Things To Come--I Hope

So, I recently wasted spent an entire afternoon downloading and listening to all the extant episodes of The Fire and Water Podcast, a show devoted to Aquaman and Firestorm and hosted by Rob Kelly, author of the blog The Aquaman Shrine and The Irredeemable Shag of the Firestorm Fan blog, who, by the way, has been known to check in on this blog occassionally and has left a comment or two in his wake.  Anyway, there's a point in each episode where   the pair tell the listener about all the other blogs and podcasts that they do on top of having jobs and families and lives outside of cyberspace.  This left me feeling a little bad about not even being able to keep up one blog on anything resembling a regular basis recently.  Of course, there have been "real world" events that have kept me away from the keyboard, but I think those are now under control to the point where I can devote a little more time to spouting off about the funny books for the half dozen or so people who actually care about my opinions. 

Sitting on the floor beside my computer desk is a pile of comics that I want to write about and taped to the wall in front of me is a long list of topics to cover, so I've got more than enough material to carry the blog through the end of the year if I can just overcome the the forces of inertia and start writing. That's part of the reason for this post.  I figure that if I tell you about some of the stuff I  want to write about, I will then be obligated to actually do it.  Here's just a sample of what's in the pile and on the list:

photo by Max Ink

Thanks to Jonathon Riddle, who gave me First Issue Special #4 for my birthday a few weeks ago, I now have the complete run of that quirky little Bronze Age book and hope to write about the entire series issue by issue.

I managed to lay my hands on a copy of Batgirl #1 after all.  Before I get to reviewing it, however, I want to look at a handful of significant Batgirl stories, including her first appearances both in print and on the tube. 

Earlier I said that I might pick up Superman #1 if I had $2.99 burning a hole in my pocket.  Well, it turns out I did.  Actually, it was a twenty dollar bill that I found lying on the ground in the parking lot of the office building next to where I work and which I proceeded to blow entirely on comics.  

In addition to Superman, I also purchased two The Fury of Firestorm #1's.  That's two different comics, by the way--the new one and the one from 1982, which I probably paid too much for because the Laughing Ogre tends to overprice their back issues, but it was found money, so what the hell--and not two copies of the same book.  With that acquisition, I now have all four of Firestorm's debut issues, and plan on reviewing them in chronological order. 

Dark Horse recently released a trade paperback collecting all fifteen issues of John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke's Major Bummer, originally published by DC in the late 90's.  I didn't buy it, in part because I didn't really have thirty dollars to spend on a comic book right then, but mainly because a few days before it was released I had found nine of the fifteen issues in the clearance boxes at Half-Price Books for a quarter apiece and subsequently tracked down the remaining six for a buck each at Packrat Comics.  Thus, I managed to acquire the contents of a thirty dollar trade paperback for $8.25, which, even if I never get around to writing the review, I just felt like bragging about. 

Also, even though it's now almost two months since their release, there are still a couple of the DC Retroactive one-shots that I'd like to write about. 

If you actually see the list I wrote of above, you'd see that what I've described is just the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, it's time to quit yapping about what I plan to do and actually do it. 

Talk to you all soon.