blogging about blogging is a sin

The state of the site.

by

Don’t be alarmed by the title, everything’s fine, I’m not going anywhere. But like I noted yesterday, my initial attempt at my Monday post someway, somehow, caused a glitch in the matrix here. Comments couldn’t be posted on the post, and for some folks the site as a whole wasn’t loading properly.

Well, I managed to do a brand version of that post that appears to work fine…some of you have posted a couple of comments, so it all looks good.

As I also said yesterday,I wondered if the 16-year-old template I’m using is part of the problem. I’m using a WordPress theme called “Hanami,” which has been a solid and faithful visual layout for my site for all this time, but it’s very possible the cracks are starting to show. Hence, my quest for a newer, more modern-looking theme that will retain the simplicity of what I have now, but be more responsive to, say, desktop and mobile screen sizes. Oh, and will also allow for a banner across the top of the page with my site name and tagline superimposed over it.

And also won’t break everything. That’ll be good, too. Any ideas, feel free to let me know in my hopefully-functioning comment section.

If you were around the last time I changed up the site, back in early 2010, you know that was a bit of a challenge. But that was switching from Blogger to WordPress, a full transition of blogging platforms. This new template, whatever it is, will hopefully just be a visual shift on an existing platform, one that will hopefully work better with the software involved.

My feeling is that it’ll be a smooth transaction, since my site isn’t terribly demanding programming-wise. But I imagine there will still be a period of adjusting things here and there once I make the switch, so I’ll give you sufficient warning before I start messing around with the site.

• • •


Speaking of that Squeak the Mouse post, a couple of you noted that the cat vs. mouse cartoon characters Herman and Katnip are more of a direct inspiration. In fact, it’s specifically cited by folks from

The Simpsons

as such…this in-depth article by Brian Cronin tells you all about it.

Plus, in response to my calling Justice League of America #200 “post-Bronze Age,” Athelind asks

“I’m intrigued that you refer to a 1981 comic as ‘post-Bronze Age,’ I tend to think of the Bronze Age as running from around 1970 (Adams/O’Neil on Batman and GL/GA, Kirby leaving Marvel, Spider-Man Drug Issues) to around 1985-86 (Crisis on Infinite Earths/The Dark Knight Returns/Watchmen, the shift from newsstands to specialty shops, the black & white/indy boom).

“I’m curious to know what your benchmarks are for the transitions between Silver, Bronze, and Iron.”

And…hoo boy. I’ve talked about this before (like here and here and here), and, okay, at that last link, I note that Overstreet defines “Bronze Age” as “1970-1984.” But I’m also old enough to remember when Overstreet used to define “Bronze Age” as an informal, not generally accepted term.

But to keep this from going on too long (too late, I know) in my head I generally think of “Silver” as “mid-’50s to late ’60s,” Bronze as “’70s,” and anything past that more or less as “Modern,” because I’m fighting “Copper Age” with all the power my aging body will allow. And I don’t think I’d ever heard Iron Age before, which Googling tells me is 1985 to 2011, and man, I just don’t have it in me right now. I know I’ve said “Modern Age needs to be broken up,” but every time someone suggests something my initial reaction is “no sir, I don’t like it.” So, yeah, don’t pay attention to me on this…I’ll come to terms eventually.

Basically, all I meant was “post 1970s,” as ’70s JLA certainly felt different from ’80s, even early ’80s, JLA.

And in other site news…I will be returning to the “My Fantastic Four-Ay” series shortly, and will be getting into my non-spoiler-free post about the final issue of Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing 1989. So, yes, soon I shall posts on the site that aren’t just about the site. I’m sure you all will appreciate that!

Not really an End of Civilization post.

by

So it’s been a while since I’ve done an End of Civilization post (this notwithstanding) in which I go through the distributor catalogs and crack wise about some of the goodies appearing therein.

Part of the reason this series of posts went into decline is the lack of time I’ve had to put them together since opening my own shop back in 2014. Another is that my mindset seemed to have changed slightly because I was now a store owner, and…I don’t know, I don’t think I was more sympathetic to distributors, publishers and their products by any means, but I felt perhaps a little less inclined to be openly mocking them as I had been .

And of course, with the demise of the original Diamond Comic Distributors and their Diamond Previews print catalog, my main source of material has fallen to the wayside. Yes, every current comics distributor has their own catalog, or set of catalogs, that they release monthly, but making fun of just comic books isn’t quite the same as pointing out some new ridiculous Monopoly variant or a PVC statue of a schoolgirl in a bikini or whatever.

