Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Living Large

Hello loyal Second Printers-

I am sorry it has been a few weeks since I have thrown something up here on the old blog. Things were busy at work (which is now over) and then I headed off on vacation with my wife (which I just back from). Yesterday, as I was recovering from jetlag, I started to work my way through the pile of comics that has built up in my absence. I got through Final Crisis #3 and Secret Invasion #5 before I gave up. It’s not like the comics were bad, in fact I found both issues really enjoyable. They both created a shift in tone to the storyline that was unexpected but I thought very well handled. I was simply too tired to keep reading books.

So what did I do instead?


I bought a year’s subscription to Comic Foundry. If any of you don’t know, Comic Foundry is a fantastic quarterly comic magazine – just over or about to be a year old (I can’t exactly remember when issue #1 came out) – that approaches comics in a radically new way. See while magazines like Wizard approach comic fandom in a very narrow, very insular, very only comics-dvds-and-the-same-rehashed-news way, Comic Foundry approaches comic fandom in a much broader view. It looks at comic readers' place in the world and not as people who live in their mothers’ basements drinking Mountain Dew and pleasuring themselves to Jim Balent comics.

It takes being a comic reader as being a member of a legitimate culture, one that has fashion styles and music preferences and all of that. You want to know how to dress like a hip Jimmy Olsen? They say try a Banana Republic sweater vest and some canvas chucks. You want to know what comic creators also have bands? Here is a list of them. You want an interview with Matt Fraction, what Didio’s office looks like and to order a Superman shirt? Yeah, it’s got all of that too.

As someone who for years has approached being a comic collector as lifestyle, one that a person should be proud of, it is nice to see at least someone agreeing with me. It's also nice to see it be in the form of a well written, glossy magazine. So my question to you Second Printers is this:

Do you see a comic lifestyle magazine as an overall appreciation of comic culture by a larger audience or a road to said appreciation or neither?

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