I guest posted over at TNBBC about my bathroom reading habits. Since I habitually read in the bathroom, I had a lot to say! You can check out that guest post here if you’re so inclined.

I AM TOO STILL YOUNG SHUT UP

Before I even start this rant, because I know that comics are SRS BSNS for some people, I do want to clarify that I know there are comics that don’t fit into the problems I’m about to lay out. There are comic books and graphic novels that I’m a huge fan of, like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its offshoots by Jhonen Vasquez. Mostly the comics I’m going to be addressing are the mainstream comics–the ones that have been around since forever, the ones that my fellow nerds sometimes arch an eyebrow at me for not being deeply and intimately familiar with when I mention that I love Batman.

See, this whole thing springs from my love of Batman.

I have loved Batman since I was a child. I remember the first time I saw the camptastic 60′s Batman show; I was five or so, and Dad was flipping through the channels (it must have been a weekend, if Dad was home) when he stopped on some live-action show that I didn’t initially suspect was going to be any good. I mean, there were grown-ups in it. And a weird old dude and no cartoons. How could this be a good show? But my dad stopped on that show and said, “Aw, I haven’t seen this in years. I used to watch this a long time ago, when I was about your age.” SIGH. How could I not watch after that? I was Daddy’s little girl, and if Daddy watched it when he was little, I would also watch it.

I LOVED IT.

The crazy costumes! The villains! CATWOMAN! JOKER! THE BATMOBILE! (I maintain that the 60′s Batmobile is the sweetest of all Batmobiles.) I was obsessed. The episode that he stumbled across that day happened to be a marathon; dad threw in a cassette tape (VHS baby) and taped it off of TV. I watched the hell out of that tape. When it started re-running on … whatever channel was re-running it, I made sure to tune in every chance I got.

THE Batmobile.

It wasn’t long after that I saw Tim Burton’s Batman. Probably it was not appropriate for me to watch; I was six when it came out, although I wouldn’t have seen it until it was released to video. (Dad dubbed it and cut out the most violent parts so I could watch it. Aw.) That was a different Batman, but still good. Even though there was no Robin (I loved Robin in the old series, I won’t lie–even though Burt Ward was completely old by the time I ever saw the old series, I had a crush on him), and even though it was dark and Joker was more violent than goofy, I loved this new Batman. It gave the character depth for me–because, let’s face it, the Batman from the 60′s was a little too vanilla to be interesting as a character. Tim Burton’s Batman helped cement what has been a lifelong obsession with the hero.

(My husband tells me that Adam West showed up in his tights to audition for Tim Burton. But my husband makes up stuff all the time and I haven’t been able to verify this story, so I can’t attest to its accuracy.)

The only problem? I always have felt like a fake Batman fan because I never read the comics. Oh, I may have read a few when I was a kid, but I’ll be honest, I was all about Archie and not really about superheroes at all. So even though I’ve seen all of the Batman movies, watched all of the cartoons and shows, and am constantly doing internet searches on Batman-related things as an adult, I’ve always felt like a bit of a fraud.

I recently decided to remedy that and buy some comic books. The Joker, who is by far my favorite Batman villain (in fact, I may be more of a Joker fan than a Batman fan), had what looked like a sweet new storyline with amazing art. I knew the comics were edgier than the cartoons–see also, when the Joker beat Robin to death–so I thought, it being 2013 and boundaries being pushed all the time, this could be a really good story. And it was. I don’t want to–what are the kids saying these days? Throw shade? on the Death of the Family storyline. It was pretty bitchin’.

This is what came up on Facebook that initially caught my interest. HE CUT OFF HIS FUCKING FACE

But fifty-five dollars later, I am reminded why I have never gotten into comic books. I mean, besides the fact that they are FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE JESUS FUCK. I didn’t even get ALL of the comics in that storyline and I spent mad cash, yo. These suckers are going up on eBay shortly.

In comic books, nothing is ever permanent, so why should I give a shit about anything that happens?

Even though I hadn’t read the comics, I had a general understanding of many major events in the Batman universe. I knew that Robin (Jason Todd as Robin, not Dick Grayson) had been beaten to death by Joker with a crowbar. I knew that Joker also was responsible for the paralysis of Barbara Gordon. So I was less-than-impressed to find that, in the reboot, Jason Todd has come back to life and Barbara Gordon is up and around as Batgirl again. So everything that was scary about this:

and this:

is not really that scary. I mean, yeah, that would still hurt like a motherfucker, to get beaten with a crowbar or shot in the pelvis–but if you knew you weren’t going to have any permanent consequences, it would be about a thousand percent less scary to run up against the Joker. You would be like, well, okay this sucks and everything, but it’s not FOREVER so I guess it’ll all be okay in the end. It’s like when Marvin the Martian or Wile E. Coyote gets blown up–it’s fine, because you know he’s not really hurt. In fact, it’s meant to be humorous.

