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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2024 11:33:23 GMT -5
Make that four! And those bound volumes look amazing. Make that five. I think. You see, I’ve only seen the film, not the TV series, nor the book. I really liked the novel and its sequel. (I didn't read the third book).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2024 9:49:34 GMT -5
Bought in May 1984 :
Arak #36, still in Arabian Nights territory.
Batman #374. All I remember from this one is the cover, but as the issue is pencilled by Don Newton it must have had pretty good art.
Conan #161. Oy vey! Now they decide to bring back Fafnir, the red-haired Vanirman who died in issue #20. (They seem to think his name is "Redbeard" most of the time, though.) Fafnir's death had been a poignant moment; bringing him back here is truly pissing on a great story. Oh, and he's now got a demon hand because we've never seen that before in sword and sorcery stories. No way will that paw cause trouble down the line, right?
Conan the King #24, continuing the excellent run by Alan Zelenetz. Conan's first born is supposed to be dead, and his second son is turning out to be very unlike his father. He's not strong, he's not brave; he's however petty, arrogant and very interested in magic. This issue has something we don't see enough of: a magic practitioner who's barely competent. Too often witches and wizards are shown as ominously powerful; here we get the Dollar Store version.
Kull #5, once again with a nice Michael Golden cover. We abandon the double-sized format, but this book stays really good.
Secret Wars #5. The entire concept of this series was silly. I look forward to its redeeming scene, in which Doom steals the Beyonder's power.
Micronauts #59. This is the end of the most recent war against a returned Baron Karza, and it is rather unsatisfying. The good Baron came back from the dead recently and assumed control of the Microverse once again (an event that defies all logic considering how quickly the status quo from issue #1 was reinstated, but one that was welcome as far as the book's interest went). Over the past year, our heroes have done all they could to topple him from his throne once again. However in the past few months the Micronauts/X-Men miniseries came along, a series in which the two teams joined forces with Karza to face the evil Charles Xavier, who was busy destroying the entire microverse with his mental powers. (Apparently, Evil Xavier's powers have omnicidal proportions. Why are evil versions of our heroes always more powerful than their good counterpart?)
That miniseries concluded, we now pick up where we had left... the Micronauts go back to the Microverse after a brief journey to Earth, and they find the place an utter shambles. Karza has killed everyone on Homeworld, or turned them into monsters in his body banks. Good guys and bad guys trade punches, Princess Mari stabs the Baron in the chest...the end.
Wait, that's it? After all this build up, we get Indiana Jones shooting that sword-wielding guy in the market? Yup. The creators of the mag are going away, and we have to finish this.
Then we reset the status quo once more: Mari isn't angry at Rann anymore, Microtron and Biotron are resurrected (or more correctly acceptable copies of them), we get rid of Fireflyte, and the team gets a new ship, the Endeavour II. Now concerning that ship... The original Endeavour was a masterclass in science-fiction vessel design. We could easily have used a new version thereof in this issue. But no, we get the most generic spaceship you can imagine; and furthermore, mention is made of its having variable geometry -weasel words meaning that we won't bother drawing it the same way two issues in a row. Then the tale is over, and the back cover informs us that Mantlo and Guice are leaving the book to work on Swords of the Swashbucklers. There would be an extra issue introducing the new creative team, but talk about a coitus interruptus finale!
New Mutants #19, with the Demon Bear and more Sienkiewicz. An uncommon artistic approach for a super-hero comic, and I for one was delighted!
New Teen Titans #1. I'm pretty sure I bought that, if only because it was a #1 issue (a rarity in those happier days). Both this title and the new Legion of Super-heroes were basically created to give their star artists, George Perez and Keith Giffen, a higher grade of paper; alas, both gentlemen would move away almost immediately.
Sub-Mariner #1. I remember that this mini-series was available at our local tobacconist, so I bought all four issues. It had Banny Bulanadi inking. But beggars can't be choosers.
Savage sword of Conan #102: an excellently-drawn issue, thanks to Gary Kwapisz.
Savage sword of Conan #103: a contender for the title of "worst issue of SSoC ever". It didn't win, but still. (It has Pablo Marcos art, though, if you are interested).
Tales of the Teen Titans #45. I had no idea there was an Aquaboy. Er, I mean Aqualad.
Thor #346-347. Slowly inching toward another Ragnarok, aren't we? More of the famous Simonson run.
Transformers #1. What, this comic was published that late? I could have sworn it was many years earlier! Anyway, I bought it... but not the rest of the miniseries. The art was very lackluster, as I recall, despite a Sienkiewicz cover.
West Coast Avengers #1. First issue... of course, I'd buy it! I might send my kids to college thanks to this book, one day! I always had a soft spot for Hawkeye, too.
X-Men #184. Professor Xavier, once again on his two feet and eager for action, wears a very ugly yellow bodysuit (a fact acknowledged by Nightcrawler in a letter page, somewhere). Here Xavier and the X-Men fight the Black Queen Selene, a character I would have killed as fast as I could if I had been, say, Wolverine. It turns out Wolvie would instead try to kill Rachel when she'd try to to that exact thing a little while later, because "X-Men don't kill". Ah, plot-mandated variable morality...
