After far too many years of doing this, I’ve decided that my days of regular updates are over. I don’t want to say that this is my final post, since it’s possible I’ll want to use this space again for other purposes, but I’m fairly confident that my days of regular updates are over.
I started this blog in 2007, when the easiest shorthand reference for a bad comic remained ’90s Marvel, or more specifically, ’90s X-books. The people working in comics didn’t seem to disagree. Today, you can buy actual $100 hardcover reprints of Rob Liefeld X-Force comics. Lord help us, Avengers: The Crossing is even available in hardcover. ’90s storylines routinely receive sequels these days. Bishop, Blink, and Deadpool have appeared in multi-million dollar movies. There are working professionals in the entertainment industry that weren’t even born when Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 blessed us with its multi-cover glory. And the blogging boom that inspired me to create an alternate site to explore the ’90s is long dead.
I’d like to thank anyone who ever posted a link or left a comment during the past eight years. Mike Sterling was the first to post a link during my initial week of blogging, giving me more readers early on than I probably deserved, so special thanks to him. I’d also like to thank folks like wwk5d and Matt for leaving comments here for as long as I can remember. And wherever you are Fnord Serious and cyke68, I hope you’re doing well.
I’m still around. You can follow me on Twitter if you’d like, and I’m open to writing for someone else’s site if the project’s right. You can email me through the Contact page. (Actually, I have an idea for another review series if anyone’s interested. Also, I’ll be doing more micro-reviews on Twitter in the future.) Feel free to contact me. Thanks for the support, and may all your web-lines be advantageous.
24 comments:
Oh, no!
Thank you for all the work you put into these reviews!
I am REALLY going to miss reading them.
All the best!
Robert from Budapest
Thanks ! I had a lot of fun reading your posts here !
Such a shame :( Sad to see you go, but what a body of work!
Thanks for the posts. Enjoyed them for many years. Hope your next project goes great.
all good things must pass
i wish you luck in your latest endeavor
and you have given me and a lot of others lots of reviews to read through and pour over and pull out those old comics
..think im going to reread x-men v2
Aww... I had a feeling this was coming based on your cryptic tweet about "the beginning of the end" last week, but I hoped maybe you just meant the end of ADVENTURES OF THE X-MEN.
I still remember when I found your blog -- I had the day off work and somehow stumbled across NOT BLOG X, probably while looking for some random nineties X-Men reference or something, and I spent the entire day reading every post to date (I think this was a year or two after you'd started).
I appreciate all the work you put in the X-Men comics and the Spider-Man stuff first and foremost, as those are my main interests at Marvel, but I read all the posts, even for the comics I had never actually read (Spawn, Image Turtles, and all the rest). I think you gave all of it a fair shake, and you usually did so with good natured wit. Your posts, along with Teebore's at Gentlemen of Leisure, were what inspired me to start my blog, even though -- as you noted -- the blogging craze for this sort of thing was long over.
I'll keep following you on Twitter! And of course if another review series does pop up, I'll be sure to check it out.
Thanks so much for all these years' worth of good reading. Your original X-comics run, extending until Onslaught (and what a capstone post that was!), is still some of my favourite comics writing on the internet, and something to which I'll keep returning for as long as it stays on the interwebs.
Personally staggering to think about: I have lived on four continents, starting a family on the way, and all along I've kept lurking on this site. So I should have said this much, much earlier, but here goes:
Thank you, sincerely.
Taneli
Wow. A sad day. But a retirement well earned. :)
All the best. Thanks for an awesome website.
Disappointing, but you've reviewed a hell of a lot of comics in your time. Hope you stop by to do irregular updates from time to time.
Thanks for the entertainment, you're reviews were always interesting and enjoyable to read!
Sorry to hear this, but thanks for the years of entertainment. It was a real nostalgia trip reading about all these comics from my teen years again.
Yeah...I mean, I hate to say it (and hope Matt isn't reading it) but this sort of thing isn't worth the time it takes. So while I'm sad to be losing a source of free entertainment I'm happy you'll have time to put your talents to bigger and better things. Good luck to you in the future. I'll try to check in with your twitter but I, like many, try to avoid that service. Too much distraction. So if you start a series some where else don't forget to post it here.
Long time reader, first time poster.
It brings me down to think that NotBlogX will no longer be a fixture of my comics experience. I have checked the site daily for well-written commentary that is both entertaining and informative. The only silver lining to this dark news is that the archives will still exist, allowing me continue my frequent forays into past articles.
I am truly sorry to hear that you will not be blogging here regularly anymore, but am thankful for all of the content you've provided. Take care.
