Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Komiks Advocate is Closing Down

I apologize for the long lack of updates, without even letting anyone know why. I developed an addiction with going online, and had to go cold turkey for my own sake.

Aside from that, however, I had been struggling to find work, and decided that the time spent managing this blog and my social networks was getting in the way of that. I finally have found work, but don't have time to maintain this blog anymore. Rather than have people hang on and wait for me to come back, I've decided to close this blog.

It took careful deliberation to make this decision. This blog was really just a project for a blogging short course, however I realized this was an opportunity to help out the komiks community, even in a small way. What the blog accomplished, even with all the limitations, exceeded all my expectations. My experience with the online komiks tribe has been mostly positive and interesting. People are very accomodating and easy to talk to, and eager to help each other as much as themselves.

However, many of my core assumptions about the community had been proven wrong, and this subsequently invalidated the point of the blog. I also want to apologize to everyone who invited me to a komiks event here and there. Well, now you know why I couldn't go.

I have to say, I think this blog has been misunderstood. It was always intended to be treated like an advocacy, to figure out what things the community needed help with, whether they be newbies or even heavyweight veterans. I have strong personal opinions, and I'm not afraid to express them in my networks. However, the blog was meant to be separate from my social network persona, and I did not do enough to differentiate between the two.

I apologize to any readers who may have come to rely on this blog. Other circumstances have prompted me to make this decision. I'm proud of it, but it's only a drop in the water in the komiks blogosphere. There are so many great komiks blogs out there who can easily take its place, such as:

Komikero, Jonas Diego, Budjette Tan - the big three, major komiks creators who've invested in making great blogs.
Paolo Chikiamco does informed komiks coverage for the POC, as well on his own blog Rocketkapre.
Flipgeeks has made komiks promotion their advocacy.
I would like to single out Randy Valiente, who may not be as well-known as other creators, but has an excellent blog, in Tagalog to boot.

There are so many more that I just couldn't catch up to all of them. My apologies if yours wasn't mentioned.

This blog will remain online, as well as the Facebook Fan Page, but for the most part this is over. If I do come back to komiks advocacy, it probably will be in a different form. There are also some unused ideas, which will be shared in a future post, for other komiks bloggers to write about if they want, or for komiks people to explore on their own.

For those of you who found all of the above TLDR, I don't have the time to blog anymore.

I'd like to thank my readers and everyone who helped on this blog.

That's it :)