Plus, it was easier, at least in terms of “planning out a hopefuly-humorous blog post” if not “placing orders for the shop” to have everything in one spot. Now that it’s decentralized, I have to work harder for the laughs, and you all know how much I hate to work.

That said, I do have an account with the current owners of the Diamond brand, via which they primarily sell just toys and game pieces, and from whom I’ve received exactly one item (a Halloween Michael Myers action figure, ordered from the old Diamond long before its final collapse). I’ve spent many a week looking through their offerings, new releases and final calls to order, and have found basically nothing making it worth the effort I took to get an account at this new company in the first place.

But I found something this past weekend that almost makes me think End of Civilization could perhaps rise from the ashes. And that’s the “Star Wars: Rogue One Director Krennic Cape,” available in multiple sizes:


Yes, for only $200, you can have a cape that you’ll want to wear to work, to jury duty, to weddings, pretty much every waking hour to justify dropping two C-notes. When I pointed this price out on the Blueskies, that I hadn’t priced capes in a while and had no idea if this cost was in line with your standard cape expenses, I was told “yeah, it’s in the proper range.” I don’t recall if the rest of the costume as shown in that picture was also available for sale, but maybe the manufacturer just assumes you have the clothes already. I mean, don’t you?

The starting date for Progressive Ruin.

by

Some search results (in particular, those powereed by “A.I.”) are stating the incorrect year for the beginning of my site. My very first post on this blog was December 5th, 2003. Unfortunately, I link to a specific “Wizard of Id” strip in that post that’s now blocked behind a paywall. Ah well. At least the link isn’t dead entirely, unlike so many other sites that I’ve linked over the last couple of decades.

Anyway – first post here: December 5th, 2003. Mark that down in your diaries.

“Comics Giveaway Day,” if you’re nasty.

by


Just a reminder that Free Comic Book Day is only a couple of weeks away, and I’m receiving my stacks of giveaways with my new comic shipments every week. What’s weird is that I hadn’t really thought about the approaching date until I started receiving those FCBD books a couple of weeks ago.

In the past, we usually started getting the promo stuff, like the posters and the shelftalkers and the window decals a little more ahead of time to start getting the word out. But, in the process of just, you know, running the store and doin’ things, I somehow never noticed that no such promotional materials had been offered this year.

I placed a call to Lunar Distribution, who’s handling the FCBD stuff in the U.S., and found out they hadn’t offered any such extra items for retailers. None of the buttons, shirts, posters, and so on, like Diamond would offer. I’ve speculated that perhaps the changing of ownership was finalized too late for such items to be put together for distribution this year…or maybe they just forgot about it, like I almost did.

Hopefully next year they’ll get their act together, but this year I had to print up my own posters and shelftalkers, and little flyers I’m giving out at the register. And, somehow, I still had a case of FBCD merchandise bags sittin’ around, so I’ve been using those. And a good sign: even when I ask the customers new to the store “so, do you know about Free Comic Book Day?” the answer is usually “yes, can’t wait!” Has FCBD become just common knowledge amongst the regular population?

So here’s hoping this year’s event continues the wild success of my previous years. And comics writer Amy Chase is coming back to sign more books and chat with customers, which went extremely well during her last appearance at FCBD. Alas, pal Dorian won’t be able to help out this year like he has before, but an old customer of mine, Deon, will be filling in! We should be on track for another good year, with any luck.

***

Just a brief blog note: I haven’t forgotten about the “My Fantastic Four-ay” series, I just took a break this week and I’ll be back to it next week. Those are a lot of work!

This week’s new issue of Krypto is good too.

by

Hi pals! I’ve been a tad out of sorts of late so the content-generating gears in my brain have been working slower than usual, for which I apologize. Proper content will resume shortly on this site, such as starting on answers to your questions and getting to the next entry in the Final ’90s Countdown.

In the meantime, why not hie yourself hither to the Longbox Heroes podcast run by close personal friends Todd and Joe, which while on the Patreon site, their main weekly comics podcast and their weekly After Dark show remain free. However, if you throw ’em a buck or five, you get all their bonus podcasts (sometimes right away, sometimes you have to wait a couple of weeks, depending on your subscription level).

