sfcityduck

There were blacks in Medieval England. A lot were living in London based on contemporaneous accounts. As for the dwarves, I'd hope it wasn't due to some fear of making dwarves out to be gay. The dwarf wife does have facial hair, but not a full-blown beard. Not sure why "canon" matters. The "canon" was blown out the door in every adaptation of LOTR (no Tom Bombadill, enhanced role for Arwen, Frodo robbed of a key heroic moment in his story arc, etc.) in material ways. The beard thing is just a footnote, not anything that matters.

Episode 3 was a strong and entertaining. I have no doubt that we're seeing the origin of Gandalf's relationship with Hobbit-kind, and its a welcome insertion which clarifies two massive black holes in the history of Middle Earth - What was Gandalf up to and how did he become close friends with Hobbits some point long before Bilbo. I also welcome the storytelling about the more youthful and inexperienced Galadriel before she became Elrond's mother-in-law and eventually an ancient grandmother (possibly the oldest elf in Middle Earth). And, yes, the "ordinary people reviews" of RoP are being bombed by white supremacists. There are many articles discussing this in respected publications right now, and admissions by those pushing those views. It's a sad thing. The only thing I'd add is that Shakespeare wrote about a black lead character, "Othello," and western literature was not destroyed even at that fragile juncture in its development. So anyone worried about racial purity in the RoP (or Spiderman or Bridgerton or anything else) needs to look deep inside. RoP is just an adaptation - if you don't like the skin colors of the actors, don't watch. But don't try to claim that our culture or the story is being destroyed. Nothing can destroy the story, it is in the books and they are everywhere! If it can survive Ralph Bakshi, it can survive anything.

When it comes to foreign Duck books, I'm really loving the Italian comics of the early 1950s. Not only do they have really cool color variations of some covers, like this one for FC 263 - my all time favorite Duck FC: But they also have a Barks cover taken from interior panels for the other other long story in FC 263 "Trail of the Unicorn"! How cool is that - a Barks cover not seen in the U.S.!: To me the answer is "very cool" and I've picked up several copies. Anyone know of any other Barks covers that are not on US comics? P.S. Fantagraphics did something similar for their "Trail of the Unicorn" volume of the Carl Barks library: I'm sure they used "unicorn" instead of "totem poles" out of sensitivity to native peoples.

I agree. But two more observations. First, CGC has much larger pool of graders now, many newly hired, and they undoubtedly are still learning their craft. Second, a rhetorical question: How can anyone.reasonably second guess the grading on an encapsulated book when the grade in question is based is of the inside cover of a double cover book? I don't think its really possible. For the yahoos on the video, they did so based pretty much solely on (1) the age of the book and (2) the notion that the only way a book could attain such a state of preservation would be if it was kept locked in a bank vault (which as many here know may be far from ideal for storage even if better for security). Apparently they had never heard of Edgar's cedar lined closet or its cousin the cedar box the 9.0 white Action 1 was stored in or whatever storage held the Allentown's etc.

No doubt Fishler knows a lot. But he started collecting after I did and there are guys that were active for a decade or two before either of us. The guys who I think might slip under the radar are the guys active since the 60s - especially those who stopped being that active in the 90s. Guys who were buying from folks like Bruce Hamilton etc. before Fishler had a store.

Some are up for auction now.

You should see his collection! All purchased in the early 1970s when prices were cheap and $200K went a loooong way towards building a collection.

I bet the commission was 5% and the seller got a small profit. 5% of $3.4M = $170K yielding a profit of exactly $50K to the seller over the original purchase price. Easy money for the dealers, seller's happy, and may work out for a buyer taking a longer term risk. If that book reappears on the market in a year or so, it might end up suffering "Pay Copy Syndrome".

Yeah, that video is the blind leading the blind. Never heard of MH? Sad. But what can you expect from an "expert" whose carefully constructed background to enhance his credibilty has no GA books and an FF 1 reprint on the wall? Apparently, a whine that not every modern comic that get printed is a 9.8 off the press.

