Yo La Tengo!

For the past month and a half or so, my Multiversity Comics co-writer Brandon Burpee and I have been filming exercises in absurdity in which we drink beer and talk about comics. We call it 4 Color News & Brews, and it has been slowly but surely taking off as we've gotten more views this week than ever before. Yeah!

Not that this will necessarily help, but I emailed Yo La Tengo (a band I very much enjoy) to see if we could use their track "Periodically Double or Triple" as the theme to our podcast. Surprisingly, I received an email back within three days saying sure. This is a band who has been around as long as I've been alive and is playing the absurdly huge Coachella Music Festival this year - they're pretty big time. Hell, I even randomly came up with a dance with Joanne to this song at my dad's birthday party last year. That's how you know they're good. Maybe this will earn our podcast some new Yo La Tengo friendly viewers, or perhaps the band some new fans. Who knows?!

Thanks to Yo La Tengo for being so damn cool about it, and I'm hoping we get the track added to our intro this week. If you're lucky you might get to see me cut a rug in the podcast too.

Multiversity Comics' Saturday Showdown Podcast

In case you missed it last week (which you probably did given that I didn't post it here), my co-writer Brandon Burpee and I launched a new podcast for Multiversity Comics titled Saturday Showdown. So far it's been a pretty decent success, ranking 47th for the last week on YouTube for most new subscribers in the category "Reporters" (sure, that's a lot of qualifiers, but I'll take it).

It's basically the most ridiculous thing ever, but if you enjoy comics and nerdery and things of that sort, you'll probably enjoy this. Do us a favor and subscribe to it if you enjoy it, as we'll be rolling forward with weekly installments (including one at Emerald City ComiCon). Plus, we may be comic nerds but man, we love ego boosts as much as anyone.

At the very least, come back to look at some of the ridiculous things we may do in the future. I'm deciding as to whether or not I can shape my hair to look like Wolverine's hair right now - odds are good. Here's hoping that makes a future edition. If you're really lucky we'll post the true first episode in which we may have had a few too many beers and we had to cut it because of variable quality and our 20 minute show running for over an hour. It was pretty hysterical.

Multiversity Comics Update: Version 2.0

Multiversity Comics, the comic blog I write for, just went through an extensive redesign. The redesign was performed by none other than Sergei Shiryayev, the guy who redesigned my blog, and has already been lauded by a site for its brilliance in design using the Blogger formula. Just a fantastic job by Sergei, thanks man!

Besides the redesign, we've recently launched a forum, new features, loaded up on tons of big time creator interviews, and are actually trying out a gaggle of new writers (who knew that people would actually want to write for us?). Response has been great, as big time comic sites like Comic Book Resources, The Comics Journal and others have steadily linked to us, and it's really exciting. We just keep growing!

The next big step is Emerald City ComiCon, which my co-writer Brandon and I will be attending (with press passes!). While there, we're going to set up interviews with a ton of writers and artists, and will likely set up an Emerald City ComiCon version of our Saturday Showdown podcast (premieres this Saturday!). I really can't wait for all of that, but definitely check us out if you have any interest in comics or genre fiction.

Bendis Week

As I say rather frequently Multiversity Comics, the comic blog I write for, has really taken off and been quite the success. We're looking into a redesign and looking to acquire advertising dollars very soon, but before we do that we're looking to build our audience. To do such a thing, we need something to draw in new readers.

Enter Bendis Week.

Starting tomorrow morning, we're going to be unveiling five days of Brian Michael Bendis. We had an extensive interview with Bendis last week, and we went over all aspects of his career with most of the focus being on his big Marvel event Siege. Bendis is pretty much the modern day Stan Lee, acting as the architect for Marvel comics over the past decade and helping turnaround the comic giant from bankruptcy. It's a huge moment for all of us at Multiversity, and any of you are interested I highly recommend visiting this week to read the interview.