Now, those bonus Patreon-only podcasts may be of interest to you, the Progressive Ruin Platinum Member Cardholder, in that I’m definitely involved in one, and may eventually be involved in the other. In the first case is their monthly “Previewing the Past” show, where they send 2 to 3 hours discussing the Diamond Previews released exactly 30 years ago this very evening WOOOoooOOOO spooky! And Todd and Joe were nice enough to invite me, or I shoved my way in, one of those two, and I’ve been supplying additional notes based on my own memories and experiences about some of the items in these old catalogs. Since, after all, I am quickly approaching my 37th anniversary in the business, so I sold all the stuff in those 30-year-old Previews!

I should emphasize I’m submitting written material for Joe and Todd to read, so you’re not going to hear my malodorous — er, mellifluous voice on the show. However, their other monthly Patreon podcast, “Comic Book Oddities,” is where the two lads discuss comic book movies of the past. The next episode’s movie is randomly picked at the end of each show, and somewhere in the mix is America’s greatest cinematic achievement, Frank Miller’s The Spirit. And Joe has said, on air, that should The Spirit ever turn up via random selection, they’ll find a way to have me actually on the episode. So, there you go, added incentive (or perhaps, decentive) to sign up.

And, um, okay, here’s some actual comic book stuff: I read this week’s forthcoming release of Marvel All-on-One #1:


…and it’s a hoot. All splash pages inside, as befitting a comic where the Thing just beats the stuffing out of folks. Don’t reveal the surprise ending to your friends!

Any excuse to link to Buddy.

by

Okay, first, a couple of brief updates:

1. Okay, so I didn’t realize that the alternate Earth on which the Fantastic Four movie took place was numbered after Jack Kirby’s birthday (Earth-828) until folks brought it up in the comments. Post has been updated accordingly.

2. In the comments on Friday’s post about the Superman story and the cutting of Siegel and Shuster’s credits, it was pointed out that Tom Brevoort did a very thorough job outlining the changes in the different printings of that story. So, basically, my post was more or less redundant, and I could have saved everyone some time just by linking to that post in the first place, had I known about it.

I think the bafflement of my younger self trying to work out the internal logic of the story still stands, however.

Anyway, used to be in ye olden dayes I’d scour the internet making sure I wasn’t going to trod over well-traveled ground with all my posts about, for example, how great All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder and Frank Miller’s The Spirit were. I would go down the list of the recently updated sites on the Comics Weblog Update-A-Tron 3000 to see what other people posted that day before I wrote my post and anyway, I’m feeling much better now.

Can’t say I’m never going to cover a topic not already covered by someone else. If I do, I’m not trying to step on any toes. But at the very least, I promise to bring my own spin on things, my personal perspective. No cheap listicles here! …Unless that’s all I’ve got time for, then LISTICLES AHOY

• • •

I am still taking your questions or topics, so query/topic-ize(?) away! Just follow the rules, please, and take it easy on your pal Mike.

I’ll probably start answering these pretty soon, so Watch This Space for your responses!

• • •

Thing I was not expecting here in the Year of Our Lord 2025…a new Robert Crumb comic:


Man’s 81 now and doesn’t seem to have slipped at all artistically. His writing has been…hit or miss, sure, but one more comic from the old master is certainly something to which we should pay attention.

Now, if we could get a new Freak Bros. comic out of Gilbert Shelton, well, I’m sure I’d just about plotz.

In which I complain about reading too few comics.

by

So it’s been a while since I’ve done just straight up reviews of the new comics on this site, which is primarily because I don’t tend to read the new comics during the week they’re new. Either I’m reading things well ahead of time (as the Marvel and DC books usually show up at the shop a week before their on-sale date), which is rare, or I read them well after release, which is more likely.

My eyeball troubles during their initial phase, when my vision was cloudy or just blacked out entirely, kept me from reading more or less anything for about a year and a half. I was able to read text on my computer screen by enlarging fonts, doing high contrast white-on-black colors, etc. But comics were a no-go for a while. And while I still continued to accumulate books to read during this period, they went unread for quite some time.

I’ve got quite the backlog, even with deciding to give up on some titles to thin out the stack. Adding to the problem is that now I’m able to read again, I’m not reading as quickly as I used to. And this is just comics. I’m not even bringing the prose books I’ve gathered up recently into this.

I’m trying to make time to read comics and get through these stacks. I have entire series that I’m eventually going to have to sit and buzz through their runs. I just did this with Ahoy Comics’ Second Coming and The Wrong Earth, and Howard Chaykin’s Hey, Kids! Comics! is up next.

