The Future of Event Fatigue

Man, the last three months have flown by. It feels like yesterday I just started this blog as a way to goof off and as an outlet for my bitter comic book related cynicism. But in three months I've written over fifty articles (some were really short) for this fair blog and I was joined by two of my very good friends from IWU, Tim Dunn and Peter Durkin, as co-authors who will help to balance out the perspectives of the site. So, with the first couple steps and growing pains out of the way, what is there to look forward to? LOTS! Hit the jump for a little preview of what 2010 has in store for our fair blog.


The Future of Event Fatigue

Features

Throughout the coming year, I'm going to be trying out a couple new features on the blog and seeing which ones I think work the best. My goal is to have basically a set number of features that I write so I can put out one post for each feature without you guys having to wait a month between posts for each feature. Here's the tentative list of features that I'm looking at playing around with as a glimpse into what is going to be coming up in the future:

• All-Time Awesome Lines From Comics - I'm going to keep this feature going because I enjoy doing it and it has really given me a chance to share some of the things from comic books that really show how great the genre can be. But the big thing is that I'm going to be way more consistent with it - No more putting up five posts in a week and then none for a month.
• Links You Should Know - Again, this is going to be a consistency thing. I'm going to make this an every Tuesday post, because it's the day before new comic books and I know that I usually don't have anything new to read online so this is a great way to share some new stuff with you the readers.
• Put it Out To Pasture - I loved doing the first post of this based on the Office, so I'm definitely going to be revisiting this with some posts coming up about Bendis' Avengers run, Morrison's Batman, Heroes, and (if he doesn't get fired) Jerry Angelo's tenure with the Chicago Bears.
• Trade Secrets - Definitely keeping this as a feature, and with Christmas-time I got a plethora of new trades to cover including Old Man Logan, Chew Vol. 1, Secret Invasion: Black Panther and The Boys Vol.s 3, 4, and 5. So I'm going to work my way through those books, plus Wolverine: Weapon X Vol.1 and the Rick Remender Punisher.
• Attention Must Be Paid - Definitely sticking around but does not factor into the discussion for a weekly feature since I'm only going to write it for a major death of a character that people care about. It cheapens it if I write one about Blue Jay or someone equally stupid dying (but apparently not if I write about someone dying that they then bring back a month later). Don't worry, with Siege and James Robinson writing JLofA, there will be blood and I'll write about it.
• Windy City Mumblin' - I'm getting rid of this feature. I had originally intended to do a weekly post where I just talk briefly about random things, but I never did it often enough and I was never crazy about it.
• NEW - Sports Feature - I haven't titled this yet and I'm still not sure about the format, but I'm going to start doing a weekly sports feature where I talk about some big news event, game, or contract signing in the world of sports that week.
• NEW - Devil's Advocate - This another feature that I'm now toying around with, where basically I take a stance defending something that comic fans or comic book characters are against. I have some ideas of things in the pike, so be on the look-out for that.
• NEW - Single Issue Spotlight - With Peter doing reviews, I don't have to worry about writing any! So instead, I'm going to pick my favorite or absolute least favorite issue that Peter doesn't review and write-up about how stupid or awesome it is.
• NEW - My Favorite Runs of Comics - This going to be a semi-regular feature where I spotlight a different run from writers/artists on comic books that I thought were fantastic and it will also give me a chance to spotlight some of my favorite all-time writers and give them their due.

The Big One of 2010 -The Qdoba vs. Chipotle Challenge

When I first started this blog, I had this rediculous idea that I'm still formulating in my head about how it's going to work, but in 2010 I'm going to be launching what I've dubbed the Qdoba vs. Chipotle Challenge. I'm going to eat everything on both restaurants menus and assign points for each item and which ever restaurant does the best is the winner. I have always liked both restaurants, so this is my way of deciding once and for all which is the best. It's going to launch in late Spring (April/May) so that I can still run and not put on a ton of pounds doing this. When we get closer to the beginning of the challenge I'll post a full run-down of what I'm doing with the challange.

More New Authors

With Tim and Pete already on as authors on the blog, we will hopefully be adding another full-time author to the site in the near future. I've been talking with my brother Ian, and he has some really good ideas for different kinds of posts than you'd get from me, so hopefully he's going to be joining the three of us as an author for the site. What's going to be really nice about it is that it kind of eleviates pressure from me to not only stick to my feature plan but also write Op/Ed pieces on top of those.

Also, I'm going to be inviting different people to come on for some guest posts on the blog, where they can write about whatever they want to. To start off with I'm going to ask friends of mine to write things up for it, but if anyone reading this thinks they might be interested in it, they can contact me at the Event Fatigue e-mail address eventfatigue AT gmail DOT com (I wrote it out that way cause it deters spammers from picking it up). So if you have some ideas, send me a line and we can set something up!

Convention Coverage and Interviews

In 2010, Reed Exhibitions (the group behind the NYCC) is hosting a major new Comics Convention here in Chicago, and Event Fatigue will be there for coverage! Premiering April 16th through the 18th at the McCormick Place in Chicago, the Comics Convention and Entertainment Expo (or C2E2) should be an awesome new highlight for 2010. The addition of this comic-con along with the already established Wizard World Chicago (which sucked this year BTWs, the two highlights for me were meeting Mark Millar and talking with Dan Slott who was a really cool dude) in August have started a convention war between Reed and Wizard World, and I really hope that it's the fans who end up winning this one. But the important thing for you all to know is that I am planning tentatively to go to every day of the C2E2, and I am hoping to be able to score a couple quick interviews with some of the bigger name creators that are going to be there, as well as getting some sketches done that I'll post on the blog for people to check out.

Well, that's what the future is going to have in store here at Event Fatigue. And I for one am very excited about the upcoming year since I think that it is going to be a great year all around. After '09, I think we all need a really great year don't you?