Justification of the blog title for anyone who was disappointed that I didn't take their suggestion

I’ve wanted to create a comics blog for about three months, but couldn’t find the perfect name. “Comics Adventurer?” “Adventure in Comic Land?” Every single idea I came up within that two-month time span involved “Adventures” and “Comics.” Perhaps post-college life has started to rot my brain? So I turned to people that are creative for a living, namely my cousin Liam, to find a name. We brainstormed ideas (“Robert Crumb is an old, lecherous idiot” was my personal favorite). I wanted something catchy that related to comics but not the process of creating them. His suggestions “The Blue Pencil” and “Drawing in the Margins”, while beautiful, referenced artistic implements and ideas. We finally came up with “Thought Balloons,” “Paper Tigress,” and “Growls and Grawlixes.” I then put these names to a vote, relying on my lovely friends on Facebook and my parents. The votes were tied, so I decided to combine two titles.

“Paper Tigress: Growls and Grawlixes of a Comics Adventurer”

I liked “Paper Tigress” for a few reasons. A paper tiger is something that looks dangerous, but in actuality is not. I liked the idea of using a title that explored perception vs. reality, a concept often explored in comics. “Paper” connected to the physicality of comics. Tigers, according to a 20-question online quiz, represent half of my soul. When I took the Daemon quiz on The Golden Compass website, I found out that my match would be a tiger, possibly because of my anti-social tendencies and fondness for stripes. I modified “tiger” to “tigress” because “Paper Tiger” was already taken by like 50 million people according to Google.

“Growls and Grawlixes” provides an auditory connection to the title. Tigers growl. Stomachs growl. I growl sometimes…especially when I’m talking about how much I hate parts of the comics community (fan boys, beware). “Grawlixes” is an exciting comics vocabulary word for swears written with a combination of the symbols @, !, #, $, etc. Because my blog is connected to the Fulbright Program, I am not allowed to swear, talk about sex (hopefully this doesn’t apply to graphic novels or else my discussion of Argentine comics will be limited) and drinking, and write negative things about Argentina/the USA. Basically, I am not allowed to embarrass the Fulbright Program in any way. So, if needed, I will use grawlixes. And finally, I added the “of a Comics Adventurer” because my title must indicate my blog’s connection to comic books.

Now that I’ve gone into detail on the title of my blog, I should probably explain what it is about and why you should care. But I’ll do that during my next post.