Like any comic book-related character worth his salt, I’ve returned from the dead. What have I been doing? Read on for my poor excuses for well… excuses.
Essentially, I’ve been doing review-worthy things. I’ll save the best for actual reviews, but a short recap follows.

Well, first of all, I’ve been watching more […]

This week’s column is up a day early. I’m heading to New York this afternoon, so I wanted to make sure I get a forum topic set up for you folks to post in before I leave.
Is the 22-page format (or the 32 or the 48 or any floppy page format) dead? Is […]

This week I’m wondering: why do we read comics? Why do I read comics? Why do any of us read comics? Why do we read the types of comics that we read?
I think there’s a simple answer for this that was given to me by someone very dear and close to […]

After much debating, I finally have a topic for this week. Perhaps this will grow into a multi-week analysis, but for now we’ll start with an overview. Maybe this is all old news, but let’s throw out the basics in case it’s new to someone out there.
Everything is influenced by what has come […]

I’m jumping in and spending a little time talking about creator-owned comics versus the work-for-hire system for the Big Two. Once again I’m not saying that one or the other is better - they’re just different.
This post started off as a comment on 5by8, #7: Attribution. I saved my lengthier comments for what eventually has […]

So last week’s column got a few manga fans in a little bit of a tizzy - not an all-out fanboy war type of tizzy, just a few disagreements with my remarks. Hopefully this week, I’ll put bandaids on their wounds while I kick American fanboys in the nuts (although again, that’s not my […]

I spent about a thousand words last week refuting Matt’s assertions on the supremacy of manga over western (specifically North American) comics.
Well, I’m not done. This week, I’ll look at things that I like better about our western comics. Next week, I’ll stay on my high horse and show those things that I […]

So if Matt is going to jump right out there and tell you folks that manga is so much better than the North American comics we all know and love, then I suppose it’s up to me to defend an entire industry against his reasoning. This is going to be hard, because if Matt’s got […]

Hello again, Gang. I’ve just taken a preliminary look at the stats for December (I know - before a lot of you knew we existed), and I’ve come up with some pretty interesting findings. I’m going to throw out the top two items in a couple of categories. Basically, I’m wondering if […]

So guess what my loving and ever-faithful girlfriend got me for Christmas? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a “T,” and ends with “ickets to the NY Comic Con in February!”
Yeah. She’s a keeper.
So now what?
We’re just going for Saturday, so how do I get the biggest bang for my (her) […]

I started this site back in October. I thought that I was reading and spending a lot of money on comics, so it made sense for me to do something a little more constructive with it. I was also considering doing writing for more than a hobby, so on a whim, this site […]

Why are comic mini-series so freaking long? I’m not talking about the company-wide crossovers that happen every year. I’m talking about the single story-line miniseries that usually run between 8 and 12 issues, even though it seems like they should be able to do it in 4. Why are they this long […]

Some of the first comics I remember having as a kid were a small black and white Archie-sized Superman book, an old Star Wars comic, some Disney comics, and a Madballs comic. The one that sticks out most in my memory is that Superman book.
I’m pretty sure I had that thing kicking around since I […]