About the ‘bomber
Rocket Bomber is an unapologetic fan site featuring hack journalism (if we can even call it ‘journalism’), opinion, analysis, the odd review, and occasionally something insightful.
Highfalutin Goals:
I picked the name “rocket bomber” because, for me, it captures both the optimism and pure joy of early sci-fi and then combines it with the mangled engrish of giant robot voice activated attacks.
I envision a site where the top banner w/ logo features a sleek orbital 30s era spacecraft one day, and a mecha launching a rocket-propelled fist the next.
“RocketBomber is your daily guide to the Fantastic.
Sci-fi, fantasy, comics, games, manga, anime…
from steampunk to mecha, from the retro-future
to fantasy rpg, from galaxies long ago and far away
to the restaurant at the end of the universe,
“ If It Explodes, We Like It! “ ™
other slogans oft used on the ‘bomber:
“We Combine Publishing Trends and SCIENCE! Because We Can!“ [sm]
“We Read Boring Corporate Financial Reports so You Don’t Have To!“ [sm]
The initial plan was to cover sci-fi, fantasy, comics, games, manga, anime, steampunk, mecha; the whole of SpecFIc from the retro-future to fantasy rpg.
…and back to earth
While I’d love to publish a weekly webzine—with a lovely associated linkblog—featuring multiple reviews, industry analysis, insightful dare-I-say academic research in the field, and maybe even some stuff that I’d be able to write, I don’t have the time or the financial resources to make that happen.
First off, strike ‘daily’ from that mission statement above. I can’t manage daily updates; never have, likely never will.
Second, at least for now, the focus is going to be on Manga — some anime, some industry news, but an awful lot of manga. Because, well, that’s what I read, enjoy, and collect.
Your Pilot:
My name is Matt Blind and I’m soloing this thing. If and when other bridge crew decide to climb on board, I’ll set up some sort of contributor page to let you know who they are.
I’m a bookseller. I don’t own my own shop — I’m just field management for one of the big chains — but that’s what I do, where my knowledge base is, and the source of some of my bias. I’m also a hack writer, have been a blogger of one stripe or another since aught-four, am a voracious reader, and I have forgotten more about beer than the rest of you will ever know.
I’m also an otaku. If you know what that means, then pity me. But my love of the media (media, plural: both anime and manga) is part of what fuels this blog.
Our Privacy Policy
(we didn’t start out needing one, but now we do, and here it is)
I take your email addresses with me to the grave. I share nothing. I sell nothing. I just have this very odd hobby (ref. multiple years of manga rankings) and the only return I will ever get for the time wasted invested is the validation I receive after sharing the fruits of that effort with others. The email newsletter is just the latest extension of that. If I were at this to make money, I’d have picked something besides manga…
roll credits
Rocket Bomber runs on Textpattern 4.0.6. The CSS template is called Afterglow, originally by ‘wchulseiee’ and tweaked and optimised for Textpattern by Stuart at thebombsite.com. I’m modifying it in chunks, as needs and bugs arise, but downloading the base template was a big help.
RocketBomber.com entered testing back on 27 May 2008, and “launched” on 29 June 2008. The colour scheme inverted [black/red to white/green] on 29 October 2008, pulling us further and further away from ye olde Afterglow — but that was a shift that had to happen because black-on-white is just easier to read. (and I post some lists of eye-glazing length at least once a week.)
Some articles in the archives predate the official launch, because I ported over a large stack of material I originally wrote for Comicsnob.com. [note, 3 Nov: that process is ongoing and about 30% complete] The ‘snob was founded by my good friend Bob Holt, who invited me to contribute early in it’s life cycle (Dec. ’06) and where I happily infected his comic site with enough stuff about manga that eventually, it (and I) completely took over. Rocket Bomber is a direct successor to my work for Bob’s site; if you like anything here, then thank Bob.
