Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 25, 2022 21:20:06 GMT -5
Happy birthday Confessor! I hope celebrations of some sort were in order. Was there any special birthday music you listened to? Not really "Birthday music" as such, but a small group of my friends came back to mine after a day spent drinking in bars and we gave a Link Wray compilation, The Beatles' Let It Be, and R.E.M.'s Murmur a listen.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 25, 2022 0:58:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I like Trotter as the name of a wandering Hobbit ranger-type character. But Bingo would've been a major misstep had Frodo ended up being called that.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 25, 2022 0:49:57 GMT -5
I Haven't participated in the contest for years -- in fact, we might've been back on the old forum last time! But my self-imposed rule was that I could only post covers of comics that I owned, but within that "rule" it was usually whatever came into my head.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 24, 2022 11:33:34 GMT -5
I'm not a Conservative voter, as you probably know, but I've been saying for the last 5 or so years that Rishi Sunak would be Britain's first Asian Prime Minister. I thought I'd ballsed that prediction up when he lost the leadership contest to Liz Truss, but it now looks as if I'm back in with a shot of being right (and consequently being all smug in public ). The Tory party is an unbelievable shambles right now. It's hugely embarrassing on the world stage and it must be embarrassing for a lot of Tory voters too. I have a couple of friends who are both staunch Tory supporters (and one time paid up members of the party, in fact) and they both tell me that they consider Boris's personal conduct and the hopeless ineptitude of Liz Truss's term to be awful stains on the reputation of the party they passionately believe in. I just hope whoever ends up in charge of the Conservatives next can get a handle on things and try to keep the country on a relatively even keel until the General Election next year. I won my wagers, all in good fun of course but still some nice coin...and although I have a tory background the past few weeks have been downright atrocious. I hope that's on the mend now. Yeah, and I'm feeling particularly smug at having been proven correct in my prediction of the past 5 or so years about the identity of Britain's first Asian Prime Minister. I would think that having a former chancellor of the exchequer as PM, with Jeremy Hunt as the current chancellor, will at the very least reassure the financial markets, which will be a good thing after this recent period of unprecedented turmoil. That's something I suppose. Beyond that, we'll have to wait and see.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 22, 2022 5:43:46 GMT -5
So I placed a wager with a friend...he is backing BoJo...I am betting on Rishi...we are both staring at the unbelievable turn of events in England...I should have wagered on that lettuce too. I'm not a Conservative voter, as you probably know, but I've been saying for the last 5 or so years that Rishi Sunak would be Britain's first Asian Prime Minister. I thought I'd ballsed that prediction up when he lost the leadership contest to Liz Truss, but it now looks as if I'm back in with a shot of being right (and consequently being all smug in public ). The Tory party is an unbelievable shambles right now. It's hugely embarrassing on the world stage and it must be embarrassing for a lot of Tory voters too. I have a couple of friends who are both staunch Tory supporters (and one time paid up members of the party, in fact) and they both tell me that they consider Boris's personal conduct and the hopeless ineptitude of Liz Truss's term to be awful stains on the reputation of the party they passionately believe in. I just hope whoever ends up in charge of the Conservatives next can get a handle on things and try to keep the country on a relatively even keel until the General Election next year.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 21, 2022 22:10:25 GMT -5
Well, it's my birthday today. The big 50! Not quite sure how this has been allowed to happen. I mean, surely I'm still only 32 or something?!
Anyway, it's better than being dead.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 19, 2022 17:43:40 GMT -5
Nice idea, Cody, and nice playlist too -- though the absence of "Heroes and Villains" by The Beach Boys is shocking! I know most of those songs on there, but there are a few random tracks I've not heard. Looking forward to listening to the full play list over the next day or two.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 17, 2022 3:14:55 GMT -5
On the upside, that leaves more time to re-read The Silmarillion. Honest Injun: give it a try with Foster's Guide to Middle-Earth near at hand. The Silmarillion is an amazing epic if you can check who heck Maglor is and how he's related to Finrod! (I never could remember at first). Ha! I will definitely read it one of these fine days. I have Foster's guide, the Atlas of Middle-earth, and The Silmarillion in its entirety on audio book (read by Martin Shaw) to help me get through it and actually absorb it. In the past, I've just found it utterly impenetrable. I did read on Reddit someone suggesting reading some of the more accessible chapters first, such as "Beren and Lúthien" or "The Coming of Men into the West", as a gateway into the book in its entirety. What would your opinion of that idea be?
