paqart

If I ran CGC, I would want to have my customer's confidence. That would mean dealing with issues like this when they come up, annd changing how things are done to prevent a reccurrence. I think the fairest solution is this: CGC offers to buy back the ASM 252 and NM 98 at full purchase price. Then, CGC goes after the seller who defrauded them to get their money back, if possible. Also, I would do this as publicly as possible.

In that case, never mind.

I don't understand this. Can you explain for someone who doesn't know why the comic has to be in the inner well to begin with?

If anyone did that, they'd have to be careful about which ad they use, because they aren't the same.

How to do it in Python: def investment_comparison(comic_value, condition_98_multiplier, condition_75_multiplier): investment_98 = comic_value * condition_98_multiplier investment_75 = comic_value * condition_75_multiplier * 10 if investment_98 > investment_75: return "1 copy in 9.8 condition" elif investment_98 < investment_75: return "10 copies in 7.5 condition" else: return "Both options have the same expected return" # Assuming the comic is worth $1000 comic_value = 1000 # Assuming the 9.8 condition multiplier is 2 and the 7.5 condition multiplier is 1.5 condition_98_multiplier = 2 condition_75_multiplier = 1.5 better_investment = investment_comparison(comic_value, condition_98_multiplier, condition_75_multiplier) print(better_investment)

I enjoyed the review. It seemed plausible to me, as one more reason why I'm not interested in the movie. Funny thing, it's more interesting to discuss the movie here than to see it.

He asked for eras, societies, cultures, not one-off small scale policy choices.

On that subject, all I know is the only thing my future wife wanted was me. The feeling was mutual, so we've been together a little over 39 years. My first and only date. So glad I missed the drama, even if it is interesting to watch in movies.

When those two issues came out, it was after about 30 issues of reprints. I had given up on X-Men for that reason and missed GXM 1 and X-Men 94, but they both came out when I was avidly buying comics. I found out about the new X-Men around issue 98, loved the new version of the series, and started buying 25 copies of every issue. Every kid I knew was into the series, and the comic store I worked for got a very good premium for the earlier issues only a few months after they'd come out.

Those EEOC classes are your problem right there. If I ever took over a company, they'd be the first thing over the side, followed by the worthless DEI officers.

The one released in 1996 starring Michael Jordan. I don't know about another one with LeBron.

That makes sense. I spent my free time driving to Yosemite to hike and paint watercolors. I didn't visit any of the places you mention. I also wasn't invited to any of the "wild" parties that were going on all over the place because it was obvious I wasn't interested. My view of that activity was narrow, and limited to the hot tub at my apartment complex, and observations within my office. My apartment complex's hot tub, btw, had its share of intrigue. Enough that I sometimes wondered why I ever entered it after a swim. I had two apartments there, and numerous well-known celebrities lived there as well. For instance, Alyssa Milano, Gary Graham (Alien Nation, Star Trek), and the writer Donald Spoto, who wrote numerous Hollywood biographies. One guy was the casting director of the Travolta film "Michael." His stories were easily the most shocking I've ever heard.

I disagree strongly with this. I've never hired a CEO, but have hired many other people. It is a very rare occasion when any of the candidates meet my standards for being hired. For that reason, I almost always have to choose from a small group of people that look like they might grow into the job. At Sony, I participated in the search for someone who would be (I think) president of an LLC. We didn't find anyone we liked, so we went without. Instead, the existing COO did the job. It is very difficult to find someone who can do the job. Finding someone you like is even harder. The idea you can find someone capable and you like in multiple racial and gender groups is ludicrous. Maybe it has happened a few times in the history of civilization, but I don't see how it could be expected. More likely, standards on the first two items are compromised to satisfy the third.

