Welcome to 2024 and the second full year of Tales From My Spinner Rack! When I started this series one year ago on my blog, I didn’t realize where it would take me. I thought it would be a fun, little, hobby type of thing, exploring the comic books I loved as a kid and reliving them decades later.
If you click on the category listing for Tales From My Spinner Rack! on the right sidebar, you’ll see there’s about 50 posts over the course of my first year. Some of those posts are promos for my convention presentation appearances at WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con (I tend to be an merciless self-promoter). But there are over 30 posts that deal with these comics I grow up with, including multi-part series on December 1965 (all the Marvel comics published in that month), Superman Month, featuring my favorite Superman stories from the Mort Weisinger-edited era, and Marvel Annuals from the 1960s, along with quite a few one-offs on particular comic books from the Silver Age.
In March 2023, I did my first presentation at WonderCon based on Batman #147, which features the classically bad story, “Batman Becomes Bat-Baby!” I meant to record that presentation, but in my nervousness I forgot to hit the record button on my iPhone. That faux pas turned out to be a blessing, because it allowed me to redo the presentation and record it with a (hopefully) better voice-over track and improved graphics. And to present this monumental creation to the world, I started my very own Official Tales From My Spinner Rack! YouTube Channel. I did a short video (Episode 01), called “And Lo, There Shall Be A … Spinner Rack!”, which chronicled my love of comics and my 20-year career at San Diego Comic-Con as the Director of Programming and Publications. I followed that with Episode 02, “Batman Becomes Bat-Baby!” and … well, pretty much both videos inspired the overwhelming sound of crickets.
But then a funny thing happened. I did a much more complicated presentation (76 slides compared to 39 for “Bat-Baby”) at San Diego Comic-Con in July, “Jimmy & Lois: Still Crazy After All These Years!” which turned out to be—for a number of reasons—not my finest moment when it comes to live presentations. I was bound and determined to improve upon that, so I redid it as a video, using Keynote (which I use for all my presentations), and uploaded that longish (38 minutes) video in November. Lo and behold … it caught on (kinda … sorta). It currently sits at over 3,000 views, ticking up every day, not very impressive by YouTube standards, but by my standards it’s box-office gold.
So I decided to do an all-new video—not based on any convention presentation—on the above-mentioned “December 1965” three-part series I did here on my blog back in December. I didn’t have high hopes for this one because it wasn’t overtly funny, like “Jimmy & Lois” was (those books are just naturally funny, intentionally or not), but I posted that one just after Christmas and it’s hurtling towards 2,000 views at this point. I’m gaining followers every day, too, and people are leaving very nice comments, something sorely lacking on this blog (and on my two related Instagram accounts, @gg92118 and @talesfrommyspinnerrack).
While I definitely enjoy doing the Spinner Rack posts here on my blog, they don’t really get much engagement from people. I seem to get a lot of views when Mark Evanier or my friends at the SDCC Unofficial Blog give me a plug, but there are very few—if any—comments here and not a lot of visitors. A good day for me is 50 visitors. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doing this for the adulation of millions (well, maybe thousands …), I’m doing it because since retirement I’ve become even more warmly nostalgic about these books I loved collecting as a kid, a habit that has stayed with me all these years. Plus I enjoy writing about them and doing research into their history.
It’s very gratifying to see much more engagement from people over on YouTube, so I’ve decided to concentrate my Spinner Rack activity over there with the creation of new videos. I’ll still be doing related posts for each episode here on my blog, kind of a “Read More About It” feature. The blog posts allow people to actually look more closely at the art I scan and post and also provide a script for me for the videos. But the creation of the videos are much more time-consuming, since I’m doing animated graphics with numerous pieces of art in Keynote. Because of that my original idea of a new Spinner Rack post just about every week has to go out the window. Once a month is much more realistic. I’m a one-man band here, doing the whole thing—researching, writing, graphics, and production–all on my own. It’s fun and I enjoy it, but I don’t want it to feel like I’m back working again, basically creating TV graphics (which was my full-time job from 1980 through 1998).
I’m debuting an updated look for Tales From My Spinner Rack! to kick off the second season in 2024, mainly new fonts and a new background (which showcases some the many books I’ve written about on here). I have a whole stack of ideas for new videos and posts and I’ve created a teaser video of what to look forward to in the first part of the coming year. And—no guarantees—I hope to appear at certain conventions again this year and I hope you’ll be able to catch my dog and pony show at them if you’re there (I prefer “cat and hippo show,” to be honest, but that’s not how other people feel about it). I’ll be sure to plug them on here if and when they come up.
But without any further ado, here’s the 2024 Sneak Peek Preview video!
I will continue to create the usual posts here on my blog, including photos, monthly book reviews, life events, and the occasional ripped-from-my-soul diatribe (thankfully, few and far between these days), but—sad to say—my traveling days are slowing down a bit, so don’t expect another photo tour of merry ol’ England anytime soon. I love to write (and take photos) and I’m hoping that shows on here. This is my much-needed creative outlet and I hope it will be for many more years to come, but—for the foreseeable future—Tales From My Spinner Rack!’s primary vehicle moving forward will be on YouTube. As Stan Lee would say, “SO BE IT!”
@innocent-bystander.com 
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