BW Programming Note> The Future Of “Yesterday’s” Comic

I was going to just put this in the Jake & Leon post with the usual site updates, but this is going to be a longer bit and I didn’t know who reads that comic strip I work on and the usual “Yesterday’s” Comic feature, so I’m making a separate post instead. Jake & Leon will post the usual time tonight.

The daily comic review started as a roundup of that week’s comics I bought, posting on Sundays. Running out of ways to start it each issue…long story short…Jake & Leon became the intro to This Week’s Comics. However, Sundays was one of two days I wasn’t working and one of the two days I could get my chores done. That meant I didn’t have time to do house chores and that bothered my mom at the time. So by doing it weekly along with the feature article I actually had more time on the weekends to do other chores. So that Sunday feature became a series of links to other articles, the precursor to the Saturday Article Link, and then it was just the comic and a weekly site update, becoming the BW Programming Note if I didn’t get to make a comic that week.

Eventually the article links went daily along with a daily video, giving me four posts a day. That wasn’t sustainable for a bunch of reasons and just became a daily video, a comic review, and the feature article, the big article to the fun bonuses to draw in more readers.

As things stand I’m out of new comics since I can’t get more and need to sell off some of the ones I have. The article links moved to just Saturdays because I didn’t always have a week full of articles. The Daily Video entries are piling up. The old comics I have on ComiXology and Neon Ichiban are all reviewed, Drive Thru Comics is about to run out of free comics that interest me, and Globalcomix just has mostly fan comics available to review, and I’m always iffy about being judgy about stuff done for fun rather than trying to make income like DC and Marvel’s stuff. What remains of Drive Thru’s entries are anthologies, as are the current pre-DC and Friday Golden Age comics. I’ve lost access to scans of the Ultraverse titles for Malibu, meaning Malibu Mondays are kind of done.

This means I need to make a chance to the “Yesterday’s” Comic feature. It’s not going away, but there is going to be a slowdown and this post will explain why and how the feature will work going forward. I still like reading the old comics, but once again time is a factor. Scroll down to the marker (you’ll know it when you see it), but I want to go into why I’m making this change.

Reading an anthology takes only slightly more time than a regular comic.  That’s not a problem. What is a problem comes from formatting an anthology article. A regular comic review is simple:

If this turn out to be a weird LARPing session, someone’s going to be embarrassed.

Comic Title #?

Publisher (date)

“Issue Title”

WRITER:

PENCILER:

INKER:

COLORIST:

LETTERER:

EDITOR:

And then I write the review with the summary, got right, got wrong, and final analysis. It doesn’t take much time. With an anthology on the other hand you have each title in the anthology, maybe a one person credit for the Golden Age, and the summary. With more recent anthologies you rarely get one person per story. There’s numerous credits for each one. Even writing all those names and putting in the tags for search engines (including the site’s own) takes time and the end result is that these are practically a full article in length. It takes extra time than the usual review and I’m pretty much out of normal comics. It’s all anthologies outside of features like Free Comic Inside and Scanning My Collection…and even some of those potentials are anthologies.

I’ve been wanting to branch out into other projects. I’ve been doing this site since 2008. I’ve wanted to get back into video production, maybe even streaming. The Let’s Play series has been stalled for so long I’d be surprised if people who voted in the poll to order the first five games are still around. Plus once again household chores are on the backburner for something that isn’t technically my job because the only ones making money off of my articles are the site host. I make no money from these ads. Outside of that one week a year or so ago I haven’t have any paid work, meaning I’ve been a burden on my dad for way too long now.

I lost my job in 2013 and tried to make this site into a source of income. I could stay with my ill mom and dad could help look after his own parents while still taking care of her. When she passed away I still wanted to make this a paid gig but didn’t really know how to go about it. The extra articles hoping to bring in more readers and possible Patreon supporters got in the way of my doing anything for Patreon besides early access, and some days that was only a few hours. It’s no surprise it didn’t get much traction. If I were smart I would have pivoted then but I was getting something out of it in readership, even if interaction has actually gone down in the years since.

