It’s all true! Perhaps this is the next forgotten item of DC continuity to be dredged up and exploited now that Geoff Johns has exhausted the unexplored implications of Alan Moore’s old Green Lantern Corps stories. I can see it now: “War of the Djinns,” coming next spring to the four (yes, really) GL monthlies.
“His ego is unbelieveable! He wanted to tell me who he was, where he came from…!” Uh, that doesn’t really sound all that egotistic, actually — just basic getting-to-know-you small talk. She must be hell on speed dating.
This is at least consistent with the longtime characterization of the Guardians consistently making terrible decisions that always come back to bite them in the ass later, intended to ‘protect the universe’ but actually just spreading dangerous menaces all over the universe for any numbnuts to stumble over and unleash. Well done again there, exalted sirs.
Sometimes I wonder about the subtext of GL stories given that the Guardians were modeled on then-Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, but then you stumble into something like this where they’re basically mining the universe — and “what was then Arabia” — with genie-bombs and I figure that way lies madness and likely an unpublishable, unreadable work of literary analysis as interesting as another unnecessary examination of issues of race in comic books (yawnworthy even for a sociology thesis) or why women don’t buy more awful superhero comics (they have other stuff to do).
From Legion of Super-Heroes #267 (1980) by Gerry Conway (well yeah, it had to be him or Roy Thomas to come up with that one, mmmmaaaayyybe Marv Wolfman when he was self-editing), Jimmy Janes, & Dave Hunt.
I don’t think it really hit me until this week that with DC Comics’ “New 52″ linewide relaunch beginning next month, August is basically linewide endings as they (hastily, in some cases) wrap up their current line. I picked up the final issue of the Superman ‘Grounded’ storyline (#714) more out of curiosity than anything — remember, it was a similar wrap-up that brought us Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” so it wasn’t out of the question the thing would be decent. I certainly wasn’t expecting much: it’s hard to imagine a coherent storyline remaining anywhere after the penultimate chapter has been unceremoniously yanked and replaced with a years-old inventory story about Superman’s dog. My impression of Chris Roberson’s fill-in run as writer is that he’s spent a lot of time doing damage control, explaining away all the dumbass out of character bits J. Michael Straczynski wrote before leaving — which may not be entirely accurate, seeing as all I’ve read of Roberson’s run is his first issue on the book, the Flash issue, and this one — and there’s more of the same here, followed by a perfunctory everything-relaunches-next-month-so-nothing-we-do-matters wrapup ending that manages to be so boring I can hardly believe it: (****SPOILER ALERT*****) Superman gives signal watches to his friends so they can work together better and somehow thereby save the Earth and somehow that totally doesn’t stand out at all in a time when practically no one wears watches anymore and anyway it seems like text messaging would work just as well as a communication medium but oh well the end. Upon closing the book I thought something I bet I’m going to be thinking a lot this month: “Well, that was pretty shitty, but at least it’s over.” As a longtime reader, sometimes one has to accept that as the most satisfaction you’re going to get from some comics.
Also, I’m not really one to speculate on the amount of effort put into any creative work or to draw unsupportable correlations between amount of effort expended and perceived quality of finished work, but John Cassaday’s cover work on this series sure has looked lazy and uninspired. At one time it seemed he could do no wrong but I can’t even recall the last time his work looked more than passable. Granted there’s a lot wrong with this run that striking cover art can’t fix, but it certainly doesn’t help that all of his work for the series (the giant S logo first issue aside) has been static, pedestrian, and occasionally cringeworthy (#705). Taking a look at the collected covers of the run I keep spotting some semi-decent covers I missed along the way, but clicking to fullsize inevitably reveals each is a variant alternate cover by another artist, each of which far surpasses whatever cover Cassaday contributed. George Perez’ alternate cover on this issue is a really nice piece of work, Cassaday’s makes Superman look like a halfwit.
Gail Simone ended Secret Six really well this week; though the book had fallen into my “I’ll get to it when I have time” category of late, resulting in a stack of eight or nine issues I had to catch up on first, the book remained consistent thoughout its run even if the art quality did decline (somewhat inevitable for a second- or third-tier book as good, quick artists tend to get poached away quickly). This issue takes the concept out on a high note, wrapping up in appropriate fashion and reminding readers of the series’ unique qualities. Hopefully whatever follows won’t instantly piss all over the series; unfortunately the upcoming Suicide Squad book doesn’t look too promising, but let’s leave next month to next month for now.
