sfcityduck

I guess we should both know the actual quote is "Have you no sense of decency?" That's on me.

You know who was also there? Gardner Fox. So was the nascent comic fandom with guys like Jerry Bails who had been begging Fox for a revival of the JSA. After all, JLA was not created until 1960, after the DC superhero revival had begun. JLA was not even the first DC SA team - the LSH had appeared back in 1958. Your quote from Bob (and I'm not going to enter into the debates about Bob's memory or credibility - I'll give your unlinked comment full credit) is not about creativity - it is about sales. No doubt that successful series like Superboy, Jimmy Olson, Challengers, Showcase itself, Lois Lane (the first title to spin out of Showcase), etc. all had their impact on the publisher's conclusion that new titles could sell. No one claims otherwise that I know of. But Challengers was not a superhero comic. No more than Blackhawk (also from 1958):

To quote Joseph Welch: "Have you no decency, sir? Have you no sense of decency?" BB 28 was written by Gardner Fox. You are now accusing Gardner frigging Fox of ripping off Jack Kirby on how to write a superhero team comic? And a JLA story at that!?! Unbelievably ignorant! FYI: Gardner Fox wrote many of the JSA stories in All-Star Comics. In fact, he wrote the JSA's FIRST adventure in All-Star 3 way back in 1940. And guess what? It was a full comic book length story with multiple chapters. Yet you think that book length comic stories in superhero team comics were "still unsure" at the time of BB 28? Guess what? You're wrong. I invite you to peruse not only the GCD index on All-Star Comics but also the GCD index on Leading Comics starting with issue 1 (home of DC's other team - the Seven Soldiers of Victory). You are literally accusing the man who wrote the first true superhero team story, as a book length adventure, of ripping off "the concept of a full story in a comic" from Jack Kirby. That is rubbish! It was an established and normal concept for superhero team books at DC because of Gardner Fox! Please stop overclaiming Jack Kirby's influence. Kirby has a lot of accomplishments. He does not need you trying to push every other creator under water to elevate his reputation. This thread is ridiculous in the amount of overclaims about Kirby and disparaging claims about others you make.

More nonsense. Just because Kirby drew a subject does NOT mean he invented that subject or influenced everyone who came after. In all likelihood, it just means that Kirby was himself influenced by some earlier pop culture reference. Most likely, Kirby, who worked on "giant monster" comics, was "inspired" by the 1955 giant monster movie "It Came From Beneath the Sea" that had come out a few years earlier: In any event, BB 28 features an alien STARFISH like creature with an eye where its mouth should be. Showcase 12 is just a giant octopus like in "It Came From Beneath the Sea." Entirely different concepts. P.S. Do you know how many octopus covers there are in the world of Comics. So many its a genre GA collectors collect: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nEMR-sUqojg/T-U4sVbnGnI/AAAAAAAAGYw/uov63euYDqM/s1600/famous.funnies-215.jpg Does this mean Kirby was "influenced" by Frazetta? Or Baker? Again, no. You are trying waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hard again.

I agree its easier to follow if you've read a lot.

Thanks for posting this. But it is strange to me that someone is doing a 27 minute recap of a one-hour show. It is even stranger to me when the first discussion point is where are the Harfoots migrating when earlier episodes established that the Stranger landed in the general vicinity of the Southlands (e.g. Mordor) and Appendix B of the LOTR and other sources makes it pretty clear that the various types of Hobbits were originally living in the Southlands and made their way northward until much later crossing over to Eriador. The map of the migration makes it fairly clear that they are migrating northwards. Once I got past that slow start, the video presents a lot of interesting speculation of varying degrees of persuasiveness. I am prepared to rethink Adar as Sauron despite his complete lack of a "fair" visage, but hey he could easily be a shapechanger. I am not sure what the gender of the white robed short haired person is, I saw a male in white robes not female, so to me still a Sauron candidate. I don't buy Harbrand as a candidate for being Sauron at all. I do think the narrator of the videos is a little too tied to information in the Appendixes which is presented in that text as speculation: E.g. In the Third Age "...the Istari or Wizards first appeared in Middle Earth. It was afterwards said they came out of the far West and were messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron...." These are not definitive statements, they are supposed to be a history written by a Hobbit with limited access to the facts. It may well be that the Istari arrived earlier yet did not reveal their presence as they learned their limits, their power, and investigated Middle Earth. JRR kept things vague for a reason and there is plenty of flexibility. What makes RoP fun though are the Easter eggs and avenues for speculation.

