Comic blog hero

Rachelle Goguen's blog Living Between Wednesdays has become so popular she'll appear in Batman Strikes this summer.

by Carsten Knox

A lot of commercial websites would kill for 30,000 hits a month. Rachelle Goguen has seen that kind of traffic on her comics blog Living Between Wednesdays, and she's never done any advertising. All it took was a little controversy. "I wrote an open letter to one of the editors at DC--- that got a lot of attention," she says.

Though Goguen, 27, does her best to be constructive about comic books on Living Between Wednesdays, if something annoys her, she doesn't hesitate to respond. Her open letter in January 2007 was a reaction to a DC comics editorial, written to encourage female readers to pick up Supergirl comics. "I was insulted because Supergirl was such a bad comic at the time. It never occurred to me that Supergirl was intended for women. It just seemed like a crazy male fantasy, a poorly thought-out character.

"One of the writers of Supergirl wrote back to me," she says, pointing out the title is much improved since she wrote the letter. "He was mad at me because I called a douchebag."

The blog started as a collective, something where Goguen and three of her friends would be "women who write about comics," but she was the only one who committed to it regularly. On her own, she decided that as an antidote to a lot of negativity in blogosphere, she'd try and be more supportive, poorly written and drawn Supergirl comics not withstanding. "A lot of people just complain on their blogs. If you go on Newsarama and you look on the message boards, it's just people complaining and insulting people. I thought it would be nice to be positive and silly."

Goguen recommends to other people starting their own blogs to post regularly and often on websites with the same interests. "Post a lot of comments, with a link to your blog when they click on your name. Eventually people are going to start checkingyou out."

The popularity of Living Between Wednesdays---the name is inspired by the fact new comics come out on Wednesdays---has attracted the attention of big names in the comics industry. Josh Elder, the writer of Batman Strikes, a DC comic aimed at a younger audience, is such a fan he's going to write Goguen into an issue this summer. "I guess I'm going to be a Gotham City police officer. Commissioner Gordon is going to ask me to light the bat signal. That was what I was told, anyway," she says, laughing.

"I am so impressed by how many hits she gets. It blows my mind," writes Adam Daughhetee in an email. He helps put together a popular American comic blog called The Dollar Bin. "What appeals to me so much about LBW is how much she loves comics, and she's not blindly in love (though sometimes she may squint a little)."

The only problem with having such a popular blog is maintaining it. Goguen, who has written for The Coast, is currently finishing her MBA at Saint Mary's, working part time at Strange Adventures comic-book shop, and performing in local rock band The Stolen Minks. That doesn't leave much time for posting content online.

"When I don't have time to write about something that's really obviously sexist in comics that week I feel like I'm letting people down. A comic blog isn't a bad forum for it because it's being read mostly by men who maybe don't think about that."

Goguen is finding the time this weekend to attend her first convention, the Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she'll be seated in the media section with the Dollar Bin guys.

"I'm excited to meet other bloggers that I read all the time, too," she says. "But I was thinking, I don't want to sit at a table, really. Why would anyone want to talk to me when Ed Brubaker is there? I don't do anything, I'm just a fan."

Daughhetee expects Goguen will get some love from the convention goers. He knows of people who are "being swayed over to attending simply because she's announced she'd be there. I think she'll be shocked by how many people recognize her and will want to finally speak face to face."

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