A most sinful post.
Look, I know I still owe responses to some old comments, and that said responses will be a bit time-intensive for me to slap together so I’m doing lazy posts like today since I’m still a bit not-altogether-there and extended thought processes are falling into a jumble of nose fish bicycle, so please bear with me while I get my act together here.
Let me respond to a couple of comments re: blogging from the other day.
Walaka of Earth Two crosses the dimensional barrier to say
“…The comixweblogosphere was robust and diverse with snark over here and nostalgia over there and scholarship in the corner. And none of it was homogenized or monetized or corporate. That era was way too short.”
I think I’ve mentioned in the past that during Peak Comics Blogging, before I’d write my post for the day I’d zip through all the blogs in my sidebar and make sure I wasn’t duplicating anything my blogging brethren or sisteren had already covered. Of course that’s the behavior of a complete madman, particularly when I realized the value of “a personal blog” is one’s…well, personal insight and perspective. Sure, we were all talking about ALL-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, but was anyone talking about it the exact same way I was talking about it? I think not.
I do miss the cross-pollination of blog posts and comment sections and all that jazz between the comic blogs at the time, and I look at (as Andrew points out) my almost entirely-rotted links page and lament the loss of many of those voices. Which is why I’m lamenting the possible loss of Twitter, as several of those folks turned up there so they’re not entirely gone.
Someone, and I’m sorry but I forget who, was going through all the old comic blogs, indicating which ones were still going, which were still up but clearly ended, which were gone entirely, what happened to the folks running them, etc. I thought that was a pretty interesting, if sometimes depressing, series…though that person ironically enough shut down his own site before getting to me and this ancient blog of mine. Dang it, the site name is on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t remember it. I even plugged it here once or thrice. Ah, well, I’ll think of it eventually.
But anyway, I’ll reiterate a pledge I made to y’all before, that I promise not to disappear on you with no warning. When I take my rare-ish break from the site and I say “I’ll be back soon,” that’s not the death-knell we’ve seen so many times on other blogs. I really will be back, honest! As long as I’m in this terrible industry, and still slinging comics, I’ll keep this site going. Or if for some reason all traditional blogging software goes kaput and I have to move to a new platform, I’ll let you know. I mean, I suppose if I am retired…you know, permanent-like, against my will, the site’s done, but I wouldn’t be able to help that. But if I can run this site from beyond the grave, I will.
I suppose being in comics retailing as long as I have is what’s kept this blog alive all these years (coming up on its 19th anniversary in just a couple of weeks!). I can’t imagine it surviving my departure from the business…for one thing, I suspect I’d not want to talk about comics after that. But, with any luck, that won’t be an issue. So long as, you know, people keep buying comics from me.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Not sure what I’ll be posting for Black Friday, as who’s gonna be reading blogs on Black Friday, but I’ll come up with something. Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll talk again with you soon. Honest. No foolin’.
I miss the cross-pollination of so many great writers too. I really think, despite the occasional feuds or fallings-out, that we made each other better writers.
I deeply, so deeply regret not maintaining proper archives for the decade+ that I wrote about comics. I’ve tried to centralize as much as I can on Linktree ( https://linktr.ee/alandaviddoane ) but I know there’s still a lot missing, some of which (the Graphic Language podcast I co-hosted with the great Yan Basque, for one example among many) I need to re-upload if I can ever find the time and energy.
Words cannot express how grateful I am to you for the way you have kept the fire burning all this time, Mike. Your blog is always a delight, but never moreso than when you commit the greatest sin of all. Sin on, Sinner!
Any idea why the Comic Treadmill old posts are inaccessible?
All of H and Mag’s work.. .gone?
Mike Sterling
FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
may be the comic to restart Charlton Comics.
Is it ever possible to get colors out of register if they’re only on the internet?
“ALL-Star Batman and Robin”
Forever and ever, he IS the God-damn Batman!
Steven Gauthier: “Is it ever possible to get colors out of register if they’re only on the internet?”
And if it wasn’t on rapidly-yellowing, cheap, mildly off-center paper, would anyone notice?
It wasn’t me, but a few years ago, I happened to pass 15 years of blogging, so I wrote a post about it and checked in on some of the blogs I used to read. It was a sad exercise, as you might expect.
I think the “Golden Age” was around 06-11/12 or so. Before that, it was a bit Wild West, but around 06, everything seemed to be humming, but around 11/12, people began to drop off. Of course, those years are fluid, but that seems about right. I’m glad you’re still cooking!