And now it needs another one. After three years in the “business” of covering key moments of comic history with humor and fun, Mark Engblom has decided to retire Comic Coverage.
A variety of factors lead to my decision:1. I’m incredibly proud of the work I’ve done on Comic Coverage, and rather than risk an even further dip in quality and frequency, I thought it best to end it before that body of work was compromised.2. As much as I hate to bring this up, I’ve been dealing with a repetitive stress shoulder injury for a little over a year (my drawing arm, of course). Moving from a more or less daily blogging schedule to an every-other-day schedule has helped with the healing process, but eliminating this extra-curricular (and non-paying) demand on my shoulder should help even more.3. Having just sent my daughter off to college and with Fall just around the corner, the feeling of “change” is heavy in the air…a feeling that naturally leads me to reassess where I’m at and how I want to spend my days. As much genuine joy as I’ve had doing the Comic Coverage blog over the years, there are other things I’d like to do that blogging has curtailed or prevented me from doing…and it’s time to change that.4. …I’m beat. My energy level and enthusiasm for blogging seems to have taken a nosedive. I still have plenty of good ideas for blog posts, but I just don’t have the excitement or ambition to do them properly. So, rather than just half-heartedly “slog-blogging” (blogging just to blog), I think it’s best to step away before it becomes the inert, irrelevant non-entity so many other blogs degrade into.
I’ve already covered this blog on a past Internet Spotlight. What I didn’t say is that since his was the first blog I started reading regularly, it could be deemed partly responsible for my own blog by fault of dragging me into the blogosphere, and me realizing that I was making comments that were way too long. Apparently, I’m not the only one so inspired. (Interestingly, this was the second blog I started reading regularly. I think Four Color Media Monitor was next, so that might be the order of collapse. 🙂 ) And look at all the well wishers in his comments section.
So this means that Comic Coverage will move from my RSS feed list to my favorite blogs list. As long as the site is up, it will be a source of information and interest. Good luck on your future gigs, Mark. As I said in the comments, know that CC will still live on in your fans and those you inspired, and our gratitude for your hard work.
BW Media Spotlight 