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Post by The Captain on Apr 1, 2020 15:00:50 GMT -5
Read 112 books in March, as a lot of the normal distractions from life disappeared and I had some extra free time.
Best Thing I Read in March I enjoyed the few Jonah Hex stories in Weird Western Tales that I read, as well as some of the issues of Iron Man as I read my way through that series. Some of the IM stories between 65 and 100 are a little rough, but things start to pick up in the late 110s and really get going once they introduce Justin Hammer and his cadre of supervillain henchmen to the book.
Worst Thing I Read in March Current issue of Captain America, no question.
April Look-Ahead Will probably continue putting a lot of time into the Iron Man read-through, as well as picking up the second Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex collection. At my current pace, I will probably make it to IM #200 by the end of the month.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 1, 2020 11:41:50 GMT -5
Land
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Post by The Captain on Apr 1, 2020 8:47:17 GMT -5
brutalis, such a great bunch of movies you've watched in the past week! Most of those have been played in my household as well within the past few months. I will say, I don't think Animal House has aged well. It's still funny in spots, but overall, I didn't laugh as much as I did when I would watch it a decade or two ago. Caddyshack, on the other hand, is just as hilarious as the first time I saw it back in the 80s. This is one of those films I can watch over and over and it still has me roaring. Watched both Beetlejuice and The Princess Bride with my daughters last fall. My older daughter wanted to see the former because she is obsessed with the Broadway musical, and she enjoyed it a lot. As for the latter, it is just about a perfect movie, hitting all the right notes throughout its run time. As for me, the only comedy movies I watched in March were the first 2/3 of The Cornetto Trilogy, those being Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, both with my wife. We watched SotD right after the self-isolation order was given in PA and Hot Fuzz last Friday night. After this rewatching of both films, I have come to the opinion that Hot Fuzz is actually the better movie overall, while I think SotD has the more memorable high spots.
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Post by The Captain on Apr 1, 2020 7:33:02 GMT -5
Winning
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Post by The Captain on Mar 30, 2020 10:40:58 GMT -5
Pam herself didn't come back but she was reincarnated as sometime Dr. Strange love interest Morgana Blessing, as revealed in Doctor Strange (1974 series) #50.
Cei-U! I summon the old wine in a new skin!
Well, that makes sense. And did Junior show up again as one of the identities of Moon Knight? Nope, Moon Knight's identities were Marc Spector (his birth ID), Jake Lockley (cab driver), and Stephen Grant (millionaire playboy).
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Post by The Captain on Mar 30, 2020 9:58:28 GMT -5
I'm not a big fan of either, but if I have to pick one, it has to be Batman. Of all of the Batman stories I've read, I like the late Bronze Age, just before Crisis ones the best. The Detective stories from the early Bronze Age, with their supernatural bent, are pretty bad, and I don't dig Silver Age DC in any way, shape, or form (at least not for their main heroes; just too darn silly). Current ones have him at god-level abilities; he's perfect at everything and always five steps ahead of everyone else, so threats like the Council of Owls seem ridiculous, as he would have HAD to have known about them or else he's an idiot.
Superman has never appealed to me at all. He's too OP and attempts to make him vulnerable come off as forced or hokey.
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Post by The Captain on Mar 29, 2020 20:17:28 GMT -5
Counter
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Post by The Captain on Mar 29, 2020 11:43:00 GMT -5
You know what would be fun... a fight between DC and Marvel, with legit fan voting for results. I would mind an 'acts of vengeance' style thing either, throw DC's villains at Marvel heroes and vise versa. I big epic 'first the fight, then they team up' thing like always? pass.
I'm afraid Marvel would end up winning more of those fights because they have the higher market share.
No fan voting, because that leads to PIS. I would be intrigued by an "Acts of Vengeance" kind of thing. Spidey against Flash's Rogues, Batman against the Sinister Six, stuff like that, but one problem I would foresee is that many of DC's heroes seem to be OP compared to Marvel's villains, so who could Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern fight that would give them a legitimate challenge without needing the above-mentioned PIS?
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Post by The Captain on Mar 28, 2020 17:47:56 GMT -5
Visited the oldest, smallest supermarket in town not too long ago. Unlike the far larger stores in the area, they actually have paper towels/toilet paper for sale. Funny how that works out. I did the same thing for my parents this morning. Went to the little grocery out in the middle of nowhere near us instead of the big one in the suburb near them. Found everything on their list save one bag of coleslaw mix (which I did find later at the store near them, as my dad called me with "just a couple more things", including a prescription, between me finishing up my initial trip and running those groceries over to their place).