I caught up and finished out Simone’s Birds of Prey run as well; though the series technically doesn’t end until this week (I think) the last two issues are a Marc Andreyko two-part fill-in so she’s been done for a bit. This run didn’t work as well as her previous Birds stint; as noted elsewhere, constantly shifting artists make consistent tone impossible and though the characters retain their personalities and signature charm (i.e. Simone making sex/internet jokes through their mouths) the stories didn’t really seem to go anywhere or do anything. More than anything the series feels like a casualty of DC editorial’s constantly changing directions and shifting priorities over the past few years; hopefully they’re committed enough to the New 52 direction for Simone’s new Batgirl series (one of the books I’m most looking forward to, actually) to avoid such pitfalls. *koff*
Along with the regular DCU books, all the three-issue Flashpoint tie-in miniseries finish up this month as well. It’s little surprise that the Azzarello/Risso Batman: Knight of Vengeance book is far and away the standout, this conclusion featuring a stunning sequence that would justify the book’s existence even if the rest were garbage, which it’s not. So far, this is the one story told within the Flashpoint framework that works well enough to survive outside of it; it helps that Azzarello does more as a writer than just say “Okay, in the world of Flashpoint Ambush Bug has Firefly’s powers and is an Australian woman” and expect the reader to give a shit. It comes across as a solid Elseworlds tale of the sort that might have appeared in Legends of the Dark Knight once upon a time.
It’s difficult not to feel disappointed at Secret Seven for featuring something like six pages of George Perez art in the first issue with the rest of the series filled out by what looks like either an assistant or an imitator, but even if the wrapup was more of the same-old-same-old wholesale killing of alternate versions of familiar characters that typifies these stories, at least there’s a nice gesture for fans of Milligan’s old Vertigo Shade the Changing Man series buried in there, so that’s something anyway. Maybe this book will turn out to have a whole bunch of hints hidden within about the New 52 status of these characters, maybe not, I don’t know. And maybe if Perez had drawn the whole thing I’d be enticed to reexamine the book later on, but all in all I’d characterize it as disappointing — and I’m someone who read enough of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad to actually care about these third-tier characters, so I can’t imagine most people finding this essential reading.
I’m enjoying the DC Retroactive specials (probably disproportionately to their quality, honestly) but one thing they really reinforce is how temporary any particular interpretation of these characters are, particularly once you get below the A level. I mean, a villain like Abra Kadabra is generally only going to show up once every four or five years anyway, so when the relaunch cycle tightens to the point you have four Flash relaunches in five years (not an exaggeration) every appearance of the character becomes essentially a new reimagining by an entirely different creative team. It’s a good perspective on the flexibility of serial characters: don’t bother get too worked up about whatever way they screw up in any relaunch, because whatever doesn’t sell will be canceled, everything that’s taken out now will be reinserted later by someone else, and whatever doesn’t work will be forgotten — except by continuity detail obsessives, who are clearly not the target audience for these things anymore. If something as dumb/disturbing/outdated/all-around WTF as Comet the Super-Horse can’t be successfully and permanently removed from the DCU without someone eventually putting it back, nothing can.
Also, who chose the reprint stories for the Retroactive books? Because if there’s one story the audience for these books has already read about eighty times and almost certainly has at least three printings of already, it’s “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!” which was stuck in the Green Lantern 70s book for some reason. That’s not a bonus. It doesn’t even make sense thematically since main artist Mike Grell didn’t draw it. Fortunately they picked a great reprint story for the Flash 80s book — in which the main story was enjoyable, if hampered by a shitty coloring job that somehow managed to be both garish and murky along with error-ridden — but missed the trick by not including the killer cover by current Flashpoint artist Andy Kubert so I addressed that omission by putting it at the top of this page. (You’re welcome.)
Art inconsistencies kept the Wonder Woman 80s issue from resembling a product of that era even slightly — definitely not up to the standard set by the Gene Colan work in the reprint — but it’s good to see some things never change, like Roy Thomas compulsively taking a page and a half in every issue to recap old stories no one but him and Mark Waid give a crap about. This issue was a minor pleasure at best, but I have to admit chuckling when I saw the selected reprint was the story right after Diana got her new halter top.
