The Time Draws Nigh …

 
Because I’m so frequently away (this is the longest I’ve been home since 2002), I set up a rooming situation on my return from Iraq. I get extremely cheap rent, which goes down further when I’m away and not using any utilities or taking up space. Now that I have a report date for my coming duty, I’ve given notice that I’ll be gone again for awhile — it turns out that it’ll be a seven-month tour, rather than six — and need to begin consolidating my possessions for storage.

I still haven’t received my passport yet, which isn’t that surprising, but I’m hoping it will arrive before I ship out. No big deal (I don’t actually need it, as long as I’m on military orders), but I’d like to have it available. Meanwhile, with my ex-wife’s agreement, I’ll be having my mail sent to her, starting on the date I leave.

(I still don’t have a whole lot of information, but the next couple of days are a drill weekend, and I should be able to learn more while that’s going on.)

Though I put it off for longer than I intended, I started my remix_redux assignment the other day, and now that I’ve broken that barrier, I have some idea where I’ll be looking to go next. There are still things to be worked out, but experience tells me that I’ll find my way through it once I get in motion. I’m supposed to be in a different state by the 20th (for processing out of the country), and I’d like to have the story done by then. That will require some focus, but I’ve done it before. And, even if I don’t meet that goal, I’ll still have several weeks before the official deadline.

We get closer and closer to the appearance of Buffy, Season 8 from Dark Horse. Ordinarily I would have pre-ordered it already, except that I knew I’d be elsewhere in the very near future, and I won’t know my mailing address until I arrive at my duty station. I’m excited at the prospect seeing more of what was once (immediately after the company of my children) the favorite part of my life, but I have some reservations. The main one, of course, is the possibility of having one or more of my stories thoroughly Jossed (which I had contrived to avoid before now), but that’s not the only consideration.

Setting the actual, canonical Season 8 in comic book (graphic novel) format will be a departure from the previous practice. On the plus side, Joss will have a degree of freedom he’s never had before, and almost anyone comparing the 1991 Buffy movie to the subsequent TV series will agree that more Joss-control gives a better product.

On the other hand, sometimes constraints work to creative advantage. When Steven Speilberg put out 1941, I loved it, and watched it any number of times. When I bought the director’s cut, however, I was horribly disappointed: the things that Spielberg had originally been forced to remove, to meet the optimum running time for theaters, were all things that very well needed to be left out; their reintroduction to what had — for me, at least — been perfectly effective as a wacky comedy, served only to ruin the whole.

So, what’s the likelihood that an unbounded Joss will do the same thing? No telling. I’ve gotten only a few small hints of upcoming elements; they sound intriguing, and none of them look to be plot clunkers. I really don’t know how the production-feedback cycle of a comic book series compares to that of a television series, so I can’t evaluate what difference that might make. I actually have only two things I can use in rendering judgment: Serenity, which moved Firefly to a different medium but succeeded in retaining most of the things that had made the TV series appealing, and the JLA graphic novel, “Identity Crisis”. (No, I haven’t followed his work in the X-Men comic series; I’ve heard favorable reviews of his endeavors there, but without having seen it personally, I can’t assess the result.)

We’ll see. We’ll see. And, if past performance is any indicator, we’ll have one rollicking ride.