Nas’s Illmatic is basically my favorite album. It’s ten tracks are essentially perfect, and it’s one of the few albums that I can listen to in order over and over again over the course of a day. I woke up to find scans of XXL’s feature about the making of the best record of all time. It’s must-reading.
I spent the weekend in New York, and all I have to show for it is this podcast with most of the FBB gang.
Go listen.
Graeme from io9 quoted me in a piece about Fox News and black superheroes this morning, you can check that out right here.
Keep an eye on the site in Feb. I’m going to be relatively quiet this week since I’m still gearing up for BHM09. Once 02/01 hits, though, it’s on like Donkey Kong.
Chris Eckert has a fascinating look at The Comic Reader, a fanzine from the late ’70s/early ’80s, over at FBB. The inaugural edition of what I hope is going to be a series is pretty fascinating, and even explains those weird painted marks on old comics.
[…]Denny O’Neil contributes an open letter to Steve Skeates, responding to an earlier interview where Skeates lambastes what he perceives as O’Neil’s dishonest business practices and “lukewarm liberalism” masquerading as as “radicalism”.
So in case you were wondering everyone, politics invaded comics a long time ago. Blame Nixon.
TCR allows O’Neil to ramble for over two pages, mixing inside jokes with lengthy quotations from Camus and e.e. cummings, old convention anecdotes and critiques of specific issues of Aquaman. What’s amazing is that these are not the kneejerk slapfights we’ve grown accustomed to in the blogosphere, these are letters delivered by parcel, debates with months between retorts. But even with those hurdles, creators found time to fight!
Go give it a read.
Comics going up to four bucks has been a hot topic lately, with good reason. It’s a big jump in price from 3 bucks, and it’s coming at a time when people are screaming “Recession!” at each other like it was “bingo.”
Probably the best financial-based look at the price increase came from Conor at iFanboy, where he broke down price per page for trades and singles. Matt Silady hipped me to Marvel’s Ultimate trade and hardcover pricing a while back (ten cents per page on the OSHCs, approximately, saves you money, with Ultimate Power being the first to cost more than that), and I’d been paying attention to comic prices before then anyway, since I’d taken an axe to my pull list and gotten rid of 90% of the dross I was reading.
I found another interesting post this weekend, courtesy of Heidi Meeley. She breaks down some real-world equivalents for what you pay for comics:
12 comic books at $2.99 = $35.88
OR
Monthly electric bill at $34.76
That is a big one, right?
16 comic books at $2.99 = $47.84
OR
Cell phone bill at $49.95
Unfortunately, some form of communication remains a viable expense.
I buy most of my trades off Amazon at this point. Getting up to 60% off counts for a lot, particularly when it comes to OSHCs or Absolutes. As my attitude toward comics adjusts, I’ve become more comfortable with waiting to read, or even not reading, some stories. As the price of comics has gone up, I’ve become even more comfortable with waiting to read books and dropping other books entirely.
Basically, I don’t really have any interest in paying four bucks for a comic book, especially not when I can double that investment, add a couple bucks, and get six times the story. Four dollars for 22 pages is a quite a bit more than a bit much. I quit buying CDs when they went over 12 bucks for similar reasons. I started looking for sales. With comics, I’m looking for full stories. Serialization is good and all, and hanging with the gang on Wednesday is fun, but most stories are interminable when split up these days.
And with Marvel pulling tricks like sixteen pages of story and charging four bucks for books like Astonishing X-Men Ghost Boxes, which wasn’t even really worth three bucks to begin with, well, I don’t feel too guilty about making four bucks my hard line.
My PCS cohort Jon has hit us with another big idea– Comixup. It’s a feed aggregator plus network. Sites can trade links, banners, or whatever helps to try and make your mark. Hit up Jon if you want in, or check out the post on COMIXUP on PCS if you want more info.
The internet went from a weird thing nerds used to do whatever it is nerds do to being a day-to-day part of all of our lives. The best place to put something where somebody can find it is online, so he put the first issue of his mean, beautiful, amazing, heartbreaking, and totally 100% worthwhile comic book about the war in Iraq online for free.
Go and read it.
The guy who got shot in that video? Unarmed, pleading for his life, and trying to tell the cop who shot him that he has a four year old daughter.
It’s 2009.
(via the smoking section)
E-friends Laura Hudson and Leigh Walton are launching Cerebus: A Diablog sometime this week. They’re smart and cool people, and I’ve never read Cerebus, so I’m definitely interested.
There is an LL Cool J joke in there somewhere, but I don’t have the energy to make it.
I love Tim O’Neil’s reviews, and his wrap-up of the latest issue of JSA is pretty much spot on.
Remember a few months back when I said that the Gog storyline could be really interesting if it turned out that the all-powerful, benevolent Gog actually was as benevolent and kindly as he wanted everyone to believe he was? That such a twist would actually be far more interesting than the inevitable revelation that Gog was just an evil demigod after world domination after all? Well, this is the issue wherein the omnipotent evil demigod is dispatched with surprising alacrity considering how effectively he was built up as unbeatable. All the thorny ethical and ideological questions of the past six months are wrapped up in a dismissive “oh well, he really was evil after all” shrug.
Click through, check it out. He’s got some other gems in there, as well.
