Bob's Angry Rants

So, the biggest news that I have for you is that I've gotten a gig moonlighting as a comic book commentator and reviewer at IGN. For those of you who don't keep track of websites that cater to 18-35 year old males, IGN is a network of entertainment sites (mostly video games, but also DVDs, comics, etc.) that receives around eight million unique visitors a month. At least according to their corporate blurb. But don't let that fool you. The comics site that I write for (comics.ign.com) just started up a month or two ago and is pretty small compared to the rest of IGN. It's basically a one man operation, with a handful of freelance contributors such as myself.

I guess, since I'm writing about this, I might as well reveal my name, which I think everyone who reads this thing knows already anyway. Robert Chang. Those curious can find my trade paperback reviews here, my roundtable contributions here and my weekly comic book reviews are on there somewhere, though there doesn't seem to be a page devoted to it. While this is definitely a lot of fun and yields stuff like free comics and video games, I've been having a small crisis as far as having an editor goes. When I read something that I submitted after it goes up on the site, my reaction goes a little something like this:

"My beautiful, beautiful words. Why? Why have you ruined my beautiful words? I put that period there deliberately. It wasn't a whim. No. I wanted that break there. You've ruined my review. When I wrote it, it was genius. Now it's crap. Aaauuuuugh!"

Most of the time, I'm forced to concede that it does read better with the changes, but sometimes I just can't stand it.

I also am starting to understand how real writers must feel about publishing. It's kind of horrible. When I write some awkward phrasing or make a typo here there are maybe two people that I have to explain it to. No big deal. When I put something crappy up on IGN, there's probably like ten or eleven people who are going to read it! Gah. And I don't know who they are and they hated it. They're probably badmouthing me all over town. Or even worse, they're not.