This is one wacky post as you insinuate that Kirby came up with the idea for the Living Eraser. Aside from the fact that Kirby's supposed "prototype" (1) was not a supervillain, (2) appeared in a relatively obscure Harvey comic that Stan Lee likely never read, and (3) bears no resemblance to the Marvel villain the "Living Eraser" in powers (Kirby's character erased himself not others), look or feel, there's a major flaw in your "prototype" analysis that appeared 10 years ealier in 1949 in one of the popular superhero titles ever published: You try waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to hard to minimize Stan Lee. If you are going to play the comic historian, at least try to be academic not outcome oriented in your fanciful "arguments."

Watched it early. Here's my thoughts (potential and actual spoilers maybe):

I will be watching it tonight. Someone sent me a great quote from a letter that Tolkien wrote to his publisher Milton Waldman in 1951 around the time LOTR was being readied for publication that is really relevant to RoP. Tolkien relayed that his goal was: And I think that is exactly what he has accomplished. Tolkien created the path with room for and the intent that others would build it out, and that is finally happening now.

The rating did increase after they removed posts. But, you're right, they did lose the battle because when they turned the comments back on, they immediately got hit with thousands of one star reviews. Do you really think people were sitting at their computers hitting refresh waiting for Amazon to turn reviews back on? Maybe some, but the rapid increase in one star reviews, four to five episodes in, is strong evidence that Amazon is being spammed by bots and folks with a political agenda. Most normal people who dislike a show after an episode or two just give up and stop paying attention to it. They don't linger at review sites waiting for the opportunity to drop more one-star reviews. The key lesson of the last few years is that bots can impersonate people on twitter, on review sites, on message boards etc. and create the appearance of much greater support for an idea than actually exists. So user review now are ultimately nothing more than noise where we can't sort the wheat from the chaff. That HoD may be subject to less negative reviews than RoP is probably mostly a reflection that HoD is not viewed in the same illustrious light by the folks who are politically upset with RoP and so they care much less about it. HoD is a recent made for tv property. Sadly, LOTR published in the 1950s has a segment of racist fans who have wrongly viewed LOTR as endorsing their views. Their anger at LOTR:RoP is much more personal and intense. And the HoD fanboys could be spamming RoP out of misplaced sports mentality given the many negative reviews that want to draw negative comparisons between the two shows. Something I don't see happening with any frequency by RoP fans. I don't really care which is more popular on message boards between HoD and RoP right now. There is room for many popular shows.

Fair enough. We effectively already made that agreement when I chose not to respond to his last post.

If you look at my posts up thread, you'll see that I am addressing the episodes with specific references and examples. The problems is that the folks pushing a lot of the generic criticisms of RoP are doing so without any analysis. They don't want to have a real discussion. It is sad and does detract from the enjoyment of just discussing the show with like-minded fans not concerned with the politics. But you can't let misstatements stand unrebutted when they are outragously asserted for improper motivations.

LoL! But you care enough to keep responding to my posts.

LoL! Your "There is no discussion to be had with you on this subject" position lasted five minutes. I'm not relying on five star reviews for any point I'm making. Look, if you want to swim in the deep end of the pool you need to dive deep. I'm happy to discuss fidelity to the source material with specific examples and evidence. I've done that above. You, on the other hand, just want to say it takes too long to read such posts (and presumably the source material) and want to rely on the argument that "many people say X" as your support. But guess what? Many people say all sorts of stupid and incorrect things, especially when they are just reporting what others say. When a politician says "many people say" you can pretty much assume that they are lying. When folks on an internet message board say "many people say" you can pretty much rightly assume that they have done no independent evaluation as to whether what "many people say" is correct or false. Usually, if all you've got is "many people say" in response to actual evidence and analysis, you can assume you've been duped.

More B.S. Amazon did not "get caught." Amazon publicly turned off reviews while they fought a battle with bots and spamming. Amazon was deleting obvious bot reviews and reviews with inappropriate (such as racist) content. The fact that after their clean-up they immediately got hit with thousands of new one-star reviews is pretty much prima facie evidence they are indeed being botted and spammed. The notion they were attempting to secretly inflate reviews is rebutted by the fact that they publicly turned off comments and then opened the comments back up. Sadly, it appears they don't have a good means to guard against bots and spamming.

Hard to get more ironic than the circle made by those three sentences. I will take your inability to argue my points as an admission of their validity.

