There's a new Superman movie coming out this week. It's kind of bizarre to me that this blog's been around long enough that I talked about the last one. And look, there's Chris Haley in the comments! Agreeing with me! That's crazy!
Anyway, while I once liveblogged Supergirl and I've talked about the sequels, I haven't done a whole lot of blogging about the Christopher Reeve Superman movies in the eight years or so that I've been running this sporadic blog.
So now I'm going to. Five Superman movies, five days, and then the big Man of Steel review. I'll even watch Superman Returns in its entirety for the first time since 2007 or so. Will I still find it to be swell? Find out this week!
Monday, June 10, 2013
An update on the flood
The thing I really need to update is that list of comics that need replaced, since I done gone and replaced a whole bunch. Even if I did have to order three copies of Adventures of Superman #466 before I got one in decent condition.
I bought two five-drawer lateral filing cabinets to store all my comics, something I've been wanting to do for years. One has been completely converted for comic storage, and I quite like it so far. I'll be working on the second one next, but I wanted to fill the first so I can see what changes I might need to make to my process.
The one downside of storing comics in such a device is that it's not very friendly to unboarded ones. I happened to have a couple of coupons for boards and bags from my LCS, so I ended up buying 600 modern-size comic boards, and burned through them rather quickly, trying to board everything I could so they would stand up nicely in the file drawers. The moving process is kind of on standby until Wednesday when I can get some more.
I also replaced a couple of bookcases and started moving trades back into them, only recently realizing that I may need one more bookcase, which would require me to remove everything I've done already and shift it all over a few inches. So I may see if I can wait on that.
I'll post pictures of my conversion process with the second cabinet, in case anyone else is thinking about that as an option. It ended up being $600 for the two cabinets, plus shipping, but they're pretty pristine and top-of-the-line for used office furniture. In the long run, though, I think this will prove less expensive than buying, replacing, maintaining, and dealing with the failures of cardboard. Plus, they look a lot nicer.
I bought two five-drawer lateral filing cabinets to store all my comics, something I've been wanting to do for years. One has been completely converted for comic storage, and I quite like it so far. I'll be working on the second one next, but I wanted to fill the first so I can see what changes I might need to make to my process.
The one downside of storing comics in such a device is that it's not very friendly to unboarded ones. I happened to have a couple of coupons for boards and bags from my LCS, so I ended up buying 600 modern-size comic boards, and burned through them rather quickly, trying to board everything I could so they would stand up nicely in the file drawers. The moving process is kind of on standby until Wednesday when I can get some more.
I also replaced a couple of bookcases and started moving trades back into them, only recently realizing that I may need one more bookcase, which would require me to remove everything I've done already and shift it all over a few inches. So I may see if I can wait on that.
I'll post pictures of my conversion process with the second cabinet, in case anyone else is thinking about that as an option. It ended up being $600 for the two cabinets, plus shipping, but they're pretty pristine and top-of-the-line for used office furniture. In the long run, though, I think this will prove less expensive than buying, replacing, maintaining, and dealing with the failures of cardboard. Plus, they look a lot nicer.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Some other Star Trek thoughts
Spoiler Warning for Star Trek Into Darkness.
Star Trek should not be a movie franchise.
Star Trek began as a lot of sci-fi does: a way of telling allegorical stories examining modern social issues divorced from the context that makes them controversial. It's a lot easier to tell stories about 1960s racism when it's about people who are literally half-black and half-white, or to explore humanist themes when the gods are giant computers and omnipotent children. On one hand, it's because those kinds of stories play better with the Nielsen families than an hour of the same regarding the real-world counterparts to those issues; on the other hand, it allows the writers to boil away the complexities of those issues--either to get to the heart of them or to stack the deck in favor of a particular position that might not hold up to scrutiny when held against reality.
Star Trek was also about exploring relationships between the ensemble cast, and showing a future where everyone could contribute equally regardless of race, gender, nationality, whatever. The future was bright and egalitarian, despite the miniskirts.
Star Trek was ostensibly a show about exploration, allowing the same core cast to visit a new locale every episode, and thus allowing for a different allegory and overarching message each episode. If the allegory was terrible or the message hamfisted or the excuse to use a preexisting Paramount backlot as a set were too obvious, then at least there was another chance the next week. As a result, Star Trek as a series was able to encompass many messages, many positions, and tell many fables in its time.
The Star Trek movies don't have much of this. Right from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," they've mostly been exercises in spending bigger budgets. Make the ship bigger and brighter, buy snazzy new costumes, have more explosions and more expensive special effects. Raise the stakes: make things more dangerous, more exciting, more violent and over-the-top. There's never a need for a Star Trek movie to figure out how to make use of all these 1920s gangster costumes.
As a result, the Star Trek movies tend to be less about exploration, and less about exploring social issues through the allegorical lens of sci-fi. They've done both a few times--Star Trek IV has a pretty obvious message, I and V have Roddenberrian explorations of gods and religion, Insurrection has a new species and a new world and something to say about the Prime Directive and exploiting the resources of indigenous cultures.
But I don't know that any of those episodes works quite as well as the series did as exploring those themes. Maybe it's because a typical Star Trek morality play can't sustain a 2-hour movie; maybe it's because the focus is more on spectacle than allegory, using up those big Hollywood budgets. Maybe too much time is spent on making sure that every member of the ensemble has something to do. Again, a TV show has the advantage of giving different characters spotlights in different episodes. Maybe Sulu doesn't have more than one line this week, but next week he gets a subplot or something. The movies have to cram everyone in the ensemble into 2 hours or less, and that's difficult to juggle. As a result, the movies have a nasty tendency to be the Kirk/Spock/Bones show, and the only time that really hasn't been the case is in the Next Generation movies. Where they were the Picard/Data show.
