TF Views

Dominic wrote:I am going to say anything before 1985 is right out. About 50% of non-MoS 1986 and 1987. Then, after several reboots in the last 20 years, I would say 80% or so is close enough. If it does not apply to modern Superman, it is out of context.

No, that's not how the DC universe works. The Golden Age stories would actually belong to the Superman from Earth 2, who survived CoIE separately from the modern Superman. That alone shows how a story doesn't have to apply to the modern Superman but still be in context. And CoIE didn't erase the stories that came before it. They still happened and still exist on some level, even if not all were directly incorporated into the surviving universe, as Infinite Crisis would go on to explain, particularly with Power Girl and her inconsistencies over the years and show as Alex Luthor was able to un-merge the multiverse Earth's. This is why I say it'd be hard to pin down an exact figure. You can't just dismiss everything before a reboot because they're not actually undoing all of that history.

Shockwave wrote:Ok, so I'm gonna hijack the thread for a moment and put this question to the rest of the forum: Do you follow writers like Dom does or the franchise like I do or some mishmash thereof?

I'm more the type that follows the franchise, not a particular writer.

So this thread asploded when I was gone! This is gonna be a long one and I'll probably reiterate some points (Onslaught Six is fucking redundant, indeed) but I don't give a damn.

Shockwave wrote:And just to clarify, I'm not knocking your system. You have one and it obviously works for you, I'm just trying to illustrate why such an approach would never work for me. It probably has something to do with the ADD.

Do you take any medication for that? (I'm not trying to insult you, I'm legitimately curious. They put me on Adderall for a few years in high school. We could compare notes.)

Ok, so I'm gonna hijack the thread for a moment and put this question to the rest of the forum: Do you follow writers like Dom does or the franchise like I do or some mishmash thereof?

Both. If there's a Transformers comic out, chances are decent that I'm at least vaguely interested in it--enough to read summaries but probably not enough to buy a trade and actually read it. AHM was the first IDW comic I bought.

Now, I like Shane McCarthy as a writer. I think he gets TF. So I'm definitely going to read any TF he works on in the future. (Well, I still haven't really read Drift, but you get my meaning. I intend to.) However, if he starts working on, say, Booster Gold or something--then I'm out. I don't care about Booster Gold (heh, I wrote "Booster Golf") all that much. I'm 'open to the idea' and if someone I trust (you, 86, Dom, etc.) tells me, "Hey, McCarthy's Booster Gold run is awesome, go read some of it," then I would.

But then there's other writers like, for example, Frank Miller. I loved Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns (who doesn't? For all it did for comics, positive or negative, it's still an awesome book) and subsequently I would like to follow some of his other stuff (Sin City, Ronin, his Daredevil run), I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

So, I guess it depends on the writer. I liked Watchmen but I don't have From Hell because Jack the Ripper is boring when he isn't in Shadowman. But I do have The Killing Joke. Does that make any sense?

Dominic wrote:

Not even that awesome Mega Man Archie comic that I am the only person in the world buying?

Meant to pick it up. Missed the first issue, so there is no point unless it gets compiled.

It might or it might not. The first issue is mostly filler crap you already know anyway--the gold is in its portrayl of the bosses, and stuff.

Onslaught6 is fucking redundant.

Actually, I tend to agree with you 90% of the time you say it though.....

I only use it in cases of dumb timetravel or reality-bending idiocy or stuff that involves fanwanky supercosmic bullshit.

You could ask me why I think that it is wrong for a man to have skill with interior design. Not being homophobic does not make me immune to charges of stereotyping.

That's a decent start. Interior design is a legitimate field!

Most writers can put together arcs that are reasonably self-contained. If I was a fan of Johns, I could read his "Flash" of "Green Lantern" without Waid's or Jones' runs on those titles.

A comic series is only a single story in the vaguest sense. Is anybody really going to tell me that pre-CoIE Superman comics are part of the same story that modern Superman comics are?

If a writer goes to a different book, the original story is over and they have moved on to write something else.

I've got it!

To Dom, comic writers are like bands!

Let's say you've got a band (or solo artist or whatever). Lady Gaga's a good example, some of you are fond enough of her. So she puts out an album, and it's good! You really liked it. Now Lady Gaga is working on a new, entirely different album. Are you going to go, "Well, I was only a fan of how that album sounded, so if this is different I'm not even going to check it out?" No, you're going to download it and see if it sucks or not, and if it does, well then you go, "I liked her earlier work better."

Or perhaps an individual performer would work better with bands as a context of character: Maynard James Keenan is the lead singer of Tool, A Perfect Circle and his solo project Puscifer. I follow all three of these bands because Maynard is in all of them (and something of the primary creative force) but they're all different. In fact, to me, those three bands are all different aspects of Maynard's personality, and to explore one of them without fully exploring the other is just outright stupid.

The same stands for Devin Townsend. Devin was in extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad for years, and then at the exact same time he would do his solo prog metal releases like Ocean Machine and Infinity and Accelerated Evolution. If you liked one thing he did, chances were good that somewhere inside of the other thing, you could find something else good. I can't just write off Strapping because I don't like certain death metal stylings--I owe it to myself to check out everything. Granted, there's a lot of Strapping songs I don't like, and that's fine--but there's also a bunch of ones I 'do' like, which I would have never discovered if I didn't follow Devin to his other band.