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Post by The Captain on Mar 28, 2020 14:25:42 GMT -5
The Captain I don't know if your dad's newspaper does it, or what his comfort level with tech is at his age, but our local paper provides digital access to the daily (an Sunday) papers if you have a subscription (and they offer Sunday only subscriptions). You get physical delivery (when not in lockdown) and digital copies you can access via device or computer. It might be a way to mollify your father and take away an excuse to go out. -M Thanks, but he's not interested in reading it online at all. I suggested that and was told it has to be a physical copy. They have one desktop computer in the house and he doesn't want to sit in front of it for an hour to read the news.
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Post by The Captain on Mar 28, 2020 11:43:15 GMT -5
Came real close to having to take the keys for both of my parents' cars this morning. As I was dropping off their weekly grocery order, my dad asked if I would be coming by tomorrow (Sunday) and when I said I was not, he followed with "well, how am I going to get my Sunday newspaper?"
I told him he might have to go a week without it, and he got all pouty and said "well, this is all a bunch of bullsh$t anyway. No reason we should be stuck in the house. There's only 188 cases in our county, out of 1.8MM people. How much danger am I in going to the gas station to buy a paper?"
I tried to explain to him that the number of cases wasn't an accurate count, because some folks are asymptomatic and because there aren't enough test kits since a certain someone sat around for two months not taking this seriously. He of course got offended at that (he's a Fox devotee) and said that once Trump relaxes the restrictions, he'll go wherever he wants, to which I had to remind him of states' rights and that the governor of PA (Tom Wolf, a Democrat), is not likely to follow what Trump says and will keep the restrictions he put in place much longer. He grunted and shut down, at which point I politely excused myself from their company and headed home.
They're both in their mid-70s, both with underlying health issues (he's a diabetic with high blood pressure, may have had cancer but I'm not sure since he and my mom are tight-lipped about their health, and an alcoholic, while she has been dealing with whatever happened with her brain three months ago), and he's acting like getting a muffin-fluffing Sunday newspaper, so he can do the muffin-fluffing crossword puzzle, is important enough to risk both their lives.
It's not a lie when they say that as your parents get older, they take on the role of the child and you the role of the parent, and it's all being made worse by the Coronapocalypse.
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Post by The Captain on Mar 27, 2020 15:48:30 GMT -5
How are you acquiring this? Trade or cash? Just curious what you're going to be putting out for the books.
Might be a beneficial trade, I have some spare silvers that he's keen on, early Spidey, Iron Man, Daredevil etc...
We'll explore that option a bit deeper when things like social-distancing get relaxed, but we're good, we've known each other for some time. Very cool. I know that the prices on this series have skyrocketed with the upcoming MCU film, so I was interested in knowing if it was part of a sale this fellow collector was having or if you were acquiring it some other way. Of course, if I'd have been smart, I'd have bought the entire series out of the $1 bins, as there was zero market for them even up to 3 or 4 years ago.
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Post by The Captain on Mar 27, 2020 12:40:33 GMT -5
I've never read the bronze-age 'Eternals' but have access to a full set (I think 19 issues + 1 Annual) that a fellow collector has decided to part with. Is it any good? Never read it myself (one of just a couple of Bronze Age Marvels I haven't read), but I have a follow-up question. How are you acquiring this? Trade or cash? Just curious what you're going to be putting out for the books.
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Post by The Captain on Mar 27, 2020 9:21:18 GMT -5
Slide
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Post by The Captain on Mar 26, 2020 14:06:22 GMT -5
I don't have anything to that. Too many idiots not only endangering us all, but making this take longer. Yeah, and my poor sister, who informed me that starting Monday, she and her five practice partners are splitting into two teams and will be "3 weeks on, 3 weeks off" for the foreseeable future. This is to ensure that there are always healthy doctors at home in case one of the three docs "on" gets sick, and if someone does get sick, they have three weeks "off" to recover. She said that she might not be able to go on vacation with us in July because even if the self-isolation and social distancing orders are lifted, she'll still be around potentially sick people every day and wouldn't want to bring something with her to Ocean City, Maryland while we're around crowds of people. This makes me very sad, as this has been something we've done every two years since my girls were little and is a new family tradition for the two of us who never had many of them growing up (neither of our parents could care about family history or tradition or things like that in the least, so we had very few annual or bi-annual rituals on the calendar).
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