Star Trek Into Darkness was what gelled all this in my mind, because it was a movie with no exploration, and only a fairly thin and muddy exploration of drone warfare and post-9/11 chickenhawkery, with no real clear message on at least one front. The movie might, like other Trek movies, have been saved by the strength of the cast and explorations of the relationships between them. Except that it became the Kirk/Spock/bones show. And worse, it relied on movies and TV from 30-plus years ago to give those relationships gravitas. By the time of the big climactic Kirk/Spock moment here, we'd seen them interact for a total of 4-ish hours. Contrast that with the original cast, who'd had eighty hours of stories under their belts by that point. There's no real emotional depth to that scene without the history between the characters, history that was wiped out by the last film.
The rest of the ensemble cast gets more sidelined than usual, and while Uhura and Scotty get some significant moments, Sulu's spotlight is basically a moment in the Captain's chair, and Chekov stumbles through being surrogate Scotty.
And then there's the lead villain, who has been stripped of all the tyrannical charm and larger-than-lifeness of his original incarnation to become a somewhat more ruthless and power-mad Neo-from-the-Matrix. Not to mention the gross whitewashing. I love Benedict Cumberbatch, but that was poor casting all around.
Star Trek Into Darkness was a big, flashy, fun action movie. It definitely felt like high stakes, even compared to the last movie's giant time-traveling battleship and imploded Vulcan. The battles, the set pieces, everything looked great. But there just wasn't enough else to it. Too much of the story was borrowed from earlier sources, too much of the characterization relied on our pre-existing familiarity with these characters, too much of the suspense and tension came from wondering whether or not things were going to play out again like they did in 1982. And while lip-service was paid to some TOS plots and the opening narration, there was no exploration and little of the cultural examination that made Star Trek a phenomenon.
There's a kernel of an interesting story in Into Darkness. This is a Starfleet and an Earth that, in a relatively short period of time, has dealt with time-traveling Borg invaders trying to alter the timeline, a temporal Cold War, and a time-traveling Borg-enhanced Romulan trying (successfully) to alter the timeline, destroying Vulcan in the process. It makes sense that this would lead to the ascendancy of Section 31 and an accelerated timeline for building warships (almost a century before Wolf 359 led to the Defiant) made not for exploration, but for defending the Federation and Earth from threats beyond current technology and current understanding.
Why those warships would be so much larger than exploration ships, despite requiring far fewer crewmen, is an open question.
But the movie wasn't interested in exploring those possibilities, and probably couldn't have done so even if it wanted to. There just isn't time.
Which is why Star Trek belongs on TV. They may not be able to afford such great special effects, but at least they can tell the stories that Star Trek should be telling. Any dumb Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle can do explosions and space battles. Star Trek should be more than that.
Star Trek should not be a movie franchise.
Star Trek began as a lot of sci-fi does: a way of telling allegorical stories examining modern social issues divorced from the context that makes them controversial. It's a lot easier to tell stories about 1960s racism when it's about people who are literally half-black and half-white, or to explore humanist themes when the gods are giant computers and omnipotent children. On one hand, it's because those kinds of stories play better with the Nielsen families than an hour of the same regarding the real-world counterparts to those issues; on the other hand, it allows the writers to boil away the complexities of those issues--either to get to the heart of them or to stack the deck in favor of a particular position that might not hold up to scrutiny when held against reality.
Star Trek was also about exploring relationships between the ensemble cast, and showing a future where everyone could contribute equally regardless of race, gender, nationality, whatever. The future was bright and egalitarian, despite the miniskirts.
Star Trek was ostensibly a show about exploration, allowing the same core cast to visit a new locale every episode, and thus allowing for a different allegory and overarching message each episode. If the allegory was terrible or the message hamfisted or the excuse to use a preexisting Paramount backlot as a set were too obvious, then at least there was another chance the next week. As a result, Star Trek as a series was able to encompass many messages, many positions, and tell many fables in its time.
The Star Trek movies don't have much of this. Right from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," they've mostly been exercises in spending bigger budgets. Make the ship bigger and brighter, buy snazzy new costumes, have more explosions and more expensive special effects. Raise the stakes: make things more dangerous, more exciting, more violent and over-the-top. There's never a need for a Star Trek movie to figure out how to make use of all these 1920s gangster costumes.
As a result, the Star Trek movies tend to be less about exploration, and less about exploring social issues through the allegorical lens of sci-fi. They've done both a few times--Star Trek IV has a pretty obvious message, I and V have Roddenberrian explorations of gods and religion, Insurrection has a new species and a new world and something to say about the Prime Directive and exploiting the resources of indigenous cultures.
But I don't know that any of those episodes works quite as well as the series did as exploring those themes. Maybe it's because a typical Star Trek morality play can't sustain a 2-hour movie; maybe it's because the focus is more on spectacle than allegory, using up those big Hollywood budgets. Maybe too much time is spent on making sure that every member of the ensemble has something to do. Again, a TV show has the advantage of giving different characters spotlights in different episodes. Maybe Sulu doesn't have more than one line this week, but next week he gets a subplot or something. The movies have to cram everyone in the ensemble into 2 hours or less, and that's difficult to juggle. As a result, the movies have a nasty tendency to be the Kirk/Spock/Bones show, and the only time that really hasn't been the case is in the Next Generation movies. Where they were the Picard/Data show.
