Two Decades

This marks 20 years of Reporting on Marvels and Legends. The comic shop that provided 60% of the name has been gone for over a decade, but this blog remains. Most of the people whose work convinced me I could have a blog about comics have either moved on to other media platforms, or vanished into the aether, but I'm still here, plugging away on Blogger. Ah well, I've never been what they call an early-adapter. If something works for my purposes, I'm usually content to stick with it.

Let's see, the past year of the blog. I didn't end up shifting the schedule around after all. No big surprise (see the previous paragraph re: sticking with what works.) Monday remains a day to review manga volumes, standalone graphic novels, and trade paperback collections. Wednesday is still for whatever random notions I might feel like posting about, plus solicitations once a month. Tuesday is for movies, including my new "Overdue Movie Reviews" series, where I get around to a bunch of movies I ought to have properly reviewed long ago. Friday is for Random Back Issues, 22 in the last year, same as the year before, and on par with the two years prior.

Maybe the routine makes it easy to keep going. There's less scrambling for a topic, or to choose when to discuss something. Accepting it's no big deal to skip a day here or there helps, even if I didn't actually skip many days this year. With all the short video games I beat, I had a lot more topics to fill up Thursdays than the year before. It was mostly Wednesdays that were silent. In the past, that would have been the day for posts with speculation or guesses about storylines in the comics I was buying. I usually throw that stuff into the reviews now.

Sunday Splash Page made some actual progress through the alphabet this year, going from Mekanix to Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat. Saturday Splash Page wasn't nearly as successful, starting with Slingers and ending with Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom. At least we finished the letter "S"!

You'll notice that, with another 4 letters complete, the two series have almost reached one another. Current projection is mid-April. After that, I have a splash page theme that'll run across both for 3.5 weeks. Then, it's back to their respective beginnings. It'll have been 7 years since I finished "A", and there's a lot of new stuff to go over. By this time next year, Sunday Splash Page will probably be on one of Juan Diaz Canales' Blacksad stories, while Saturday Splash Page could be up to Hector Plasm, depending on certain mangas that aren't currently finished, but might be by the time I loop past again.

Like last year, I struggle to understand what prompts certain posts to get a (relatively) ton of views compared to others. I get the reviews of popular movies that led certain months; Clue in October, 28 Days Later in July, maybe Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in June, if you stretch "popular". Why the review of solicitations for August's releases topped May is beyond me. Or why the Saturday Splash Page on Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle got 3 times the views of the previous week's entry (Seven Soldiers: Zatanna), and twice the following week's (Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer.) And I have no idea why my apparently most popular post of 2025 was Saturday Splash Page #188. Yeah, the one on Secret Defenders. The Internet loves early-90s Roy Thomas, apparently.

For those who still come around, or just started to drop by, thanks. I don't have any plans for new features, but I wasn't planning on Overdue Movie Reviews or Random Back Issues until I started them, so I guess you can't tell. I may develop an obsession with some new hobby - potato-based liquors, perhaps - and it will come to dominate the blog.

OK, this probably won't become a boozy spud blog, but something else isn't impossible. Maybe I'll do more traveling next year and start posting photographs again! Or maybe I'll decide the outside world is scary and stay inside.