paulc51

Name: Paul Dykman

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My exposure to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics is fairly limited—I was more than a fair-weather fan in the…

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paulc51's Recent Comments
January 1, 2016 11:34 pm Hey Conor, Not sure if you every get a chance to listen to filmweek on kpcc in LA, but the three reviewers who were on last week talked about Anomalisa (who knows--they may have been in the same screening as you). http://www.scpr.org/programs/filmweek/2015/12/23/12405/ It's a funny segment because two of the reviewers absolutely hated the movie--one especially hated the animation--and one really loved it (Amy Nicholson, who tends to have interesting takes on movies)--and she describes it in such a way that the other two reviewers start to question their take. Personally I'm looking forward to it--one of my favorite movies is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
September 2, 2013 12:35 am Thanks for everything guys! I've always felt connected to the site and the podcast because you guys are of my generation--we'll always have Sunday, right? Cheers to that.
April 9, 2013 9:15 pm Got it.
April 9, 2013 1:44 am Can anyone explain why this feature randomly looks back nine years instead of ten? I've been conditioned to respect round numbers I guess but a little grumpy old man voice always just goes..."Bah! nine! What about ten years ago? Now THAT was a long time ago...." :)
January 30, 2013 10:47 pm Glad to see Gregg Hurwitz is still on writing duties--he has a nice sense of character and dialogue--I recommend his novels as well.
January 23, 2013 11:56 pm Yes! I think you just described what this site means to a lot of us. . IFanboy really kept me into comics when I came back after a 15 year absence.
January 12, 2013 12:05 am I used to subscribe to a bunch of comics growing up in the late 80s / early 90s. I loved getting issues of Batman, Detective, and ASM in the mail--something about opening the poly bag to see which issue came that day was awesome. I remember when Impact comics came out (all of the old Harvey characters that DC briefly rebooted in the early 90s), I convinced by dad to drop $60 bucks on subscriptions to all five titles for the year (yes, it was that cheap)-- (The Black Hood, The Shield, Jaguar, The Comet, & The Web). There were a lot of turkeys but I loved getting the mail everyday to see which issues came. Ah, salad days. Same problems then as described here (one month delay, once-in-a-great while damaged issues, etc.)--I'd hate it when I'd go to my local LCS and see the great covers for the issues I wouldn't see for another 2-3 weeks. Though I'm pretty much digital now I can see how the Internet might make you appreciate the tangible even more.
December 5, 2012 11:21 pm The first 5 minutes was crazy klunky. They've had sex, then they go fight bad guys in costume, argue, apparently stop arguing, remove their costumes to go out for diner food for a minute, and then argue and leave each other. It felt like they'd filmed random scenes and just spliced them together.
November 28, 2012 12:00 am This may be rooted in eighties / nineties comics, but I always felt Marvel had a higher propensity for heroes fighting each other for no good reason--just mindless, several page long battles--which bugged the crap out of me as a younger reader (you'd never see Batman and Superman just fighting each other over a misunderstanding for an entire issue). In my mind this kind of placed Marvel a little bit more in the Greek mythology tradition, with a lot of flawed characters (one big, crazy soap opera), whereas DC felt like it was reinforcing some sort of moral code. That being said, the first several issues of the latest Justice League incarnation in the new 52 felt very 'Marvel' to me (the Jim Lee art probably added to it).
November 20, 2012 12:07 am I started reading comics just before it jumped from 75 cents to $1 in the late 80s. When I got back into comics a couple years ago after about 20 years out of it, I jumped into it with the same zest. This included embracing the main thing I loved about it--storing, alphabetizing, and cataloguing. Pretty quickly, the thirty something me had to quash some ideas the eleven year old 'inner child' was harboring: 1.) You live in a one-bedroom apartment now with a wife--you have no space to store hundreds of comics. 2.) Those aren't comics...those are 'floppies' (this new, strange, and earth-shattering word quickly entered my vocabulary). Floppies have no value. (sigh). Say it again...internalize it----take it down like medicine---those things are like the Time magazine you throw away. 3.) Trade paperbacks are physical products that have value (these were but a blip on the radar when I stopped reading comics around 1995). They can be bought and sold online, and you will inevitably have some that you will want to sell, and that can be sold to feed the future habit (just like trading your Pearl Jam cds for that Jawbreaker 12'.'--there will be some that you will outgrow and that will make you cringe to keep on your shelf). Comi--er-'floppies' are almost always worthless (sigh). No one will want them and you probably won't read them again. 4.) Your wife has an ipad. Use it. So, here's what I do (and though I'm not as focused on money, it does help recoup value)--I buy trades of series that I will want to read again, like 'Scalped,' 'Y the Last Man,' etc.--titles that I've heard great things about, and wait a month to buy the digital monthlies (like Batman, Flash, other DC titltes), which save me a dollar. I buy the Marvel titles prior to the price drop back (I'm about twenty issues back on ASM) and I occasionally take advantage of 99 cent sales. When I go to my local shop (I've never been a Wednesday guy, so that helps) to buy my trades, I flip through the (ahem)...floppies, and I tell myself that they are not worth it. And then I try to remember what the hell Ron, Conor, and Josh were talking about a few weeks or months earlier so I can buy the right trades! By the way, I hope Marvel is reading this message board--I can't think of a better impetus to change their pricing policies, especially for the digital price drop.