Hamlet

I discovered the first issue of the Rocket Raccoon miniseries from the 80s in one of my boxes a couple years back and tried to read it, but was only able to make it about three pages in. That is a horrendous book.

One thing I wonder about is from a practical standpoint, are there really any more new, original stories to tell about these long running characters anymore? The reboots, and the renumberings, and the constant tinkering with gender/race/etc may stem from the fact that at some point you just run out of stories to tell and have to start retelling them over and over with something changed. Some of those retellings are good ( say Miller's Batman Year One ) and some are bad, but frankly, there is going to be difficulty with rehashing the same things over and over for 50 years. On the one hand, people want the comics to be true to the characters, but on the other hand, in order for the comic to actually be new, it has to different in some way from the past issues. How do you actually do that with any consistently after 50 years of stories? Either its the same old thing that you've read 10 times already, or they've changed something too much and it doesn't feel like the character you grew up with.

I think you are probably right about the decline in circulation, but without any digital numbers, it is hard to be sure. On the economic side of things, the decline in revenue hurts all the middle-men that used to be involved in distributing CDs, but I would argue that the producers and the end consumers are likely to be better off with the digital distribution. It's like stock trading-- The transaction costs involved in buying stock have plummeted due to online trading. The revenues for servicing a retail, low-volume stock trader like myself have declined dramatically in the last 25 years, but it is hard to see that as a bad thing, even though a bunch of stock brokers have had to find new employment.

These days, I generally purchase movies digitally through Amazon. I think Amazon is less likely to go under than I am to lose or damage a physical copy. The digital copy is also nice because I can pretty much access it from anywhere these days. If I'm over at a friend's house, and we decide that we'd like to watch one of my movies, we can pull it up on any computer or Roku or Smart TV. I have a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old that attempt to destroy anything they can get their hands on, so for me a physical copy is a massive downside Certainly there will continue to be a market for the higher-end quality of a blu ray, but I'm not really that market.

I'd love to know how many subscriptions they have to Marvel Unlimited, and what the demographics of those subscribers look like. I would suspect that that is how the majority of people under 25 would buy comics these days. Citing low print runs as the death of comics is like citing CD sales as the death of music. Music isn't going away, it just gets sold on iTunes these days instead of on a plastic disk. The real long term determiner of Marvel's success in comics will be how many of those subscriptions they can sell, not how many floppies they sell, IMO.

I think the fundamental issue is that printed comics are a buggy whip industry. My daughter's main exposure to the medium has been digital. Almost anything printed ( magazines, newspapers, books ) is a shrinking industry. The concept of getting paper copies of these things is pretty foreign to most younger folks. Collectors like the printed version. Readers are mostly moving to digital long term. Marvel's terrible stories have made it worse, but in the end printed comics are going to lose most of their market no matter what.

I was impressed with this title. It really does have the same feel that drew me to ASM when I was a kid. I've read a few to my daughter. She liked them, but she's still a little young for them. I don't think the sales for the series are bad (30k+), given how few issues much more established characters with large installed fan bases are selling. Note that I read them on my iPad through Marvel Unlimited, and I would expect most teens to read them that way these days. Why would anyone pay $3.99/comic when you can buy all of them for $69/year?

That works as long as both of you stick to some rational yardstick of spending relative to income/wealth. Ironically, my problem is that my wife is actually thrifter than me, so my still thrifty spending levels (for our income) seem wasteful in comparison. It's hard to feel good about blowing money on comics when your partner in life is choosing to skip the fancy coffee to save $4.

Looks like this ended up being pretty much a wash between the FP1 in 9.6 and the S&P 500 according to the rules of the bet. The last two sales of the FP1 don't look real good trend-wise though (490 and 525). I just signed back up on GPA to check on the FP1. I will probably update the key list out of curiosity.

Honestly, people seem to have complete rose-colored glasses about the past. American cars from the late 70s early eighties were expensive pieces of junk. That is why the Japanese cars became so popular. 100k miles used to be a lot for a car, and people had to get new ones every 5-7 years. Now even the worst cars last ten years on average. I bought a 2008 Kia Rhonda, the definition of a disposable car, and it has 100k miles on it and shows no sign of major issues. Are there any major car models these days that aren't likely to be good for 10-15 years? My uncle has sold cars for nearly 40 years, and he talks about when he started selling them, you almost always had the customers bringing them back for (minor) repairs in the first month because the quality control was so hit and miss. These days that is rare.

