A Roll-Out of the Welcome Mat to Friend and Foe Alike!

Thanks for stopping or stumbling by! This is the inaugural post on a blog where I hope we'll both find a lot of fun.

For those who don't know me, I was one of the co-proprietors on the Bronze Age Babies blog that published from 2009-16. My partner Karen and I, along with staff writers Mike and Robert (and others who guest-posted from time-to-time), offered many topics for conversation and developed a wonderful community of commenters. Among the hallmarks of that blog were our reviews of comics, films, and books. Using the link embedded above or also at right, don't hesitate to go spelunking and certainly don't shy away from leaving a comment - we'll see it and respond. Since the BAB's closing, I've had a presence on Twitter using the handle @bronzeagebabies.

What I'm wishing to do in this space will have a different feel from the BAB. First of all, this won't have the frequency of posting that we offered (or endured, at some points when life tossed us curveballs) back then. I think I'm looking at maybe getting something live once or twice a week; Mondays and Thursdays seems ambitious enough to start (although come back each day this week through Friday as I jumpstart this project!). While I'd love a community of conversationalists to develop, this blog may focus more on presentation and less on queries for reader exposition. But I do hope you'll leave a note of your impression of the day's content - I'd love to have a little discourse.

So what's in store? As I type this, my initial ambition is to highlight Bronze Age artists who excelled in the black and white format. In the future, you might see reviews of full stories or of pages or even panels. I'll identify the penciler and inker, and sometimes we may just discuss that pairing  - was it a good fit? On other days you may see sketches, or pages of original art. And we won't necessarily be limited to just the Bronze Age - watch for anything from Golden Age Batman newspaper strips to Jeff Smith's Bone to pencil art from Batman comics of the last decade. While my personal comics wheelhouse of 1973-1980 may receive the bulk of attention, hopefully there will be at least a little something for everyone!

Just to give an idea of where this may go, here's an incomplete inventory from my comics library:

• Planet of the Apes Archives, volumes 1-4
• Savage Sword of Conan, volumes 1-4
• Doc Savage Archives, volume 1: The Curtis Magazine Era
• Bone: The Complete Cartoon Epic in One Volume
• Batman: The Dailies, 1943-1944, 1944-1945, 1945-1946 
• Spider-Man Newspaper Strips, volumes 1-2

...and several Marvel Essentials collections, numerous Artist Editions, etc.

If you didn't see something to whet your appetite, leave me a suggestion. If I don't have it to review, I'm not opposed to acquiring new material. And if you do have a discussion topic that's been gnawing at you, let me know and perhaps I can craft a post around your idea. I do want to be clear from the start: I am no authority on any of the above topics - not B&W comics, nor original art, and not inkers. But I hope we can all have fun in our admiration of such things and find some common ground on which to interact.

Again, thanks for the visit, and I hope to see you back again -- even as soon as tomorrow!