KINDERCOMICS
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comics@CSUN
  • Comics Studies Society
  • KIRBY!

KinderComics on Hiatus

12/6/2021

2 Comments

 
Picture
Regretfully, I must announce that KinderComics is on indefinite hiatus. I'm not sure what this means, exactly, but I do know that I will post few if any reviews here from now until the end of the academic year (so, June 2022), and nothing big. Worse, I can't be sure that I'll be returning even after that. As an academic, meaning a teacher first, scholar second, and critic third, my yearly cycle is keyed to the traditional school calendar, which for me equals August through May. During those months my hands are full, and these days I feel an ever-greater pressure to devote summers to the scholarly projects and teaching prep that I cannot get done during the other nine to ten months. I know that something, some things rather, have to give, and, sigh, KinderComics seems to be one of those.  
For the past three and a half, going on four, years, this site has been my pride and joy. I've enjoyed writing here, and putting myself to work thinking about some great comics. Yet I know this site has never been able to sustain real momentum, not enough for KinderComics to become a known and trusted source for reviews; that has been a source of regret. I haven't been able to get out in front of new book releases, to be timely as reviewers tend to be. And I've never been able to expand this site beyond reviews to interviews and longer features as hoped; again, regrets. So, not once but repeatedly, I've been forced to admit that this is an extracurricular pursuit of mine, squeezed in between the other aspects of my working life.
I should admit that something else is going on too. I'm writing this through a fog of bereavement, as  both my mother, Ella Jane Ellington Hatfield, and my father, Jerry Hatfield, have passed since midsummer. I've experienced their deaths as sudden shocks to the system; I seemed to have been turned upside down and inside out. I find myself wanting, needing, more time than I have. I feel a need to refocus. Since I have several long-range projects in the works (here's one), and since there ought to be more to life than sprinting to catch up on my comics reading, I need to take a break, somewhere. Here, I'm afraid.
The thing is, writing reviews is my favorite form of writing. I like the elasticity of it, the freedom of writing less formally and at different lengths. I love concentrated encounters with works of art that interest me, and I like the more or less constant practice of writing for a blog. Also, I like staying in the swim when it comes to comics, especially young readers' comics. That matters to me. KinderComics was created to satisfy all those itches. So, to press the Pause button on it, with the thought I may never be able to unPause it, that's a blow. But I'll continue writing occasional criticism for the excellent SOLRAD: The Online Literary Magazine for Comics, and I hope for The Comics Journal too, my two favorite platforms for online comics criticism. Those trusted online magazines have been an outlet for me, and I can write for them without spending much time on social media trying to draw eyes to my work; I look forward to continuing with them when I can. Readers, I hope you'll look for my work there, and thanks for listening.
If I get back to writing here, I'll sound the trumpets! In the meantime, this site is staying up for the foreseeable future. If you see something here that sparks your thinking, and you want to reach out, use the Contact form, above! I'd be glad to chat.

Picture

​PS. Back in September, I described Sas Milledge's comic book miniseries-in-progress Mamo as "a warmly humanistic, implicitly queer-positive, inclusive fantasy" and "an aesthetic delight." Now that it's done, I can strike the "implicitly" from the above, and can also affirm that the finished story is just as strong as I hoped it would be. Highly recommended; I bet there will be a trade collection soon! Milledge is one of the great talents I've learned about thanks to KinderComics (good god, Kat Leyh, Jen Wang, Rumi Hara, Jerry Craft, Molly Knox Ostertag, Chad Sell...). I'll look out for whatever she does next.

2 Comments

    Author

    See Hatfield, comics and children's culture scholar

    Archives

    January 2025
    December 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    March 2024
    June 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    March 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018

    Categories

    All
    392
    About KinderComics
    Abrams
    Adaptations
    ALA
    Animal Stories
    Anthologies
    Anti Sexism
    Anti-sexism
    Awards
    Best American Comics
    Bookshops
    BOOM! Studios
    Business
    CALA
    CalRBS
    CBLDF
    CCEL
    Children's Lit In Academia
    Class/Classism
    Collaborations
    Comic Con International
    Comic-Con International
    Comics As Social Protest
    Comic Shops
    Comics In Academia
    Comics Studies Society
    Comic Strips
    Courses
    COVID-19 Lockdown
    DC Comics
    Decade In Review
    Dial Books
    Disability
    Disney/Hyperion
    Drawn & Quarterly
    Early Readers
    Ecology
    EGL Awards
    Eisner Awards
    Essential Graphic Novels
    Ethics
    Eulogies
    Events
    Exhibitions
    Fairy Tales
    Fantagraphics
    Fantasy
    Faves
    First Second Books
    Flying Eye Books
    Folklore
    Food
    French BD
    Friendship
    FSG
    Gallery 13
    Graphic Medicine
    Grief
    Harper
    Historical Fiction
    History
    Holiday House
    House Of Anani Press
    How-to Books
    Immigrants' Stories
    Instructional Books
    International Comic Arts Forum
    Jen Wang
    JLG Selections
    LA Is A Comics Town
    LGBTQIA+
    Libraries
    Lion Forge
    Markets
    Marvel
    McDuffie Awards
    Memoir
    Middle Grade
    Miyazaki
    MLA
    Music
    Mysteries
    Nature
    News
    Nobrow
    Nonfiction
    Oni Press
    Paper Engineering
    Picture Books
    Poetry
    Politics
    Public Speaking
    Race/Racism
    Raina
    Random House
    Reading (and Watching) Hilda
    Reviews
    RH Graphic
    Sales
    Scholarly Works
    Scholastic/Graphix
    Schulz
    SF
    Simon & Schuster
    SOLRAD
    Sports
    Superheroes
    Teaching
    Teaching Roundtable 2018
    Textbooks
    Tillie Walden
    TOON
    TOON Books
    Top Shelf
    Tributes
    Updates
    Webcomics
    Witches
    Year In Review
    Yen Press
    Young Adult

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comics@CSUN
  • Comics Studies Society
  • KIRBY!