On July 1, 1998, the first incarnation of Comicsgirl officially launched. The internet was a very different place then and no, I didn’t think I’d still be trying to hang onto this 20 years later. I mean, 2018 was completely the future! I have no idea if that teenager who thought it would be cool to make a website would be happy or sad I’m still doing this. I may have been overly ambitious, but it was 1998 and there was a need!

I admit to being naive in some of the language I used but I do admire how generous I attempted to be, even if I was — admittedly — really imperfect at it.

The early days of Comicsgirl are long since gone from the internet, for the most part. There’s still the Wayback Machine, so let’s revisit some of the things I wrote (not all are from the earliest version of the site — the oldest version I could find was from October 1999, but close enough!) Also, I just tossed these images in — they weren’t ones from the original site (and the introductions to these posts did have creator/publisher information and such).

About The Sandman:

The Sandman was an ambitious project about the Lord of Dreams and his family, The Endless (Destiny, Death, Delirium, Destruction, Desire, Despair), and the mortal (and often not so mortal) dreamers they encountered. The Sandman delved deeply into mythology, history, and literature. It has been said that The Sandman is a story about stories, and I will easily agree with that.

The Sandman, mainly because it was a nontraditional comic book (meaning that it generally lacked men in tights and capes fighting crime), appealed to many women. Neil Gaiman’s personal estimate of its readership is about 50/50 split between males and females. Three and a half of the seven Endless are female (Death, Despair, Delirium, and sometimes Desire), and many strong female characters play prominent roles in the storylines. Even though some of the female characters may be strippers, or murdered, they are never presented as being mere sex objects or victims. From the coldly independent Thessaly, to the sweet, lonely Nuala, to the quick intelligence Johanna Constantine, every woman in The Sandman has self-worth and is presented as being nothing less than whole. One character remarks in The Sandman that “All women are remarkable.” Everything about the women in this title would agree with that. Highest recommendation possible.

About Elfquest:

Elfquest is a fantasy comic book concerning a group of elves named the Wolfriders. These elves evolved after a race of being accidentally landed at the wrong time on a fantasy world. They struggle against humans who believed them to be demons, cruel trolls, and even other treacherous elves in a struggle for survival in a world where they do not belong.

Elfquest, which was written and illustrated for many years by a woman, has an abundance of female characters, each multidimensional with her own strengths and weaknesses. The female elves are treated on the same terms as the male elves, and neither gender is made to look superior or inferior. The writing and artwork deals with them both equally. While the women are sometimes scantily clad and well-figured, the men are drawn exactly in the same manner, and neither is offensive. The stories are excellent, the art is great, and Elfquest is just downright fun. Highly Recommended.

About Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:

In this dark and historic miniseries, Frank Miller explores what effect superheroes have on society. Ten years after Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman, a new crime wave has hit Gotham City. Although he is older, Bruce Wayne feels the drive and desire to become Batman once again, and does so not realizing how the world has changed since the last time Batman appeared.

I almost did not want to review this, because the question came up…is The Dark Knight Returns “female-friendly”? Well, it’s not “friendly” in any way, although it is a monumental work–as relevant today as it was ten years ago, and it probes deeply into the psyche of one of the world’s most beloved superheroes, but is it something female comic book readers would enjoy? I can only speak from experience that I am a female comic book reader, and I liked it a lot.

I would like you to be warned–this is no simple superhero tale. It is violent, unnerving, unrelenting. Those aspects of the book can’t be ignored. But The Dark Knight Returns is also about the sweet, fatherly relationship Batman has with the new Robin, a thirteen-year old girl, and Batman’s continuous attempt to save himself from the torture of the memory of the violent killing of his parents he witnessed as a child. These aspects humanize the book. It’s not just mindlessly violent, nor a thoughtless tale of fighting crime. It’s about one man’s misguided mission to save his city from crime–to stop what happened to him from happening to anyone else. In that regard, the book is worthy of being read and something will be gained from doing so. So reservations about “female-friendliness” aside: Highly Recommended.