Michaelangelo’s parties always get out of hand. Or should that be foot? Flipper?

2016 is when I had my two surgeries and a blood clot. That was not a good time and I’ve been starting to realize that I let all of that downtime when I couldn’t do anything get to me. It made me less active because I got used to being less physically active. I gained all the weight back because of that and some psychological whammy from having lost the weight too fast. I fell back into old habits, but not the good ones. I was sitting here writing three articles a day at that point. The Daily Video is usually just a video post and link, but the feature article requires research and the comic review requires reading and occasional research. I couldn’t lift much with the hernia, but that was gone a few years later, and now the kidney stone isn’t an issue. I was able to help set up a new local store, but when that was done no job came of it, and working full time stocking shelves wasn’t something I was ready for.

Don’t worry, this will all matter. With the anthologies taking so long to review they’ve become a full length article, and soon anthologies will be all I have to review until the history of comics catches up with the one story per comic model we know today. I’m losing time that I could be spending on other projects, including paid projects and some kind of income, to focus on something that makes no money. Even then I haven’t been able to work on things like building up a buffer of “evergreen” topics, my own comics and prose work (I really want to get back to “My Transformers Universe”), getting video work and livestreams going, including Let’s Plays, and do you know the last time I dusted? With my sinuses, the answer is way too long!

SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH “YESTERDAY’S” COMIC! (This is the marker, kids.)

Since anthologies take too long to review regardless of actual reading time and I really need that time, I can’t in good conscience continue “Yesterday’s” Comic as a daily offering. I’m turning 53 on Monday and all I have to show for it is my retired father paying my bills, few as there are because I can’t go anywhere or do anything because both broke and doing this, and feeling like a burden and a loser. I can’t do that anymore. On the other hand I don’t want to completely give up the site because I still like rambling about storytelling, but if the goal is to become a better storyteller…I should actually tell some stories on top of fulfilling my duties living in this house like finding some kind of paid work and doing my share of the cleaning. The hernia and kidney stones are gone and I should have long since recovered from my surgery by now.

To free up some time, “Yesterday’s” Comic is going weekly. Specifically in the same Sunday slot this posting. However, it and the Saturday Article Link will show up at 6:00 AM Eastern time to match the other postings. New video or article link at 6 AM and new feature article at 6 PM. On Sundays it’s the Golden Age anthology comic review in the AM and the usual Jake & Leon/site update at 6 PM. This way you know what to expect when. As far as the remaining Drive Thru Comics or any new comics (which would be “Today’s Comic” instead) they’ll be a bonus comic review like Scanning My Collection and Free Comic Inside. This might change the next Free Comic Book Day but I have until next year to worry about that.

I can’t review the Ultraverse comics without a source so sadly I have to give that up just as things were getting interesting with some of the titles. The Night Man, Solitaire, Hardcase, Prototype, The Strangers, and surprisingly The Solution and not Prime are comics I’d to see more of. We were just getting to the forming of Ultraforce, which I know more from the cartoon so I was looking forward to see what the comic version of Malibu’s answer to the Justice League and Avengers was like. So it will just be the Golden Age comic reviews from Comic Book Plus. The pre-DC pre-Quality comics I’ve been reviewing will fold into the rotation, meaning it will be a while before we get back to Plastic Man and pals. They’re in 1942 and the other Golden Age comics are 1940.

As it is I’m taking next week off for my birthday. “Yesterday’s” Comic will take it’s new spot here next Sunday. My apologies to anyone who just subscribed (hi, by the way, thanks for checking in) for this feature or were already around (hi to you as well) and will miss a daily comic review among all the other storytelling discussions, but I need the time to make something useful out of myself and pull my worthless life together. I hope you understand and will still check out the comics that led to what we enjoy in comics today. Maybe if things change I can go back to a daily formula but this is how I have to operate for now. Hopefully you’ll still like what you see and what comes out of this in the future. At any rate, thank you for your time reading this. Time’s kind of important for all of us right now.