Eddie-torial Comments

Comics

Why Review?

There's an interesting pair of articles on reviewing comics at the Pulse page right now. They've got me to thinking about my motivations for wanting to use this blog to review comics.

Online reviews are a dime a dozen these days. They're everywhere, running the gamut from excellent to good to mediocre to flat out awful. So what makes me think I have anything to add to the mix? Why do I want to do this?

Part of my motivation stems from the desire to write about anything. I love to write. It's something I do fairly well, for the most part. I do a lot of writing at work, but, until this blog came along, I didn't have an outlet for more personal writing.

Wanting to promote good comics is another motivating factor. With so many comics coming out, there's a lot that gets overlooked. I'm not sure what kind of effect that an obscure blog nobody reads can have, but I feel like I'm doing my part to help. If somebody some day actually happens to stumble across this bog and read something here that prompts them to pick up a new comic, that's great. If it never happens, then at least I tried.

So what can you expect from reviews in this blog? I think it's going to be a mixed bag, ranging from a few short comments to longer, in depth pieces. I want to talk about comics that are important to me and tell why I feel that way about them. Some stories resonate deeply, and it takes a while to explain that. Others don't require such intensive commentary and exploration.

Some of the reviews will be about new material; others will be about older stuff. I'm not going to push myself to read a stack of comics every week to have something to review here. Usually, I don't get to my comics shop more than once a month, and it takes a while to work through that kind of backlog. But I am reading almost constantly, so I should have something to talk about on a pretty regular basis.

There won't be a lot of straight plot synopsis. I believe the story for most comics can be summed up in three or four sentences. I want to talk about what makes a comic good (or not so good), not rehash the plot.

I'll be focusing on stuff from the smaller companies, because that's what I read most. Like I said earlier, there's a lot of stuff that gets overlooked. I'd like this blog to be a forum for that material.

Well that's enough talking about reviewing for one post. I'll try to get some actual reviews up this week.

Comments?