Really, Peter? It’s your birthday!

What kind of year has it been?

Well, a hectic one. The first year where I forgot to mark the anniversary of this blog. On April 6, we celebrated our 3-year anniversary… except I completely forgot to celebrate.

So let’s do it now. I’d normally start with an overview, but I did something like that back in March, after I took an unplanned 2+ month hiatus, and made a We’re Back post.

That post gave a walk through of the blog, and I don’t want to repeat myself. So I’ll note a couple changes since March.

First I’ll note that our Best We’ve Read page has expanded from 50 to 100 Marvel Universe entries, spotlighting our posts on the best Marvel stories of the era. This allowed a lot more variety. The top 50 is very dominated by Steve Ditko, particularly Spider-Man stories. The top 100 spotlights a greater diversity of characters, including Iron Man and Ant-Man.

Somehow, even with a hundred entries, still no Human Torch stories made the cut. That’s a head scratcher, there.

Trying a new thing I call “Reading Topical Comics”. The idea is that people seem particularly interested in things that tie into current media. But I’ve struggled to figure out how to tap into that. I started by doing expansive posts that walked through every comic reference I could find in a show. They were extremely popular, but also too much work. Now I’m trying to just pick up a relevant comic and read through it and make some notes. For the recent Dr. Strange film, we read through a comic about America Chavez. And for the Morbius film, we read through an entry about Morbius himself.

I didn’t love how either turned out, and still haven’t gotten out as many entries as I’d hoped (still no Moon Knight post, for example), so am still tweaking the format. We’ll see how it goes.

My blog numbers had been doing well as long as I was making regular posts, but my recent 3-month hiatus led to a drop in readership. I think people got out of the habit of checking the page regularly. Now that I’m back to regular posts, it’s picking up rapidly, but still not to where it was a year ago. No more vacations, I guess.

Monetization. I do this blog as a hobby, not for money. It costs a fairly trivial amount of money to keep the site running, but a very large amount of time. In an attempt to recoup a bit, I’d included links to Amazon of comics I talked about. That really wasn’t making much money, and I decided I don’t feel quite right advertising for Amazon, so I’m stopping that practice.

If you’d like to support this page, you are free to donate at Buy Me a Coffee. Find the coffee cup icon in the bottom corner, or the “Buy me a Coke” button at the side.

For the anniversary, we actually got to read a really good Spider-Man comic, a fine end to year 3. We’d ended the previous year with an also-excellent Spider-Man comic.

Unfortunately that’s only 68 entries for the year, not an impressive rate. (68 in my main Marvel Universe reading; there were some 40 other posts.)

Starting to get a realistic sense of the rate I’m putting these out. My guidepost for the effort is the Marvels series. I’m hoping to cover the ground of Marvels #2-4 with this format, which takes us from the Wedding of Reed and Sue, through the Coming of Galactus, through the Death of Gwen Stacy from 1973. That will take well over 5 years unless I really pick up the pace.

Once we reach 1973, we’ll probably pause and see how I old I am and where my life is, and then go from there.

What kind of year has it been?

A year of love found as Mr. Fantastic finally proposed to the Invisible Woman. A year of love lost as Nick Fury’s girlfriend Pam was tragically killed. A year of love confused as Peter had not yet met the lovely Mary Jane Watson, but Betty and Liz have, which is not helping with Betty’s jealousy complex.

A year of final battles. The Stranger carries Magneto off to deep space, forever ending his threat, I assume. Zemo dies in battle with Captain America, and Bucky’s death is avenged.

A year of endings. The Human Torch/Thing stories mercifully came to a close. Giant-Man and Wasp decided to retire from superheroing and their series came to an end as well. Iron Man decided to also take a leave of absence from the Avengers, and Thor was called off to the Trial of the Gods, leaving Captain America as the last Avenger.

A year of reform. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch renounced their evil ways. Hawkeye vowed to reform after Black Widow was injured and perhaps killed by her Soviet masters.

A year of new beginnings as those three reformed villains formed a new team of Avengers, led by Captain America. Namor was also offered a chance to join the Avengers, but refused, as he remains at war with the surface.

A year of new villains. The Leader. Juggernaut. Absorbing Man. Destroyer. And Madam Medusa, who teamed with Wizard, Trapster, and Sandman to form the Frightful Four.

We reviewed the confusing history of Red Skull’s first 20 years and saw new tales of his WWII era battles against Captain America.

The X-Men traveled to a hidden Antarctic jungle where dinosaurs still roamed, and met its lord, Ka-Zar, with his trusty pet, Zabu.

An outmatched Daredevil (in a spiffy new suit) stood valiantly against Namor.

We have unresolved plot threads. Thor’s hammer is broken from battle with the Destroyer, and he remains unaware the Avengers had disbanded; and he still needs to get the Norn Stones to Odin to prove Loki cheated in the Trial of the Gods. The year ended with the Fantastic Four still lost at sea, their powers faded. (Because this post is a bit late, we now know they got their powers back after an epic battle with Dr. Doom.) The wedding remains imminent. The X-Men are still recovering from injuries sustained in battle with the Juggernaut. The schemes of the Leader continue to plague Hulk. In old Tales of Asgard, Thor and his allies continue their quest to learn why the Odinsword is cracked.

And so we continue.

Thanks for reading along.