4.01.2010

I'm Back

Hey guys. So I've clearly dropped the ball writing for my own blog that I started. It's been a couple weeks since I've posted anything, except for Pete's reviews going up last week. Now, I'm not the type to whine and complain about stuff in my life so I'm not going to. Shit happens to everybody and sooner or later every person gets knocked down in their life. The big difference between people is whether or not they can pick themselves back up and become stronger after getting knocked out. And that's what I intend to do.

Some things have happened to me recently in my personal life, almost none of them pleasant except for one potentially amazing thing, but also something happened to me that directly effects this blog: I've become disillusioned. With comic books in general, as honestly most of the books on my pull list I just flat out don't enjoy at all anymore. But, I also became disillusioned with this site, with my own blog, because I realized that I was trying to copy other people's sites and ideas and I wasn't concentrating on making my own stand out. The highlight of my year so far was getting my article on Dark Reign published at the Weekly Crisis, yet nothing I've written for my own site was anything like that article.

Let's start with the world of comic books though. My pull list up to a month ago was as follows: Dark Avengers, Siege, Blackest Night, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Secret Warriors. Out of those books, the only title that I really liked reading and really felt like I didn't waste my time or money on was Secret Warriors. Blame it on event fatigue (ha, that's the name of this... never mind), but I just flat out do not give two shits about either of the big events anymore, and thank god that Blackest Night is over with. But, Blackest Night #8 has left me completely at a loss as to why I bother reading comics. (SPOILERS FOR BLACKEST NIGHT #8) In this issue, there were several heroes and villains that were dead brought back to life at the end of the issue, including the male Hawk, the original Captain Boomerang, and the original Firestorm. Look, we all knew that Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and Hawkman/girl were all going to be coming back from the dead and I'm totally cool with that, killing J'onn was the dumbest move DC has made even though FC: Requiem was such a terrific issue. But I have a serious problem with Geoff Johns bringing characters back for no reason other than he loves using these characters and loves the Silver Age. Captain Boomerang had his story end in a great, touching way and we saw the mantle passed to his son Owen who had nothing but potential. But, Johns doesn't want to use Owen, he wants Digger so fuck the fans of Owen since they don't matter. Well you know what, I really liked Owen Harkness and I thought that he could've been a really terrific character and I loved his time on the Outsiders and the new Suicide Squad, but it doesn't matter since my opinion doesn't count. It's the same way that I can't read good stories anymore about my two favorite DC characters, Kyle Rayner and Wally West, because every comic is about how AWESOME Hal Jordan and Barry Allen are. That's what Blackest Night #8 boiled down to: Hal and Barry are awesome and save the day, and the Silver Age is the only viable age in the DCU. Now, I can read GL Corps for my Kyle fix, but in the Blackest Night mini (a Green Lantern event mind you) Kyle shows up a grand total of 10 pages in the entire 8 issues. Oh and Wally? He only shows up as Barry's second fiddle and doesn't have his own book or team anymore.

Frankly, the best comics I've read have been independent comics, some that don't have anything to do with superheroes, or the Rhino story-arc in Amazing Spider-man which I bought because I heard it was so great. So I've decided that I'm cutting the fat and severing all ties to shitty books that make me not want to read another comic. I'm not even going to bother finishing Siege or Dark Avengers, and you better believe I'm staying away from Bendis's Avengers books like the plague after the Heroic Age launches. Instead, I'm going to get the trade for Hickman's Fantastic Four and start buying the issues of that. I'm going to keep buying stuff like Last Days of American Crime and the Boys. I'm not just going to buy things because I've always bought them, and I'm going to make sure that when I buy comic books I buy them because I'll enjoy them and they'll make me happy damn it! And I'm going to buy Hickman' S.H.I.E.L.D book too, because that looks like the best freaking comic ever.

Now, as for this site. Don't worry, Event Fatigue will still be going and going strong, but I'm not going to be posting every day and will most likely only post once or twice a week. I'm going to put thought into my articles and write about concerns that I have with the comic book industry or pop culture or society in general. I'm going to write mostly opinion and editorial pieces about things that matter to me and things that I want to write about. And I'm going to start writing more plays and even a couple comic book scripts to further that part of my life. Peter will still be reviewing comics, but I'm doing away with most of the features for now, scaling everything back until I'm sure what I want to do. Sometimes you have to tear things down to build something up.

And that's what I'm doing, throughout my life. I'm commited to building the best things possible and to that end I first have to tear things down. But things will be better because of it. At least I hope so anyway.