There is the problem with the idea that female leads in superhero movies leads to female backside in theater seats. Maybe women aren't interested in that kind of movie. My wife certainly isn't, nor is my daughter. At least, not any more. Of some interest, they did enjoy the early MCU. As soon as the female characters started putting down the male characters, they both lost interest. As in, I can't drag them to an MCU movie any longer. It's a funny thing, but maybe women like strong men, and don't like belligerent women. I was a CG animator for a few years, but I haven't liked any movie with animators as characters. I'm not wealthy, but have enjoyed many movies with wealthy characters. I am half Swedish, but do not seek out movies with Swedish actors. My wife is Chinese, but she doesn't go out to see every movie with a Chinese character. When she does see them, she is often critical. The reason is that the characters on screen are disrespectful of others, or they have played up the "Chinese" aspect of the character to such a degree that she finds it nauseating. She does like Chinese-subtitled Korean soap operas, particularly those that center on historical events from hundreds of years ago. The waken American usage of ethnic minorities is, in her opinion, insulting. I have run into a number of women who also find the portrayal of women in movies as not only offensive, but a deliberate slight to them because they have chosen to raise a family. They don't want to see another wealthy sexy single woman in a tight skirt bossing around groveling men as she shuffles through her rolodex of one night stands. To them, that is an empty and unappealing life. Nor do they find it amusing to watch timorous men obey the commands of a female CEO in a Chanel pant suit. That kind of role-reversal is not, in many cases, a true role reversal. If you look at the way different people report the same incident, you know that different people see the same things differently. A man might think he's made a polite offer of a dinner date, the woman may be uninterested and call it harrassment. When you put a script together with the intention of reversing roles, but those roles are based on a flawed perception of the people, you won't get role reversal. What you get is something that doesn't make any sense. For instance, Pepper Potts as CEO of Stark International. This is all the more true when the previously loyal and considerate Pepper suddenly starts treating Tony Stark as if he was a smelly dog. The issue, as @VintageComics keeps saying, is the stories themselves, not the demographics the characters belong to. That is irrelevant. Trying to force us to think those things are relevant simply turns off the audience. How many of you have seen a video on Twitter of some crazy screaming person Do you leave the volume on or turn it off I turn it off, and rarely watch the entire video. Who wants to see a crazy screaming person, not me. I react the same way to forcefed messaging. Some don't even notice because they're either so used to it or they actually like it. That doesn't mean it isn't there.

At this point, I believe the "culture of sexual harrassment" is exaggerated. It may be found more often in Hollywood, New York, San Francisco,and similar places, but in other places, it is much rarer. Even in Hollywood, there are quite a few well-known players who absolutely reject the Weinsteins of the world. These men and women do what they can to stop mistreatment of others if it comes to their attention and they are in a position to do something about it. The Weinsteins (and worse, the Bill Cosbys) exist, but their numbers are not as large as purported. They get outsize coverage because of the scandalous nature of their behavior and their rarefied positions (note the word "rarefied") give them opportunities that others thankfully don't have. A couple levels lower and you have colleagues trying to date each other at the office. I've seen that at a couple places I worked at, but as far as I could tell, the people involved wanted to date each other. I have no idea how many unsuccessful and unwanted attempts were made because my time was spent working or with my family, not socializing with colleagues. The only exception is racquetball, which I played often with a couple of my fellow animators on Space Jam. All three of us were married, so none of us were a part of the dating scene.

Having lived there, though on the outskirts, I've seen enough that at least some of the gossip is true. Maybe a lot of it, but again, I was on the outskirts.

I don't have that impression. For the record, I agree with you. I also don't remember anything from @VintageComics that would suggest disagreement. Maybe I missed it. It seems pretty obvious that the MCU audience has to include people who don't read comics due to the number of tickets sold. It undoubtedly benefits from people of earlier generations like myself, who may not buy comics now, but did in the past. This makes the math a little more complicated. The difference isn't between the 250,000 or so monthly sales Marvel gets on a contemporary best-selling comic and the 50,000,000 tickets they sell to a movie. I bought comics from 1971 through 1979 when a good title sold 750,000 copies in a month. Some viewers were likely active in the 1990's, when a few comics sold up to 8,000,000 copies. Add those people up, take out the overlap, and go down a couple levels to people who weren't collectors but readers, and the number of potential customers from among comic buyers might be in the 10-15 million range. Still, it is less than the number who went to the theater. Therefore, it seems obvious that many of the people today (or at least up to Endgame) who enjoyed the MCU were not comic book afficianadoes.

