My Comic Facts

Now before I truly get into posting, let me tell you a bit about my fandom so you can see where I'm coming from, my biases, and catch some of my inside jokes.

-First of all, I'm a primarily DC fan. I love DC comics and its many heroes, even prefer its comic universe to any other. Oddly enough though, it's the Marvel comics that normally find there way to the top of my read pile each week.

-I can't recall my first comic, but I remember the first title I started regularly buying. Amazing Spider-man, Volume 1, around the end of 1993.

-I discovered Image, specifically Top Cow and Wildstorm, in '95 and have complete runs of the majority of their amazing titles (even when they're not all that amazing)

-I BUY an average of 130 new comics a month, check diamond's website every monday, and generally pick up my books on a saturday. Because of this, many comics that don't jump to the top of my read pile slip far down the list and wont get read for several months!

-I've been annually attending Comic Con International every year since 1999 and started attending many other comic and anime conventions annually since 2005. I average around 12 conventions a year.

-I'm an absolute sucker for variant covers (but truly hate paying extra for more limited released ones)

-Rob Liefeld and John Byrne have made their names into curse words within my comic shop because of the ways they carry themsevles online and in person.

-My comic collection is so large I honestly have no clue how many thousands of issues I own...though they are suprisingly well organized.

A New Idea

Hello all you prospective new readers! I am Mathias Lewis, a comic fan, creator, and retailer whose been absorbed into the industry for several years now. I've been a comic fan for well over a decade, first truly reading American Comics on a regular basis back in 1994. Since then it has been a long and bumpy road where my fandom shifted all over the place. I recall a few years in the late ninties where I was only reading "indy" titles (which I considered anything not from the big two). However around 2001 I was drawn back into the mainstream of comics and started picking up everything that interested me well building a huge backlisting of titles dating back to the 60's. In 2003 I wrote my first comic script and saw it published in 2004. During 2004 I was also hired on a different end of the industry, selling comics. I still hold that job nearly 4 years later, working weekends at a Southern California comic shop (that for the time will remain nameless). Since that point I've expanded my career path in more directions that I can name. I attend countless comics and anime conventions every year and feel I have a fairly good grasp of the industry and its fans.
Thats where this brand new blog comes into creation. Like everyone on the internet, I have a million things I want to say. This actually accounts for why I have roughly half a dozen blogs from livejournal to myspace, however there were things I wanted to talk about that just wouldn't have fit in those places. My solution is what you are currently reading, a blog just to talk comics. Here I will discuss everything from the crazy comic customers, the woes and benefits of being a comic store clerk, commentaries on comic news and stories, and perhaps much much more dealing with the American Comic Industry and its many related forms (from manga to movies). So I honestly do hope you will all enjoy this blog and you're all welcome to comment. Honestly, if you like what I say, if you hate what I say, if you just want scream you're personal distate for Rob Liefeld, please feel free!