Comics Critic

Oh, like "professional quality" as opposed to "being paid for it." Okay. Thanks, Grunt, Pete.

:D

I hope y'all understand my comment was supposed to be self-deprecating hoomer, nothing on Pete. Because, truly, the items on my resumé where I can list pro, as in, "got paid for it," are nothing I've done in the arts (if my stuff can be so called) nor even anything in computer and website wrangling.

Except… I got paid to be a … comic book … reviewer!

(Cue sad violin music)

During the independent comics explosion of the 1980s, I got over the 1970s theft of my 1960s Marvel comics collection, and started living my childhood dream of buying every comic on the rack. (Except some crudely-drawn black&white comic about some kind of adolescent genetically altered tortoises; I passed that one up.) To justify my indulgence, sort-of, I started writing reviews of the comics for the Comic Book Forum on CompuServe (yes, pre-Internet).

Eventually, I was burned out on doing reviews, feeling not like a fan having fun but more like that scum of scums, a critic, when an actual comics-related print magazine asked me to be their reviewer critic. So, for a few months, I continued my exercise, but my heart wasn't in it. More importantly, I wasn't cynical and superior like they wanted, and I was soon replaced by others who were.

To prove what a pro I was, they never paid me for my last (non-review) article they published.

Confessions of my wayward past life.

(Sad violin music ends with needle scraping across record)