Justin Martin
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jmartinwrites.bsky.social
Justin Martin
@jmartinwrites.bsky.social
380 followers 880 following 2.2K posts
Trying it over here. Disabled and queer. Word tinkerer (in schools) and word tinkerer (not in schools). Never not thinking about Plastic Man.
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jmartinwrites.bsky.social
dc in the 90s really wanted you to know that Lobo was hung.
November 28, 2025 at 9:17 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
jesus CHRIST, aesop.

(trans. Robin Waterfield)
128 THE FROG NEIGHBORS Two frogs lived close to each other. One lived in a pond that was deep and far from the road, while the other lived in a puddle on the road. The pond- dwelling frog advised his friend to move to his pond. “You’ll have a better life here,” he said, “and a safer one as well.” But the other frog didn’t listen to this advice. “It’s really hard to up and leave one’s familiar surroundings,” he said. And before long he was crushed to death beneath the wheel of a passing wagon. Likewise, there are people who throughout their lives pursue worthless occupations and are overtaken by death before they find better ways to spend their time.
November 15, 2025 at 6:58 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
exact meter out of thin air? in tmnt font guess i have a reputation tmnt font
November 7, 2025 at 3:45 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
straight up 90s todd macfarlane in the TMNT font
November 7, 2025 at 4:00 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
today's Lynda Barry comic is required reading for any kind of teacher.
November 1, 2025 at 8:39 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
reading SECONDS and I really dig how Bryan Lee O'Malley uses the comics page. On the left, comparing two people in short scenes. On the right, following a single thought.
October 26, 2025 at 10:58 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
y'all look at this egg

(odilon redon, The Egg)
an egg with eyes in a black and white goblet. sketchy.
October 23, 2025 at 3:57 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
omg omg @silaslee.bsky.social
October 23, 2025 at 3:49 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
turn this into a large poster and hang it in every Marvel and DC office now.
ZH: A lot of animators grow up watching cartoons, and that inspires them to draw and that inspires them to animate. Which is great, but if the only thing you watch is other cartoons, you’re not gonna pull from an interesting [place]. “Family Guy” will reference weird ’50s stuff and ’80s stuff. “The Simpsons” pulls from dramas and actions and thrillers and real-life references. A lot of the stuff we find funny or interesting, and what goes into the show, is a lot of the real-world stuff. Like a weird Dick Cavett interview from the ’70s. All the real stuff in the world that we find interesting as adult men, that is completely unrelated to cartoons, is usually more fresh. If you’re just watching cartoons and making cartoons based on cartoons, it spirals into a big blob of nothing.
October 21, 2025 at 2:04 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
with apologies for contributing to Bezos, favorite Gilligan's Island episode? (Or Columbo, as a backup?)
October 9, 2025 at 1:06 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
nobody asked but if I was teaching high school again, knowing what I know now and where the crises + possibilities are with students, here's the bare minimum I'd insist on doing, in terms of weekly structure
October 6, 2025 at 12:53 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
book that didn't make a big impression on me at the time but I still think about years later: Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue

we gotta either give this guy a full 30-episode season of actual Star Trek or let him be one of the best contemporary American novelists again; prestige Trek thing is dumb
a gold record on a red background; cover of Telegraph Avenue
October 2, 2025 at 1:42 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
Um, I beg to differ?!?!?
bugs bunny in drag
September 30, 2025 at 10:54 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
dire stretch of reading lately -- lots of stuff I haven't dug -- but here's three I did.

YOU THINK IT I'LL SAY IT: political satire and realistic fiction with bite, particularly loved a gay Barefoot Contessa story here

