Three years ago today our first post went live.  It was a poorly written essay about how Batman could work on television and a list of shows I want to see.

You can see the original article, “How Batman Could be the Greatest Scripted Drama on Television” here.

There’s still one show on that list I’m still dying to see, and it’s a Gotham Central show.  Here’s my original rundown of it:

GOTHAM CENTRAL: It seems that just about every show on television is either Law and Order, a Law and Order spin-off or some type of Crime Scene Investigation. Well, Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s real-world take is that entire sort of thing only better and with the Bat. Imagine a show where cops are running down leads, and trying to get their job done and well, only to have the villains wrapped in a bow by Batman. This only serves to annoy and demoralize them. And really, who watches over the city during the day when Batman sleeps? This is that story and it would quickly become must-see TV. Killing Joke would be great to see from this perspective as well.

It’s taken us three years to get here.  And more people this month so far have visited the website than in our entire first year.  Going back through those original articles it’s pretty obvious we’ve grown considerably.  We’ve learned a lot about writing and content, we’ve learned a lot about what people want to see, and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves.

But when Lucas Ackley (Kill-tacular-tron) and I started Big Shiny Robot!, it was so we could have fun and disseminate our opinions on the geeky news of the day.  In the intervening three years we’ve grown from a website that simply gathers news into a website that originates it.  Because of Big Shiny Robot! I’ve been able to meet George Lucas and ask Jon Stewart questions, Lucas was able to interview Ernie Hudson (thanks to his love of Ghostbusters), and many of the other contributers that have volunteered their time to the site and in return been able to create some pretty great moments for both themselves and the site.

In three years we’ve had more than 2.2 million visitors, we’ve published almost 3,500 articles (almost 1,100 of which I’ve written personally) and we’ve had more than 30 contributers.

Lucas and  I want to take this time out to thank all of the people who write for the site and those of you who read it for helping us get to where we’re going.  We do it because we love it, and it’s fun for us, but we hope you love it, too.

I can’t wait to see where we’re at for our 4th anniversary.

We’d also love for you to come celebrate with us.  I’m sure most of you have heard we’re having a party this coming Sunday.  You can get the full details here. But more than anything, we’re going to drink (a favorite pastime of robots we learned best from one of our patron saints, Bender B. Rodriguez) and watch one of our favorite movies about a Big Shiny Robot!, Brad Bird’s “The Iron Giant.”

Thanks again, and we hope to see you there!