My name is Kirk Warren and I'm a long time comic book enthusiast just trying to have some fun and share my passion for the hobby with my fellow fans through this blog.
From Hobby to Blogger
Like many comic book readers, I have noticed the continual decline in local comic book shops and limited options for real life discussions about the hobby we all love. As such, I have been forced to turn my attentions to the internet where I can share my opinions and views with a much larger audience of similar minded individuals.
However, despite being an internet user since the early 90's, I have noticed the number of dedicated comic book review sites are few and far between. Yes, there's the mainstay news sites, such as Newsarama or Comic Book Resources, but they do not specialize or feature very many reviews.
As such, I took it upon myself, a rather avid reader and collector of a variety of books, to create my own blog dedicated primarily to weekly reviews, featured every Wednesday as soon as I get my comics. As the months went on, I have added news, previews, moments of the week, character profiles and other assorted columns and posts to the site - all features I have found lacking on the major sites related to comic books around the web.
Why The Weekly Crisis?
I chose the name The Weekly Crisis because Major Spoilers and The Buy Pile were taken. Ahaha. Seriously though, I wanted a comic book sounding name and one that was not taken. There were a rather large number of "_____'s Pull List" and "____'s Longbox" and other such derivatives. I wanted something to uniquely reflect the fact I would be doing this every Wednesday, week-in and week-out, as well as something that was related to comic books. DC had just finished Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis and I knew they had Final Crisis planned as well as the original crisis, Crisis on Infinite Earths. It seemed like these Crisis's were popping up every other week these days and thus, The Weekly Crisis was born. I added the sub-heading, Weekly Comic Book Reviews as a means of describing exactly what The Weekly Crisis means for new viewers and random traffic that stumbled onto the site.
If you would like more information on The Weekly Crisis, feel free to get in touch with me through my contact page.
Contributors
For the majority of the blog's life, I was the sole contributor. Over time, I found I wanted to expand the amount of the content I provided my readers and realized I would need some help. This led me to recruiting Eric Rupe and Matt Ampersand, two bloggers I had become friends with and who's content I enjoyed reading. Later, we collectively decided to expand the blog further and recruited Ryan Lindsay, Ryan Schrodt and Christine Hanefalk. You can read more about each in their profiles below.
Eric Rupe
Columnist
Notable Columns: Trade Waiting, Eric's Soapbox: A Collection of Random Thoughts
I love comics. Can't enough of them. This can be seen through my reading and buying of more comics than I have time for or my need to discuss them with other people, either on forums, by blogging or simply talking with friends about them. Although I started blogging about comics for something to do in my free time, it has quickly become something more than a simple way to kill time and I've found I enjoy sharing and discussing opinions with other like minded people who love comics as much as I do.
I got into comics through the Spider-Man: The Animated Series from the 1990s. My early comic book career was mostly spent with the Spider-Man franchise, but I eventually quit reading comics for a time in the late 90's. Since getting back into comics, I have been constantly expanding my reading horizons and have come to appreciate comics as an art form and extension of basic literature.
Matt Duarte
Opinions & Editorials
Contact: Matt.Ampersand@gmail.com
Notable Posts: What is Marvel Doing Wrong?, Trades 101: An Introduction to Trade Buying, International Women's Day: A Look At Female Superheroes, War of Kings Primer
I buy a mixture of monthly issues and trade paperbacks to keep my comic book addiction at bay. Originally born in Argentina, I also lived in the United States for several years and currently reside in Spain, where, thanks to the internet and a local comic shop, I still manage to find comic books in English to read.
I have been an avid reader since childhood. My parents bought me collections of Argentinian newspaper strips Yo, Matias! and Mafalda to foster my reading at a young age. Years later, my father bought me collections of many comics from the mid-90's and I started reading comics more heavily for the next couple of years. During my early teenage years, I stopped reading and concentrated on other things. A combination of things pulled me back into comics in the middle 00's, and they are my main hobby nowadays and something I've become so passionate about, I began a blog of my own and, eventually, joined up with Kirk and Eric here at the Weekly Crisis.
Ryan "the Iowan" Schrodt
Reviewer
Contact: ryanreviews@gmail.com
Notable Posts: Ryan the Iowan's Comic Book Power Rankings
I began reading comic books at a very young age when I first discovered the four-color adventures of spandex clad heroes neatly stacked at the bottom of the magazine section of my local grocery store. To this day, I still own the very first comic book I ever purchased, Jim Lee and Chris Claremont's X-Men #2. I put the hobby aside in junior high to focus on sports and girls, only to quite randomly return to reading comics my senior year in college with the purchase of the Batman: Hush trade paperbacks (once a sucker for Jim Lee, always a sucker for Jim Lee).
I began reviewing comics in 2006 on various forums before debuting the Weekly Review Power Rankings in 2007, which eventually led me to joining Weekly Crisis (where the countdown-style column was redubbed the Comic Book Review Power Rankings). When I'm not reading or writing about comics, I'm working towards breaking into the industry as a writer, attending various midwest comic book conventions, or spending time with my lovely wife and my awesome hamster, Scott Pilgrim.
Ryan Lindsay
Opinions & Editorials
Contact: ryanlindsay82@hotmail.com
Notable Posts: Hype Machine, Marvel’s Savage Magazine Format, Deus Ex Comica: The God in the Page, Fireside Chat With Jonathan Hickman
My eldest brother was a Marvel zombie, therefore it was in my blood before I had a choice, and these were the days where you carefully chose your camp as Marvel kids did not discuss the four colour world with DC kids. You could get your ass handed to you for thinking that Bruce and Liz were any way connected by the surname Allen. Your choice was serious and I stick by my decision of Matt Murdock over Bruce Wayne. As per what seems all post-Y2k readers, I disappeared from the scene to pursue girls, parties and a university degree. It would be years later that the same brother would buy me the first trade of The Walking Dead. A week later I would discover that Kevin Smith had written an arc on Daredevil. I never looked back.
I currently have a modest sized monthly pull list subsidised by the odd splurge on trades to catch up on other titles. I mainly follow writers who know how to craft a real tale. I deal in a fair trade of mostly semi-fringe Marvel U titles and a smattering of Vertigo and Image output. I still haven’t managed to grasp the allure of the sordid DCU.
Christine Hanefalk
Opinions & Editorials
Contact: theothermurdockpapers@gmail.com
Notable Posts: Unrealistic Portrayal of Spandex, Trade Waiting: The Losers
I started reading comics as a kid growing up in Sweden. This meant that there weren't that many foreign comics to choose from, but I managed to get a hold of the Swedish translations of both Superman (my then favorite) and the occasional Spider-Man issue.
I started reading comics again as an adult when I fell in love with Daredevil, and since 2007, I've been blogging about the Man Without Fear on my site The Other Murdock Papers. Over the last couple of years, my pull list has grown considerably though it still hovers at around a relatively modest ten books a month, not counting the odd TPB and the back issues I access through Marvel Digital Comics. Books I'm currently reading include X-Factor, Spider-Woman, Thunderbolts and other Marvel titles. As a Weekly Crisis contributor, I hope to venture into the DC Universe as well, and I'll be sure to let you know what I think!
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Thanks for reading and I hope to see you around here at The Weekly Crisis!
