine but not any better than other similar (and cheaper) shoes. He gave me a lecture about for-profit medicine and how our very stupid health insurance system incentivizes doctors to do little add-ons to get more money from a visit since most in-network fees are quite small.

And then he assigned me to go to physical therapy until my foot has improved, and said I should toss the custom insoles and get less rigid over-the-counter ones. (I suspect their rigid arches might have exacerbated the situation.)

Today I had my first physical therapy. It was like getting a really intense foot massage, but with homework. And I have to go three more times over the next two weeks before I'm allowed to return to California, then I'll probably have to come back a few weeks later, or maybe I'll be improved enough I can go to a Burbank PT for a while.

In short, I have a doctor's note requiring me to go to Manhattan. Which would be more fun if I didn't also have a doctor's note to take it easy and stay put in my apartment in Jersey City.