Taral-DLOS

June 18, 2013 9:06 am 1. Age of Ultron 10 2. Captain Marvel 13 3. Darth Vader and the 9th Assassin 3 4. Indestructible Hulk 9 (dropping series after 10 though) 5. New Avengers 7 (digitally only) 6. Uncanny Avengers 9 7. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Smuggler's Code (digest) BQ: This weekend, my wife bought "Pitch Perfect", via iTunes. The last hardcopy movie I bought (I think) was a blu-ray that contained both "Fantastic Four" and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer." Terrible movies, but $8 for both on blu-ray, so why not, eh?

May 14, 2013 2:42 pm 1. Age of Ultron 8 2. Avengers: The Enemy Within 1 3. Nova 4 4. Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Ninth Assassin 2 5. Wolverine and the X-Men 29 Also, I had my LCS pull last week's Astonishing X-Men 62 for me, since I've just now started buying it (got the BQ: When I was still living at home, especially in the year before I left for school, every week we would watch the new episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and eat homemade popcorn (fresh-popped on stove, with homemade cheddar cheese sauce. Delish!) Also, she's an excellent grandmother to my niece and nephews, and makes the effort to keep mentioning me around them (I live far away from my parents and sister, and so I never see my sister's kids, so I'm glad that they're getting frequent reminders about their uncle).

April 2, 2013 1:47 pm 1. Age of Ultron 4 2. All-New X-Men 10 3. Indestructible Hulk 6 4. Thanos Rising 1 5. Ultimate Comics X-Men 25 BQ: Portal gun, from the Portal games. Ideally a functional one :)

March 12, 2013 9:37 am My LCS, The WIzard's Tower in Barrhaven, Ontario, Canada, has always been great to me. When it comes to business, I want to say that their main income comes from Magic: The Gathering (card sales and tournaments). On more than one occasion, I've been stuck in line behind people buying well over $100 in individual cards lol. But when it comes to the comics, they treat me good. They're the only store in the greater Ottawa area that gives Diamond preorder discounts. I give them my money 2-3 months before the book ships, and I pay about 20% less per book, which adds up (a $3.99 USD book comes to $3.23 CAD; that comes to a little under $20 in savings a month). At the beginning of March, I told them which books coming out in May that I wanted, and they handled it. They'll pull all of them for me, and I come in once a week (usually Saturdays) to pick them up. They give first priority to people who do what I do, making sure that every person who pre-paid gets their books and putting the rest on the shelf. And I can usually could on the books coming out that week to be on the shelf in sufficient numbers that, if there is one that I want to check out but don't want to commit to pre-ordering yet, then I'll be able to off-the-shelf it easily (and they sell those for US cover price, not some lame Canadian markup). I did that with Avengers. I was unwilling to commit to $3.23 x 2 for 3 months, so I picked up Avengers #1 when it came out easily (didn't care for it, so I didn't buy the rest or start preordering them later). They also have TPBs and hardcovers at US cover price (admittedly common in Canadian comic book stores, but unheard of in Canadian regular-book stores, and the difference between US and Canadian cover prices can be huge; older Essential books are $16.99 US, or $27.25 Canadian). And older TPBs that don't sell as well are 2 for 1. The TPB selection isn't amazing, but they'll order anything I ask them to. When The Wizard's Tower's satellite store in the University of Ottawa campus closed down (they were forced out because the university was renovating that part of the campus), they wanted to keep their customers, so gave everyone a 40% discount for a month. Sadly, I was only buying like 4 books back then. I'm on a first-name basis with the owner, the manager, and the girl that works weekends (who is also running their booth at Ottawa Comic-Con in May). I walk in the door, and 9 times out of 10, by the time I reach the counter, my books are on the desk. Because I've been buying digitally lately as well, I've managed to convince the owner to explore making a digital marketplace for his store through Comixology, so that when I do buy digitally he gets a piece of the pie. He's looking into it, and will probably launch it next year. I'm ashamed to say I once waivered in my loyalty, looking at a store closer to my workplace (it's a good 30 minute drive to The Wizard's Tower every week, which can slowly eat into my savings in gas money). But the other store I looked at didn't even care to respond to my questions about their pull list mechanism. Also, when I asked the other store about Diamond preorder discounts, the store clerk actually said "I'm not sure that's a thing," questioning my intelligence. I explained what The Wizard's Tower gives me, and she just said "yea, we don't do that." So I dropped that like a stone and remain loyal to The Wizard's Tower.

March 12, 2013 9:05 am 1. Age of Ultron 2 2. Star Wars 3 3. Thor: God of Thunder 6 4. Utlimate Comics X-Men 24 5. Uncanny X-Men 3 6. Wolverine and the X-Men 26 7. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Defenders of the Lost Temple 8. Star Trek Volume 4 BQ: The worst DST story I've personally had was being late for work one morning, back when I was still in school and working at the local Wendy's. The boss was cool with it though. But one time, when I was a little kid, my family and the Preacher were the only people in our church's congregation to forget to change the clock. We all went to church, were surprised to be the only ones, but just started the service. About 45 minutes later, people who had changed their clocks correctly started to trickle in, and my parents realized the mistake they made.

March 6, 2013 8:57 am In the Ultimate line, Kraven The Hunter was a TV star. He was basically the equivalent of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter. In his first appearance, I actually had trouble hearing him as Russian; kept defaulting to Australian.

February 18, 2013 1:24 pm I have one comment to make: Both volumes of Ultimate Iron Man were absolute garbage. The fact that they sold well astounds me. I got them from the library through inter-library loan (interests that my library didn't have them) in a phase when I wanted to read the entire Ultimate line. I struggled through Ultimate Iron Man and Ultimate Iron Man II. They were such trash that subsequent Ultimate Iron Man stories retconned them out of existence. Their entire story was relegated to being an in-universe cartoon about Iron Man. Seriously. So I'm hoping that his new Superman stories bomb because they end up being such poor quality as Ultimate Iron Man was.

February 4, 2013 2:46 pm No love for Avengers Vol 3 19-22 (when he destroys an entire Eastern European country so he could rule it)? Or Mighty Avengers 1-6, when he commandeers Iron Man's armor and looks like Nude Wasp and tries to take over the world?

January 21, 2013 3:50 pm 1. Uncanny Avengers #3 2. Uncanny X-Force #1 3. Wolverine and the X-Men #24 (picking that one up digitally) BQ: Firefly. Bring back some of the surviving characters, restart the original premise of Western In Space. Start with a sub-set of Mal, Zoe, Kaylee, and Jayne (maybe 2 or 3 of them), and a few new characters as new crew/passengers. Leave Simon, River, and Inara out of the show, but maybe have them guest star periodically.

January 15, 2013 8:30 am All-New X-Men 6 Captain Marvel 9 Indestructible Hulk 3 Savage Wolverine 1 BQ: This morning I forgot what time my wife needed to be at work for, and almost made her late by not getting into the shower early enough. Oops :)