In my above example; McCarthy's theoretical Booster Gold run. I don't really care about Booster Gold. I'm aware of him, what his character is, but I don't care what he's doing week to week. I don't even know what he was doing a few years ago. But if McCarthy was writing Booster Gold, and you told me it was good, and I picked it up, I might actually start caring about Booster Gold. After all, I barely followed IDW's comics before AHM, but then Dom and 86 hounded me saying AHM was Really Really Good, so I bought the first trade and now suddenly I care about 'everything' going on in IDW's universe. To limit yourself to something because "Well, I don't like that franchise, even though I've never read it" isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.

You see movies, yeah? You ever see a movie just because some actor is in it, or somebody directed it? When you see a new Adam Sandler movie come out, for example, do you go, "Well, I liked Adam Sandler in The Waterboy, but he's not playing The Waterboy in this movie, so why do I care?" No, you don't, you go, "Oh hey cool, Adam Sandler. I'll go see that/rent it when it comes out on DVD." I know I'm not too fond of Michael Bay movies so whenever Michael Bay makes a move now, I'm going to be able to go "That's directed by Michael Bay, I'm not going to go see it."

A final example: Toy moulds! Have you ever had a TF toy mould that you liked so much, you bought a repaint of it, even if it was as a character you don't care about? I loved the Cybertron Crosswise mould so much that I bought the 2008 Movie Wal-Mart exclusive Jolt, even though I don't really have an interest in G2 Jolt (the intended homage, I guess) at all.

Shockwave wrote:If it's only issue 3, I could jump on and get the three that are out, but with Mega Man, I'd rather get either more games or the figures. Still might check it out. Is it any good?

Would I lie?

Besides, no new Mega Man games are coming out for a while. Capcom is really not on good terms with Mega Man as a franchise right now. Why? ...Because Keiji Inafune, the guy who created all the games, no longer works for them. (Incidentally, I am following what Inafune is doing now, because I liked his previous games. Circular!)

I might. I mean those events have to have had some impact on the characters or settings or else what's the point and subsequently, what's the point of writing anything new?

The major events are always referenced enough that keeping up is usually not a problem. Also, that's what the old "*See Spider-Man issue 125" captions are for. If you were unaware the Green Goblin was dead, for a random example, all it takes is one line of dialogue. "Man, things sure are better now that the Green Goblin is dead*!" with a little caption note telling you what to read to see the Green Goblin die.

Also, one should be keeping up in the minor events even if one is not actually reading the books. For example, I know that Spidey's in the Future Foundation right now. I'm not reading Spider-Man nor Future Foundation, but there it is.

Yeah, but what if it's something else you don't care about? You mean to tell me that you suddenly develop an interest in characters that you couldn't care less about before just because a particular writer has a good story? That just sounds wierd to me.

Yes! This is entirely possible.

Because, after all--it's not like you were popped out of the womb and had an interest in Transformers. Something had to introduce you to that. Maybe it was a toy you had, and maybe it was a certain issue of a comic.

Example: Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's Guide. I like Hitchhiker's Guide. He also wrote those two Dirk Gently books, which I didn't think I would be at all interested in, but it was only $7 for the one so I gave it a go anyway. Turns out I didn't like it until I got about a third of the way through, then stuff started getting interesting, and then I lost interest in reading since I was doing it before work in McDonald's and they gave me a key to the office, so I could just come in and sleep on my desk instead.

Well ok. I guess that addresses the issues above. I wouldn't have the attention span for that. And such an unrelated collection would bug the living shit out of me. My TF collection is somewhat like that currently which is why I'm selling off so much of it. I want more cohesion. I want that in my fiction as well.

And I'm assuming Dom either doesn't need that cohesion, or realizes it will never be possible, so.

I'm trying, but I'm still not really seeing how that isn't what I was talking about. I mean, if you like Mirage and are willing to just get "a" Mirage rather than a particular version... I dunno where I'm really going with this. Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. I mean, I'm focused right now on trying to have as complete a Classics TF set as possible and trying to sell off other versions of characters that I don't need (Hot Rod is a good example of this since I have about 5 of him and none of them is the one I REALLY want).

Think of it like superheroes who have had different designs over the years, and suddenly it makes a LOT more sense. For example, I really don't like any Cyclops design that isn't Jim Lee's, so I have no desire to own a Cyclops figure that isn't based on that design. (Still need to track down the one they just did.) But my interest in Colossus is pretty much "Colossus is awesome and he does that OOOUUUUGGGGHHHH sound in the X-Men arcade game, so as long as I get one that looks reasonably like that, I'm happy."

Dominic wrote:And, liking a writer's work in the past does not obligate me to get everything they write. For example, even if Abnett did not make a piss poor showing recently, I would feel no obligation to go back and buy more than a few of the "Mr. Men" books.

Wait--Abnett wrote those books? I loved them as a kid.

And that brings up another problem with this method: what's the point of reading a well written story by any writer if the next guy is just gonna come along and retcon it out of existence? And it seems to happen a lot *cough*DC*cough*.

This is why I don't buy comics! Or read them much at all unless they're non-canon stories.

However, I have a friend who does, and I asked him this question not too long ago. His response? "You just live in the moment with it. Maybe it's not going to matter in ten years. Maybe it's not going to matter tomorrow. But it matters right now, damn it."

BWprowl wrote:(if you know me, you know I'm a huge art whore. Is an art whore a thing? Like Graphics Whores for video games?)

