First off it seems prudent to tell you why I’m bothering to do this. That’s an easy one, I was dissatisfied with seeing reviews based solely on a numerical value or without an in depth look at the artwork and storyline. It’s hard work being a professional creative. For me, it’s lazy and disrespectful to consider a proper review as art was great, story was awesome. Not only does that tell you absol
utely nothing about why you should shell out your hard earned cash to buy it but it marginalizes the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into birthing something from one’s imagination. My endeavor here is to give the creative spirit its due and provide honest feedback to ex*****on. It’s just one guy’s perspective. Take it or leave it. I also have trouble finding good information as a parent as to something being appropriate for my kid or not. My son enjoys comics a lot and I take an active role in curating what he puts in front of him. Ok, there was that one time he swiped the first volume of Bill Willingham’s Fables from the shelf without me knowing. This caused a few discussions that maybe we hadn't yet anticipated, including an explantation to my wife, but we had the discussions and I’d rather he gets info from me than his teenage buddies. So short story long, I’ll try to include an area in each review for parents so they can gauge if this is ok for their child or not. We all parent differently and my comfort level might not be yours but I am trying. My own background -
My first experiences with comic books were picking them up at the local gas station close to my parents house. I’d save up allowance money and go buy Spider-Man and West Coast Avengers. I still have them all even if their condition is less than ideal or rather they are in the proverbial parent’s attic. It’s cliche, I know and that’s honestly why I don’t do the individual issue collecting thing these days and stick to trades mostly. Trades are far easier to store on the shelf. My first three jobs were in comic book shops: World Class Comics, Big Orange Comics and Cards, and Comics Inc. This encompassed from when I was 16 to about the time I was 21. As I developed and matured, my interests shifted from The X-Men to Hellblazer. On one fateful day, I was invited to work a Carmen concert. If you don’t know who that is he had a big boxing ring in the center of the arena where he punched out the devil, hence why nobody wanted to work it. The backstage life got into my blood and I created a career both on the road and as a house guy that lasted 15 plus years and comics kind of fell into the ether for awhile. Fast forward ( I mean you didn’t want my whole life’s history, right?) and I’m a middle aged artist, happily married, with a teenager. Life had settled down a bit and I started picking up graphic novels with greater frequency, relying largely on recommendations from our local shop in Tacoma, Washington (shout out to Atomic Comics.) Then there was the whole lupus thing. I got officially diagnosed in late 2020. Something had been greatly amiss physically for years now, it just didn’t have a name. Some days are good, some aren’t but now I have to hide from the sun. Lupus sucks by the way. While moving towards something ethereal called remission, I started devouring comics again which coincided with a need to occupy my brain with something other than what part of my body hurt on any given day. So, this little project is part of my recovery plan. It’s a work in progress so don’t judge too much. Well, even if you do I’m unlikely to care all that much honestly. Hey, Slytherin all the way baby. Seriously, I don’t know anyone who tests more strongly to be exclusively Slytherin than me. I’m one of the good ones though. Why Bifrost Industries? My parent’s had a dog when I was born that hated me simply because I was alive and got the attention he was used to. The little s**t bit me when I was a toddler and I wouldn’t have anything to do with dogs for many years. In my middle twenties, I got an adorable husky, shepherd, beagle mix. Episode One came had come out that year so I named him Maul. Please tell me I don’t need to explain the reference. That dog secured me my wife. We met online and once we decided to meet in person, our first night meeting in real life was going great. I can’t call it a date because I was working as a bouncer at the time and she came down to the club to meet me. After one of the best conversations of my life and basically ignoring all my duties at work, I asked if she wanted to meet my dogs. When she met Maul, he gave me a look of gratitude as if all this time with me had been leading up to that moment when he found his person soul mate and I was summarily abandoned in favor of her. He passed at a ripe old age many years ago now but is remembered in the form of a tattoo of Mjolnir on my arm. You know, a big heavy hammer which is also known as a maul. All my dogs have memorial tattoos for them but he was the first and scored me the love of my life. Those of us that are pet lovers know about the Rainbow Bridge which is also know as the Bifrost in Norse mythology connecting Midgard and Asgard. I probably didn’t yet mention I have an anthropology degree and mythology is a big thing to me. Anyway, there’s the connecting threads of it all. Now you know.
