[Mutation Vectors] A year of disappointments and surprises

Klintron

Klintron

— 4 min read

Status Update

2024 was a year of both disappointments and surprises. Some of them good surprises, many of them bad. and there's a still a week to go, so who knows what will happen.

Anyway, it's list season, and I have some lists of my favorite media of 2024. That trend of surprises and disappointment certainly applied to pop culture this year, but I'll keep it focused only on what was good.

Media Diet: Best of 2024

Art

I was a fan of Kim Hu's art even before I joined BlueSky, the Twitter-like social network du jour. But that's the platform that launched her into internet stardom, and I'm there for it.

And via Hu: Massiveface I bought their 2025 calendar.

Books

I will always remember 2017 as the year that I saw Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker for the first time. It changed my brain and taught me new ways to watch movie pictures. I will always remember 2024 as the year I read Gene Wolfe for the first time. Reading Gene Wolfe changed my brain and taught me new ways to read, and write, fiction.

I started with the Book of the New Sun science-fantasy series, and just finished and then began re-reading his horror/weird fiction novel Peace.

As for stuff that was actually published in 2024, my favorites were, in no particular order:

Fiction:

  • The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones

  • The Seventh Veil of Salome Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  • A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian

  • Blue Ruin Hari Kunzru

  • Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Non-fiction (Both of these were actually published in 2023):

  • If We Burn by Vincent Bevins. Learning from the mistakes of the protest movements of the 2010s feels especially important heading into the second Trump presidency.

  • The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini.

Comics and graphic novels

My favorite comics of the year:

  • Ribbon Queen by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows. I'm not a particular fan of Ennis or Burrows, but I noticed a lot of people getting excited about this one and it's included in my GlobalComix subscription so I decided to give it a shot and I'm glad I did. Ennis managed to conceive of an visual gimmick---literally cutting people into ribbons---that seems obvious now but that I'd never seen anywhere else. And it turns out Burrows was the perfect person to illustrate it. But at its heart is a character-driven, socially relevant story that largely avoids the sort of juvenile, macho digressions that Ennis too often makes.

  • Mothballs by Sole Otero. Not necessarily the sort of thing I usually pick up, but when I saw a couple drawings from this I knew I just had to have it.

  • Haus of Decline A BlueSky find. An online comic strip with a twisted sense of humor.

Also worth mentioning:

  • Local Man stayed good and got canceled too soon.

  • I've been enjoying Jeff Lemire's stuff. I'm caught up on Phantom Road and Fish Flies, but haven't looked at the Bone Orchard mythos or Minor Arcana yet. I just returned to Gideon Falls.

  • I didn't like the ending of The One Hand, but I did like the journey. I was less impressed with the companion series Six Fingers, but it was interesting how they fit together.

Some of my favorite readings of the year not published in 2024: Farm Hand, Clean Room, and Silver Surfer Black.

Film

I Saw the TV Glow was the best movie I saw this year, but Monkey Man had to be my favorite. I also need to shout out Queer, which came as a surprise on multiple levels. Last I heard, which was 2010 (!), Steve Buscemi was to direct it. Then I see the poster at the local indie theater and it's got Daniel Craig in it and it's directed by... Luca Guadagnino? Whose Challengers just came out earlier this year? And Reznor and Ross are doing the soundtrack? Then I saw the trailer, which made it look like it was going to be ... a romcom? But then I listened to Guadagnino on Marc Maron's podcast and it turned out it was going to be quite Burroughsian after all. So finally I see the actual movie and it's glorious even if it does have a dead wife problem.

The Substance was another huge surprise that seemed to come out of nowhere and is impossible to forget, describe, or recommend. If it's for you, you probably know already.

This was also the year that I saw Inherent Vice and became obsessed with the "stoner noir" microgenre.

I had also somehow completely missed that Benson and Moorhead released a new film in 2022: Something in the Dirt. It's great, and very Gene Wolfian.

Journalism

I was a little late to the party, but I feel like 404 Media, the publication launched by former Vice Motherboard contributors deserves special mention.

Music

Several of my favorite bands put out new albums in 2024, but a few other releases really stood out:

  • Zamilska: United Kingdom Of Anxiety

  • Ufomammut: Hidden

  • Oranssi Pazuzu: Muuntautuja

TV

My favorites were some of the usual suspects: The Bear, Hacks, Ripley, Fargo, Penguin, and True Detective: Night Country. These all got rave reviews and you don't need to hear more about this from me.

But keeping with the theme of surprises, I was really pleased with Bad Monkey. It got good reviews too, but flew a little under the radar. I guess it's copaganda, but it's fun and it's not just about cops. I guess I was skeptical about watching a show with Vince Vaughn in the lead role, but he was fun in it and the whole cast is great. It reminds me a lot of Justified, but with more humor.

And a new favorite that didn't come out this year: True Detective season 2. I didn't watch this when it came out, but always meant to come back to it. After watching Vince Vaughn in Bad Monkey and Colin Farrell in Penguin we decided to give it a chance. I can see why people hated this one, coming fresh off the first season, but I found a lot to like in it. If you watch it as a tribute to James Ellroy, rather than as part of the True Detective franchise, it's pretty good.

Logoff

Well, that's quite enough out of me for one year. I do have one last ask, though: If you have your own email newsletter, let me know will you?