Except they don't have a solid analysis. And you aren't even putting up a fight to show that they do. It is telling. Numbers of posts don't matter in an age of bots and spamming. No doubt that RoP (and to a much lesser extent HoD) are being attacked by folks for political reasons based on intolerance. I don't get why. I'm good with anyone not liking the show. It's a subjective opinion whether you like the acting, story, look, feel, pacing, etc. But I see no reason to let false statements about "fidelity" to a "canon" of "source material" as compared to the LOTR movies stand unrebutted. Especially when that criticism often comes across as code for racial intolerance. Your empty "many people say" argument does not convince me otherwise given we live in an age of bots and spamming. P.S. Why do you choose to have a "My Pronouns: AT/AT" signature line on a comic book board which frowns on political discussions? It comes across as intended to make fun of LGBTQ people who use "My Pronouns:" lines to express pride in and avoid misunderstandings as to their identity. I'm not initiating a debate on political views as that's not appropriate here (as would be a signature line with a political view). But I will say that while I do not use "My Pronoun" statements due to an OCD view of grammar, I also see no need to make fun of people who do choose to use them as a means of self-expression of identity - especially when most major corporations and employers now accept and encourage their use. To each their own. Making fun of people who use "My Pronoun" lines is an indicator to me of mean-spirited intolerance. Coincidentally, mean-spirited intolerance is what I think is motivating a portion of the attacks on RoP. If that's not your intent, you might want to reconsider your signature line.

More B.S. The one star reviews spamming Amazon are likely not legit or in good faith. A bald assertion of lack of fidelity to LOTR is a common rationale in the many one star reviews spamming Amazon. No analysis is offered. If you want to dive deep on that topic then address the comments of someone who is familiar with Tolkien by offering a substantive response to my comments above. Don't give me poll numbers from venues where bots vote and fanboys spam.

I think most folks online claiming RoP is not sufficiently true to the “source material”, LOTR is, probably TL;DR the LOTR, and likely never heard of the many volumes of unfinished material.

Same score as RoP. But I don't see a lot of posts bombing HoD with comparisons to RoP. The other way? Yeah. That's the sports mentality applied to shows. Folks who think you elevate your team (or yourself) by pushing others down.

Eric Kain's review of the first two episodes: I think he may have a substance abuse problem if he then pivots after episodes 3 and 4, which many think are far superior to Episodes 1 and 2. After all, how you reconcile what he says about Episodes 1 and 2 with your take? Did the quality really go down that much in your opinion? I don't think so. You disliked it from the outset. The reasons he gives for disliking Episode 3 and 4 are based on misapprehensions. He got it right the first time.

Politics might explain a lot of that (but we can't discuss). HoD triabalism might also explain a fair amount. Fortunately, I can judge for myself and know enough about Tolkien and the "source material" to form my own judgments on a lot of the flawed "fidelity" arguments being tossed around.

Rotten Tomatoes has RoP at an 85% fresh rating with critics. Understandable that there will be critics who are, well, overly critical. I see where you got the points that shape your view as they are basically what this guy focuses on. I do agree with him on the look and feel of the show, a view I know you don't share with this critic or me: It looks much more like a movie than most everything else on tv right now, and not surprisingly is a tight fit with the visuals of the LOTR. As for his critiques of the writers, I addressed those when you made them above. I don't give them more credibility because some yahoo at Forbes came up with them. He doesn't appear to know his Tolkien at all (won't even address the significance of the tree) or to be paying enough attention to the details in the scenes with Harfoots. Instead, he entirely misconstrues the "no one shall be left behind" and "we shall wait chants" and the basic nature of hobbit-kind at that point in time. Fight or flight? They take flight and harfoots are frequently left behind hence the irony of the rituals and the stakes in a migration. Those kind of mistakes cost credibility. After all, Tolkien had many examples of flawed Hobbits in his books. I prefer this take, which shows the difficulty taking on something with as big readership as Tolkien faces (a problem not faced by GoT spinoff HoD):

Not sure where you get any of this. First, no one has suggested Galadriel is or is not married at this point in the RoP story that I can recall. Second, as for Galadriel's daughter, Tolkien's notes state that Celebrian was not born until AFTER Galadriel refused to return to Tol Eressea in the Second Age. So there is no reason to think Celebrian must necessarily be born now. Celebrian did not meet Elrond until late in the Second Age and they did not marry until the Third Age. So there is no reason to believe that Galadriel necessarily must have a daughter at the time of the RoP. Third, as for Galadriel's degree of "life experience," 1,200 years is not that much for an elf who was over 7,100 years in the LOTR. And her "life experience" at the time Sauron re-emerged consisted of less than 150 years before the trees were killed, another almost 600 years of the War with Morgoth, and 500 years or so between Morgoth's death and Sauron's return. During this time she was largely a vengeful warrior. The subsequent 6,000 years, in which she gained a Ring of Power and had her daughter, undoubtedly gave her many more "life experiences" which tempered her character and made her more wise than the Galadriel we see in this show - and again it bears emphasis that she was part of the hot-headed Nolder who rebelled. As I said, your nitpics are not convincing or correct as far as I can tell.

