VintageComics

I think you're on a good path. There were times in my life many years ago when even discussions like this may have shaken me. The quest is to discover who we really are, face it and then find that true inner centering, and this makes all the outside noise unimportant. You become unshakable. That path has been the goal for me for many years and it was a lot of hard work but I can genuinely say that my happiness, or better put, my peace comes from inside and from how I see myself not from any outside circumstances. What happens on the outside really is irrelevant to me. This isn't so much to preach to you but rather to acknowledge that you've obviously made progress on that path and to just encourage you to stay on it.

Is your avatar about the Van-Damme movie? I met him a while back. He's much smaller in real life than he looked in the movies but he's quite a character in real life.

You'd be surprised. In the 20 years I've been here I've seen the following happen: i) A well known dealer known for their integrity came on here to publicly call out bad behavior about a known bad dealer, and some of the boardies eventually turned against the good dealer. ii) An honorable dealer got hounded by a pack of mobsters here for a very long time, just because they didn't like what the dealer stood for. iii) A bad dealer get defended by boardies even though the dealer's bad behavior was indefensible. And most of these actions were by boardies who are "well respected in the community" and some are still here regularly. I've seen it all here.

I did not, because I haven't the least bit of interest in the subject of John Carter or whatever the director/studio/actors/AMC theaters might have done with it. You should, because it's the $300 Million elephant in the room. It's basically Corman's FF multiplied X 300. You can read a sample of the book on Amazon and pages 1-5 (scroll to roughly the middle) give a good intro to how the movie seemed like it was made to fail compared to all other movies at the time. https://www.amazon.com/John-Carter-Hollywood-Michael-Sellers/dp/0615682316?asin=0615682316&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

It's a big deal to me as well, and one of the problems I had when this went down almost a decade ago was they way it went down. People kept hammering him publicly when it was apparent that he was already going onto the HOF list. People love to get their digs in (I'm not saying Comix4fun did, but as a general mob thing, people do it) and although it's not happening right now, partly because the dialogue on Mental Illness has become far more prevalent and mainstream a decade later, it's still a problem and I am touchy about it too. --------------------------------------------- It's strange how many people come out to make sure someone doesn't sell here but when a thread pops up about openly bad behavior from a prominent seller or auction house that's impossible to ignore, it's crickets by the campfire. Thread is wiped or silent, nobody talks about it ever again. Everyone has seen it but nobody will talk about it. If Chip was a BSD (Big Shot Dealer) there would probably be more people encouraging him to sell here. Shocker. Way of the world. --------------- Edited to add Chip is OK in my books regardless of his selling status.

I thought you were a Canuck?

If you have stuff being offered for sale online, you have an obligation to reply in a reasonable time frame and I think 24 hours is reasonable. If someone is reaching out to you unsolicited and you're unavailable, then you reply when you can. But if you have a selling thread live or have stuff listed on eBay, I believe it's irresponsible not to be available within 24-48 hours. Knowing that you won't respond for a week probably limits the number of people who will do business with you moving forward.

They are shilling their product and putting out disinformation? Color me shocked. They are quite literally making this movie political and divisive for no other reason than money, and there you have the entire world in a microcosm. All that matters is the Benjies, no matter who has to suffer. I am so happy that people are starting to see the ugly side of Disney as it gets exposed. More expose like this needs to happen.

Everything arrived safe and sound. Thank you!

Absolutely. His early work on FF was awful. Wow. I absolutely loved it. Especially the round, pudgy Thing. Kirby sucked as a realist, but his layouts and storytelling were so superb especially compared to his peers at the time. It's one of the reasons when I was younger that I didn't like him more. I needed to learn to appreciate it. To me Kirby is like beer. It's a bit of an acquired taste and as a kid I didn't appreciate it, but eventually you really begin to appreciate it. I'll have to go back and try to take a more discerning eye to it as it's been a while.

Right. I did catch that. But why I think they "pretended" the patriarchy represented all men was because the matriarchy represented all women in the 1st act. I saw the two as direct opposites or rmirror images of each other, but maybe I'm overthinking it and being too technical and I'll admit, I do tend to do that. My mind very quickly goes to analytical first. I actually have been thinking to watch it a 2nd time, just to better get "into" the movie, without the analytics.

Why do you keep trying to minimize everything? It's not like they caught a few "small time" bad guys. Which of these statistics builds confidence to anyone? The pharmaceutical industry spends more on lobbying than any other industry and nearly DOUBLE what #2 spends. The pharmaceutical industry spends more on advertising than any other industry and nearly DOUBLE what #2 spends. The pharmaceutical industry has paid out among the largest fines in corporate history. Prescription drugs for the LONGEST time were the 3rd leading cause of death after Cancer and Heart Disease. There is NO WAY to pretend corruption in the pharmaceutical industry is just an isolated incident and it's all unicorns and butterflies. We get it. You trust them implicitly. Many don't, and if it weren't for the many lies by omission and constant manipulation of people's perception by quite literally the most powerful marketing campaigns on earth, you'd be standing nearly alone. Do you even talk to people on the street about this? Or do you just get all your facts from former employers and Google? NOBODY trusts them anymore, especially people who trusted them only to get burned. My sister committed suicide because a pharmaceutical drug she was given made her psychotic and after multiple attempts over years she finally succeeded. Tell the 4 kids she left behind that they're safe and that it's "just niche industries". Goodness.

