VintageComics

I think AI can quickly move a book into a narrow grade range, the way a pre-grader would. The pre-grader counts the pages, does a preliminary grade check and then a finalizer signs off on it. I think the resto check may eventually be done by scanning a book with various tech (infrared or different wavelengths) to identify foreign substances and the natural composition of the paper. I think page quality can be measured by weight and thickness or scanning through a book looking for differences in density (missing coupons). You may not even need to count the pages eventually. I think it will not be perfect but it will be enough to eliminate a lot of human input AND it will be 98% or 99% of perfect, which will be enough to prevent it from being distinguished from human work. ------------------------- Totally a side note, but related to how far we've come with tech: I remember when in infrared thermometer came onto the market in the late 80s or early 90s. I couldn't believe that you could point this tool at something and it would read the temperature. Man, that was over 30 years ago. Now it knows if I'm a good cook or not and whether I'm obeying the speed limit while flipping my pancakes for me.

To me there is a parallel to music, which is far more universal and relatable than comics to the general public but they are following the same trends. Music becomes easier, cheaper, faster to produce but becomes less interesting...and the breakouts are those that are able to leapfrog over their competition with some sort of edge that nobody else has. Billie Eillish was a great example. I don't listen to her music but you can't deny that she did something special in a sea of mediocrity. I think it's going to be the same with comic art. Someone is going to come along and shake the foundations of the industry with a new way of capturing people's imagination using this new tech...but I think the limitation right now is the medium. Paper. Paper can't capture digital the way digital can capture digital. For example, there's a neon Billboard sign close to me that is spectacular in person. Everyone that sees it comments on it with a "Wow!"...but when I try to capture a picture of it, it doesn't translate into a "Wow". It's more like a "Oh.". So whatever new medium becomes the new norm will be the vehicle that AI will use to deliver stories. And that is likely going to be Virtual Reality. I'd say we are going to see Virtual Reality comic books soon...which I know a lot of nerds think it's a win because they'll be able to swashbuckle with Wonder Woman...but really, I cringe at the thought of it.

Hey man. The writer's strike thread in the Movie forums, which I rarely frequent. This discussion thread is really about the effect it's going to have on comic book creators. But I'm actually excited to hear what you have to say as you and I always have great convos.

Patience young Padawn. Patience. These things take time.

So you're saying I was right again. No, I hadn't seen it. Interesting stuff. So it seems that ALL of the changes we've seen with CGC including the scanning of books and the speeding up of processing times can all be attributed to their implementation of AI. I had an extensive conversation with Matt at SDCC about shipping times. Walk Through books used to be opened, graded and shipped out within a couple of days. Lately it's been taking 2-3 days (latest invoice sitting at 4 business days unopened) just to open the packages and a week or longer to get them out. Matt assured me that this was going to change. Hopefully they get back on track. This is obviously going to put CGC at a huge advantage over any competition and this was basically the premise of the general conversation on AI, that whoever implements it first will be the runaway winner...in almost every industry. Thanks for sharing. The future has arrived.

This forum has always been a priceless wealth of information for CGC that money couldn't buy if it wanted to. Honest opinions are hard to come by and there's no better way to get them than listening to your audience. I remember sitting and talking to Borock 20 years ago and asking if he really wanted to have a forum where people could slag CGC and he said he'd rather have it on his front door than in a far corner of the internet. Ingenious. -------------------------- Your first line (in bold) is something we've discussed in this forum many times over the years (in Comics General ), and I was the first to say that AI will never be able to grade a comic book accurately....in fact, I specifically remember discussing it publicly with @fantastic_four a few times on here about a decade ago. He was insistent that AI could and would likely, eventually learn how to grade comics fairly accurately. For me personally, the jury is still out but just like my example a few days ago about how people will not eventually be able to tell the difference between 'fake and real' out in the real world, AI may be able to be tweaked to get 'most' of the grading correct, so much so that the average person may not be able to tell a difference between a human graded comic and an AI graded one. Only a discerning eye may be able to tell. And this aligns with your theory that a finalizer may sign off on the grade after AI has done most of the work. But I CAN EASILY see it being used to for quality control - to catch bigger, more OBVIOUS things that the human eye may miss just due to repetition, exhaustion or neglect. Like a piece of plastic in the well, or a mistake on a lablel, or scuffing on a slab, or an incorrect book in a slab. These likely comprise the majority of complaints and so having a program babysit QC staff is probably going to happen. In fact, it may not be a co-incidence that CGC is now SCANNING EVERY BOOK at the same time as the advent of AI. Both started this year....which is ironic since people have been wanting CGC to scan every book since they opened their doors...and now we it's happening albeit for reasons other than the consumer.