But getting beaten to death or shot by the Joker isn’t supposed to be funny to anybody but the Joker.

I just can’t get emotionally involved in a story when I know everything could just be reversed on the whim of a new writer who wants to sink their teeth into the story, canon-be-damned. I can deal with reboots and alternate realities, but not with miracles fixing up problematic plot points.

And actually, I find that I don’t like the idea of superheroes altogether.

The only superhero I give two craps about is Batman. I used to watch some superhero stuff, like the old Superman shows and the X-Men cartoons, but I never developed much of an interest in them. I don’t watch the movies when they come out, I don’t cruise YouTube looking for old episodes the way I do with Batman. (By the way, Batman: The Animated Series? It has excellent art and stands up very well to adulthood.)

Here’s the thing. Let’s say I’m Superman. I have superhuman strength. I have the ability to heal myself, not that I get hurt that often ANYWAY because I am invulnerable to most human maladies. I’m fast as hell, I can fly, I have motherfucking x-ray vision and other superhuman senses. And I’m orphaned off of a planet that was destroyed and raised by humans who took me in despite me being all weird and alien and whatnot. If I don’t turn out to be a superhero? I’m a complete douchebag. For Superman, stopping crime is like regular humans helping an elderly person across the street. It’s not particularly taxing for him, and since he has superhuman speed, he can do it really fast and get back on with his day. It’s probably completely boring for him.

And then you have the humans who stumbled into their superpowers. Bitten by a spider. Born with mutations. Took a serum that transformed them into perfect human beings. That’s all good and fine, I guess, but  . . . isn’t it kind of totally boring, as far as story goes (not in real life–in real life it would be AWESOME), to stumble into superpowers? And isn’t it just as boring to stumble into superpowers and then think, “Gee whiz, I’m gonna use my powers only for good!”* I mean, if I stumbled into superpowers, I would probably use them mostly for good, but I’m human, not a saint. I think that’s why I like Batman, but not the other superheroes–Batman doesn’t have superpowers. He has gadgets that had to be invented and then he had to learn to use them; can you imagine him practicing with the grappling hook and falling about a hundred times? heh, heh. He has physical strength and prowess that he has to train to get. And if someone shoots him in the face, no chance he’s gonna deflect that shit.

Batman may be stuck in the back, but at least he WORKS FOR HIS POWERS. You can tell Aquaman totally feels like a poseur.

*I realize that I probably have missed a lot of subtle character development with that because I haven’t read most of the comics, but I still get the idea that the general gist of the superhero is that he’s usually a good guy with a mostly-sterling character, not a dark and conflicted individual constantly fighting his flawed humanity to be good despite the urge to be selfish and revel in his own power. If I’m wrong about this, please tell me.

Also? Comic books are confusing to get into, if you’re new to comics.

I just wanted to read some Batman comics. But where does one start with Batman comics? Does one need to start at the beginning? Because I didn’t really want to start at the beginning. I’m much more of a fan of darker, edgier, more violent Batman, and the early ones seemed a little . . . . . not any of that. Then you have the various reboots and storylines and offshoots and why the fuck can’t they draw a map or something for noobs like me?

I can go to the blogs, but just like every blog, it’s down to opinion. One blogger thinks I should start here, and another says no no no, start there and I have no idea so my brain short-circuits and I grab a novel instead.

Comics seem to be one of those things that are hard to get into later in life. It’s like if you missed the boat as a youngster, it’s a ton of work to get even remotely caught up. I mean, they’ve been making these things for decades now; there’s no series of novels that extends back as far or as widely as even one long-term comic book character. I can tackle Terry Pratchett’s huge Discworld series without a whole lot of trouble, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to navigating the Batman universe. I’m ill-equipped to jump into this without a team of guides and a map.

And even if I could, did I mention friggin’ expensive? Maybe if I were Bruce Wayne, I could afford to read about Bruce Wayne.

Sadly, I have determined that comic books are not for me.

We haven’t even touched on other things that would bother me if I were to read enough comics, such as the various tropes that women get forced into, or the unrealistic depictions of people (yes people, I mean both men and women here–I mean, fuck, have you seen the size of Batman’s THIGHS? THEY HAVE MUSCLES ON TOP OF MUSCLES JESUS). My recent foray into comics reading is enough to have me sticking to picking up graphic novel collections at the library, should I get the urge to check out any more Batman storylines. Gritting my teeth when I feel dead inside because nothing is happening for keepsies.