Best of the best of the rest that's not the best of the best?

My view is that longtime dealers like Bedrock are a far far better source of information than CGC because they not only do they have their own firsthand knowledge of raw/non-CGC copies, but they also trade info on the QT with other dealers and collectors who know of books they don't - like Bob's disclosure up above. And the savy ones take notes (which they sometimes reference when they post here). So I think they have good info and records. Even so, I believe that there are really nice comics sitting in collections of below the radar collectors that likely have not seen the light of day since the 50s, 60s or 70s and are largely forgotten. Bob's comment sure seems to reinforce that. And we all know of that there are incredible raw collections in nice grades held by notable collectors like BZ (acquired 60s and 70s), Dentist, and others.

Buy for $3.18M and sell for $3.4M seven months later? Sounds like a cash flow motivated sell. Seller may not have made any profit at all as the difference in price was only 6.5%. I wonder if Metro just bought it themselves. If so, they can say they paid the highest price ever for an Action 1.

What's the link about?

Looks almost like Syd was tracing Kirby. Kirby had bad leg problems back then.

I believe he's talking about three volumes of this (just vol. 1):

They have spent less than $500B. But that includes a lot a lot of special effects and cgi that will be used in future years.

More problems with the analysis: * The $1B is over five years. Amazon has committed to five seasons of RoP. (HBO cancelled the original attempt at HoD after one preview costing $37M because it stunk.) * RoP was previewed in Cinemark theaters. I guarantee that more than a few thousand people saw it. I do agree that HoD and RoP distribution is comparable. My only point being we won't know the true numbers until both seasons are over. I agree that ST is not comparable and probably has the vast majority of its number already.

I'm guessing you've got the 1992 Marvel retailer summit 3 vol. bound volumes (missing all covers, right?). Here's two others that come quickly to mind: * Man of Steel 1-6 was bound into a SC as a contest prize. * DC bound unreleased stats into "Cancelled Comics Calvacade".

Couple of problems with this analysis: * The first episode of HoD was FREE (inflates tv viewers); * The first two episodes of RoP were shown in MOVIE THEATERS (deflates tv viewers); and * Many people wait for the full season to be available before they bother to view a show. We've created a binge watch society that just doesn't have the patience to wait a week or more between episodes. So it is way too early to say which show has more staying power. (Amazon has committed to five seasons.)

I understand your frustration. The problem is that it is very hard to film a book. Especially a SF or Fantasy book, because they involve the creation of whole new worlds and tend to have a much more robust back story then other types of fiction. But lets be clear, I am about as hardcore a Tolkien fan as exists. I, and many hardcore Tolkien fans, have no trouble enjoying the movies and this tv show for what they are. Yes, they departed significantly from the books. But they still told a good story about Tolkien's characters set in Tolkien's world. Cutting Tom Bombadil and the "Scouring of the Shire," and giving Arwen an enhanced role, certainly was a very major material change that impacted the arc and heroism of the hobbits, but it still was a good story in my view despite that lack of fidelity. I'm not sure the Hobbit was filmable as written (the animated story was horrible). The additions to the Movie were certainly not presaged by anything in the Hobbit, but they were still in keeping with Tolkien's general themes and I appreciated the fleshing out of some of the storylines. For me books and movies/tv are two different mediums. The latter is an adaptation. They can be good or bad, but in the SF and Fantasy context they are rarely entirely faithful. And here, the story being told is literally accumulated from multiple contradictory unpublished texts, organized notes, disorganized notes including lines on scraps of paper, and the sketchiest of timelines. That's a starting point not an ending point. Even the Silmarillion was largely patched together by Christopher Tolkien after his father's death, and he needed help, including from Guy Gavriel Kay (a great writer), to get it done. Here's what Kay said he learned from working on the project: The "source materials" for the Rings of Power tv show are nothing more than a LOT of false starts. Tolkien never authored final versions of the sequels or prequels we might have wanted. Just "false starts" and notes, etc. So those who came after him have to fill in a lot of details to create a story worth filming.

