I love comics

I love comics

The Wisdom of Chuck Rozanski

I love Mile High comics. Chuck Rozanski is an absolute legend. My collection of trade paperbacks would not be the same without him. He is a man who has dedicated himself to helping others achieve their dreams. I could wax lyrical about his contributions to collecting, and one day I shall. However, today I wish merely to share the following with you, in light of some of my dilemmas regarding the storage of my beloved comics. It is the last paragraph of his 31st December 2005 newsletter.

“In closing today's column, I want to give all of you a bit of advice. In every collector's life there inevitably arise moments of stress or weakness, when disposing of some, or all, of your collections seems like a good idea. Whatever you do, don't sell! Because of space constraints brought on by the birth of my four wonderful daughters, I was forced to put my comics into storage for over 20 years. I never gave up on the plan, however, that I would someday be able to find the space in which to enjoy them all over again. During the intervening 22 years I continued to collect, but could only add more boxes into my storage piles each year, without any organization. Now that I'm sorting everything out, however, I'm discovering that I have more than 10,000 (!) pre-1980 comics and fanzines in my personal collection, quite a few of which are so rare (such as very small press Underground Comix or 1950's Promotional Comics too scarce to be listed in Overstreet) that I have no idea about how I could ever replace them. The message that comes through to me loud and clear from this realization is that there is always some sort of storage available. You might just have to wrap your boxes in plastic and stack them in the garage for many years (or in the hay barn, as I did...), but the rewards that come from letting time pass are enormous! A great many comics that were relatively common in 1982, when my collection first went into storage, are now almost impossible to find. With each box I am opening, I am finding more great books that make me thank my lucky stars that I was able to preserve my collection intact through all those many years. Finding storage for your collection may sometimes be extremely difficult, but my experience has shown that going through the effort to preserve your collection can really pay off in the end!

You have spoken, oh mighty Chuck! I will never get rid of any of my comics again.

And a Happy New Year to you all.

MY-ATUS

Every third post can’t be an apology for not posting. But, I really feel I have to say it and take drastic measures.

This blog began as a way of channelling my writings and having a place where I could document the thoughts that my friends and I were having – a complement to our many many emails of fanboy banter. I also wanted to talk about comics and the way they impacted and interacted with my “normal” life, which I didn’t think many blogs were doing. My aim was never to get a huge number of readers. However, people (not many, but enough to make me happy) started leaving comments and this inspired me to try and post every day. And post-daily I did, until roughly the start of September.

However, absences such as exam leave or my three-weeks away in Washington have prevented regular updating. My workload has increased, and my recent exam success has meant more celebrating. The blog has fallen by the wayside. Even my reading has dropped off as I have been forced to pick up some “word books” (I have never been able to successfully juggle word book and comic book reading – I’m either exclusively into one or the other).

So, given all of this I have to

!) Apologise
2) Put this blog on “hiatus”.

This does not mean that there will not be any new material. I will be furiously writing when the opportunity arises. I merely wish would encourage you to come back here once a week as opposed to once a day and to peruse the archives in the absence of new material. When you see the pace of entries picking-up then please increase the frequencies of your return visits.

In the meantime take care of yourselves and let’s all build a better society. May Batman guide you all in whatever you chose to do.

Batman: Justice or Revenge?

"Batman Begins"

Join Christianity in Politics and the Knights of Columbus to watch and discuss excerpts from this amazing film. The film explores the nature of crime and justice through the story of how Bruce Wayne becomes the Dark Knight. A passionate discussion will follow.

Sponsored by:

GU (Georgetown University) Christianity in Politics: A Non-Partisan Exploration
Knights of Columbus

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
8:00pm
GU ICC 107

I'm thousands of miles from home on the final day of my incredible trip to Washington, and I'm attending the above. If you read this in the next 5 minutes, it'll be good to see you there. Being British, I'm not sure how passionate I'll be able to get though!

The horizontal and the vertical

What an honour

Notice the English spelling. That's all me!

What would Batman do?

The aim of the game is simple. A situation will be outlined, and it will be the reader’s job to try and think what Batman would do, under the circumstances.

I appreciate that there are a number of different Batmen in existence. So, feel free to specify whether you mean Camp 60's Bats or Batman/Superman uber-Bats. I’ll give the blogohedron a day or two to suggest his actions before offering the solution.

Today’s dilemma:

You know that your best friend’s wife has cheated on him. You also know exactly who she was unfaithful with. They’ve been doing it for ages, and obviously you’ve know about it from day one – come on, you’re the World’s Greatest Detective. However, you put it to one side as you have bigger fish to deal with (e.g. the Joker, and his laughing fish).

However, you cannot ignore the issue any longer because your best friend asks you point blank whether you know if his wife is cheating on him.

What would Batman do?

Whoops, I didn't do it again.

Apologies for the lack of updates – there’s been a huge increase in traffic on the site recently (great – thanks to all of you for reading) which has unfortunately coincided with an increase in business and busy-ness in other aspects of The Blog Cave (not so great). So all these new visitors have nothing to read. How annoying!

Fear not. Bear with us until Monday 17th October – we will kick-off a series of posts for which there will be near-daily ammunition. Posts which will have relevance to all our lives and tear apart the blogohedron in controversy (what's Infinite Crisis?).

Get ready for “WHAT WOULD BATMAN DO?”

...

He certainly wouldn't neglect his blog for this long, I know that!