Welcome! Or, Where the Hell I've Been and What I'm Doing Now

As you’ll be able to tell by glancing over at the ‘blog history’ section of this site, I set up this blog in 2010 with the intention of making it a home for my various and sundry musings about comics and the comic industry, only to let it languish untouched for two whole years without writing a single damn post. That’s pretty bad, even for me, a serial procrastinator and all-around lazy ass known to bite off way more than I can chew. But now I’m back and rededicated for a number of reasons I’ll get into later on in this long-delayed and long-winded initial post, which you can consider part bio, part statement of intent, and part explanation of what the hell I’ve been up to in the year-plus since I last had any sort of consistent presence on the web.

For those of you who don’t already know, my name is Dan Phillips and I’m a writer, musician and miscreant with serious delusions of grandeur. Many of you know me from my time writing for IGN Comics, where I contributed reviews, interviews, feature articles, columns and podcasts from 2006 to 2011. Others might know me as the singer of my two NY-based funk-rock bands, The Frank Stalloners and The Greens Family Band. A few of you might even know me personally, in which case I apologize for my behavior that time and thank you for letting me crash on your couch.

So why am I back on the web after such a long absence? To keep a long story short, after my time at IGN came to an unceremonious and disappointing end, I pretty much soured on the notion of writing for the net in any capacity, particularly one in which my main responsibility was to generate hits by creating comics-based content for a corporate-owned website that focused primarily on video games – a task which often boiled down to writing reviews of mediocre comics, top ten lists and articles about Catwoman’s various costumes over the years. Beyond just that, I also grew increasingly disillusioned with the idea of focusing my creative energies on writing about/reviewing other people’s creative work. Although I appreciated every IGN paycheck I cashed over the years and had a damn good time working under editor Richard George and with other great guys like Jesse Schedeen and Dan Iverson, in hindsight I don’t believe the money was worth all the time I took thinking and writing about others’ original work instead of focusing on my own.

The year and change I spent away from the net –a period I spent focusing on music, thinking about what I want to do as a writer and generally bumming around for far too long stretches – did wonders in terms of reenergizing my interest in writing about comics and pop culture. A couple factors conspired to kick me in the ass and rededicate me to writing for the web:

The first was Junkyard Farmer, an awesome music blog by my good pal Dylan Bruno. The sheer volume of content Dylan is able to churn out on a day-to-day basis is staggering to say the least, and he’s a damn good writer to boot. If you have any interest in music whatsoever, you’ll dig Dylan’s writing about the songs and bands that inspire him, so go check it out and thank me later. In short, the fact that Dylan is able to crank out so much passionate writing day-in and day-out, all while working a day job definitely inspired me to make a go of it myself. Let’s hope I can prove as dedicated and consistently funny and interesting as Dylan.

The second factor that brought me back to the web and writing about comics is as simple as it is complex: ego. Anyone who considers him or herself a writer is by nature a bit of an egomaniac in that they think their opinions about stuff are inherently interesting enough to be read by others. I am no different. After keeping quiet for over a year – one that, incidentally, saw arguably the most dramatic upheaval in the way comics are read and produced since the dawn of the medium – I have a lot to say about what’s going on in the comic industry, how the medium is evolving, the increasingly complicated relationship between comics fandom and mainstream pop culture, and the future of the industry as a whole. To put it bluntly, I’ve been storing up a whole lot of shit since I last wrote for the internet, and this blog will be where I crap it all out for your reading pleasure. Furthermore, I'm genuinely excited about the prospect of writing about whatever topic is on my mind regardless of how many hits the article will generate or how it will relate to a mother site's promotion of the latest comics crossover, video game or blockbuster film.

But this blog won’t just be concerned with comics and the comic industry. Any topic is fair game, and depending on my mood on a given day, you might find a post about television, film, music or novels (most likely of the crime and sci-fi varieties) – all things I’m equally as passionate about as I am comics. Comics are my first love, though, so it’s a safe bet most of the posts found on this blog will relate in some way, shape or form to the ol’ funny books. I may even share some of the original comics I’ve been working on with my pal and artist extraordinaire, Tom Travers, who was kind enough to create the spiffy looking logo you see in the top right-hand corner of the page. Tom and I have had a couple of goes at original short comics over the years, and if you stay tuned, you just might see them pop up in this space. Check out some of Tom's awesome work here.

So that’s it for now. Hope this long-winded post filled you in on who I am, where I’ve been and what I’m interested in writing about, enough to convince you to bookmark this page and check back periodically. I intend to make a serious go at posting at least three times a week, and with any luck this latest try will be far more successful than the pathetic 2010 attempt. I would love for External Underpants to turn into a popular, lively destination for like-minded folk. And if worse comes to worst and no one stops by, I’m comfortable with this being my own little corner of the internet – a place where I can verbally masturbate while no one pays attention.

Cheers, and hope to see you back soon.

(One quick final note: me being inexperienced with blogging and generally incompetent when it comes to technology, don’t expect too many bells or whistles or even link blogging on this site. For now, it’s merely a place for me to dump my writing and thoughts about whatever is kicking around my warped brain.)