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Post by rberman on Jan 6, 2020 8:19:52 GMT -5
I'm not a fan of tpb or collected editions. I just throw them around and don't really value them. It feels like a glorified reprint. There I said it. There's no question that a trade collection is a reprint. Nothing glorified about it. However, it's a far more functional reprint than the original periodical version. It stands on a bookshelf and doesn't need to be bagged and boarded. It was designed to last, whereas, the periodical version was designed decades ago to be read and then discarded, like other periodicals. The worst thing that can be said about trades is when (1) they omit content, like lettercols, and when (2) the paper and ink are mismatched, resulting in a different color experience than what was originally intended.
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Post by rberman on Jan 5, 2020 21:30:20 GMT -5
Issue #40 (June 2013)The Story: As Liana’s explosion of force immobilizes all the bad guys, the good guys spring into action, murdering the Hierarchy members. Niniri gets a particularly Walking Dead-esque decapitation courtesy of Galahad. The panel below also shows Brent, skewering another incapacitated Hierarch. Kovar protects Bast from Liana’s mindstorm so Bast can adopt Keris’ form again, then mindlink with Jason to restore his Sered (heh) psyche. Jason then tries to calm his sister Liana. Will he succeed? Editorial: The series is now on Jim Valentino’s Shadowline imprint of Image Comics. Doran describes her discovery that the printing negatives for old issues of the series have been lost, making reprints of the collected editions problematical. Substantial effort has been spent figuring out who bought the various pages of original art, and borrowing those pages for re-digitalization when possible. My Two Cents: Only two months since the last issue! And wow, things are moving quickly at this point, with lots of large panels. I bet originally, Doran intended separate fates for all the bad guys she killed at once here. The only chat in this issue is a flashback to Sere gloating over captive Jason, whom she has recently molested both physically and psychically, and convincing Vinyr to help her download Jason's memories for her other schemes.
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Post by rberman on Jan 5, 2020 14:55:15 GMT -5
While I love the principle of the idea, for the most part, I think most Legionnaires will have zero, one, or two "solo" stories, making it tough to compile a list. That is what I was thinking as well. I can think of some done-in-one issues or backup stories which spotlighted a particular Legionnaire, but I can't say that they stand out. Part of the problem is that most incarnations of the Legionnaires retain their early Silver Age blandness, without distinct personalities. Attempts to fix this have never "stuck" for long, as with Threeboot Element Lad being a head-in-the-clouds philosopher. A few exceptions come to mind (serene Dawnstar, gentle Blok, loose cannons Wildfire and Timber Wolf, testy genius Braniac 5), but the exceptions prove the rule.
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Post by rberman on Jan 5, 2020 13:28:32 GMT -5
One more thought-rberman brought up people talking about sports-and the one thing I would add though, if you looked at the percentage of people talking about sports online vs. the number of people who watch sports, the percentage would be a lot smaller than you would think-there's just a lot more people who watch sports than read comics so the numbers seem higher. -M Dunno. All my Sports-watching friends on Facebook talk about sports with great frequency. They make cryptic posts like “That was awesome!” in mid-game, as if they were posting on a live stream.
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Post by rberman on Jan 5, 2020 0:15:38 GMT -5
This baffles me. It seems to me that most people who like sports enjoy talking to other people about sports, whether in agreement or disagreement. Likewise with most hobbies. Why would comic book hobbyists spurn venues for discussing their hobby? Yet the small roster of this forum supports the notion that most do spurn discussion. It also doesn't help that a lot of older fans grew up in a time where openly discussing comics was social suicide. There was a social stigma often attached to reading comics that is no longer as prominent, but it necessitated behavior patterns where comics were something you did in private and not a public concern. This is probably the heart of "I would rather go home and read comics alone than talk to you about comics."
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2020 23:49:19 GMT -5
It's purely anecdotal, but back when I was helping out at my friend comic shop I was trying to promote CCF as well. I talked to every pull customer he had, 73 pulls plus me) of those 73 only 4 participated in any kind of organized comic discussion on line. The attitude of most was summed up by what one of the customers told me- I buy my comics, if I like them I keep reading, if not, I drop them. I see no need to see what other people think or tell people what I think. They aren't paying for my comics, so what they think doesn't matter, and I'm not paying for theirs, so what I think shouldn't matter to them. As an aside, I couldn't even get one to even take a look at our forums despite all it had to offer, they just had zero interest in talking comics online or seeing what anyone said online. This baffles me. It seems to me that most people who like sports enjoy talking to other people about sports, whether in agreement or disagreement. Likewise with most hobbies. Why would comic book hobbyists spurn venues for discussing their hobby? Yet the small roster of this forum supports the notion that most do spurn discussion.
