Paper Anniversary: Our First Birthday

There will be no new comic news or reviews today, because this is our one-year anniversary here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives. And after 366 days (thank you, Leap Year!) with at least some form of new content every… single… day, well, we figure we deserve at least one day when anything we read, watch or hunt down related to comics? We want to do it just for fun.

It has been one hell of a fun year, going from a blank spot on the Internet inspired by some dingbat in a Batgirl costume who fucked up a couple of panels we went to at San Diego Comic-Con in 2011 to a kinda established spot for comic reviews, interesting news, Brain Bleach and dick jokes. We’re read some good comic books and some epically shitty ones, seen publishers hit triumphant highs and ridiculous lows, and covered one or two exciting events along the way. And we’ve done all of it either half-drunk or cripplingly hung over, so take that, big comics press.

We’ve been around for some of the biggest events of the past year of comics history (well, yes; technically we have been around for all of the events of the past year… having been here a year and all. Why you gotta be like that? It’s our birthday, for Christ’s sake), from the debut of DC’s New 52 to The Avengers movie premiere to the announcement and launch of Before Watchmen to Marvel offering free digital downloads of all of their comics. And what has been the thing that, according to our server logs, has the attention of most comic fans? Well, since May, it’s been people frantically searching for a way to back up their legally and rightfully purchased digital comics.

If there has been a gong we have beaten mercilessly in our short publishing lifespan, it has been that we feel that digital comics, in their current legal form, are simply not adequate for the serious comic fan, between the difficulties in interpreting the printed page for a screen, and the vagaries of your actual ownership of anything when you purchase the most widely-available comics online. Mark Waid, John Rogers and Thrillbent Comics are off to a promising start, but time will tell if they can monetize the line of books without slapping them full of onerous digital rights management… and if ComiXology will maintain an even keel, or force comic consumers to find out what happens when a digital content provider goes tits up. Think automated digital rights management will never affect an honest genre geek? Ask the people who were watching the Hugo Awards on UStream the other day. Regardless, no matter what happens, it won’t affect us; there’s a reason we spend every Wednesday evening at our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to try and make it another year without naming the store where I do all those terrible things in front of the paying customers.

But regardless of that, it’s hard to believe it’s been a year, man. Around 640 or 650 posts, with almost 75 of those written sober. And Amanda and I would like to thank our contributors, Lance Manion, Trebuchet and Pixiestyx, each of whom provided interesting viewpoints, good reviews in the clutch, and, occasionally, hard liquor.

And finally, thanks to our cadre of readers who have found the site and embraced it better than we thought possible when we kicked this pig off with a crippling hangover, lo these many months ago. We appreciate your reading, your comments, and for sticking with a comics Website run by two non-journalists whose mouth size is rivaled only by our liver size.

So tonight, we rest… because after all, tomorrow is Wednesday, which means new comics.

So until that time, and with all appreciation: see you tomorrow, suckers!