Experimentation

Okay, it’s time to start experimenting with a few changes around here.

If you haven’t heard yet — and I wouldn’t expect you to, ’cause I’ve been keeping it under my hat — I got laid off from the A-J back in November. So how am I enjoying looking for a job during the worst economic downturn we’ve seen in about a quarter-century, if not longer? It sucks.

Now I’m probably doing better than a lot of people in similar situations, ’cause I had a decent sum saved in the bank. But things ain’t exactly rosy either. Now the last time I had a big drop in my financial situation (I took a $5,000 pay cut to take my last job), I got rid of cable TV and my landline, and ended up doing alright. Unfortunately, that means I don’t have much else I can cut from my budget — can’t stop paying rent, can’t stop paying for car insurance, can’t stop paying the electric bill.

But I can cut back on comics.

So we’re gonna see how I do with a strict comics budget of $20 a week.

That means:

1. I’ll be getting only 5-6 comics every week, unless Marvel and DC boost their prices to four bucks apiece. And that means fewer reviews here on the blog. There might be days where I won’t post at all, might be days when I just post a bit of silliness, might be days when I just rant about job-hunting. There might be days when I review old comics. ‘Cause old comics I already got stored in the comics cabinet are cheaper than comics I have to spend extra cash for.

2. No more crossovers. No more “Final Crisis,” no “Blackest Night,” no “Dark Reign.” Crossovers are fine for flush economic times, when people have the spare leisure cash to spend on superfluous cosmic fisticuffs that’ll be forgotten and ignored in three months. Right now, DC and Marvel are hoping their customers will choose another six months of pointless crossovers over, say, buying food or heating the house or paying for the kids’ insurance. Ain’t gonna happen, and I ain’t gonna reward Marvel and DC for thinking like idiots. Besides, crossover books are more expensive than regular books.

3. I may still have to quit buying comics. One big doctor’s bill, one big car repair, another few months of trying to live on the unemployment handouts, and I’ll have to move into my brother’s spare apartment anyway. If the choice is paying my cell phone bill and buying comics, or paying for health insurance and buying comics — comics get the heave-ho. If that happens, I don’t know if the blog will continue. I enjoy the blog, and I think I can come up with stuff to blather about even if I don’t have a regular supply of new comics, but we’ll have to see.

4. There don’t seem to be a lot of jobs being offered in Lubbock. I know everyone says the economy in Lubbock is unusually great, but I tend to take stuff I hear from local bankers and economic development folks with about a quarter-ton of salt. I flip through the want ads, and I don’t really see many jobs being offered. It might be the same everywhere, which means I’ll be cooling my heels in my brother’s apartment for a year. If the job situation is better in other cities, then I’ll be hoping I get a job somewhere else. I like Lubbock an awful lot, but the choice between being unemployed and broke in Lubbock and having a job in another city is a real, real easy one to make. If I leave, I’ll hope to keep the blog going anyway — it might be tough to write about Lubbock’s comics community from a few hundred miles away, but it’s a challenge I think would be fun to undertake.

So does that mean we’ll be seeing big changes here at this blog immediately? Hopefully not. Ideally, I’d like y’all to never notice any significant difference between the way I blogged last week and the way I’ll blog now. But if you see some unusual or interesting new changes, or really weird topic choices, just remember it’s all in the name of science…