Last week I launched The Spinner Rack, a site that automatically aggregates information about comics from multiple sources, including publishers’ social media accounts, news sites, and trending hashtags.

It was pretty basic, and while most of the content was dynamically-updated, the site itself was mostly static, and the posts linking to the feed content were just lists of text with no images or excerpts.

Since that time, I’ve added some functionality and made it more dynamic, and made some changes to the overall appearance.

It’s still not even close to being what I want it to be, but on the bright side, it’s not getting any traffic, so it really doesn’t matter that it doesn’t do what I want it to do.

Wait, what? That’s not the bright side. At all.

But it is a fact. Nobody – statistically-speaking, anyway – is looking at it and seeing what it has to offer. No. Body.

I can’t blame them, either – though I do, at least a little, because I’m a bitter little man – because, like OpenDoor Comics itself, it doesn’t really have a lot going for it. Sure, it performs the basic function, but it doesn’t do so with any kind of style or panache, or in a way that makes it superior to any alternatives, or even to no alternatives.

Even if it were, right at this moment, everything I envision it to be – and I could be talking about either The Spinner Rack or ODC itself or both – maybe…maybe it still wouldn’t be terribly compelling.

But I don’t believe that, and not just because I can’t bring myself to believe it.

When it’s become the expectation that a comic book movie will make more than a billion dollars – and it will be considered a failure if it falls short of that number – and adaptations of material that began as comics dominate popular culture, you can’t tell me that there’s nothing compelling about the idea of a site that pulls together information from a wealth of sources and presents it in a way that gives you – as a fan or as a pro – a readout on the general state of all things comics.

You also can’t tell me that there’s no need for a community that is open and supportive and is dedicated to finding new and better ways to share ideas and a love of the medium, one that is dedicated to driving out toxicity and giving a voice to those we have spent too long refusing to hear.

That is my vision for all of this, the goal I’m working towards, and I can’t be convinced that it’s not worth my time (and money) or yours.

Maybe I’m not the right person for the job. Sure, I’ve got the vision, and the ideas, and some useful skills, but I don’t seem to be able to sell anyone on any of it, or deliver a product that can sell itself.

But I’m the one who’s trying.

One thing I can say for sure, though, is that I can’t do it all alone. For various reasons, I’m not great at asking for help.

Which is why I’m doing such a bad job of it right now, but the point is…help.

Do all of the stuff you can to support OpenDoor Comics and The Spinner Rack and the underlying vision. Visit the sites. Turn off your ad blockers. Become a Patron. Donate. Share links. Make your own comics. Provide feedback and suggestions.

If I can get this little endeavor to start paying for itself, and paying me for my time, I can start devoting more of my time to all of it and also start paying others for their time and start moving that much closer to achieving the vision.

Every little bit helps.

The title of this post comes from a song by The Spin Doctors. Given that the post is about The Spinner Rack and the song is full of comic book references, and I’ve kind of got the blues, it seemed like a clever idea at the time.

…

Maybe I shouldn’t be the one trying to do this stuff.

Anyway, here’s the boilerplate message…

Supporting OpenDoor Comicsis a thing you can do, by whitelisting the site in your ad blocker, by purchasing something from the OpenDoor Comics Shop, by creating your own comics on the OpenDoor Comics platform, or through directly giving money via Patreon or PayPal.