Pipeline: Looking Back at 1,000 Columns & 17 Years at CBR

Tue, July 12th, 2016 at 1:58pm PST

Comic Books

PIPELINE #1,000 AND THE STORY SO FAR

Trigger warning: Self indulgence. It's been 1,000 weeks, though. Let me have this one. Skip ahead to the next section if you want to get to the news...

19 years ago, I was in college. USENET hosted comics discussion in a series of forums, including rec.arts.comics.misc. CompuServe had a great group at the Comics/Animation Forum, which I would access from a third party DOS-based program whose name I can't remember anymore. (The screen was blue; that's all I remember.)

I'd go to the local comics shop at school, Dewey's Comic City, on Wednesday to pick up a must read new comic with whatever money I had scraped together during the week. Then I'd sit in a friend's dorm room while he was in class (I was a commuter) and read away. I'd stop at my regular comics shop, The Joker's Child, on the way home to pick up the rest.

I had all my hair.

Good times.

After a couple of stops and starts, I committed to writing a column every week. It would have random comics reviews and thoughts on the comics news of the day. It was a bit selfish; I grew tired of having to follow ten different discussion threads to follow all the good stuff I wanted to comment on. I had opinions on everything in those days, and didn't like tracking multiple discussion to keep up with it all.

Almost two years later, Jonah Weiland offered to be the new host of Pipeline at his site, "Jonah Weiland's ComicBookResources.com," which was a great place for links to other comic sites, as well as having one of the few news columns in the business at the time. This was when hand curation of links was a thing. Yahoo relied on it.

San Diego 1999: Jonah Weiland and Beau Yarbrough surrounding me. Dig the classic CBR logo on those t-shirts!

Beau Yarbrough was writing that news twice a week, and he was the one who suggested me to Jonah. The only competition in the news biz, as I recall, was Michael Doran's Comics Newsarama, which I had always read on CompuServe at that point.

Over the years, things grew. Steven Grant became a columnist. Warren Ellis' "Come In Alone" was a big moment, and arrived alongside a site redesign. Larry Young started a column somewhere in all of that with great behind the scenes publishing information (collected in his book, "True Facts").

Columns were king on the Internet for a short time. Blogs were just starting up, but the column format was the way to go. Eventually, blogs and forums would take over, then they would fade out in favor of various social media. Newsletters appear to be on the rise now. The world never stops spinning. More on that in a bit...

Pipeline went to a twice a week schedule from 1999-2003, for a total of 185 extra columns. Those Pipeline2 columns were always meant to be single focus things, while the regular Tuesday column could be as random as they wanted to be. Also, they could be more timely for when news broke mid-week. The news cycle in comics never stays static, but there have been frustrating times when all news broke on Tuesday mornings after I put Pipeline to bed for the week. I wrote a few extra columns to cover breaking news back in the day.

"Pipeline2" got its name, in part, from the time "60 Minutes" went twice weekly and named that second show "60 Minutes II".

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They finally made a Spider-Man movie in 2002, something I could remember reading rumors of back in "Comics Scene" magazine a decade earlier. I wrote a Pipeline to introduce the current slate of Spider-Man comics to new readers who found CBR in a Google search. It became the single most read Pipeline ever, and remains in the top three, I'm sure. It literally had 5 or 6 times the average number of readers for Pipeline. In retrospect, it was a great example of how other media representation of these superhero characters would help to drive traffic to comic sites.

I went to three or four conventions a year, centered on San Diego Comic-Con and the WizardWorld: Chicago show that would always be a week and a half later. Small Press Expo was in the mix, as was Pittsburgh Comicon, and a few smaller shows in New York City. Given the expense of mounting a show in New York City -- Unions control everything and milk you for every penny -- I never thought we'd see a big NYC show. That eventually changed, although it's still expensive, and the unions and the facility do still milk you for every penny. (Ask anyone there with a table who also had the gall to request a chair.)

The Pipeline Comic Book Podcast started at the end of 2004 -- the first comic book podcast. It was mostly a look at the week's new releases, but I did do a series of interviews as well, with the likes of Erik Larsen, Peter David, Chris Eliopoulos and more. Life got in the way and the podcast slowly podfaded out. I'm not even sure they're still available on-line. I have them on a backup drive or CD somewhere.

