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One Year of PopMeC: A letter from the Chief Editor (to the Editorial Team)

[featured image is the cover of Vaughan, Martin, and Vicente’s Barrier #3, published by Panel Syndicate]

One year ago PopMeC was born. In a struggle to challenge the stale and uninspiring sides of academia, it was born from a crazy idea and a few people who believed in it. We kicked it off with excitement, wrote articles, planned a conference, and then—as cliché as it sounds already—the pandemic came.

I was stranded in Spain with one-week worth of luggage, and lucky enough to find a flat I even managed to furnish with a bed on the very day the lockdown started. I got sick like a dog with covid, lost my sense of smell for so many weeks I thought it was gone forever, nailed one deadline after the other because I had to anyway. But mine is just one bit of the rollercoaster, as each editor has been fighting their own battle all along. And yet, PopMeC has never taken a break: it’s been a way to stimulate each other, share a joke, let steam out, have a tiny happy research island where the mood is laid-back and the academic work professional. A way to check on the friends I call editors through the surreal times we’ve been living.

PopMeC wouldn’t be the engaging collective it is on its first birthday without the amazing work its editorial team has been doing. Those who have worked with me the most know well how I can be playful ballbreaker, reliable workaholic, quirky nerd, mellow captain, hot swearer, and unimpressed bitch altogether. No matter how indulgent and easygoing I am intimately, they know that when it comes to work I can be fastidiously effective, ruthless when needed, and hardly fooled (if you think I am, better revise your assessment ;). I keep an eye on what each and every one delivers, keep track of it all, take care of behind-the-scenes work, question our projects all the time to get the best out of them. I write my editors emails (and we share WhatsApp messages, brainstorms, dirty jokes) whenever ideas, feedback bits, or answers to their doubts cross my mind. And yet, I wouldn’t possibly achieve a single thing without the trust I have in them and their quintessential contribution, energy, ideas, shared love for research. They value good academic and editorial practice, break my balls when needed, ask me, point out issues, propose solutions, and they sure accept a challenge.

You’re not my editors because I’m in charge despite the horizontality I strive for all the time. You’re my editors because I’m lucky to work with such a great group of minds. Because if you’re my editors I can learn how to make this better, be available, push your ideas, listen, support, acknowledge, and care of y’all while I’m at it. Thank you—the old and the new ones—for believing in the crazy idea PopMeC was born from, sharing the effort, and producing such badass pop stuff.

And now back to work, on to a fresh new year of PopMec’ing!

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Anna Marta Marini (December 18, 2020). One Year of PopMeC: A letter from the Chief Editor (to the Editorial Team). PopMeC research blog. Retrieved November 9, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/szej


Anna Marta Marini

PhD fellow in North American Studies @ Instituto Franklin–UAH. My main research interests are: CDA related to direct/structural/cultural violence; discursive and cultural representation of the US borderlands and Mexican American heritage; identity re/construction and narration through cinema and comics, especially related to minorities as well as otherness in gothic, horror, and (weird)western genres.

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