ASK ME: some of the best poetry ever

THE WAGER: page-turning irl cannibalism
September 28, 2025 at 8:59 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
tried to submit a proposal for Thurber House and tell me why THIS WAS MY CAPTCHA lol
identify all images with stairs
September 10, 2025 at 2:53 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
don't have time to bang this drum as loudly as I want but y'all have to read Harlan Ellison's posthumous collection GREATEST HITS. In addition to being funny as hell and the conceptually-boldest sci-fi short stories I've ever read, they dazzle on that lyrical and mythopoetic sentence level.
the cover of Harlan Ellison's Greatest Hits, a greenish human face being pulled apart from within by black-nailed red fingers.
July 27, 2025 at 9:45 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
We go to this Airbnb in Tennessee every couple of years and I always forget that the bathroom has straight up Mermaid Erotica
July 19, 2025 at 8:29 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
driving a hard and predictable bargain with @silaslee.bsky.social
btw the fee for my services is you and noa have to watch two (2) episodes of the muppet show chosen by me
June 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
Going to do a Thurber lesson this year where, like Amy Krause Rosenthal, we make an encyclopedia of our ordinary lives -- or as I'll put it, as an apology for doing a lesson on AI Dungeon Years ago -- "the big book of things A.I. will never know".

Here's one of my entries.
JUGGLER I’ve long accepted that I’d be a terrible juggler – I’m disabled, and can’t screw the screw-tops off of Snapple bottles or put my own shorts on. Juggling is one of those things that no one will be mad at you for being bad at, even forever–it’s not like I’m a terrible driver, or I’m a horrible husband. The way we react to the vast majority of these people, the non-jugglers–I think it proves we each have access to a deep well of ultra-chill generosity that we spend most of our time simply forgetting exists. But the thing is: I think it’s pretty likely, almost certain, that if every single person had to take a day off–let’s say December 16th–and we all went to Flattest Nebraska and formed some sort of beautiful seven-thousand-layer pyramid, where the people at the bottom were so freaking coordinated that they could juggle jugglers, and not just juggle jugglers but juggle jugglers juggling jugglers who were themselves juggling jugglers who also juggled juggler-juggling jugglers, you would need a couple people at the tiptop of this many-fingered mountainside who were doing their part by up-and-downing a single red ball, left hand, left hand, left hand, over and over as it glinted in the sun. I could be so good at being one of those people. And it would feel good: some of us trying harder than others, all of us trying, each of us caught.
June 20, 2025 at 7:41 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
I just figured out that @columbuslibrary.bsky.social offers this and that's....so exciting? Libraries are so cool, y'all. People using their single lives to connect people with books, personalized, for free.

Fund these things out the wazoo. Best idea humans have ever had.
the "My next read" feature of Columbus Metropolitan Library "tell us what you like to read and we'll create a book list - just for you - and email it to you within 2-3 days"
June 16, 2025 at 1:52 AM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
saw some folks play mario kart with a live band doing the soundtrack yesterday!
a bandstand, outdoors, where folks in Toad and Wario hats and full Donkey Kong jumpers play flutes, sax, keys, etc
June 8, 2025 at 7:09 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
Did I enjoy this novel in the sense of I cared deeply about its characters or its plot? For the first sixty or so pages hell yes; largely no, though.

Do I still need folks to read it because it has the most fucking intricate subcultural and intercultural worldbuilding I've ever read in sci-fi? Yeah
the cover of Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which is black with four-pointed orange and yellow starbusts of varying sizes, as well as rounded stars of the same size and color.
May 26, 2025 at 9:52 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
running a spiced-up Lasers and Feelings for the local tabletop club tonight -- I love how simple it is, but c'mon, they didn't include a table of weird aliens in there? Got to make some!
fanmade 'species' and 'ship' table for Lasers and Feelings. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MhxQQapqbXl4g9ch3JYMfuV7gtlfDEie6RoG9_pcwM4/edit?tab=t.0
May 20, 2025 at 8:51 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
my eyes are practically closed in this picture and I look so deeply unamused but we were in direct sunlight and also mere inches away from the French and their bistro. I do love this mother and sibling, I promise!
mom, who stands next to me, next to my brother.
May 11, 2025 at 9:37 PM
jmartinwrites.bsky.social
It's my birthday! Thanks for all the laughs, love and care y'all give the other 364 days.

Second-best thing you can give me is reading my favorite poem, by Louise Gluck.

Best thing you can give me is reading it to someone who doesn't know it yet.
THE WILD IRIS At the end of my suffering there was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs. You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice: from the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure seawater.)
May 6, 2025 at 3:18 PM