(Any accusations that I picked the title for this post just so I could post up an old school jam are completely, 100% true.)
I’m ending my months of silence on the blog starting now.
2007 was a weird year for me. In the first few months of 2007, I was basically crippled. I had a painful hip injury that made walking very difficult. I was very fortunate that, after seeing several specialists, I found a doctor that found the problem and fixed it. Good thing, too, because right after that, my three-year contract with my employer was ending. Luckily, in the last few months of 2007, I picked up a gig for a big company in Manhattan. Since I live in central NJ, this meant I spent five hours a day on an NJ Transit train going to and from work.
I still read a lot of comics. But I just didn’t have time (and during the painful times, little inclination) to talk about them.
Now, I’m now employed at a great company 15 minutes from home. I’m 70 pounds lighter than I was last year, and I can move better than I did ten years ago. I have more free time than I’ve had in years. And I want to talk about why I love comics again.
Quite frankly, I’m tired of muting myself. There’s more great things going on in comics than ever before. There are more talented people creating comics than ever before. Webcomics are redefining how to layout and distribute comics. We’re seeing many more women and young girls reading comics through the manga invasion. Libraries and bookstores have made graphic novels a hot sector for the book business.
I remember the days when a bunch of comics bound together to look like a book was a visual oddity, a sort of grand extravagance that looked out of steps next to the wall of comic book pamphlets at my local comics shop. I remember when a comics store would have nothing but superhero comics (which I still admittedly love), or would have a box in a dark corner filled with “alternative” comics. Those old days were fun, but today is better.
My problem is figuring out how to write about comics without duplicating what other people are saying. I’ve had some success; I STILL get comments on the saddest comic post. I have had problems just fixating on the superhero-topic-of-the-day. I don’t think I’m the best at talking about the problems of DC’s Countdown, or how Marvel’s One More Day story was so unsatisfying (although no one has been able to explain to me why Norman Osborn and the Infinity Gauntlet wouldn’t have been a better antagonist in that story than Mephisto). I still want to talk about superhero comics, but I want to balance that against all of the other things that I’m enjoying. So I’m going to work on that.
I also want to do a little retooling to the look of this site. Hey, I could spend all day tweaking the theme here, but then I wouldn’t write. Still, I’ve yet to find a theme for WordPress that SCREAMS comics. Guess I’ll have to cobble one together. But I want to focus on the writing, so I may just leave things alone.
Thanks to everyone (including my wife and my Comics Widows buddy, Glenn Walker) for sticking with me over the last year. And thank you, reader, for checking in. Now let’s have some fun and talk some comics!