It's a thing, but in comics it's far less of an issue. In a video game, sure, the graphics are important, but even the most primitive game graphics can work as long as the game itself plays well. With comics, how it looks is kind of an intristic quality--you need the pictures to tell the story. If the pictures aren't telling the story well, or don't look good, then it has failed. A game released in 2011 with muddy textures might look bad, but as long as it plays well then it's not going to matter too much.

Hell, I saw Brian Lee O'Malley's 'Lost at Sea' as an essential part of my Scott Pilgrim collection.

So that's worth picking up, then? I've been eyeing it as a kind of eventual when-I-don't-have-anything-else-to-buy (or when-there's-nothing-else-good) purchase. I read all six of the books when I got my box set in, so I'm kind of...yeah, out of stuff.

(Side note Shockwave: If you like the idea of comics but can't stand the idea of starting at the beginning of a series that started seventy years ago, you might try a manga series or two. It's a lot easier to find/buy/read a Volume 1 of, say, Dragonball than it is for Action Comics #1)

Oh, God yes. It was really refreshing for me to know, throughout my buying of Rurouni Kenshin, exactly how much of the series I had left to read and to buy. (I recently completed it! All 28 volumes! I spent roughly...$224 over three or four years oh my God I'm a nerd.) It was actually amazingly difficult; I started just as they were printing the new big-sized volumes, and then they finally stopped printing the smaller ones entirely, so getting those last three or four was kind of a bitch, since I basically had to buy them at conventions or online. I did eventually find the last three at the really awesome comic store in State College though. (Now I've contemplated selling them all to pay for buying the big-sized editions. THEY HAVE COLOUR PAGES! ARGH)

As an aside: I always liked manga because, and I know this is going to make me a pretentious fuck, I love the black and white art, 'so' much more than most coloured comic art, especially these days. I think when comic pages are coloured, I just kind of tune out all the detail, while if it's in black and white I see all of it--every line and crosshatch and stuff. I saw some images of some Jack Kirby Superman pages, both the black and white inked pages and then the coloured pages--and I preferred the black and white! I saw all the detail and the effort--every line, every dot. When I looked at the coloured page, my brain just went, "Oh, it's Superman, what of him?" and moved on, even though it was the exact same image.

Man, tell that to this lady I had in an English class once, who admitted that she was not aware that Superman was an alien, or where his power came from. She thought he was just an earth human who could magically fly around and shoot eye-lasers I guess. My point is, there's always going to be a few of these people, and the chance to use them to sell one more movie ticket is why Hollywood's going to make these things as accessible as possible.

Supes is a bad example; I feel like the dude hasn't really been "relevant" since the Christopher Reeve films--and those were thirty years ago. Ask someone about The Hulk's origin, for example, and they'll probably be able to tell you (even ignoring that he has two films out. Then again, he had the Hulk TV series on his side).

...Hell, that said, there's some superheroes I know (and even like!) who I have 'zero' knowledge of their origins or where they come from. I don't know how The Flash got his powers. (Any of them.) I just assumed that he got them, somehow, and that's really all I need to know. (Supes being an alien is kind of essential to his character. Flash's isn't; his being a sarcastic dick is.)

On the other hand, I just saw the Captain America movie last night (I liked it). Now, I had that 'general nerd knowledge' of Captain America going in, but there was a lot I *didn't* know about him, so getting some of those gaps filled in instead of just assuming I knew everything about the character was kind of nice. And before you say anything, yes, I'm sure they changed a bunch of stuff for the movie version and it probably has nothing to do with the comic stories so I wasn't technically actually filling in any gaps, but it's the *idea* behind it that I appreciated, especially since I'd say that they *do* have to go over some of that basic stuff with these less well-known characters like Captain America, Thor, and Green Lantern. Yes, lots of people know the names and could probably list a power or two, but whereas any dumb lady in an English Class can at least tell you that Superman is Clark Kent or Spider-Man is Peter Parker, they're just going to look at you funny if you let slip that you know that Cap's real name is Steve Rogers (and hell, I still can't remember off the top of my head what Thor's civilian name is).

Thor even has a civilian name? I just assume he went around going "I AM THOR!" (Seriously, Thor's whole civilian thing is probably the least-important secret identity to any character ever. You can trim the entire fat of most of that and have a much better story setting. The film did this; although I'm sure a sequel will have him going by an assumed name when he's hanging out on Earth.)

For the record, I watch almost all the shows I watch by downloading or buying complete sets/seasons, so yeah, I almost always start from the first episode and work my way through.

Yeah, 'now,' because that's how it's done these days. But in the 90s? You didn't start with the first episode of Fresh Prince. Hell, you may not have even been 'born' when the first episode of Fresh Prince aired. (But the theme song gives you all the information you need.)

Shockwave wrote:Actually book stores and libraries have books listed first by genre, then by title . But I get your point and it's still a perfectly valid one.

What fucked up libraries/bookstores are you going to? Maybe in the Star Trek section, they list them by title, because that's an overarching franchise--but they're not going to scatter all the Orson Scott Card novels all over the fucking Scifi section, they're going to put them all right next to each other under "C."

Incidentally I should reread Ender's Game.

BWprowl wrote:That said, if Thor's weird for the Dr. Blake thing being the disguise, what does that make Superman? Because he does that too, and Superman is the generic-est, most 'regular' superhero around. It's all the other guys who're weird! Except for Thor.

Someone on /co/ explained it once. There's 'three' guys in there.

