thunsicker

This is the long and the short of the whole matter. No one would have even noticed if it weren't for a certain political action committee deciding to make this the centerpiece of their convention this year. No one would have cared and no one would have noticed that a rights owner decided not to keep publishing a few low selling books that had questionable stereotypes in them. But the pac decided that this was what was important to them (not the pandemic, not the resultant unemployment, not the fact that the country is becoming more and more polarized, etc.). And so here we are arguing about 'censorship' on a comic book board.

Huh. I can't seem to find you. Did you misspell something?

You're crazy Jimmers. It's great to have you back, but I've never ever been too picky about boobs.

So is this thread only for sword and sorcery films we think are better on rewatch? If not, I want to say WandaVision had me rewatching Age of Ultron the other day and it wasn't the crappy movie I remembered. It actually held up pretty well. This is in no way a defense of Joss Whedon. That guy can still go to hell. But the movie was much better than I remembered.

Heck, that’s nothing. In the early 90’s Liz Phair was the hot new artist with her debut album ‘Exile in Guyville’. If you have a minute go listen to the track ‘Flower’ off that critically acclaimed album.

I'm with you all. It's nice to get some Schomburg War covers for not too much money. Though I haven't be able to pick up any cheap lately.

I don't know how you can't tell the difference between new music like Cardi-B and Body Count and older music like Guns & Roses and Metallica. The difference is as clear as black and white.

These questions. Also... Who was the person in witness protection that Woo was there for? And if the magics there were enough to draw Agnes why didn't they draw Dr. Strange? (Or any of the other Marvel wizards?)

Have you looked at https://comicbookgradingtool.com/? It's not a very sophisticated tool, but it does go over a lot of the things that you would want to train your model to look for. It might make more sense to use the model to do a simple binary test (does the comic have spine stresses yes/no). Then have it do a degrees type of thing (what level of spine stresses does a comic have from none to excessive). Finally develop an algorithm that looks at all the things mentioned on the online tool's page and try to figure out a grade from them.

https://www.comics.org/search/advanced/process/?target=sequence&method=icontains&logic=False&keywords=basketball&type=6&order1=date

Andy! Long time! Hope all is well with you.

Interesting experiment. Ironically it might make more sense to ignore the specific comic approach for two reasons. First, as you noted, it's hard to find enough of one comic to teach the algorithm. Secondly the difference between a 9.8 ASM 300 and a 9.8 Action Comics 1 is going to be greater than the difference between a 9.8 ASM 300 and a 1.0 ASM 300.

Well I started collecting comics in the mid 70's to mid 80's so Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans were the best thing that DC had going at the time. I don't really know Cyborg from Teen Titans GO. In the Wolfman Perez stories he definitely wasn't an angry black man. So if the depiction that they were seeing in Snyder's movie was, I can see where they would be concerned. Yes Killmonger was an angry black man. But T'Chaka, T'Challa, Shuri, there were plenty of black people in the film who weren't playing that overdone stereotype. Right. If like that Marvel has given Teyonah Parris a major role in WandaVision. But if they had decided to make her the sassy black friend of Wanda I would have said something like "we can't have a sassy black friend in WandaVision". That is not that we can't have a black woman in our production, but we can't have that overdone trope in our film. I just that when I read "we can't have an angry Black man at the center of the movie" I read it as more of the later rather than the former. I may be wrong, I don't really know any of the players in this personally.

Fine, make Cyborg the center of the film. But avoid using the 'Angry Black Man' trope. We've had enough of that from Hollywood already. How about Cyborg as the hopeful black man star of the film? Or as the friendly black man? Shy black man? Just avoid the stereotypical 'Angry Black Man'. Though I can also see where Warner Brothers, in a film with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman would be a bit hesitant on making Cyborg the center of the film. Not because of the color of his skin, but because of his relative IP value.

I'm not sure what this issue with that is. I would hope that they wouldn't center the movie on the "angry black man" stereotype. Unless you are reading that as "Ray Fisher is an angry black man and we can't center the movie on him"?

I’m always loathe to get into these conversations for fear that they are dangerously close to the dreaded p word, but... Henry Cavill said something insensitive. When his attention was called to what he said he immediately and completely apologized. Chris Evan’s said something inappropriate about the Black Widow character. When his attention was called to what he said he immediately and completely apologized. The only way my opinion of either of those actors would go down is if this behavior became a pattern. The pattern of this kind of behavior is what is giving Whedon and Carano problems. It somehow has not given Renner problems. You want to go after someone who hasn’t been taken to task enough it’s Renner.

If I were looking for one comic to display, and I didn't have a favorite character, I'd probably go with a comic that had something related to my profession on the cover. e.g. Software Engineer: look for a computer cover; Attorney: look for a courtroom cover; Doctor: look for an operating room cover.

Thing that worries me most is the lower right corner. Hard to see exactly what's going on there. Is there paper loss? Bug chew? The scan has a weird artifact where it looks like the whole cover is woven, which makes some stuff hard to make out. And there is, as you noted, a lot of Marvel pre-chipping going on. My gut impression was a 7.0

So true on the DC keys. Collectors always calling them a bargain and overdue, yet they haven’t gained in value for years. In fact some have decreased. I would have been better off putting my money into an overpriced Marvel key which still makes gains while DC just sits still at the starting line. Spoken like a true investor. Some of us collectors don't care if the comics don't go up. Being able to still collect despite the outrageous prices being paid for comics now a days is seen as a good thing, not a negative. Teen Titans, Doom Patrol, Green Lantern, Justice League, and on and on... There are a lot of fun stories and good collectables that won't cost you your retirement even if they aren't the most sound 'investments'.

I agree that a low end grading company like that could work on the multitude of comics that aren't worth the cost of getting graded. Simple resto check (e.g. see what glows under a black light), quick grade by single grader, into hologram sealed mylite and charge $10. While CGC seems to have a pretty good business on high end comics I don't know that anyone is addressing the comics that aren't even worth $100 graded.

Red card and disqualification for duplicate? Harsh, I was thinking Yellow Card at worst.

In the land caled Kush:

at the Coliseum:

Sorry about the short notice, but someone on my sports board posted this today: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7576216070154962189

We could find out if once was enough to give you super powers. @gadzukes how many films in your marvel contract?