I would pick 1000 dollar books up at conventions that I thought were worth $3 each. Huge return on investment, terrible $/hr.

The thing is, they don't need an excuse to return it. They can just force a return thru PayPal/E-bay. I'm amazed that anyone still sells on E-bay with how stacked things are against sellers these days.

I did too! The last issue I bought off the racks was #301, and I thought #300 was pretty lame. The McFarlane run gets a lot of love from folks here I respect, but for me it was missing almost everything I love about the character. Some nice covers for sure but that was about it. I think that so many of the issues from 262-297 were so bad that McFarlane was a huge relief to read for me. Someone else mentioned 264, but there were so many stinkers from that time it is hard to pick just one. Spider kid in 263, the secret wars 2 stuff, etc, etc. I got into comics about that time, and if it wasn't for back issues of ASM, it would have been rough going. Kraven's last hunt was good, and I loved the Hobgoblin, but there were more stinkers in that run than hits.

Yeah, I think this is likely to break down by how long someone has been collecting. When I was 13, MC #1 was the book I dreamed of owning because it was the first Marvel comic and I didn't care for Superman. Cap #1 wasn't a book I dreamed about because I wasn't a Cap fan. So while I understand all the reasons other people would prefer to own a Cap #1, I would take the MC #1. It's not the book itself, but what the book represented when I was 13. I am extremely unlikely to own it unless it continues to fall out of favor though, so I recommend that everyone else should sell it and buy Cap 1s instead.

I have the run from 4-365 or so. I don't remember exactly when I stopped in the early 90s. I'll get a #3 eventually (Doc Ock is a personal favorite), but I'm not sure I can make myself pay the money needed for AF15, #1, and #2.

Where do I see such graphs? I'm where you were in college, it seems uninteresting. I wasn't aware that the cost efficiency has been doubling every 18 months. I should have said "something like Moore's law". It's may not be doubling every 18 months, but it is starting to look pretty impressive-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_per_watt

Fusion. It's my favorite technology. It has the greatest potential to take mankind to the next step of civilization...I'm frustrated that we don't devote more resources into making it a reality. There is an international effort to build a reactor though--ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor currently being built in France. It may fail, but , hopefully it won't and either way we'll get there. https://www.iter.org/ Solar power is starting to get interesting. I remember thinking that it was pretty useless as an engineering student in the early 90s ( I live in Minnesota, so that certainly didn't help ). I remember being a Solar Power class and having my project group go into conniptions when I told the professor that. Today, though, the power/cost graph is starting to look it may follow Moore's Law. If that continues, we may reach a point not terribly long from now where the idea of burning stuff for electricity will seem quaint. It just goes to show that technology never seems to move in quite the way you would expect.

"The power of the sun in the palm of my hand."

Why wouldn't you just sell the 266 instead of trading it? It's a liquid book. I think you'd have been better off just throwing it into the next Comiclink auction than messing around with these trades. Every trade you go through puts you at risk of misgrading a raw book or missing restoration. I also think you should avoid trading until you are more experienced. Trading is an activity that tends to benefit the person more informed about the market and grading. This isn't anything you haven't heard before though.

I think this is currently true of Deadpool and Harley as well. However, it remains to be seen how much staying power they will really have. For the most part, they haven't crossed generations yet, or even really dealt with an aging fan base. Will the "kids" who are excited about these characters now still be excited by them in their 50s? Will their kids be excited about them as well? That is really the test of a character's staying power.

interesting...I would LOVE for one of (or all) my kids to want to work for/with me...if you are "working" for them, you are earning money they would otherwise pay someone else...doesn't make sense to me, but what do I know...every family is different Honestly, I think it is usually healthier for the kids to strike out on their own. How can a child ever really consider themselves an independent adult if their employment still depends on their parents? How can they have any confidence that they are actually good enough to get a job on their own? Nepotism leads to a lot of ugly situations.