Yeah, and that’s enough of that. Did I mention I was a teenager and this was more or less 20 years ago?

In all honesty, though, doing this has brought so many good things into my life. People were generous with their comics and I got to read a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise. I was once vaguely considered an “expert” and people even interviewed me about my site! It lead to getting involved with Small Press Expo and that’s been amazing. I’ve made countless friends — including people I absolutely consider to be my family. It indirectly (and directly) lead to job opportunities. It has been frustrating at times, sure, but I think there’s a good reason that even after 20 years, I haven’t wanted to let go of this.

Mostly, it’s been such a huge part of my life and I’ve loved it so much.

I’ve watched the internet change from websites (remember when I used to run a webring? Do you even know what a webring is?) to blogs to … whatever space we’re in now. I like change but I hope I can keep up.

I had fun going through my site and rereading things. I’ve collected a few of them.

Favorite posts (that aren’t reviews):

• Can we stop pretending all comic book stores are now awesome? Plus bonus followup: The Big Bang Theory’s Alice is the future
• Girl Scouts have a Comics badge! (Girl Scouts have since created Comic Artist badge for Cadettes)
• In defense of Cathy
• Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki at Politics and Prose
• Library Con at Petworth Neighborhood Library & Comics by Women (Bonus presentation! I will still happily be on your panels!)
• Near Miss: Minx
• Remembering BoHoS: A conversation with Maggie Whorf
• Revisiting The Sandman (also known as “that time Neil Gaiman linked to my site.”)
• Revisit: The Tick Omnibus (You will be happy to know I did get my Man-Eating Cow action figure since then)
• Super Art Fight at the Red Palace

My favorite reviews:

• A Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes
• A Drunken Dream and Other Stories
• Insufficient Direction
• Laika
• Through the Woods
• Skim
• Smile

Three reviews by special guests:

• Molly on Sisters
• My mom on The Book of Genesis: Illustrated
• The Destruction of Spider-Man: A Review of Turn Off the Dark by my friend Steve Kopian (despite what the name on the post says! Also check out Steve’s work at Unseen Films.)

Despite the fact I haven’t updated this site in nearly a year, I don’t consider it “dead” — I’m just … taking a break. I have some plans for the next era of this site. I’m getting there! I may even bring the podcast back! But really, thank you to everyone who has ever indulged me with this. You’re all a delight.

In all honesty, I never had that big of a comic book collection. I never bought too many individual issues as it was and I often gathered up comics I was done with and passed them along (or turned them into craft projects — yes, I am a terrible person). There were maybe about 300 comics in my closet and I got rid of about half (as these things go, they didn’t actually sell at our yard sale — my mom ended up giving them away. There were some good comics in there so I hope they at least ended up with someone who appreciates them).

I’d been thinking about this anyway, and while I am unclear on the actual date, but 2011 marks 20 years of my comic-book-reading life. I distinctly remember what my first comic was — X-Factor #62.

In retrospect, it wasn’t the best nor the most reader-friendly choice — it was the end of a crossover — but I didn’t know any better.

Let’s back up a bit. My brother, after seeing some friends at school with them, bought a couple of packs of the first series of Marvel Universe Cards. I did, too. This wasn’t too much of a leap for us since we were both baseball card collectors.

I found myself attracted to a lot of the X-Men characters and I wanted to know more about them. So, one day at 7-Eleven before some outing with our mom, we picked up comics (this was the days where comics were sold at 7-Eleven. And they also only cost $1. And you could get a Slurpee at the same time. Yes, these were the days). At least, this is my memory of the experience — I am willing to allow this was no true.

I don’t remember what my brother bought, but I clearly remember I bought X-Factor #62. (It was dated January 1991, which meant it came out earlier than that. I feel like it was spring when I bought it, but I honestly don’t know.)

