Saturday, May 01, 2010

Superheroes, etc.


Before it was left to gather dust, Superheroes, etc. was a blog about comic books. It stayed dormant for many of the same reasons other blogs do. Procrastination. Laziness. Doubt. Life. I planned to dust it off back when I started blogging regularly again with the fine folks at Trouble With Comics, but I failed to do it in part because it felt redundant to write about comics both here and at TWC.

The simple, stupidly obvious fact that occurred to me recently is that there's no good reason why Superheroes, etc. needed to be only - or even primarily - about comic books. Hell, the name says it all. I don't think I meant for it to when I first named the blog, but that little "etc." gives me a good deal of license.

A few mornings ago, in the face of writer's block and an overall creative malaise, I challenged myself to come up with a list of subjects I wanted write about and that I thought other people might want to read about. The list quickly overtook the single piece of scrap paper I allotted for the project. At lunch I forced myself to go and take my usual half-hour noon walk around downtown Albany, and this time - instead of laziness - it was the prospect of coming up with more blog topics that almost kept me from my daily stomp.

And there were plenty of topics covering comics. For some time now, I have thought of writing extensive, perhaps even in multi-part, pieces about certain comic series that left deep impressions; most notably, Lone Wolf and Cub. I started several times, but never finished, an article about comics like Empire and Wanted featuring supervillains as protagonists. Then there are all the papers I wrote in college about superhero comics which, for some reason, until now I've never even considered reproducing on the Internet.

But if you are generous enough to occasionally stop here to check out what I'm posting, you will find comics are just one of many subjects I'll be writing about. And at times the blog will seem like nothing but autobiography, with a few comic book and movie reviews here and there.

A lot of things in my life have changed recently; mostly for the better. So to celebrate the de-cobwebbing of Superheroes, etc., the first new week of the blog is going to be all about works of art that changed my life. An album that changed my life. A novel that changed my life. And to begin, this coming Monday, a comic book that changed my life.

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