Hagai Palevsky (he/him)

@dialhforhagai

Writer, critic, translator. Street cat photographer. President of the Great Clown Pagliacci fan club. Enjoyer of posts and content.

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Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 13

Didn’t care for Julia Ducournau’s ALPHA (2025)

For the first half or so of the movie, I couldn’t stop thinking about another movie that came out around the same time as this one, IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU — both, after all, are movies about children contracting (or suffering from symptoms of) fatal diseases, and the parental helplessness that stems from that; the difference, of course, is that ALPHA not only focuses on the perspective of the child but also on the way that these symptoms flare outwards. This, in itself, makes Alpha (the character) an interesting emotional anchor: unlike the child’s disease IF I HAD LEGS…, Alpha’s disease is a public hazard, and we are shown, again again, the ramifications of contagion, thus robbing Alpha of her own humanity, her own validity, while she is forced, helpless, to watch. Like the Bronstein movie, there’s always that looming risk of emotional monotony, but at the very least it’s an interesting emotion.

But I said “for the first half or so,” meaning there’s another half to go, and that second half falls squarely into cliché. There are some nice moments there—Alpha, too young to truly understand, being taken by her drug-addicted uncle, who has the same epidemic disease that’s ravaging (presumably) the whole world, to a club where the doomed-and-ill are free to dance their worries momentarily away—but the weaving of past and present and that swelling soundtrack just bog the whole thing down. The theme here is the lingering nature of familial trauma, but all it seems to have to say is that the nature of familial trauma is that lingers.

It’s true that some things last a long time… but that doesn’t mean they leave an impression.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 12

Bear in mind this is subject to change, and indeed I did answer this then delete because I didn’t feel the initial list was quite right, but “Waiting for the Miracle” “Coming Back to You” “Sisters of Mercy”

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 12

Enjoyed her in DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS and OH, HI!; I can’t say I have more thoughts beyond that

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 11

this month’s monthly milkshake was tiramisu flavored and honestly it rocked

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 11

Not “my” recipe but it fucking rocks anyway. Slice cucumbers into semicircles, place in colander with salt and let sit for thirty minutes to let them dry out a bit. Afterwards, mix with green onions, gochugaru, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and black sesame. ENJOY

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 11

lol, I appreciate the people now trying to turn my nonsense into a Mission. Exceedingly unlikely just because I don’t tend to go to all the louder bars/parties but who knows

Would you be up for trying karaoke at Thought Bubble?

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 11

I’ve only seen NORTH BY NORTHWEST and VERTIGO, honestly, and both of those were so long ago that I don’t really have a firm opinion. So I’m going to say SIR ALFRED #3 by Tim Hensley

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 10

And, of course, lest we forget,

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 10

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 7

genuinely fascinated by this approach

Quote from Rivers Cuomo:

"I remember when I was 21 or 22, right when Weezer got together. I went to the local used record shop in Santa Monica with the intention of buying a classic album that was going to be a huge influence on me and my writing for Weezer."

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 7

Bolaño

and when with the naiveté of a fledgling, I said that I wanted to be a literary critic, that I wanted to follow in his footsteps, that for me nothing on earth could be more fulfilling than to read, and to present the results of my reading in good prose, when I said that, Farewell smiled and put his hand on my shoulder (a hand that felt as heavy as if it were encased in an iron gauntlet or heavier still and he met my gaze and said it was not an easy path. In this barbaric country, the critic's path, he said, is not strewn with roses. In this country of estate owners, he said, literature is an oddity and nobody values knowing how to read.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 6

ngl feels super gross to see someone talking about their sibling committing suicide reduced to crass clickbaitism

Post by Popverse:
The secret, original writer of DC Comics' Absolute Wonder Woman revealed as Zoe Thorogood (and the heartbreaking and real reason why she quit).

[link]

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 6

for better or worse it’s certainly mellowed out, compared not just to the ‘80s–‘90s days but even to the Nadel/Hodler online days… sometimes too much for my liking, but I also don’t know that too much combativeness is sustainable over time. (Plus, it doesn’t always make for good writing, obv.)

What do you think of the changes to the Comics Journal over time?

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 6

I don’t think my facial hair looks good at all if I’m honest with you

What's your secret for good facial hair?

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 6

Haven’t watched it. Or read the comic, for that matter (I have a copy, just haven’t gotten to it)

Do you prefer the French or English dub of Persepolis?

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

I make an effort not to crash out on main so the above is all anyone’s gonna get, I think

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

I really don’t have a preference; both come naturally to me.

Do you prefer reading left to right or right to left?