"Farmboy Clark is his real identity. Metropolis Clark is a mask, Superman is sort of a mask. If I have to choose I'd say Superman is more real than Metropolis Clark but still Clark the farmer is the real one."

138 Scourge wrote:

BWprowl wrote:
That said, if Thor's weird for the Dr. Blake thing being the disguise, what does that make Superman? Because he does that too, and Superman is the generic-est, most 'regular' superhero around. It's all the other guys who're weird! Except for Thor.

Yeah, but Clark Kent is still dude's given name, and who he was raised as and everything. Don Blake's a smaller guy than Thor with short hair who walks with a limp. In the early Thor comics, Blake was a real dude who found the hammer (disguised as a stick) and turned into Thor using it. Later, someone decided "Wait, then...where's the Thor who'd have been around back in the Viking days?" So they decided that Don Blake wasn't a real dude at all, but was always a disguise for Thor. Thor'd basically been turned into Dr. Blake when he pissed Odin off at one point.

So then later Thor gets rid of the spell that lets him disguise himself, and kicks that over to Beta Ray Bill, so he can turn himself back into his normal form (picture movie Voldemort with a John Bohner tan), and he just starts Clark Kenting it with the alias Sidgurd Jarlson (nice inconspicuous name, there). There's even a backup story where Blake's practice is shut down and the identity's retired. Nowadays I think Blake's back, but I don't know if he was ever a separate guy or not.

Cue O6's standard response. Anyway, like I said, Thor's human ID is kind of a weird case.

Actually this is kind of decent. I mean, the Blake-was-never-real retcon is kind of sucky but that's from the 60s or something--it works better when we know from the beginning that Thor was cast out for being a douche.

Also, Thorse is awesome.

So this thread asploded when I was gone!

New issue next week. Things should be back to normal then.

For instance, I'm a big, big fan of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, and admittedly enjoyed the first reboot series DC did for them in the mid 2000's.

Really? Wow.

To be fair, not all Trek fans collect toys. Almost all TF fans do. That's a pretty wide society-point margin already there.

Good point. Buying toys is seen as worse than watching the same episodes over and over and over and over again. (I would say watching old episodes is worse, because at least toys are something new on occassion, but whatever.)

Because you're the only one I've known that does this. As such, I'm fascinated and have questions. And next question is this: So how far does that extend? If Costa were to write a comic based on a soap opera like All My Children, One Life to Live or General Hospital would you read those too?

Ya know, if I did not have that "no more than 5 books on my pull-list" rule, probably. (Hey, I watched more than a bit of MLP because I heard it was worth watching. Never watched it before. Hell, even bought a couple of the toys.) Of course, Bendis and Costa a currently prolific enough that my "5 books a month" rule is harder to hold than I thought it would be.

Nice try, but that you can't honestly sit there and tell me that if you read an awesome story that was retconned an issue later you wouldn't be pissed? I'm calling bullshit.

Oh, hell yeah, I would be pissed. But, the fact that most comics are likely to get retconned out is all the more reason that they need to have more than just a chronicle of fictional events.

No, that's not how the DC universe works....

Except, the whole point of CoIE is that the earlier comics never happened. Golden Age Superman remembered stuff that did not happen. And post-Byrne, they stayed away from, "it did not happen, but it still matters". Aside from a really tedious story featuing the pocket universe, (only there to reconcile necessary bits of the Legion origion....which then got glossed over anyway), the Silver Age comics got retconned out completely.

Now, I like Shane McCarthy as a writer. I think he gets TF. So I'm definitely going to read any TF he works on in the future. (Well, I still haven't really read Drift, but you get my meaning. I intend to.) However, if he starts working on, say, Booster Gold or something--then I'm out. I don't care about Booster Gold (heh, I wrote "Booster Golf") all that much. I'm 'open to the idea' and if someone I trust (you, 86, Dom, etc.) tells me, "Hey, McCarthy's Booster Gold run is awesome, go read some of it," then I would.

Been looking for McCarthy's "Batman" run actually. And, I would be following Costa to DC if not for my "only 5" rule.

It might or it might not. The first issue is mostly filler crap you already know anyway--the gold is in its portrayl of the bosses, and stuff.

I still want a complete run. Hopefully, I will find it, and other back issues, at a convention or something.

Let's say you've got a band (or solo artist or whatever). Lady Gaga's a good example, some of you are fond enough of her. So she puts out an album, and it's good! You really liked it. Now Lady Gaga is working on a new, entirely different album. Are you going to go, "Well, I was only a fan of how that album sounded, so if this is different I'm not even going to check it out?" No, you're going to download it and see if it sucks or not, and if it does, well then you go, "I liked her earlier work better."

Her new stuff is even more difficult to parody than her old stuff. At least give me coherent lyrics to mock dammit!

The band example works pretty well though.

Toy moulds! Have you ever had a TF toy mould that you liked so much, you bought a repaint of it, even if it was as a character you don't care about?

I bought BC10 Breakdown, didn't I? And, in an ugly colour scheme no less. Hell, I am considering buying that KOld Deepcover. (Yeah, not even a legit toy of a meaningful character, and I want it.)

And I'm assuming Dom either doesn't need that cohesion, or realizes it will never be possible, so.

It is a question of how I define cohesion, from writers not franchises.

My toy shelves tend to look good because I usually sort toys by year and design.

Wait--Abnett wrote those books? I loved them as a kid.

The man is a god, which is why it is so sad that his powers seem to be fading.

