(Announcement) This is my final entry for this weblog. I've tried to find every excuse imaginable for delaying making this announcement, but there's no way around it: I simply cannot edit both a daily, news-oriented weblog and a regularly-produced magazine at the same time.
I should note that I'm not entirely abandoning comics commentary. Beginning with The Comics Journal #262, I'll beginning a regular column of industry commentary, which oddly enough will be called ¡Journalista!, just one of a number of innovations I plan to bring to a newly revamped TCJ in coming issues. I hope you'll give the magazine a try if you aren't already a regular reader.
The weblog, however, is toast. Given that, I'm pleased to see that the comics blogosphere has more than picked up the slack. Since the discontinuation of ¡Journalista!, any number of new comics-related weblogs have appeared, and several attempts have been made to take up the task of gathering the day's newslinks -- the best of the lot is Kevin Melrose's weblog Thought Balloons, which I heartily recommend to anyone looking for their daily fix.
Writing ¡Journalista! for sixteen months was a learning experience, a daily headache, and a hell of a lot of fun to produce. I was lucky enough to find myself writing about comics at a time when the industry was undergoing tremendous and far-reaching changes, a process still ongoing as I write this. Forcing myself to spend each weeknight searching for every available piece of significant news on the subject of comics turned out to be quite an education -- the knowledge I gained in the process has already served me well as managing editor of The Comics Journal, and the issues about which I wrote are issues I intend to continue exploring in the Journal in my editorial capacity. We are both blessed and cursed to live in interesting times, and I think that the magazine should reflect them as well as I can possibly manage.
I'd like to thank three people who made this weblog possible: Gary Groth, who gave me enormous freedom to write as I saw fit; Milo George, who provided invaluable advice and criticism; and especially Kim Thompson, who allowed me what is in hindsight an almost ludicrous amount of latitude in rearranging my work schedule to accomodate the writing of a weblog, so long as I fulfilled my various other Fantagraphics duties -- I hope I satisfactorily kept up my end of the deal.
Finally, thank you, dear reader, for spending part of your time wading through my sometimes fevered ramblings. I know I have a much more nuanced understanding of the comics industry than I did when I began, and I hope I was able to share something of what I learned with you along the way.
See you in the funny pages.
