Happy Anniversary -- You're Entering the Third Year of the Bronze Age Babies!

Happy 2nd Anniversary!!

Doug: Wow -- what a long strange trip it's been! I can vividly recall sitting in my summer school classroom, having an email exchange with Karen about what to do next, given the demise of our former collaborative blog. We batted around the idea of going forward together as a duo, toyed with some ideas and monikers for a new blog and BAM! Here we are at the conclusion of our second year! As we did after our first year, we'd like to sit back, take a moment for reflection, but most of all offer up some thanks to you the reader. I consider the existence of this blog a gift to myself; without it, I'd be just too lazy to seek out/dig out older comics and relive that wonderful past of my youth. Doing the posts you see has been really fun for me, a true labor of love, and your participation in the Comments and Suggestion Box sections are a huge part of that.

Karen: It's hard to believe it's been two years. What's even harder to believe is that Doug and I have never even met! Our blog partnership has all come about via the internet. But it seems to work. We agreed with this blog to give ourselves more leeway to cover anything of interest to us, and that has made it more fun to work on. But the best thing has been witnessing the development of a community of fans here who all have a fondness for all things 'Bronze'.

Doug: I guess the biggest goldmine we hit over the past 12 months has been the Open Forum posts. I'm not sure how they got started (although I know Andrew Wahl's "talking points" on his Comics Bronze Age blog were a huge inspiration) -- if I recall, I was anticipating the release of the TwoMorrows book about Vince Colletta, and thought I'd throw out the subject of inkers and their roles. You responded, and we were off and running. Those posts have been great conversation starters, and have usually been among our most-commented posts. When we have one of those in the queue, I really anticipate the day of release so I can see how you'll respond.

Karen: I'd have to say that the Open Forums have become my favorite posts, because I'm always excited to read what you all have to say! And that was all Doug -great idea, partner!

Doug: Another series, that we're actually in the process of finishing, has been our Side-by-Side series. That one started off just a bit slowly, but really gained momentum as we got into the mid-'70's. I get the sense that you're enjoying our look at Marvel and DC in the Silver Age, but not as much as you enjoyed the Bronze Age retrospective. For almost all of us, we're lacking the experiential element here. As I'd said earlier, we were unsure how a four-month long series would be received... Well, we're stretching it to six months, and I'd say it's been a success.

Karen: The Side by Sides was another series where I didn't know what to expect, as far as reader interest. We often joke between the two of us about how we have no ability to predict which posts will generate a great response. But these particular ones seem to strike a chord with everyone, precisely because they take us back in time, to something we experienced. I really enjoy hearing everyone's stories about their reactions to certain comics events. It's like hanging out chatting with friends.

Karen: Although they didn't seem to garner much interest from our readers, I really enjoyed working on the "Tales of Asgard" posts. Those were just wonderful, fun stories. I also liked some of our two part reviews, like the X-Men vs. the Imperial Guard, or Avengers vs. Zodiac. The Face-Off and Versus posts let us explore all sorts of ideas, both in and outside of comics. The music ones seem to draw a strong response.

Doug: And you ask: Did anything surprise you in the comics reviews you did? I don't want to speak for Karen, but I know the 4-part Green Lantern/Green Arrow and the 3-part Ra's al Ghul arcs disappointed me from the standpoint of Denny O'Neil's scripts. I could never denigrate the art of Neal Adams -- even though I decided after one issue not to buy any more of his Batman: Odyssey series, the pictures were still beautiful. But I really thought those seven books we reviewed fell short story-wise. There were plot points in the Batman series that were either silly or meaningless, and the over-the-top moralizing of the GL/GA series left me flat -- maybe I was just a man out of time in regard to the impact of those stories as they'd been originally intended.

Karen: We've had an unfortunately high number of duds this last year. I suppose my expectations may have been a bit too high, but I have to agree about both the cases you raise. It's really hard sometimes to get through a review of a book when you just aren't enjoying it at all. Luckily those GA/GL and Batman stories had some fantastic art, but even that couldn't save it for me.

Doug: Another series we ran ended up being quite a bit of fun. Almost all of us recall the summer Annuals as well as that period when Marvel published the oft-quarterly Giant-Size books. So it seemed logical to give a retrospective on this blog, and our Giant-Size June and George Perez July features accomplished that mission. I really wish Karen and I had more books in that vein to share -- we have something cooked up for July this year, but it won't be nearly of the scale we tackled last year. Of the issues we did cover, I'd have to say that the two X-Men books, Giant-Size X-Men #1 and X-Men Annual #3 were my favorites.

Karen: Annuals and Giant-Size books conjure up memories of summers past, which is always a good thing.

Doug: So to wrap up from my perspective, we just again want to thank those of you who make this a now-daily habit. The Comic Blog Elite shows that we run around 340+ unique viewers per day, as well as over 1100 page views daily. That's a whole bunch of folks reminiscing with us, and we are grateful for your participation. Here's hoping we can stay interesting and relevant in 2011-12, and share more of our love of the 1970's and early 1980's as it relates to the pop culture of our youths. Be well.

Karen: I can't add much to that other than: Thank you! It wouldn't be anywhere near as fun without hearing from all of you.