Preamble

I would be the first to admit that, in general, Threshold has a fairly limited appeal.
After all, it has no real redeeming value. Is it a source for news in the way that many other blogs are? No, not really. I have no real desire to be some sort of new media journalist making use of the Web and my blog to report stories that get missed by traditional news media.
I don’t even specialize around a particular topic, opting instead to make this space a hodgepodge consisting of the minutia of my rather sedate (to be kind) day-to-day existence, occasional pictures, and a variety of complaints, observations, and links to other sites.
Is it at least entertaining? I think so, and I’m sure that at least some of you agree.
But most Threshold readers are people who know me and therefore have something of an existing “investment” in me and are better equipped to “get it” when it comes to my humor and seemingly bleak worldview.
I do recognize that there are others out there who don’t know me apart from what they’ve read here, and I do try to appeal to them as well, presenting myself as something of an “everyman” living under the rule of Murphy’s Law.
The point is that I do recognize that there are people out there putting their blogging skills to use in the pursuit of some kind of purpose (leaving the individual merits of each of those purposes open to evaluation), but I’m not one of those people.
I could devote my blog exclusively to discussing comic books, for example, or exclusively for posting my fiction, or my art, or any number of my personal interests.
But I don’t, as I want to make the appeal of Threshold as wide as possible.
Ironically enough, that desire to make Threshold as widely appealing as possible is precisely what makes its appeal so limited.
If I were to specialize, the odds are better that Threshold would get noticed by more people, and a much larger, albeit more narrowly-focused audience would be considerably more likely to develop.
However, because I initially knew who my audience would consist of (friends, family, and co-workers), I chose not to specialize, as I knew that, apart from whatever interest they have in me and my life, many of the members of my audience have very little in the way of common interests.
Besides, while I do have, as an example, a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of comics, there are a lot of blanks I would need to fill in via research in order to put together any sort of authoritative blog on the subject, and with no other impetus than merely having something to pass the time, I wasn’t too likely to invest that sort of effort into this site.
The point of all of this is that, while sometimes I may tip the scales too far in favor of one particular interest, I try to keep Threshold fairly balanced, never delving too deeply, to use the comics example again, into the depths of geeky comic fandom (and yes, I do recognize that there were mixed metaphors in there).
However, to carry out an idea I had back when I first heard from her, and to satisfy her persistent requests, I’m finally going to write up that piece on female fandom and women in comics that Wendy has been waiting for.
To those of you whose eyes glaze over whenever you encounter any comic book-related content here, you might want to skip this particular entry (or, more likely, series of entries). But then, you might not.
I’ll probably break this up into more than one entry in the interests of keeping individual entries brief.
Granted, “brief” is a relative term, especially here (apart from the fact that I don’t specialize, Threshold differs from most blogs in that here I break the cardinal rule of blogging on a pretty much daily basis: blog entries should be brief), but I do want to keep from having one overly-long and cramped entry.
Besides, I’ll probably organize the content into different categories which can be addressed as separate entries.
This entry is not, obviously, the actual entry itself, but something of a preamble.
For those of you still interested, this will not exactly be a scholarly essay, but will instead simply be my observations, experiences, and opinions on the topics of women in comics (as characters and as creators) and female fandom. Ideally it will be interesting, entertaining, and at least somewhat informative, but it is in no way intended to be authoritative.
So, without too much more ado, we’ll soon be off on our “Journey Into The Feminine Mystique,” with the standard bonus geek points to anyone who understands why that title is (at least kind of) funny…