1. James Franco has invested heavily into the Jason Lea Bank of Goodwill. He has ties to Freaks and Geeks and the Spider-Man trilogy, both of which count for something ‘round here. But that doesn’t make him a good author.

I had concerns after reading Franco’s short story in Esquire. Palo Alto, a series of short stories based in a fictional facsimile of Franco’s hometown, is similarly unremarkable, according to PW.

The reviewer said it “reads like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho fell into a Catcher in the Rye remix.”

I’m not sure what that line is supposed to mean, but it elicits an “oh, snap!”

Let me be clear. I haven’t read Palo Alto. But bad review paired with the underwhelming first impression of “Just Before the Black” have quelled any anticipation I might have had for Franco’s fiction.

2. Online Masters compiled the top 40 comic stories to integrate into college curriculums. I love that Ohio natives Brian K. Vaughan (who is misspelled as “Vaughn”), Jeff Smith and Harvey Pekar wrote six of the 40 suggestions.

All the usual suspects — Watchmen, Maus, Sandman — show up, but it’s a pretty good primer for those who don’t care about superheroes but are intrigued by the potential of the medium. Not that the list completely ignores capes, All-Star Superman makes a deserved appearance.

3. Some clever soul has started an @emperorfranzen Twitter feed in the wake of Jonathan Franzen’s Times cover.

Samples: “I see too many self-pub novelists “pushing” their books too hard. Me? I never do publicity. It does me.”

“I love me some marshmallow Peeps. I imagine each one is a chick lit author as I devour them.”

“Writing Tips From the Franz: “Write what you know. You know nothing. So write nothing, and read my books instead.”

4. Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng update us on their school in Sudan.

Speaking of Sudan...

Still speaking of Sudan...

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I have a soft spot for any Freaks and Geeks alum, so I was excited when James Franco wrote a short story for Esquire.

If you didn’t watch Freaks and Geeks (shame on you), you might know Franco as Willem Dafoe’s son in Spider-Man or the guy who common-law married his pillow on 30 Rock.

He won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal of James Dean.

I love Franco — not in the same way legions of indie-film-watchin’, peasant-skirt-wearin’, living-with-my-parents-and-thinking-of-getting-a-doctorate twentysomething women do. I just think he’s talented and picks strong material. Y’know, not counting Pineapple Express.

But Franco’s short story has garnered mostly negative attention. Salon even declared its crush on Franco finished.

I think Entertainment Weekly, of all outlets, assesses Franco the most fairly. His story “Before the Black” is, in a word, unspectacular. It’s also overly familiar. If I had a dollar for every short story that ended with an ambiguous maybe suicide, I could afford to put a basketball court in my backyard. (OK, that’s an exaggeration; but I could at least buy a pair of new basketball shoes. Nice ones. The kind you got jumped for in middle school.)

Yes, Franco will get published more easily because he’s famous. (He has a book deal with Scribner.) Yes, there are unpublished, unknown writers who deserve it more. But Franco’s young and still searching for his voice. Maybe he’ll get there. Maybe he’ll spend the rest of his career writing unspectacular, overly familiar stories.

But can we blame a man for getting published just because he could?

At least he isn’t writing a memoir or a thinly veiled memoir under the guise of fiction.

So, no, Franco hasn’t eclipsed Steve Martin as my favorite actor/writer. (Does Vonnegut count?) But my (man-)crush is still going strong.

On a completely unrelated note, one of my favorite bloggers measures the merits of blogging as opposed to Tweeting or posting on Facebook.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com