I am surprised to find myself agreeing with you to a degree about this. I don't think it is the whole story, but can see it as part of the answer. However, I think the reason it is part of the answer is that there was a fundamental shift in the way the stories were written. That shift included the addition of unnecessary and unwanted modifications to the characters that made them repugnant to general audiences. An example of what you are saying is from Black Panther with Chadwick Boseman. My impression of Boseman is that he was so afraid he wouldn't look "regal" enough that he gave a totally bland performance. He was so bland, that I was left with the inside baseball portion of the movie, and that wasn't enough for me to enjoy it. If his personality had some spice to it, either with a different actor or different instructions to the actor, I think it would have been a lot more engaging. It did well regardless, but that may have had something to do with the tremendous goodwill the MCU had at the time, excitement about Infinity War, and the marketing campaign centered on a black Marvel superhero.

Well, using an example from life experience is different from referencing peer-reviewed studies. Thanks to my PhD, I have access to one of the world's largest libraries of such journals, but they are definitely skewed against my position (I checked.) However, there are a number of contentious subjects where my university's library is silent on the controversy. To find competing ideas, I have to look elsewhere. It is almost as if someone did a PC sweep of my university library's contents. I know the other articles are out there because I've seen them. The most recent example of this relates to lockdown/Covid studies, which monolithically represent one side of the issue at the library. However, there are plenty of competing articles found elsewhere in reputable journals. I'm writing a book about this, so I've downloaded dozens of examples of this phenomenon. For now though, I'm happy to drop this. Not with a concession, because my view of "female empowerment" is different from yours for what I think are valid reasons. The reason is this is the wrong place for such a conversation.

It's one example of many. I understand what valid generalization looks like, and am comfortable saying that my comments generalize pretty well. My reasons, however, cannot be shared in this forum.

I can't comment because I haven't seen it. Based on the trailers though, doesn't look like "female empowerment." It does remind me of a lot of products that are pitched that way, but tend to convince women to make decisions that make them less happy overall. My mom was an "empowered" female from her perspective. From mine, she was sometimes homeless and died of starvation after a very unhappy life spent avoiding good men, or being with the ones that played the "female empowerment" game, but who were all very bad or just plain useless guys.

I'm just wondering if disenfranchised customers can hold out longer than the companies that have abandoned them. I didn't think I'd make it with Pixar, but it was easier than I thought. Haven't seen one of their movies in years. Marvel, I expected to be tougher, and it is. I've seen a couple in the last few years, but skipped several others, including the Spider-verse film that just came out. Right now, I am more interested in the Sony Marvel villain movies than the Disney MCU movies. D+ is a little trickier because when I work, I like to have something mildly entertaining on one of my monitors. If too entertaining, it is distracting. If not entertaining eough, it doesn't prevent boredom. Most of the MCU TV shows were perfect for that. The exceptions were Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Moon Knight, Werewolf by Knight, and the last few seasons of SHIELD. Bud Light is no problem because I don't drink, but if someone makes it so the only vegetables on the market are GMO, I'll either be eating my lawn or will cave. The thing is, I don't like to have options taken from us, so that we are forced to consume the only thing that is left. Film offerings were pretty homogenous in SciFi until Iron Man. It was so refreshing, it brought customers back to theaters that had long ago left. But then we had the string of films in the old flavor after Endgame (and including parts of Endgame.) It was disappointing. The uniformity of content is on the level of what I experienced when I was in China. The people I met were terrified they might say the wrong thing, so they only talked about what they knew wouldn't get them into trouble. It led to a number of boring conversations about nothing. Meanwhile, it was very interesting they had been reduced to that condition, but that couldn't be discussed. The MCU is similar now.

Female empowerment is Gone With the Wind, Sound of Music, Mrs. Miniver, not Captain Marvel or IronHeart.

Think of how many people went to see Titanic because they were curious if the ship made it to New York.

As I just wrote in reply to someone else, this movie didn't captivate me. I'm not sure why. It was definitely well done. Still, I saw it twice, and found it boring both times. The part I liked the most was the cinematography, which was excellent. Now that I'm thinking of it, I think the movie needed some tonal contrast. As I recall, it had the same tone all the way through, of unremitting doom as it slowly approached to engulf every character. Schindler's List had some excellent comedic moments, and those moments helped the movie a lot. I think something like that would have made Interstellar more appealing to me.