Admittedly I’ve always been a DC guy who buys some Marvel books and DC has really grabbed the spotlight with the relaunch lately and blah blah blah but truth be told, I’m finding it really hard to give even the slightest shit about the mainline Marvel Universe right now. Fear Itself as one of those incoherent non-story crossovers has subsumed the line within a really groan-inducing cover treatment and really seems to bring nothing to the books it derails other than the typical “There sure is a big planetwide tragedy happening right now!” immediacy. I’d been enjoying Avengers Academy but the recent “War is hell, even comic book war” issues, while well written and drawn, are just too steeped in the false drama and pathos of Fear Itself to describe as enjoyable. I’m hoping the book gets back to what it was doing (well) soon.
Marvel’s recent ‘Big Shots’ branded second-tier relaunches would seem to be more up my alley, although I’m already completely bored with the Bendis/Maleev Moon Knight after four issues. I can’t really blame them for trying a different approach to the character after three or four relaunches by different writers across the last several years have all failed to light up the sky, but correspondingly they can’t blame me as a reader for finding that different approach idiotic. They should have gone all the way and titled the book “New Avengers Solo” because it’s basically just more of the oft-mocked talky-talky-talk found in Bendis’ other Avengers books, only here the novelty is that the chatty-cathy talking heads are all in the main character’s head so the chatter isn’t punctuated by Big Important Fight Scenes. The problem is, since it’s all internal that also means the chatter very very rarely does anything to advance the action. Throwing in a guest appearance by the number one Bendis-pet character no one else in the world gives the slightest fuck about doesn’t do a lot to relieve the tedium. This will probably outlast Bendis/Maleev’s similarly boring Spider-Woman series, but I can’t see them sticking with it past a year. I certainly won’t be.
Fortunately I found Mark Waid’s Daredevil #1 enjoyable and pleasantly free of the pervasive “every book must reflect the same view of the Marvel Universe at all times” approach, with sharp art and a less crushingly tragedy-suffused approach than the book has seen of late. It feels a lot like Waid’s Legion of Super-Heroes relaunch actually, which keeps me from getting my hopes too high as a number of Waid’s books seem to start off strong and then drift as they go (Irredeemable has felt that way since the first year, I’m afraid) and I’m not enough of a Daredevil fan to read the book when it’s not all that good (I dropped it after Brubaker quit) but based on Daredevil #1 I’m cautiously optimistic. Keep the art this sharp and I’ll stick around, but if they start subbing out Rivera and Martin for less skilled draftsmen within the first year it might be a problem.
I find myself feeling much the same about Greg Rucka’s parallel Punisher relaunch: I have high hopes for it, but then I’ve had high hopes for every Punisher comic I’ve read since Garth Ennis stopped writing them and those hopes are rarely rewarded. The premiere issue seemed fine, even promising, but I felt like it barely got things rolling — admittedly it’s difficult to show something we haven’t seen in a Punisher story before without going to the FrankenCastle extreme, but I felt like all we really got here was the basic premise of people shooting other people and then getting shot by the Punisher for doing so, without a lot of indication of where Rucka plans to take the series. His approach seems solid enough though and he’s usually dependable working within the crime milieu so I’m on board for the foreseeable future, especially considering how plagued with delays Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX book has been. In any case Rucka’s approach seems like a good fusion of the hardcore Ennis approach into the less adult Marvel Universe setting, without going to the “let’s have Punisher fight Stilt-Man” extreme of some previous volumes. As Punisher #1′s go, it wasn’t the best (what are we up to now, Punisher v9? v10?), but I’ll put it top five, easy.
Finally: month after month both Zenescope and Antarctic Press continue to print comics and somehow the cover of practically every single issue makes me shudder to think of the people buying them — and even Zenescope and Antarctic can console themselves that at least they’re not Bluewater, duping creators and readers alike with substandard, barely comprehensible garbage produced for miniscule or nonexistent wages. I guess unsold WTF back issue bin fodder has to come from somewhere, but following in the footsteps of Todd Loren and George Caragonne seems of dubious wisdom and I just don’t get why anyone would bother to put the effort into publishing something guaranteed 1. to be shit and 2. not to make a lot of money. As the comics industry continues to contract I wonder how long these tiny niche-market publishers can possibly continue to justify printing and distribution; after all, there were many Marvel and DC series that not even 5000 people in the country were interested in buying, and I have to imagine the audience for these indie books is exponentially smaller than even the lowest-selling Marvel/DC book. (Okay, maybe not Street Poet Ray). Still, as shoddy as these books are — and without any intention of ever reading any of them — I will mourn the day they no longer carry such material on comic shop shelves because comic shops used to be a refuge for weirdos, outcasts, and odd ducks everywhere, and frankly a visit to a comic shop without seeing at least one cover on the rack that makes you shake your head in wonder and disgust isn’t really a trip to the comic shop. Rest in peace, counterculture.