What fucked up libraries/bookstores are you going to? Maybe in the Star Trek section, they list them by title, because that's an overarching franchise--but they're not going to scatter all the Orson Scott Card novels all over the fucking Scifi section, they're going to put them all right next to each other under "C."

Yeah, outside of the segregated franchises, author names trump titles.

Card is an asshole.


Dom
-wonders if we are going to need two threads for the two TF books.

Dominic wrote:Except, the whole point of CoIE is that the earlier comics never happened.

No it wasn't. The whole point of CoIE was to condense and simply 50 years worth of continuity. That's not the same thing as saying the stories before it never happened.

Golden Age Superman remembered stuff that did not happen.

No, he remembers his life and universe prior to the multiverse being 'folded' into only one surviving universe. Those events still happened, it just took place in a universe that for all purposes no longer exists.

the Silver Age comics got retconned out completely.

Again, that's not how CoIE worked. It didn't start everything all over again. Some things were retconned out as part of their efforts to simplify the continuity, but not the entire Age.

Onslaught Six wrote:To limit yourself to something because "Well, I don't like that franchise, even though I've never read it" isn't just stupid, it's dishonest.

How is that dishonest? I'll concede stupid to a point, but I don't get dishonest? What's dishonest about not liking something conceptually to the point of wanting to avoid it? Case in point: Squidbillies. I hate that show. Intensely. I've never seen an episode of it. But I hate the concept enough that I can barely stand having the commercials for it show up on my tv. Now, on occasion, the tv has been left on when the show came on and as such I've had some exposure to it, but that exposure only reinforced what I already knew: I fucking hate it. Now, if McCarthy was to write a Squidbillies comic, I still wouldn't buy it regardless of how awesomely written it might be because it's still based on that same shitty concept. Or sports. I fucking hate sports. But I don't need to read the sports column of the paper to know that.

Everything else you said made absolutely perfect sense though. And some damned fine points too.

Can I also say that I love the fact that this site can have one person asplode a thread and everyone just goes with it. Thanks for indulging me, guys you all rock!

Shockwave
-Also stared watching MLP because of reviews here.

Also O6: I forgot to reply to the medication comment, yes it was Rittilin. Don't remember much about it though.

Onslaught Six wrote:

If a writer goes to a different book, the original story is over and they have moved on to write something else.

I've got it!

To Dom, comic writers are like bands!...

I'd been thinking this thing could be compared more to food. Like, I like Cheeseburger in general, but when McDonald's writes Cheeseburger, it's just kind of eh, while when Carl's Jr. writes Cheeseburger, I love it. And I didn't care about Chicken Strips at all until Carl's Jr.'s take on them, and now I'm a big fan, to the point that I've been sampling Chicken Strips and other Chicken Series stuff from others, like Burger King. It's all the same basic stuff, but there's quality and variance thereof depending on who creates it, which is why you try to keep track of these things.

I've been really unhappy with Taco Bell's recent retconning of the Grilled Stuft Burrito, by the way.

You see movies, yeah? You ever see a movie just because some actor is in it, or somebody directed it? When you see a new Adam Sandler movie come out, for example, do you go, "Well, I liked Adam Sandler in The Waterboy, but he's not playing The Waterboy in this movie, so why do I care?" No, you don't, you go, "Oh hey cool, Adam Sandler. I'll go see that/rent it when it comes out on DVD." I know I'm not too fond of Michael Bay movies so whenever Michael Bay makes a move now, I'm going to be able to go "That's directed by Michael Bay, I'm not going to go see it."

I thought about this one too. Following a writer on TV exclusively would be downright incoherent, moreso than picking up random comics by a particular author. Which is I guess why people tend to follow actors or directors in these sorts of things more. My friend watched Firefly and loved the hell out of it, so that inspired him to start watching a bunch of Joss Whedon's other shows. Similarly, I really liked what I saw of Gargoyles, so when I heard that showrunner Greg Weisman had also helmed the appealing-looking W.I.T.C.H. series, I happily checked that out. And I enjoyed that series so much that I'm now interested in checking out the Weisman-run Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, even though as we've established, I am not that big a fan of Spider-Man. Meanwhile, literally all they had to say was "Genndy Tartakovsky" to get me to watch 'Sym-Bionic Titan'.

A final example: Toy moulds! Have you ever had a TF toy mould that you liked so much, you bought a repaint of it, even if it was as a character you don't care about? I loved the Cybertron Crosswise mould so much that I bought the 2008 Movie Wal-Mart exclusive Jolt, even though I don't really have an interest in G2 Jolt (the intended homage, I guess) at all.

Ditto for me and the Deluxe Movie Jazz mold, I just bought a new version this year. Also I'm super jelly that you got Jolt, that was the only one I never saw in stores, and I wanted it almost as much as I wanted Big Daddy (whom I got, along with Fracture).

Think of it like superheroes who have had different designs over the years, and suddenly it makes a LOT more sense. For example, I really don't like any Cyclops design that isn't Jim Lee's, so I have no desire to own a Cyclops figure that isn't based on that design. (Still need to track down the one they just did.) But my interest in Colossus is pretty much "Colossus is awesome and he does that OOOUUUUGGGGHHHH sound in the X-Men arcade game, so as long as I get one that looks reasonably like that, I'm happy."

I've got a pretty extreme example of this: I only care about Dr. Doom as the character I play as in the Marvel vs. Capcom games, particularly the black color scheme I use. So I bought the Marvel Universe toy and *repainted* him to look like the alternate-costume game version, since that's the version of the character I wanted.

