The Girl Loves Ink | We Out Here

Catherine Bathe’s column “The Girl Loves Ink” began its run on PLAYBACK:stl in September of 2015. Old editions of the column can be found here (at least until PLAYBACK is taken down at the end of 2017). We are happy to have Catherine join us here at The Arts STL to continue to offer her unique take on comics and other elements of geek culture. | Jason Green, “Fearless Editor” (Erin Jameson’s idea for a title, not mine)

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeew! Have I been busy!

What about you guys? What have been up to, Inklings?

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we have changed venues—PLAYBACK:stl is no more. We’ll miss it, but now JG,FE is JG,FEiC and I’m totally cool with that. I don’t think I get a new title, but that’s okay—as long as we’re still allowed to love ink in all of its variety in this corner of the internet, I don’t need a new title. Anyways, like I said: I’ve been busy. I have changed jobs (twice), moved into a house that I now have to pay a mortgage for, and had some social shakeups.

Oh, I’m also a puppy parent now, so expect some babbling about the new puppy here and there. His name is Oliver, after everyone’s favorite Emerald Archer. He fails the city, a lot, but that’s probably because he’s 15 weeks old and we’re working on potty training.

It’s been a bit to handle, I’m not gonna lie, but, I’m slowly getting back around to feeling a little more like me. Getting back to writing in this little space is part of my “normal” space and I’m super excited that JG,FEiC invited me to continue babbling on this pretty new website we have here. (Yay!) He’s also said that I can write about whatever I want. This means that, eventually, I’m going to go mad with power and probably wander away from comics at some point, but we’ll always come right back because:

I <3 comics.

Anyways.

Somewhere in a box of stuff I haven’t unpacked yet is a collection of half-finished columns I started writing in various places: while at my old job, while at school, on my laptop, on my Kindle—you get the idea. I’m going to try and take a different approach to how I’m working with this space. I love doing reviews, they’re a lot of fun, but I think what I loved the most about the column at Playback—and what people talked to me the most about—was the stuff I wrote as far as issue around comics were concerned. More than a few of my readers (a.k.a. my friends) reached out to me, and still do, to talk to me about the column I wrote on politics in comics. That was a really fun piece for me to write and a subject I’ll probably write about again. I wanna mix things up, I wanna take a look at more of the stuff around comics, as well as keep up with the reviews. I wanna branch out and take a look at comics in other places (like the column I wrote about the Suicide Squad movie vs the first issue of Suicide Squad: Rebirth—JG,FEiC’s subtext for it still makes me giggle).

I also want to take a look at what’s going on locally—though this site is based in St. Louis, I live near Denver, Colorado, and there’s a lot going on creatively in this space

And!  One of the coolest things about unpacking all of these boxes and moving into a permanent space is that I can finally set up things in a way that I’ve wanted to for a long time—and I won’t have to move them again! Something I’m planning to do is maybe get a cute little dice bag or something and drop some prompts, or some really general ideas into it, pull out the prompt card, and that’s what I’m gonna be writing about! I’m not totally set on the idea, but I think it’s a super fun one and I’m thinking about trying it out, for sure. Being in a place of transition in, essentially, every important area of my life has been a chaotic and trying period, but coming out of it, I’m starting to organize things way better than they were before.

I think I’m gonna have a lot more time to write—and that’s definitely a great thing, because there’s a lot going on out there in the comics world, which means that there’s going to be a lot to write about!

Something I’m excited about, as far as this column, is that there has been a lot going on that I’m excited about catching everyone back up on: Civil War II, my favorite “Rebirth” storylines, Secret Empire, this whole “Generations” thing, DC’s “Metal” event going on, Marvel’s upcoming “Legacy” launch (Can we talk about that Phoenix-Odin kiss, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?), and my recent adventures into the world of indie comics (It’s been pretty fun, so far)—and none of that is even brushing some of the other stuff I’ve got bouncing around in my head.

The tl;dr of all of this, I guess is: thanks for being patient, I’m back, thanks for hanging around—and welcome back.

<3 | Catherine Bathe

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