COLUMNS

The full SBC archive of columns can be accessed here, and the following is a listing of some of my favorite columns from over the years…

My Favorite Columns

Have written more than 300 columns since 2001, and these are my absolute favorites from my first five or so years. Without becoming too dramatic about it, these are the reasons why I wanted to write a weekly column in the first place. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them way back when—even though some of the thoughts, language, and rhetoric no longer applies. But I certainly meant it when I said it, and it seemed critically important at the time for me to share it with others. Every entry includes a quick excerpt and a direct link to the full piece…

Haters Be Hating (posted September 6, 2001)

I’ve seen you people on the internet, lurking within message boards with your ridiculous aliases, and shield of anonymity. You take potshots at anything that’s different, moan that continuity should be preserved at all costs (story included), and proceed to rip announced projects apart before they’re even halfway to the stands. You my friend are the Hater…and you must be stopped at all costs.

Perfect Blueprint (posted August 25, 2002)

I just find it highly disappointing that in the new millennium, with Hollywood producers and mass media crawling up our ass to see what’s contained within…still, after bothering to claw our way from the gutter of the mid 90s…people don’t want to read ___in’ comics anymore…they want to “save” them. Imagine that.

Piercing Ideaspace Along the Continuity Breakers (posted September 9, 2002)

…I think Moore is absolutely right. The principle of Ideaspace successfully adds an additional layer of complexity to the process of writing and you know I’m all for anything that makes my little ‘twitch’ more intangible and unexplainable.

Destiny (posted March 3, 2003)

If we cannot get it done, then it never deserved doing. Creatively we are too strong and too stubborn to simply fade away, replaced by what will pass for “entertainment.” At the end of the day, this “majority” that doesn’t understand us, doesn’t respect us, and doesn’t acknowledge us only does so because it doesn’t know any better.

The Crucible- My Epic Year (posted December 29, 2003)

Epic was a chance to begin firmly within one of the big two, but as the summer wound down, all the “will” in the world wasn’t enough to quiet that sinking feeling in the back of my head. Progress was slowing to nothing, and the frustration built to that breaking point I swore to never reach.

The Black Column (posted April 5, 2004)

I write because I want you to change. I want to have the opportunity to write long enough to reach that story or approach that propels the industry, hell, that propels the medium forward. Who knows how long it’ll take to reach that level, or if it’ll even happen, but shouldn’t that be what everyone is aspiring to?

Resolve (posted September 20, 2004)

This is the only thing I know how to do, the only thing I know how to want to do, and there’s a level of comfort from being surrounded by other cats driven into excitable fits by Wednesday afternoons. And everyone’s relationship and connection to the material is unique in some way, how they discovered it, why they stay with it, what did or almost took them away from it.

Stop Sayin’ Nigger (posted May 9, 2005)

I cannot believe that the same branch of fandom that is chattering about the Blue Beetle gettin’ killed, and inevitable price increases, is just consigned to sit back and wait patiently for byrne to say something’ even more hateful and disrespectful than the last thing he just said.

Black Like Me (posted October 1, 2005)

Penance one might say, for missing a very critical opportunity, and being left with a dreadfully small number of minority characters to get behind, and the sensation that no one else even notices, and on the off chance they do, knows or cares enough to do anything about it. And I have to say something about it, because I’m not twelve years old anymore, and neither are you.

Either Focus Or Fold (posted June 13, 2006)

Here I am having a dialogue with someone working at one of the big two, with multiple years of experience in the biz, telling me, almost to my face, that the viability and acceptance of the black creator is resting on my incredibly green shoulders. Which is flattering and ridiculous at the same time. And more than just a tad insulting, considering the source.

Persistence Overcomes Resistance (posted July 28, 2006)

Even when I try being lazy, it just doesn’t work out, leaving us with this, a gang of pics, a few reviews, some name-dropping, and more than a few keen observations as the ’06 edition of the SDCC is preserved for Ambi. prosperity.