Today’s not an anniversary or a special date or anything, but I’m taking a moment to remember Steve Gerber because he was awesome and we won’t be seeing his like again.
The Kaiser Chiefs’ “pick 10 of the 20 tracks we recorded for our new album and make your own tracklisting, even though we will of course later release our own official version that includes a song not available otherwise” is maybe the dumbest attempt to co-opt the power of filesharing for promotion yet, but at least it’s something to distinguish them from Franz Ferdinand in popular memory.
If you have a “Please consider the environment before printing this email” line in your email signature, let me assure you it’s okay to take it off now. Also, you may be shocked to discover you’re not actually doing anything to save the environment simply by driving a Prius or complying with mandatory recycling laws. I know, it’s crazy how for anything to get done one actually has to do something, right?
It was nice to see Dunn one last time but a few bright spots aside Jackass 3 didn’t really do it for me. More than anything it’s truly amazing that crew managed to go over a decade without anyone suffering a fatal injury, but in the aftermath of Dunn’s death I think the time for Jackass is done. A lot of the movie felt like minor variations on previous stunts — occasionally even featuring explicit callbacks, as if nostalgia might somehow bolster the waning vibe — while a lot of the charm of their neck-risking shtick has drained away along the path from crazy dumbfuck kids to grown-ass men. At this point they really put their audience in a bad spot: it’s difficult to watch someone risking their life and not feel somewhat bad when your reaction is “Eh, seen this before, better.” Bam especially seems to barely tolerate even appearing in the film, and it’s not hard to understand why at this point: if you didn’t have to, would you? (The snakepit bit playing on his phobia came across far more cruel than funny.) And these days, when you can see far crazier stuff anytime online for free (or have it curated and compiled for you by Tosh.0 and similar programs), it’s difficult to see what the point is of encouraging these guys to continue — perhaps it’s better we agree it’s time to put an end to Jackass before things get impossibly sad. (As it is, I can’t watch Knoxville do anything anymore without thinking about him having to catheterize himself every day to urinate).
And speaking of things outliving their time, Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus is really still running? I would have thought if nothing else the animal rights people would have shut them down years ago. Is their audience entirely based on parents thinking children should be taken to the circus just because that’s what you do when the circus is in town? I can’t imagine any kid born after, say, the popularization of the internet growing up with Harlan Ellison’s affection for the world of the big top. Even in the boonies there are other things to do now, or so I’m told.
I know logically and intellectually that certain (many) comic book artists and writers maintain employment largely by virtue of timeliness rather than quality of work; I’ve also been informed that art is subjective and everyone’s tastes are different (blah blah blah). Yet every time I see Ron Lim artwork, it just baffles me that it’s in a professionally printed publication and not an anthology of slush pile rejections. Infinity Gauntlet‘s George Perez->Lim handoff is one of the most personally disheartening in comics history and makes a decent story pretty much unreadable for me — even if 1991 was a little early in Phil Jimenez’ career, why oh why couldn’t Gauntlet writer Jim Starlin at least have done the fill-ins?
Based on a viewing of their 1987 Meltdown performance, It Bites is to Yes and Genesis as Dream Theater is to Iron Maiden and Metallica. It was oddly interesting to see but difficult to recommend unless you’re really in the market for a second-rate Asia.
Well-intentioned homilies or no, I pass on smelling flowers because for me the potential upside (nice smell, um, I guess that’s it?) is far too small to compensate for the potential downside: sucking a full load of allergy-inflaming pollen directly into my respiratory system, leaving me unable to smell anything at all for hours.
I can’t claim anything more than a passing familiarity with the music of Incubus but I can tell you that bro-dude vocalist looks like the biggest douche in the world when he’s singing. Also, they are a rock band with a DJ and that’s never a good sign.
In retrospect, it’s unfortunate Don’t Tell A Soul was my first Replacements album.
If you were going to devise an experiment to see if you could make someone sick of their own music, a great way to do it would be to force them to play the same twelve songs in the same order with the same people for months on end.