What about you guys? Do you love comics, or dislike them? Why? Am I totally being too hard on comics? Which ones do you love? Sound off about comics in the comments!

I was thisclose to shutting down IB this past week . . . and by “thisclose” I mean, I already did it. And then changed my mind.

It’s no secret that I haven’t exactly been feeling the bloggery lately. I have wanted to do anything but blog about books. Anything. Mostly, what I’ve been doing instead has been reading J. D. Robb’s In Death series. The whole series. In order. (For the most part.) I spent a few weeks chain-reading the Robbs and doing very little else–I certainly couldn’t blog about them here, right?

So I just read. Barely left the house. Barely did anything else. I’ve already read as many books this year as I read all of last year.

Taking a few months off from IB didn’t seem to help at all. If anything, the distance from my routine made it even easier for me to contemplate cutting the blog loose. My stars, I thought–wouldn’t it be nice just to read whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted? Or even to take breaks from reading and not feel guilty? Not to feel the weight of books-to-be-reviewed coming down on you all the time, or feel the pressure of getting some, any, content rolling? I know, you guys weren’t putting any pressure on me–and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that, and how much I appreciate the encouragement from everyone. I was pressuring myself, because I wanted to do a good job at this. Then I started to crack under my own pressure.

There were other things. I felt like I’d said everything I wanted to say about books–I had ideas for posts, but no burning desire to put the content out there. I also felt like . . . it’s hard to explain, but I felt like being a blogger was making me a more negative person. Coming up with material for rants, getting irate when people took potshots at bloggers, having scuffles with people over blogging territory. Being a blogger means throwing yourself in with a group that is occasionally targeted by other people–or occasionally targeting other people, to be fair–and getting mixed in with conflicts that you wouldn’t normally give a crap about.

It puts up some divisions between you and other people, too. I’ve met a good many authors and publishers (and editors and other people who work for publishers) through this gig, and most of the time, we get along great . . . but then, sometimes, there’s this awkward wall. Because I’m one of the people who publicly judges their work. And if I like it, great–but if I don’t, then I’m honest, and even if I haven’t had to be negative toward a work, that potential is always floating around there.

I fully decided to quit when I had a fight with someone who is, or maybe was, a very good friend of mine. No, I’m not going to say who, or what it was about, except that–if we weren’t bloggers, I don’t think it would ever have been a thing. I have no idea if she’s going to forgive me, or if we’re going to be able to go on and be friends from here everything is fine, but I think it fucking stinks that blogging stuff came between me and a good friend.

So, when that happened, all the weight of everything came crashing down at once, and I said, “You know what? Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I hate this. I really hate book blogging. I hate the drama of it, I hate the pressure of it, I don’t even want to do it anymore and it’s not fun anymore. I quit.” And I e-mailed my co-bloggers and I e-mailed a few other relevant parties and told them that I quit. And it felt fantastic.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

The more I thought about it, the more fantastic it felt, actually. Who needs to be tied down to the internet all day? I could be out doing other things. I could be out adventuring! I could go back to doing things just for me. I mean.. y’know, sure I missed talking to everyone. But there’s always Twitter, right? Right?!

And yeah, it gave me little pangs when I would get messages from people who just discovered the blog, because they wouldn’t get to read any new content. Mostly, though, I felt savagely glad–which, looking back on the past week and how I felt, tells me that, somewhere along the way, I started doing this shit all wrong.

The other night, I was poking around the internet, looking up Batman stuff. (I do that sometimes. I kind of love Batman.) I remembered that I’d seen that there was a new Joker storyline happening, and I decided that I wanted to read it, because the Joker is my favorite and the art looked really good. In the spirit of doing things just for me and having adventures, I hopped in my car and drove to the comic book store across town. I don’t generally read comics, so I had no idea if I was completely wasting my time; I didn’t know if they would even still have the comics.

They did have most of them. Forty dollars later (and one mournful moment where the employee called me “ma’am”… sigh), I was the proud owner of eleven new Batman (and Batman-related) comic books. Which I then proceeded to devour over iced tea at my favorite coffee shop.

After I finished them, I thought, “Dang, I really want to write a post about this for IB.”

And then I thought, “Are you fucking kidding me? NOW my inspiration comes back?”

