As a kid, I remember buying comic books. They were inexpensive and fun to read and had cool ads full of exciting things like x-ray glasses, sea monkeys and how to be like Charles Atlas. Many years later and my how things have changed. The artwork is more refined (at least compared to the comics I was reading when I younger), the printing is just better, the paper is higher quality than the newsprint-like stuff of the good ol’ days and the ads are different. No more x-ray specs! And there are a lot more comics out on the market.

The “traditional” characters like Batman, Spiderman, Green Lantern, and other superheroes are still there, but there are hundreds of comics on everything from Buffy to Dorothy & the Wizard of Oz. Fans of Richie Rich, Archie and MAD Magazine need not fret because they’re still in print, too. And the prices really haven’t gone up that much, allowing for inflation – you can buy a mainstream comic for about $3, which is a pretty good deal.

And when you do bite the bullet and head to your local comic book store, you’re asked whether you want a “bag and board” for each of your new purchases. (The correct answer to this question is, of course, yes.)

And how do I know all of this? Well, a few days ago Joseph Mallozzi, one of the creative geniuses behind the various Stargate series, announced on his blog that a new comic book called Dark Matter written by him and his writing partner, Paul Mullie, will be released on January 11, 2012. He’s been teasing the readers of his blog with tidbits about the new comic for a while now and it sounds pretty cool,  so I decided to find out what’s involved in getting my hands on a copy of it and that ultimately involved a trip to one of the local comic book stores, aka the top of a very slippery slope.

As it happened, a couple of months ago DC comics did a big “reboot” of many of their series, including the various Green Lanterns, Batman, Justice League and others, so many of the story arcs have just started. So, if you’re a newbie to the genre, it’s fairly easy to get in without having to get up to speed on years of character history.

Unfortunately, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably going to start making weekly excursions to the comic book store because, of course, the release schedules for the various comics I’ve apparently started following are staggered on a weekly basis.

And I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Dark Matter.

Curse you, Joseph Mallozzi! 😉

I’ve been using the Sociable plugin for quite a while to offer readers a quick and easy way to share what I’ve written on different social networks. It’s fairly configurable, allowing you to select where you want to make it easy for people to share things with. I have about half a dozen little icons at the bottom of each post that you can click to share the entry with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, or by email, or add it to your favourites, share it in Google Reader or post it to Digg or Reddit. There are other social networks that I could choose, like MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?), but I don’t want to clutter things up with a zillion little icons.

There was a major upgrade that appeared in my WordPress control panel today bringing it up to version 4.0.3, from 3.whatever. Usually WordPress plugin updates are fairly painless, so clicking on it didn’t really concern me, so I upgraded and then watched as all my icons disappeared.

Grr. (more…)