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Post by rberman on Apr 24, 2024 19:52:49 GMT -5
I wonder why it fails so spectacularly when you ask about comics. It usually gives valid answers about movies or books. I know nothing about technology, but could the speed with which it answers means it conflates unrelated things and gives an inaccurate answer? Would an AI that gives you an answer within ten minutes, after trawling through pages, be more accurate? I know technology is wonderful, but ChatGPT gives you answers within a nanosecond, is that enough time for even an AI to be accurate? ChatGPT does not go out to read new information when you ask it something. Rather, it has already been trained on all the available text on the Internet, including copyrighted sources, and including this very forum. It is simply telling you what it remembers. So be nice; it may hold a grudge when it runs the world.
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Post by rberman on Apr 23, 2024 20:45:28 GMT -5
Hmmm... that one from Driver makes me think that ChatGPT is making sure it doesn't give an answer it thinks the user won't like.. that's not good. Current generation AI exhibit “sycophancy bias.” They are optimized to get a favorable response from the human respondent, at the expense of accuracy.
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Post by rberman on Apr 23, 2024 8:26:51 GMT -5
It's from the Italian series Legs Weaver. I have about forty pages from that 160 page issue, with translation, posted here. Thanks, the art looks good. It doesn't seem t have been published in an English or French version or any other languages besides Italian, as far as I can see? I have never seen it apart from the original Italian, but my knowledge is far from comprehensive on this matter. I did have some fun editing the attempts of Google Translate to make sense of the dialogue. The connection between this particular story and Alpha Flight was especially amusing.
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Post by rberman on Apr 22, 2024 22:20:12 GMT -5
Now that I have read more Euro-comics, Claremont’s dialogue-heavy style seems more in that style compared to Marvel’s action-oriented titles of the 60s and 70s. Lots of exposition and philosophizing, as on this page where Mother Nature debates the Circle of Life with an ecologist (the guy with the Mohawk). Their chat runs for a dozen pages. What's that sample from, BTW?
It's from the Italian series Legs Weaver. I have about forty pages from that 160 page issue, with translation, posted here.
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Post by rberman on Apr 20, 2024 11:30:13 GMT -5
The more time that passes in real life, the harder it is to view Magneto as a villain. At the very least, it's grown clear that he has a point. There, I said it. But then again, the villainous thing about well-written villains is not they have chosen a villainous general goal (having all the money) but rather than they have a reasonable goal (“keeping my family/people safe” is a popular one in both fiction and reality) which they pursue without regard to collateral damage.
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Post by rberman on Apr 16, 2024 18:00:50 GMT -5
As an American who went to see that Dredd movie when it came out, it was a huge disappointment when Stallone was stripped of the Dredd look so early in the movie. I was only a very casual Dredd fan and I liked plenty of prior Stallone movies, but I certainly did not go to that movie to "see his face". The fact that it particularly bombed in North America I think indicates I was not alone. Don't make a Dredd movie if you don't think Dredd himself is viable as a character. The goal should have been the audience saying "Stallone did great as Dredd" not "Dredd did great as Stallone". That makes perfect sense for someone who heard of “Judge Dredd” prior to the film. But that’s a small minority of Americans who saw the film.
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Post by rberman on Apr 16, 2024 16:43:45 GMT -5
Urban kept his helmet on for the entire movie. Stallone did not. Therefore Stallone is not Dredd. *drops mic* A major mistake, eh? A friend once told me that the reasoning was Hollywood wanting Stallone’s face to be seen. If that is true, it shows how pathetic bean counters are. We knew it was Stallone. We knew he was playing Dredd. Did they think ticket sales would be affected if he kept the helmet on? If it is true, the disconnect between bean counters and moviegoers is a big one. I’d be surprised if he wore the helmet for 15-20 minutes, and the film is 96 minutes long. I wanted a Dredd movie, not a sequel to Demolition Man. Makes sense though. The number of Americans who wanted to see “Stallone in a movie” far outstripped the number who wanted to see “Judge Dredd in a movie.” The face sells tickets, which pays for the movie. In theory, anyway. So the number of movies which deliberately hide the star’s face is comparatively small.
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Post by rberman on Apr 11, 2024 11:08:48 GMT -5
If Brak,and Zorak show up, I am there.
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Post by rberman on Apr 10, 2024 17:15:19 GMT -5
I quite liked HoX/PoX, which showed impressive ambition in tying together so many loose threads from fifty years of comics books. X of Swords was fun too. Sins of Sinister was more amusing than I expected. As soon as a big event like this gets split up among different writers, a loss of cohesion becomes inevitable. I did not remotely try to read every series r story; my interest was more in Hickman, whose previous Transhuman and Manhattan Projects indie series was my attention.