I almost let it go. I almost did. I’d already told people I was quitting, and I didn’t want to look like a flake. The last thing I expected was to get my mojo back this soon. It took giving it up completely to get me to do what I needed to do to save it, it seems–I had to break all of the chains I put around myself and around this blog. I had to get out of my rut by reading and experiencing something that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I almost never read comics; finally having read some again, I remembered why I don’t read comics. And I felt a strengthening urge to rant about it.

Expect that post sooner than later.

For the time being, I don’t know exactly what the future holds for IB. That’s fine. I’m tired of planning. I do know that I want to open IB up to be more of an entertainment blog than ONLY books. Because you know what? I like movies. I like TV. I bet you guys also like these things. And if you’ve enjoyed my book rants, just you wait until I get my claws dug into a movie that I hate. (Like this one.)

I’m back, bitches.

And I missed you.

I didn’t want to write this post.

I still don’t want to write this post.

Or any post.

Just typing out the words right now is something akin to pulling a thousand tiny splinters out of my body.

Since about mid-December, I’ve been suffering from what you might call writer’s block. It’s more than a block, though. It’s more like, writing rejection–as in, my brain adamantly rejects the idea of writing. I almost hate writing every time I think about doing it. This bothers me.

I’ve seen many blogs come and go on the internets, and the eventual downfall happens the same way each time: the blogger starts to feel like they’re slogging through posts, instead of sitting down to write them with interest. Updates become fewer and further between. Radio silence ensues. I don’t want that to happen here, but I worry that it’s actually happening right now.

Bloggers: How do I combat this?

I always told myself I would stop doing anything at IB if it stopped being fun, but I’m not ready to let go of the whole damn blog. I rather like it here. I like you guys. I think you’re pretty rad. But I don’t know how to flip the switch back on and want to write again.

Help!

(P.S. If anybody’s ever wanted to write a guest post for IB, now would be the time to ask.)

Just a quick post today–and I promise we will resume something akin to our normal update schedule soon! I have a small request. I am getting ready to do a little project, and I need a few photos from people who would like to have their pictures touched up.

Whaaaat? Bear with me!

I’m getting ready to, um, prostitute my services to raise money for something special, and one of the things that I do is touch up digital photos. I smooth out complexions, adjust the lighting, and make them look basically pretty cool. Thing is, I don’t have any before-and-afters that I would be able to display as examples of what I do. Tracking down permission for those photos would be kind of a pain, and some, I wouldn’t even want to ask. (One project that I did was, I touched up an old school photo that was scratched and damaged; it was one of the few photos they had of the person, who had been killed. The before and after makes me feel warm and fuzzy that I could help preserve his memory, but, I can’t exactly display that on a website–way too personal.)

So, I am going to ask y’all if you would like to donate a photo that you wouldn’t mind being displayed on this blog as a before-and-after touch-up photo. It’s not going to be so heavily airbrushed that it looks ridiculous; I try my best to keep it all looking as natural as possible. But if you have a photo that you’d really like, except that the lighting looks kinda bleh? Or you had some pimples and you’d rather just erase those? If you want some special effects like all black-and-white but one element in color? Or maybe you had red-eye, or there’s something in the photo you’d like to have taken out? Send it in!

Guidelines:

The photo shouldn’t be tiny. I can’t really work with ubersmall photos and have them turn out very well. It should be at least 500 pixels square (although it can be larger or rectangular, but at least 500 px on a side) for web; if you plan to print the photo, having as close to the original size/camera size as possible would be amazing.

I can do a lot, but I can’t work magic. If the lighting is uber dark, or the photo is originally really terrible quality, I won’t be able to do much with that. I also can’t make a low-res photo into a high-res, printable, amazing photo. I also cannot un-blur photos, or de-pixelate photos that have tons of noise in them. (Please send photos taken by a real camera, and no Instagram photos, please.)

Give me a general idea of what you would like your photo to have done with it. It can be a general “just make it look nicer!” or something specific.

Please only send one photo candidate. I will pick a handful of photos to edit for free for the display–please don’t be mad if I don’t choose yours! I will choose based on versatility of what effects I can do.

You can do whatever you want with the finished photo. It’s yours, after all! (NOTE: Please actually DO send me photos that you have permission to give me permission to display. If it was taken by a professional photographer or if someone else owns the rights to it, don’t send it! Especially if it has a watermark or something!)

It doesn’t have to be a portrait! Have some vacation, travel, or other photos that you’d like to make look more awesome? Send ‘em!

Submit your photos to insatiablebooksluts@gmail.com. I will let you know if your photo is chosen.

Thanks, friends!