When TwoMorrows made a book about comic book podcasting, I was lucky enough to be one of the featured podcasters. Here's my bio pic for that book. I put my camera on a tripod and even have an off-camera flash off to the left.

I worked behind the scenes on the first two Comic Book Idols, mostly working the message boards. J. Torres had the hard work of wrangling the artists. Work got busy and I didn't do anything on the third, but those first two brought us such luminaries as Pat Scherberger and Jonathan Hickman. ("The Manhattan Project's" Nick Pitarra was a contestant in Season 3.) I hosted a Comic Book Idol panel in San Diego one year, filled with first timer jitters. I'm glad no video of that is on YouTube. It'd probably be too embarrassing to watch.

I was a panelist in San Diego three or four times, for comics journalism and podcast-related topics.

"The Commentary Track" began in 2007, where I'd interview a creator about their new comic in a page by page fashion. Dynamite and Dark Horse had started doing such things for their books at various websites, and we expanded it out to different publishers and creators. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare (particularly going through official marketing channels), so I only lasted a dozen columns or so. I love the idea and think it could work even better now, but it would just take more time than I have to devote to it. I have ideas for how to update that format and concept that would be killer. Maybe some day…

Memorably, I had one creator bail on it when his book turned out to be a little controversial and he had to talk about it ad nauseum everywhere else first. He burned out. He was very kind about it and called me -- yes, the phone! -- and we had a long chat about the whole thing. Super friendly guy. Buy me a Diet Pepsi at a con bar sometime and I'll tell you the whole story.

In March 2008, I took on the role of CBR Editor for the brand new CBR Reviews section. I lasted four years, editing and posting something like 20 - 25 reviews a week. I edited more than 4000 reviews in that time, which just about put me in a mental institution.

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Throughout all of that, and to this day, I've written Pipeline every week. No guest posts. No weeks off. On vacation weeks, I'd write two columns before I left, and often started writing the next one during my trip.

The average length of the column ballooned. What started out in the vein of a newspaper column at about 750 words often expanded to closer to 3000 words. I think 2000 - 2500 has been the average for a few years now.

Sorry about that.

Yet, you all keep coming back. I talk about Disney Ducks and Savage Dragon and French comics (literally, they're still in French!) and lettering and 25 year old comics, and you still show up.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It means the world to me.

PIPELINE: THE FUTURE

It's not at CBR.

After a 17 year run, Pipeline #1,000 is the final column to be hosted at Comic Book Resources.

But it is not -- repeat NOT -- The End. I haven't come this far to quit just yet. Also, next year will be Pipeline's 20th anniversary. I keep resetting the bar and finding new milestones for how far I want to go. It's a sickness.

Pipeline will see print again next Tuesday, the 19th, right on schedule.

I set up PipelineComics.com recently. It will either be the new home of Pipeline, or will redirect you to where it does go. Maybe both. Sign up for the newsletter there, and I'll email you as soon as I have a definitive answer.

Thanks to everyone who's read this column over its lifetime at CBR. It's been great fun and an honor to watch the industry explode ("implode"?) from this vantage point. It's been amazing watching the website grow and evolve over the years. I'm proud to have been in on it very early, and lucky to have hitched my wagon to the right star at the right time, and contributed to it where I could.

CBR allowed me to do a great many things that I wouldn't have been able to do if I was just another Blogspot page, and for that I'll always be thankful.

Special thanks, of course, to Jonah Weiland for guiding this ship for as long as he did. I don't get to call him "Boss" anymore, but I’m lucky enough to still call him friend.

And to all the editors who've been stuck editing Pipeline over the years, you have my thanks for fixing all my spelling mistakes and calling me out on the occasional dunderheaded comment. Thanks Steve Gerding, Steve Sunu and Arune Singh, and everyone who ever filled in while they were on vacation, and the others I'm likely forgetting…

But, like I said, it ain't over yet. It's just not happening here. Please join me at PipelineComics.com and let's keep talking, OK?