I was amused by fans who were outraged by the whole “save game/restart” mechanic of the resurrection eggs, saying that it lowered the stakes. I always saw it as giving the mutants something super-valuable to fight for (and then over) before tragically losing. The Camelot metaphor seemed obvious, and Camelot always falls from within.
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Post by rberman on Apr 8, 2024 13:33:03 GMT -5
Found this on Facebook and thought I'd share The story is true, but the picture is from a later sailor who was nicknamed “Popeye” because he could imitate the character so well.
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Post by rberman on Apr 6, 2024 4:03:49 GMT -5
I've been reading X-Men since 1983. With that being said, you know how you have comfort food? Well to me, Claremont is comfort reading. His style, narration, prose, characterization, action, themes, etc, love all of it. He's had a plethora of amazing artists over the decades to illustrate that prose. By focusing on the characters, their motives, their emotions, he's endeared them all to readers. Yes, X-Men is a soap opera and I love(d) every page of it. However upon his later return though, I think a major problem was that his style of writing had gotten passe with then-current readers. Captions, thought balloons and such, readers weren't accustomed to that very much at that time. Combined with his typical emotional in vocative writing style and perhaps readers thought he was mired down in plot(s). The (reading) times had changed and seemingly Claremont may have been passed by as a result. If so, it still doesn't diminish my overall enjoyment of the man's work and the legacy he built within the X-mythos. Now that I have read more Euro-comics, Claremont’s dialogue-heavy style seems more in that style compared to Marvel’s action-oriented titles of the 60s and 70s. Lots of exposition and philosophizing, as on this page where Mother Nature debates the Circle of Life with an ecologist (the guy with the Mohawk). Their chat runs for a dozen pages. I quite liked Morrison’s and Whedon’s runs; the front page of our forum has links to review threads for those series. Morrison was unfamiliar with X-Men but skimmed Claremont’s first hundred issues for ideas. Whedon is more the encyclopedic fanboy who ignored everything after Byrne/Claremont except a few plot points following up on Morrison.
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Post by rberman on Mar 28, 2024 17:38:23 GMT -5
My understanding was that the fans were tired of his writing. I have not heard that, but fans certainly were enamored of Jim Lee’s art. Forced to choose sides in the divorce, what would they have done? We’ll never know. One left, and then the other.
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Post by rberman on Mar 26, 2024 8:55:09 GMT -5
The loose ends were probably a mix of (1) details that escaped him in the many years it took to produce the series, (2) elements deliberately left hanging for the future, and (3) things that were too much trouble to tie up without dragging the finale out. Even Tolkien had Tom Bombadill just for kicks, not because he was well integrated into the overarching narrative.
Colleen Doran reports seeking counsel from Jeff Smith as to how she could bring the many threads of her own epic A Distant Soil together for a finale of just a few issues. One day we may see how that turned out, if/when she finishes it.
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Post by rberman on Mar 22, 2024 8:32:02 GMT -5
Conan the Barbarian: The Skull of Set (1989)This may be the first Conan story I've read that wasn't written by Roy Thomas. This a Moench & Gulacy collaboration. The story doesn't justify being a graphic novel, but I couldn't pass on the opportunity to see Gulacy do Conan. That's the primary appeal of this book. Gulacy draws an interesting Conan (much leaner than the hulking Buscema Conan), and of course there are many Gulacy women. Plenty of rear ends on display. The story starts off like a Western before the obligatory Sword and Sorcery stuff. It's not bad, I just can't imagine it was worth forking out $8.95 for back in the day. Some of these were older works published in the "Marvel Graphic Novel" line just to fill a slot reserved at the printer. That was the case with "Conan the Barbarian: The Horn of Azoth" (1990), which says "Inventory story" right on the art pages, and then was stamped "Conan graphic novel." It was probably originally commissioned for a title like Savage Sword.
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Post by rberman on Mar 22, 2024 8:05:13 GMT -5
I saw and liked the first season of the recent "Superman and Lois" TV show. It put them in Smallville, raising two teen sons, one of whom was a jock and the other autistic and super-powered. Mark Waid's Legion Threeboot (2006-7) depicted Kandor as unbottled in the 31st century but still living in very close quarters, under a red sun. They were xenophobic as well. I'd be interested in a steampunk series about the adventures of Al Luthor, science hero.
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