It seems de rigueur, when starting up this sort of thing, to do an intro post explaining what it is, who's perpetrating it and what to expect of it in the future. This has always struck me as a little odd, since it means you're doing your intro when you have, at least theoretically, the fewest number of visitors. And those who show up later don't need the intro so much—they can see for themselves what sort of stuff will be there, because there's a bunch of it already there.

[This is aside from the issue that many of these things start off announcing grandiose (or even modest) plans, peter out almost instantly and then wait, untenanted and unmourned, for any of those plans to materialize, which makes the intro post seem somewhat hollow.]

But what the hell, here I am.

I'm Kurt Busiek, a writer—largely of comic books—and you probably already know that, or what would you be doing coming here in the first place? More details can be found in the "About" section, along with at least one truly dorky picture of myself as a child (and pictures dorkier still of my adult form). I've long thought it would be a good idea to have my own web page, since much of my work is scattered around among various publishers, and while they're naturally interested in promoting whatever they make money from, they're not in the business to promote my other works. So having one central location where I can bring all the various threads and bits of my career together in one place seems to make sense, and I probably should have done it a lot sooner. But what with health issues and deadlines and such, there never seemed to be the time.

Now, in the wake of finishing the year-long Trinity, and while I'm in the start-up process on a few new things, there's enough time to put all this together, with the help of design wizard John Roshell, who does a gorgeous job of lettering and design on my Astro City series, and has done at least equally well on this site.

There are still some bits we're filling in, working on, revising and so on, but there probably always will be—there's a reason I call this an online "work in progress."

With luck, this'll be a good place for news, information, previews of upcoming projects, announcements of convention appearances, and things like that. I've already started putting some articles, interviews and stories in the "Read" section and there's a near-complete bibliography in the "About" section. We have a message board—have had it for a few years, actually, since it's been the board we set up to go with my other site, AstroCity.us—and we'll be reworking and redesigning it, to cover all my work, not just Astro City.

Beyond that, I'm figuring it out as I go along. I'm sure there'll be stuff I have to say that isn't about self-promotion or biography—things of interest from the file cabinets, links and recommendations about other stuff found around the web or on your local comics shop or bookshop shelves, passionate arguments on the evils of the designated hitter (no, wait, I tell a lie; I don't actually care one way or the other about the designated hitter, but as an American League fan I'm used to them), and whatever else might come up.

I hope people will want to come along for the ride, wherever it leads us.

[The illustration above was drawn while I was in college, I'm pretty sure. It started out as a sketch for a planned letterhead, but quickly went wrong in ways that I liked enough to save all this time.]