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Post by K-Box on Oct 25, 2011 17:50:01 GMT -8
Note to self: In interviews, movie directors don't like it when they mention the wonderful subversive new approach they have to a subject matter, and the interviewer mentions that this approach has been used since the 1950s. HAHAHAHAHA THEREBY HANGS A TALE
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Post by K-Box on Oct 23, 2011 14:25:31 GMT -8
Old news. Especially since Matt Smith's contract is for three seasons, with an option to renew, and recent interviews had him leave hints that he's not going to use that option. Smith has also said that he plans on being involved in the 50th anniversary, so with the gap in production ...
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Post by K-Box on Oct 22, 2011 20:25:37 GMT -8
It's amazing how Marvel has managed to take an entire generation of formerly promising storytellers, from Bendis to Fraction, and reduced them to ground chuck.
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Post by K-Box on Oct 22, 2011 20:21:56 GMT -8
The concept of prophecy in a time-travel show is particularly ironic, yes. I think for the most part we sort of have to ignore it the same way we don't examine too closely why the oldest message in the universe is written in High Gallifreyan, carved in stone on a giant mountain, and the Doctor took 907 to bother to take a look. The great thing about a character like the Doctor is that it's actually very easy to account for that, since it's long been established that he's absentminded, forgetful, thoughtless, prone to procrastination and has literally devoted several lifetimes to avoiding anything that he finds remotely unpleasant. When you're virtually immortal and you live in a time machine like a retiree who's sold his house and gone permanently on the road in his RV, the easiest thing in the world to say is, "I'll get around to it tomorrow."
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Post by K-Box on Oct 18, 2011 1:17:00 GMT -8
Both c) and d).
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Post by K-Box on Oct 11, 2011 20:52:39 GMT -8
I'm calling it right now; Amazing Spider-Man will drop out of the top 30 in October. You think DC will keep it's sales figures well enough for that? Every retailer who's been asked in the press has said that they'll be INCREASING orders on ALL of their DCnU titles in October; as in, literally every single one, INCLUDING Hawk & Dove and OMAC.
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Post by K-Box on Oct 11, 2011 20:50:06 GMT -8
Yeah, the fact that Tony got the last word in over Steve sits really wrong with me.
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Post by K-Box on Oct 11, 2011 0:32:41 GMT -8
ICv2's top 300 comics sales figures for September:And my own monthly sales analysis:The crabmeat: In August, this title's highest-ranked issue for that month had a sales rank of 6, and its lowest-ranked issue for that month had a sales rank of 9. In September, this title's highest-ranked issue for that month had a sales rank of 18, and its lowest-ranked issue for that month had a sales rank of 27. 27 is also the lowest sales rank achieved by the NuSpidey era to date, which ties Amazing Spider-Man #670, published in September of this year, with Amazing Spider-Man #580, published in December of 2008, for the status of the lowest-ranked issue in the 48-year history of this title. I'm pointing out these facts precisely because one of the most frequent refrains, among Marvel editorial staff and NuSpidey status quo apologists alike, has been the assertion that, because this title's sales ranks have always eventually recovered enough to bring it back into the top 25, and often the top 20, and even the top 10 on occasion, then it should be judged as a sales success relative to the performance of the rest of the American comics market. Except that this title only achieved a sales rank of 18 by releasing an issue that offered an individually customized variant cover for literally each individual customer who ordered enough copies, and it only achieved a sales rank of 27 in the middle of an "event" story arc that's not only serving as the centerpiece for one of Marvel's multiple concurrent line-wide crossovers, but has also been fairly well received by a number of fans and critics alike, so especially given that it's going up against the increasingly retailer-ordered (and reordered) titles of the DCnU line, I'm going to say that I don't see any such recovery in the monthly sales ranks for Amazing Spider-Man for the foreseeable future. And that's not even the worst of what should be worrying Marvel right now. Because even if you dismiss this title's declining performance in the September sales ranks on the grounds that the DCnU line was just that much of a juggernaut for that month, you're still left with several retailers anecdotally attesting that, as Tom Brevoort had claimed would be the case, the rising tide of customer interest in the DCnU line did indeed lift the metaphorical boats of Marvel's sales as well. So, with all those DCnU customers checking out what Marvel had to offer, how much of a sales bump did Amazing Spider-Man receive, between August and September's non-variant-cover issues of the title? 66 more copies ordered. Meanwhile, even Aquaman sold 328 more copies than the highest-selling issue of Amazing Spider-Man in September. AQUAMAN. Think about that for a bit. I'm calling it right now; Amazing Spider-Man will drop out of the top 30 in October.
