It's that time again: four years and four days ago I made my very first post here, and it's time to acknowledge that anniversary with a quick summary of where things stand at the moment.
My schedule isn't quite what it normally is at this time of year, unfortunately. Way back in December, when I took the month off to spend time with our new baby, I managed to read Frank Miller's entire DAREDEVIL run and compose posts for all of it! It was the biggest cushion for Monday posts that I've ever managed to give myself. Tomorrow the final post goes up, and I've barely even started work on what comes next. This baby has sapped a lot of my quiet evening reading time, and it took me about six months just to read three FLASH GORDON collections! But I'm not too concerned; I think I'll be back on track soon enough. At the very least, I still have Fridays lined up for a while. We just finished Flash's adventures on Friday, and after dallying for the next two weeks on smaller "one-shot" posts, we'll head into this fall's TRANSFORMERS stuff, which is coming along nicely.
And that's a nice segue into a "behind the scenes" sidebar, providing a look at how and where I find time for all these posts. I have two prime reading times during my day: my lunch break at work and in the evening after the baby is asleep. I don't usually bring books to work with me, so that's when I read a lot of the digital stuff I post about. I'll whip out the iPad, read an issue or two, then compose a quick post all in the span of my lunch hour. Then the post gets refined whenever I can find time, usually at night or in the morning.
The evenings are when I read the actual physical books: the Omnibuses, comic strip collections, etc. I try to find an hour, during which I'll read an issue (or a segment of the book or whatever), then type up a post. The only catch there is, as noted, our baby is not very good at sleeping yet, so for several months, my evening hour was often interrupted or never happened at all. Only recently have we finally hit on a routine that seems to work, and things are shaping up so I may soon be able to get comfortably ahead of schedule again.
Lastly, the stats: The X-MEN COLLECTED EDITIONS chart still has the most all-time hits by a mile; I don't think that's ever likely to change. Behind it with about a third as many hits is still my review of the INFINITY GAUNTLET OMNIBUS. That'll probably only increase as next year's INFINITY WAR movie gets closer. And more or less tied for third place are some newcomers to these standings: the CAPTAIN BRITAIN reviews and the IRON MAN by Michelinie & Layton reviews.
And those who dare to come here via Google use variations on the blog's name as the most popular search term, followed still by searches for information on the INFINITY GAUNTLET OMNIBUS, and, unexpectedly, searches for NEW TEEN TITANS reviews.
So to sum up: Mondays are kind of by the seat of my pants right now, but Fridays are looking good. And of course Sundays will continue to see The Unboxing once a month. I have much less time for the other sorts of posts I used to squeeze in on weekends, but I'm sure some will pop up now and then.
I have read the INFINITY GAUNTLET OMNIBUS post before (and obviously it's the INFINITY GAUNTLET that's the superior bit in all accounts among the three), but I read it again and this time around got intrigued to check also the early SILVER SURFER issues mentioned. Back in the day I owned SS #40 before reading IG, but couldn't really connect it and so the IG started in full in medias res form for me.
ReplyDeleteOnly now I realise how compelling case Thanos made for himself in SS #35... initially. It was very GREEN LANTERN & GREEN ARROW, right up to "I will murder half of everyone". It was a much huger deal than I realized, how Surfer crashes through the ceiling window of Dr. Strange.
Also, having been reading DEFENDERS since, it's hard to not notice now that the "original" Defenders *did* disassemble back in the day because Surfer, Strange, Hulk and Namor reuniting would cause the destruction of Earth if they ever did. And then it happens, in INFINITY GAUNTLET.
So, thank you for your blogging and its part in making these great stories even greater.
Thanks, Teemu! I'm glad you checked out those earlier SURFER issues. I love Starlin's full run on that title as a prologue to INFINITY GAUNTLET. I never realized that bit about the Defenders, though, having not read much of that series. That's actually pretty cool. I wonder if Starlin intended to follow up on that thread when he brought them back together, or if it was just coincidence?
DeleteI would want to say coincidence, but in IG #3 Adam Warlock sure does drop intriguing "Defenders" as his addressing to the Earth's gathered heroes, followed by a splash where those four (plus Dr. Doom) are the closest persons to him. And obviously it's pretty disastrous what they set out to do next.
DeleteBut if there was a ball up in the ait, Marz drops it in SS #57 where one thing that Surfer gets guilt-tripped with is his supposed bailing out on the other Defenders, which never took place as it was made clear that those four should never gather together again because of cosmic karma reasons (and THE NEW DEFENDERS reasons too, obviously).
Y'know, I've never read the SILVER SURFER tie-ins to INFINITY GAUNTLET, though I've owned them in single-issue format for well over a decade. I think I just figured since Jim Starlin didn't write them, they weren't important. I've certainly never felt I was missing anything by not reading them, at least. But perhaps someday I'll check them out...!
DeleteI would want to say that it more than not is likely to ruin the IG for you a bit, but #55-56 has some fun pre-empting of certain unrelated movie franchise starting in year 2000.
DeleteWell, you've piqued my interest. I'll check those issues out eventually!
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