Star Trek Into Darkness was what gelled all this in my mind, because it was a movie with no exploration, and only a fairly thin and muddy exploration of drone warfare and post-9/11 chickenhawkery, with no real clear message on at least one front. The movie might, like other Trek movies, have been saved by the strength of the cast and explorations of the relationships between them. Except that it became the Kirk/Spock/bones show. And worse, it relied on movies and TV from 30-plus years ago to give those relationships gravitas. By the time of the big climactic Kirk/Spock moment here, we'd seen them interact for a total of 4-ish hours. Contrast that with the original cast, who'd had eighty hours of stories under their belts by that point. There's no real emotional depth to that scene without the history between the characters, history that was wiped out by the last film.
The rest of the ensemble cast gets more sidelined than usual, and while Uhura and Scotty get some significant moments, Sulu's spotlight is basically a moment in the Captain's chair, and Chekov stumbles through being surrogate Scotty.
And then there's the lead villain, who has been stripped of all the tyrannical charm and larger-than-lifeness of his original incarnation to become a somewhat more ruthless and power-mad Neo-from-the-Matrix. Not to mention the gross whitewashing. I love Benedict Cumberbatch, but that was poor casting all around.
Star Trek Into Darkness was a big, flashy, fun action movie. It definitely felt like high stakes, even compared to the last movie's giant time-traveling battleship and imploded Vulcan. The battles, the set pieces, everything looked great. But there just wasn't enough else to it. Too much of the story was borrowed from earlier sources, too much of the characterization relied on our pre-existing familiarity with these characters, too much of the suspense and tension came from wondering whether or not things were going to play out again like they did in 1982. And while lip-service was paid to some TOS plots and the opening narration, there was no exploration and little of the cultural examination that made Star Trek a phenomenon.
There's a kernel of an interesting story in Into Darkness. This is a Starfleet and an Earth that, in a relatively short period of time, has dealt with time-traveling Borg invaders trying to alter the timeline, a temporal Cold War, and a time-traveling Borg-enhanced Romulan trying (successfully) to alter the timeline, destroying Vulcan in the process. It makes sense that this would lead to the ascendancy of Section 31 and an accelerated timeline for building warships (almost a century before Wolf 359 led to the Defiant) made not for exploration, but for defending the Federation and Earth from threats beyond current technology and current understanding.
Why those warships would be so much larger than exploration ships, despite requiring far fewer crewmen, is an open question.
But the movie wasn't interested in exploring those possibilities, and probably couldn't have done so even if it wanted to. There just isn't time.
Which is why Star Trek belongs on TV. They may not be able to afford such great special effects, but at least they can tell the stories that Star Trek should be telling. Any dumb Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle can do explosions and space battles. Star Trek should be more than that.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Some thoughts on Injustice
I just finished the story mode for Injustice: Gods Among Us, which I'm not going to talk about a whole lot. The basic premise was better when it was the Justice League "A Better World" plot, and the game has some really enormous problems with misogyny. But the gameplay is pretty good, and the fighting mechanics aren't bad. It's definitely a better experience than "Justice League Task Force" was on the Genesis.
My bloggable issue is with the end, so if you're hoping to avoid spoilers, stop reading here.
Let's say you were going to imprison Superman. How would you do it? This game chose "a cell surrounded by red sun lamps," which I suppose is a good start but (especially as implied by the ending) isn't really enough on its own. At least that cell should be surrounded by gold Kryptonite, if it's available, and green Kryptonite if it isn't. But even more ideal would be some use of the Phantom Zone. Maybe make the entire room a Phantom Zone projector that would immediately zap any intruders or escapees into that prison dimension, in addition to the Kryptonite and red solar energy. Something, anything, other than just surrounding Superman with red lights and hoping that's enough.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
A short spoilery thought on Star Trek
Below the fold be spoilers.
Ricardo Montalban >> Benedict Cumberbatch
Ricardo Montalban >> Benedict Cumberbatch
Saturday, May 18, 2013
What I did on my Super vacation
So, you may have noticed that it’s been awhile since I posted anything. Several significant dates and bits of information have come and gone without my comment--the release of the Man of Steel trailer, the release of “Superman: Unbound,” Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, the first three issues of the new digital Adventures of Superman book (sans Orson Scott Card, thankfully), the end of Superman Family Adventures, the coming and going of Andy Diggle’s run on Action Comics, etc. But the thing that I missed which stings the most was the 75th Anniversary of the release of Action Comics #1, celebrated on April 18th. Surely, no matter what real-world business has kept me from blogging, I could have found time to wish Superman and Lois Lane a happy birthday.
Except.
Except I woke up the morning of April 18th to find that my basement was flooded with water up to my ankles. My basement where my books are. My basement where my toys are. My basement where my comics are.
It was a traumatic morning.
One stack of longboxes had collapsed in the moisture, dropping two on their side in the water, and ruining pretty much everything therein. The boxes on the bottom were a mixed bag, and I spent two days going issue by issue to find out what was salvageable. In addition, we lost something like two hundred books, including most of my hardcovers--the Absolutes, the Omnibuses, etc., which were on a bottom bookshelf.
All told, I lost over 1,300 comics, including huge swaths of the Superman family titles. Some books from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but mostly stuff from the late ‘80s and mid-’90s. The electric blue era was devastated. More significantly, I lost a lot of issues that held a great deal of sentimental value, for one reason or another.
I have kind of a crappy memory for lots of important things. I can’t keep dates straight when I’m talking about historical stuff, I have a hard time remembering names, I don’t remember birthdays very well, and just keeping something in mind from one moment to another is difficult at times.
