F For Fake

Sweet, love it! I dug a Critters #1 out of a dollar bin two weeks ago, wish I'd run into some of these as well!

I'm with you bud, let's yell at that cloud together!

I was a kid in the 80's, so that would definitely be the good old days to me!

Yup, 100%. It's pretty timeless.

Well, agree to disagree. She hasn't reached the saturation of the big three, but from a merchandising standpoint, I'm pretty confident she'd be in their top 5. It would be interesting to see some numbers on it, but I'm not sure if they release that sort of information in a character breakdown.

I can deal with the fact that the established "ages" are a bit wonky and not really uniform...up until the point that I realize we've been in the "modern age" for nearly 30 years now. At some point, Overstreet/The Cabal/The Comics Illuminati or whoever it is that makes these decisions is going to have to officially break the 90's off into its own established age, and then start Modern at Walking Dead or Ultimate Spider-Man or whatever makes the most sense. (I'd pick WD just because the Ultimate line is no longer a going concern.) We've nearly been in the Modern Age longer than Silver, Bronze and Copper combined. So, yeah, once you get past Copper, I think you sorta HAVE to go with the decades (90', 00's) because nothing else makes any sense.

Huge Devo fan. One of the great concepts in rock music, and such great songs as well. They really understood the idea of combining the music with an aesthetic, from their movies to their videos to their albums. I never thought I'd get to see them, but they finally came through town when touring "Something for Everybody". Of course Josh Freese was drumming with them by then, so it wasn't the classic lineup, but at least I got to see them before Bob 2 passed. Still got my blue energy dome and a shred of Mark's suit that he threw from the stage. Amazing show.

I tend to think that Joker is DC's second most popular property, behind Batman himself. I know the thinking is usually Bats, Supes, WW, but these days I'd tend to think it's Bats, Joker, WW, maybe Harley Quinn, THEN Superman, simply from a public awareness and merchandising sales standpoint. Could be wrong though, I know that S-Shield is still beloved around the world. But yeah, I'd tend to agree that a well-made Joker movie would be a box office juggernaut. The Dark Knight didn't become one of the biggest movies of all time just because of Christian Bale's McGuff the Crime Dog impersonation.

You know, if they'd done away with all of the Juggalo tats and grill and all of that , I don't know that I'd really have a big problem with that take on the Joker. But the movie was garbage anyway, so I didn't have much invested in it.

Yeah, it definitely took on different dimensions once I learned about what had gone on. But there's no getting around the fact that it's a classic film. There are a lot of problematic figures in cinema, like in any other field, I'd think. Recently, one of my best friends, who happens to be black, was angry because there is a portrait of D W Griffith in one of the houses at our local art-house theater. (Each house has two portraits of important filmmakers: Welles, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Eisenstein, Truffaut, etc.) I tried to have a conversation with him about it, not trying to justify it, but just trying to basically explain his role in film history and why a theater would include him in that context. "Birth of a Nation" may be an ugly piece of pro-KKK propaganda...but it also created a lot of the language that has been used in cinema ever since. (And for what it's worth, Griffith spent a lot of his career afterwards trying to right that wrong, particularly with his follow-up "Intolerance".) The same could be said about Leni Riefenstahl, the reprehensible Nazi propagandist, who also contributed greatly to the evolution of film editing and technique. Not trying to infer at all that Gibson (or even Polanski) are on that level, just citing examples of how difficult it can be to separate the art from the artist. And so, at this point, I'm just saying no to both. (For the most part...I mean, I gotta watch The Road Warrior a couple times a year.)

I get it, especially with the music. Part of it may just be that I'm "getting old", but honestly, the music just isn't as good, right? It's not just me, right? Please? The only music I buy much anymore are soundtracks on vinyl, but that really ties into my movie collecting more than music collecting. Just love those multi-colored vinyl releases. But even that seems like a chore at times.

When I got my iPad, it REALLY turned me into a comic reader again. 99 cent sales, freebies, 50% off trades, so many awesome options, and reading on the iPad is such a joy. I think I'll always be a comic reader, I just don't need to own so many of the darn things.

