“Vacation / All I ever wanted / Vacation / Had to get away.”
Vacation, The Go-Go’s
The number one reason we do Retcon Punch is because it’s fun. We like comics, and we like writing about comics, and that’s basically all that goes on here. “Fun” has been my driving force on all of this from day one. Whenever we approached a new challenge, the first question out of my mouth was always “okay, how do we have fun with this?” Putting together our daily discussions is also a lot of work. Like a lot. The Summer time brings a lot of changes to people’s schedules and priorities, and we’re in a place right now where the work-to-fun ratio isn’t playing about quite how we’d like it.
With that in mind, I’d like to announce that we’re transitioning into Summer Hours, which will mean significantly less coverage than usual. In fact, we’ve whittled down the next two months of releases to a list of absolute cannot-miss comics, and those are the only issues that we’ll be doing in-depth Alternating Currents for. We’re hoping to re-introduce weekly round-ups, so the breadth of coverage should still be there too, just not quite in the same way as it has been.
I want to thank all of our readers for sticking around with us during this time. July is Retcon Punch’s 30th month, and Drew and I have never taken any time off from the site. I’ve known people to get degrees in less time. Degrees! My hope is that we can all rally around the pieces that we will be posting and can keep an active dialogue there. If you’re reading this piece right here, that means that you are important to us. So thank you for your understanding, and your patience, and for talking about comics with us for however long you’ve been reading.
Also, just because we’re dialing down for a bit doesn’t mean that we’re not coming back. We’re going to be returning to a regular schedule after Labor Day, with more writers and a renewed sense of purpose. In the meantime, thanks for sticking with us, and here’s a list of the comics we’ll be talking about over the next two months:
Batman 33, Wonder Woman 33, Sex Criminals 7, Daredevil 6, Saga 21, Trees 3, Zero 10, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles In Time 2, Hawkeye 19, Outcast 2, Trees 4, Moon Knight 6, The Multiversity 1, Wonder Woman 34, Sex Criminals 8, Daredevil 7, Saga 22 and Original Sin 8
Comic release schedules being what they are, you can always check out Pull List to get more specific dates on when we’re posting about what.
Patrick Ehlers, Co-Editor-In-Chief
Patrick: You know what’s wrong with the narrative in the Star Wars prequels? I mean, beyond “everything” — if you had to pin-point what’s so awful about the story itself, what overarching storytelling philosophy leads that series astray? I’m sure everyone has their own answer to this, but for me, the biggest culprit is Lucas’ refusal to make the interstellar conflict personal. All the motivating factors for going to war are tariffs and alliances — which could be effective if only our characters had some sort of relationship to how futile and trivial their efforts are. That’s a damn shame: there’s a lot of compelling mileage to mine from the futility of war. Tom Waltz and Casey Malone’s The Last Fall is set to explore just that thematic territory.
Retcon Punch 