Countdown to 70

There's a symmetry in my starting this blog seventeen years ago on the first of September, which going forward would prove to be the month that I could expect the least engagement from an audience, despite often putting the most work into the "anniversary." The WebTV site goes back nearly another decade, when I first got passionate about the Manhunter from Mars. With too much time and absolutely no money, why not build a fan page on the digital frontier? And the blog came about because I was copying The Aquaman Shrine, with the intent of repurposing the fan page content that was lost when I stopped my WebTV subscription. But see, The Aquman Shrine began after DC had killed off its featured character, and over the course of the Shrine's run (and its spin-off/legacy podcast,) the King of the Seven Seas reached dizzying new heights from there, starring in a billion dollar motion picture.

They killed my character after I started the blog, and the Alien Atlas has mostly been subjected to a series of disheartening lows and a shrinking cultural footprint since his biggest moments, each coming before I had any skin in this game. The glory days of the JLA comics and launch of his only ongoing solo series inspired and preceded my overt fandom, and then his being featured on the Cartoon Network's Justice League happened between WebTV and Blogspot. If anything, the declining interest in the blog was followed by a successful supporting run on CBS/CW's Supergirl and a sort of appearance in Zack Snyder's Justice League (but not on an actual movie screen.)

All the spotlights and commissions and such that I wrote or crafted or paid for came of nothing in expanding interest in the Sleuth from Outer Space and his sphere. All my time in comics, as a retailer and as a public advocate, have helped forge a few friendships and filled some longboxes, but accomplished little else. If anything, I feel like I've been a bit of an albatross, never embracing the various creative visions for the character over the past thirty years. Bit of a back biter really, and maybe the Martian Marvel would be better off without me.

Anyway, I let other things eat up most of my time in August, but I'll step up a bit this September and next, plus points in between, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. I have a decade-long backlog of art pieces that I never posted, and most of the last few years' blogging has been driven by keeping the seat slightly warm ahead of getting all that out for the 70th anniversary in 2025. Having accomplished that minor feat, and finally acknowledging those artists' efforts, I can finally take or leave this thing as I please without a guilty conscience.

I put in so much time and effort, seemingly to no benefit to anyone, and I'm just damned tired of trying to prop up a piece of corporate intellectual property that I glommed onto in 1996 after a dozen year flirtation, starting around "War of the Worlds 1984" and The Super Powers Collection. J'Onn J'Onzz will always be my favorite Martian, and I want to wish him a happy birthday, but then it'll probably be time to wander elsewhere in this big ol' galaxy.