phillosmaster

November 16, 2020 1:23 am I'd like you to examine your reply and see how its nothing more than a straw man argument (several actually). It's for your own benefit, and maybe it's not on purpose.

November 2, 2020 12:00 pm The only thing holding me back from watching Ted Lasso is where it is streaming. Hard to justify getting into another serivce when I barely watch everything I want to get to on the services to which I currently subscribe. Good Lord Bird is fantastic IMO. I don't really hear anyone talking about it.

October 25, 2020 11:03 pm Agreed that this run of FF has been such a joy to read. When FF was gone it didn't feel like Marvel to me, and in the hands of a less capable writer they can easily not work. Slott really is a great fit here. If he doesn't have an affection for these characters then he's extremely good at faking it. Sometimes a writer goes on a book and as a reader it can feel like they are struggling to pinpoint what is the fundamental value of the property. Slott seems to have identified the fundamental values of the FF here and when a writer does that they can make the silly and annoying stuff fit better. So I'm on for the ride until they take him off the book.

October 21, 2020 2:24 pm My favorite stuff in the setting is not the Space Marine stuff because I find it hard to be sympathetic with the space marine characters since they are steroid-ed up, space zealots. If I was going to recommend anything it would be Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series which is effectively a sci fi take on Sharpe's Rifles. Either that or the Eisenhorn novels also by Dan that's about an Imperial inquisitor. Eisenhorn is more about sci fi horror since it deals with alien incursions and the corrupting influence of the warp (think the movie Event Horizon for what warp travel and the perils of the warp would be like). Though I can understand why they started with the Space Marines. They are the sexiest part of the franchise and clearly the most popular element in the war game. A book about Marneus though didn't make me personally run out and purchase the book though I will eventually.

October 21, 2020 2:08 pm As a lapsed Warhammer 40k fan I think it is a shame that they didn't try and use this comic as a jumping on point. Seems like a huge missed opportunity. To answer a question you had (but probably don't really care about) the Space Marines are no longer human. They start human. Then when they become a candidate to be initiated into a Space Marine chapter they undergo a battery of medical procedures and genetic therapies that make them transhuman. One of the side effects of which is a potentially infinite lifespan though most die in battle eventually. Usually they are presented thinking of themselves as something separate from the general human population. Each chapter has a fiefdom of sorts that they watch over and protect. Marneus's Ultramarine chapter watches and in effect rules over the Ultramar sector, which is under the umbrella of the Imperium of Man who has it's capital in holy Terra. I fell off from Warhammer 40k though I was big into it as a kid and played the war game alot (if you like the idea of mini painting and model crafting then it is a great hobby). My weariness with it stems from just how dreary it is by design. You can only take so much grim dark future space fascist fiction IMO. Also the writing in the novels are uneven depending on the author. Many authors cross over with comics. Certainly the Dan Abnett books were very entertaining and a highlight of the franchise. Also I dug Graham Mcneill's stuff. If I wandered too far from them I ran the risk of read just sweaty and kinda boring gun porn.

October 19, 2020 1:15 pm As I read this over I realize I said "Is downloading digital comics stealing?" rather than is pirating comics stealing. Oops. I wasn't making a value judgement on digital only readers :)

October 19, 2020 1:08 pm Well I think they pretty clearly set their ground rules for morality in their argument. Is stealing amoral? Most societies and systems of morality would say yes stealing is wrong and amoral. Those are societies that value private property. Have their been societies that do not place an emphasis in private property? Yes for example some Native American populations encountered by early western explorers had no concept of private ownership. In the 21st century does western civilization value private ownership? Yeah, pretty clearly the laws are set up to protect property and condemn stealing. Is downloading digital comics stealing? You are benefiting off the backs of the labor of other people without compensating them? So only in the loosest definition is this not stealing. Is there a moral quandary at play? Conor alluded to this when he made the statement that comics are not food. If you have to steal bread to feed your starving child there is a tough question on which action is more moral. That's not in play here because as the guys rightly point out you don't need comics. You want comics. You could have no comic reading in your life and still live a full and healthy life. "If there is one thing that you should know about me, Ray, it's that I don't need anything. I want." So by the standards of the society we agree to live in tacitly by participating in that society (paying taxes and receiving the benefits of the infrastructure that society maintains) yeah this is stealing and there is little moral grey area here. Everything else I've read just feels like a justification for amoral action. They are straw man arguments usually.

October 12, 2020 4:30 pm So I had not been reading DCeased because I saw the premise and figured I'd give it a pass, but each time you guys talk about it I think to myself I really should be reading it. Then the realization that its a big event with stakes really sold me this episode. The big events seem lame mostly because you don't believe they have stakes equivalent to their scope. DCeased looks like it does so I'm am sold. I'm gonna go back and read it all. I think I'm coming to the realization that some of my favorite stories were the ones that were out of continuity or at least started as out of continuity. I use to love reading "What If" for example mostly because you were never certain where it was gonna go and how off the rails the writer wanted to take things. Maybe this continuity thing is overrated :)

October 12, 2020 9:19 am Everyone I give a copy of Boxers and Saints to love that book. Whenever I see Gene's name on a book I get immediately interested. I am not a basketball fan by any stretch of the imagination, but now you've got me interested in Dragon Hoops.

September 9, 2020 9:14 am We appear to have very different tastes. Such is comics I guess.