Sean's Anti-Year-In-Review

I was traveling yesterday and couldn't really get to a computer. But have no fear, I am not going to be one of those blogger sloths who goes on holiday just so they can "spend time with family." Phaugh! I'll be here plowing through the rest of the year!

Anyway, we're in the final weeks of 2007 and a lot of folks are doing Year-In-Review posts or Best-of-2007 or whatever. It makes sense, since transitions of all sorts (even artificial ones like the changing of the year) give people enough pause to stop and reflect. What's worked, what hasn't worked, how can I use my previous experiences to make things better in the future...? I did one of these myself last year.

This year, though, I'm not going to do that because, frankly, 2007 sucked. Oh, there were some good -- even excellent -- comics that came out, but my wife of ten years left me and that's colored my whole year. I'm trying to stay positive. 2008 has to be better. I mean, both my parents would have to die horrible deaths and George Bush would have to get re-elected (he hasn't let U.S. law get in his way so far) for 2008 to be worse than 2007!

So what am I looking forward to in 2008? Let me start with some comics that are already scheduled in some capacity...

• The Nearly Complete Essential Fred Hembeck Archives Omnibus
• High Moon
• Dr. Who
• Scud: The Disposable Assassin collection
• The Rainbow Orchid in hardcover
• Erik Larsen's "Next Issue Project"
• Captain Victory in hardcover
• Jack Kirby's "lost" Fantastic Four #108

There's probably some other stuff I can't think of offhand, but you can get the general gist of things.

What am I looking forward to that may not be quite so solidified? Well, that's harder to answer. I don't have enough contacts or insider knowledge in the industry to really even guesstimate what may or may not happen. What I'd like to see -- and let me stress that I'm not even going to claim these are predictions -- in the next 12 months...

Well, you know, I started an enlightened and high-minded list but I'm just going to be selfish here instead. I want to see more me. I'm not going buy more mirrors or gain a lot of weight, but I want to see my name out there in the industry more. I want to see "Written by Sean Kleefeld" on more articles. I want to see "When I interviewed Sean Kleefeld about..." in other articles. I want to be a topic of conversation. I want to be referenced. I want to be able to claim to be a BNF and bring back the term "Big Name Fan." I want 2008 to be The Year of Kleefeld.

Ambitious? Yes. Egotistical? Yes. Improbable? Yes.

But, it's also a kick in the pants for me to actually get myself together and really try to become the best person I can be on my own terms. I don't doubt 2008 will be a better year than 2007, but the trick is going to be seeing how much better a year I can make it. Stan Lee usually defines "excelsior" as something of a battle cry, meaning: "Onward and upward to greater glory!" Let's see if I can't live up to that.

Excelsior!

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