abstractgeek

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abstractgeek's Recent Comments
July 11, 2013 1:18 pm A solid book overall. i prefer Larry Tye's Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero, which came out last year. Weldon's preference for some of the stranger sillier silver age tales sometimes colors his view of things that don't quite match that vision of the character. Tye is a little more dispassionate and even handed. Also Tom Dehavens Our Hero: Superman on Earth.
July 11, 2013 1:08 pm the aura bit actually comes from the Elliot S! Maggin novel, Last Son of Krypton, which came out in 1978. It's also a pretty good origin story. I normally dont plug anything but i did a podcast recently comparing not only man of steel, birthright, and secret origin, but pretty much every origin story i could get my hands on going all the way back to action 1 thru earth 1 and the new 52 action 1-8. the evolution of the origin is pretty interesting, its a process of adding elements through the golden age, consolodating elements from various sources through the silver and bronze ages, then a complete reboot and the struggle to reintroduce old elements in new ways ever since. key things always stay, but it certainly changes to suit the different audiences and needs of the publisher. http://www.geekfights.net/2013/06/12/geek-fights-bonus-the-many-origins-of-superman/
June 12, 2013 10:10 pm The original script for Superman had 4 kryptonian villains, one of which was Jax-ur. he was cut for budgetary reasons.
May 24, 2013 2:10 pm First it sounds like the biggest problem is that you set up some expectations that the shop didn't live up to. This seems to be the most common geek complaint about anything. Expectations are a bitch. Being excited for something makes us unreasonable about it, then we are saddened when its not what we want it to be. Happens in comics, movies, TV, retail and people. That's our fault as much as theirs. Second instead of speaking with your wallet, speak with your mouth. It doesn't sound like they are doing anything bad they just aren't doing anything good. Most people who open comic shops have big love for comics but often no idea about how to run a business. Perhaps you could talk to them about ways to improve things. You can do that in a nice respectful way ( " here's what you are doing wrong" is not the way) maybe they'll take it well maybe they won't. If they are struggling they may welcome the help. Start by asking how business is, mention it doesn't seem like its very busy, if they are doing fine and they just happen to run a shop that's not your thing then fine, but if they are struggling, you could offer suggestions. It's not a consumers job to make the retail experience work, but it is a nice gesture and its a comics fans job to help out other fans that are trying to live their part of the dream. If you are willing to support" small time creators or publishers, why not extend that to retailers. Most of them are fans too, most of them didnt really understand how it all works when they decided to try it. Being involved in almost any part of comics is a fools game. The only people who would do it are idiots or people blinded by their love for comics and thank god they do, or we wouldn't have comics. Lastly comics retail is hardly dead. Overall Sales are up year over year and with the exception of 2 or so years where the economy was at its lowest, it has been on the rise for a while. New comic stores will only help that growth
April 14, 2013 6:51 pm I find it interesting that everyone (including bkv) concluded that the potentially offensive part was the homosexuality and not the graphic nature of the images. while there has been sex in the comic before it was hardly as graphic as a bukake money shot, or even a blow job. sure the images were small, but very clearly front & center in the panels in question. and they were really not in any kind of story context like the sex in the space brothel issue (which had what certainly seemed like some gay sex to me). Its not like someone thought a steamy embrace between two men might be offensive, it was shots thats are pretty much right out of porn. if the sex was heterosexual, they would still be straight out of a porno. But the reaction was that it was a double standard between straight and gay sex as opposed to a double standard for r rated and x rated images, which wouldnt really be surprising or garner much in the way of headlines. This story got picked up by some LGBT news sites. I dont know if the bukake community would have given the story as much traction.
April 2, 2013 10:49 am Fighting American was created many years after Kirby & Simon were fired from Timely. It was a response to Atlas reviving Captain America in 1954 with Stan Lee and John Romita. I think Kirby's Sky Masters comic strip deserves to be on here. With inks by the legendary Wally Wood, I think it is easily among Kirbys best artwork. Special nod should go to Kirbys visualizations for Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light film project, In addition to being amazing examples of Kirby's later design sensibility and fascination with gods, they were used by the CIA to free hostages in Iran in the actual events that inspired the film Argo. I wish they would have used the Kirby art in the movie.
January 16, 2013 5:14 pm movies may have little impact on monthly sales in comic shops, they have a huge impact in bookstores outside the comics market. Infinity gauntlet became the #1 selling tpb (beating the walking deads that typically sit at the top of the list) for a few weeks after the avengers movie, and that was just a tease of the character. Watchmen sold huge numbers the year the movie came out. Movies have an impact on sales, just not in shops
December 14, 2012 12:08 pm Now that is most likely a diamond issue. if they ordered 200 and only got 7. there was a screw up on diamonds end
December 14, 2012 12:03 pm print on demand is considerably more expensive than standard printing. the reason image has issues with second prints is because the smaller print runs of second prints means a larger cost. print on demand is very expensive. a full color 28 page comic at ka blam printing would be 3.46 a copy. way too high for anyone to make a profit unless cover price were $10 and then no consumer would buy it.
December 14, 2012 11:55 am i know diamond gets a lot of shit around here, but this has nothing to do with them. Diamond takes the orders from retailers and passes them on to the publisher. they are middlemen. they dont decise what retailers order, or what publishers print. The "bizarre front heavy ordering" system is pretty much how most retail merchandise is ordered. virtually every new product in every store is ordered prior to manufacture, thats how supplers set their orders. Every book, dvd, cd etc that went on sale at any retailer this week was ordered by the retailers months ago. CONSUMERS dont have to order in advance, even with diamond. only retailers. If you have to preorder your books its because the retailer has chosen to pass on the responsibility of inventory management to you, usually in exchange for a discount of some kind. Again thats the retailer, not diamond.