But a lot of those comics weren’t just paper and staples and ink. They were physical artifacts of my past, keys to memories locked deep in my brain. Those hologram-infused issues of Robin II came from the time my late grandpa took me around to all the comic shops in the Quad Cities, even though it really wasn’t his thing, and I was too young and dumb and self-absorbed to appreciate it. Those random issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America were comics I got in bundles and packs from Sears and JC Penney catalogs, the very beginnings of my comic collection. I can’t tell you how many times I stared at images from What If...? #31, trying to draw that Captain Universe/Spider-Man costume, or how elated I was when I finally ordered the Cosmic Spider-Man issues from Lone Star Comics in high school (or how disappointed I was when he never actually wore that awesome costume in those pages). I bought Action Comics #363-366 and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #94 and #96 not because I had a great burning desire to read those issues, but because my mom always talked about having read the first parts and never being able to find the later ones. I remember seeing Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey #1-2 on the wall at Land of Cran Comics in Canton, OH, and nearly buying two copies of each because the shop displayed both covers in separate shelves. I remember reading and rereading and rereading the first and third parts of “Dark Knight Over Metropolis” and Superman #51-52 and Action Comics #660, because for a long time those were the only modern Superman comics I had; each one, for whatever reason, had some kind of printing or storage error where the front cover curled around the pages a little, developing little rips from my careless over-reading. I remember getting Action Comics #679 on a trip and reading it in a hotel and puzzling out where Metropolis was in relation to real-world cities. When my mom went to Colorado to visit a friend, I asked if she could go to Mile High Comics--a nerd mecca that I’d only read about in ads--and pick up a list of issues for me. She came back with Superman #50, and it didn’t matter where she’d gotten it. I kept Superman: The Wedding Album in the front of my first box of comics for probably a decade, the only issue that broke my otherwise meticulous chronological-then-triangle-number-sorted Superman run, because I wanted to keep it in a position of honor and respect. My wife had the alternate cover to that issue printed on my groom’s cake.
The ones that hit the hardest were Superman: The Man of Steel #18 and Superman #75--not because I have any huge attachment to the Death of Superman, but because they’re what got the whole ball rolling. I think my first exposure to the news of Superman’s impending demise came from a house ad in a Wonder Woman issue my brother got, with a whited-out silhouette of Doomsday against a torn S-shield background. The storyline made the news, and I begged my parents, working out the math from a subscription ad, to let me subscribe to the four Superman titles (my subscription to Amazing Spider-Man was almost up, and once it ran out, I never renewed it). More than that, Dad took me down to whatever the local comic shop was in Cuyahoga Falls, and we preordered Superman #75. Man of Steel #18 was the first issue to hit our mailbox from the subscription; I gave the extra copy of Superman #75 to my brother and kept the one from the waiting list. I had the Superman funeral poster hanging on my bedroom door until we moved from Ohio--and I was amazed when I laid it out to dry that it was still in such good condition. I’d remembered it being far more beat-up, but you could barely even tell where I’d put the pins (not through the paper, just in the right spots to hold it in place). I thought it was enormously cool how DC sent extras--first the “Legacy of Superman” and "Supergirl and Team Luthor" specials and “The Superman Gallery” art comic and the special Newstime magazine tie-in, but eventually Annuals and random try-out comics and so forth. I held those subscriptions through the Man of Tomorrow era, through the cancellation of Man of Steel and the second volume of Superman. I finally let them lapse in college, when I’d started buying comics more regularly from retailers. I think, all told, it was 12 years, with only very occasional, very short lapses (like the one that forced me to buy Superman #123 at a markup from Reality Adventures in Rock Island).
I built my life on a foundation of paper and left it below the water line.
There was, of course, other stuff. The construction-paper book I won an award for in Kindergarten. All sorts of RPG stuff from Junior High. Notebooks from grade school. A couple of yearbooks. All the Rock Band/Guitar Hero instruments. And then the bigger ticket items, like our new washer & dryer (washer was fine, dryer cost a bit in repairs) and our four-month-old treadmill (anyone need treadmill parts?).
The last of the tubs of soggy comics was picked up for recycling this week. In the meantime, I’ve been spending hundreds of dollars trying to replace the things I most want to replace, and realizing that even with the insurance money, that’s not going to be entirely possible. At least, not all at once. But I amassed this collection over 20 years, so it’s not as though I’m really expecting to rebuild it in a month.
I’m reserving some of that money to finally do something I’ve wanted to do for years: upgrade my comics storage. No more ugly white cardboard boxes; I’m moving up to filing cabinets and hope to pick a couple out next week. I would appreciate any advice that anyone has on using them (I’m looking to get used cabinets, 36” lateral filing style, which is more or less what my local shop uses for the subscriptions/pull lists). For the first time that I can remember, I actually weighed a full longbox the other day, trying to estimate what the weight capacity of those drawers would have to be (since I’ve heard things about them not being able to carry the weight, and since I’ve seen the difference in bowing between a shelf of hardcover books and a shelf of TPBs). After seeing that one longbox weighed 55 lbs, I gave my younger self a lot more credit for upper body strength, thinking about the number of times I moved those damn things from the top shelf of my closet to the floor and back again.
Also, that top shelf in my closet held over 200 lbs, and that’s seriously impressive.
When I first started talking about all this, people asked what they could do to help, and that was absolutely awesome. As such a minor and intermittent blogger, it was incredibly cool to see the outpouring of concern and support from people I’ve only talked to online. We had insurance, it paid up, we’re doing fairly well at this point. Donate to someone who really needs it, from the fine folks who just lost their jobs in the tragic ComicsAlliance closing to the world’s various starving and homeless people.
