Hey, folks. I’m Mike. How’s it going? Welcome. Make yourselves at home.

Although I’ve never read a comic book before, they’ve asked me to be part of the new and hopefully improved (but maybe not, give us a moment to figure this thing out) Blog@Newsarama. What’s that mean? I’ll find out when you do. It’s my first blogging experience, after all.

Just kidding about the never reading comics part, by the way. Not so much about the blogging experience.

We’re going to try to keep this pretty relaxed; I’m a mellow guy. To give you a little background, I’ve been here at ‘Rama as a reader for ten or more years. It’s been a while. Troy Brownfield, wise man that he is, approached me in October 2005 (doesn’t seem like it was that long ago) to contribute to the weekly Best Shots column. My first reviews: David B.’s Epileptic, Ande Parks and Chris Samnee’s Capote in Kansas, and a pellet of P. Craig Russell’s Opera Adaptations vol. 2.

Working with a paltry three-man crew – myself, Matt Brady and Ryan McClelland (who had to bail early due to severe illness) – I was part of the team covering the first New York Comicon the following February. Winter of ’06, I pitched Matt on my doing an interview with Usagi Yojimbo’s Stan Sakai for the occasion of Usagi #100 from Dark Horse. He rolled the dice, everybody seemed to think it went okay, and then I started pitching more interview ideas.

Two years later, I’m still at it.

I live up in northern New Jersey, a stone’s throw (maybe five) from the Hudson River, which I travel beneath regularly for my day job, where I work in news distribution, proofing releases, hand-holding clients, and generally ensuring that important (and lately, less than enthusiastic) economic news reaches full and legal disclosure. Not terribly exciting, yeah, I guess not, but it pays the mortgage. At least until Matt Brady gives me a forty grand raise and I can devote all my time to this.;)

You should be aware – if you’re not already from my reviews and interviews – that I have a decidedly unique perspective on this whole comics thing. I love a good superhero comic, but the medium’s full of crazy-ass possibilities, and I’ve tried to focus on things outside of the typical Marvel/DCU superhero universes.

I’ll probably try to keeping shining the spotlight onto projects that maybe, just perhaps, have flown under your radar. Maybe you’ll find them interesting. Maybe you won’t. But at least you’ll have a little info and be able to make up your mind. Generating some flow of information and ideas. That’s why I’m here.

In fact, if I have an over-riding goal for my role in Blog@, creating some type of discourse is really it. Let’s have some discussion; a little debate; a handful of outlandish, easily debunked theories. Ask me questions, and then I’ll write a little bit as I see things, you tell me how you see things, and maybe we can all get a little perspective on this storytelling form we all seem to love so much and what it is about comics that clicks for us.

Hopefully it’ll be enlightening, and more hopefully, a fun time.

Or you’ll all hate me because I’m like the lame-ass legacy character taking over for a cherished Blog@ favorite.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 8:59 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.