Graphic novels are kind of a roadblock in this process, in that I could read 1 graphic novel or I can read (x) number of comics in that same period of time. Again, I read more slowly than I used to, so it’s a real decision to make.

But it’s no decision at all when Bill Griffith gets a book out:


I mean, of course I’m going to read a biography of Nancy creator Ernie Bushmiller. It’s a dense retelling of not just Bushmiller’s career, but of the history of comic strips in general, going into details of the business from Bushmiller’s era. It’s not as emotionally devastating as his previous biography, Nobody’s Fool, the story of real-life pinhead Schlitzie, but watching Bushmiller’s rise and developing his methods of operation are both compelling and exciting.

There are several asides, from Nancy and Sluggo themselves (using redialogued Bushmiller art), and from Griffith himself, making appearances as the curator of an imaginary Nancy museum. Certainly strange, certainly fitting given the comics being discussed.

Good book, well worth spending the time absorbing this work. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested not just in Nancy and Bushmiller, but in the business of strips.

I do love the cover, taken of course from one of Bushmiller’s more nightmare-inducing strips:


…which I of course used as a wallpaper on my original flip phone, and also appeared in my Sluggo Saturday feature. (I see someone else out there is using the “Sluggo Saturday” name — ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.)

The book does bring up his use of assistants of course, which I was aware of even when I bought this original Nancy strip a few years back. Like I said in that post, even so it was nice to have something produced under Bushmiller’s watch. And seeing that period of Bushmiller’s career in Griffith’s book, it was nice to think “I have something from this point in his life.” It’s a solid, real connection to this story, and in its way, maybe Three Rocks is as affecting as Nobody’s Fool, at least to me and my personal minor link to Bushmiller.

Social muddy-a.

by

Hi pals…sorry for the short post today, was just too tired last night to get anything together.

I’m just going to leave a brief note about the current Social Media Shuffle…I’m still on Twitter, while the duct tape is still holding everything together. And I have a Mastodon account, which is fine but is just mildly complicated enough for it to not quite feel “Twitter-like.”

The current point of exodus appears to be Bluesky, where you can find me under “mikester.bsky.social.” It’s invite only at the moment, but my account there should be publicly accessible eventually, along with everyone else’s. Here’s hoping…it looks like it may be the site of choice, but I thought that about another place until policy decisions an’ such caused folks to bail.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens. Everything could change again in a few weeks. But mikesterling.com will still have links to wherever I’m at, though I need to update it again (and probably drop off the social media accounts I don’t intend to keep around).

So this was going to be a real post…

by

…about one of two different subjects, but the first one was going to be the first of a series, which was a problem as I’m starting the look back at your 2022 comic industry predictions next week. And the second one…turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be at first glance, and I can’t really stay up ’til 3 AM getting it all puzzled out. So, those are for another day then!

But speaking of predictions, you do remember that I’m looking for YOUR 2023 comic industry predictions! Put ’em in this little chromium comments section here, so long as you mind the very important rules.

Thanks everyone…I know this wasn’t much of a post today, but you’ll be looking back on it fondly once I get crackin’ on the walls of text looking back at those older predictions. Gird whatever needs girding before then, and I’ll see you on Monday!

“Get me the Instagram account of Spider-Man!”

by

Okay, this is the last time I’m plugging it this year, and I probably won’t mention it again ’til I start doing follow-ups in just a couple weeks to the last time we did this, buuuuuuuut…

…get me your 2023 comic predictions, soon! Like now! Do it quick like the bunny! Just follow those rules I have posted there, please!

This is also the second year, I think, where I posted my own predictions. I did it last year, so I’ll know how I did soon enough.

Anyway, I know blogging here hasn’t been as thick and meaty as it normally is, and I could go back and retype that into something less unpleasant but I refuse to. It’s just…Christmas and end-of-the-year stuff and Surprise! Migraine! and other things just getting in the way of doing the important work…blogging about that menace Spider-Man! (Actual image of me blogging about Spider-Man above.)

But I’m not going anywhere, hopefully you aren’t going anywhere, and we’ll all meet back here at the start of the new year with me providing The Content, and you providing The Eyeballs. I’ll also see if I can’t scrape together some kind of “Best of the Year” entry about comics I did manage to read, despite being desperately behind. And of course, as noted, I’ll be covering your predictions for 2022 in the next few weeks, which will have you begging for more lean times on this here site.

So thanks for reading, pals, and I hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year’s Eve/Day!