As others are wont to do, I thought I’d stop and say hello, and let you know just who I am. Hopefully the name Lucas Siegel is somewhat familiar if you’re a regular visitor to Newsarama. I have been writing as part of Best Shots for a couple years, and after initially working on interviews, I began going into other styles of stories.

Along with Troy, I’ve read every single tie-in to Secret Invasion and written the “Damn Dirty Skrulls” recaps. Along with that and Flashback Friday, my focus has been the Games section since its inception in June.

There, I’ve worked on Reviews, Hands-On Previews, Interviews, and News pieces about that other love of mine, video games.

I’ve been a gamer pretty much my entire life, starting with the Apple IIe and my brother’s Colecovision. I game on all three current systems and PC, but if I had to choose I’d say the PS3 is my current favorite, purely for the controller. LIVE is the best online gaming, though, and the Wii is a lot of fun to play with friends and family, including those who wouldn’t touch other systems.

As for comics, I was into Marvel and Marvel alone in my early years, getting in through the gateway drug of X-Men: The Animated Series. I stopped reading in 1996, though I stopped back a few times to check in, and still held onto my old books. In 2002, my then girlfriend/now wife and I were talking about how much we used to love comics, and decided to go to a local shop just for fun. I bought the first issue of the Chamber mini-series by Brian K. Vaughan, having been a big fan of the character back in the day, and I was instantly re-hooked. That spun into multiple directions, with me checking out other X-Men Books, and Y: The Last Man, then taking reccomendations from my shop runner on what else to check out. Before I knew it, I was collecting and reading nearly every book Marvel put out, along with a smattering of Vertigo offerings. Then, as Troy noted, I was off to go overseas and spent about 15 months on Active Duty with the Army. It was while there that I discovered Newsarama, posting frequently as ArmyMonkey and forging some great, lasting friendships, including one with J.K. Parkin. I even guest-contributed a couple of times to The Great Curve while it was under his purview. Eventually I got into several indy and DC books, and now I read pretty much any comics I can get my hands on. I was once dubbed the “Marvel Care Bear” of Best Shots, and call myself simply a “Non-jaded Comics Fan.” As you can see, this year I even dressed as Hush for Halloween, carrying my Catwoman-wife’s heart in my hands all night (See recent events in Detective Comics for explanation).

I digress. I’m thrilled to be a part of the new team. My focus here will be video games, specifically comic-based ones. I’ll also try to let people know that it’s ok to just plain love comics, be they superhero or otherwise. You can find audio and video of me in the currently-on-hiatus Shots in the Dark podcast if you just can’t get enough Lucas (it’s been known to happen), and I look forward to bringing you up-to-date info through this Blog as well as my continuing coverage on the main site.

This is Russell Burlingame, reporting for Blog@Newsarama.  I’m on the road today, away from Manhattan for an extended holiday weekend with my family, and so have decided that while I wait for some things to gel, it’s not a bad idea to take Michael C. Lorah’s example and let readers know who the heck I am.

Since February, I’ve become known as the head writer for Comic Related, a fast-growing comics news site where we cover basically nothing but comics.  A few movies every so often, and video games and the like might come up in someone’s blog…but it’s mostly just comic books over there, something that appeals to me because I feel like whenever someone like Wizard or Newsarama take on too much video game or movie news, it overtakes the comics, simply on the strength of its mainstream appeal.

One of the things that appeals to me about covering nothing-but-comics is that people don’t give comics enough credit.  Comic books aren’t just superheroes and I think anyone here at Newsarama would have to know that, but it’s something that even the comics-savvy sometimes have a hard time putting in perspective.  In the last couple of years, my favorite graphic novels have been Matt Silady’s The Homeless Channel and Alex Robinson’s Too Cool To Be Forgotten.  There’s a lot more in the comics industry and the comics medium to cover, than most reporters choose to cover or have the opportunity to cover when under a lot of editorial guidance.  That’s one thing that I’ve always loved at Comic Related–Chuck Moore over there lets me do more or less anything I want, as long as the story doesn’t suck–and that’s what’s appealing about the Blog@ forums.  How often do you get to go on Newsarama and plug some book just because it’s good and out, without worrying about newsworthiness?  Score!

Anyway, over at Comic Related, a site that focuses a lot of its energy on indie and underground comix, I’m kind of “the mainstream guy,” with some connections and friends that I made when I was a kid interning at Wizard magazine (save the slings and arrows, I’ve heard them all and it’s been almost ten years since I was there anyway).  I write the weekly Hot Shot of the Week piece, as well as monthly (or as close as I can get) columns that sit down the the writers after Booster Gold, The Perhapanauts, Manhunter and Deadpool come out.  There’s a bunch of other feature columns I work on, which I’m sure will come up at some point, and I’m also a “real” reporter who does interviews and breaks news and things…sometimes.

I’ll still be at Comic Related, doing my thing…and some of that might bleed over into here, but I’m trying to keep the two gigs fairly separate.  I’ve got a number of fun articles for Blog@ coming up soon–a look at the New York comics scene including some of the off-the-beaten-path stuff like Molly Crabapple’s small-but-very-well-promoted “Dr. Sketchy’s” events, an interview with Jim Infantino of the geek-rock band Jim’s Big Ego, and let’s face it–if anyone here knows my work it’s impossible to imagine a month going by without my writing about at least a half-dozen mainstream superhero comics.

Should be a fun ride–welcome aboard, and hopefully I won’t steer anybody into an iceberg or something.

An Opening Statement from Matt Brady

Hi folks - I don’t have too much to say this time, other than obviously to thank JK and the crew for all their work over the last couple of years here at Blog@Newsarama. While I was as frustrated as anyone that things reached a point where they felt it was in their best interests to quit, I wish them the absolute best as they go on to set up their own shop and make a go at this crazy thing on their own. JK had mentioned to me that Robert Kirkman manifesto was a big motivation for the group, and I can’t wait to see how they take his message to heart to do their own thing under their own shingle.

That said, I’ve got to look toward the future at this point, with a huge thank you to Troy Brownfield in refining the ideas we had of what Blog@ should be despite the four-day, holiday weekend notice that we’d be needing something to fill the big shoes of JK and the rest. Troy has done an outstanding job of assembling a team of some familiar names, some new names, and some names that folks may be familiar with from reading the indicia in comics. I’m truly convinced that we’ll be seeing new and great things from Blog@ in the coming weeks and months, taking it to new readers, and new heights as a companion to Newsarama. I won’t spoil any surprises, but it looks like there’s some great stuff coming up.

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