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

I have not

Have you seen Bodies Bodies Bodies Bodies? I think you'd like it

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

thank you to my uncle for capturing my vibe, “guy who brings a Tsuge book to the family bar mitzvah in case it gets boring”

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

read, and loved, TO REST OUR MINDS AND BODIES by Harriet Armstrong

First, for me, there was Lorde; in high school, I would listen to "Perfect Places" and think, well, if she made this album when she nineteen, if I get to nineteen with no masterpieces to show for it I'll have no excuse whatsoever. Nineteen came and went; you can guess how that turned out. I still can't resist that comparative urge—MJ Lenderman, one of my favorite musicians, is just one year older than I am, while Leo Fox, one of my favorite cartoonists, is a year younger, and don't get me started on Brian Wilson making PET SOUNDS at twenty-four—but as time goes by it's just to be expected that some people will be your age, and that some of these people will make masterworks, because these people are just people in the world.
Where the protagonist of NO LONGER HUMAN—the last book I read—has given up on understanding the world altogether, Armstrong's protagonist here is the opposite, still trying to reconcile it (through studying, through literature) but coming up, forever, empty-handed. Even her emotions feel out of reach — the reason the infatuation that drives the book is so powerful, so tempestuous, is precisely because she cannot do anything about it, cannot be anything other than a spectator. Armstrong's is world is one of permanent dissociation, right down to the prose — note the way dialogue starts and stops completely without demarcation, in a sort of undeclared reportage, stiff and glassy in its mood but fluid in its division between reality and perception.
Harriet Armstrong is my age, incidentally; judging by TO REST OUR MINDS AND BODIES, we might be of the same disposition. How strange it is to be anything at all.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 5

Appreciate the check-in! No

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 1

Oh, good question. Maybe this photo of my cat.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 1

WIP

Excerpt from a work-in-progress review:

A memory: when I was a kid, my parents had a couple of friends who were, to put it mildly, rather wealthy; the wife was caring but often out of touch, and the husband was one of the stingiest and most obnoxious people one is likely to ever meet. One evening, my mother got a call from the wife, asking if we would like their old “flat-screen TV,” as they were upgrading to a newer model; my mother happily said yes, and we got into the car and drove about thirty minutes to their house. When we arrived, my mother’s friend brought down a large and rather inelegant CRT model; confused, I asked, “Didn’t you say a flat-screen?” Affronted, she replied, “Yes! Can’t you see that the glass on the screen is flatter than usual?” Then, after a pause, she asked, “What, did you think I meant I’d give you a thin-screen TV?”

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jul 1

From an interview with Krigstein. It’s Important to note that none of the below panels are *large* panels; with the exception of the last one, none of them are substantially larger than the others, none are given excess space to be “showy” — it‘s just that he drew the fuck out of his panels

Kurtzman’s pages, like Simon and Kirby’s pages are not really composed spatially. They are total in another way. Now they are great; now Simon and Kirby is great. But I am not thinking of composing a page that way. If you take apart a Kurtzman page or an Eisner page and look at a single panel, the single panel falls. It can only exist as a total page. The Eisner panel as an individual panel cannot exist by itself without its surrounding page. It exists only as a page because they exist in time like a movie. They are held together by a sequence of actions.

The panel has to exist by itself, otherwise the integrity of the art is in jeopardy. Until the artist arrives at the point where he realizes that by drawing a single panel he has a single work of art that exists by itself as a single statement which can live by itself, only then can all the panels live together. And then you reach a totality that is completely out of the realm of the infantile kind of page continuities that comics are filled with.

Each panel must exist by itself. And the thing that makes a comic page different from every other day in the year is that each of these individual works of art, at the same time as they have a totally individual life of their own, also exist as a total group, as a unit. This was my inspiring motivation in doing comics. If you can pull out your panel and frame it, exhibit it as a panel, and then have the reader unconscious of that as he’s reading the totality, then you’ve done something, in my estimation. You’ve raised comic book art to the level of Goya, if you can achieve that.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 30

Individual panels by B. Krigstein (colored by Marie Severin)

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 30

June 2026 in books, movies, music

Books:

THE PALM HOUSE, Gwendoline Riley - 4 stars
A SWIM IN THE POND IN THE RAIN, George Saunders - 3.5 stars
FAMESICK, Lena Dunham - 2 stars
NO LONGER HUMAN, Dazai Osamu - 4 stars

Movies:

BLUE HERON (2025, dir. Sophy Romvari) - 4.5 stars + heart
MARTY SUPREME (2025, dir. Josh Safdie) - 4 stars
ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE (documentary, 2023, dir. David Gregory) - 3 stars
MILE END KICKS (2025, dir. Chandler Levack) - 4 stars
THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON (2005, dir. Jeff Feuerzeig) - 4.5 stars + heart
HARDCORE (1979, dir. Paul Schrader) - 4 stars
LE SAMOURAÏ (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) - 4.5 stars + heart
THE INVITE (2026, dir. Olivia Wilde) - 3 stars

Music:

The Magnetic Fields - GET LOST
Daniel Johnston - 1990
The Music Tapes - 1ST IMAGINARY SYMPHONY FOR NOMAD
U.S. Girls - HALF FREE
The Lemon Twigs - A DREAM IS ALL WE KNOW

The albums by the Magnetic Fields, Daniel Johnston, and the Lemon Twigs are written in bold, as they are favorites

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 30

Been reading MESSAGES IN A BOTTLE, the B. Krigstein collection, and “Going My Way?” is (chronologically, haven’t gotten to the EC stuff yet) the first comic in here that I’ve capital-L loved. No moral, no karmic punchline, just evil.

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 29

Choreography in non-space: hand-to-hand combat, Krigstein (from “Death of Nuggets Nugent”) // basketball, Derambure (from BASKET)

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 29

Brother I’ve got all day

Hagai Palevsky (he/him)@dialhforhagai· Jun 28

quick, without looking it up, guess what book this is about