Best Blog Post in...Well, A Long Time
It's been a long, long time since a blog post on any comics blog has been good for more than a momentary diversion, if even that -- I'm sure I'm not the only one that's noticed the past few months that comics blogging is essentially dead in the water.

Now, Neilalien has gone on the record on the death of comics blogging, examining the various places that comics bloggers have disappeared or transformed themselves into.

The most fascinating is Neil's mention of the secret "Fight Club"-type private mailing lists -- I know of one that includes dozens of big name industry pros, retailers and commentators. I know of it because I created it, a couple of years ago, in response to a personal attack on my private life that was carried out by a pair of disturbed individuals who were outraged at my willingness to publicly discuss my opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

I'm not in the "Fight Club" anymore -- I assume Neil is including this one in his thoughts, because at one point I invited him to join and he politely declined -- and I am sure there are many others out there too, hidden and unknown, occult in the truest sense of the word.

I disassociated myself from the one I started long ago, but I know it's still around and kicking, and that many former and some current friends and acquintances still particpate in it. So I know that Neil is right, that intelligent folks with interesting things to say about comics are, in large part, saying those things privately. Perhaps some of those thoughts are later developed into public essays and columns, so not all is lost, but man, the glory days of the comics blogosphere are seemingly well and truly over, at least for the time being.

I mean, really, where's today's Journalista? Who is today's Sean T. Collins? Sure, he blogs, but -- nothing against you, Sean, if you're even reading this -- he doesn't blog about anything I am remotely interested in. The same goes for Tim O'Neill and When Will The Hurting Stop. I'm sure he thinks his remixed comics covers and out of context Mark Trail panels are hilarious, but I don't even visit his blog on reflex anymore. It's that dead to me.

Now, Neil posits that people use LiveJournal for the privacy factor -- and I know at least one comics blogger who, apparently, does shield off some posts from public viewing -- but I've never done that, and I don't know that I ever will. If I want to share private thoughts with that small of a group of people, well, there's always e-mail, is there not?

As someone who once had what seemed to be one of the most prominent and popular comics blogs -- I can only wish today that anything I am associated with could manage the hits the ADD Blog got in its glory days -- I do mourn the passage of what was a truly fascinating couple of years on the comics internet. But it seems like the fad may indeed be over, and the best comics bloggers are either writing about stuff that mostly isn't comics, or are writing about comics in other formats, like The Comics Journal. Which, by the way, will apparently have one of my reviews in it in the next issue (#272, I think -- whichever one is shipping in November or December). Of course, the review was written something like a year ago, so I am far from excited to finally see it go into print, another aggravation with non-blog comics writing, the delays -- but it remains an honour to be in the Journal in any form. It is, in fact, a lifelong dream, just one I wish was being fulfilled a little more often. But I know I'm no Tom Spurgeon or Rich Kreiner, and am, in fact, lucky to be invited to the party at all.

But Neil's thoughts on that other party, the comics blogging one -- those interested me. Check them out. And thanks, Neil, for grabbing my interest on a subject I thought long ago exhausted of any intellectual power at all.