Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

The laziest way to start the next year of comics blogging.

§ December 8th, 2023 § Filed under how the sausage is made, pal plugging § 10 Comments

Thanks, gang, for the positive response to my 20th anniversary post, both here and elsewhere. And thanks to most of you for not making fun of my appearance in the Youtube video, Andrew. Ah, just kidding with ya, I knew my face was goofy when I took it.

But anyhoo, I was going to dive back into the 1990s comics thing, and I promise I’ll get back to the 1980s comics thing next week, but I thought I’d respond to a couple of recent comments before they’re lost to the mists of blogging time.

First, Donald G mentions

“May you be here for many more and not disappear like so many others.”

I’ve talked about this before, but it’s likely been, oh, a decade or more, so it probably won’t hurt to address it again. Barring accident or sudden health issues or something, like a big cartoony piano being hauled up the side of a building suddenly snaps its rope and it comes crashing down, accordionizing me beneath it, I promise if it comes time to shut off the lights here, I will let you know. I won’t leave y’all hanging.

I’ve seen a lot of blogs over the years where the last post reads something like “sorry, been busy, will post again soon!” and the entry is marked like five or six years before the current date. It was prevalent enough to where when I when post something like “sorry gang, no post today, will be back later” I’d add something like “no really, I’m coming back, I’m not like those other blogs.”

I used to post every day, because I read something once long ago that you should post every day to maintain your readership, get people used to the idea that Regular Content would appear on your site. Well, maybe doing that in the early years helped build an audience, but now I’m on a more…sporadic schedule (usually Mon-Wed-Fri, but not always) and that doesn’t seem to have hurt anything. I mean, someday the schedule may get even looser…once a week, three times a month, something like that, but don’t worry, I don’t plan to scale it back that far anytime soon.

BUT…scaling it back is likely inevitable. As long as I’m in the comics business, I plan on keeping this site going (so if you want this place to continue, the obvious solution is sending lots of money to my store). But it may be as free time decreases, or the simple desire to post as much wanes, new content here will diminish. I can’t see ever not wanting to talk about comics, so the site staying open so I can continue to pontificate at excruciating length at least once in a while.

Like I said, that’s a long, long way off before I do anything like that, at least three or four months, so don’t worry about it. One of the ultimate goals for this site is to create an index page, with links to specific posts or categories of posts, so that even when I decide to stop the blog or slow it to a crawl, it can remain a more easily-searchable resource. I used to have in the site’s sidebar links to posts of note…it would be sort of like that, only perhaps a little more comprehensive.

One thing I won’t being doing if/when I bring the site to an end is “Scorched Earth.” This was a post I thought about doing very early on, before I realized this site was going to become a lifelong task. It would be the final entry here, where I stopped being polite and started getting real, just laying into the people who annoyed me, crushing my enemies, speak truth to power, etc.

But if I’ve changed at all in the last couple of decades, it’s that I’ve mellowed out a bit. I don’t get quite as worked up over the whole “Someone Is Wrong on The Internet!” thing as I used to, mostly just shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. Besides, I’ve outlived most of my enemies, at least here on the Information Superhighway, so the burning need to do a Scorched Earth post has diminished over the years. …Wait, I just thought of that one guy. OOOOH I hate that guy. NEVER MIND, SCORCHED EARTH IS BACK ON.

The TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ version: I’ll tell you when I’m stopping the blog. Unless I’m hit by a train or something, in which case someone else can tell you.

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Here’s a quickie link to something amusing you folks might like. I know I did! Matthew Murray gives us the mini-comic Juchebert for free, free, free, in which Dilbert strips are mashed up with North Korean propaganda slogans. Very strange and amusing, and you can download it your own self here.

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Lastly, customer Sean asks, among other things, if I’d rank the various Swamp Thing runs. Well, I did, a while back, in these two posts: 1 2. It’s been nearly seven years, probably pointing folks to them again wouldn’t hurt. Anyway, this is the sort of thing a big ol’ index page would come in handy for.

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Thanks for reading, pals, and it’s back to Business as Usual Monday!