Good God, thank you. I have NO idea how anyone can dispute this or why they'd even try. They LIED to the public.

As someone who was involved in the conversation at the time, and has stayed in contact with Chip over the last 10 years, I can definitely say he is a different person now than he was 10 years ago. Time does change us but I think he has actually, proactively "put in the work", which is not something everyone does. I'm not going to comment on whether he should buy or sell, just like I didn't then - my concern was just for his wellbeing, but I do think he's a new man and that in and of itself is a beautiful thing and worth commending.

Coming from a family rife with mental illness + addiction, (1 sibling suicided, 2nd attempted, 3rd lives in the streets, 1 aunt died young due to meds for schizophrenia and my dad died during a liver transplant from alcoholism) my concern has always been for dangers posed to the mentally ill, addicts, and the abused. I've grown up in that world my entire life. Meanwhile, at the time you and others smeared me, accusing me of falsely caring about addicts and the mentally ill. Best of all, I can't even fact check anything because I don't have access to the Watercooler, you edit your past posts anyway so they can't be trusted and it can't be openly discussed because it's a forbidden topic. Why did you even step into this thread? The airing of grievances is over. Kang is done.

Facing reality is a very hard to thing to do. I myself avoided it for a long time and lived with my head in the clouds, but facing it changed everything for the better. It reminds me of when I used to coach my kids in soccer and the U-18 boys always tried to show me up when we scrimmaged. I was new to coaching soccer, hadn't played much growing up and early on they'd get me because they used a lot of flash but I realized quickly that they didn't use much fundamentals. So I turned the tables really quickly by just sticking to basic, time proven fundamentals, and I began to hold my own even if those these kids were a 3rd of my age and approaching their prime athletic years while I was well past mine. Crouch in a defensive position, back up as they advance, keep an eye on their eyes and not just the ball. It quite literally changed everything. Big Money has lots of flash because they don't have much else to sustain their enormous, ever growing profits. If they stuck to just the basics, they'd make less money and the CEO would be ousted. It's not that their product gets better year after year, it's just that the song and dance changes and they dazzle you differently every year. There's always an angle. Once you start to see the angles you no longer fall for the flash and man, there's no other way to live peacefully.

Stuff you see when you look inside comic books. From Forever People #1

Why not actually use an established female herald and build her up the way they built up Tony Stark from a B or a C character into an A list property? You completely missed the point. As I said, in the Silver Age it was an uncommon portrayal for male superheroes and it would have served the perfect opportunity to bring it into the mainstream without having to change anything. I am actually often effeminate in person. My 2nd wife used to say it all the time about me. Nice try on the gotcha, though.

Actually...no. I stopped using shampoo a while ago. True story. But don't tell anyone.

Stop derailing the thread!

There's an entire army of fans that thought it was great (me included), but the article quite clearly explains how the film was sabotaged. I even belong to a large Facebook group that tried to push for a sequal back in 2012 and 2013. Did you even bother to read it or are you too well versed in reading minds and it's beneath you? The discussion may be new to you, but this conclusion was already well established 10 years ago as everyone dissected and debated to death why the film failed. We even discussed it on this forum openly and many came to those same conclusions, well before people became so closed minded and programmed to turn the "conspiracy theory" term into a dog whistle. You should search that discussion out. It's probably still here somewhere. Stop making it personal. If you disagree then explain why you disagree and leave it at that or ignore it.

There are 3 important characteristics that make the Silver Surfer who he was. 1, he was a man 2, he sacrificed himself for the preservation of his world 3, he was forever trying to escape Earth to get back to Shalla-Bal He was also always a beloved character in fandom. Even if he couldn't carry his own title, he was highly esteemed as a character and had a deep, rich history through Marvel stories. The last point (3) is what made The Surfer different than every other hero. He was an emotionally charged man with a high emotional EQ, which was very ahead of it's time in comics in the 1960s. In effect, he was extremely effeminate for being one of the most powerful male beings in the cosmos. This would have been the perfect opportunity to actually show how men can be more sensitive and break the traditional male stereotype. They are literally willing to throw everything that made him unique and stand head and shoulders above other characters under the bus, and use his avatar to sell out and turn the character into something completely homogenous and bland. Wow.

It's shocking that people still think that this sort of thing never happens. They think it's nearly impossible that someone would play with people's lives like they're pawns on a chess board and no matter how much immutable, unequivocal proof you show, it's easier for them to believe that it's just either co-incidence or there's some other far less nefarious explanation. I understand why. People want to think the world is a safe place. That's how Bambi feels all the time but it's unrealistic and the sooner people realize it the sooner they can position themselves better. Everything and everyone is fodder for the profit machine and that machine includes Disney. Time to step out of the Dialectic Wizard's Circle.

Well, that'll get all the boys watching. Who doesn't love a good body paint exhibit?