When I started this blog in December 2016, there wasn't really a huge amount of planning involved. I needed to write something about (of course) an adventure gamebook from the 1980s in reply to someone, Blogger was there, for the first few days of its life it had some placeholder name I can no longer remember. Then about a week or so later I wrote another 'proper' post and it took on its current name, chosen because it seemed amusingly self-deprecatory,1 and without any expectation that it would ever find any kind of widespread audience.
I've mentioned this before, but -- even without the fact that I was proven wrong and, after a bit of time working out exactly what I wanted it to be, the blog has evolved into something with a bit of a following -- I've never been hugely thrilled with the name I ended up with. I've considered having some artwork depicting a reading niche commissioned before. I think maybe it's too late to change it altogether now.
Except writing about comics has made me reconsider how appropriate the name is at all. When I am writing about Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan, The Numskulls, Bananaman or Ivor Lott and Tony Broke, am I not writing about the history of characters who have made a significant cultural impact? Surely that's something with definite mainstream appeal? Is the name of the blog actively handicapping it? Am I not even doing a disservice to the people involved in the making of the thing I'm writing about?
I became very aware when writing my piece on Ivy the Terrible that I was approaching everything from research to editing with a level of diligence I wouldn't have been capable of nine years ago, because I know people are actually going to be reading it. But it's not just about comics. Surely recovering a television series written and directed by one of the country's best-known novelists is something people outside of a narrow section of the population would be interested in? Or a joke from The Simpsons that's been unseen for over three decades? Or a significant part of the broadcast history of one of the most iconic Saturday Night Live characters in the show's history? Okay, maybe sometimes the name still seems appropriate. But on the subject of adventure gamebooks, when I'm writing about the making of the book that popularised the format in the United Kingdom... maybe not so much.
Perhaps the biggest reason why I haven't changed the name is that I can't think of anything better. Which seems like a pretty good one, at least. (The original placeholder title must have been truly appalling if I've devoted this much time to whinging about the current one.) And I do like that the blog is something difficult to sum up in a title.
After all, there can be few places on the internet that offer you analysis of both Twin Peaks and Maid Marian and Her Merry Men.
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