Confessions of an Old School Comics Nerd: Welcome...

Greetings, readers, welcome to Van Horn's third blog...yeah, third...Confessions of an Old School Comics Nerd.

If you're coming over as one my loyal followers from The Metal Minute and The Crash Pad of Ray Van Horn, Jr., I thank you for your continued patronage. While I haven't posted jack at either page in forever, they continue to be stat machines, so I felt a third one was in order, a hub where I can really take my passion for comic books to...well, somewhere. You vets of The Crash Pad have already been submitted to my more-than-routine ramblings about the genre, so expect nothing but comics speak here.

My aim with Confessions of an Old School Comics Nerd is to not only celebrate the medium with retrospective looks at comics from over the years, along with sharing my longtime perspectives, I will do what I do as a music journalist: stay old school while keeping my finger on the pulse of the new. For me, it's never old versus new, but new complimenting old. Thus, this will be a hub where new books will be reviewed, breaking news could likely pop up here, a guest or two from the industry might give me a few moments to chat for this site, or maybe I'll even showcase some new talent since what I do as a music writer and tastemaker is help break new artists.

As a father, I get very few releases around home as I'm working dual careers on top of parenting, and the writer portion of my being is often shoved into the evening hours. Comic books serve as my release and always have, aside from music, film, animation, baseball, football and hockey.

Comics have consumed my life and anyone who knows me knows what strides I've been taking the past couple years trying to network inside the comics scene as an aspirant script writer. It's doubly hard to break into this medium than it was for me to rise to A-list in metal and punk journalism, but I have every bit of faith my time will come. Already I've been offered an eight-page script assignment for a music-themed comic as part of an existing series. I'm stoked for the opportunity and it inspired me to get this site rolling.

So what makes me qualified to yak at you fellow freaks about comics, since there's a shit ton of respected websites, hubs and blogs doing what I'm attempting to do here other than grade your books for future resale? K, I'll answer that in order:

1. When watching the Spiderman films with my son, I always remind him Betty Brant was Peter's first true love before Gwen, Debra, MJ, Felicia and Carlie. After taking the extra minute to explain who Debra and Carlie were in Peter's love-stinks life (cue up the J. Geils Band, if you please), I always say MJ would be my numero uno if real life was comic book life. Betty, to be fair, could be pretty hot for a nerdette newspaper secretary.

2. When walking out of Batman v. Superman, the first question I blurted out to my friends was "Who the hell moved Metropolis across the pond from Gotham?" Oh, my bad, this must've been Earth 2.

3. I own an original copy of Tales from the Crypt # 44. Foom!

4. I used to work comics retail in the early 1990s. Yeah, you know, when Superman died the first time? Black Friday, 1992, we had a line down the entire strip center from non-comics folks looking to cash in. Of course, nobody, especially the owners, told them they were shacking out for second printings. "Hah!" guffawed Doomsday. DC did more than guffaw that year. The rest of us guffawed at Supes' mullet upon his miraculous return from the dead.

5. I was there at the theater in 1977 when the original Star Wars (these days referred to as A New Hope ) premiered. It was the greatest moment of my childhood. I was also there when a green Bugs Bunny showed his dumb ass in Marvel's Star Wars # 8 and 9, one of the biggest betrayals of my childhood.