One Year Later

When I first started this blog a year ago today, I was unemployed, afraid I wouldn't make it to any conventions for the rest of the year, and uncertain I could generate interest in a blog about black comics. Now look at me - I'm the mayor of a great metropolitan city with a talking shark for a sidekick and a new costume! Oh, and I'm pregnant too!

But seriously, sustaining this blog has been a great challenge. There's been stuff I tried that didn't work, there's been stuff that did. As I've said many times before, here and elsewhere, I do not claim to be either an expert on black comics nor an authority on them. There's stuff I miss all the time, and not everything that's out there interests me equally. My opinions on things have been known to change. I get things wrong occasionally. I forget things. I am far from an adept at this. So why do I do it?

It's simple - I feel someone has to. I'm no black militant; you'll never see me in a daishiki or anything like that. I accept and take pride in being black, but I've never once felt the urge to wear it on my sleeve, so to speak. Comics, however, are different. In the five-plus years I've been writing about comics, I've done my best to bring into the spotlight titles and creators who don't get the recognition they deserve, and there are an awful lot of black comics that fall into that category. So I see Glyphs as an extension of what I've always been doing - telling people about good comics they may not know about (and some they do).

I've learned an awful lot in the process, and I've made some unexpected friends as well. To thank them all would take way too long and probably bore you to death. There are a few people, though, whom I must single out for all they've done for me this past year in helping get this blog off the ground: Erick Hogan, my once (and hopefully future) columnist; Omar Bilal at Black Superhero for thinking enough about Glyphs to put a great big banner for it on his homepage; Guy LeCharles Gonzalez at Buzzscope/Pop Culture Shock for thinking my insane ramblings would be worth reading about on a monthly basis; Pam Noles for her near-infinite wit and wisdom and for basically being a kindred spirit (I hope we get to meet in person one day), and Maurice Waters from ECBACC for helping me organize the Glyph Awards and making it - if not a total success, then at least not a total failure either!

And to the rest of you who are either regular readers, who have posted links to it on your own blogs, who have written about it, who have sent me news and information, or who have even sent me an e-mail saying you like what I'm attempting - thank you most sincerely. Like I said, this blog is far from perfect, and I don't spend as much time on it these days as I'd like to, but it's still here, dammit!

It's still here.