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Post by Randle-El on Aug 11, 2014 13:42:57 GMT -5
For me, it's not so much keeping up with a weekly title vs. having a single title amount to essentially 4-5 titles in dollars. I'd rather spend the same amount of money on additional titles. If 4 titles are telling a single story over 4 weeks (a la No Man's Land, Triangle era Superman, the many Spider-title cross-overs of the 9os like Maximum Carnage, etc.), is there any difference from that to one title giving 4 installments of a single story over a month? It's still essentially 1 story you have to buy 4 issues to read isn't it? -M Yes, but I also dislike crossovers over multiple titles. I don't like having to buy another title that I don't normally get pulled just to complete the story. And for the title I do get pulled, I don't like that, more often than not, the regular ongoing story is getting interrupted for the crossover. With the weekly books, it's more of a budget and pull list thing. I have so many dollars a month I'm going to spend on comics. I'm already used to the model of reading monthly installments of a serialized story. So in any given month, I'd rather spend that money to read as many different titles as I can, rather than commit to a weekly shipping book that effectively takes up 4 or 5 spots on my pull list. It's all about maximizing my pull list.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 11, 2014 11:50:23 GMT -5
For me, it's not so much keeping up with a weekly title vs. having a single title amount to essentially 4-5 titles in dollars. I'd rather spend the same amount of money on additional titles.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 5, 2014 13:25:30 GMT -5
Let's see, Michael Bay and Megan Fox? Good luck with that.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 5, 2014 10:57:35 GMT -5
If you want to compare each character's stature in the comic world pre- and post-Miller, he undoubtedly had the greater impact on Daredevil. As Jez pointed out, Daredevil was a second-tier character whose book was on the verge of being cancelled when Miller was brought on. He managed to transform Daredevil into one of Marvel's more popular (though still B-list, I would argue) characters. Batman, on the other hand, was always an A-list character for DC before and after Miller's work.
However, I think if you measure Miller's impact as it concerns his influence on other creators and the direction the characters have taken since his time with them, I think the scales tip in favor of Batman. Of the writers who have been on Daredevil since Miller, Mark Waid seems to have been the most successful at escaping from under Miller's shadow, both in terms of longevity and reception. Kesel also did a run that was a lighter take on the character, though it was pretty short. Ann Nocenti, having had the unenviable task of taking the reins from Miller after Born Again, retained elements of Miller's run, but I think made a brave attempt to differentiate her Daredevil in some unorthodox ways -- the political aspects of her writing, and injecting a supernatural component via the Mephisto storyline. On the other hand, as chadwilliam pointed out, I don't know that you can count the same kind of diversity in Batman's writing since Miller.
The thing I find to be intriguing is Miller's influence on each character relative to the output he produced. Miller had an extended run on the main Daredevil title of about 30 issues (more if you count the start of his run as penciller, though I don't know how much say he had in plot), in addition to the Man Without Fear limited series. His Daredevil run is widely considered to be the best run on the character. For Batman, he produced four out-of-continuity limited series, one which was never completed and widely panned (All-Star), and another which had a lukewarm reception (Dark Knight Strikes Again), yet he is still credited with having such an influential role in shaping Batman. To me, the accolades for Batman just don't seem to be in proportion to the size and quality of his output. Then again, I'm one of those guys who thinks DKR is overrated, so what do I know.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 4, 2014 0:51:19 GMT -5
As I'm not as familiar with Daredevil as I am Batman I can't really compare the two, but I do know that Mark Waid is currently writing a version of Matt Murdock that doesn't seem to be too difficult to reconcile with the pre-Born Again version of the character. I don't know however, if the same approach would even be attempted nowadays with Batman. Even when doing a story inspired by and set during some of Batman's more outrageous Silver Age adventures, Grant Morrison still seemed to be using Frank Miller's (or at least, a Frank Miller influenced) template for the character. I mean, if you can't revisit the Jack Schiff era of Batman without using Miller's unbalanced and obsessed intrepetation of Batman as your go-to setting, then yeah, it's hard for me to believe that he had an even greater impact on another character. Interesting fact - Frank Miller's involvement with Batman (to the extent that his ideas were severely changing the character) actually goes back to Batman and the Outsiders. At the end of the first issue, Mike Barr gives thanks to a few other creators mentioning that they helped shape the Batman we'd be seeing in that