The Video Pipeline

In the years where I did a New Year’s Resolution type post, the running joke was always that THIS was going to be the year when I regularly posted videos.

Much like those resolutions to become a gym rat, my promise to become Quentin Tarantino never survived the first month of the year.

2024 Update

At the end of November 2024, I made the decision to give it a try. I wanted the challenge and the focus. I quietly committed to posting 30 videos in the month of December. They could be any mix of long and short forms.

On December 30th, I posted videos #30 and #31. So, yay, I can call this experiment a success.

Now I can also talk a bit more about it and show you what I’ve done.

Is This the End of Blogging?

Nope. Though, to be fair, I’ve never considered this site to be a “blog.” This is a very stupid technical argument, but a blog to me has always felt more “of the moment” and personal. Most of the things I publish here are reviews or thought pieces that are meant to be evergreen. They’re only presented in reverse chronological order because that’s the default of the website engine and that makes it easier for regulars to see the newest stuff up front.

The news posts I write feel more bloggy, but they’re also the least-read things. That’s a large part of the reason why you don’t see so many of those anymore.

Does making these videos mean I’m giving up on writing? Nope. Some things work better when written out, and I’ll continue to do that. The stuff I’m doing with video includes things I couldn’t do strictly with writing. It’s a lot of show to go with the tell.

Honestly, the two can complement each other. Some reviews can get into the nitty-gritty of the visuals, and that works best when I can show more of those images without overloading the page with heavy graphics that only slow everything down.

Truth be told, it’s also easier for me to piece together a video than a written article. I don’t often have the large blocks of time free it takes me to edit my writing in the way I’d like to do it. With a video, I can edit it in bits and pieces for as long as it takes. I can spend five minutes and make progress on it before life pulls me away from the computer again. It’s harder to do that with writing.

The other reality is that more people watch YouTube videos than read websites now. I can’t fight the inevitable. If I want to spread the good word of European comics, I need to find more people. As Google continues to light itself on fire (having already destroyed blogging by killing Google Reader and then tossed the whole thing into a dumpster fire with AI and the Helpful Content Update), readership on this site has diminished. I can take a hint.

I need to meet the audience where they’re at. I can’t jump up and down and wave my hands and expect anyone to see me.

On the other hand, the YouTube audience isn’t necessarily looking for BD content, so I’m mixing things up more broadly over there. I’ll be covering a wider variety of things. I should have made this move years ago, especially back in the day when I had more free access to BD. (Publisher/Distributor cutbacks from the last couple of years have also limited my access from the free-for-all it once was…)

But here we are today, in 2025. I’ve succumbed to reality. Time to make the videos…

Video Themes

I published 16 long form videos in December and 15 shorts. That’s how we get to 31.

Additionally, I warmed up with some videos in the second half of November, so you’ll see a few of those sprinkled in through the rest of this article.

The long form videos fall into two camps: 3-D Comics and Christmas Comics. I didn’t have any European comics to review for the 3-D side of things. I’m not sure any exist. Has anyone ever done a 3-D conversion on Asterix or Spirou?

I had some Spirou Journal issues to show off for Christmas, but I never made those videos. I didn’t have a specific angle for most of them, and then I just ran out of time. There’s always next year!

On the other hand, I had a very special series (one far too long ignored) to help me fill out the Christmas comics half. I had to import some books from France to make it work, but it was well worth it.

3-D Comics

They’re usually considered a gimmick, but I found a lot of useful angles to cover when looking at 3-D comics. They can enhance an artist’s storytelling easily, but also make missteps all the bigger and more obvious.

Mostly, they’re just fun. I enjoy a good one.

Unfortunately, not all conversions are equal. There are very good conversions (when Ray Zone does them), and very bad ones (most everyone else). Unfortunately, Marvel is currently publishing a series of 3-D titles that started out badly. I’ve lost hope for their future installments.

Here are the books I’ve made videos about so far:

I have one more 3-D review I’ve recorded to publish in the next week or so, plus another half dozen books I could review. I don’t know how many more I’ll cover. If I see something interesting in one of them, I’m sure I will jump all over it.

Christmas Comics

Figuring I’d benefit from a little of the excitement of the holiday season, I started to review Christmas comics. I discovered I don’t have as many of them as I thought I did, mostly since I purged a large part of my collection a few years back.

However, I did choose an obvious book from the BD side of things going back 20 years with the “Li’l Santa” series. (I reviewed them in the old CBR column, but never here.) With any luck, you already read my article about it from last week, which talked about the books that NBM didn’t translate and the sudden reboot the series underwent.

I ordered three books in the series from France and got them just three days before Christmas. I gleefully read through them all that day, and started recording videos right away. It took the rest of the week to edit and publish them, but I have no regrets. I love this series.

• “Savage Dragon” #106
• “The Extreme Super Christmas Special” #1
• “The Sensational Spider-Man” #24
• “Superman” #165
• “Christmas on Bear Mountain”
• “Li’l Santa” v1
• “Li’l Santa” v2
• “Li’l Santa” v3
• “Li’l Santa” v4
• “The Small World of Li’l Santa” v2

And Asterix, Too!

Papercutz’s new release of “Asterix the Gaul” in an oversized edition with some historical back matter prompted a video review. It’s a nice complement to the review I wrote here, with the advantage of being able to show you just how big the pages are.

Yes, this video actually came out in November so it doesn’t count towards the 30 videos, but it is a nice model for how things could work in the future. I have hundreds of reviews on this website that I could turn into video reviews, and then attach a link to that video in the written review for posterity.

Lots to Learn

There are two reasons to jump into a self-challenge like this.

First, it’s to get the reps in. Maybe nobody else sees it, but I can see where I improved in my editing and recording from the beginning of the month to the end. I know what I want to do next and where I need to establish more systems and templates and whatnot to get the tedious parts of the job done faster and easier.

There’s that Netflix Asterix series starting in the Spring. This would be a good time to build up a library of Asterix video reviews. Of course, the last time I had a thought like that, we got the Valerian movie.

Second, I have to test lots of things out. I need to see what format viewers are looking for, which comics people want to watch videos about, etc. To a certain degree, all of these videos are just test cases. I have a lot more testing to go. I have ideas for review formats for when I’m reviewing a digital comic that I want to play with next, for one example.

Along the way, I’ve been learning DaVinci Resolve for video editing. I still love ScreenFlow for quick and simple screen grabs and short edits, but Resolve has all the extra stuff in it to make for better-looking videos. I haven’t even scratched its surface yet…

Like and Subscribe! (Ugh)

I haven’t said “Like and Subscribe” in a single video yet. I’m trying not to be the stereotypical YouTuber here.

But do please subscribe to my channel. I need to get to 1000 subscribers to be eligible for the “YouTube Partners Program,” i.e. the thing where I get a cut of the ad dollars YouTube makes before and after my videos.

The Pipeline Podcast and YouTube

Funny side story: I took some of the podcast episodes and turned them into videos a couple years back when I wound down the podcast. YouTube seemed like a natural (and free) place to give them forever homes. I have a playlist named “Podcasts”, as a matter of fact, to help you find them.

YouTube was kind enough to label that playlist as a “podcast.” I wish that meant they offered an RSS feed for that playlist. Then I’d be half-tempted to restart the podcast as a YouTube series. However, I’m old school about this — the very definition of “podcast” includes an RSS feed. Without that, it’s not really a podcast. Nowadays, everyone thinks that any interview series is a podcast, for some reason.

However, I might include future videos that act as standalone video essays in that playlist just for the fun of it. We’ll see.