VintageComics

#netflix If you want to get technical, since 2020 was pushed ahead a year, everything was pushed ahead a year. And as FF and I were just discussing, it was both the pandemic AND the stalling to expire Fox's contracts that BOTH created a delay. The writer's strike was the 3rd blockage in the pipeline, so it's hard to say which one is most to blame for not having an FF or X-men movie in the works yet, but regardless, I think cutting their losses on the crepe they've been shoveling is the best thing they can do. The PROBLEM is that corporate structure is based on constant revenue and profits. For example, if you're a sole entity and had a good year but see that next year is going to be horrific, you can adjust and have a lean year. Smart people leave a much larger margin of error for things to go sideways. But corporations are run so lean (who wants cash sitting around?) and everyone MUST BE PAID their $10's of Millions for "doing a good job" that there is far less room for error. If you have a REALLY bad year, like Disney is having now, you can equate it to having a hole in the side of a ship. It's REALLY hard to find a way to stop bleeding when your reserves are getting used up and you need that revenue you've lost to bridge finance a year with a corporation because there are so many hungry hands reaching out to get paid. So I think Disney banked on the aggressive side and thought these "bridge finance" movies were going to be the bandaid, but they didn't realize how small the bandaid was and how big the gashed artery was.

I went in the complete opposite direction thanks to the US legalizing hemp in 2018. Funnily enough, I NEVER smoked weed for 50 years mainly because I hated the experience. Then at some point in April 2020, I had a friend going through a tough time with his girl and we hung out a bit one night and he kept pushing me to try it. I ended up taking a drag and it literally blew my mind. My world changed. I ended up having insights into myself and my relationship that I could never have had any other way. I still drank alcohol during this time but I didn't drink as heavy because I didn't want to fall into the trap of using booze out of boredom while being locked down. It was really the weed that was the motivator. I didn't smoke to get high, I smoked to learn about myself, about others, about how the world worked. I would quite literally get high and then just sit there every evening, because there was nothing else to do and confront myself with everything I could recall from my past and work through it. It was a fascinating exercise that changed my life and then in Dec 2021, I got a bit of a bug (THE bug, but it was very minor, I just lost my sense of taste, had a bit of a fever and just couldn't sleep for a couple of weeks) and once I felt better, I felt SO GOOD that I decided I was done with weed, booze and tobacco. Cold turkey, one shot. Since then, I've dabbled a bit here and there. I still would have a scotch to sip on with friends or a toke, but I've decided a while back that it just serves no purpose for me any longer other than to indulge so I stopped using altogether and I'm now straight edge and absolutely love it. I can be around anything and there's no temptation. I just don't want it anymore. The joy I get from life is so powerful that I refuse to cloud it with anything else. The side benefit of the work I did using the weed was that I managed to transfer those lessons over to when I'm sober, and am able to now use those lessons every day. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to and would need to continue to feel that way, but it worked. Pretty fascinating stuff. I am actually thinking about dabbling in Psychedelics to better heal past traumas, but I've never used a psychedelic and I'm moving slow with that one. I had a long winded reply posted elsewhere about my new high note, but the gist was this: In Jan 2020 I made a conscious decision never to have a bad day again after a lifetime of bad days. I made a promise to myself to turn every negative into a positive and that made all the difference in the world for me. I haven't had a bad day since. Really. Bad things happen, the pandemic happened 3 months after, I had a car catch fire, lost many friends and clients over my position on current events, but I can genuinely say every day is a great day and haven't had a bad days since Jan 1 2020. I didn't believe it was possible when people would tell me about this sort of polyynic stuff, but I'm now living it. You're on a similar, parallel path with your Zen journey, aren't you?

The single greatest silver bullet to most of the world's economic woes today, and probably the most helpful single thing that EVERY SINGLE PERSON can do to help society would be some self imposed austerity. Just lifting your foot off the gas by a hair changes everything. But you can't force that, you can only hope that the smart people do it without it being put into crayon for them. It would literally change the world.