title. One of those creators was Frank Miller. I don't know who came up with what, but the Batman in that series (at least with regards to the early issues) really feels like the Batman we wouldn't really be introduced to until Dark Knight/Year One. The team even finds its origins in Superman acting like a government stooge (something the character would never be prior to this story) and has Batman complimenting one of his men when he throws a dictator to his people to be torn apart ("I like the way you think" he remarks). That's kind of a tangent, but I thought it worth throwing into the mix. Although I'm not a Frank Miller fan, he did come up with some ideas that were inspired. He was the one who figured out which movie the Waynes watched the night of their murder for instance, and by establishing that Alfred served as the Waynes butler since Bruce Wayne was a boy, he pretty much ensured that from this moment on, Alfred would play a far greater role in Batman's life than he had before. I can't help but be impressed by the way this minor detail now made it almost essential for Alfred to possess a dry, caustic wit that had been absent during his first 43 years of existence. A butler who only met Bruce Wayne after his career as Batman had begun would be out of line to sarcastically comment on his crimefighting, but as a member of the family who had helped raise him, it would never feel inappropriate. I think however, that while Miller's impact on Batman was and remains unquestionably huge, it has nonetheless been an negative one. It strikes me as odd to hear about how much damage the Adam West series has had on Batman when the existence of that show never stood in the way of us getting the Robbins/Novick/O Neil/Adams version just one year after Batmania took off, or the Frank Miller version 20 years later, yet here we are almost 30 years after Dark Knight and it's the mentally unhinged, emotionally unstable, man-child that prevents any better interpretations from coming to the fore. Again though, I'm not familiar enough with Daredevil to say whether or not he has these problems, but it does at least feel as if a writer has more possibilities when writing him than he or she would with Batman. Great analysis. I loved Miller's work on Daredevil, but for me his work on Batman is uneven. I loved Year One, but found DKR to be overrated. To me, the portrayals of Batman in the two stories were really different. DKR Batman came off as more of a violent and sociopathic character. I haven't read All-Star Batman, but it sounds like Miller took the Batman in DKR and really ran with it for All-Star. Miller took Daredevil to some dark places in his books, but I don't think he ever quite made him to be an anti-hero on the level of his Batman.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 4, 2014 0:24:06 GMT -5
Ah right --- gotcha, thanks for clearing that up. I always associate "X-Men" as Lee/Kirby era (unless you're talking about the Jim Lee and Claremont one), and "Uncanny" as Claremont era. And I forgot that they switched the title from Classic X-Men to X-Men Classic part of the way through the run. It didn't even occur to me until now that the change happened when they started reprinting the issues following the addition of "Uncanny" to the title. Learn something new every day!
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 3, 2014 16:14:36 GMT -5
Frank Miller's shadow on both of these characters looms large. Nearly every creator that has worked on Batman or Daredevil always mentions his name as being part of their creative process -- whether it's to express their admiration, acknowledge his influence, or indicate a desire to differentiate from his take on the characters. Which character do you think he had the greater impact on? Was his work on Batman better than his run on Daredevil? Discuss!
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 3, 2014 15:32:40 GMT -5
I have the entire original Claremont run on Uncanny X-Men, but I've been picking up his original X-Men run in Classic X-Men instead both because they're cheaper and they have more material! Can't go wrong with more Claremont X-Men. Neither the new pages nor most of the backups are available anywhere else. I don't understand this statement. Claremont's original run on Uncanny X-Men was issues 94-279. Classic X-Men reprints Uncanny X-men issues 94-206.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 2, 2014 10:47:42 GMT -5
That goes for any comic purchased on-line. However, a seasoned seller takes enough photos of the book being offered to give reasonable proof of the condition, ie WYSIWYG. To me, that's better than buying directly from other sources that only offer a stock-photo next to the assigned grades. I agree. I tend to stay away from any eBay seller that uses stock photos. That goes for comics, or any other type of merchandise. Regarding my previous comment: It just occurred to me that buyers bidding more cautiously (and thus skewing prices slightly lower) since they can't inspect the book is probably offset somewhat by the last-minute auction frenzy of buyers who are determined not to let a book slip through their fingers. I know I've bid on a few items in the past where I probably paid a little more than I would have normally just because I got caught up in the bidding war. So perhaps that balances out against any conservative bidding that occurs.
