PopCultureShock Update #513f
Slowly but surely, I’m getting back on track over there. A huge help in that regard was finally finding a managing editor, Kevin MacDonald, who saw my posting on The Engine and endured a grueling interview process that included publicly, and intelligently, talking comics while drinking in an Irish pub. Equally important, though, is that he’s actually a production editor by day, working for one of the major publishing houses here in the City. He’ll be taking over coordinating and editing approx. 60% of our columns, while I finally turn my attention to getting our reviews up to snuff. Yay, Kevin!
Speaking of reviews, Johnny Bacardi has worked out nicely — check out his latest Revue, now running on 1st Mondays — and I’m planning to join him with my own monthly review column, starting in two weeks. (Suggestions for the column’s name? Winner will get something comic-related!) I’ve also moved Greg Burgas’ Comics You Should Own feature to the 2nd and 4th Monday slots, so now Mondays will once again always feature reviews. Standalone reviews are the next thing to figure out, but they will be limited to OGNs and TPBs.
Beyond reviews, once Kevin has his sea legs, I plan to jump back into doing interviews and features again, with a ridiculous backlog of people and comics I want to cover. Free Comic Book Day looms on the horizon and I’m debating whether or not I want to do another marathon review of everything being released. Last year’s coverage was a case of biting off more than I could chew and resulted in multiple 3am nights! It was fun, though, and I discovered several gems because of it, so it’ll be hard to resist this year.
Finally, on the relaunch/redesign front, there’s nothing new to report. Work continues behind the scenes to make sure when it goes live, it’s actually ready to go live.
PS: Had the pleasure of meeting Johanna Draper Carlson last week, and she is as nice and straightforward in person as she is on comicsworthreading.com. At one point, she asked about PCS, and why I do what I do for free, and I told her it’s basically to keep the writing juices flowing until the day I have the time to devote my energies to my own writing. It’s a lot easier to bang out a review of something than it is to carve out a couple of hours a day dedicated to my own fiction writing. That said, there’s days — like last Friday, perhaps — where I question the sanity of it. Figuring out a way this weekend to work it into my taxes certainly helped. This year, I just need to figure out a way to make it come out profitably!
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