Of course you are free to dislike anything you want. That's everyone's perogative. There's no problem with disagreement. I just don't appreciate the B.S. about the "canon" and "historical accuracy" being spewed on Amazon, some of which is quite clearly motivated out of anger over casting of minorities (which has also been an issue, less so, for HoD). Here's where we disagree. The visual look and feel of RoP is EXACTLY that of LOTR. As is the score. So on a superficial level, the show definitely feels like watching a LOTR movie. In terms of a comparison to the Hobbit and LOTR, which is not an apples to apples comparison because of the lack of written material underlying RoP, it should be noted that there are no contradictory additions to the story such as Radegast the Brown's ridiculous sled as in the Hobbit and no major omissions of very material parts of the story as in LOTR (as detailed in my post above). Unlike the Hobbit and the LOTR, this story is being told about a period that JRR barely explored. So if you are trying to derive your "feel" from something you've read (which is I'm sure not the case with GoT or HoD), you really won't be able to do it. This is not the dry history told in an academic voice of the five pages in the Appendix or the sterile and somewhat archaic voice used for the myths told in the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales. This is the storytelling style of the LOTR. And the range of emotion and style of dialogue we see in RoP is squarely in line with the style of LOTR. Your "examples of weak writing" don't resonate with me at all: * Galadriel defeating five armed guards in armor is not at all implausible given what the LOTR characters were able to achieve in battle, especially when you keep in mind that she was considered by Tolkien as the greatest female elf of them all and is an experienced warrior; * The Harfoots going on and on about never leaving someone behind is called "irony." The chant and dance was an attempt to psych themselves up because the stark reality is that the Harfoots are almost always leaving someone behind. Why? Because they are not fighters, they are flighters. They flee. And if you are being chased by someone who can eat you, you don't have to beat the pursuer, just the slowest person in your group. This was made clear in dialogue that you evidently did not focus upon - especially the ceremony where they say "we'll wait for you" regarding the dead. This characterization is entirely in keeping with the way JRR portrayed the general character of Hobbit society and people (stealthy sneaky hiders). The writing was good, but you missed the point. * "Going from hating elves to we want to join you army in like 1 day (I do understand the falling leaves bit, it is weak)." The central fact of Numenorean society is that their Island was given to them by the Valar for services with the Eldar in the War with Morgoth. The white tree of Numenor is Nimloth, a gift from the Eldar who reside in neighboring Eressea. It is literally a tree infused with divine essence of holy significance. The fact that the tree commenced to shed leaves at the instant that the Numenoreans turned their back on helping a prominent member of the Eldar is not coincidence but divine message. It is a sign recognizable by the Queen, especially since she already is privy to the vision given to her by the Palantir that Numenor faces destruction by divine forces. It is no surprise she changed course, especially since she does not hate elves. The people followed the lead of their respected leaders, albeit with prompting of speeches and the slowly developing crescendo of volunteers. They got up in the moment. Happens all the time in our society. * "Having a full night to gather belongings to move to a safer fortification, and nobody brings any food." First, they were fleeing for their lives. Second, they brought food, just not enough. Third, they were going to a fort and may well have thought they would find food there. It's a minor nitpick that suggests a predisposition to want to find plot flaws that aren't really there. Again, I see no reason to compare HoD and RoP. George RR Martin is no Tolkien. He hasn't even completed GoT and may never do so. HoD is, I'm sure, an entertaining fantasy series. That RoP is an entertaining fantasy series is no blow to HoD. They aren't in competition in any real sense. Some people love them both (I'm not one of them). But far too early to be speaking of the "quality of the acting." I am finding the acting on RoP to be quite good, far above the norm for tv. I have no desire to watch HoD, so I won't waste time to make a comparison - as they are apples and oranges. GoT and HoD are aimed at a different audience than LOTR and RoP - an audience that enjoys shows with gratuitous violence and somewhat disturbing sex (definitely good for fans of incest). I'm sure that takes great acting chops! But not my cup of tea. Really two entirely different takes on fantasy. Once again, you are entitled to your view, and I respect that it is sincerely held, but your supporting reasons for your view just aren't convincing or correct to me at all.