Wow.
I have been a comics fan ever since late-60s Marvel: My brother handed me a copy of Captain Marvel #1, and I was off to the races. I bought everything in sight. Got into the fan scene (went to the early Phil Seuling conventions, wrote a column for one of the early fanzines, etc. etc.). You all know the drill ... including the liquidation of most of my collection at a young age.
It was the commercialization of collecting that turned me off to comics for a long time, though I still loved the fanzines, the books, and so on. Spawn was one of the first post-turnoff comics I really loved; I did work for one of the Spawn videogames, Acclaim sent me all the comics, and I loved what I saw. Lately I've become a huge fan of Brian K. Vaughan's work, caught up on Watchmen, and discovered all the Marvel releases on CD-ROM of complete runs of Spidey, FF, Avengers, etc.
I've been reading David Hajdu's superb book, "The Ten-Cent Plague" and, having become aware of the digital comics landscape, wondered if I could find some of the pre-code (and non-EC) horror, crime and romance titles David was writing about and that I'd heard about over the years.
A bit of Googling and -- voila! There was your site. I was thrilled. I even blogged about it:
http://www.lohad.com/?p=2327All I can say is: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I understand what it takes to create and maintain a site like this, and I have a keen appreciation for all the work everyone involved with the site has taken on. You've developed an amazing resource. I feel like a kid again exploring in depth some of the titles and characters I've heard about for years, seeing the early work of artists I've loved all my life, and discovering new characters and artists for the first time. I just turned 50; your site feels like one of the most wonderful birthday presents imaginable.
Keep up the great work. You'll be seeing my PayPal donation(s).
THANK YOU!!!!
(P.S. Looks like the avatar upload function isn't working: I'm getting this error: "The attachments upload directory is not writable. Your attachment or avatar cannot be saved.")