Aw, sorry to hear that. This site is one of the 3 site I visit regularly, and I will be sad to see the updates stop. The reviews were always interesting, even after you finished covering all the 90s X-titles and series. It was fun seeing what aged well, what didn't, how some of my opinions were revised since the 90s, what was remembered differently (like you, I always remembered Reign of the Supermen being much longer than it actually was), etc.
If there is one thing people can take from this site, its that not all the X-stuff from the 90s was horrible. Some of it was was very good, some of it was very bad, and some of it was inbetween.
As everyone else here has already said, thanks for all the great content and reviews. Will definitely keep this site bookmarked and check it out from time to time for any updates. And good luck with future projects!
I discovered this site like 5 years ago and have been enjoying the many fun and often deservedly snarky forays into X-titles, Spider-titles (those were extra fun since you covered the period I was buying them monthly), Spawn, TMNT, Reign of the Supermen, Knightfall... every single thing has been highly entertaining to read, and I would pop in pretty much daily to see if there was new content. Many thanks for the many years of blogging and entertaining. Your reviews will be missed!
Thanks for all the posts over the years. This blog almost inspired me to start a similar look back at The Punisher, but the amount of work just seemed daunting.
Thanks for the clever, sarcastic and downright hilarious reviews over the years! Good luck with whatever you do next!
This was one of the last few comics blogs I still visited-Mike Sterling's is the other, actually-and I rather enjoyed reading it. The 90s were such an awful time for comics that I admire your ability to keep it up for so long. Thanks for all the reviews.
I was introduced to this blog from "Say it Backwards" and like others here I dove in during that initial experience.
This is my favourite comic blog and while I'm sad this is the (maybe) end, I can totally understand it. I have always been so in awe and grateful for your daily updates.
The fact that your last post is the reboot of the universe and the creation of the "regular X-Men" is as fitting as an...um...Psylocke swimsuit.
Well done and I look forward to more capsule reviews and the like. Your 90s X-Men overviews are some of my favourite pieces of comic journalism but was amazed with your recent overview of the Post Clone Saga Spidey titles. Shows the quality has never let up.
It's been an absolute pleasure
This has been a wonderful trek through the fun and the schlock of the comics of my childhood! Thanks for the years of blogging.
Best to you, and thank you so much for your years of insightful writing on an underrated era of comics that many of us hold so dear.
Hopefully this isn't goodbye forever.
Thanks again!
Aw.....
You've certainly earned a respite, if not outright retirement, but I'll miss your writing nonetheless. Like Matt, I've enjoyed everything you've written, even stuff I personally wasn't as interested in or haven't read before (even if my own workload has prevented me from commenting as often or as regularly as I'd like), and once your initial tour of the X-books was complete, it was always a thrill whenever you'd unveil whatever your next project would be (and if you do pop up with something again, even in finite form, I'll be just as excited to learn what it is).
Personally, your X-Men reviews were a large inspiration for my own issue-by-issue examination of the X-books (and, eventually, Marvel's Star Wars as well), which has pretty much become the bread-and-butter of my site and my favorite thing to write, so I owe you a big thanks for that alone.
When you started this blog, you stated a desire to "re-evaluate the 1990s era of the X-Men family of titles", and you've done that (and much, much more). You're right that the attitude towards 90s comics (including and especially 90s X-comics) have changed in the years since you started this blog, and while there's a lot of reasons for that (including, as you suggest, at least some of today's creators having come of age during the 90s), I'd argue that your re-evaluation of the era contributed, at least in some part, to that change in attitudes.
That's a pretty worthy accomplishment right there, and deserving of a break. :)
Many thanks for all your work through the years, and all the best.
Thanks for the shoutout! A... ah, change in my employer's IT policy prevented me from commenting as much as I would have liked over the past year or so. I discovered the site by happenstance in doing some research for a similar project I was planning some time ago - an exhaustive synopsis of AoA. I quickly came to the conclusion that such an endeavor wouldn't be addressing some unmet need after all. NotBlogX was already matching - and surpassing! - my ambitions, in both quality and quantity. There was no point in my putting a competing spin on big event comics of years past - I could just direct any interested parties here.
This site has supplied me with endless hours of entertainment (and education). I'm sad to see it come to a close, but can't deny it really has reached a logical end point. You more than fulfilled your remit, and that's an incredible accomplishment!
You're a gentleman and a scholar, G. Your continued presence will be sorely missed. Take pride in your impressive body of work. It's a legacy that ensures your efforts can never be forgotten.
"After far too many years of doing this..."
Every now and then I would realize how long I've been reading, and depending on, this blog and think about how remarkable it was that you were keeping it up. Thank you so much for what you've done and what comes next!
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