Where you in Dallas last weekend?

I can think of a lot more people to fire than Fiege over revenue performance. Good. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move the heck on, whether you're a comic dealer or Disney. This bodes well for FF and X-men, WHICH EVERYONE HAS BEEN WAITING FOR!!!!!! Clean the slate and LET'S DO IT!!!!! I absolutely LOVE going to the movies. I wasn't allowed to go to a theater as a kid. My parents, being religious forbade it, so the 1st movie I ever saw was Tarzan: Lord of Greystoke in 1984. I was probably 13 at the time and my aunt, my mom's sister LITERALLY NEEDED TO SNEAK ME to the movies and I was not to tell my parents. She told them she was taking me shopping. Imaging the moral quandery for a 13 year old kid to hide something like that? Anyway, seeing a movie for the 1st time was like an awakening. I was smitten and fell in love and to this day, because I wasn't allowed to go, I've been drawn to it ever since and every time I walk into a theater I do so with child-like wonder and amazement, even 40 years later. The reason I don't go as often anymore is I don't like to patronize garbage content, and so I tend to go to smaller art houses and theaters where they curate much cooler movies. And I get the popcorn every time. It's a tradition.

Stalling makes sense. That's a lot of money to stall with though. I think they miscalculated. They thought the public wouldn't notice that the sub par material wasn't going to go over well, and the public noticed. With the advent of the internet, the public's awareness has risen to an nth degree and people in general are just much more aware of what's going on. What I didn't think they'd realize is how violent the reaction would be. I think they thought they'd slide a few stinkers through, collect some revenue and float into the FF and X-men. I don't think anyone foresaw Disney teetering on real financial trouble. There was definitely a delay to starve out the old contracts. That much I'm pretty certain about. Disney didn't want to bring on people from the Fox stuff. A premiere studio would rather start from scratch and have full creative control. The pandemic certainly created another delay and I think THAT is what shot them in the foot.

Thanks. Yes, I think this is a very tidy solution for all and I'm glad we were able to talk it through with everyone's input. Having said that, there doesn't seem to be much interest from the audience in participating in a donation thread, so if I don't get a decent amount of interest I won't be hosting it here. Heritage Auctions actually offered to help me hold a proper auction for the event, but I don't think we're big enough for something like that yet, although I do envision this being an enterprise level event that could be hosted in a much larger venue at some point in the future. My actual goal is to eventually have a large capacity event with 1000's of tickets sold and to host the event at a much larger venue than the Whisky. But at this point it's baby steps and I'm genuinely thrilled to be able to offer my services in a meaningful way that will help the maximum amount of people possible. --------------------------- I'm going to throw this out there in case anyone is in the LA area and wants to attend the event: I'd be happy to help anyone behind the scenes with coordinating travel plans, hotel stay, donations to the Mission or just attending Midnight Wonderland and need tickets. Just drop me a PM. And of course, I'm already thinking of next year so if anyone wants to help we can always use help in many areas but especially in things like graphic design and video editing for marketing, where all of us are currently paying out of pocket to make it happen. Frankly, I need to learn to do this stuff myself but until then, I'm at everyone else's mercy. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and support. It was very helpful and much appreciated. Roy.

Nah. As soon as it all started I told my friends it would be 2-3 years before we got back to normal and I planned my life around it. It's why I decided to stop drinking heavy, stop smoking, work on myself and made the conscious decision to come out on a high note rather than a low note. It was a conscious, calculated decision on my part and if I knew it would be that long, there's no way big industry didn't. Big industry has insider info that Joe Public doesn't. Or maybe it was just a lucky guess. Super-heroes haven't fatigued in 80 years, but I do agree that there is too much coming out all at once. Just slowing it down a hair, or pulling their foot off the gas for a second would allow everyone to breath and want more, but the push to make more money as fast as possible is what's killing everything.

