The Blog Experience So Far

Last summer I had a revelation.Well, it wasn't so much a revelation as it was me discovering something that should have been blatantly obvious.I was a little more than a year into my return to reading comics and a month or two into a new job that allowed me internet access when I realized that there were people online that liked to talk about comics!!!OMFG!!!Why didn't I think of that before?

I started out on Marvel Comics' website forums.After about 100 posts and 10000 times rolling my eyes at overly-picky fanboy comments I grew tired of that.It was about the time that the second Fantastic Four movie came out and there were about 30 topics at any one time created with the sole purpose of bitching about how movie Galactus was not 616 Galactus.(Wank, wank, wank)

I then found Newsarama, which covers more of the industry and is a usually entertaining website that I still frequent during my down time.I never really got into the forums there.I created a screen name and posted about a dozen times, but the fans there seemed even more anal to me.I'm not a continuity nitpicker and I don't complain about out-of-character moments.(Unless it's something truly ridiculous, like Captain America smoking a big, fat joint.Even then I could accept it if the story was some sort of "What If?" thing.)So my involvement there was short-lived as well.

Through Newsarama I found When Fangirls Attack, which is a "linkblog" where they discuss comics from a feminist point of view.It's an interesting site in that you get to see topics discussed that don't typically come up in fannish conversations.Everyone seemed to be having so much fun there, even when they were fighting each other, that I got a case of blog envy.So, after one or two false starts, I started up this blog.

My initial intention was for this to be a big dumping ground for all of the stray thoughts and ideas that make their way through my head over the course of a day.Thanks to my focused reading of comic blogs though, it quickly became a place for me to talk about comics.I got linked at WFA a few times and that was pretty neat.My blog got some extra hits it would not have ordinarily received but I really didn't make much of a splash.

My attempts to get linked and involved there were doomed to failure though.I couldn't really get behind any of the "outrages", mostly because I'm not someone who looks to be offended.It's only comics.If I don't like something, I put it down and leave it to the people who want to read it.I did like to read about everyone else's outrage.

Eventually it got to the point where reading about how pissed everyone was was ruining my own enjoyment of the books.It was just such a downer.So I pretty much stopped writing about comics altogether and tried to focus on writing about little odds and ends.That sucked too and I got very apathetic about writing.

Recently, I started stepping up the amount of hiking I do and started taking more pictures.This has worked out the best so far.The focus is on the photots and the posts pretty much write themselves.The only problem is that I don't go as often as I would like to so my posts now are pretty spread out.I can live with that.It allows me to focus my free time more on things like my piano practicing, which has fallen into some admitted negligence.

So...what's the point of this long, rambling essay?What is the moral of this seemingly pointless story?

1)Comic book fans need to calm down.I get it.You're upset that your favorite comic isn't going in the exact direction that YOU PERSONALLY would like it to go.let go of your anger.Move on to a different comic.It's OK.You won't miss much.The way decompression works you could skip 6 months and only miss one storyline.

2)I suck at critical writing.I have no interest in looking for hidden context to further my own agenda, whatever that may be.Call me simple, but I just want to enjoy a story without worrying if the writer is subconciously insulting me.

3)This project, like the hundreds of others before it, is doomed to die of neglect.

4) The internet is a wonderful thing.Only here can a dozen people writing on their blogs magically multiply and become "everyone".Aaaahhh technology.