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.

18 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I don't think the comparison holds up upon closer scrutiny.  With music, people abandoned compact discs in favor of digital downloads (both legal and illegal) and streaming.  With comics, while we don't have the digital distribution statistics, I think it's pretty obvious that the decline in circulations is not just due to people changing formats.  Not to mention, global music revenue has plummeted by 40% between 2002 and 2015 while this shift occurred - no one would even begin to argue that the economics of the music industry are what they used to be.  If digital subscription models were to similarly dominate in comics, one would have to wonder, not if, but how big a revenue hit the industry would take.  It obviously wouldn't be able to support the existing distribution infrastructure, but I wonder if you could even support the existing creative infrastructure.    

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.

15 minutes ago, nWo_22 said:

He is right.

Now while I don't buy a ton of blu ray's anymore, I still own the major movies on disc.  Watching Rogue One on netflix isn't as good as blu ray.

Plus still in 2017 there is zero benefit to owning digital movies, CD, Or games.  They lose the license and you lose your rights to re-downloading the media.

Case in point Marvel vs Capcom 2 for PS3.  I had to get a new PS3, Sony lost the rights to game, I lost $40 bucks. Owning the tangible product is still best.  Just like people who didnt have the common sense to not upload pictures and other media to the iCloud.  Those hot celebrities found out what happens when you assume hackers wont come in and steal your adult pictures from out of the thin air. haha

 

 

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.  

1 hour ago, Ken Aldred said:

It actually isn't bad at all.  I'm just jaded and I don't have particularly fond memories of my schooldays.

As you've said, its sales relative to other titles are okay.  It's just that being old I remember decent sales figures being around 200k.  

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.

20 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

 

Some of the stories using the new Muslim Ms Marvel are set around high school experiences as were our early Silver Age Amazing Spider-Man issues.  In my 50s, I'm not really that interested in reading more of the same again but,  judging from less-than-stratospheric sales figures, neither does that setting appear to have resonated much with the current generation of teens.

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?

6 hours ago, oakman29 said:

Apparently she also has your balls too! Maybe you should be called noballs.  

My wife and I have an arrangement, I don't ask about purses and shoes, she doesn't ask about comics.

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. 

On 2/10/2017 at 0:52 PM, VintageComics said:

I'd say "NO" emphatically. They DON'T build things like they used to.

Remember all those companies that were known for outstanding quality? They no longer exist. And why? Because the general public doesn't want to buy a car or a piece of clothing and wear it forever. They want something new and shiny every week / month / year.

I worked for Mercedes Benz for 11 years and for 11 year prior worked alongside Benz / Porsche / BMA / Rolls / Jaguar, etc. Nothing is built like it was decades ago. You used to buy a car that would actually last a lifetime. Now it's designed to last 4 years. I don't care what the manufacturers say.

The general public 'say' they want quality but what they mean is that they don't really want to pay for it. They just want it at the cheapest possible price. The problem is that there is a direct correlation between price and quality. If you want better you have to be willing to pay for better, but most people won't. They'll just stop buying the more expensive product and then the manufacturer will have to drop the price by cutting corners to stay competitive and voila, back where we started.

We're a short sighted society.

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.

Some buyers are looking to hit the jackpot on an undergraded book and use a listed grade as an excuse for a return (with you paying shipping both ways) if the nm is not in fact a 9.6 or 9.8. I had gone to "high grade" "mid grade" etc. and am back to giving a specific grade. My scanner is not great, so I can't just say "look at the picture." If someone returns something, so be it. Low grade stuff I just say low grade. I don't try to speculate on 9.6-8, just "nm or better" and note that a specific defect is going to prevent a 9.8, etc just do disabuse anyone of the notion that it should go in a slab.

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 stopped reading it shortly after 300...

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.

Since I owned a store in the eighties MC #1 was the Grail. Have to go with that.

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.

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.

 

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

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

 

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."

Trade update

 

I'm trading my x-men 266 cgc 9.6 and flash 139 3.0/3.5 for his asm 40 8.0/8.5 and ba12 9.0 raw and also he's throwing a messi card and two silver age spideys.

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.

To stay on the topic(somewhat)... even a potentially crappy R rated movie made for only the fan base wont kill this book. Deadpools popularity is immune to bad writing, bizarre storylines and no continuity.

 

This is Generation Y's book of choice and nothing is going to change that now.

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.

They said that they want me to become independent instead of relying on them.

 

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.

The positive we can take from this FF movie is now all future comic book movies will use FF as the benchmark of what not to do with iconic comic book characters.

 

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.

 

The original X-Men flick was a good example of giving the audience the progressive social undertones inherent in the mutant struggle without beating the viewer over the head with it. It at the same time had great action and characters (argue about the costumes later) that kept the audience hooked.

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.

My expectations are low enough that if this movie doesn't actually make me physically sick I'll consider it better than expected.

 

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.

My expectations are low enough that if this movie doesn't actually make me physically sick I'll consider it better than expected.

 

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.