What Is “Fluit Notes” Anyway?
I’ve been asked what niche will be filled by this
column. What am I going to do that
nobody else is
doing? What do I bring
to the discussion?
First, “Fluit Notes” is reviews. In-depth reviews will be a big part of what I plan on doing. I’ll do line reviews, as I started out doing with Dark Horse’s line of Star Wars titles. I’ll do series reviews, as I did with Scion, Starman and other titles before I had an official column. I’ll review a batch of recent issues, usually two or three weeks’ of comics at a time. I won’t do that every week or every month. Sometimes, I just like to sit back and enjoy my comics. But sometimes I feel like judging and evaluating them. When I do, I’ll turn that into a column. I’ll do trade paperback reviews, some as they come out and some that have been released years ago. And I’ll even do a few “retro-reviews” in which I pick up an older series and either praise it or pick it apart. Reviews will take up at least half of my columns. Maybe even more than that.
However, I don’t plan to limit myself to only writing
reviews. I’ll also do some of what I
call “random rumblings.” I’ll pull
together a couple of different ideas that strike my fancy. Maybe I’ll respond to a quote or a
comment. Maybe I’ll compare and contrast
different approaches or different media. I’ve taken that tack before, comparing works as diverse as Buffy: The
Vampire Slayer and The Dark Knight Returns.
Plus, “Fluit Notes” will contain my “industry
insights.” I believe that opinions
should be based on solid
information like facts and numbers. And from time to time, I’ll look at the
numbers. How well is a book selling? How well did a certain promotion work? What is the health of a particular
company? Or of the industry as a
whole? I’ve addressed these kinds of issues before, as
in my CrossGen: Analysis of a Collapse and my Reconstruction articles.
Finally, my “industry insights” may not always be limited to
current comics. I enjoy the rare and the
obscure. I enjoy the history of
comics. And I may just end up writing
about that as well. I probably won’t
delve that often into the Silver Age of comics. We have other columnists who do that like Captain Comics and Commander
Benson. They know a lot more about that
era, having grown up in it, so I’ll usually leave those books to the people who
know them best. But that still leaves a
lot of ground for me to explore.
That’s what I’ll be covering in this column. But that’s only one way of answering the question, “What Is Fluit Notes?” Fluit Notes is also unabashedly me. I’m in my early thirties, making me the youngest of the regular columnists that we have here on the Captain Comics website. I grew up with the comics of the ‘80s: Chris Claremont and Alan Davis on the X-Men, Marv Wolfman and George Perez on the New Teen Titans. Like a lot of others, I wandered away from comics for a bit. I came back in the mid-‘90s. I came back in the middle of the glut that so many others disparage. I came back to the Age of Apocalypse and WildC.A.T.S., Grant Morrison’s JLA and Kurt Busiek’s Avengers. And I love a lot of current comics. I’m buying nearly as many comics now as I ever have.
That’s who I am and that’s the perspective I’ll bring. I hope it’s the perspective of a younger
generation. And I hope it’s usually a
positive perspective, reminding us of what’s great about comics right now.
And that is “Fluit Notes.” I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I plan to enjoy writing it.
(Originally Published at CaptainComics.us, on Feb.13, 2007)
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