The Less Blob

A late 70s newstand is not rarer. It is more common. Now it might be rarer as a 9.6 as the newsies were handled a bit rougher. It drives me nuts that sellers tout "rare" 70s and erly/mid 80s newsstands as rare.

I will look to see if I have a beater of that issue.

$130 is a little high for that right now during pandemic pricing (indeed I saw one auction go for $66 and it had a couple of other books too, although $66 seems like an anomoly), but I can understand not wanting to get in on auctions, etc. if he has a pristine one in a slab you might as well get the cheapest reader you can that is not falling apart. 2.0 - 4.0. i hate buying a book like that on ebay though, but it's not like we have conventions to go to nowadays. the problem with ebay is you probably spend $9-$14 after shipping and tax, whereas you can probably buy a low grade copy of that book in a lot of $5 boxes at shows or even some shops.

Did you see that on the Marlborough Man News Network?

Apparently starting yesterday or so they started taking steps to try and count these properly, which led to deaths seemingly going up for a bit, when, in fact, some had just not been getting counted

It is in October. If we're still hiding in October I might throw myself in front of one of our packed subway cars.

San Diego is a beautiful city. I was there a week before SDCC a few years ago, just lovely.

Deaths in NYC are likely undercounted by 20-30%. If paramedics pick up a body of someone who had not previously tested positive it is not counted. The # of random dead bodies picked up is up 800%. Like an extra 150 a day. They are not testing dead people.

"Even if it were not, would anyone risk their or their families health to attend the event this year?" Unless we're told to stay home by the governor I fully intend to live my life as normal come July and August. By mid-May I will have been housebound for 2 months. Mid-June will be 3. My kids have probably had physical school closed for this school year (our mayor and governor are fighting over it, but it will happen). My 8 year old had a breakdown over online schooling today. He said he is fine dropping out of school and working at mcdonalds. I have paid for a membership at a beach club and we're going to use it. Admittedly, having a space at a beach club where you can distance yourself from others a bit is not quite the same as being on top of others at a convention or sporting event. But I am not going to be doing this in July and August. Nope. It would be smarter if they could contemplate doing it in August though. Another month. People will be dying (no pun intended) to go out and do stuff. I don't know how people can cope in San Diego right now with their great weather. And the smog has lifted from L.A.? It has been lousy here, so staying inside most days has not been so hard. And if I get free passes to NYCC in October, I am going. Maybe with a respirator and a box of gloves, but I'm going!

Maybe I have been lucky, but PITA buyers are maybe .5%-1% of my transactions, maybe less.

To clarify, Ebay was great for records early in some ways. It killed prices on "good" stuff (Yellow submarine suddenly became easy to find...), but when I was selling records in 2000-2002 it was amazing how I could put just about anything up and it would sell. Usually not for more than $5, sure. I lived in a 600 unit apartment building and neighbors were constantly throwing out records as stuff no longer fit in their apartments (and many were in the music industry, so they got free stuff) so I had a constant flow of stuff I was selling. Now with fees and the tremendous expense in properly shipping a record I don't see much room for $3-$5 record sales.

That actually makes sense if they really don't have the barbers/customers for a lot of chairs and they want to use the space in the back for $ generating stuff. It would make total sense to have stuff that appeals to kids. One place we'd take our kids to was a barbershop/toy store. the haircuts were expensive and the $30 in toys added up each time. We started taking our kids to a cheaper place with no extra sales pressures..and an open, free, bar while daddy waited! we stopped going there because there were some weird creepy guys who hung out who were a little too chatty with the kids that the owner tolerated a bit too much because they were probably criminals. now we go to a place run by a Russian lady who won't put up with that nonsense.

My old comic shop, circa 1999 or so, decided to get rid of his space for 25 cent comics (he had room for about 6 long boxes) and replace them with vinyl records. He said he was making $5 a week off the comics in that space, it wasn't worth it anymore. He wasn't selling a ton of records, but he was making more than $5 a week from the space. He still sold cheap comics (50 cents each and in grab bags that worked out to 25 cents each) though, just elsewhere. He closed in about a year. He was making more money running 99 cent auctions on ebay unloading former 25 cent books and charging $3 shipping + $1 per extra book.

The bickering over there seemed fairly mild compared to a few other threads. It did swerve off the actual topic though, whereas the other threads that got more wiggle room were actual covid19 threads (and how they relate to comics).

When was starlin almost unknown????????? He was a huge star among artists. He just didn't produce a ton of work like Byrne.

I was gonna say Cardy. It's like he really only started getting appreciated in the last few years. He was definitely three cuts above some of the other generic DC artists of his era.

They cut train service 75% so now the people who still have to commute are packed like sardines. Like 50 transit workers have died and a huge chunk are taking sick time.

They don't want to be the ones with to have rosey predictions if things get worse.

nyc has a subway and bus system that might as well be an incubation chamber. I was frigging terrified on the subway until March 16... The last day I commuted. And of course March 16 I had to get in by 9, so I was on a crowded train. With that said, new cases probably post date when a lot of folks would have started staying home. I could still fall ill from a 3/16 exposure, but it's unlikely. More likely I get sick from a grocery run. Dropping stuff off for my mother at a nursing home was scarey.

I don't think stay at home means stay inside. Maybe it does. People are still allowed out here in NYC. The cops may scream at you if you're in a group congregating. Our parks are open. I think you can walk on the frozen beach. Of course maybe that's why so many folks are dying, but it is easy enough to go outside and be 10-15 feet away from others. I have a tough time seeing it going to memorial day. But maybe I'm just delusionally optimistic. .. But you keep on talking about economic issues... If businesses stay open and 50, 60% of the employees get sick, where does that get them? The problem is there isn't enough PPE out there. No reason mycs or cgc or any number of places can't operate with reduced staff in staggered shifts to give everyone space, but if folks don't have ppe ....

The stock market is doing ok this week

Ok, we hijacked the thread. Reid does look like kingpin. I wonder if Reid inspired romita?

Spiderman has had the beaten out of him by plenty of regular humans. Sure, he is very resilient, but if someone gets him square in the face he doesn't laugh it off.

He is obviously a mutant and does not know it. His mutation is that he is multiple x stronger than he should be for a guy who spends Most of his time eating, insanely quick for a fat man... So he's basically the love child of The Mountain and a sumo grand champion (one of those 700 pounded) on extra steroids and amphetamines. The tv show may have hinted it was activated in the trauma of killing his father.

King Kong Bundy was big when Miller was doing DD, but frankly, I think most people here are confused by the question because it doesn't really seem like Miller changed him much. He sometimes made him a little fatter and more massive than others, and sure, he helped develop the character and make him 3 dimensional (plot wise), but some of the 60s an 70s renditions had him pretty big too.