Multiversity Comics Update

For my every so often update about my comic blog Multiversity Comics, I only have a few updates. The first would have to be that I received my first collection of loot from a comic publisher (as you can see above), as I received a box today from Archaia Press. In it were four graphic novels (including the massively acclaimed collection titled The Killer) and a bunch of different comics. Lots of reading to do, as provided by the exceptionally cool folks over at Archaia, so thanks a lot for the opportunity to review your work.

Also, over the next two weeks we are going over the past decade in comics, discussing eleven different categories culminating in next Friday's Best Ongoing Series list. There will be plenty of surprises, as this is a list comprised of my votes along with the other three writers there. This was my brainchild unsurprisingly given my obsessive listing, but if you like comics or are looking to get into them, I highly recommend you check it out. There will be a lot of great ideas for you there.

The last update is we officially have business cards! These are necessary to get our press passes at comic conventions, so it's nice to finally have those. Thanks so much to Jason Burdette for designing them. They're simple, elegant, and they fit us. I'm guessing if he was here Patrick Bateman would approve, most assuredly.

Multiversity Comics Update: Is this really happening?

Last time on my Multiversity Comics update, we'd just had our biggest visitor day ever because of a Twitter list Matt had come up with. That was an extremely exciting day, one where Gil, Matt and myself could hardly believe what was happening perpetually. Since then, things have settled down a bit, but not for a lack of excitement. In recent weeks, we've added a new writer in fellow Alaskan and Boscos patron Brandon Burpee. Not only that, but we've had a slew of exciting interviews start coming down the path, as I've interviewed personal favorites like Jonathan Hickman, Fred Van Lente, and Francis Manapul. That's not even the tip of the iceberg. In coming weeks we have interviews with industry giants and newer and highly lauded creators alike, such as:

• Brian Michael Bendis (essentially today's version of Stan Lee, the architect of Marvel Comics)
• Filip Sablik (Publisher of Top Cow Productions, one of the biggest companies in the industry)
• Joshua Dysart (acclaimed writer of Unknown Soldier and BPRD)
• David Petersen (Eisner Award winner best known for his work Mouse Guard)
• David Gallaher (Eisner Award winner best known for High Noon)

We have all of those, plus a number of other great creators like Phillip Tan, Brahm Revel, Jim McCann, and many, many more coming up, plus some other exciting interview opportunities that are presenting themselves.

If that wasn't exciting enough, we've started to get a good amount of press to help legitimize our venture even more so. The most exciting spotlight for me was when one of my favorite creators, Brian Wood of DMZ and Local fame, was emailed my review for the new issue of DMZ and promptly made a post on his forum discussing my review and what others opinions are of my thoughts. To think that I'm not just an outsider looking in but part of a site that seemingly is drawing the interest of all of those people I've idolized for forever is very exciting indeed. Of course, I can't ignore the fact that all of the interest in our site is earning me pretty sweet perks ("hello there package from company...you want me to read your title and feature it in my Small Press Spotlight column? Don't mind if I do!").

Possibly the coolest news of all though I've saved for last. I had been planning on going to the Emerald City ComiCon this year in Seattle, and now it appears that not only will I be attending, but I will be attending as a bonafide member of the press. Press pass and all, getting me into the events for free and into panels and the like automatically. To a huge dork like me whose aspirations for writing never really extended far out of endlessly ranting on this here blog (thank you all for reading it), it's pretty damn exciting. Yet, I do want to note that the more I write there the less time I have to write here. I'll still post plenty because it's my personal version of crack, but perhaps not as often as I have in the past. Still, follow my exploits at Multiversity Comics, and watch us grow into the next big comic site. Or not. Who knows, really? All I know is it's good to know reading comics for so long has started to pay off for me as a writer/person.

Multiversity Comics Update

Today was a huge day for the comic blog I write for. Multiversity Comics started the day securing three interviews (including one from one of our favorite creators in the industry) and finished it with by far the biggest day in terms of visitors in our short history. In fact, we managed to have significantly more visitors today than we typically do in an entire week, as we have nearly 1,500 unique visitors today with 4 hours to go.

How did this happen?

