By Dustin Cabeal

When I ended Comic Bastards in 2018, I had a lot going on and while some people were acutely aware that the site was existing more as a historical record of a lot of people’s work; it was also clear that a lot of people never really paid that close of attention to the site.

Here we are four years later, and I still get emails asking for coverage on this or that. Would you be willing to interview so and so about their new project? I’ve lost track of how many email lists I’ve unsubscribed from in an attempt to gain control of my inbox and again… it’s been four years.

Perhaps it was my own fault since I kept the site up. It still has a decent amount of traffic for a dead site, but I have always found it strange that people paid little to no attention to the announcement of the site being on, but not updated. I mean, until this post it’s been the top article on the site. How did people miss it? Or did they simply not care?

I’m sure a lot of people thought I was ghosting them or being rude. Never once wondering how a site with zero ad presence stays afloat in this ad heavy/paywall internet world we’re living in. And I get that no one cares that I spend my own money to do this and always have. The meniscal amount I made off ads for a short time was nothing compared to what I poured into the site. But to not even bother reading the front page of the site they’re contacting? Almost monthly? Well, you can move on to another site thank you very much.

To borrow a line from John Wick, yeah… I’m thinking I’m back. But not the way anyone is going to want. The reviews I will be doing are only the reviews I want to do. I don’t even have a guess of how often I’ll be posting them and frankly, I doubt it really matters or will even ping on anyone’s radar. I won’t be posting any news, press releases or bullshit of that nature. I will not be taking submissions or listening to your pitch on Kickstarter. This is more of a pop-up event than your favorite restaurant.

Frankly, I will not be participating in the typical internet ways of SEO’s and first is all that matters. I always said content is king, but I will never be king. No one is looking to buy up my site and add it to their corporate stack of sites. I’m never going to have the money, time or connections to disrupt the status quo of comic book sites, nor do I want to. Comic Bastards has never been about joining the rest or being first, but rather presenting the best. Niche, indie, under the radar comics. Sometimes big corporate books too because why the hell not. And I’m not just reviewing comics. I’m going to review anime, manga, a fucking movie or even a song. I’ll review a bottle of water if I want to because I’m just here to do something I enjoy.

Will anyone be joining me on this journey? It’s very unlikely. There’s only a small handful of people I would welcome back because it was an exhausting amount of work to get all the articles on this site. I couldn’t pay anyone so to make the work easier, I did the hard work and I’m not looking to do that again.

Hell, I’m pretty much writing this for myself. Again, no one is checking that home page for new content. This will slide by and that’s okay with me. I felt like I needed to announce myself. To put it on the record of the site. To say that Comics Bastards is kinda open, even if it’s just one bastard. I’m not doing a name change at this point, that would be stupid.

A review is coming soon and thank you if read this and thank you again if it made you happy.