My 700th Post! Also, Free Comic Book Day!

It is fitting that my blog which discusses comics so often reaches its 700th post on a Free Comic Book Day, and if you'll excuse some "navel-gazing" I'd like to reflect on how I/we got here.

This was me in October 2010 around when I started thinking about making a blog.

It is crazy to think how I started my blog back on that faithful day, December 3rd, 2010. Back then I was new at this whole "blogging" thing and while I wouldn't say my writing style has changed too much in the intervening 2+ years, I have gotten better at the act of blogging itself. My original blog-page was kind of a mess of images, would have too many posts on a page with "breaks" so you had to annoyingly click an article, and maybe got one or two viewers every couple of days. I wanted to share my thoughts with people who shared my interests though, and a blog seemed like the best way to do it so I kept typing along.

I wasn't discouraged by the low views and complete obscurity, however. I knew if I just kept posting I would get noticed, and slowly but surely I gained some more readers, started communicating with comics professionals and doing interviews with them,  and expanding out to various writing stints for other websites now and then. From that first time a comic creator contacted me a little after a month of my blog existing (John Arcudi to thank me for naming his graphic novel "A God Somewhere" as my favorite graphic novel of 2010--and it continues to be one of my favorite comics ever).

While I may have slowed down on the posting once I moved from Upstate New York out here to Saint Louis in the Fall of 2011, I like to think that despite less articles the effort I put into making longer and more in-depth pieces made up for the somewhat sporadic posting I still sometimes fall victim to.

As I said, it is just crazy how within the time of starting this blog I went from NY to STL, met the love of my love out here in Missouri, and now will be graduating with my Masters in Public Health this May 17th (which is also my sister's birthday, funnily enough). Some of the things I attempted on the web failed (Having a tumblr to go with the blog, doing a regular podcast with little more than myself rambling on), but through it all the blog itself remained a constant, chugging along and commenting on the world.

It is amazing how time flies when you're talking about comics, movies, music, television, the news, and whatever else one feels like yakking about it. I'm just lucky that there are at least some people out there who enjoy reading what I think--and whom I enjoy reading the thoughts of if they have a website or blog.

While my life will keep changing once I graduate and look for a job, get married, have kids, and all of that, one thing I hope will remain constant. Namely, that I'll have "The Newest Rant" and folk will continue to take pleasure in reading it.

Thanks for having read my blog whether this is your first time reading a post or your 700th, I hope to make many more--now go get yourself some free comics!