That said, I have a list of the comics that I’m trying hardest to replace here, the oversized books here, and the paperbacks/random books here, and I would very much appreciate anyone telling me if they happen to see stuff in quarter/fifty cent bins or otherwise in super-cheap locations. There are also a few comics/books that I’ve been having trouble locating for reasonable prices/in good conditions, and wouldn’t mind some information on those--or on storing comics in filing cabinets, or on better economical bookcase options than the ones we had, or whatever. I’ll put the specific stuff at the bottom of the post, and you can leave a comment here or drop me a line at tfoss1983 [at] gmail [dot] com.
On the blogging front, I should be having more time as the summer approaches, and I’m planning to re-read chunks of these comics as they come in, and jotting down my thoughts and memories and such. So hopefully it won’t be another month before I have something to say here.
Once again, thanks to you all for the support and empathy, and for actually being here reading this stuff once more.
Things I’m having a hard time finding:
Except.
Except I woke up the morning of April 18th to find that my basement was flooded with water up to my ankles. My basement where my books are. My basement where my toys are. My basement where my comics are.
It was a traumatic morning.
One stack of longboxes had collapsed in the moisture, dropping two on their side in the water, and ruining pretty much everything therein. The boxes on the bottom were a mixed bag, and I spent two days going issue by issue to find out what was salvageable. In addition, we lost something like two hundred books, including most of my hardcovers--the Absolutes, the Omnibuses, etc., which were on a bottom bookshelf.
All told, I lost over 1,300 comics, including huge swaths of the Superman family titles. Some books from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but mostly stuff from the late ‘80s and mid-’90s. The electric blue era was devastated. More significantly, I lost a lot of issues that held a great deal of sentimental value, for one reason or another.
I have kind of a crappy memory for lots of important things. I can’t keep dates straight when I’m talking about historical stuff, I have a hard time remembering names, I don’t remember birthdays very well, and just keeping something in mind from one moment to another is difficult at times.
But a lot of those comics weren’t just paper and staples and ink. They were physical artifacts of my past, keys to memories locked deep in my brain. Those hologram-infused issues of Robin II came from the time my late grandpa took me around to all the comic shops in the Quad Cities, even though it really wasn’t his thing, and I was too young and dumb and self-absorbed to appreciate it. Those random issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Captain America were comics I got in bundles and packs from Sears and JC Penney catalogs, the very beginnings of my comic collection. I can’t tell you how many times I stared at images from What If...? #31, trying to draw that Captain Universe/Spider-Man costume, or how elated I was when I finally ordered the Cosmic Spider-Man issues from Lone Star Comics in high school (or how disappointed I was when he never actually wore that awesome costume in those pages). I bought Action Comics #363-366 and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #94 and #96 not because I had a great burning desire to read those issues, but because my mom always talked about having read the first parts and never being able to find the later ones. I remember seeing Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey #1-2 on the wall at Land of Cran Comics in Canton, OH, and nearly buying two copies of each because the shop displayed both covers in separate shelves. I remember reading and rereading and rereading the first and third parts of “Dark Knight Over Metropolis” and Superman #51-52 and Action Comics #660, because for a long time those were the only modern Superman comics I had; each one, for whatever reason, had some kind of printing or storage error where the front cover curled around the pages a little, developing little rips from my careless over-reading. I remember getting Action Comics #679 on a trip and reading it in a hotel and puzzling out where Metropolis was in relation to real-world cities. When my mom went to Colorado to visit a friend, I asked if she could go to Mile High Comics--a nerd mecca that I’d only read about in ads--and pick up a list of issues for me. She came back with Superman #50, and it didn’t matter where she’d gotten it. I kept Superman: The Wedding Album in the front of my first box of comics for probably a decade, the only issue that broke my otherwise meticulous chronological-then-triangle-number-sorted Superman run, because I wanted to keep it in a position of honor and respect. My wife had the alternate cover to that issue printed on my groom’s cake.
The ones that hit the hardest were Superman: The Man of Steel #18 and Superman #75--not because I have any huge attachment to the Death of Superman, but because they’re what got the whole ball rolling. I think my first exposure to the news of Superman’s impending demise came from a house ad in a Wonder Woman issue my brother got, with a whited-out silhouette of Doomsday against a torn S-shield background. The storyline made the news, and I begged my parents, working out the math from a subscription ad, to let me subscribe to the four Superman titles (my subscription to Amazing Spider-Man was almost up, and once it ran out, I never renewed it). More than that, Dad took me down to whatever the local comic shop was in Cuyahoga Falls, and we preordered Superman #75. Man of Steel #18 was the first issue to hit our mailbox from the subscription; I gave the extra copy of Superman #75 to my brother and kept the one from the waiting list. I had the Superman funeral poster hanging on my bedroom door until we moved from Ohio--and I was amazed when I laid it out to dry that it was still in such good condition. I’d remembered it being far more beat-up, but you could barely even tell where I’d put the pins (not through the paper, just in the right spots to hold it in place). I thought it was enormously cool how DC sent extras--first the “Legacy of Superman” and "Supergirl and Team Luthor" specials and “The Superman Gallery” art comic and the special Newstime magazine tie-in, but eventually Annuals and random try-out comics and so forth. I held those subscriptions through the Man of Tomorrow era, through the cancellation of Man of Steel and the second volume of Superman. I finally let them lapse in college, when I’d started buying comics more regularly from retailers. I think, all told, it was 12 years, with only very occasional, very short lapses (like the one that forced me to buy Superman #123 at a markup from Reality Adventures in Rock Island).
I built my life on a foundation of paper and left it below the water line.
