The Pipeline BD 100 Half Time Report

The Goal

 

At the beginning of the year, I pledged to review at least 100 bandes desinees albums in 2017.

It was a big goal, particularly for someone like me who used to try to get to 50 trade paperback reviews in a year and fail miserably every time.  Here I am now trying to double a mark I never met in the first place.

Still, I thought it was possible.

And I still do.

 

Off to the Races!

Things started fast, particularly in trying to keep up with Comixology’s sales, plus keeping up with my own backlog of reading. The impending “Valerian” movie also gave me direction in short order to get those books read.

At the pace I went in the first two months, I was quietly thinking — while hoping to not jinx myself — that a new goal of 125 might be possible.

Then, through a series of non-comics-related issues in the month of March that leaked a little into April, that momentum died.

It took a little time to get back in that groove.  With a little bit of looking back on the first six months, some renewed enthusiasm and interest in the topic with the “Valerian” movie coming out soon, and discovering some new very exciting BD books, I’m 100% focused and confident that I’ll hit the goal.

 

The Hard Numbers

As of July 1st, the half-way point of the year for the purposes of this conversation, I posted 43 reviews.  Do the math, and you’ll see that at that pace, I’m only going to hit 86 reviews for the year, a bit short of the 100 goal.

That means I need to post twice a week, every week, for the rest of the year.  Even then, I’d only be at 95 reviews.

In other words, I need to pick a few weeks up where I can handle three in a week.

Or, looking at it another way, I need to publish ten reviews a month.  That’s one every three days.  I think that’s entirely possible.

 

How to Do It

First, while I will occasionally reprint BD reviews from older columns from the CBR days, I do not count those towards this goal.  Maybe I should.  A review of an album is a review, right?

But the point of this mission is for me to find new things, and that would be cheating.

The good news is, I’ve read more books than I’ve reviewed.  I also have a few drafts sitting behind the scenes here that I just need to concentrate on, finish up, and publish.  There are six or eight of those right now.

This gives me a bit of a kickstart.

Since the beginning of July now, I’ve published four reviews.  That leaves me with six more to do in the next 19 days.  It’s a slow start to the month, but it’s something I can make up and I’m more or less on track.

If worse comes to worse, I shorten up the reviews.  I’d guess the average review length right now is about 1200 words.  With additional books in a series, I should be able to shorten that up.  There’s no need to repeat myself on the fundamentals of a series.

 

Thanks for Reading

Thanks to all of you for reading these reviews, for being curious about the world of Franco-Belgian comics, and for telling your friends about this site or just sharing reviews on social media.  Word of mouth is everything in this game, and I appreciate all your help on that front.

If you still don’t know where to start, I continue to recommend “Ken Games” and “The Campbells” as good starting points.  Or, if you’re looking forward to the movie, start at “Valerian and Laureline” v3. If you want something that’s pure humor, try “Back to Basics” v1.

 

The Video Version

I recorded a vlog last week talking about this.  I go into a bit more detail in the video about the world of blogging and content production, too.