The more I revisit old Sonic Youth albums the more I wish Lee Ranaldo was the central figure of the band and that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon weren’t so consistently impressed with themselves and each other. Were that the case, maybe I’d find myself revisiting new Sonic Youth albums occasionally.
Every time I hear Pearl Jam I think, “Maybe this will be the awesome thing they do that knocks me out” and it just never happens.
I do think posting a link to a new Limp Bizkit video is sufficient grounds for a Facebook defriending, right up there with being blatantly racist or supporting Michele Bachmann. Hmm, now that I think of it these could all be symptoms of the same issue…
Comics:
I was leery going in partially because I don’t recall the Pacific Comics originals of the latter-day Kirby concepts exciting me much and partially because Project Superpowers ended up being second-rate in almost every way, but based on a reading of #0 and #1 Kirby: Genesis is off to a really strong start. This series exists in an area where independent companies can really excel: doing the type of thing DC-Marvel either aren’t inclined to do or simply can’t do anymore for whatever reason. I honestly can’t think of a regular DC or Marvel book right now as consistently good in either writing or art, though Alex Ross’ storytelling layouts are still a little stiff at times. Very promising if this team can keep it up on a monthly basis — otherwise, this is the type of thing that falls off one’s radar quickly once it stops appearing regularly.
Still finding it really hard to care about any of Marvel’s Fear Itself, itself built around Kirby characters but as it completely lacks the King’s verve and sense of drama nothing about it seems exciting or interesting beyond Stuart Immonen’s always-perfect artwork. (Most telling line of dialogue from #4: “End of the world. Samo-samo.”) At least we know Flashpoint is going somewhere; this doesn’t seem to have a point other than making new toy designs for Marvel to sell.
And on that subject, while I’m enjoying Flashpoint immensely for what it is — a ridiculously decompressed version of an old Brave & the Bold Flash/Batman teamup — it was more than a little ill-conceived for Geoff Johns to waste seven pages of this issue (#3 of 5) on “Ooh, will the Flash get his powers back?” Your audience is getting restless, man, and give us some credit: the book is called Flashpoint, we all know the Flash is getting his powers back or the plot isn’t moving forward. Odd that Johns seems to have completely forgotten how to write a fast-paced Flash story.
Various and random:
“Scientist-turned-comedian” is one of the least appealing phrases I can recall ever reading in promotional copy.
The level of product placement in season 2 of The League was enough to take me out of the show completely on several occasions, so I guess well-done on that one if that was their aim. No amount of shilling is ever going to lead me to spend money on swill like B** Light in any case.
How do Newsweek employees — who no doubt grew up dreaming of working as professional journalists — manage to crawl out of their beds and show their faces in public after that “What if Diana Lived?” cover story hit the stands? Did they get calls from their mothers asking, “I thought you worked for a REAL magazine?!” Or was it more of an understanding, “I know times are tough, honey, we won’t judge you for doing what you have to in order to survive — but have you ever though about stripping” type of deal?
I don’t mind Jason Sudeikis as a comedic actor at all but man, despite his best efforts to pepper the conversation with punchlines he sure is deathly unfunny in interviews.
Finally, an apology to anyone I’ve ever offended with a negative music review: I’m truly sorry your music wasn’t better. I’m sure you would have improved it if you could.
It’s a big summer for Flash fans with DC Comics’ summer event Flashpoint being speedster-centered — literally dozens of comics are coming out this summer with ‘Flash’ on the cover — as DC Entertainment does their level best to get the Flash into position to follow Green Lantern into the theaters sometime in the near future. However, some are concerned that with recently returned Flash Barry Allen at the center of Flashpoint, fellow Flash Wally West is being overlooked. Hence, “Where Was Wally West?”
Flash fans across the country have been asking the same question: “Where is Wally West?” While we do not know where Wally is now, where he will be, or how long it will be until he is anywhere, we certainly know where he was! With that knowledge, here is the latest installment in our ongoing contest feature, “Where Was Wally West?”
We posted a panel from a classic Flash comic, featuring Wally West in an alternate reality, the past or a “possible future”. Correct answers were put into a raffle, and a winner was drawn at random. To refresh your memory, here is the latest subject:
Check your interval vibrations, because the winner is…
Congrats to Aaron! This week’s answer was JLA: Earth 2, art by Frank Quitely and story by Grant Morrison. Flash works alongside the JLA to rebuild an Earth ruled by the Crime Syndicate. Aaron wins a hardcover copy of Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge.
