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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2015 1:35:24 GMT -5
That's a big part of it, dupont. Collectors and scholars alike have been focused on the super-hero stuff for more than sixty years, so there's simply no interest in much of the other genres. Crime comics are pretty well documented but once you get past the creme de la creme of the other genres (e.g. Barks or Kelly's funny animals, Simon and Kirby's romance work), there's nothing. Which is a problem for me as a conscientious historian. It may well be true that most teen humor titles are vapid rip-offs of Archie but I'm reluctant to say so in print unless I know it's true. What if Ace's obscure Monkeyshines title (27 issues with NO recorded data beyond cover images) features some forgotten genius equal to or better than Barks or Kelly? Cei-U! I summon the angst! Well that's the challenge of being a historian, if there were a lot of material already available, you wouldn't be breaking new ground and doing the work needing to be done. As my thesis advisor would remind me every time I complained about scarcity of sources on certain medieval topics-if what you were doing was coming easy, chances are someone else already covered the material you are doing and you would be basically wasting your time unless you had a completely fresh angle, which is unlikely on the most trodden fields. The fact it is coming hard means you are doing valuable work others will build on some day. So take it as a challenge and realize you will be leaving a foundation for others in the future on this topic, which is quite the opportunity to establish a legacy of your own for your scholarship. -M |
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2015 2:12:33 GMT -5
I understand why the majority of content out there skews toward what people actually have an interest in. But you'd think there would be more info regarding the more obsolete. Like when you look at sports statistics from a hundred years ago, they have info on more than just the champs. I'm personally always interested in the offbeat stuff. Especially since if I Google "Batman" I'll know absolutely everything I'll ever want to know about Batman.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 20, 2015 12:53:31 GMT -5
I wish that blogger a lot of luck with that. For more than a week now, I've been assiduously compiling a year-by-year breakdown of all the American comic books published in the 1940s. What I've discovered, all too quickly, is that there are immense swathes of that output for which there is no data whatsoever: no scans, no fan sites, no content details, frequently not even publication dates, nothing beyond cover images on GCD and a minimal listing in Overstreet. Once you get past the majors--DC, Dell, Marvel, Fawcett, Quality, MLJ/Archie, Fiction House--and once you get past the minors' super-hero stuff, it's a vast unknown. The most seriously unexamined genre is newspaper strip reprints (the bread-and-butter of publishers like David McKay and Eastern Color) but there's also huge data gaps for even some of the majors' funny animal, romance, Western and teen humor titles. Roy and I have yet to discuss how we're divvying up the work on the books but I'm fairly confident Roy's going to want to handle the super-hero and jungle material, leaving me with the very genres and publishers I'm finding so undocumented. I'm sure we'll get it all worked out and I realize how very "first world" this particular problem is but just at this moment, I'm feeling more than a little discouraged. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. My sister's eyes just glaze over when I complain about it to her. Cei-U! I summon the bad case of comicbookus interruptus! Yeah, I've been collecting (generally coverless) Hoppy the Marvel Bunny/Magic Bunny for a while now, and I'm shocked about how little information there is about what should be a major title with lots of interest. |
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,958 
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Post by Crimebuster on May 20, 2015 13:08:18 GMT -5
Kurt, I don't know if you are a member of the CGC forums, but I might suggest checking them out. The Golden Age sub-forum has a lot of members who know all sorts of things nobody else seems to. There are guys there with massive collections of obscure titles and publishers. Just as one example, there's one guy who has a complete or near-complete collection of everything published by Centaur. There's a guy who has a full set of DC copyright ashcans. There's even an original collector who has been reading and collecting comics off the newsstand since the 40's. If it exists, there's probably someone on the forums there that has a copy or knows someone who does. It might be worth a shot.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on May 20, 2015 18:11:58 GMT -5
I recall Cat Yronwoode writing many research articles on romance comics of the 1950s. I believe quite a number of those articles were published in The Comic Reader whereby she told of the history of the genre and a publisher-by-publisher detailed analysis. According to her research, for a number of years during the early 50s, love comics was by far the dominant comic genre accounting for about 33% of the market. She called that period The Love Glut. I've also seen a few hardcover books regarding those comics in various stores the last few years
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Post by dupersuper on May 20, 2015 19:53:36 GMT -5
Well, I'm on report but still employed. Looks like my pull list won't be cut down.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 1:59:20 GMT -5
To honor the end of an era....  -M |
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Post by Jesse on May 21, 2015 10:15:51 GMT -5
I prefer...   |
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 12:28:18 GMT -5
Another damned exhausting week. As per usual, rather than expend mental & physical energy I desperately lack, I'm just going to paste from my FB status updates & such ...
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 12:30:57 GMT -5
From Tuesday --
Received word from my vet today on poor Winston. The call came while I was waiting in a doctor's office, & I had to dash outside to take it, so I wasn't taking notes ... but basically, he died from a fluid build-up in the lungs that normally results from a puncture wound from a cat fight or even something as innocuous as a cockleburr, Dr. Gotthelf said. Thing is, while I was of course generally never here 24/7, he was the *last* cat to ever tussle with the others. I could much more easily see it if it were any of the other 7 ... but as timid & withdrawn as he was, I just can't. And he *never* went outside, so no cockleburrs or the like.
Then again, not too long after I got him from Mary. he ran a fever. A couple of my others (Sophie, Sweet Jane) have done the same not long after I got them, & everything went swimmingly ... but who knows? Some sort of infection might've been lingering & developing ever since. Then *again*, he had been to the vet at least twice for routine stuff in the interim, & nothing untoward was ever detected. Heck, just a couple of months ago he was under anesthetic for so long for neutering (he had one undescended testicle, & they weren't able to find it) that they had to stop the surgery for fear he would suffer harm, but even then nothing alarming turned up. So ... just one of those medical mysteries, I guess, that happen with animals & humans alike sometime.