For the sake of transparency, it's not my event. The event is put on by the Founder Jowell and all help is volunteer only. Jowell's been a friend of mine for a few years now and as anyone who's been involved with these sorts of events can attest, it can be very busy and time consuming work so I'm thrilled to be able to help her in any way I can. The event started in her parent's backyard in Los Angeles as a family and friends gathering. It has unexpectedly grown into an enterprise level event over the last 7 years. This is the 3rd year the event is being held at The Whisky, but last year was really the 'break out' year for this event. Last year she sold 250 tickets to the event and she never expected it to get as big as it has so quickly. As such, she is in the process of registering as an actual charity and should be for next year. My involvement is mostly around logistics / heavy lifting in whatever way I can help lighten the load and support her. I'm generally involved with media, advertising, logistics, bringing on sponsors and actual physical help on the day of the event so that she can do the networking between the venue, the artists, ticket purchases and donors. ------------------------------ The tagline for the event is UNITING PEOPLE | MUSIC FOR CHANGE and that is the ultimate goal. It was my idea to run a sales thread here on the CGC forums to try to raise a little more money for The Mission and the reason I chose to do this is because there is a great synergy between music and comic books. I love them both and I think many people here in the community would be excited to learn more about that as well as to be involved with a great cause. This is a list of famous rock and roll artists that are also avid, comic book collectors. Eminem Adam Jones from Tool Kirk Hammett from Metallica John Dolmayan from System of a Down Jack White Steven Tyler from Aerosmith Glen Danzig from Danzig and the Misfits Leonardo DeCaprio (not a musician but still cool) Nicholas Cage (not a musician but still cool) KISS Alice Cooper Todd Kerns from Age of Electric and Myles Kennedy / Slash Brent Fitz from Myles Kennedy / Slash Not sure if anyone knows of any others...

OK, appreciate all the help gang and thanks to Sharon in particular. I'm waiting to hear back from a Tax accountant but I think everyone's questions have already been answered. I spoke to a project development manager from The Midnight Mission and they said they do stuff like this all the time, and this was their advice: The easiest way is to have people making purchases from another boardie here donate directly to The Midnight Mission through their online donation feature in the amount of their purchase, and they'll immediately get an online receipt. Then the buyer can provide me with a receipt of payment / donation from the Mission via PM and I can give the go-ahead to the seller to ship the book. Does that work for everyone? My intent was to streamline the process for people and do most of the heavy lifting to make it easier for everyone else, but it seems that it may not work that way in the real work so I appreciate the direction. Thank you. The Midnight Mission has a donation option on every page of their site and they accept credit cards and Paypal as payment. This looks like a win-win for everyone as it makes it easier for me and more direct for all involved. https://www.midnightmission.org/donate/ I really like @DougC's advice here and I would run the event the way he described. One thing I would add in line 2., is that after the sale is over, I'd open a 3 way PM thread between myself and each individual buyer / seller so that everyone would be on the same page. I think this is an elegant solution. Thank you so much for your suggestions, everyone. Does anyone have any more suggestions or concerns?

