“Beware the Ides of March.”
Those words were written by a much better writer than I am. They come from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
According to the legend Julius Caesar was told to watch his back on the Ides of March (March 15th.) And of course it was on the 15th of March that Julius Caesar was assassinated. It was Shakespeare who inserted “Beware the Ides of March” into the pop culture lexicon.
I’d always thought it would be interesting to set up a monthly feature for Nexus contributors to participate in, with different themes for each month. Given that we were in March, it just seemed like the Ides of March would work as something to build a theme around.
So I interpreted “Ides of March” as a moment that was brutal, heartbreaking and a betrayal. I spread the word among the Nexus to think about best/worst betrayal in comicdom and the genre’s most brutal or heartbreaking moments. Then I asked them to write about what they came up with.
I even asked some of our supremely loyal voices in the forums to participate, because I believe that the forum is just as vital to the Nexus as our main page. They contribute to the site just as much as the staff, but in different ways.
My goal for the monthly features is to both give the site a more cohesive feel and show the strength of our diversity of voices. We’ve got writers with such varied tastes that it just seemed like a fun experiment to let them put their own spin on a theme.
Plus I also just wanted to give us another opportunity to gush about something that we all love; comic books.
So there you have it, it’s the introduction to the Ides of March. The rest of the month will feature periodic ruminations on some of comicdom’s darkest moments.
Or as the Big Two call it; business as usual.