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Post by Randle-El on Aug 2, 2014 1:18:09 GMT -5
eBay is a bit tricky, since people can't physically inspect the merchandise beforehand, so that tends to affect how people bid or make offers. But I agree that in general it's opened up the market by providing actual sales data. That was my complaint about the Overstreet Guide... some secret cabal of retailers who are "reporting" their sales data that nobody else sees in order to determine back issue prices. The values in the book are reported by the same guys who are doing the selling -- how that not be a conflict of interest?
I still find it pretty astounding that people think Mile High is a good place to buy back issues for a fair price.
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 31, 2014 23:05:48 GMT -5
Chuck's website looks like websites I used to make in 1995 writing HTML code in Windows Notepad. I'm surprised he doesn't have an intro page that asks if you want a frames/no-frames version of his site.
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 30, 2014 22:45:08 GMT -5
Your taste in games and mine are the same, it seems. The games I usually play are single player RPG's or adventure games that take 40+ hours just to complete the main quest. The plus for me is that after playing for a month or so, I'll take a month or two off and barely play at all, mostly out of burn out. I finally got into Oblivion and 40 hours in, I've barely scratched the surface. Thankfully, I don't have kids. Once I start Skyrim, if I did have kids, I'd probably have Child Services called on me for neglect. (I kid, parents.) I have the exact same boom-bust cycles when it comes to gaming. Typically what happens is I buy a new game, get really really into it and start playing it obsessively until I beat it. But beating it typically also means pursuing every little side quest, exploring every little nook and cranny of game world, finding all the secrets, etc. Then after I've completed it, if it's a game like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic, I'll complete it again using a different character to see the different endings. After that, I usually take a few months off from gaming to pay attention to all the other stuff I missed while gaming. That cycle used to work when I was single or married before kids. I have a pretty good feeling that neglecting my kids for a few months wouldn't work at all... heck, neglecting them for a few MINUTES wouldn't even work around here! By the way, the Elder Scrolls series was always one that I wanted to get into. The immersive experience of it sounds exactly right up my alley. But that's also way I'm very afraid of them as well... people might not see me for a long time if I started up with one of them. Actually, now that I think about it -- there are a lot of activities that I try to avoid, or at least engage in very very occasionally, not because my self-control is so great or because I'm not that into it or because I think it's bad, but because I'm afraid that I would enjoy it *too* much. A lot of my friends play poker or golf, and I've tried to stay away from both of them because of the time and/or money that I know I would eventually sink into it. I have enough time and money sinking hobbies as it is!
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 30, 2014 13:33:00 GMT -5
I noticed that the final issue of Fatale is hitting the shops today. Anyone following this series? I had been thinking of checking it out, but when I heard that it was going to end soon, I decided to wait until I could pick up the entire series and read it all the way through. Is it worth getting the whole thing? Mix Lovecraft and noir with Bru writing and Phillips gorgeous art and I'm a fan. I was in at issue 1 and been following since. There has been a lull here and there in the run, but overall it's one of my favorite series since I got back into new comics again early in 2012. -M Good to hear. I'm thinking of trying to track down the series in single issues rather than trade. It'll be more expensive, but I really love the cover art for this series. This was one of those titles where I knew nothing about it but was inclined to check it on just on the cover art alone.
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 30, 2014 13:20:12 GMT -5
I noticed that the final issue of Fatale is hitting the shops today. Anyone following this series? I had been thinking of checking it out, but when I heard that it was going to end soon, I decided to wait until I could pick up the entire series and read it all the way through. Is it worth getting the whole thing?
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 30, 2014 10:24:33 GMT -5
I'm not very enthused about the new Wonder Woman costume; its not so much the design but the color. I fear in the new DCU that Wonder Woman will be reduced to just another darker/overtones character much in the same vein as Superman in Man of Steel. Agreed. The new WW costume is not surprising given the direction Warner has been taking with the DC films. I'm not even a big WW fan, but as a comic and superhero fan in general, I had hope they would at least be respectful of her origins and at least be faithful with the color scheme. Near as I can tell, the movie costume doesn't even use the color scheme of the comics AT ALL.
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