About the Blogger

I’m your average 24 year old female who really enjoys comics. I am currently living in Japan, which eliminates the possibility of heading down to my local comic book shop to pick up my weekly treasures. Instead, I use an online ordering service which ships my books to me once a month. As a consequence of having to preorder like this, I have to order my comics just over a month early. So I order April comics in February. And then May comics in March, and in April I am ordering comics that will come out in the month of June. This is actually about two months ahead of time for those books that come out at the latter end of the month in question. So I have to rely on solicits and early buzz about comics to make my selection. If the buzz doesn’t start until the book comes out I’m out of luck. Sometimes I get fooled by the buzz and end up with a book not worth getting. And because of the advance ordering sometimes I will have ordered almost an entire miniseries before I even get the first issue.

My pull list right now is mostly DC and independent titles. DC isn’t paying me or anything, and I don’t have anything against the Marvel Universe or its characters. In fact I like a lot of them. But what hooked me on comics was the DC Universe (mostly Batman), and at the moment at least, I simply can’t afford to get in to a whole other universe of comics. I try not to get involved in the “Which company is better” debate. I really can’t say because I honestly haven’t read much Marvel. I don’t think that DC is perfect and can do no wrong. They’ve done several things in recent years that have made me unhappy, but they have also done a lot I really liked. I imagine that if I was reading Marvel it would end up being about the same. I’m not saying that I will never say anything about the companies themselves, but I try to keep a level head about it all. I am biased, just like every other comic book reader, and I hope anyone who reads my blog can respect that. I promise to do the same for my readers.

My comic book history really starts back when I was a kid with the Batman animated series. I used to watch it at every opportunity. I didn’t see any of the live action movies for a long time, so it was really the animated universe that caught hold of me. I watched a little of the old X-men cartoon as well, but not as often because my mother didn’t like me watching Fox when I was a kid. Then when Batman Beyond came about I fell in love with that series too, although it was missing my favorite character, Dick Grayson. Yes, in watching Batman I became a huge Dick Grayson/Robin fan. I’ve always been a fan of the sidekicks, the kids who can do what the adults can do too, even if they aren’t always perfect.

So then one day I was in a store browsing the magazine racks while I waited for my mother and I came across the comic books. There before me was a Robin comic book. I was thrilled and somehow convinced my mother that we couldn’t leave the store without it. Once I got home and read it I was a little bit confused. I had been hoping for Dick Grayson but instead had this other Robin named Tim who was still pretty cool and was still Robin so that was okay. I did know about the whole Nightwing thing, so I understood that this was his replacement. I had seen Tim on the animated show. But this Tim, unlike the one on the animated show, wasn’t an orphan, he still had a father, so that threw me for a loop. But even more confusing was that Gotham City was apparently a wreak, Wayne Manor was abandoned and Batman was apparently missing. I had wandered into the beginning of No Man’s Land, the event which followed the Giant Earthquake that struck Gotham and caused chaos. Also there was this girl character who I had never heard of called Stephanie who was having a baby, which was apparently important to Robin. And there was a new Batgirl. And Barbara Gordon was in a wheelchair and calling herself Oracle now. It was a lot to take in, but like they say, every comic is someone’s first. And all of these unanswered questions didn’t scare me away from the comic. If anything I wanted to learn more.

I found a bunch of back issues on eBay and convinced my father that they were necessary to help fill in the gaps on what the heck was going on. I guess I was a persuasive child, because I got them. Things probably would have gone on like this expect for the fact that only a few months after my discovery of comics they disappeared from newsstands. I was upset that my stores didn’t carry comics anymore, and the few that still had some didn’t have Robin. So I was cut off. I didn’t know about comic shops. But I was young and easily distracted, and so I forgot about comics for a while.

It was about that time that I started to read a lot of manga, so I guess I got my comic fix from Japan for a while. I like a lot of shonen titles with preference to adventure and fantasy. And attractively drawn men are a plus as well.

Fast forward to college. My now-fiancé-then-boyfriend had gone out with some friends to do something and they had ended up at a comic shop. Knowing that I still really really liked Batman he browsed the shelves for me and saw that there was this event going on called The Return of Ra’s al Ghul. So, being the wonderful guy that he is, he bought me all of the issues of the event that they had, as well as a few of the back issues. Of course, this was an event that spanned 4 books (Batman, Detective Comics, Nightwing, and Robin) so this was an even bigger entry to comics than last time.

And the rest, as they say is history. I started a pull list at the shop and started getting more and more comics. I was mostly centered on Batman at first, but as time went by I became interested in some of the DCUs other fine characters. It wasn’t until I came to Japan and really got into reading sites like Newsarama and Comic Book Resources that I became interested in the smaller companies and really became aware of what all was out there. And now I pay almost as much on shipping to get my comics here to Japan as I do for the comics themselves.

I love fantasy, science fiction, and mystery.

I can’t draw very well and envy those who can. I love to write and dream of one day finishing one of the many projects I start, getting it published and gaining a small group of readers who my work brings joy to.

Here are so random favorites

Favorite comic book character: Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing/Batman)
Favorite comic series: The Unwritten
Favorite web comic: xkcd
Favorite manga series: Saiyuki (and its various sequels)
Favorite Books: Stardust and The Wizard of Earthsea
Favorite Movies: Stardust and The Princess Bride
Favorite Video Games: Katamari Damacy, Okami, Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Animal Crossing
Favorite Video Game character: Chocobos!!!! and Don and Katsu from Taiko no Tatsujin