Well, Matt (MC's creator, writer and editor-in-chief) wrote an innocent post sharing the Twitter accounts of a ton of different comic creators in an attempt to create the most comprehensive Twitter account list out there. Of course, it started well as many creators commeneted on the post and emailed Matt to get added, but it all escalated like crazy when first MTV's Splash Page (MTV's comic movie blog) made a tweet about our post, and then arguably two of the biggest writers in the industry did the same: Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis. Throw in Marvel blogger/champion Agent_M (he of 1.2 million followers on Twitter), and our site just went completely insane.

This is just an absolutely gigantic day for us, and we're really excited about the future of our blog. Who knows what it holds, but man, it was an incredibly fun day to watch unfold. Hopefully we build on it and make Multiversity even bigger than it already is.

News from the Front

There are three really quick topics and two updates I wanted to touch on, and while none of them are really post worthy, when you combine their power they are somewhat akin to a super post. Enjoy!

- After years of bragging about how I've never had to go to jury duty, inevitably has now caught up with me. Early November I will have to go in for jury duty summons, and knowing me it will be impossible for them to resist. I mean come on, who wouldn't want me on a jury? Fair, honorable, passionate about justice, and with a deep set desire to find the truth in situations, I'm pretty much the ideal jury candidate. Well, besides the fact I fall asleep within 15 minutes of sitting in one place and doing nothing? I'm going to need to get a Big Gulp filled with a Caramel Americano to survive this.

Here's hoping my case is eerily similar to the one from the Pauly Short classic film Jury Duty, minus the serial killer and lengthy case parts and plus the Tia Carrere (circa 1995) part.

- Somehow I've gotten to the point where over 20,000 visitors have came to my blog. I don't know who I feel worse for: myself for writing that much nonsense or you all for suffering through it. Can't wait for the next 20,000, especially considering I'm getting more visitors than ever. Thanks for stopping by!

- My comic blog has now hit the big time. After numerous quotes from comic publishers, high profile interviews, and tons of content, we officially decided to purchase our own web space: Multiversity Comics is now at http://www.multiversitycomics.com. Awesome! Congrats to Matt and Gil, my compatriots who have done a masterful job starting it up, and I appreciate them letting me tag along for the ride.

- Yes Month update: This month has completely ruled, and by my count I've still only really said no once (to the Germans about going to Firetap late on a work night). Been busy as hell and I've had an amazing time so far. Thanks Yes Month!

- Starting this Wednesday, I will start counting down my top 50 albums of the 2000's. Wednesday will be 50-41, Thursday will be 40 through 31, and so on and so forth, with my top ten falling on Sunday. Expect shocking revelations and surprising choices all over the place.

Multiversity Comics Update: We're big time!

I have to admit, I'm really excited by how well the comic blog I'm writing for is doing. We're getting over 100 unique visitors a day, according to a comic site traffic aggregator we are the 55th most visited comic blog, and I'm even managing to successfully pull in a variety of creators for interviews. Upcoming creators that we will add to our list of interviews include Atomic Robo and 8-Bit Theater creator Brian Clevinger and the Sword and Girls creators the Luna Brothers.

However, the first person I interviewed was novelist and upcoming Bone writer Tom Sniegoski (which I talked about here). That interview is now posted and in my humble opinion, it's a very good read. It's pretty fantastic that creators who are likely quite busy are working with me to do this, and I really appreciate it. Hopefully I can keep getting more and more interviews and hopefully our blog will end up being a major success. Help us out by giving us a visit from time to time, especially for this new interview.

Multiversity Comics

Given that I know the majority of my readership does not particularly care about comics, the fact that I'm now writing blogs for an actual comic blog will help cure you of those ills. The blog, Multiversity Comics, came from the comics thread that myself and a couple of the other writers all frequent. It is quite the thread, having nearly 15,000 posts over the last three or four years, and it is about time that we took our love of comics out into the blog world. Of course, the fact it was named after a yet to be released Grant Morrison monstrosity is not awe inspiring.

No less, I know that most do not particularly care for comics, but I wrote my first "column" tonight. It's a weekly piece on what comics are dramatically underappreciated, and I call it "How are you not reading these?!" I never claimed to be a creative title crafter. Check it out, if you're interested!