September has mostly escaped now, so I should report on my activities in case they provide any alibis:

THINGS I GOT DONE THIS MONTH

• THE SECOND FLASH FOSTER STORY: I polled my Patron(s) about how I should follow up my coverage of the first Flash Foster and his High-Gear Hot-Shots story, it was decided I should check out Flash’s story from the following issue. I did so, and it is a better story, though it gives most of its emotional weight over to a different character.
• PHONE GUYS: My Phone Guys comics were the big point of focus for me this month. There are two important things to know about Phone Guys. 1) This comic is a foundation on which this website stands. I have put up a Phone Guys comic every week since the first of November, 2010. During some of my more depressed eras, there are probably months where it was the only thing that went up. And 2) This comic is not well made. I don’t mean that it isn’t good (though that is a claim I wouldn’t fight), what I mean is that I make it in a bad way to make a comic. At about this time every year I make all 52 Phone Guys comics that will go up over the following year. That means that for most of the month I’m trying to get two or more of them done in a day, often in the wee hours after being wiped out by work often resulting in the very “good enough, print it” comics that have become a tradition. So I did that this month. 52 more comics in which two people say stupid things at each other over phone. The lifeblood of the Book of PDR.
• THE MARVEL APPENDIX 25 YEAR ANNIVERSARY EVENT: My favourite encyclopedic website of obscure Marvel Comics knowledge, The Marvel Appendix, has been around for 25 years (Hey, that’s even longer than this website). To celebrate, they’ve been putting up a truly overwhelming number of profiles covering every corner of the Marvel Universe and then some. I helped out with a small handful (including an android superhero, a civilian, a motorcycle designer, a team of mercenaries, a jerk Deadpool knew, and of course an alternate universe version of my beloved Rocket Racer), but my entries were a drop in a waterfall compared to what everyone else put up. I enjoy helping the Appendix when I can, but I am constantly reminded that I am a mere sidekick compared to the other contributors. My Marvel love is highly focused, but they seem to have expansive collections and organization skills I envy. I could not have got 25 years out of that site, but they could have done it without me easily. Congratulations to them, I’ll continue to do what I can, when I can.
• BEEKEEPER REVIEW: CAPTAIN QUAID: The beekeeper I reviewed this month is from a show based on Disney’s Tangled. That was a movie I remember enjoying, so it was easy to dip into the show for Quaid’s two episodes. For the record, this is my 96th Beekeeper Review here on the site and I’d love to finally make it to 100 soon, so I will probably try to do a monthly review for a while.
• MUSING ABOUT THE MERMAID MASK: I decided I should start a regular thing on the site where I talk about adventure games I’ve played. I love adventure games so much and don’t talk about them enough, so this will force me to do so. I checked my Steam library and wishlist a few days back and I have around 90 games waiting to be played. Let’s get that number down.
• OBSCURE MARVEL CHARACTER PIXEL ART: This month I have drawn none other than Dennis Dunphy, aka Demolition Dunphy, aka D-Man. Dennis is a character that has been treated with little respect in a lot of stories over the years, often used him as the butt of a joke. He is a funny character, it’s true, but they tend toward mean-spirited mockery. But I assure you he’s actually one of the most purely heroic characters in the Marvel Universe anddeserves respect, so don’t come talkin’ around here unless you treat him right.

OTHER THINGS I’VE BEEN DOING

• STUDENT LOAN DEBT BELOW $3000: That’s right, it says it right there. The student loan that has absolutely upended every aspect of my life (in spite of the fact that it didn’t even help me actually graduate) has been brought to a number below three thousand dollars! It is, I admit, going more slowly than I had hoped. Every time I make an actual budget to organize my life, something happens. I have an expensive car problem or I am made to move into a more expensive apartment or the prices of all gas and food and everything everywhere increases. Every dollar paid off comes with a struggle. But that struggle is slowly paying off. At the risk of “jinxing” it, I am currently on track to have this shit finally gone from over my head in three years or so. After that the money that currently goes toward it could actually be saved up, a scenario I can almost not imagine right now.
• HOVER HEAD COVERS: After my success at making the Adventure Dennis section of the site better last month, I’ve decided to continue improving and beautifying things around here. To that end, I have given comics-style covers to my Hover Head comics, as seen below:

DID I ENJOY ANYTHING THIS MONTH?

• ETHAN COEN’S MOVIES: I am a big fan of the work of the Coen Brothers, but I had not got around to checking out the movies that Ethan Coen has made sans brother/avec wife. Until now! I do think that part of the reason it took me so long to watch Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t is because the reactions I heard said they were middling at best. Well, now that I have seen them, I can see where those reactions were coming from. They seem intended to be a sort of b-movie fun romp, but they’re still full of Coen-esque action and tension and quirky characters and dialogue. I can kinda see the seams that hint at which of the Coen Brothers brings which aspects of their team fims, but I enjoyed these fine. If I find most of the Coen Brothers’ work to be incredibly good, a movie that is half that level in quality is actually still pretty okay. The real question is, won’t anyone save Curlie?
• WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE: I can’t remember how I came across it, but I was searching for some old story in an issue of Weird Tales and found it on the Internet Archive. After I noticed they had a lot of issues of the magazine on there, I’ve just been checking out a short story or two a week. I don’t think I have any specific recommendations, I’ve just been picking things that look short and have an interesting name. You could do that too, if you want.

COMEDY JOKE OF THE MONTH

Why is it safe to tell actors to “break a leg?”
Because they’re already in a cast.