On the flip side, I really like Kamen Rider W, who has a buttload of forms, some of my favorites being HeatMetal, CycloneMetal, and HeatJoker. But when the time came that I could buy a toy of W, I went with CycloneJoker, who is the 'standard, regular' version of the character, and even though he's not my favorite form, since I was probably only going to get one W for the time, that's the one I wanted representing the character on my shelf.

Similarly, I'm kind of pissy that the upcoming SH Figuarts Vegeta is in Super Saiyan form, since I'd prefer we got the 'normal' form rather than just the powered-up version. Of course, I'm still gonna buy it, and I should just be happy that a Figuarts Vegeta is coming out at all, since for a while it looked like that wasn't gonna happen. Plus he's in his Cell Games outfit, which is my favorite look/context for the character, so that helps, despite the Super Saiyan-ness.

BWprowl wrote:(if you know me, you know I'm a huge art whore. Is an art whore a thing? Like Graphics Whores for video games?)

It's a thing, but in comics it's far less of an issue. In a video game, sure, the graphics are important, but even the most primitive game graphics can work as long as the game itself plays well. With comics, how it looks is kind of an intristic quality--you need the pictures to tell the story. If the pictures aren't telling the story well, or don't look good, then it has failed. A game released in 2011 with muddy textures might look bad, but as long as it plays well then it's not going to matter too much.

See, I generally agree with this about games, but with comics I'll happily grab something based on art alone. It's how I wound up with one issue of Avengers: Fairy Tales, just because the art looked nice. Not to mention the reason I ended up with such a massive manga collection, via just grabbing something random off the shelf on account of it looking pretty (Hell, I read Bleach for nearly thirty volumes, mostly just because of the art). Oddly, this extends back to games too, and ones I've bought just because I liked the art style (eg: Persona 3, or Odin Sphere).

Hell, I saw Brian Lee O'Malley's 'Lost at Sea' as an essential part of my Scott Pilgrim collection.

So that's worth picking up, then? I've been eyeing it as a kind of eventual when-I-don't-have-anything-else-to-buy (or when-there's-nothing-else-good) purchase. I read all six of the books when I got my box set in, so I'm kind of...yeah, out of stuff.

I really liked it. It's quite different from Scott Pilgrim, in that it's a quiet, focused story with minimal pop-culture references and no physics-exploding fight scenes, but it tells its simple, isolated story piece with a lot of skill, and it's interesting to see O'Malley's artwork put to such different use. I felt very satisfied after finishing it. It's also worth noting that I wanted it in the first place since I *love* getting older stuff from artists to see where they've come from, and whatnot. That's the real reason I make an effort to find/download old doujins by Manga-ka who are famous now (stuff by Kouta Hirano and Rei Hiroe aren't too hard to come by, but I love having Kiyohiko Azuma's (of AzuManga Daioh fame) 'Inma no Renbou' on hand.)

(Now I've contemplated selling them all to pay for buying the big-sized editions. THEY HAVE COLOUR PAGES! ARGH)

As an aside: I always liked manga because, and I know this is going to make me a pretentious fuck, I love the black and white art, 'so' much more than most coloured comic art

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lolwut?

Supes is a bad example; I feel like the dude hasn't really been "relevant" since the Christopher Reeve films--and those were thirty years ago. Ask someone about The Hulk's origin, for example, and they'll probably be able to tell you (even ignoring that he has two films out. Then again, he had the Hulk TV series on his side).

This actually made me realize that I have no idea what the Hulk's origin is. I mean, I know 'Gamma Rays!', but that is literally it. I don't know how he got his powers or whatnot. Mostly this has to do with me just generally hating the Hulk as a character, but then that mostly comes from growing up in the 90's when they were trying to push the Hulk as a legitimate super-hero instead of the force of nature/study of the extremes of the human psychological condition like he works better as. I suppose I should watched Teh Incredible Hulk sometime soon, since I hear it's watchable and I plan on seeing Avengers when it comes out and all.

Yeah, 'now,' because that's how it's done these days. But in the 90s? You didn't start with the first episode of Fresh Prince. Hell, you may not have even been 'born' when the first episode of Fresh Prince aired. (But the theme song gives you all the information you need.)

I actually didn't watch a lot of sitcoms as a kid. Partially because live-action was 'boring' to me as a child, but mostly because my parents wouldn't let me watch most of them. Stuff like Friends and Family Matters and Fresh Prince and the Simpsons were outs (not to mention Power Rangers and X-Men, outside the sitcom genre). But I get what you mean. That said, keeping up with shows in order wasn't *too* hard as a kid, since it seemed like FoxKids started a new cartoon every other week, and I'd just get up the Saturday it premiered, start from there, and watch it all the way through its seasons (I kept up with Digimon pretty admirably through its run).

Dominic wrote:

For instance, I'm a big, big fan of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, and admittedly enjoyed the first reboot series DC did for them in the mid 2000's.

Really? Wow.

What can I say? Admittedly I was just happy to have a new comic starring these guys, but it made some good (thought somewhat hamfisted) points about bringing these characters into the modern era of comics, had a really good portrayal of Sam as a character, and genuinely surprised me a few times, in a good way. And I really liked their use of Father Time (Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard, on the other hand, was an utter tool of a character).

Because you're the only one I've known that does this. As such, I'm fascinated and have questions. And next question is this: So how far does that extend? If Costa were to write a comic based on a soap opera like All My Children, One Life to Live or General Hospital would you read those too?