Unfortunately, in the pursuit of a new audience, they lost far more fans then they gained. They already had the largest movie franchise ever. They already had a massive and diverse fanbase. After all the movies leading up to Endgame, I would argue they had already captured virtually everyone that would be interested in this type of entertainment. They made a significant miscalculation that there was a massive untapped pool of fans, if they just made certain changes. In reality, that pool of people either does not exist, or is relatively small. In addition, they thought existing fans would except the changes without question, because it was Marvel and they had banked a massive amount of goodwill. I think this arrogance also extended to the series. The fans will watch because it is the MCU, and therefor they could have even more interconnectivity, and pump out and endless stream of content. Again, they are learning the hard way that most casual fans (and many previous hard core fans) are not watching the streaming shows, as shown by the low and declining ratings. Which has created a new level of problems. I think we're missing the most important part of the discussion. The decision making process has almost nothing to actually do with 'trying to appeal to an audience' anymore. It has to do with a top down, agreed upon corporate investment strategies among large corporations. The driver is not to appeal to consumers, it's to appeal to outside investors. That's why Disney's decisions seem unusual to us average Joes. They're NOT TRYING TO APPEAL TO YOU. It's these external forces that are ruining the art form. There's plenty of precedent for this. Sony's Spider-man #3 was an absolute hack of a job. Why? Too many people trying to call the shots, and you get all these ideas and characters pushed into a movie ruining the franchise. It was the absolute worst of the 3 movies and an absolute stinker. Sony even publicly admitted there were too many people involved! Batman vs Superman was another one. What should have been a triple length sequel that could have been a blockbuster 3 times over was a shoddy mess because external corporate pressures tried to rush the process and again, they jammed too much into one flick. What is happening is what happens in every industry that invests in art, in this order: The art form draws people in and becomes profitable, big money wants in on the profit, big money starts dictating the direction of the art, the art loses it's purity because of external pressures on the art form, and the art form is no longer the goal. Only profit is. So it's no longer art. It's an investment vehicle. It's the life story of every rock band in history. ----------------------------------- Serotonin is the feel good chemical. It's why people eat sugary stuff. That hit makes them "feel good" like music or art does. This article explains it: A Tablespoon of Sugar Makes the Stress go Down What big money has figured out is how to provide the path to hit the serotonin levels that make people "feel good" but they do it without need to actually have the full body of artwork. They just have the sweet spots pushed to the forefront to get as many people as high as possible. People go to these movies, they feel entertained but it's not fulfilling because it's hollow. It's very much like a sugar high. You get the quick serotonin bump, but you don't have the substance or body where most of the true sustenance is and eventually, the bump won't be enough so it fades, unlike a complex carb, which builds energy and serotonin slowly over time, fills you up, feeds your body AND gives you a much longer lasting serotonin high that is more moderate and more appealing in the long run. When you leave a GREAT MOVIE it moves you. You think about it for days after. It may even force you to think about things you wouldn't have thought about. Very different than a sugar bump, it's more like a great meal. It's the same discussion over and over again: if the money is influencing the art, the art is going to suck. It's that simple. It has always been this way and always will be.

I'm dead. I love this.

Do you think he tried to establish the C and D characters because he sat on his laurels, or because he was stalling until they could get the FF and X contracts to expire so that Marvel could start from scratch with those franchises? Because the latter is what I had heard.

I've been an automotive guy since about 1985 (I was born in 1970) and have been obsessed with exotic cars ever since. I spent 22 years in that industry. It was literally my life. My, routine in my 20s was to wake up, pour some cereal and read a maintenance manual over breakfast. Specifically, my favorite car was Porsche. It has nothing to do with being bougie or extravagant. It's all about the engineering, the racing heritage, the drive toward perfection...what I loved about Porsche was their goal of building the absolute best sports car they could with integrity. Anyone who knows anything about German culture knows that taking a shortcut or compromising integrity was not acceptable under any circumstances. You did it correctly or you didn't do it. Those were the only two options and they didn't take shortcuts. It was my favorite thing about the culture. My favorite car has always been the 911 Turbo. The way a Turbocharger works, is that the you need exhaust gasses to power the turbo. That means if the car has no exhaust, it cannot have a turbocharger. Porsche recently announced that once the internal combustion engine is done away with, they will be selling a "Turbo trim kit" option on their cars. I think the price was something like $15,000 for the "trim option". It made me want to puke. This car company that I had loved for nearly 40 years and even worked for at one time was willing to slap a Turbo STICKER on a car, make it a "TRIM OPTION" to keep the visual appeal EVEN THOUGH THE CAR WOULD NO LONGER HAVE A TURBO. It was an easy decision that took me couple of minutes to make once I heard that. I no longer love Porsche. They compromised the product by compromising their integrity, were willing to lie to the people to grab their money and they lost a lifelong customer that would have run the gamut for them. This is what corporate greed does. It simply eviscerates their own. The same pattern can be applied to every industry and Disney did it to one of the largest stars to ever grace their screens. Depp made $255 MILLION over 5 Pirates films from Disney. If they did it to him, just imagine how little they care about you.

