I made the statement that CBR is a corporate mouthpiece for Marvel and DC because, well, that's all I see. For a long time now I've had a hard time keeping my food down when trying to read the weekly fluff piece known as Axel-In-Charge; never have I read a serious piece of criticism aimed at Alonzo by an interviewer, and if something "unpleasant" is brought up, it's usually phrased in a "Some trouble-making fans seem to think..." implication that is tailor made for, and inducing of, your typical vapid, company-speak non-response that Alonzo has mastered like no EIC before. Alonzo is the guy who boldly got away with extolling the virtues of "The Amazing Greg Land" and straight-faced (I'm assuming) proclaiming that the Bendis Moon Knight series was a brilliant success when, in reality, it was a flop. This is the general sort of thing that irks me in regards to the specific relationship CBR has with Marvel and DC. I have zero tolerance for people like this that feel it's their right to warp the perception of reality to suit their purposes. Quite frankly, CBR is complicit in this behavior.

A more specific example would be the recent announcement of the upcoming Batman/Superman movie. I made a harmless sarcastic response to the ridiculous name they're currently going with and my post was deleted. I made no personal attack, used no vulgarity, aimed no vitriol at any forum member, and it was deleted. That's the last time I posted there and the last time I will ever post there. Now, I've read my fair share of dupersuper posts over the years (I was Brannon at CBR and had been there since 2006 under that name and a few years before that on an old one) and he's one of the friendliest, most benign regular posters that I can recall. To keep it pithy, when someone like this is getting banned, the writing is on the wall for anyone that cares to see it.

Well, my ban has been lifted and I have sporadically posted. My new avatar is a Stepford wife. No reason, I just like the movie.

Wait... Somebody else reacted to your comment, and you got warned for not stopping them from having that reaction?

Yes. The mod told me that the other poster had a beef with me from the old board. I was never aware of it, if that was true. I don't post on comic forums to harass people, I post because there's nowhere else to talk about geek stuff. And I don't follow certain posters around to make their life miserable. That's childish.

Is this a time traveller caught on video from an old Charlie Chaplin movie clip speaking on a cell phone?

What I don't understand is people getting banned for the least things, but they feature on their front page articles about Joker's "boner" and an extremely exicited Spider-Man statue (http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/06/nsfw-spider-man-statue-removed-after-arousing-complaints/). Standard are one thing, but consistency would be nice too.

The recent posts about high school reunions & such reminds me anew of the one I attended (&, as noted previously, the only one I knew about, & possibly the only one held for my class, period), my 10th in 5/87. I dunno how many people can say their class reunion was (a) held in a deer camp out in the woods, (b) non-alcoholic & (c) racially segregated (I guess our black classmates held their own gathering somewhere else), but I can.

I particularly regret (c), since it means I've now gone some 37 years without seeing any of my black friends from those days. As it happens, my best white friend from senior high, Rex, I haven't seen in nearly that long, & since he was a grade behind me he wouldn't have been at the reunion, anyway.

Not that he'd probably make it in any event, since to my dismay I learned via some idle Google research a few months ago that he's on the sexual offender list in whatever county he's living in a couple of counties to the north. *sigh* Not surprising, I guess, that he'd go off the tracks at some point, since during my senior year he wound up shooting his father to death, though he never did any jail time to speak of, since evidently the act was in self-defense. Seems that the father had gotten drunk & was shooting up the house, putting Rex, his 3 younger sisters & their mother at perilous risk. (I'm not sure where they lived, but I gather it was out in the country, not that the middle of my hometown was exactly urban.) 

Which of course is a damned shame, all of it. For one thing, the father had to have been a somewhat intelligent person at some level; I well remember reading the syndicated "Bernstein on Words" column in the main statewide paper & seeing he'd had a question or comment published. And not that killing one's own father (for whatever reason) would be a source of good memories for anyone, but maybe it's even worse when you're named for the guy; Rex was a "Junior."

My earliest memory of Rex is of when he was catching for the other local team (we were so small that our pee-wee & little leagues had only 3 teams each, of 7-9- & 8-10-year-olds respectively, & that was with one team in each league coming from the county seat, i.e. not my town) at age 8 or so. Only kid I ever encountered that young who chewed tobacco.

*sigh*