Ya know, if I did not have that "no more than 5 books on my pull-list" rule, probably. (Hey, I watched more than a bit of MLP because I heard it was worth watching. Never watched it before. Hell, even bought a couple of the toys.) Of course, Bendis and Costa a currently prolific enough that my "5 books a month" rule is harder to hold than I thought it would be.

A weird side-note from me that almost fits in here: It wasn't exactly based on author, but because it was in the mostly-reliable Yen+ anthology, I ended up reading quite a bit of the manga based on 'Gossip Girl'...and really liking it. Now admittedly you could chock some of this up to my stupid enjoyment of Shoujo manga previously, but come on! This was the magazine that had Soul Eater, and Higurashi, and Nabari no Ou in it, and for a while the thing I was looking forward to the most in it was Gossip Girl!

MLP's also a really good example of what we're basically talking about here: Getting into something you would normally have no CHANCE of looking twice at, simply because it provides a quality, entertaining story. Tying in nicely is the fact that people will also use the involvement of Lauren "Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" Faust as a qualifier for why the show is worth checking out in the first place. Writers and the other people behind stories matter to a lot more people a lot more than you seem to think, Trekwave. Haven't you ever wondered why shows and comics will make a big deal out of a particular author coming on board? It's because a lot of these people really do have that sort of brand recognition, and (a reputation, at the very least) for quality, regardless of what franchise they're writing.

Shockwave wrote: Nice try, but that you can't honestly sit there and tell me that if you read an awesome story that was retconned an issue later you wouldn't be pissed? I'm calling bullshit.

Honestly, I can tell you that I would not be pissed. Because the story is still *there*, for me to read and enjoy whenever I want. I've said before, I could give a flying toss about how it contributes to an overall "verse" or whatever, I just want the author to tell a cool story in the space they're given, and with franchise characters if that's what they've chosen to do. Fictional stories already have no effect on the real world where I'm reading them, why would I be mad just because one became irrelevant twice?

You play any of the Zelda games? Link's Awakening, the one on the Game Boy, retcons *itself* out at the end in what is generally considered THE most trite and stupid way to do so (SPOILERS: It was all a dream!). Yet, even replaying it, it's still got one of the most enjoyable-to-follow stories I've seen in a game, with a great (mostly imaginary in hindsight) cast and a wonderful (eventually revealed to be fake) world design. No joke, most of the events of that game technically never happened, but it's still one of the very few video game stories

Spoiler

to almost make me cry

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Shockwave wrote:Or sports. I fucking hate sports. But I don't need to read the sports column of the paper to know that.

Wow, really? *All* sports? I'm sorry, but that *is* a really limiting view. Have you literally watched a sampling of every sport ever to be sure there is none in the world that you like? I mean, I'm hardly a frat bro, but I really enjoy watching the game of football. And I at least developed a respect for baseball once I realized that it was basically a tabletop role-playing game.

No it wasn't. The whole point of CoIE was to condense and simply 50 years worth of continuity. That's not the same thing as saying the stories before it never happened.

Except, it was the same. In context, much of issue 11 of CoIE was explication to the effect of "none of that old stuff happened, get over it", and (more importantly) out of context, DC made a point of tossing the old stories. Time got re-written, and the old stuff got chucked.

Stuff like Friends and Family Matters and Fresh Prince and the Simpsons were outs (not to mention Power Rangers and X-Men, outside the sitcom genre).

Damn, I thought my parents were stricts. (I was barred from watching "Married w/ Children" and maybe a few other shows, until I was maybe 15 or so. Slasher movies were right out as well. They tried to keep me from watching wrestling, but gave up when I was maybe 8 or so. I had a couple of years to watch them before just outgrowing them. MwC stayed as a habit until I was maybe 19 or so. But, you get the idea.)

quite a bit of the manga based on 'Gossip Girl'

I just do not get the appeal of that show. (Seriously. At one point, I was told that being conversant in "Gossip Girl" was useful for teachers, and I cringed.)

Haven't you ever wondered why shows and comics will make a big deal out of a particular author coming on board? It's because a lot of these people really do have that sort of brand recognition, and (a reputation, at the very least) for quality, regardless of what franchise they're writing.

John Byrne coming on to a title would all but guarantee a sales bump of ~50K (I think) back in the 80s and 90s.

Wow, really? *All* sports? I'm sorry, but that *is* a really limiting view.

I kind of agree with this.

I just kind of suck at sports, which cut my incentive to be involved. (And, even if I wanted to be, what team would take me?) And, I am not only a child of the 80s, but I grew up in Boston. Boston sports teams were shit in the 80s. The Red Sox were especially bad. (Their ball playing was comparable to Art Speigelman's writing and drawing talents. Furman's showing on "Beast Wars" was better than 80s Red Sox.) I could not understand why adults punished themselves by following worthless local teams. (Of course, I also read "Countdown", so the larger lesson probably eluded me.)


Dom
-new issue next week. And, then, more derailing.

Yeah pretty much all sports with football being the worst. It's largely due to my formative years where I was stuck in back woods literally middle of nowhere North Dakota where if you didn't completely immerse yourself in sports you routinely getting beaten, berated abused and generally treated like a pariah. And while the abuse itself stopped after high school, I have yet to really meet anyone that has changed my perception of sports. So yeah, pretty much all sports. But the football jocks were always the worst.