Nearly reached my lull with collecting moderns. My pull list is down to Batman, Tec and Wonder Woman, and that's just because I've been collecting those runs for decades. I still enjoy reading moderns, and I do read a lot of stuff digitally, but as for keeping boxes of the stuff around, I just don't have the appetite anymore. I know I've mentioned in other threads that I was thinking of downsizing, and I've started taking some steps. There was a time in my life where I felt like I needed to expand my storage/display capabilities to fit my collection. Nowadays, I feel like my collection needs to fit the confines of my storage. No more stacks of long boxes in the laundry room. I want it to all fit in my "comic room", you know? So I've been slowly selling off the drek. Just pulled out three longboxes worth of junk this weekend to drop at the LCS. If stuff is worth selling on ebay, I throw it up on there, but otherwise it's all going to the LCS, where I get store credit, which lately I've been trading in for low grade silver stuff that I enjoy. I'd rather have a couple of short boxes of silver Marvel beaters than 20 longs of drek, you know? Anyway, that's where I'm at. My interest jump around so frequently, I can't imagine that I'll ever lose the collecting bug. I've been doing it since I was a kid. But the focus and approach to my collection continues to evolve over the years. I think that's natural.

Well, if they have to do it (and it's probably just a matter of time) hopefully they'll get someone of that caliber to take it on. But if they try to remake "Lawrence of Arabia", I'm rioting in the streets! NO PRISONERS! NO PRISONERS!

You know, I think everyone has to go with whatever suits their moral compass. I certainly don't think it's WRONG for anyone to watch or enjoy Mel Gibson movies, or Woody Allen movies, or Roman Polanski movies, etc. I used to be a big proponent of "the art, not the artist", and I think that's still a valid viewpoint. But in recent years, I just feel like my tolerance has changed. Personally, for many years I struggled with my feelings about Roman Polanski's catalog in particular. I just love "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown", you know? But I finally decided that, for me, the thing which made me feel best was to not support artists that I am ethically opposed to, because there are SO many movies out there I haven't seen by folks that don't have that cloud over them, I'd rather just check out something new. Again, not passing judgment at all on anyone who wants to see this. Hell, I love Mad Max and The Road Warrior more than I can say. Ugh. But yeah, that's the right choice for me. Everybody has to do their thing.

Thanks guys. Since the books are for me, not reselling, I can live with a few rings if need be. I just didn't want the book getting wavy and curved somewhere down the line.

Oh, and screw Mel Gibson.

No no no. No no no no no. Kwai is perfect. Leave it alone. If they made it now, they'd make a bridge with a CGI explosion and a CGI train plummeting to the ground. In the original, they spent a quarter of a million dollars blowing up an honest to God bridge with an honest to God train, and they only had one shot at it. THAT is movie making!

Doesn't anyone remember the nerd outrage when the Ledger Joker pics first came out? People HATED it. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the movie came out, and people fell over themselves to worship the performance. So Phillips is primarily known for directing comedies. Who cares? Jordan Peele still made "Get Out". Terry Gilliam made "Brazil." Albert Brooks made more movies than I can think of off the top of my head. Most talented people can do more than one kind of thing. Studying every last bit of info that leaks out, every little bit of minutiae that dribbles onto the internet, just creates baseless expectations and/or needless disappointment. I've seen these pics, fine, that's where I stop. I'll be ignoring the movie until it comes out, and will make a final judgment then. Maybe it comes out and it DOES suck. Who cares? Life goes on. There will be another Joker movie coming down the pike a year or two later. Maybe you'll like that one.

I haven't subbed anything since the advent of the new cases. While (clearly) newton rings are still an issue, whatever happened with the "creep engine" problem? Are books still showing up all wavy at the top, or did they fix that? I've got a couple I'd like to get slabbed for the personal collection, but am still wary.

I was at 5.0 but scrolling through the other responses I guess I'd agree a 5.5 seems very possible as well!

7.5 based on what I can see here.

You have to tell me if you're a cop, otherwise it's entrapment!

Not that I can share while I'm at work!