The iFanboy Letter Column – 07.15.2011

Friday means many things to many people. For some, Friday is all about shaving your head and blowing stuff up. For others, they want to avoid that guy, which is the correct choice.

At iFanboy, Friday means it’s letter column time.

You write. We answer. Very simple.

As always, if you want to have your e-mail read on the any of our shows or answered here, keep them coming — contact@ifanboy.com

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Since Comic-Con will knock out the letters column next week, we’re doing this week in mini quick hits style!

Is there any official explanation as to why Spider-Man/Peter Parker is dead in The Amazing Spider-Man series but still is popping up fighting Venom in the Venom series, appears still healthy and active in FF, etc.?  And do you see this continuing i.e. Spider-Man alive in certain aspects of the Marvel Universe and not others.

Jason

Wait, what? I dropped The Amazing Spider-Man last month, but I picked up this month’s issue for the Ryan Stegman art and Peter Parker seemed to be alive and well, if busy and a bad friend. As far as I am aware, Spider-Man did not die in the regular Marvel Universe. He did die in the Ultimate Universe. Perhaps you mixed those two Spider-Men up? Either that or I somehow missed the biggest story in comics that no one is talking about.

As a person who is heading off to college this fall, one issue that arises is what to do about my weekly habit of buying comics. Very soon I will be in a situation where I will have no local comic book shop, less money, and less time. So my question is this, should I take this as a time to bow out of comics for awhile? Or maybe just scale back on what I buy. I just worry that I will not have the time to devote to comics. So what do you guys suggest I do? And do you think that something like trades would be easier to follow while I am in college? 

William from Van Etten, New York

Heading off to college! Congratulations, you lucky bastard.

So what do you do about the whole reading comics in college thing? If you’re worried about money, get a job. I realize that sounds like an old man thing to say, but it’s what I did in college so I could maintain the comic book lifestyle to which I was accustomed (as well as eat and drink and stuff). If you’re worried about not having a local store and not being able to keep up then I think you have two options: 1) Utilize a mail order service like DCBS, or 2) Go the trade route through Amazon or InStockTrades or places like that. If you choose the mail order you can get your books delivered weekly or monthly and still stay on top of things close to as they happen. If you go the trade route you’ll be a bit behind “the conversation” but at the end of the day you can probably live with that.

I think you should bow out of comics if you feel like you want to bow out of comics, which you might. Hey, maybe you need a break. But if you don’t want to bow out, you can certainly find cost-effective ways to stay in the game even without a local shop.

I was curious if any of you guys have any guilty pleasure books you read that you wouldn’t normally admit to? Mine’s Alpha Flight as the John Byrne run and the X-Men crossover is what got me into collecting.

Cory D. from Nebraska

You know what? This is going to sound trite, but I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. I just don’t. Like what you like and don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it. At the end of the day, who really cares if you like Deadpool, Two and a Half Men, or Twilight? I might think they’re stupid but if you enjoy them isn’t that the most important thing? The older I get the less I worry about what other people think about what I like. People spend too much time worrying about that stuff. Life’s too short.

(That doesn’t mean I won’t still make fun of things for comedic effect because A) That’s fun, and B) We’re trying to be entertaining here.)

Also there’s nothing wrong with liking Alpha Flight. Those John Byrne books were good.

Conor Kilpatrick

 

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Why do they spell out the names of organizations in Marvel and DC? People wouldn’t say it like that. You say FBI because it’s not a word. Like S.H.I.E.L.D., You wouldn’t say all those letters you’d just say “shield”. Same goes for S.T.A.R.R., S.W.O.R.D.,  and H.A.M.M.E.R.

You wouldn’t say Hydra as letters like CIA if Hydra stood for something. Initialisms vs. Acronyms is all I’m saying, to write out shield as an acronym when two people are having a conversation they aren’t saying ess a-ch eye eee el dee, they would just say the word shield. An example is the acronym fubar. You say it as a word even though it’s an acronym.

Stone

Because it’s more fun.

Two questions for you. One, I have been wondering how long it takes you all to read the average 20-22 page comic? At present I am averaging between 10-12 minutes. I know this may seem like a strange question but as someone who is very story-focused I sometimes feel like I’m not giving the art its due attention and wanted to know if people thought about these things at all or if I was way over or under the norm – if there is such a thing.

Evan

I have no idea. I have never timed, nor thought of timing how long it takes to read a comic book. I can tell you that it’s probably around 10 minutes or so. It depends on the book. If it’s 5 minutes, you either didn’t spend enough time looking at the art, or it was a shitty comic. But at the same time, if an issue is too packed with content, I tend to want to move on. A block of prose in the middle of a book always throws me off from a pacing standpoint, because it’s just not what I signed up for. I always have to read my books in a hurry though, and I actually don’t like doing it that way. I’d love to read them over the course of a few days, and if you can, that’s the way to go. For me. But instead of timing it, just try and pay attention to what you’re reading, and really look at the art, and all the things in there that we might gloss over. So much work goes into a comic page that we spend 45 seconds on, and that’s kind of awful.

If iFanboy (Ron, Josh, Conor and, for the sake of this question, Gordon the Intern) were an analogue for The Beatles which Beatle would you see yourself as, and which Beatle would your partners be respectfully and why?

James

This is not a straight up comparison, because I know way too much about The Beatles to do so, but if I was forced to shove someone into a box, I’d go like this. As for why, I’m not delving into that minefield. You’ll just have to infer, and that will make it more fun anyway.

Ron: Paul
Conor: John
Josh: George
Gordon the Intern: Ringo

Josh Flanagan

 

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I took your recommendation from the letters column a couple of months ago and picked up Savage Dragon starting with the “Back in Blue” story arc via the Image app on my iPad. Now I’m caught up to the most recent issue and wow has it been a blast! This is easily the most fun I’ve had reading a comic series since I started reading Invincible. Anyway I just wanted to thank you guys for what you do and being so accessible on the forums, email, twitter, etc. You guys get me hooked on some of the greatest comics, keep up the great work!

Brandon T. from Knoxville, Tennessee

I know this breaks format a bit as it’s not really a question for us, but given that the San Diego Comic-Con is approaching and things are nuts right now, when I came across Brandon’s e-mail it reminded me of why we do this every week, so I thought I’d run it here this week so I could not only thank Brandon for the kind words, but also to illustrate part of the reason why we do iFanboy. You see, we love comic books — it’s just that simple. We love reading them, talking about them and sharing what we think about them with all of you. The added bonus has been hearing back from people like Brandon and the many others of the iFanbase who have taken the time to let us know what they think of the comics we discuss here.

So thank you Brandon for letting us know that you enjoyed a book we recommended here. And thank you to everyone else who takes the time to write in, call the voicemail etc. Without all of you, iFanboy wouldn’t be what it is today and we appreciate everyone single one of you.

Now Brandon, now that you’re on board with Savage Dragon, why not check out Twisted Savage Dragon Funnies next? Try something out there and new, but oddly familiar and comfortable.

Ron Richards