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Post by The Captain on May 29, 2020 13:51:20 GMT -5
1. My maternal grandmother. Brought me the black polybagged three-pack of Star Wars #1-3 reprints for my birthday. 2. 1978 or so 3. Still buy regularly, although the pull list is down from a high of 25 books per month in 1994/95 (I was working in, then managing, comic book stores, first in college and then right after I graduated) to 4 books right now (Captain America, Firefly, Marauders, and X-Men).
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Post by The Captain on May 29, 2020 13:42:10 GMT -5
I did my duty.
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Post by The Captain on May 27, 2020 21:07:35 GMT -5
Knox
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Post by The Captain on May 27, 2020 10:28:14 GMT -5
My LCS let me know that one thing on my pull list came in this week (Marauders #10). I might pick it up later today, but it probably won't be until the weekend, as it is a little out of the way. I'm just hoping the two Epic Collections I asked them to pull for me (a Fantastic Four collection and the first 13 issues of Conan the Barbarian) come in soon. Been holding off on reading my Conan run (I have #15 to #115 in floppies) until I get that Epic so I can read it all in order. That Conan read sounds pretty epic indeed. I'm looking forward to it! I'm currently halfway through John Carter, Warlord of Mars and up to Iron Man #210 on my reads through those series, so I probably won't get to that Conan run until the fall.
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Post by The Captain on May 27, 2020 9:33:41 GMT -5
I'm honestly just curious to know what shipped this week. Is the industry "back to normal"? Oh, and I love the new slogan! Like a lot of things it seems to be coming in waves, DC seems to have the most content out while Marvel, Darkhorse, Image and IDW are just starting to get back into it this week after laying low. Hopefully we start to approach normal in the coming month, but for me it's still digital only as the shop I've been frequenting for the last few years is still not open as it's in a mall which isn't allowed to open until mid-June. My LCS let me know that one thing on my pull list came in this week (Marauders #10). I might pick it up later today, but it probably won't be until the weekend, as it is a little out of the way. I'm just hoping the two Epic Collections I asked them to pull for me (a Fantastic Four collection and the first 13 issues of Conan the Barbarian) come in soon. Been holding off on reading my Conan run (I have #15 to #115 in floppies) until I get that Epic so I can read it all in order.
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Post by The Captain on May 26, 2020 14:59:30 GMT -5
I know this isn't the "There. I Said It." thread, but Gil Kane looks like he could easily have fathered both Alan Cumming and Paul Reubens. Those three men are not at all dissimilar looking.
There. I Said It.
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Post by The Captain on May 25, 2020 5:28:16 GMT -5
Nah, it's okay. Not my favorite Duran Duran Song, but its good. There's always something about the first song from a band that you hear, that grabs your attention. For me, it was Hungry Like the Wolf. MTV was my gateway to New Wave/Post Punk/New Romantics/Wahtever you want to call it stuff, beyond the big New Wave bands that got mainstream US radio play, in Central Illinois (Blondie, The Cars, The Tubes, The Police, The Motels). I now they did Electric Barbarella; but, would have liked to have seen them do a cover of the Barbarella theme song, given the name (classic band line-up, of course). I never much cared for Duran Duran, except for the later stuff like Ordinary World. Was brought up on New Wave though, it's one of my favorite music genres, probably because it's so diverse I wasn't a fan of Duran Duran or any New Wave bands when I was growing up. My father, who was the popular music critic for our city's biggest newspaper for 17 years, was a classic rock fan (or just rock back then, as most of it hadn't become "classic" yet). He was derisive of most of the New Wave artists as being formulaic and uninspired, especially bands like Depeche Mode that relied heavily on electronics for their sound, although he did like The Cars. Because of that, I grew up listening to Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, The Who, etc., while my peers were diving into new music. I finally started listening to bands like The Smiths, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, etc., when I went away to college and hung out with people (especially girls) who were big fans of that genre. My first college girlfriend introduced me to Oingo Boingo and Duran Duran, both of which rank among my faves to this day, and my main Pandora (yes, I still use that instead of Spotify) playlist is packed with the bands I mentioned above plus a whole lot more. Back on topic, every site has churn; it's just the nature of the beast. Unfortunately, we've lost some strong members in the past year, real pillars of the community around here, and it sucks, but we've had other "pillars" like Ish and Dan leave and while we diminished because of their departures, we are still a strong community as a whole and we need to focus on that and be grateful for it. The nice thing is that the door is always open for any of these folks to return, but the CCF will continue to exist whether they come back or don't.
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Post by The Captain on May 22, 2020 14:38:01 GMT -5
London
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Which One?
May 18, 2020 12:19:29 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by The Captain on May 18, 2020 12:19:29 GMT -5
I missed last week's topic, which would have to be Doctor Strange for me, as I have never read a Dr. Fate story in my life and quite possibly couldn't pick him out of a lineup (he's the one that sort of looks like Dr. Bong, with the gold helmet, right?)
