User blog:Hatebunny/Who I am, and what I'm doing here.

This is apparently a space meant for reviewing comics, but that's not likely what I will ever use it for, given what I've been up to on this site.

First off, who I am: I am probably not a typical comic-book geek, as dictated by the stereotype of the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. I'm a (nearly) 25-year-old male. I reside in Toronto(ish), Ontario, Canada. I didn't really get deeply into reading comic books until just three or four years ago. I recall begging my mother to buy me a few comic books in my life, but I'm sure the sum total of comic books I bought up until a couple of years ago was fewer than I have fingers on my hands. I recall a few specific issues which I haven't managed to find and reread... they must have been lost to the ages.

In one of them, there was a flashback in which Perry White and his friend blow open an Aryan Brotherhood in Metropolis. It was pretty dark stuff for an 8 year old... or however old I was. In another, the Riddler filled fake, explosive babies with blood, and sent Batman and Robin on a wild goose chase. In another, Batman faced Narcosis - a guy putting hallucinogenic drugs into Gotham's supply of milk. Once again - dark stuff. And despite my never having found and reread those books, the imagery and the stories have always stuck with me. I'm sure I read those three particular books over and over again. Anyway, they were good, and I liked them.

It wasn't until I found myself in a desk job that would otherwise have had me spending hours staring blankly at a computer monitor that I decided to make a real effort to follow my instincts, and really get into comics. DC comics, particularly. I had had a few Spiderman comics, some Moon Knight, some X-Men, but they hardly felt as dark or engaging as Batman tackling serial murderers or Superman's boss tackling the Ku Klux Klan.

So, I started building a collection. A HUGE collection, spanning pretty much all of the main titles in post-crisis continuity: Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman (actually, all of the Batman family books). I started by reading the Knightfall Saga... but once I realized that it was going to lead directly into a number of crossovers that would take me all the way from 1993 to 2000, I ended up going back and reading Crisis on Infinite Earths... and then reading all the books I was interested in up to Infinite Crisis. Of course, then I realized that I had missed out on a bunch of back story. So, here's how we get to why I'm here.

My job is basically data entry. In the morning, I do the data entry. In the afternoon, I listen to a radio show, and summarize every issue that comes up related to my client's topics. I went to school for Philosophy and Creative Writing. Neither of those were particularly useful in getting me a job. However, when I started reading my comics at work, and needing to get info about them at the same time, I discovered that a lot of the comic pages on this site are lacking summaries (among other things). So, I spent weeks arranging my comics into the appropriate order, and then started at the beginning. Now, I spend my afternoons reading each of my comic books, year by year. As I finish each issue, I fill in as much info as I can about the comic that isn't already there - including a detailed, wikified synopsis.

My hope is that by spending all these hours writing these synopses, I can help people who are trying to identify a specific comic, or fill in a gap in their collection, or figure out what the heck happened in the past that they missed out on. I notice a lot of the other editors seem focused on the details; naming conventions, appearances, creative teams, adding images, categorizing. Instead, I'm approaching the wiki from a story, canon, and continuity angle. Hopefully, my efforts on this wiki can serve to interest new readers who don't realize the emotional depth and amazing plots that this medium - and DC comics in particular - has (have) to offer.

Cool? Cool.