And that’s a wrap on 2025. It’s certainly been a busy year for the site, quite possibly the busiest yet… both for reasons you saw and some you didn’t see.
We have been through SO much this year, in fact, that I thought to end it by summarizing my thoughts on what went through.
This is KIND OF in order of how much the milestone meant to me.
The Superman retrospective starts
For the most part, this is the “I should definitely talk about this at some point” retrospective.
Obviously reviewing ALL of Superman’s stories would be a colossal undertaking even for me, so I get to cover like 2% of the material… but it’s a great source of historical insight, plus we saw Silver Age Supergirl again which is always neat.
The Doom Patrol retrospective ends
I can’t believe it was THIS year, with everything else going on. Unfortunately the last batch of stories was quite underwhelming, but at least we ended on a high note with both the masterpiece that was the last issue and a quick overview of the follow-up Doom Patrol series.
Hero Origins gets through the Golden Age
Can you believe this started in 2023 and it took me THAT LONG to finish the Golden Age?
This remains one of my favorite retrospectives.
Doctor Doom gets through Secret Wars
(and most of Infamous Iron Man)
I thought for sure that Secret Wars would take more time, but I didn’t realize how little Doom himself shows up in person. I’m also surprised that I already finished Infamous Iron Man, but that was mostly because I had to rush through the follow-up series.
While the Bendis finale proved to be even more disappointing that I remembered, the retrospective still covered several great stories. Next year I’ll get to the 2020s and significantly change the scope of this retrospective.
The Eternals & New Gods retrospective
This one was… a challenge. I’m glad that I discovered more good Fourth World stories that I expected to find, but man were New Gods and Forever People harsh to navigate.
I went into this thinking Eternals was underrated and the Fourth World was overrated… and nothing I saw changed my mind. Mostly because I already knew Ikaris sucks.
The Legion adaptations & apocrypha
Continuing the slow drip we had both the animated continuity of JLU and the sort-of-in-continuity “Justice League Vs The Fatal Five” movie, but especially we had Smallville with both the TV show and the comics.
Squirrel Girl comment
Squirrel Girl co-creator Will Murray left a comment on my review!!!
It was a correction, but still!!!
Mexican Doctor Doom
I am extremely proud of this one and consider it one of the funniest reviews I ever did.
The Legion poll
I’m so happy about the level of response to the poll. I will definitely find a way to do another one, but I will have to use a different method since the specific plugin I used didn’t turn out to be the most stable option.
Not only my poll received more votes than the one published by DC in Volume 4, but turns out I helped at least 16 people become Legion fans!
Saving the site
You barely saw any of it, but the site went through a couple of massive technical problems between April and May that nearly broke it.
Long story short, when I started the site in 2020 I had no idea of how to manage A LOT of things and I had no idea the project would grow to this size.
Fixing everything behind the scenes took a financial hit and was a source of a lot of anxiety.
Thankfully the Patreon donations helped a bit, and I’m happy to say that the steps taken SHOULD ensure the site runs smoothly for years to come (fingers crossed!).
There are still a couple of minor technical points that will be addressed behind the scenes but if everything goes well you won’t notice.
This site is not for profit but it’s not exactly cheap, so if you have the means for a Patreon subscription or a Ko-fi donation it would certainly be appreciated!
Anniversary Countdown ends
This was without a doubt the most personal project I’ve done so far. I had not checked out most of the comics I covered in years, and it made me think back to why I fell in love with comics in the first place.
The 5YL retrospective
I managed to review 5 years of published comics in only 1 year, even when I hated something like 95% of what I was reviewing.
I’m not gonna lie, I did seriously consider dropping this era more than once.
Actually managing to get this one done, plus the fact that now I never have to read these comics ever again, just fills me with pride and joy.
Can you believe ALL OF THAT was just one year?
2026 will bring other important milestones.
The Legion Reboot will be in full swing, as I will finally get to talk about what is overall my favorite Legion continuity.
I will also definitely start taking a look at the 2006 cartoon series, although likely not all of it within 2026 given how long it takes to review animated stuff.
Doctor Doom will finish the 2010s, leading to a complete change of the scope of his retrospective: starting from the 2020s I will transition from talking about ALL of his appearances to just the ones that update specific counters or that I just want to talk about.
While this will mean the retrospective will slow down quite a bit, rest assured that I am a long way from running out of things to say about Doctor Doom.
The Superman retrospective will definitely end sometime during the year, because there aren’t a whole lot of 70s and 80s Superman stories where I have stuff to say (considering Crisis is the cutoff point). While a Superboy retrospective WILL eventually happen, it certainly won’t be the one to succeed the Superman one because I want to space them out a bit.
It is possible that I will get around to finally starting the Wonder Woman retrospective, but this will depend HEAVILY on how much time the other retrospectives will take.
The Hero Origins retrospective will most likely take the whole year to get out of the Silver Age, because there are A LOT of Silver Age characters to cover! Possibly not as many as the Golden Age did, but we’ll see.
Filling the gaps will be the Character Chronology retrospective, which will likely be all about Marvel characters to pick up the slowing down of the Doom retrospective.
Beginning in February we will also have another weekly Anniversary Countdown; nothing as elaborate as the previous one, but it’s still going to be 6 reviews in total.
If you can stand my ramblings for another year, 2026 will be quite something!