I definitely remember being confused, since, as I mentioned, this was the end of a fairly large crossover series (although it was just nine issues. That’s kind of cute now) but it was interesting enough to me that I wanted to read more comics. In fact, I think starting on the X-Men titles after “Xtinction Agenda” was pretty good timing.

And that comic? It was written by Louise Simonson. That’s right: My first comic was written by a woman. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think that’s amazing and appropriate.

(OK: In all honesty, I had read some Archie comics before this, but I guess I mean this in a way where this was the first comic I recognized as a comic book.)

I realize I came into comics at possibly the worst time in retrospect — the mid-’90s boom and bust was just around the corner — but it was fun at the time. And despite it all, I never fully gave up comics. Yes, many issues of various X-titles followed and I bought into the whole Image thing, but I also found The Tick and Elfquest and The Sandman. Those comics taught me that there was more out there than just the usual suspects and I’ve been filling my bookshelves up with them ever since.

I didn’t know what X-Factor #62 was going to mean at the time — it was just a fun, if confusing, diversion. But I remain grateful for that comic, 20 years later. Even if it wasn’t the best introduction, it opened the door to so many great things.

The Tick

Back in the early ’90s, I had a couple of letters published in a couple of issues of a title I will not name, and this being the era when they would actually include your home address (it was before the Internet reached saturation, OK?), some people wrote me back. One became a very good friend. And he, among other things, sent me The Tick Omnibus and a few issues (I think I had at least through issue #9, if not through issue #12).

All of this was before the cartoon, before the live-action TV show, before creator Ben Edlund was writing and producing alongside Joss Whedon (all of which I’ll get to in a bit).

Edlund’s broad parody of superheroes, following an insane asylum escapee in a blue suit calling himself the Tick, still works pretty well. The Clark Oppenheimer bits in the earlier issues are a little obvious (who hasn’t made fun of Superman’s secret identity? Before or since?) but The Tick’s utter cluelessness is still fun.

Some of the references are a little dated — Oedipus serving as a stand-in for Frank Miller-era Elektra, the obsession with ninjas — but it’s still self-consciously delightful (and probably no more dated than Watchmen is now and people still love that). This was what comics were like in the 1980s and early ’90s. There was a lot to laugh at.

I was honestly surprised to see how well-paced this was. It’s not a gag-a-minute but it actually does tell a story (what it is, of course) and The Tick is fun to watch. Oedipus, even as a broad parody, is a likable heroine, and the ninjas are so goofy that they’re not much of a threat. The final issue in this volume, “Villians, Inc.” where superheroes hire bad guys to fight to create a reputation for themselves, does point to the preposterous nature of most comics and lets Edlund play with some bigger ideas.

It may not necessarily be the most relevant comic now, but it still works. It’s still fun. I was greatly entertained.

So back to all the other things.

Yes, in 1994, The Tick became a Saturday morning cartoon on Fox. At the time, I thought this was really cool but I don’t think it quite registered how bizarre it was to have this happen. I’d known about The Tick for a couple of years, after all, and it felt pretty much like common knowledge to me, even if it wasn’t.

In some ways, I think the cartoon worked better than the comic series. It was pretty faithful to the spirit of the series but it removed some of the darkness and just allowed the goofiness to shine through. It still had characters like Chairface Chippendale (and the Man-Eating Cow. I never got my Man-Eating Cow action figure, though, and I am still sad about that) but took away characters like the Chainsaw Vigilante, who always felt a little out of place to me. It gave us such villains like The Evil Midnight Bomber and awesome Galactus parody Omnipotus. The Tick cartoon was good stuff.

Here’s the opening:

This is my favorite episode, mostly because of the always-awesome Ron Perlman, but because of the hilarious gracefulness they handle the innuendo of superheroes and their sidekicks:

I suppose none of that has much to do with The Tick as a comic, though, but I’ve loved following Edlund as a creator over the years. I still enjoy The Tick in all of its incarnations, sure, but I think it’s cool the diversity of projects Edlund is doing now.