You always seem to try to switch the topic from future impact to immediate benefits as though future impact should never be discussed. The discussion is not about immediate benefits. We're not just talking about the now. I'm specifically talking about the future of the industry. The "learning is restricted to a circumscribed topic" right now but we ALL know that is not going to remain the case as AI moves deeper and deeper into society and continues to be more accessible by a larger segment of the population. This precedent has already been replayed a zillion times. Have you ever read my posts? Duh. I'm ALWAYS 'making general statements far beyond their relevance to the comic book industry' on a multitude of topics in every forum of these boards since I first came onto this forum 20 years ago. Should we then move ALL of my posts into the Watercooler? Discussions breathe and grow and trying to put training wheels on everyone is ridiculous. You post off topic all the time, so much so that your posts sometimes make no sense to me. This is a conversation about the comic industry. I've always posted in broad terms in every thread I'm in as I believe it's immature and naive to focus on one small aspect of a conversation without considering the greater perspective. My mind always works in broad terms while yours seems to always focus on minutia. Why YOU would bring topics OUT OF THE WATERCOOLER here, and then ask Moderation to move my thread into the Watercooler is beyond me but it's obvious that you're just trolling like Lazyboy because you both have a history with me and your push to steer this thread into the WC is just another attempt at a troll. Everyone else is having a genuine conversation.

Pages showing. Book was obviously pressed. Avoid at all costs. Just kidding. Those early Hulks are always tough books.

Thank you for your conclusions. I wonder if ALL the people discussing AI are in on the conspiracy or just the ones who disagree with you. I'm sure you'll be right at some point. Now please stop trolling me. Thanks.

Nothing and this is just a thinly-veiled attempt to bring a Water Cooler topic to Comics General for... some reason? This is Comics General. We are GENERALLY DISCUSSING COMICS...comic art to be more specific. @CGC Mike I've pointed out to you many examples of Lazyboy trolling me. He adds NOTHING to my discussions and only enters to disparage me. Why is he still allowed to do it? Do you need 1000 examples to make my point? or should the dozen or so I've made be sufficient?

Thanks for that post. That validates my own thoughts. In my mind the timeline was by the end of the decade at the latest, if not sooner due to the unpredictability of progress. But not later. This is what I wrote in the movie forum: It's implications can't be overstated. Before the end of this decade, life will be entirely different than anything we've known. Mark my words. Wonder how I came to the same conclusion as them? Now THAT is a necessary debate to be had and one I'd never thought of. Great insight.

So was most GA art in the GA. It still sold like wildfire and spawned an entire industry even though much of it was krepe. Next.

Yep most of 2020-early 2022 was an anomaly that will never happen again for anyone over 40. best to plot x as 2019 and y as 2023 I would never say never. We had a bubble in the 90s. We had a bubble across the entire hobby when CGC formed. We had another bubble across the entire hobby during the *** gosh darnit I can't say it because only everyone else can say it but not me *** - let's call it the "time of great travail" because I like Biblical terms. That's 3 bubbles in the last 30 years. Albeit the 1st one was really just new books, but the last 2 were DEFINITELY hobby wide and affects most books. We just have NO idea what the future holds in terms of prices.

You're standing on the side of the freeway and seeing cars moving and assuming there isn't an accident and based on that, there never will be. Is AI learning more or less each day? Is it getting faster or slower? Is it's base of influence getting larger or smaller? There are no pitchforks. I just believe the conclusion is inevitable but this is just a discussion...and I happen to have a pretty good track record on being right in discussion.

This is a great point. That lawyer above is about to get replaced. ---------------------------------- But calling AI archaic and "nothing to worry about" at THIS point in time is probably accurate. But that's like looking at an early cell phone and Ma Bell saying "Brah, you got NOTHING to worry about. This thing doesn't fit into your pocket, it's expensive, it doesn't work.... It'll never catch on." meanwhile now we're talking about humanoid implanted cell phones. Hmmm...... I REALLY think many can't see where things are going before they actually get there and the apple cart falls over. In fact, after the last few years of heated debate, I'm damn 100% of it now.

Well, once we do that we'll have discovered the "God" particle and then it would all be over as we know it...

Yup. Prices are always rising and dropping. At this point, we all know 2021 was a bubble and comparing prices to the height of the bubble is kind of pointless in the context of this discussion.

