jools&jim

I thought you said it was "free of charge"?

Close. I accessed restricted access to the information via the internet.

This is, strictly speaking, not true. See my AF15 post above. But, yes, the LOC is a fine and venerable institution, and I am pleased to see it doing so nicely...

I saw it once a long time ago. It was neat, I guess, but seemed haphazardly strung together and poorly curated to me -- just rooms of stuff in glass cases and hanging on the walls without any consistent "narrative" thread or central organizing principle or context (e.g., strictly chronological, or by era/creator(s)/character/theme/publisher, etc.). Again, that was a long time ago, so maybe it's changed for the better in that regard over the years...

...with the exception of using the internet from anywhere outside of the Library itself to read Spidey's origin story in Amazing Fantasy 15 from scans of the original art: https://www.loc.gov/item/2016687393/

What is the Library of Congress going to do with, and why would it want, a giganormous collection of flicker rings? I'm betting that there's a lot more to this story...

The mini-comic shown in this ad does exist (Ian Levine has one, I think), but good luck buying his, or finding another... [CORRECTION: Should have done a quick board search first -- at least two boardies own a copy, and another was offered on eBay earlier this year.]

Funny you should mention "Drano". Those same guys I knew who rode their bikes to the dump were also notorious hell-raisers in our neighborhood, and were frequently chased by the local cops for all sorts of mischief, which occasionally went too far (not terribly uncommon back then for guys in junior high). One of their favorite bits was to make "Drano bombs" from, er...common household items. One of them would mix the thing up in a vacant lot or in the woods behind the houses while the rest of us watched from a safe distance. When we saw that guy run like hell, we all ran, too...then BOOM!!!! Nearly as loud as an M80...and a helluva lot more dangerous, too, given the glass shrapnel. Thing is, and this is important..it was never intended to hurt anyone, nor to destroy anything other than the bottle. And it never did. What they enjoyed--and the rest of us, too, I guess--was the simple pleasure of getting away with it. Ah, so many boring old stories. I'm sure you guys have a million of 'em, too, especially if you grew up in an era when parents, in general, let kids be kids, even if it meant getting intro trouble sometimes. Frankly, it's a wonder that any of us survived. Here's one more: a goofy kid from the other side of town named Bruce who hung out with us sometimes, and whose hair made the shape of an "M" on his forehead, got too close to a makeshift "flash pot" (a crushed up Estes rocket engine) to see why it didn't go off. Yep, you guessed it...goodbye eyebrows! Ah, those were the days...

Back in the late '70s, a couple of guys in my neighborhood would ride their bikes to the local dump once or twice a month. I went with them at least once, but my parents found out about it and that was that. Don't know about comics, but they scored plenty of porno mags, and--on one trip--two large cardboard boxes full of 8mm & 16mm stag films...

I do agree that the onus is on the sellers to do the right thing here. But when the buyer--who was already suspicious that at least one of the books was being misrepresented, either due to ignorance or deceit--told the sellers that he'd be in touch if there was a problem with any of the books, despite their claims to the contrary, were there any reassurances from the sellers that they had, and would honor, a return policy? Seems to me that that would be the minimum requirement before handing over the dough, especially since there was already at least a slight shadow hovering over the deal...

How 'bout "color (error?) variants", or whatever, for a genuine BA key...?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=fantastic+four+110+error&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

I think it's entirely plausible that this sort of thing happened simply because the end product was just some stupid comic book for kids, and nobody really gave a !

Outstanding, thanks!

In true Malthusian style, maybe Thanos could wipe out half of all comic book collectors and dealers...or half of all comic books...

A couple of big EMPs combined with a major geomagnetic storm or two, and all those tablets and e-readers will make nifty drink coasters. So, like Chuck Heston in Omega Man, I will stockpile the forgotten things...the neglected physical product of the World the Way it Was, and listen to real records on a real stereo, read real books and comics on real paper, play real games on real game-boards, drink real booze and smoke real cigars long after our Overlords have outlawed it in the name of What's Good for Us All, and generally sing in my chains like the sea until, as with all ages of humanity, me, my outmoded kind, and all our non-digital/non-virtual stuff have crumbled to dust and gone the way of the dodo...!

Thanks!

I seem to remember that, at least for the Star Wars comics produced by Marvel in the '70s and '80s while the original film franchise was still in progress, the comics writers and artists were under strict orders from Lucasfilm not to produce anything of consequence -- no major character changes (or deaths, obviously), no resolution of the Han-Luke-Leia (kinda creepy) love triangle, no tinkering with backstories, no epic plot twists, etc., so no formal continuity with the film plots, in other words. Instead, what you got was a lot of shilly-shallying around the galaxy, weird alien encounters, rescue missions, etc., etc. -- mostly fluff, but sometimes well-written and drawn (Goodwin, Simonson, Williamson, etc.), reasonably entertaining, and all more-or-less consistent with the tone, look, and feel of the Star Wars universe. So in that case at least, it seems that the opposite of what you're talking about was true: the movie writers simply ignored the comics stories (if they knew about them at all!), and the comics creators found ways not to interfere with or contradict the continuity of the movies. And yet for all that creative hamstringing by Lucasfilm, the Marvel Star Wars comics sold for 10 years, and in fact outlasted the original film series by several years. It may not have been a rampaging success story, but it was most certainly a film-related comics series that worked...

Thanks. But neither of those are technically "MCU" games, right? Because for some reason the X-Men aren't part of the same (main?) movie "universe" as the Avengers, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Guardians, Thanos, etc., and because a redux Spider-Man was only a recent addition to that world? I don't follow this movie stuff very closely at all, including who owns the rights to which characters, so please forgive me if I'm way off base here...

Marvel Comics produced stand-alone adaptations of the first three Star Wars movies...and, in between those, published an ongoing Star Wars comic book series with the continuing adventures of those same characters in that same "universe", which ran for nearly 10 years. It may not have been a great series, but it was successful precisely because the movies were successful and there was a market for ancillary product. Why not try to apply that same basic formula to the MCU? Speaking of ancillary product...does anyone know if Marvel has released video games set in the MCU? That seems like another no-brainer...

I think the customer--unintentionally, of course--made the clerk's job more difficult by specifically asking for something that did not exist. Why that was the case needed to be explained before alternatives could be presented, and to my ears at least that's precisely what the clerk tried to do. The guy saw the movie, went to an LCS, and asked for the "The Infinity War" comic book. And here's what Marvel had waiting for him: Imagine if the clerk hadn't been proactive in approaching the customer, who was clearly new to the store and looked like he needed help. Could you blame him for thinking that this is what he was looking for? And can you further imagine his dismay, after buying and reading it, that Thanos is a good guy in the story, and that the villain is some lightning-bolt man-bun weirdo who is the future incarnation of some other character he'd never heard of (with a hugely complicated backstory)...and paying $20 for the privilege? Talk about feeling hosed! In my view the clerk did nothing wrong. If there is any fault here at all, it's Marvel's...

BSD!

Welcome! Can you post some pictures?

• The VCC Elite • "Trade it for some sweet rims..."