Poor baby. It occurs to me, & it truly hurts my heart to think, that he just never felt well. Which might be why he was so timid, withdrawn, etc. And why the other cats didn't often engage him ... I've seen ferals who sense when one of the colony is sick or dying, & they stay away. *sigh*
I know it sounds maudlin, & I apologize to y'all who will no doubt roll your eyes, but ... Daddy loved you, Winston. He loved you with all his heart.
And always will.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 12:33:57 GMT -5
Random follow-up comments --
And I don't care -- I know bloody well that the break-in, & those 7 (or however many) ittle subhuman hooligans tromping trough the bedroom & making god knows what sort of animal noises, did not do him any good. They might not have murdered him, but as far as I'm concerned they hastened his demise & made some of his last hours on earth absolutely terrifying to him. May they rot in hell.
And also, not that it really matters, but I guess I didn't specify when I took his body in that I wanted them to hold it for me. So I won't be getting it back for burial. *sigh*
He was just one of those little boys, it seems like, who was fated not to have a long or happy existence. Life just seems too cruel at times for words. It really does.
Like · Reply · May 19 at 6:56pm
But at least he won't have to undergo another long session under anesthesia. That's what he was looking at this summer.
Y'know, I don't believe in an afterlife, or anything of the sort. But if one were even remotely possible, I like to think animals would deserve it far, far more than humans do. They're innocents in every sense of the word. The vast majority of us (children excepted, of course) ... not so much.
And by "children excepted," I of course am not referring to little thugs who break into people's houses. They make me hope devoutly for the afterlife I can't believe in, too. See previous comment about rotting in hell.
The necropsy results weren't going to bring him back no matter what they were, & of course that would have been the only happy result. It just reawakens the pain a bit, inevitably. I'll be fine. I'm fine now. We all go through this with our fur babies, & we all hurt terribly when it happens. If we didn't, something would be awfully, awfully lacking in our hearts, minds & souls.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 12:59:22 GMT -5
And the next day ...
The medical appointment I was at yesterday when I got the vet's call about Winston was with a local psychiastrist. A friend who's a (former?) hicensed therapist had recommended one of his partners tto me, but I of course needed the soonest available appointment, & that was with this gentleman. I liked him, & he seemed -- not surprisingly, of course -- very conversant with mixed-state Bipolar II, which IIRC is me in a nutshell (accent, as I like to say, on "nut"). It also helps, I think, that for a layman I'm pretty well-read on the subject. (My sensei in this regard is Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, who is not only a recognized authority on the subject but also suffers from it herself, up to the point of trying suicide once upon a time, like me. She's also a devastatingly luminous writer. For that, of course, I hate her.)
Anyway, per the shrink I'm tapering off of Lexapro, the antidepressant I've been on for years (& its sister drug Celexa before that, going back to late 2000), & will have transitioned to Seroquel by the next time I see him, Tuesday a.m. Here's hoping.
I haven't researched that one yet, but of course I will. I mean, I research *everything*, pretty much, of course, I guess in keeping with my orientations as a former historian & journalist, not to mention an obsessive in general.
Cute thing is that one possible side effect, he told me, is increased appetite. I ... don't think that's possible, really. (Though I haven't had one to speak of the last few days. Which under the circumstances is a good thing. If I could make that last at least another year, I would.)
The shrink was pretty concerned that even the light dosage I take might be exacerbating the bipolar, since normally it would be counterbalanced by a mood elevator like Depakote ... but of course I haven't been on that (or anything else in that category) since my 12/04 OD.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 13:08:26 GMT -5
And the same damned day, after I got the vet's call & got home from the shrink's, I had a home security guy recommended by a friend visit the house. With any luck, as of next week they'll install their system. For $490 or so I get the 3 doors wired up, as it were, along with 2 "glassbreakers" on the ceiling (motion sensors would be the norm, but not a good idea with so many hyperactive cats, the guy told me). After that, $28.50 a month for monitoring.
Next up -- burglar bars for at least the windows not easily seen from the street (the bars are pretty expensive, & even though my house is not large at all -- something like 1,600 square feet -- I count 23 windows, of which only the one overlooking my computer desk has bars) & a security door for my kitchen/carport door. My next-door neighbor gave me one she'd earlier given to a friend for whom it turned out to be the right size; if my tape measure is to be believed, it will fit my back door ... right width, anyway. I realized a couple of days ago while looking them up online that I've yet to check the height. Duh. Glass is broken out of the bottom, but big deal -- the bars are what matters.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 13:11:23 GMT -5
And this morning was the first court appearance for the 4/15 burglary pair. Not surprisingly, they pleaded not guilty (I'd have been shocked had they done otherwise); trial is set for 8/13. Per SOP, the judge ordered them to stay away from me & my property, but the first kid's lawyer told me later that that one's dad would like to contact me, & I gave my assent.
They appeared about 90 minutes apart & with different lawyers. If this were circuit court, I'd take that to mean the case was severed & each will attempt to blame the other. I assume that's still the likely case.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 21, 2015 13:47:49 GMT -5
And this morning was the first court appearance for the 4/15 burglary pair. Not surprisingly, they pleaded not guilty (I'd have been shocked had they done otherwise); trial is set for 8/13. Per SOP, the judge ordered them to stay away from me & my property, but the first kid's lawyer told me later that that one's dad would like to contact me, & I gave my assent. They appeared about 90 minutes apart & with different lawyers. If this were circuit court, I'd take that to mean the case was severed & each will attempt to blame the other. I assume that's still the likely case. Unless they waived the conflict, being represented by the same attorneys would be be a conflict of interest for exactly that reason. It's rare as hens teeth for co-defendants to be tried together. |
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