For the sake of transparency, I came to this question as soon as I understood what AI was. I immediately understood the implications toward mankind. Since the advent of the various public AI offerings, I think people are slooooowwwly coming around to understand it's implications and my reasoning behind starting this thread was that I believe MOST people have never thought about this. This isn't "living in fear" as some may like to paint it. It's living in reality. You have to face the scariest things in life or they overtake you. A machine can't be human and it will never will be human. I'd bet the house on it. But it may be able to be so close to a human that you may not be able to tell them apart. That's one concern. The other concern is the backdrop that this happens against. Humanity is headed in a direction where some / many (most?) WANT to leave their humanity behind and be something they're not. You can see it with implants and cosmetic surgeries, what people are willing to put into their bodies, the type of music they listen to (I can't listen to fake music - it's soulless), the food they eat (hey, this lab food is better than real food! ). People are not only starting to love fake things en masse but there is a belief on one side that humanity is actually bad and getting rid of it is better. A perfect example would be autonomous cars. The argument goes that autonomous cars will eliminate so many problems including getting lost, car accidents (so reduction in deaths and injuries), congestion and all of these horrible ills that plague our society. So tech provides what they think is going to be a "good solution" to a known problems. But nobody is talking about the OTHER side of the coin. That discussion has been quashed. Like, why the heck are people who don't know how to drive allowed to get licenses, for fudge's sakes! And what will be the societal effect of placing less responsibility on human decision making? Well, the obvious one we see already is a dumbing down of society. As people bring more creature comforts into their lives, it softens them, makes them weaker, makes them poorer decision makers, makes them less intelligent. Necessity is the mother of invention and we are devolving as a species as tech advances. ------------------------------- Just look at how much unhappiness there is in the world and where it's concentrated. I think you can argue that the most technologically advanced regions also harbor the unhappiest people while the poorest regions may generally contain the most peaceful and content people. This just brings me back to my earlier point that this all seems to be split into two schools of thought which believe either that humanity is fundamentally good and is more than just a set of atoms and building blocks but actually has a connection to the rest of existence or that it's just random chaos and you can rearrange those building blocks any way you want and it doesn't matter. Yet we have historical records that have already dealt with this dichotomy and every time society is dealt with like a bunch of lego bricks, it crumbles and fails. This a pattern that has perpetually repeated itself countless times. What does this have to do with this discussion? AI art is just a small piece of a large machine and how it gets accepted by the public should be determined by the audience but it will likely be pushed in spite of the audience's wishes, because of the implications of those who control the AI: In short it will be more profitable for companies to use AI than not, humanity be damned. And so I believe those companies will try to culture society to accept it even if they don't.

My heart just skipped a beat. Wait, should I be worried?

His novels tend to sell well and his 1st graphic novel sold well on Amazon. We did speak about graphic art and picture story telling. Rendering is one thing. Layout and design is a totally different discussion and I agree that as far as picture story telling, there's always room to improve. Not everyone can be a Kirby or an Eisner but most can aspire to be somewhat successful.

I actually typed that in and then erased it. I felt like T-rex made my point with a little more emphasis.

As a professional in the biz, I appreciate your insight into the discussion. Alex Ross came to mind with his lightboxing. -------------------------------------------- To me, this brings on the real question of 'what is a soul'? And what I mean, is that art is historically meant to "stir the soul" - throughout history, art was an expression of humanity and the soul, and yet some believe the soul doesn't exist. For the record, I DO believe there is a soul and it is a living thing. And I think that the real battle or showdown is already happening between factions who believe there is a soul and those who believe there isn't. Pure profit vs pure art. Atoms vs order. Random structures vs intelligent design. In fact, I believe you can draw a string through nearly every faction in human history and will see that it is all divided on this one, single point of whether man is soulless or soulful. A 'soulless' person may not even recognize what's missing in art in much the same way that some don't recognize that the soul is missing from a Digital music recording, whereas a 'soulful' person may see the same piece of art the exact opposite way and not be moved by it at all, sensing that it's missing something unique and human. I remember listening to a CD for the first time in the late 80s or early 90s and I vividly remember thinking it sounded EXTREMELY different than an analog vinyl disc. To this day I still believe that digital is missing the humanity and warmth of analog recordings.

The ranges on these are astonishing. So many deltas in the red to the tune of over 50%, even 70% ... and a surprising number in the green selling for 3, 5, 10+ times peak. Thank you as always for putting in so much effort. While I fully appreciate DC#'s work, these snap shots in time are very hard to put into perspective. A graph over a larger timeline would be much more valuable and insightful. People need to start looking at sales numbers historically for a given book rather than the last few data points. That will give people far more insight into what's happening.

That's not true at all. Sometimes you can fear something and it doesn't come to pass and visa versa. This is about as scientific as rolling dice. There are millions of people standing to lose their livelihoods in the literal blink of an eye. Maybe they should just get a support animal and stop worrying? ------------------------------------------ Negative emotion is a far more powerful motivator than positive emotion. This is indisputable. That's is why media preys on people's fears - you get a FAR MORE visceral and immediate reaction be touching people's fears than by appealing to their good senses. But fear is also one of the most important attributes we have. Fear of loss, fear of injury, fear of betrayal...all of these things put us on guard and make us aware of our surroundings to keep us safe both. Can you imagine humans not having the ability to fear? "Honey, there's a Tyrannosaurus Rex outside out door." "Oh sweet. Imma go pet it...." ***CRUNCH!***

I believe that is exactly what Disney wants.