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2024 9:19:16 GMT -5
This was all a test to see if I could do it, since I wanted to bind Logan's Run, and Captain Carrot. Three Logan's Run fans! We should start a club Make that four! And those bound volumes look amazing.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2024 9:04:51 GMT -5
Capitalism
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 2, 2024 5:07:51 GMT -5
Eat
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2024 17:33:45 GMT -5
zipper
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2024 10:39:52 GMT -5
Interrupted
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2024 7:52:04 GMT -5
Danger
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2024 7:51:14 GMT -5
First of May, International Workers' Day... How could I resist listening to L'Internationale, as every year?
I love that song. Irrespective of the horrors associated with every attempt at establishing a worker's paradise on this green Earth, irrespective of the song's over the top lyrics, I find its stirring call for a better world very endearing. Composed in the XIX century, its basic message is still valid: let's work together, and we'll make tomorrow better than yesterday.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 1, 2024 5:53:08 GMT -5
Tribunal
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 30, 2024 18:36:36 GMT -5
I have a preference for some branded stuff, e.g. I like Hovis bread, and Diet Coke. But I am absolutely happy with generic, non-branded cereals, biscuits, orange juice, etc. A non-branded, generic orange juice tastes just as nice as a branded one that is double the price.Yup. From what a friend of mine tells me (he's a senior manager for a major grocery chain), their "home brand" orange juice is made by the same company that makes a certain big brand. It's just the packaging that changes.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 30, 2024 18:32:08 GMT -5
Brothers
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 30, 2024 14:49:31 GMT -5
Missing brutalis and dan bailey, to begin with. Seconded.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 30, 2024 10:17:27 GMT -5
The fascinating responses here have got me thinking: Is there anything that we can definitively state WILL NEVER occur because it’d be scientifically impossible? (Asking a question here of knowledgable people, not expressing a view) For instance, when we were discussing things in the ChatGPT thread, I asked the AI if a supersonic helicopter will ever be possible, with rotor blades capable of withstanding supersonic speeds. The answer, and I even looked on Quora, seemed to be a definitive “NO”. That’s my personal example, other examples could include faster-than-light travel, time travel, etc. For anyone with a scientific head here, going by my example, can we completely rule out a supersonic helicopter for all eternity, or could it be within the realms of reality, if a little improbable? Like I said, I’m seeking knowledge, not expressing a view. I can’t remember where I read it, but I remember reading an article - Reader’s Digest, possibly? - which stated that it was once believed a heavier-than-air flying machine would be impossible, but now we have all sorts of flying machines. So I’d be curious as to whether my example of a supersonic helicopter could ever be ruled out. I don't think it can be absolutely ruled out, because the concept doesn't contradict fundamental laws of nature; we'd just need a machine sturdy enough, with sufficient thrust. The practical problems I see is that there might be no material capable of handling the stresses involved, or that the modifications required to gain enough thrust would change the thing from a helicopter into something else. So rather than completely impossible, I would say that it is not practical at this time. However, I wouldn't say that it's as impossible as, say, cooling one's kitchen by leaving the door of the fridge open all night.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 30, 2024 9:51:33 GMT -5
I have a question for our resident scientist(s) ( Roquefort Raider and whoever else): I studied biology in college (didn't quite finish my B.A., for reasons I won't get into), and although I never worked in a scientific field, I think I grokked everything pretty well, and held onto a lot of knowledge over the past decades. In the context of lay folk confusing the technical meaning of "theory" with its common usage (which in technical terms would map much better to "hypothesis"), I often hear non-scientists talking about how theories get discarded all the time. This is wrong, of course. Due to the rigorous testing involved before naming something a theory, any further evidence which comes along which might upset a theory in some way, always ends up with the "old", "upset" theory as a special case of the new one. Is this correct? Is there any example of a theory which was completely scrapped? If so, what would be the most prominent example? It's very rare for a scientific theory to be scrapped (at least a well-established one); as new data comes in, it is usually just refined. When a major body of work is confined to the dustbin of history, it is most often referred to a model (like heliocentrism) or a mechanism (like Darwin's pangenesis). Certain theories can run concurrently to others and be incompatible, suggesting that we could eventually dump one in favour of the other; string theory, for example, is appealing because of its explanatory power but suffers from a serious lack of hard data. It could one day be dropped entirely (or show itself to be pretty accurate, I don't know). The whole thing is really about semantics. Even practicing scientists use the word "theory" in daily parlance as equivalent to "an idea". In a sense, a theory is a bit like a species: while we know what we're talking about when mentioning one, we don't have clear lines to tell us when we go from a well-tested hypothesis to a full-fledged theory. That's why certain models, certain ideas, will be called by different names -including "theory"- depending on one's source. A rather waffly response, I'm afraid!
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