Marvel Comics has, once again, gained attention with its Captain America comic — this time by doing something as simple as changing the release date. Why did they do it? Who will it benefit? And in the long run, will it sell more comics?
Everything But Imaginary #309: Captain America Comes Home Early
Inside This Column:
It’s a double aniversary for me today. First of all, it’s four years to the day that I first met my girlfriend, Erin, in person. And for all the crap that has happened since then, the time with her has made it the best four years ever.
In news that will be of more interest to those of you who don’t want to get cavities, today is also the one-year anniversary of the relaunch of my Evertime Realms site. I did a “soft launch” of sorts on June 2, 2008, putting the site online and e-mailing friends and family asking them to check it out before I started posting links, setting it as my site on profiles like Facebook, and generally trying to promote it. It wasn’t long, though, before I started turning out the content that I was hoping to do. Later that same day, I posted my first book review, of Kevin Brockmeier‘s novel The Brief History of the Dead. My first movie review came on June 12, with the documentary The King of Kong. I started doing basic blog posts, columns, rants, ponderings of all kinds. On June 9 I posted the prologue to my novel-in-progress, Summer Love, which I swear to you guys is still in-progress.
Then things started to happen that I didn’t intend when I launched the site. On July 24 I posted a bit about the new DC Universe Infinite Heroes action figures I found. The response surprised me, so I did it again. And again. Now the feature I call Toy Stories has become a staple of Evertime Realms.
Earlier this year, I realized that I needed time to work on Summer Love, really work it to completion. So rather than leaving no new fiction here at all, I started serializing an older work of which I am still extremely proud, Lost in Silver. I’ve wound up posting a lot of fiction here on the site, and it’s gotten a lot of reads. But not enough comments, hint hint.
I moved my annual Halloween Party and Christmas Party series here from my old LiveJournal account. I’ve provided incessant links to my columns and podcasts, and an enormous, still-incomplete archive of my comic book reviews. I’ve done bits on teaching and writing. About plays I’ve been involved with and about just goofing off with Erin and my friends. I even survived a hurricane.
So it’s been a pretty good year here at the Realms. Thanks for everyone who has stopped here over the last 12 months. I hope you keep coming back, and I hope you keep enjoying it — and I hope you comment more. If there’s one thing I’d like more of, it’s feedback! I’m shameless about this, friends, I want to know what you’re thinking. Every post has a comment button. C’mon. Use it!
To wrap up this little retrospective, I thought I would let you know something I already know — which posts have been the most popular. Here, in descending “Countdown” order, are the top ten most-viewed posts at Evertime Realms to date:
10. How to Have a Crawfish Boil — Every Lenten season, my cousins Carl and Tammy host seafood feasts on Fridays. One week, Erin inspired me to take pictures of a crawfish boil in-progress. Since then, this post gets hits all the time from people searching for crawfish recipes. I hope it helps.
9. Blake’s Universal Rules of the Universe is a feature I brought back from my old site, one that people actually asked me to bring back. It’s just a list of goofy thoughts and sayings that I think have some… well… universality to them.
8. NOLA Comic-Con 2009 was a quick post I made once I knew that there were plans to bring a con to New Orleans. Amazingly, this became the top Google search hit for people looking for “New Orleans Comic Convention” and other variations on that. Several people approached the 2 in 1 Showcase table at the con and told me they found out about it because of my post. That was awesome.
7. DC Infinite Heroes: The Gotham Group is a post that showcases the Infinite Heroes Commissioner Gordon figure, as well as a couple of toys from the Dark Knight line.
6. DC Infinite Heroes: Lotsa Toys was a post-Christmas photoblog that ran down a dozen figures I’d gotten since my last post at the time. More Dark Knight, some Green Lantern, Superman, and lots of assorted characters.
5. DC Infinite Heroes II-And Blake’s Classroom was just the second-ever post I made about toys here. It ran down a few new figures, included lots of goofy Mini-Mates pictures, and also showed off how I had arranged my classroom for the then-upcoming school year… the same year that just ended.
4. Lego Batman and Mini-Nightwing looks at, of all things, the McDonald’s Lego Batman Happy Meal toys, as well as the Mini-Mate two-pack of Nightwing and Starfire.
3. Kanye West Hates Reading is a post that’s less than a week old, but it’s already become the third most-read post on my site. When Kanye proved, once again, his utter ignorance by decrying books and asking people to buy his 52-page “book” at the same time, I unloaded. And I’ve gotten some attention for it. This one post probably has more replies than any other on the site.
2. DC Infinite Heroes was my very first toy feature on the site. For those of you who wonder why I talk about toys so much here, this is your answer. Five of my top ten posts have been toy-related posts, including the post that would have been my most-viewed if not for one really cool thing.
1. What I’m Reading: Sheldon. On June 10, 2008, just over a week after I launched the site, I decided to write about my favorite webcomic, Dave Kellett’s Sheldon. The exceedingly generous Mr. Kellett somehow came across this post and linked to it on his own site, which you may notice is far more popular than mine. The incoming traffic was enormous, and this post still gets several hits a week from people going through the archives of Kellett’s blog. This post has almost three times the hits of post #2 on the list. It’s not getting unseated anytime soon, unless Oprah winds up Twittering about me or something. I’d rather have Dave Kellett.
So there you have it, folks. A year’s worth of blogging, and this is what I’ve got to show for it. And y’know? It was totally worth it. I’ll see you later for the beginning of year number two!
Evertime Realms 
People are saying…