250 Mile Update

Haven't been around much lately. I recently started a new job, and have had to reorient myself to a completely different schedule.

In the hubbub, I managed to miss my own one year blog anniversary. Such an occasion on its own would normally cause me to be reflective, but then my birthday came as well. All three of these events have kind of brought on a wee bought of existential crisis. What exactly am I doing here?

I mean, every blog has its thing... Sims has his karate bear-fighting, polite Scott has his medical expertise, Dave has his bad, 80's comics... What's my thing?

For my birthday, my wonderful girlfriend indulged my inner child and treated me to an iMax showing of Spiderman 3 (which I enjoyed greatly, even though it showed Raimi's weakness for the darker, character dramatics and that including Gwen and her father was too much of a red herring for the longtime fans... I kept wondering how they were going to kill the both of them). She also gave me some cash and cut me loose, instructing me to go to as many comic shops as I possibly could. What a gal.

I decided to make the pilgrimage to Ventura and see the man himself, Sterling Mike. He runs a great shop up there. A nice broad range of everything, even dollar boxes. Meeting Mike was an honor and I can now place his dulcet tones to his writing. I hope I didn't creep him out... I've been warned I can seem a bit stalker-y at times.

From there I cut a swath down until I ended up at Meltdown (open til 10 every night). I then headed home to share my haul (my major prize of the day was getting Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes #246... the very comic I remember holding as a child and thinking that I really wanted to learn how to read).

Throughout the day, I kept asking myself the question, and slowly I found my answer. I have a deep, personal relationship with this medium, and hopefully it comes through here. Not in the kind of freaky fanboy way, but in a genuine love of the stories and characters I've gotten to know my entire life, and the enduring sense of hope and possibility that the medium contains. I may have flirted with giving up on comics in the 90's, but I know deep down now that I'll never leave.

So, my mission remains... from the beginning I wanted to document my rediscovery of comics, and I will continue to do so.