Who cares about Simon and Kirby? Well judging by the first two years of this blog’s existence only a small number of fans. But it was not just the low number of visits to my blog that suggested that Simon and Kirby were pretty much forgotten by the larger public. 2006 and 2007 also did not really have much in the way of books with significant Simon and Kirby content on the market. But all that has changed. In the last two years the number of visits to the Simon and Kirby Blog has increased by a factor of ten and it keeps on rising. The last year saw the publication of Titan’s “Best of Simon and Kirby” and DC’s “Simon and Kirby Sandman”. This year should see DC release books on the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos. Even more important Titan will be publishing the “Simon and Kirby Superheroes” (okay I’m biased). I still believe what I wrote in my last anniversary post, that the key event to this change in interest was due to the publication of Mark Evanier’s “Kirby: King of Comics”.

I did not envision any of this when I wrote my first post on March 17, 2006. I just wanted to spend some time writing about my favorite comic book collaborators and the artists who worked for them. I had been studying Simon and Kirby for quite some time before starting this blog but something changed once I did. I found that writing helped clarified my thoughts. That and the studies that accompanied my posts greatly increased my knowledge. I have learned much more about Simon and Kirby in the last four years then I have all the time before that.

I admit that keeping the blog going during the last year has been quite difficult. My restoration work for “Simon and Kirby Superheroes” has taken up much of my time (I will be posting about that in the not too distant future). But I love writing this blog and do not want to give it up even for a short while. And there is so much more to write about. My serial post Art of Romance has gone 28 chapters so far but is only up to the end of 1954 while I intend to take it up to 1960. Another serial post, Little Shop of Horrors, has gone 9 chapters but alas will end with the next one. And yes I know there are other serial posts that have long been idle (It’s a Crime and Wide Angle Scream) however I fully intend to write more on them at some point. In the past I posted about two titles (Foxhole and In Love) from Simon and Kirby’s short attempt at being publishers but I have yet to give Bullseye and Police Trap a similar treatment. DC is reprinting their Simon and Kirby material and that provides an added incentive to writing about Sandman, the Newsboy Legion and the Boy Commandos. With so much to discuss about Simon and Kirby I am sure this blog will have many more anniversaries to come!