Normally I despise four-year-olds…

I’m not the most kid-friendly guy on the planet – there are very few children I can tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time. But today is the fourth birthday of a very special child: Comic Book Galaxy.

In its various incarnations, one thing has remained central to the site: Alan David Doane. Now, I know ADD rubs some people the wrong way – which of us can’t say the same? – and I know some people certainly rub him the wrong way. I know I’ve disagreed with him from time to time, but when I first started getting back into comics after a longer break from the medium, it was Alan who pointed me towards the books that reminded me of the medium’s potential. Like any reviewer I’ve ever read, Alan certainly recommended some books that I thought were utter dogshit, but I’ll take that with the proverbial grain of salt because the books he recommended that I truly loved by far make up for the $20 or so I spent on books I hated.

Without Comic Book Galaxy, there would be no Comic World News, that much I know. If memory serves me right, Caleb and Dan (the founders of CWN) were once a part of Comic Book Galaxy. And, without Comic Book Galaxy, I never would have e-mailed Caleb when the site was first looking for reviewers. While Caleb and Dan had been long gone from CBG before I first found it, reading Comic Book Galaxy and the books ADD recommended got me reinvested enough in the comics scene to decide that not only does intelligent comics discussion have a place on the internet, but that I wanted to find my place in it as well. I certainly wouldn’t have pushed so hard for CWN to take a more independent, alternative and art-comix slant without CBG’s influence.

So, when this blog starts pissing you off, or if any of my old columns ever rubbed you the wrong way because I insisted you try something other than people in long underwear beating each other only to realize that they should join forces to beat other long underwear-wearing people, look no further than Alan.

He’s partially to blame, and I love him for it - even when he's "rubbing me the wrong way," like a shitty Christina Aguilera song inverted.

Here’s looking forward to four more years of CBG, and hopefully four more years of Alan’s Five Questions at Newsarama. God knows some of those cats need someone to point them in the right direction.