Closing up shop.

PING! Mother Box PING! (and it's original incarnation, Surfing the Bleed) has been a blast. When I originally started the blog, my goal was to track my own progress breaking into comics, to help other people get access to information from professionals about breaking in, and to eventually integrate myself into the industry I love so much.

I'm now a published comic book author and journalist, and I feel like this blog has done all the good it's probably going to do. In the years since I started, I've noticed a lot of creators making a more concerted effort to offer advice and war stories to people looking to break into the industry. I won't take the credit for that, but I am proud to say that many of the people I interviewed went on to create blogs and panels similar to the experience they had through STB/PMBP.

In the time since I went back to school and started working as a copywriter, the blog has suffered. I believe it's time to give it a proper send-off and move on to an endeavor that encompasses my wide range of interests. So PMBP is closing up shop, but Stay On Target, a blog and podcast about nerd culture and writing, will carry on in its stead. Here's a glimpse of the kind of content you can expect from Stay On Target.

Goldust/Dustin Runnels as Tyrion Lannister - When the firstborn son of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes was born, I can imagine the expectations were pretty high. After all, this was the progeny of the humble son of a plumber who became the World’s Heavyweight Champion. The bar was set. Unlike Tyrion Lannister, Dustin wasn’t born a dwarf, but he did become something of the black sheep of the Rhodes family. Estranged from his ambitious, absentee father (Tywin Lannister, message for you on the courtesy raven), Dustin rebelled in the most public of ways. He became the lecherous, womanizing, overly foppish Golddust. Dustin even has a brother who is perfect in all the ways that he is not. Sounds a whole lot like the imp, right?

Cody Rhodes as Jaime Lannister - He’s not the older of the two, but after that the parallels between Cody and Jaime are uncanny. He’s everything his strange sibling Dustin is not. Where Dustin is craggy, Cody is strikingly handsome. Where Dustin carries some paunch, Cody is chiseled from stone. Where Dustin is considered a cautionary tale, Cody is expected to one day inherit the keys to the kingdom. But it’s not all easy for Cody Rhodes. Where Dustin has been free to live the life he chose, having all but erased his connection to his family for years, Cody has been constantly reminded of the fact that he’s a Rhodes from the first time he stepped into a wrestling ring. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he should rule one day, much like his father has, and he’s been more than a little arrogant and flippant about that legacy at times. Hell, Cody even had his face (thought to be his best quality) broken and was forced to wear a mask. Kind of like a swordsman losing his hand, right?

Dusty Rhodes as Tywin Lannister - Head full of blonde hair? Check. Working well into old age, despite the fact that he should have left the family’s legacy to his children years ago? Check. A vastly prideful man whose accomplishments are known throughout the world? Check. Capable of such shocking violence, yet so full of love for his family? Check. Lives by a code of mother fucking honor? You damn right that’s a check.

The Rhodes family = The Lannisters

Family Crest - Crescent Wrench

House Words - Hard Elbows, Hard Times

Yep, that's an article comparing Game of Thrones characters to pro wrestlers. That's the kind of weird shit I think about all day, so it's the kind of weird shit I want to crow about.

To everyone who supported this blog, to everyone who contributed time, to everyone who read, who let me interview them, and who offered me work based on this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Onward and upward.