Let me take a moment to look backward.

*So I started back into comics (officially, let’s say… just for the sake of argument) on Free Comic Book Day, 2002.

I slowly began to immerse myself back into the ongoing ‘world’ of comics, after an absence of several years.

I sort of started out participating in comics discussions in whatever other fannish communities I was involved with at the time (gaming, horror/exploitation films, etc.). And I kind of tried to creep back into the ‘scene,’ for whatever it was, still trailing around the borders.

I noticed that The Comics Journal was sold at Borders. I started picking that up, and it was almost like a foreign-language text at first, so ungrounded I was in any sort of knowledge as to the independent comics universe. I still go through those old issues and find myself unlocking fascinating tidbits I couldn’t help but miss at first.

I had to search for more information on the internet. Comics stuff.

So I bounced around, checking out message boards and the like. I was pretty late to blogs, honestly, only picking up Journalista a few months or so after it launched, even though I think I was posting on the Journal’s board at the time.

Personal blogs? I barely knew what they were. I’m slow like that.

And among my bumbling and fumbling, I found a site that offered a lot of interesting reviews, often of books I’d not entirely heard of, updated often, and with an interesting collection of voices behind it all.

That was Comic Book Galaxy. And at that time, it had existed for years already, longer than all the time I’ve been running this site.

Today is September 1, 2005, and Comic Book Galaxy has been around for five years.

Half a decade.

That’s really quite thoroughly insane. That’s downright wizened in internet time.

And for a tiny little pup like myself, fiddling away online, it’s great to have something that you can measure your own time as an active fan against, and far greater to know that a lot of the content released in that time was actually pretty good. Alan David Doane’s brainchild was around when I started back up reading comics regularly, it was around when I began writing my own stuff on this site, and, well, here we are today.

I’m happy I’ve written some stuff for the site. I hope some newer (or hey, older!) enthusiasts happen by the Galaxy and become as interested in their content as I was, those years ago. Hell, I’m still interested. There’s as strong a line-up over there as ever, just laying in wait for the next batch of readers, passing the good word on.

Inspiration.

So happy anniversary, Alan. Here’s to five more.

*Long day of driving ahead. Reviews aplenty tomorrow.