My point is that the prequels are nothing more than everchanging story ideas. Tolkien felt no fidelity to them, he just thought they were good ideas. Now that he's dead, and they are plowing a lot of new ground, there's room to tinker with the ideas in the background notes and make a better story. Filming the Silmarillion with fidelity to that book would just create a boring flop as it lacks characterization, nuance and supporting characters. Put another way, the LOTR and The Hobbit movies deviated from the books in many ways - when there was less justification as those were fully finished works. I enjoy the movies immensely anyway. Same here with this tv show of very unfinished works. If you want to delve into the many prequels, I cheer you on as I've done it and enjoyed it. But I truly think this approach creates a much more viewer friendly product than any attempt to film the prequels with any degree of fidelity would yield. After all, the prequels provide only a sketch of Galadriel's life (really almost everyone's lives in those background notes).

I don't see the hypocrisy. When Bridgerton portrays Regency era London as a multi-cultural and diverse society the only liberty it takes is to show blacks becoming nobility a few hundred years too early. There is no need for a character played by a black actor in Bridgerton to have been played by a white person as race is not essential to the character. There's no reason why Hermione can't be black, or Harry Potter, or most literary characters whose race is not relevant to their essential characteristics. In Hamilton, portraying George Washington as black is historically inaccurate but it captures the aspirations of our nation. It also is a counterpoint to the many times that whites have been cast in Hollywood as blacks, Asians, native Americans, eskimos, etc. I dunno, I hear people say "I'm color blind when it comes to race" but that sure doesn't seem the case in these contexts. Having said that, I think color blind only goes so far. The Black Panther is a character for whom race is an essential characteristic. So I can see why that would more justifiably upset fans. And, you're right, that change would draw a charge of racism. It would probably be justified unless the producers had a really good reason to make the change. And if a historical drama changed MLK Jr. to a white, that too would probably draw some serious criticism (just as changing Hitler to a Jew would) that would probably be justified. But, here, we're talking about a fantasy where skin color is not essential to the characters. And, of course, there's the fact that white actors, benefitting from white privilege, have been cast to play other ethnicities in "black face" or "yellow face" etc. for about a hundred years. (Reminds me that in Shakespeare's time men played the female roles). So maybe its time to give good actors from other races a chance to play more roles that would, in less enlightened times, have gone to whites automatically. I agree that Hollywood is full of racial hypocrisy, but to me its accepting white actors playing other races for a hundred years and getting up in arms over the reverse now.

None of the Tolkein prequel materials, including the Silmarillion, were finished products. They were all background notes. There is no "canon." The prequel stories contradict each other regarding the lives of the same characters. So there's plenty of room to work with. The notion that a movie/tv must have complete fidelity to the book to be a good movie/tv is long discredited. It's just a fantasy book, not the Bible. As for your agenda comment: I think the agenda here is to tell a story about Galadriel before she became the ancient grandparent we see in LOTR. She obviously had a life before she was married, in fact she was a member of a prominent family of hotheads and fighters who got themselves banished for disrespecting authority, so the story told so far is plausible. Are you bothered by the concept of a strong pre-married woman? Not sure your point.

Not at all surprising an Ohio area collector has books with "C" markings. The "C" can't tie a book to the "Ohio" Pedigree as it was a distribution mark seen on multiple pedigrees (and non-peds) out of Ohio. But those are beautiful books. Are any for sale?

Am I missing something? What accents do you think Viggo and Sam were using in the movies? Jackson made a decision to have the High Elves be upper crust English, the Halflings speak lower class English/Scottish, and Viggo speak some mid-Atlantic Danglishtina. I can't fault this show on that grounds. I liked it in LOTR and like it here.