As for this week, I will echo a number of other posters in that this was just a little bit after my time. I think my grandmother got me a couple of them for my birthday or Christmas one year because she thought they looked like something I might like, but that ship had sailed. I've never read any of the comics from any publisher, and I have had no desire to watch any of the movies, even for free on cable.
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Post by The Captain on May 17, 2020 15:15:16 GMT -5
Yeah, tell me about it! **grumble, grumble**...damn speculators**grumble** I didn't have much trouble finding a cheap copy of 18 (the Miller issue). It was #11 (the Origin of Dejah Thoris with a cheesecake bondage cover) that gave me fits trying to find an affordable copy. The prices on it about 5-8 years ago were ridiculous, but they dropped about 2 years back to more reasonable levels. I didn't see a copy under $20-$25 for a couple of years and it was the last issue I needed to complete the run, then I ran into 2 copies in a dollar bin at a show about 2 years ago. I snagged them both, but demand had dropped to the point I ended up giving away the second because there were no buyers in the area for it (the speculators had moved on to other things). Though it stiff lists for $10-$15 at places like Lonestar. -M This is the only issue I own of the series. I bought it a couple of years ago, when it was still kind of hot, out of the $1 bin at my LCS. And just to update everyone who weighed in. I took the drive back up the antique mall today and picked up the Omnibus. As soon as I finish reading Ruse (only have five issues to go), I'm going to dive into this series.
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Post by The Captain on May 17, 2020 9:44:14 GMT -5
I've found the postal service locations around me to be incredibly inconsistent. Selling lots of Magic: The Gathering cards on eBay the past few years, I've been told, by different people at each of four USPS locations I've visited, that: - if the envelope is inflexible in any spot (I used toploaders for the cards), I have to pay the "package" rate of $3.00+. - if the envelope is inflexible in any spot, I can just pay an extra $.30 or so for "no machine handling". - if the envelope is only "slightly" inflexible in any spot, I can pay the regular stamp price and the machine can handle it.
Over time, I've learned to either visit the location in the town next to mine, where the guy will do the third option above, or to use a long envelope with three pieces of copy paper folded, like a letter, around the toploader and just drop it in the mailbox outside my local location, because the card can slide around the long envelope instead of being tightly confined in a short one.
I also shipped three boxes of cards to a shop on the West Coast for sale last fall, all from the same post office. The first and third ones were sent out on a weekend, and the guy working the counter (not the usual weekday guy) sent them both Media Mail, saving me a ridiculous amount of money. The second one was sent on a Wednesday and they pushed me on 2-day priority shipping with additional insurance (the cards were worth about $500, while the first box was worth about the same and the third was about $300) to ensure that it got there as quickly as possible. Funny thing was, both of the Media Mail shipments got there in the SAME AMOUNT OF DAYS as the 2-day priority, so I have learned to never go there on a weekday to ship things like that.
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Post by The Captain on May 16, 2020 19:55:53 GMT -5
Another question:
Is the Marvel John Carter, Warlord of Mars series any good? There is a used copy of the HC omnibus at a local antique mall for $40, so I was wondering if it would be worth picking up.
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Post by The Captain on May 16, 2020 18:44:16 GMT -5
Thanks, The Cheat and @mrp! I knew I could count on someone in the community to give me a well-reasoned answer, and I got two of them.
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Post by The Captain on May 16, 2020 11:08:22 GMT -5
This may be a dumb question, and I am going to assume upfront that our resident comic industry expert @mrp probably knows the answer, but why aren't Marvel's Epic Collections in perpetual reprint?
I'm asking because I am trying to amass the first 130 issues or so of Amazing Spider-Man via that format, but there are two of the Epics (Spider-Man No More, collecting issues #39-52 and Annuals #3-4, and The Goblin's Last Stand, collecting issues #105-123) that are RIDICULOUSLY expensive on Amazon ($80+, for books that have MSRP of $39.99).
Maybe they only plan to do one print run of them and now it's either buy them on the secondary market or figure something else out, but these types of collections, in my opinion, shouldn't become collector's items. If Marvel were to keep them in print, even on a semi-regular basis, they would make money themselves rather than letting an opportunity pass them by.
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Post by The Captain on May 14, 2020 21:34:33 GMT -5
That is pretty much what the original HB cartoon was. Since Wacky Races came 1st in 1968 (with cooler concept cars) and then Cannonball Run came in 1981 that means Cannonball is a copycat! Well, Gumball Rally and Cannonball both preceded Cannonball Run, so we are talking generations of copies. Really, the whole thing started around 1965, with Blake Edwards' The Great Race and Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Their success leads to Those Magnificent Men in their Jaunty Jalopies and Wacky Races, in 1969, and Cannonball and Gumball Rally, in 1976, before we get to Burt and the gang, in Cannonball Run, in 1981. I always found Gumball Rally to be the better film out of those based on the illegal road race. Little better level of acting in it, with Michael Sarrazin and Raul Julia, as well as Gary Busey, in all his glory. "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was released in 1963, predating both of the 1965 films you mentioned, which were just variations of the former's general plot of a cross-country race.
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