First off, what I’ll be up to in about six weeks: giving a lecture on October 23 at the Understanding Superheroes conference at the University of Oregon. I’m on a panel called “Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology,” with Beth Davies-Stofka and Jonathan Tanner, and I’m going to be talking about the end of the Fourth World, the beginning of the Fifth, and the retcon as god-bullet.

I’ll be back at the U. of Oregon, this time at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum, on October 28 to give another lecture, which will be a double feature with one by Peter Coogan; this time, my talk’s going to be called “Super-Aesthetics,” and it’ll be about the overlap (and differences) between good visual art, good cartooning and good superhero cartooning.

In the meantime, a few other things I’ve had published recently:

*The piece about criticism and my abuse of poetry for Poetry magazine that I mentioned below, which is now up on their site

*A piece for Wired/Ars Technica’s “Dual Perspectives” feature about the current state of augmented-reality displays

*A review for Pitchfork of the Beatles’ Past Masters, and another review of the new Richard Thompson boxed set

*A few more brief appreciations over at Hilobrow, including this one, about Ogden Nash, which both uses and cites the word “objurgate”