There was, of course, other stuff. The construction-paper book I won an award for in Kindergarten. All sorts of RPG stuff from Junior High. Notebooks from grade school. A couple of yearbooks. All the Rock Band/Guitar Hero instruments. And then the bigger ticket items, like our new washer & dryer (washer was fine, dryer cost a bit in repairs) and our four-month-old treadmill (anyone need treadmill parts?).
The last of the tubs of soggy comics was picked up for recycling this week. In the meantime, I’ve been spending hundreds of dollars trying to replace the things I most want to replace, and realizing that even with the insurance money, that’s not going to be entirely possible. At least, not all at once. But I amassed this collection over 20 years, so it’s not as though I’m really expecting to rebuild it in a month.
I’m reserving some of that money to finally do something I’ve wanted to do for years: upgrade my comics storage. No more ugly white cardboard boxes; I’m moving up to filing cabinets and hope to pick a couple out next week. I would appreciate any advice that anyone has on using them (I’m looking to get used cabinets, 36” lateral filing style, which is more or less what my local shop uses for the subscriptions/pull lists). For the first time that I can remember, I actually weighed a full longbox the other day, trying to estimate what the weight capacity of those drawers would have to be (since I’ve heard things about them not being able to carry the weight, and since I’ve seen the difference in bowing between a shelf of hardcover books and a shelf of TPBs). After seeing that one longbox weighed 55 lbs, I gave my younger self a lot more credit for upper body strength, thinking about the number of times I moved those damn things from the top shelf of my closet to the floor and back again.
Also, that top shelf in my closet held over 200 lbs, and that’s seriously impressive.
When I first started talking about all this, people asked what they could do to help, and that was absolutely awesome. As such a minor and intermittent blogger, it was incredibly cool to see the outpouring of concern and support from people I’ve only talked to online. We had insurance, it paid up, we’re doing fairly well at this point. Donate to someone who really needs it, from the fine folks who just lost their jobs in the tragic ComicsAlliance closing to the world’s various starving and homeless people.
That said, I have a list of the comics that I’m trying hardest to replace here, the oversized books here, and the paperbacks/random books here, and I would very much appreciate anyone telling me if they happen to see stuff in quarter/fifty cent bins or otherwise in super-cheap locations. There are also a few comics/books that I’ve been having trouble locating for reasonable prices/in good conditions, and wouldn’t mind some information on those--or on storing comics in filing cabinets, or on better economical bookcase options than the ones we had, or whatever. I’ll put the specific stuff at the bottom of the post, and you can leave a comment here or drop me a line at tfoss1983 [at] gmail [dot] com.
On the blogging front, I should be having more time as the summer approaches, and I’m planning to re-read chunks of these comics as they come in, and jotting down my thoughts and memories and such. So hopefully it won’t be another month before I have something to say here.
Once again, thanks to you all for the support and empathy, and for actually being here reading this stuff once more.
Things I’m having a hard time finding:
- Avengers & Power Pack Assemble #1,3
- Legion of Super-Heroes (1984) #37
- Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane v.1 hardcover
- Superboy (1994) #59-64, 75-80
- Supergirl (1983) #16, 19
- Supergirl (1996) #75-80
- Superman: Under a Yellow Sun
- Tiny Titans #1-4, 6, 14, 27
- Wonder Woman (1987) 141, 170, 189, 191-192
- World’s Greatest Super-Heroes oversized hardcover
Monday, February 18, 2013
It's Always Best To Do Nothing (or, Caring About Things Is Stupid)
Jim Mroczkowski at iFanboy posted this asinine article about the Orson Scott Card controversy, where he trots out all the usual lame arguments that the hemmers and hawwers have trotted out regarding this protest: "I missed you at the Iron Man protest" and it's just another fanboy outrage and "For everyone who writes an open letter to DC editorial [...] there is someone in line at Chik-Fil-A who will buy the book out of defiant solidarity" and "If DC spiked Card’s Superman story tomorrow, would that help someone?" and "I don’t see anyone’s mind changed" and "There has to be a better, more productive way to approach this." Someone in the comments adds "I think being Tolerant is the new intolerance," and that's bingo.
To answer the dumb points:
1. In short, the answer is mostly "no." The Guardian had an interview with Dan Slott, where they mentioned in passing, that "fans expressed skepticism," and CNN ran a TV segment on the fan reaction to the end of "Amazing."
To answer the dumb points:
- I missed you at the Iron Man protest: while there was at least some discussion of Card's bigotry when Ultimate Iron Man came out, it was also 2006. Several things have changed, most notably the fact that Card didn't join the National Organization for Marriage until 2009 (and that NOM wasn't really significant until 2008). The rise of Twitter has made organizing these kinds of protests easier (for better and worse), and the cultural attitude toward marriage equality has shifted as its passage in various places has not led to the end of the world. But most importantly, in 2006, the extent of Card's bigotry was a bunch of articles he'd written, not helping to drive the most prominent organization that's fighting against people's basic rights.
Oh! And Card also openly advocated overthrowing the government in 2008. But hey, I'm sure there's nothing about Superman that would make us reconsider letting a guy who advocated treason write him, right?
- It's just another fanboy outrage: Sorry I didn't quote that bit, Mroczkowski goes on at length about how this is exactly the same as the Superior Spider-Man and Avengers Arena protests, and a dozen different outrages before that. Because it's not at all completely dismissive to suggest that getting angry because Doctor Octopus switched brains with Peter Parker for a limited series is on the same footing as caring about the actual rights of real-life human beings. But let's pretend that Mroczkowski isn't being a giant asshat here, and that these bouts of outrage are just the same.
So what?