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 16, 2022 11:52:16 GMT -5
I have to say, I really have very little interest in Rings of Power. I mean, I don't have an Amazon Prime subscription on my TV anyway, but I certainly wouldn't get one just to watch this.
From what I've seen online, it looks visually impressive, but I think part of my disinterest is due to the stories not actually being by Tolkien, with only the broadest backdrop details being the Professor's. Myself, I'm a fan of Tolkien's works themselves, and honestly, I can't even really say that I'm particularly a fan of fantasy as a genre, outside of Tolkien's stuff and having played D&D as a kid.
I like Tolkien's way of writing, his character development, his dialogue, and that's why I can still enjoy adaptations of LOTRs such as the Ralph Bakshi cartoon, the BBC radio dramatisation, and the Peter Jackson trilogy, because they all follow the plot and dialogue of the books fairly closely. It's also, incidentally, why I disliked the Hobbit trilogy so much: too much Hollywood screenwriter crap shoehorned into Tolkien's existing work for me.
The existence of The Rings of Power just leaves me feeling "meh" because it is, except for some of the characters and the general Middle-Earth setting, entirely "Hollywood screenwriter crap". I'm not saying its poorly written, mind you, because after all I've not watched it; I'm just saying that it isn't an adaptation of something written by Tolkien, so that diminishes my enthusiasm for it. I just can't muster any excitement over it at all, I'm afraid.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 15, 2022 16:49:58 GMT -5
I agree with Confessor about OMD. Yeah, right on, brother! Preach it! Also the Sins Past story with the Gwen/Osborn hook up/rape was maddening. Oh... Actually, I rather like Sins Past.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 15, 2022 16:47:47 GMT -5
It is the reason I would not dare say the team of Ditko and Lee on Spider-Man or Simon and Kirby on Captain America were the greatest of teams at their respective origin points with those characters, since their creations needed the minds and talents of others to truly turn those creations into representations of the characters (and creative teams) at their best.
While I get how people might prefer the Lee/Romita Spider-Man, or other later incarnations, I don't agree that it was not great under Ditko and Lee. Those issues are all-time classics. O don't agree Spider=Man needed later talents to make it what it was. It's all there in those early issues.The bolded is absolutely my opinion too. Asthetically, I probably do prefer the Romita era over the Ditko one, just ever so slightly, but everything that made or makes Spider-Man such a great and popular superhero was 100% all there in the Ditko run. That's not to diminish later creatives like Romita's contributions at all: his run on ASM is one of my "holy trinity" of comics runs. But its not like Spider-Man was a good basic idea in need of lots of help and development from later writers and artists to make it great. AF #15 and ASM #1-38 are already great.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 14, 2022 23:45:37 GMT -5
I'm really not somebody who normally gets their knickers in a twist over superhero comics, but the "One More Day"/"Brand New Day" clusterf**k in Amazing Spider-Man back in 2007, where Peter Parker and MJ had their marriage erased by Mephisto in order to save Aunt May's life, made me so furious that I hurled the last part of OMD across the room in utter disgust. The attendant continuity reboot it caused and the retconning of basically every Spider-Man comic since 1987 as a result was the moment when "my" Spider-Man -- the character I'd grown up reading -- ended.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 14, 2022 23:13:28 GMT -5
The picture was not big enough for me to see the lettering for the code, but... there actually is another mistake, an art mistake. Valkerie is behind Hellcat, yet her left hand, which is pointing away from Hellcat, is actually in front of Hellcat. I think Valkyrie is diagonally crossing over Hellcat, who is going diagonally the other way beneath her. That's how I see it anyway.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 14, 2022 23:09:00 GMT -5
I dunno about Greatest in terms of their impact on comics, but off the top of my head the writer/artists whose work I enjoy the most are...
Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Stan Lee/John Romita Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson Kurt Busiek/Brent Anderson David Michelinie/Walt Simonson John Wagner/Brian Bolland Pat Mills/Joe Colquhoun Jo Duffy/Ron Frenz Kurt Busiek/Alex Ross Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Gerry Conway/Ross Andru Bill Mantlo/Ed Hannigan
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,581
|
Post by Confessor on Oct 13, 2022 16:32:47 GMT -5
I really like the John Carter: Warlord of Mars series, but does it really count as an "underachieving 70s title"? I always understood that sales were quite strong for the most part. It also won an Eagle Award in the late 70s and continued to be published for 2 and a half years (over 30 separate issues, including the three annuals). It must've been pretty successful for a while there, I would think.
|
|