Gargoyles was one of the best shows ever so I'm gonna have to check out W.I.T.C.H. I have followed some writer/creators in tv, Whedon also being a good example with Firefly and Buffy. Prowl, have you read the Gargoyles comic? It was writen by Weissman as well and the current Buffy comic is "produced" by Whedon and often written by the same writers from the series. Although I guess it's a little different with tv because in the case of tv, each series is a story unto itself so following a particular writer from one series to the next wouldn't necessarily be so disjoint because you're essentially following into different continuities anyway. Same with movies. Sort of.

Love the cheeseburger analogies though.

Okay, total derail, (and a few people here know the story).


I have met some jocks who were comlete swine. But, when I was in HS, I had a run-in with a jock that went far better than one might have reasonably expected.

I am going to call the jock "JP". He was a large man. And, I say "man" literally, because he was 19, having stayed back 2 or 3 times. Physically, JP was every inch the brute. He was well over the 6 foot mark. I would put JP's weight at 300+ pounds, consisting of football muscle that was slowly deteriorating as he became more sedentary, (likely the result of a pot habit). (I do not know if he was on the team at the time. But, his jacket left little doubt about a history with the team.)

We were in the same science class. (My poor showiing in 8th grade math doomed me in a city that used academic tracking.) The teacher was the worst sort of young and idealistic. She had clearly seen "To Sir with Love" and various others movies of that sort. She was more interested in inspiring students rather than teaching them. She spent huge amounts of time on students who were patently uninterested in learning while killing any interest the rest of us had. The worst elements in that class took full advantage of this and leveraged her folly. (I swear, the class moved backwards over the course of the year.) JP's custom was that he would sit in the back, put in his headphones, and zone out. Most teachers understoon and respected this. He would not engage a teacher unless spoken to. And, he was, (to his credit), always polite if not completely honest with them.

Many of the other kids in that class were thugs. (You can imagine how well I got along with them.)

One day, little miss imspiration got an oh so original and brilliant idea. She was going to inspire us to learn by making us work together in groups of 2 to 3. There were a few people I would have wanted to work with in that class. And, one or two others that I would have been willing to work with in a pinch. (Frankly, with one possible exception, I could have out-worked any of them in my sleep. But, I was willing to make certain concessions.)

JP was not one of these people. Truth be told, I did not much like him. He was a boisterous and hulking brute. He was a jock.

Guess who I got paired with.

It was both terrifying and more than a bit insulting. The teacher then called me over to her desk, and told me to help JP as much as possible.

With deep resignation, and no small amount of dread, I joined JP at the work station the teacher had assigned us to. While the teacher gave an inspirational speech to the class, I opened my notes and tried to sneak in some homework before the lab started. At this point, JP made his move.

"You do not want to work with me do you?"

I hesitated before answering. And, before I could, he continued, "That is okay."

Oh yeah, he was gonna play with his food.

"I do not want to work with you either."

Well, there it was.

"If it was up to me, I would be back there", he indicated the back of the room, "chillin' and listening to the Cube." (He was a face of Ice Cube apparently.) "But, she is not going to let me do that."

I nodded. What he said was, based on what I knew of him, completely true. Despite my prejudices, I had to concede that he had never actually disrupted a class. JP himself may not have been terribly interested in learning. But, he had no interest in preventing others from learning or otherwise pursuing their interests.

Seeing that I offered no arguments, he described the situation as he understood it.

"I figure you could probably do all of this work by yourself." (I had to agree.) "I do not even really know how much I could help you. But, if you need my help", he shrugged. His help would only slow me down. But, it rankled me that a jock should profit for my efforts, slight as they may have been. His next words made me wonder if he were a telepath of some kind.

"It makes no difference to me what you end up doing. If you want to do the work, and take all the credit, go right ahead." Objectively, I had to admit that it would have made little practical difference to him what I did. He was in and out of trouble as it was. And, this teacher was not playing by the rules. Even if this one assignment went well, she would continue to hound him. He was doomed and he knew it.

He then said that it was fine if I wanted to sit and loaf with him. The problem with that, as he pointed out, is that we would both have to hear about it later. (Remember, it made little difference to him.)

And, he was right. It was in my interests to do the work. And, letting him put his name on it was for the best, as it would help us avoid scrutiny, if only for a time.

I had been placed in an intolerable situation by the teacher. And, it was a jock who pointed out the most rational way to deal with it. It was objectively easier for me to spend 20-odd minutes working on a lab, (still finishing ahead of the other groups), than to spend time after class (and after school) arguing with the teacher, and likely still end up doing the lab. (For his part, JP may well have had detention elsewhere.)

To his credit, JP mas more than good to his word. He helped a bit, (organizing toosl and such), and...he offered me protection. That was never part of our deal. But, more than once, I heard JP say "leave him alone" when one of the thugs (including a truly dangous kid) got wound up. This lasted far beyond our formal, if forced, alliance in that wasted opportunity of a biology class. It even extened beyond that room. JP would make a point of greeting me in the hall, regardless of who was present.

And, I suspect his influence in things going more smoothly for me in other classes. JP certainly did not solve all of my problems. But, he more than honoured the "deal" we made. And, he was a far better man than I would have given him credit for being beforehand.

I do not believe that JP finished HS. And, I have no idea what became of him after he left school. But, I do know that for in 1993, a jock and nerd worked together. And, it was the jock who taught the nerd a lesson about being rational and open-minded.


Dom
-100% true