Yes, they'll probably lead to the same outcome (that is, the company not changing anything and everyone eventually moving on), but so what if it is just another example of fanboy outrage? Is the alternative staying silent about things you care about? Not calling for any change on any topic ever (if these dumbasses can use these slippery slope all-or-nothing fallacies, so can I)? If this is just another fanboy outrage, why not do what most people do: roll your eyes and be done with it?
Is it, perhaps, because this isn't exactly like those prior situations? Were there any retailers who didn't stock Superior Spider-Man or Avengers Arena because of those outrages? Did any other prominent authors step up to say they would write those books instead/also, for balance? Did those protests get picked up by NPR, CNN, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, or The Guardian1?
But boy, if there's anything nerds love more than getting outraged and protesting, it's doing absolutely nothing while smugly telling other people that they're wrong and the things they care about are stupid.
- For everyone who writes an open letter to DC editorial [...] there is someone in line at Chik-Fil-A who will buy the book out of defiant solidarity: Again, so what? Even if you could back up this statement (which you can't), so what if the protest does nothing--or even makes the book more successful? What's the alternative, staying silent and hoping no one notices? This is a call to do absolutely nothing because you can't control what the outcome will be. Anything to avoid action, right?
Look, speaking out (and signing petitions, and organizing boycotts, etc.) isn't doing a whole lot. It doesn't take much effort, it doesn't accomplish a whole lot of real-world change, and it may not actually hurt the book's sales in the long run. But it sends a message. It sends a message that some comics fans care more about their human friends and family members than four-color Kryptonians. It sends a message that there are writers and causes we won't support with our dollars or our patronage. It sends the message that some of us care, and maybe others should too.
But yes, other people care more about four-color heroes than any flesh-and-blood person, and lots of people are terrible bigots. And now DC is courting them as a fanbase.
A last point: imagine if DC had instead snagged an author without this cloud of bigotry hanging over them. Imagine if they'd snagged Neil Gaiman or Joss Whedon. Would they be trying to crunch the numbers trying to figure out if the lost sales due to protests will be made up by the gained sales due to defiant solidarity? Or would they be too busy dealing with the "cha-ching" noise that their eyeballs keep making now that their pupils have become dollar signs?
- If DC spiked Card’s Superman story tomorrow, would that help someone?: What a dumb question. What makes you think that "helping someone" is the point? Even if it were, did hiring Card to write this story help someone? Would doing and saying nothing help someone? Does asking dumb rhetorical questions help someone?
The point is making a statement. The point is telling DC that they can't have it both ways: are they committed to diversity and LGBT individuals or not? Do they want the GLAAD awards or the accolades from the Chik-Fil-A crowd? Were Alan Scott and Batwoman and Shining Knight just a matter of lip service so they could pat themselves on the back, or do they represent something bigger with more real-world consequences?
If DC spiked Card's story tomorrow, it would answer those questions, it would show that DC cares about how they and their choices appear to the world around them, and it might send the message that maybe openly working to deny people their rights might actually have consequences on your employability.
- I don’t see anyone’s mind changed: You also didn't see the difference between 2006 and 2013, so that doesn't say a lot. But whose mind are you talking about changing, and about what? Presumably you mean that this protest isn't going to change anyone's minds about LGBT people or marriage equality. That's probably true; people usually don't change their minds about big emotionally-charged issues based on a single event or argument or thing they read on the Internet. Usually it's accomplished through a lot of little things, especially ones that hit close to home. It's possible that this protest will change minds in that way, it's possible that it won't. I don't think that's the main point, but even if it were, it has a lot more of a chance at changing minds than doing nothing, which is ultimately what you advocate.
I would like to see DC change their minds about whether or not Card is worth the hassle that employing him creates, but we'll see how that goes.
- There has to be a better, more productive way to approach this: Great. Figure it out and get back to us. But in the meantime, we're going to try the imperfect, less productive ways to approach this, because there is no way less productive than doing nothing. The whole "there's no perfect solution so you shouldn't do anything at all" is fallacious reasoning.
- I think being Tolerant is the new intolerance: No, you don't think, or you wouldn't have said something so transparently moronic.
1. In short, the answer is mostly "no." The Guardian had an interview with Dan Slott, where they mentioned in passing, that "fans expressed skepticism," and CNN ran a TV segment on the fan reaction to the end of "Amazing."
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Comics I bought this week
Avengers Arena #4: I still haven't decided if I want to follow this series, so it's still not in my pull list. And this issue left me so ambivalent that I think it might finally be my last. I'm just not curious enough about what's going on to continue reading. There's nothing offensively bad about the issue or anything; it's nice to see Chase and Nico from Runaways again, and their encounter with the Avengers Academy kids ends up being a fairly nice inversion of the usual superhero team-up story (they're friends first, then they have the big misunderstanding and fight). I think I see where this is all going; I don't think many (if any) of the "dead" characters are actually dead, but that it's all misdirection and illusion on Arcade's part for some larger, more nefarious plan. At least, I hope that's what's happening, because the alternative is kind of gross and dumb. And I'm not entirely sure that I want to find out which option it ends up being.
Batman and Robin #17: I caught up on "Batman and Robin" and "Detective Comics" last week in hopes that I'd dislike one enough to drop it, and that didn't actually happen. That said, I think this issue of B&R would make a fantastic jumping-off point. It's a pretty touching, heartfelt story about the dreams of Damian, Bruce, and Alfred, which acts as a coda to the entire series up to now, even flashing back to the playbill boat Bruce made back in the first or second issue. It's structured like a last issue, to the point where I had to check that this wasn't Tomasi's last issue as writer or something. Rumor has it that something's going to happen with Damian in Batman, Inc. this month, and the solicit for Batman & Robin #18 isn't giving anything away, but I guess I'll be finding out in a few weeks.
