A Clean Office at Last!

Photo credit: Brent Frankenhoff

After 30 years!

Now, I begin to organize plans so as to get done many of the projects that have had to wait "until I have more time." It's exciting!

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CBG Staff Released Neat Books in 2012

As I look back over the years at Comics Buyer's Guide, I'm reminded that 2012 saw Brent Frankenhoff and me coming up with three books in addition to the 12 monthly issues of the magazine.

They are Comics Buyer's Guide Presents Dangerous Curves, Comics Buyer's Guide Presents the Greatest Comic Book Covers of All Time, and A Parent's Guide to the Best Kids' Comics. Each is fun, the first two basically being romps through the wonder world of comics images and the last being A New Concept.

A Parent's Guide to the Best Kids' Comics was my concept, born out of ongoing questions I've received in the past couple of years, questions that boiled down to, "What comics do you recommend for my kids to read?" I figured that what was needed was more than an article: It needed, not only recommendations, but samples of those recommendations so that adults and kids could see at a glance what looked good to them. And the recommendations needed to come from experts who knew that specific field, top to bottom. So I came up with the format - and we found top experts (Scott Robins and Snow Wildsmith) to provide the actual information. I see from the link I've just provided that the book is on sale at a whopping discount at the moment: a word to the wise.

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Maggie's World Begins, Comics Buyer's Guide Ends with #1699

The press release concerning cancellation of Comics Buyer's Guide with #1699 appears on the magazine's website.

It's been a delight to have had the opportunity for the last three decades - plus a prior decade with the magazine's creator, Alan Light - to communicate so wonderfully with comics collectors, comics fans, and comics professionals. Over the years, we were able to reach out in a variety of ways, including coming up with the term "Done in One" (to identify stories told completely in one issue, announced in CBG for April 5, 1996). We also helped create a trade journal that was the inciting force behind the Free Comic Book Day outreach project that Diamond Comic Distributors implemented and that continues every May. Don and I were excited by Krause Publications' challenge of revamping an advertising newspaper into a full-fledged information resource. It has been an energizing challenge to adapt to the changes of the field, as it grew from a niche interest to something popular enough to command the covers of national pop-culture magazines.

John Jackson Miller has provided a look at the history of CBG on his website; check it out!

How about me? Hey, the same week that Krause Publications announced the end of CBG saw the first installment of my contribution to a new outlet for me: a monthly post on Comic-Con's "Toucan" blog. Hope you enjoy it!

Onward!

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