This week at ComicPOP!

HELLO EVERYONE! Happy New Year, Happy Holidays and Happy Freezing Your Ass Off if you're on the East Coast of the US! Hope everyone's doing great regardless! Let's get on with the updates, shall we?

As you probably know, after episdoe 200 of Back Issues we're dropping the numbering system. Nobody refers to it by number, and honestly it's tough to figure out which episodes are technically part of the regular rotation and which ones are "specials," and I'd much rather include EVERY episode of Back Issues rather than exclude any. There's no fanfare for episode 200, also. And here's why:

I just got finished scheduling out the next 34 weeks of episodes. That's right. 34 episodes are plotted out and ready to shoot. And a little less than half of them are deliberately plotted out to coincide with movie releases, comic book events, and special holidays. I would like ComicPOP to feel a lot more like a legitimate outfit for you and all the new viewers out there, and I think actually knowing a week or a month ahead of time that we're planning a 4th of July episode, or a Black Panther comic to come out the same week as the movie, that might help us mentally prepare better (and dress the set a little better, too). And I did a pretty decent job picking major titles that show range of characters, while also not delving too deep into random Spider-Man comic territory. In fact, out of the 34, there's 3 Spidey books: Clone Conspiracy, Ultimate Venom, and a third very special one!

NOW. Let's get on with this week's update. The gang and I sat down and went through a list of major screw ups that Marvel Comics had over the last year. It's a fun hour-long conversation where we just get into it and discuss what went wrong and what they can do to make it better. Hope you enjoy it!

We also shot two Back Issues this week to help re-build the buffer. The first, this week, is The Button. We've been meaning to do this one since it finished, and it's a full hour-long episode. The second, next week, is a book I picked because I was just so taken with the idea, and it was decided before the FOX/Disney thing. I thought it would be funny because I know those guys at FOX had copies of this book and thought, "OMG how can we make this a movie?" And man would it have been a bomb and a half... The book is Fantastic Four vs X-Men from Chris Claremont. It's one of the only "WTF" comics we do this year.

Tiff and I are hard at work to bring you a special Spider-Men 2 retrospecive special Off the Rack, where we'll discuss the finale and how the series felt overall. Plus recommendations, etc of course.

Elseworlds this week is still being decided, but I can tell you we're planning to rework the show a little in ways I'm very excited about. But until it's in motion, I can't really talk about it.

I would like to bring back ComicPOP Plays, Harbor Patrol, and a host of new concepts we've been thinking about for the past year.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Our 60k subscriber special is taking a LONG time to arrive simply because it's taking longer to grow than ever before. I don't know why, and I'm not too worried, but it sucks because we normally have a big live special a LOT sooner than this. Hang in there, and thank you all for being so supportive and awesome in 2017. 2018 promises to be the biggest and best yet for us, and it's all thanks to you and your dedication. Also, I would love to hear some ideas from you about Patreon rewards you want this time around.

Thank you all, and I'll talk to ya soon!

Sal