JAMES BOND WILL RETURN...

...but when?

Folks, for the first time ever, I'm ceasing a review series before it's done. A number of factors have combined to get me so far behind on this thing that I haven't even started reading the next storyline, "Thunderball", yet. And for an explanation, it's time to turn back the curtain a bit.

Since my son was born, I've found that I have a lot less quiet time at home (obviously). And by the time he's asleep at night, all I usually want to do is vegetate, chat with my wife, watch some TV, and go to bed -- but evening used to be when I did the bulk of my reading, whether for pleasure or for the blog. However, the past couple years, I've found that I do most of my blog reading on my lunch hour at work. I can read an issue, type up a quick post, and then return to it the next day for proofreading. What this reliance on my lunch break for reading means, though, is that since I don't want to lug big books of comic strips or what-have-you to the office and back every day, many of my reviews nowadays are being done from digital books.

Thus the dark secret behind all the recent Digital Unboxings is revealed. While I am totally on board with digital as a format, as I've said before, I've also found it to be a necessity recently in order to keep the blog running. The ongoing Superman and Wonder Woman reviews are all being done with digital collections, and nearly all of my Friday posts over the past year or two have been from digital material as well. I still like reading physical books; it's just harder to find the time for it!

So, getting back to Bond -- I just haven't kept up on this as I'd hoped, and I'm now forced to throw in the towel. I could try to do a few more "skip weeks" to get back on track, but at this point I'd rather just focus on this fall's project instead. Since the blog began, it's been Transformers every year, but this time it will be a new toy tie-in saga instead, and it's one I'm looking forward to (and it's in digital format, so delays should not become an issue as with Bond). I fully intend to finish these 007 strips eventually, but it won't happen this year.

I hope everyone will accept my apologies for leaving this project half-finished (at least for now). There were four more Fridays of Bond scheduled, with today being one of them. I'd like to post something over the next three weeks, even if it's just editorials or Unboxings on a different day of the week than usual, but it's also entirely possible nothing will go up. However, come August 31st, we'll be back in action. And of course, Superman and Wonder Woman will continue to dominate Mondays through the end of the year.