So. Substack, then.

Is this the first thing I've actually written for the platform?

Earlier tonight, I released the first new episode of the Emerald City Video Podcast in a long while. Zach Roberts and I have actually recorded a few that never made their way to the internet, since it takes an act of God to make me actually do any editing. I’ll be working on that.

For anyone who hasn’t listened to it before, the Emerald City Video Podcast is named after a video store (which no longer exists) in Syracuse, New York. I worked there in college, and loved it. There, I learned to love movies I never would otherwise have given a chance, and also fell in love with the idea of collecting movie props. We had them everywhere, and I came to realize how cool it is to have an actual, tangible piece of something you love. I have worked on this podcast for more than 7 years, primarily with Zach but occasionally with other guest hosts who worked at Emerald City or other video stores.

You can listen to the new episode here, which is a review of John Wick Chapter 4. It’s a “New Release Wall” episode, which is video store speak for “we went to the movies and recorded our reaction in the car after.” We’re fancy, I know. I didn’t send this episode out as an email blast, because we have another episode coming this week, which I think is a much, much better introduction to ECV for anybody who is just finding us on Substack now.

What have I been up to?

Earlier this month (as I alluded to in my introductory post), I finished the crowdfunding campaign for Time To Be Heroes, my second full book. It’s an oral history of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, featuring interviews with the cast and crew. A lot of what I expect to be posting to Substack will be behind-the-scenes goodness from creating that book, as well as a little ebook companion that I’m planning on putting together that features conversations with comic book creators, fan fiction writers, and other folks who are a big part of the Legends community but likely will not feature prominently in an oral history of the show itself.

I will also be sharing some other side projects. For over a decade now, I have been doing a “director’s commentary”-style column for each issue of Savage Dragon. It has followed me between three different websites, and the first two no longer host any of the old content. So I have a book coming out soon that will collect the first 24 issues of my commentaries, with new introductions to each by Savage Dragon superfan and editor Gavin Higginbotham.

I have had great success with my first two books on crowdfunding platforms, and am currently trying to decide whether to launch a campaign for this — it’s almost completely finished, and my only real expenses will be layout and printing — or just sell it on my online store. It seems the ticking clock of crowdfunding really serves as an incentive to folks, but it feels strange to do another crowdfunding campaign so soon after the Legends one.

My first book, an oral history of the 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats, is something I’m still very proud of, and it made enough money that I was able to publish The Gold Exchange, a collection of old interviews and columns that serves as an unoffiical companion to Booster Gold comics from 2006 until 2022. The Josie book, The Gold Exchange, and some other stuff is available at JosieBook.com, and Time To Be Heroes will be available in February of next year.

You don’t have to buy any of that shit, though. Substack seems to be a great community, but it’s heavily monetized and centered around paid subscriptions and all that. I understand it, and I’m certainly not going to say “no” if one of my readers wants to back ECV Analog (which is the name of my self-publishing enterprise), but I’m very pointedly not actively recruiting people to buy stuff from me, at least not until I figure out some things that I see as a real “value-add” on here. Often, what I have seen on Substack is people who try to monetize blogs that would otherwise be free, and I don’t begrudge them that, but it’s not for me. I feel like taking a free thing off the market in order to make way for a paid version of that exact same thing is a bummer. Maybe somebody in the comments can suggest what I can do that’s of added value for folks.

Anyway, that feels like enough for now. I do have some big stuff I want to yell into the void about soon. But…not tonight. Soon.