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Post by K-Box on Oct 2, 2011 19:15:04 GMT -8
Jens: Slight correction, per Dorium Maldovar's exact quotes: "The question" doesn't matter until it's asked "when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer," because what matters is that the question "must never, ever be answered." Which is why "silence MUST fall" at that moment. I've broken down why this question might very well be a game-changer for the entire series on my blog.
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Post by K-Box on Sept 20, 2011 1:32:04 GMT -8
Nice.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 25, 2011 15:40:55 GMT -8
As I told Michael, what I see as the more likely alternative?
"Although sales on the relaunch ultimately proved disappointing under Dan DiDio, we feel confident that our new Editor-in-Chief, J.T. Krul, will turn things around ..."
For God's sake, this is the same industry in which BOB MOTHERFUCKING HARRAS is ONCE AGAIN the Editor-in-Chief of one of the "Big Two" publishers, and ROB COCKSUCKING LIEFELD is ONCE AGAIN drawing a "monthly" (HAHAHAHAHA) title.
The comics industry NEVER learns from its mistakes. Instead, it WILLFULLY DOUBLES DOWN on its most stupid decisions, out of sheer SPITE alone.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 24, 2011 16:30:55 GMT -8
"One theory that's out there on the internet is that it's ok for old fans to be disenfranchised, because that will lead to new fans replacing us. The template those people look to is the successful Doctor Who revival."
Another reason this comparison fails? Even those Classic Who fans who have been the harshest critics of the worst excesses of the RTD era will grudgingly admit that it was no worse than the JNT era that killed the original series in the first place. Moreover, most Classic Who fans (even the ones who, like myself, got sick of Rose's constant returns and RTD's constant "Can you top this?" season-enders) rate the revival far more charitably than that, in no small part because Doctor Who is perhaps the only creative franchise in existence that's built on a foundation of ANTI-continuity.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 23, 2011 17:59:18 GMT -8
It's inaccurate on THREE fronts, since Morrison's The Invisibles and The Filth contained MULTIPLE rapes, and Morrison's entire ORIGIN for Crazy Jane in Doom Patrol was rape, and Morrison even RETCONNED IN a rape into one of the few explicitly CONSENSUAL on-panel sexual encounters Batman has ever had, by making Damian the CHILD of Bruce's rape by Talia.
Also? Any white person who compares being working-class and from the UK to being a Native American on a reservation can fuck off and die.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 17, 2011 18:28:05 GMT -8
As Civil War demonstrated, even in stories that focus almost exclusively on non-monarchial modern democracies, even self-styled liberal writers really don't have a handle on how to portray democracy within mythic fiction. It's especially glaring in superhero stories, most of which ostensibly take place in the America of "today," but which nonetheless hammer home the dynastic importance of legacies and bloodlines. Interestingly enough, it's one of the oldest superheroes who does the best job of painting the way toward the future, because the core concept of Captain America reimagines superheroes, not as modern-day kings and knights, but as living, breathing embodiments of national ideals. Aquaman and Black Panther as rulers of their respective nations don't work, for precisely the reasons you point out, but Aquaman and Black Panther as the citizen-soldiers of Atlantis and Wakanda not only preserves their ties to their nations, but actually strengthens those ties, by making them chosen exemplars of their peoples while at the same time sending them abroad from their homelands. Heh ... I suppose this makes them like Wonder Woman as well.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 16, 2011 20:24:31 GMT -8
I'm increasingly convinced that Randian libertarians are people who never grew up enough to grasp why the fantasy of living your entire life in a tree-fort away from the rest of the adult world is kind of completely impossible.
I remember thinking how cool that would be as a kid, until I started thinking about where my food would come from, or the electricity to power my appliances (both toys and non), or where I'd be able to get rid of my waste.
I was 8 years old when all of this occurred to me, by the way.
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