Katana #1: I've tried all of Ann Nocenti's first issues in this New 52, but I haven't actually stuck with any of the books so far. Green Arrow turned me off with the art, Catwoman just didn't hold my interest, and Katana? Well, I like the story, and Nocenti does a good job making Katana distinct (and fleshing her out more than she was the last time I caught up on "Birds of Prey") and strong, while also setting up an interesting conflict and environment. That said, I'm not a big fan of Alex Sanchez's art, which at times obscures the action and has some poor continuity. I'll check out the next issue to be sure, but I wish they'd pair Nocenti with a better artist for once.
Batman #17: I think there's definitely some weight to the argument that Death of the Family went on too long and got too big, and I haven't even caught up on all the tie-ins (I don't read "Red Hood and the Outlaws," and I'm way behind on "Nightwing"). But this issue--and the main saga here in "Batman"--is pretty great, and I think I'll probably try to re-read the whole thing sooner rather than later (especially since there are a couple of bits in this issue, namely the comment about the boat and Bruce's little blank book, that I didn't understand, presumably because they were referenced earlier). Capullo is a top-notch artist, and I think Snyder injects some very interesting notions into the Batman/Joker relationship, playing on the classic tropes, subverting them, and re-enacting them in other ways. People have criticized this series for its gruesomeness, and there's been some of that in previous issues and tie-ins, but most writers in recent years wouldn't have made most of Joker's bits in this issue tricks and misdirection the way Snyder did. It'll be interesting to see how the radioactive tracer pans out, and how the fallout of the Bat-family affects this book going forward, since it looks like the Joker toxin's suggestion-inducing feature hasn't worn off quite like the rictus grins have. I kind of can't wait to buy this story in trade paperback form.
Green Arrow #17: This is the second time I've tried following "Green Arrow" as a series since the relaunch, and it looks like it's the more successful of the two so far. Lemire does a lot here to try something different with Ollie's status quo, setting up what appears to be an ancient conspiracy of archers and a lot of surreal "everything you know is wrong" stuff. I think I'd kind of prefer to have Ollie as the superhero Robin Hood or the politically sensible Batman, but I'm interested enough in this take to see where and how it goes. As far as the art goes, Sorrentino's got a sketchiness similar to Tolibao's or Sanchez's above, but it lacks a lot of the flaws that I think hampered those books, and has a nice detail and dynamism to it. It doesn't hurt that the coloring and staging of panels seem to have taken a page from that other successful book about a superhero archer.
Batman and Robin #17: I caught up on "Batman and Robin" and "Detective Comics" last week in hopes that I'd dislike one enough to drop it, and that didn't actually happen. That said, I think this issue of B&R would make a fantastic jumping-off point. It's a pretty touching, heartfelt story about the dreams of Damian, Bruce, and Alfred, which acts as a coda to the entire series up to now, even flashing back to the playbill boat Bruce made back in the first or second issue. It's structured like a last issue, to the point where I had to check that this wasn't Tomasi's last issue as writer or something. Rumor has it that something's going to happen with Damian in Batman, Inc. this month, and the solicit for Batman & Robin #18 isn't giving anything away, but I guess I'll be finding out in a few weeks.
Katana #1: I've tried all of Ann Nocenti's first issues in this New 52, but I haven't actually stuck with any of the books so far. Green Arrow turned me off with the art, Catwoman just didn't hold my interest, and Katana? Well, I like the story, and Nocenti does a good job making Katana distinct (and fleshing her out more than she was the last time I caught up on "Birds of Prey") and strong, while also setting up an interesting conflict and environment. That said, I'm not a big fan of Alex Sanchez's art, which at times obscures the action and has some poor continuity. I'll check out the next issue to be sure, but I wish they'd pair Nocenti with a better artist for once.
Batman #17: I think there's definitely some weight to the argument that Death of the Family went on too long and got too big, and I haven't even caught up on all the tie-ins (I don't read "Red Hood and the Outlaws," and I'm way behind on "Nightwing"). But this issue--and the main saga here in "Batman"--is pretty great, and I think I'll probably try to re-read the whole thing sooner rather than later (especially since there are a couple of bits in this issue, namely the comment about the boat and Bruce's little blank book, that I didn't understand, presumably because they were referenced earlier). Capullo is a top-notch artist, and I think Snyder injects some very interesting notions into the Batman/Joker relationship, playing on the classic tropes, subverting them, and re-enacting them in other ways. People have criticized this series for its gruesomeness, and there's been some of that in previous issues and tie-ins, but most writers in recent years wouldn't have made most of Joker's bits in this issue tricks and misdirection the way Snyder did. It'll be interesting to see how the radioactive tracer pans out, and how the fallout of the Bat-family affects this book going forward, since it looks like the Joker toxin's suggestion-inducing feature hasn't worn off quite like the rictus grins have. I kind of can't wait to buy this story in trade paperback form.
Green Arrow #17: This is the second time I've tried following "Green Arrow" as a series since the relaunch, and it looks like it's the more successful of the two so far. Lemire does a lot here to try something different with Ollie's status quo, setting up what appears to be an ancient conspiracy of archers and a lot of surreal "everything you know is wrong" stuff. I think I'd kind of prefer to have Ollie as the superhero Robin Hood or the politically sensible Batman, but I'm interested enough in this take to see where and how it goes. As far as the art goes, Sorrentino's got a sketchiness similar to Tolibao's or Sanchez's above, but it lacks a lot of the flaws that I think hampered those books, and has a nice detail and dynamism to it. It doesn't hurt that the coloring and staging of panels seem to have taken a page from that other successful book about a superhero archer.
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