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2020 23:12:49 GMT -5
Mike Esposito has a sideline, perhaps now a main line, of recreating classic covers. I got this one recreating Amazing Spider-Man #39. John Romita did the cover originally; Under his pseudonym of Mickey Demeo, Esposito inked Romita on the interior but apparently not the cover. I guess that's the World Trade Center in the background? Here is the original published piece for comparison.
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2020 22:57:47 GMT -5
Are there great Legionnaire stories? What I mean is this: I was thinking about having a series of threads for voting on the best stories of particular characters. The best Superman story, the best Iron Man story, etc. With some teams, it seams meaningful to talk about the best stories for individual members, as with X-Men for instance. But as I thought about LSH, it seems that the most memorable stories were team stories. Is there a definitive Colossal Boy story? A don't-miss Phantom Girl tale? Etc. Just from memory, I'm not even sure I could name a dozen spotlight stories. The one I did think of was the Chameleon solo story from the Threeboot, which I reviewed here several months ago.
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2020 22:42:33 GMT -5
Is there a brief summary of when Wolverine was somehow given claws made of bone? And presumably regular human bones generally? I just ran into a reference in one late '90s/early '00s Marvel saying he has had adamantium re-grafted on to his claws/skeleton. I wonder who messed with this needlessly? I still remember vividly that panel set in the future where a Sentinel blasts Wolverine and all that's left is the adamantium skeleton and claws. I never knew there was any backstory besides his getting an adamantium skeleton with claws because of his mutant healing abilities. In the story I've come across (Wolverine #149) the High Evolutionary has removed all mutant abilities worldwide and Wolv is getting deathly ill from the adamatium, it's just the line about it being re-grafted onto to him and seeing examples of him having bone claws that makes me wonder 'what the...?' The idea was (according to this retcon) that Wolverine always had claws made of bone, as a mutation. His Adamantium was removed by Magneto in X-Men Vol 2 #25 (1993). The next issue of the Wolverine solo series (#75) revealed his underlying bone claws.
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2020 8:23:41 GMT -5
I just want to respond to the " but the readers from the 50's wouldn't like the comics of the 70's or 80" line. While change can ge jarring to a consistent reader, I will ask a question- who has gone on recored to say that they LIKE the current 6 issues to tell a 2 issue story format ? I haven't read of anyone saying that they enjoy a comic that costs 4 bucks that has nothing but people talking. I can think of quite a few examples that I like. However,, I don’t experience them as stand-alone issues since I buy them years later in compilations. I don’t know how I would feel if I was buying them on a monthly basis. I recall one issue of the manga Gantz that tried to push this to the limit, taking up one whole issue depicting one sword stroke of a warrior killing a dinosaur, and another of a terrorist spraying a crowd with bullets. I probably would have been angry to pay full price for that.
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Post by rberman on Jan 3, 2020 8:49:08 GMT -5
Anyone seen anything how the Walmart giants are doing? My local Walmart doesn't carry them, so I've never seen any 'in the wild' They are hard to find at mine, buried on an aisle halfway down one particular checkout lane. You would have to know to look for them, which defeats the purpose of the experiment. Not like the old Archie digests, which were prominent at every checkout lane for easy impulse buying.
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Post by rberman on Jan 2, 2020 15:47:27 GMT -5
The core fans buy more ongoing and crossover event books, so that is what gets made. If pirate books or college romance books or anthologies of three panel humor strips were what sold best, we would see them dominate the market instead.
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Post by rberman on Jan 2, 2020 14:01:52 GMT -5
Watched "Oklahoma" with the family yesterday, as that was one of the movies in a Rodgers/Hammerstein collection I got my wife for Christmas. Weird movie in parts, especially the trippy ballet sequence in the middle. No one really enjoyed it, and by the start of the second half, my older daughter and I were just one robot short of going full-blown MST3K on it. Not likely to ever watch it again, but I can say I've seen it once. I saw it for the first time on stage at the Royal Albert Hall in London a couple of years ago. Its mellow crooner songs and ballet sequence reflect artistic values that were a big hit at the time but would not survive the 1940s.
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Post by rberman on Jan 2, 2020 11:52:32 GMT -5
Welcome to the club! I stopped following new individual issues serially back in 1986. There will still be some good new Marvel books sometimes (I liked King’s “The Vision”) but waiting to let history sort them out, then buying the compendium, makes a whole lot more sense.
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Post by rberman on Jan 2, 2020 11:45:42 GMT -5
These comments aren't changing my mind that I'll take my time in seeing Rise of Skywalker. It’s not really for us anyway. It’s for kids today who were unfortunate enough not to exist in 1977.
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