New Age Anniversary - 1 year old!

A year goes by fast nowadays. Feels like it was just a few months ago I started up New Age Comics with Andrenn and just figured out how to add images to the blog. Let alone actually get this blog running and get readers by now. Honestly I thought I was doing great if I got even one reader.

(Don't mind the random images through the post, these are some of my favorite moments/covers that over the year I've been posting have collected in my Pictures folder that I thought would be fun to add to the post.)

I do owe some thanks. First to Kirk Warren who I asked about where to start up a blog and gave me some great advice. He’s had his own successful blog The Weekly Crisis where he now has others Matt, Eric and Ryan all working on it and it’s an awesome blog I strongly recommend you check out.

Of course all the readers, such as the first one Keith Gammage who has his own awesome blog named after the popular cosmic event War of Kings. Also friends from the Spawn.com forums Brikhed and Greg Anderson who are 2 really cool guys. Really I guess I want to thank every reader/follower/commentator. Even the guys who posted negative comments, I appreciate the honesty.

Of course I have to thank Rokk Krin and all the other guys at Rokk’s Comic book Revolution for letting me join their ranks so I can help spread the comic book greatness across the internet. It’s been loads of fun.

It’s been a lot of fun and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Even when I’ve been slow with posting I’ve always been wanting to do new things. I’ve tried some things that have worked, and others that haven’t, but either way I’d like to think by now at New Age Comics I have a distinct style with this blog.

I must admit I was once nervous about doing comic reviews when I one day hope to write comics. But I feel it’s thanks to doing these reviews and being critical of books that I’ve learned easier what works and doesn’t work which has helped me greatly as a writer.

So to celebrate 1 whole year of reviewing, lets do a retrospective.

Insane to New Age

I created this blog late at night near the end of July. Tired and a bit out of it I couldn’t think of a good name, so I just whipped up “Andrenn’s Insanity Blog” a name I still regret even trying. It’s always been an inside joke with my friends that I’m crazy, so I thought the title would work but I was dead wrong.

Later that night when I went to bed, around 4 AM it hit me after I woke up for some water: New Age Comics! The very first ever comic store I went to! How could I not pay homage to it? Sadly the awesome little comic shop went under in 2002 but I loved that place so I thought it was perfect. I added my name in since my name is fairly distinct and original, adding a little more to the title.

Presentation for the New Age

I have to thank my friend Kenny for whipping up that awesome banner you see before you. I have poor MS Paint skills but with his computer programs (I never can remember the names) he got 3 awesome covers he knew I loved and fused them into that image. It looks great and I can’t thank him enough for it.

Stabbing at Weekly Posts

My first attempt at Weekly Post was Collection Spotlight. Where I spotlighted a collection book in my 2 shelves library and every Friday would review them. It started out on Thursdays but I quickly changed them to Friday’s so that my Wednesday comic reviews could have 2 days in the spotlight.

While Collection Spotlight went strong for a couple of months, it soon got downgraded to bi-weekly, then down to random/whenever I feel like it. The main reason was I that I was finding a lack of desire to keep writing them so often but also was that my shelf was already thinning out quite a bit. I have 2 shelves dedicated to graphic novels but already all of the big and best ones I wanted to review have been reviewed.

Another attempt was Cover Talk where I talked about comic covers and found notable stuff. My first edition was on how I was very displeased with the Cy-blade #1 cover. I kept it up for a little while but it never really took off or got much reaction so I dropped it. I may do them again sometime, but certainly not weekly or on a regular basis.

Finally I came to a conclusion on 2 posts that are just about certain to be weekly, Week’s End and The Week Begins.

Week’s End was inspired by Kirk Warren’s Moments of the Week where I also wanted to mention some good moments but I wanted to do more as well. I wanted to point out the best comic, moment and cover of the week. It worked well and it’s usually been a lot of fun to write Week’s End because it’s usually a simple sweet and fun thing to write.

The Week Begins was inspired simply by the idea of commenting on the upcoming books of the week. Since I can’t always buy every comic every week I can’t throw in my 2 cents if I don’t review them but I thought maybe my comments on previews/solicits would help. This originally came in the form of Most Anticipated Comic of the Week at the end of Week’s End but I wanted to comment on more than just one comic. So I devoted a whole post to it.