Pretty awesome, and though I did read and enjoy Rogues’ Revenge as it came out I don’t have the book, so I’ll definitely be looking forward to revisiting that story!
Technically, the question as stated was: “On Wednesdays, we will post a panel or sequence from a classic comic featuring Wally West visiting an alternate reality, the past or a “possible future”. Every fan who can tell us the issue, writer, artist(s) and a reasonable description of the locale/era, by Friday, will be entered into a raffle for a cool Flash prize!”
Actually, this wasn’t even from an obscure 80′s issue or anything either, it’s from a widely reprinted and available book by two of the industry’s top-name talents, so identifying the source wasn’t really the trick here, particularly given that Frank Quitely has a very identifiable style and he hasn’t really done a ton of mainstream DC Universe superhero work. I think Grant Morrison’s in-joke book title helped me win this on the “reasonable description of the locale/era” technicality — I bet most people who recognized the panel immediately shot off emails saying “Wally’s on Earth 2″ after recalling the book’s title. That’s not the full, correct answer as I submitted it though:
“That’s from JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. Wally is on the antimatter Earth run by the Crime Syndicate, attempting to help put things right of course. Note that despite the title of the book, this Earth is neither the original nor the post-52 ‘Earth 2′; the pre-Crisis and post-52 analog to this Earth is actually Earth 3, but that’s also not the book’s setting. It’s the Antimatter Universe Earth. In fact, within the book it’s the antimatter Luthor who refers to the JLA’s Earth as ‘Earth 2′.”
There was a time not too long ago when, if I was looking at an item in a store and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to buy it, I would think to myself, “Eh, I can always find it on eBay later, maybe cheaper.” That is no longer the case.
Whether the item is a book, a comic, a CD, a video, or a piece of electronic equipment, the eBay bargains are gone. Everything that’s there is priced right about what one would expect to pay anywhere else, with the only added enticement being a much greater possibility of potential fraud than at nearly any other online retail outlet.
Perhaps worse, the selection has vanished along with the savings. As an avid music listener from an early age I have a lot of music, and 99% of the time if I’m looking to buy a piece of music the chances are it’s not going to be the kind of thing they have at Wal-Mart. At one time, virtually any album — in print or out — was available on eBay. Often at ridiculously inflated prices, true — but still, there were bargains to be had there. Once, but no more.
Where have the deals and selection gone? For the most part, Amazon is where I find myself ordering items online, and if it’s not Amazon it’ll be some smaller, dedicated online retailer that specializes in what I’m looking for.
It’s not just buying, either — I’ve pretty much lost interest in selling things on eBay. All of the items listed above are also things I’ve sold on eBay over the years, in the range of multiple thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise, nearly all via auctions I started at 1 cent with no reserve price. Some auctions went for more, some went for less, but it all evened out for the most part and made it worthwhile. But over time, the margins of profit got whittled down, and so did sellers’ freedom, and eventually, my selling activities tapered off. It takes time and effort to sell things anywhere, including eBay, and for the effort to be worthwhile there has to be a significant payoff at the end. As that payoff dwindled, so too did my willingness to spend my time on eBay.
As a seller, I think the last straw was when they took away the ability for sellers to give negative feedback to buyers. Any schoolchild can tell you that a feedback system where the “positive” option has no corresponding “negative” value is meaningless (“Was this the best field trip ever? Or the bestest field trip ever?”), but evidently eBay management couldn’t figure that out. I actually only recall leaving negative feedback once or twice out of hundreds of auctions — for some reason, packages sent to Italy had a tendency to mysteriously disappear before delivery — but that was hardly the point. The removal of the option was insulting to the point that I just decided I’d had enough.
Since then, I haven’t sold a single item on eBay. I think I’ve bought one CD — and let me note I have no boycott or any other aversion against buying items from eBay, I’ll get whatever I need from whomever’s willing to sell it to me at the best price. It’s just happened that that has been ebay only once in the past — year and a half? Two years? More?
