Goodbye, Rampage.

Well, if you're reading this, you probably already know that Fanboy Rampage is going tits up, joining Journalista! and other missed blogs in the Archivosphere (or whatever we call the place where blogs go to die).

In feeble attempts to amuse other nerds on the internet, I sometimes try to make little song parodies instead of saying anything of merit. It passes the time at work. Back in March, I started joking around with Graeme about how Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" would almost be the perfect song to parody for the end of Fanboy Rampage:

Byrne goes crazy, Busiek wins, Mike S. Miller back again
Crossgen's shot, creators' cocks, Rangergate, K-Box
Demo vs. NYX, nerd unrest, WizardWorld Rapefest
Baker_Baker goes wild, Gwen Stacy gets defiled.

Except, you know, doing an entire song parody by digging through two years and thousands of posts is a lot of work, and I'm lazy. So, instead, I'm going to stick to the straight prose.

First of all, I'm rather biased when it comes to talking about Fanboy Rampage--I'm one of the people who posted there regularly. I was even a part of that rather horrendous "Fill-In Rampage" thing, where the blog ate itself alive waiting for Graeme to get back and make it good again. But, more than that, I'm kind of sweet on Graeme. It was Graeme and a few others that pestered me into starting this blog. In the past three or four years (I'm not good with remembering when things happen), Graeme's become one of my favorite people, and one of those people I don't hesitate to call a friend despite never having been in the same room (or even state) with him. Plus, he's turned me onto some excellent things like Nellie McKay that I wouldn't have found on my own, so cheers for that.

What was Fanboy Rampage, exactly? Was it "the conscience of the internerd," as some people have said? Was it the lowest of the low, with nerds picking on other nerds in order to feel better about their own nerdery? Was it the comics blogosphere's equivalent of a gossip rag/tabloid, with creator blow-ups and fanboy whining acting as a conceptual Bat Boy or a "World's Oldest Woman Gives Birth To Horse?" Some combination of the above, with some other stuff mixed in?

Don't be crazy. It was a blog. A damned fine blog helmed by a witty guy, a fanboy himself, who was willing to point out the excesses in others as much as he was willing to do the same for himself.

It really seems time, though, doesn't it? Sometimes, it seemed like people were trying to get quoted on it, purposefully being ridiculous in order to find out who rampages the rampagers, or something. And, towards the end, more people started coming in to the blog. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but the recent Raven Gregory post and subsequent comments section really showed the place at its worst--a whole bunch of anonymous new people with names like "Batperiscope1411" carried their grudges against Gregory into the comments thread, saying things even Gregory's harshest critics probably wouldn't say publically. Odd, though, how all those came after the Bendis Board linked back to that entry? What Warren Ellis said in that thread pretty much sums it up for me:
"Making [extremely personal attacks we're not repeating here to start that shit again] -- and getting away with it, and having the comments remain in the public eye -- is just fucking disgusting, and, I suspect, partly illuminating why FbR is going away."

In the end, maybe it became a message board after all.

I'm not against message boards--I still post to a few. And Fanboy Rampage did, in it's own way, serve as a message board and as a community in a lot of ways. I know I've met people through it, and I'm quite fond of some of them--even some of the ones I argued with.

I wonder what the "next Fanboy Rampage" will be. I hope it's not going to be just a heartless (in approach and/or in concept) rehashing of what Graeme was doing (I mean, aside from fucking off at work), but at least one of those clones will probably pop up. Maybe it'll be something with all-original content, like the parody site Your Mom's Basement. Maybe someone will put together a new linkblog using Google News, RSS feeds and other technology to bash things with a hammer of snark.

And maybe Graeme, rocking a mullet, will come back in a few months to stir up shit again.

For better or worse, Fanboy Rampage chronicled some crazy ass shit that happened in the realm of comics news and discussion, and sometimes inspired some crazy ass shit of its own. I wouldn't be surprised to find Graeme blogging again sometime down the road, but even if he doesn't, I'm guessing he'll be somewhere doing something--commenting on other blogs, sticking with his column for the near future (or going to another site), or, heck, maybe doing a comic of his own.

Cheers, Graeme. Thanks for two years of pointing out things I wouldn't have bothered to look for on my own, distracting me from my day job, and all that jazz.