Week’s End is usually on Saturday/Sunday, whichever day is better for me and The Week Begins is usually on Monday but at times I’ve had to move it to Tuesday. The last couple of months I edited Week’s End where I added things such as Artist, Character, Collection, Ugh, Whoa and Comic I wish I got of the Week. That and just recently I added Runner Ups for the winners.

Months’ End is a post that is in the same vein as Week’s End only it covers the entire month of comics. Sometimes I had to recycle comments from Week’s End but really I hated doing that so I tried my best not to. Month’s End was also originally Comic of the Month where at the end of the Month I had a short post pointing out my favorite comic of that month. That is one thing that lead to Week’s End.

Other Ideas that aren’t so Weekly

Over the year we’ve had several posts that didn’t start out weekly. Such as Comic Report Card, something I don’t do as often as I’d like where I review comics that are anywhere from a few months to a few years old as long as I own the actual comics then I review them and grade them. It’s been something I enjoy but I haven’t gotten to do it in a while but I want to try and do it more often.

In August I debuted Solicit Commentary, something I don’t see a lot of other comic review blogs doing but have wanted to see for a while. The idea is fairly simple, I read the solicits, I post my thoughts on them as well as the solicit cover

I had random op/ed posts based on announcements or up coming events such as Image United or the prior announcement of Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader. I also would comment on the past such as the much hated One More Day event. Some of these op/ed posts where under the title of an Andrenn Update (stupid name, I know) but recently the title has been ditched in favor of New Age News.

New Age Ideas is a mix of op/ed and smaller things to say. Sometimes I’ve got an idea or something I want to say but I don’t think I could write enough to warrant a full blown post about it, so that’s what New Age Ideas are for. It was inspired by Eric Rupe’s Collection of Random Thoughts over at the Weekly Crisis.

While I love comics I also love video games. So I made Andrenn’s Game Shelf (another title I may ditch in favor for something new) where I review games/throw in my 2 cents on an upcoming game. I haven’t done this much in the last few months I know but I have been wanting to and I do plan to bring it back sooner than later as it is fun to do game stuff.

The Andrenn Channel was a fun idea of getting to do a minor review/praise of good TV shows I would add if I had my own channel. It haven’t done much with this post and I figure for now it’s gone but I may bring it back soon.

The Drawing Board was going to switch bi-weekly with Collection Spotlight but it never really took off, sadly. I do plan to do more but for now I just haven’t had much inspiration to do more.

While there have been more random ideas/posts, that’s the majority of them and the more important ones.

I love Horror

During October last year I had a horror filled good time posting horror themed posts everywhere from Collection Spotlight, Week’s End and even a top 25 favorite horror films. I had a lot of fun writing it, but it didn’t get much response so I’ll be toning it down this year, even with some horror themed stuff to celebrate the season.

Comic Changes

A lot of my pull list has changed over the year, recently I’ve dropped quite a few comics but I still plan to do as many reviews as I can. It’s always been tons of fun to review these comics. Even if over the year I started reading more and more Image Comics I still review Marvel and DC (only Batman from DC but hey, it still counts!)

Reader Interactivity

Recently I did Exploit-A-Spawn where readers could send in images of a Spawn panel and use it for a joke. I got some good response with that so I’m planning to do something very soon that is something a lot more epic that I hope readers will be able to have a lot of fun with. I also would like to do more and more tings like this in the future as it was a lot of fun seeing the response.

Final Word and the Future of the New Age

All right, it’s time to wrap up this shindig. It’s been a lot of fun looking back at this great year full of great comics. I’ve loved writing single post for you guys and I look forward to writing more and more for you all and I hope you enjoy them.

As for the future of New Age Comics? I can promise you all that I'll keep reading comics and reviewing them at every chance I get. I'll review comics, video games movies and cartoons. I'm glad that you all have enjoyed what I've done so far and I look forward to writing another year and maybe even a lot more. I'll keep going strong, into the New Age.

-Andrenn