Indeed, sticking to the source material, the original costumes, etc. is a key lesson learned. But this movie failed epically for reasons well beyond deviation from the iconic Lee/Kirby mythology. There is a story behind the movie that at some point will be told in clear detail. Based on the rumours about Trank over the last 12 months, the reshooting that took place in the Spring, and what -- based on what many of the critics have been pointing out -- appears to have been a completely redone/reworked final 25% of the film -- which perhaps suggests that Fox Studios didn't like the original director's cut that maybe lacked sufficient action (?) -- this was a production and -script train wreck that Fox Studios and the film's producers are as much responsible for as anyone. I'm not defending Mr. Trank, but I'm sure if he could speak freely about WTF happened, we would hear an interesting side of the story. you seriously think if the costumes were more similar to the originals that would have had ANY impact on the reviews or the box office? How many people 18-49 in America do you think have read Fantastic Four 1-5. 10K? What percent of movie critics do you think have read Fantastic Four 1-5? A marginally higher percentage than the general population? I know I haven't, and I like comics. A LOT. The movie didn't fail because the ideas because the ideas weren't true to the original, it failed because the ideas were bad. How similar was Cap 2 to anything we've read? Or Spider-Man 1, or the good X-men movies? You take the ideas and assemble and add things in a way that makes things fun and relevant and entertaining, hopefully. That doesn't mean there isn't a good TRUE movie out there to be told, just that I wouldn't count on the lesson learned from this to be 'stay true to the source material'. Obviously nothing is a direct link to comic, but are you telling me you can't see the difference between Captain America in the Marvel movies and Dr. Doom in the Fox movies? Seriously? Sure, the majority of the audience of the movies doesn't read comics, but if you burn down the characters look and personalities, a not-so insignificant chunk of comic movie-goers will hate the idea and possibly not attend. Not going to happen again after this debacle. I think it is important to stay true to the spirit of the source material, but not necessarily the actual details. Most original comic costumes would look ridiculous in real life, so the movies change or cgi them. Likewise, movies often require a lot of simplification of the plot to work, like Ultron being Stark's creation, for example. The first Spider-Man movie made his webs organic instead of mechanical, and I think that streamlined things. You need to get the themes right, though. That is the part of the source material you need to stay true to, IMO.

Yeah, its always a fine line. I really liked the original X-men. It was early in the special effects revolution, so it couldn't just wow us with those (see IM 3). It needed a decent story, and it delivered. I love the scene at the beginning setting up Magneto's motivations. They made him a three dimensional character, and it made the movie much better.

Same. I generally enjoyed the first two films, although I never liked the idea of Tim Story directing them and didn't like the campy tone of either film. I'm aware of the weaknesses and stupid elements, but I like the characters and there was enough there for me to enjoy to overlook the stupid mess. I'm betting that'll be the case this time as well; the trailers suggest there will be. But holy mess, another reboot. But a crappy one this time. I was unimpressed with the first two films, but I didn't hate them as much as most people here did. My main issue with them is that they did a terrible job with Dr Doom. They turned him into just another corporate bad guy. Yuck! Otherwise, I felt they were C+ movies. The first Hulk was a movie I hated and considered walking out of about half-way through. My buddy turned to me and said that we could save an hour and a half of our lives by leaving now. I stayed, but he was so right. The first Hulk was a huge disappointment. Even today, it is hard to sit through it. Marvel provided consultation on that movie too. What were they thinking? Does Marvel provide consultation on the Fox and Sony movies? Or do those studios just reach out to the comic creators themselves? What would possess anyone to try to sit thru it again? It's biggest problem was that it was an hour and a half story cut to almost three hours. It just dragged. There is a scene where they are going down in an elevator into some secret underground fortress that just goes on and on and on. I wanted to start screaming at the screen -- "We get it, its really deep in the ground!!" If you're going to make a terrible movie, at least make it short.

Same. I generally enjoyed the first two films, although I never liked the idea of Tim Story directing them and didn't like the campy tone of either film. I'm aware of the weaknesses and stupid elements, but I like the characters and there was enough there for me to enjoy to overlook the stupid mess. I'm betting that'll be the case this time as well; the trailers suggest there will be. But holy mess, another reboot. But a crappy one this time. I was unimpressed with the first two films, but I didn't hate them as much as most people here did. My main issue with them is that they did a terrible job with Dr Doom. They turned him into just another corporate bad guy. Yuck! Otherwise, I felt they were C+ movies. The first Hulk was a movie I hated and considered walking out of about half-way through. My buddy turned to me and said that we could save an hour and a half of our lives by leaving now. I stayed, but he was so right.