I have a stack of books building up that I would have put on eBay in the past, and it’s starting to build up to the point that it’s nearly time that I need to do something about it. Recently, eBay switched their policies again to make auction-style listings with a starting price under $1 free, up to 100 per month. That’s free to list, of course, but on the back end, there’s that 9% final value fee, and then PayPal’s almost 4% fee, and then of course the userbase just isn’t what it used to be, and USPS rates have gone up, and…
I think I’ll look into selling on Amazon, they always seem to have good deals on used books there these days. Although frankly, the best deals I’ve gotten on books in the past year have been from walking in and browsing the shelves at 5th Avenue Books here in San Diego’s Hillcrest district, so maybe I’ll just take them down and see what I can get for trade — you know, the way people did before eBay.
One of my frequently revisited comedy recordings, a priceless and somewhat rareish semi-spontaneous drunken encore interaction between Patton Oswalt and Zach Galifianakis. Not the definitive Chipmunks record at 33 rpm bit, but that one always gets me in any iteration, and the “bad career-off” in the middle is not to be missed.
You will almost certainly have zero interest in this if you aren’t into comics, but recently I’ve been enjoying watching the CCW TV Comic Culture Warrior youtube channel. Rather than bother to describe it myself I’ll just copy/paste their self-description below:
The CCW YouTube Channel features conversations between columnist/comic-book writer Elliott Serrano & comic shop retailer Jose Melendez, featuring reviews of their favorite comics, rants about the ones they dislike and talk about anything in the world of comic & pop culture. Elliott Serrano is a writer/columnist/graphic artist/geek who has been reading comics since he was 8 years old. Jose Melendez is a comic shop manager who has worked for several franchises in the Chicago area. Both of these comic-nerds have plenty to say about everything, especially when it comes to comic books.
So yeah, it’s a single-cam static shot internet TV show of two guys talking about comics, exactly what you would think it would be — but better. I find myself entertained by most of it, far above and beyond what I expected, frankly. I still have no interest in reading Serrano’s ridiculously-themed Ash Saves Obama comic (yes, there really is such a thing) but the guys have opinions that are well-reasoned and thought-out for the most part, and passionate and honest even when they’re not.
If the CCW TV dynamic — “snarky thin guy and generally more forgiving less thin guy perform cultural review in the Chicago area” — seems familiar, well, it’s because it was done to perfection by Siskel and Ebert, whose partnership created the template after which CCW TV is patterned. In fact, frankly, I’d like to see Serrano and Melendez adhere to the S&E model even more closely: very very often, CCW TV episodes take the form of its two leads in agreement, vigorously petitioning their audience to support a book they both like. However, as any At The Movies/And The Movies viewer could tell you, it’s at the points where the hosts’ opinions diverge that real onscreen drama occurs, allowing more topics for debate and discussion to arise naturally through conversation. And really, the joint admonitions and endorsements do get repetitive over time — “I like this book” “So do I” is just not an interesting conversation unless you wrote/drew the book in question.
Obviously, out of hundreds of ten-minute (for the most part) videos there are going to be ups and downs and I haven’t watched the majority of the older videos, but in my limited experience I’d have to say the magnum opus of CCW TV is theirthree-partreview of Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3, which was an utterly unnecessary, terrible comic DC put out to fill the hole in their publishing schedule while they readied Grant Morrison’s Batman & Robin and Greg Rucka/JH Williams III’s “Batwoman” in Detective Comics, both of which are pure awesome. Basically the awfulness of Battle for the Cowl #3 causes Jose’s brain to explode beautifully and horrifically, the scope from his rant expanding outwards from one shitty comic to indict creators, publishers, fans, and the entire comic industry, among others. His pain and frustration is palpably evident — these are guys who care about comics — but despite Jose’s often sneering tone, they never (okay, rarely) descend into easy kneejerk snark or glib fanboyisms. Plus, unlike 99.999% of comics reviewers, they aren’t absolute idiots with no taste, sense, or critical thinking facilities — always a nice bonus.
There was a time not too long ago when, if I was looking at an item in a store and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to buy it, I would think to myself, “Eh, I can always find it on eBay later, maybe cheaper.” That is no longer the case.
One of my frequently revisited comedy recordings, a priceless and somewhat rareish semi-spontaneous drunken encore interaction between Patton Oswalt and Zach Galifianakis. Not the definitive Chipmunks record at 33 rpm bit, but that one always gets me in any iteration, and the “bad career-off” in the middle is not to be missed.
You will almost certainly have zero interest in this if you aren’t into comics, but recently I’ve been enjoying watching the 
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