Thanks. I'll do that and report back.

These is a media ad made for the event and they offer some helpful information if anyone wants to know more about donations. Just throwing this out there as I just thought of it, but I can give anyone a US shipping address if they want to donate any physical items. And of course, I can get you a tax deductible receipt for the value of your physical donations as well.

Those are so cool. Thanks for suggesting it! These would be PERFECT for a rock and roll / comic book event!

Great question. None of the funds go towards anyone involved with the event, not even the artists. The only people who are getting paid are the Whisky staff, and they're being paid by the employer. Everyone involved with this event is volunteering their time. This is personally my 2nd year being involved. All proceeds collected from my boards sales thread will do directly to The Midnight Mission. I will be cutting a check made out to The Midnight Mission and for the total amount of the money raised here and will be giving it to The Mission directly at the event. Because the Midnight Mission is a registered charity, I can give every person who donates here a receipt from The Mission for their donation. --------------------- Additionally, 1/2 of ticket sales go directly to The Midnight Mission. All raffle ticket sale proceeds go directly to The Midnight Mission. All physical and monetary donations go directly to The Midnight Mission. All proceeds from sponsor donations go directly to The Midnight Mission. The Midnight Mission will be attending the event to collect proceeds at the end of the evening. And of course, I can offer tax receipts to anyone who offers either a physical or cash donation. I'd be happy to answer any other questions. Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to gauge whether people here would be interested in donating to an auction thread if I hosted one in the Marketplace. Would love to hear from everyone. @CGC Mike if this thread is a problem, feel free to move it to the Dealer area, but I was hoping to get some traction here before it gets moved, simply because not even I go into that forum. Gang, thanks for allowing me to indulge.

And finally, the talent we are dealing with is just off the charts. We were trying to get Sammy Hagar to sponsor the event but couldn't make it happen this year, so Sammy has donated a signed guitar for our raffle draw. Jonathan Davis from Korn has donated a signed guitar. John Dolmayan from Torpedo Comics - and you may know him as the drummer for System of a Down has agreed to donate a signed drum skin and sticks which will be framed! There will also be more prizes including a 2 night stay at a prominent Sunset Strip hotel and more! --------------------- If you like rock and roll, you'll love this: We're thrilled to announce that creative direction will be done by Billy from Biohazard! We also have Charlie Paulson from Goldfinger, Chris Wyse from Hollywood Vampires and many more to announce in the coming weeks. And frankly, I'm about to pee myself because I'm so excited about the potential artists we've been in talks with but I can't say anything just yet...

Moving forward with this, I'm going to make some announcements that I think will interest the comic community. First, I'm going to be sponsoring the event as Vintage Comics and I'll be donating a comic book at the suggestion of the Founder of the event. I just wish I'd thought of it. I plan on donating a Marvel Super Special #1 KISS Magazine, which is the issue they put their blood in the red ink. I think people will love it. 2nd, I was at the Dallas Collector's Summit this past weekend and spoke to Heritage about the event. As most of you may have heard, Mikey Halperin the son of the owner of Heritage passed away earlier this year. Mikey was a friend to a lot of us and a staple on the comic con circuit. Because of this, Heritage has agreed to sponsor the event and offer a donation which will be announced at the event. They're also donating some swag that will go into 50 totes we are giving away to 50 VIP ticket holders. We have about 18 sponsors currently.

What a fun discussion. Gotta fly. Appreciated everyone's points and it kind of felt like the old CGC boards for a while. Most of all, thanks to the powers that be for allowing it.

So Peter Davidson is doing in movies what I've been doing on the CGC forums for 20 years. Cool beans. I love this sort of authenticity and the world would be a better place with more of it, rather than the horrid reality shows we've been subjected to, perverting reality. I'll actually have to check it out. Thanks!