Good morning, internet

So, journal entry #1. I've had this account for about 3 years, but was using it purely to post on communities and comment on other peoples' journals. Lately I've decided it's time I stopped wimping out and constructed some kind of blogging architecture for myself, since I'm supposedly serious about writing and supposedly not a hopeless Luddite. I enjoy and respect writers' blogs, and blogs in general, and it's starting to feel like a sign of immaturity, the last shred of self-defeating teenage book-under-the-bed angst, that I'm not putting my writing (any of it, serious or casual) out there for people to read and, crucially, to comment on. Also, if I should ever go the self-publishing route then a blog feels like a necessary part of the professional image; while that 'pro' blog may not be this thing, I'm at the point where any online presence is good exercise. Plus, let's not be too worthy; jabbering online about my world of geek is not exactly foreign to my nature and I expect I'll be mostly doing that here, since I'm still working through my nerves about posting fiction extracts.

So as a first step I've put some personalised styling on this LJ (homemade camerapunk banner, go!) and am actually using my friends list. Once I stop congratulating myself for these tiny motions I may actually write some proper entries. We'll see. I have epic procrastination skills, and creative stuff usually comes last in the list after family, work, sleep, food, wine, and aimlessly poking the internet with a stick.

(And what's a Kiev4am? This is. Pretty!)

Old comic reviews #1 - The Authority : World's End

Okay, this is kind of a cheap win on the 'yes, I will write some entries' front. Below is a sheaf of reviews I posted on Comixology, ComicVine and iFanboy during the World's End era of WildStorm comics, i.e. the last ongoings before DC canned the imprint last year. I started these in response to a call to arms from Authority uberfan Chris Striker on his very excellent Clark's Bar message board; sales on the World's End books were tanking and he posted a challenge to us fans to raise the profile through reviews and stuff. WildStorm pimping aside, I found that producing these things - the discipline of reading the issue and then turning around a half-decent review as quickly as possible, keeping to the word limit imposed by the sites - was a really tight writing exercise.

Anyway, if you read the issues at the time you might like these write-ups. If you didn't, and you're a fan of the Authority, I really can't recommend the Abnett, Lanning and Coleby series highly enough. The relevant trades are Authority: World's End and Authority: Rule Britannia.

A lot has changed since these reviews were first written, not least the death of WildStorm as a separate imprint and the absorption of various WS fragments into the DC universe in time for the ambitious 'New 52' shakeup going on at DC. As much as I abhor DC's wastage of WildStorm, I am hugely psyched for the potential awesomeness that is Paul Cornell's Stormwatch, so I may start reviewing it when it hits the stands.

( Authority #8 )

( Authority #9 )

( Authority #10 )

( Authority #11 )

( Authority #12 )

( Authority #13 )

( Authority #14 )

( Authority #17 )

( Authority World's End Volume 1 TPB )

Old comic reviews #2 - misc. WildStorm

Just a few more old WildStorm reviews. Again, these first went up on Comixology and co. when the issues came out.

On reflection, it's weird that I've never reviewed Peter David's X-Factor. I love that book to distraction, but I seem to have the notion that my reviewing efforts are redundant unless they're aimed at a book that needs all the help it can get. When I wrote the Authority stuff, passionate user reviews were the only exposure that book was getting. X-Factor by contrast is all over the comic critic radar, wins awards, gets properly promoted by Marvel, and pisses off all the right people on CBR's X-forums. But I don't really think user reviews raise a book's profile all that much (they sure as hell didn't save WildStorm), so maybe I should stop being so stupid-earnest and write them for fun.

( Secret History of the Authority: Jack Hawksmoor )

( North 40 #2 )

( North 40 #3 )

( WildCATS #19 )

( Authority #18 )

( Authority #19 )

Technical whinging

Okay, so I just worked out that LJ's Archive and Calendar features use the original posting date of the entry, regardless of whether you then subsequently edit it to reorder things. I had my first post originally set up as a sticky post (dated 2020), and I was editing those WildStorm review posts in private mode for a few days before I made them public, so changed the dates from August 30th and 31st to today. But if you do that the Calendar widget continues to show the old dates, with live hyperlinks that go nowhere, which means that if I'm a pedantic nerd who wants everything aligned properly (I am, and I do), I have to delete and repost my entries. Which I did. What a faff. Honestly, what's the point of allowing you to edit the date of the entry if the archival features ignore it?