Month: April 2018

Marvel 99 cent sales and other comics stuff

The Beat has a good article up today, trying to explain what’s going on with the Amazon/Comixology 99 cent sales on Marvel books. As a fan, it’s kind of cool to be able to pick up some pretty good books for a buck each, but I feel a little bad for my local comic shop, when these prices are being offered on new release books. I mean, nobody’s going to spend $20 on a book at the store if they can get it for $1 on Comixology. (Well, maybe some people will. But a lot of people won’t.) I’ve bought a few of the 99 cent books over the last few weeks, but they’re all books I would never have paid cover price for anyway.

On a semi-related note, The Beat has a write-up on the Mike Mignola Q&A from MoCCA Fest that I missed last weekend. (Now I’m in the mood to read some Hellboy.)

This weekend, I’m thinking about going to the Big Apple Con. I probably shouldn’t go to comic cons two weekends in a row, but the Big Apple Con is much different from MoCCA Fest. It’s much more of a traditional comic con. There are going to be a few interesting panels at the con, including a Gold & Silver Age panel that could be fun.

MoCCA Arts Festival 2018

I went into New York today for MoCCA Fest. I’d gone to it last year, and enjoyed it, so I went back again this year. Last year, I’d made a full day of it, hitting a couple of museums too. This year, I wasn’t as ambitious and just went to MoCCA Fest. (And I was lazy and took a cab from the train station and back, so I didn’t even get in much walking.)

Last year, I didn’t buy anything at all, nor did I go to any panels. This year, I went to one panel and bought one book, so I did a little better on that front. I bought a copy of March: Book Three, and got it signed by Nate Powell, so that was pretty cool. (I have digital copies of books one and two, though I haven’t read them yet.) Powell was one of their guests of honor, and had some of his art exhibited in the little gallery they set up.

I went to a Q&A panel with Jaime Hernandez, one of my favorite artists. He was there mostly to promote his new book The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He also talked about the new Studio Edition book from Fantagraphics, and about his work in general. I’ll probably pick up the Dragon Slayer book from Amazon; the Studio Edition book looks a little too expensive for me. Love and Rockets has been one my very favorite comics since the early days; I think the first issue I bought was #2, in 1982. I’ve never seen any of the Hernandez brothers in person before today though, so it was really cool to finally see Jaime. I probably should have stuck around long enough to get something signed by him, but I didn’t. I’m way behind in my L&R reading too. I have the whole New Stories series, all eight volumes, from Comixology, but I haven’t read any of them yet. That series ran from 2008 to 2016, so I guess I’m ten years behind. (Geez.)

I would also have liked to stick around for Mike Mignola’s panel, but it wasn’t until 3:30 and I didn’t want to stay in the city too late. I could have gotten something signed by him, too, if I’d wanted. When I first walked into the con, he was at his table, and there wasn’t a line, just a couple of guys chatting with him. But I hadn’t actually brought anything for him to sign. (I probably should have just asked him to sign my program book.) Maybe next time.

Overall, it was a fun little show. Lots of eccentric work on display, and pretty much zero super-hero stuff. A nice change of pace from a typical comic con.

 

TidBITS redesign

I’ve been reading the TidBITS newsletter for years. They’ve been publishing it for 28 years; I’ve been subscribing to it for more than ten. (I’m not sure how long exactly, but at least since 2002.) They just unveiled a new design and back-end after many years under the old design and system. The new system is based on WordPress, which isn’t surprising. Lots of websites (including mine) are running on WordPress these days. The design looks good. I haven’t seen any hiccups with the back-end yet, so hopefully they’ve done a good job with that. TidBITS has always been a good source of Apple news and analysis, better in general than most of the more modern web sites. (I won’t mention specific sites, but I’m thinking of certain sites with a lot of “top ten” listicles, sponsored content, and more space devoted to ads than articles.)

I’m always interested in how sites like TidBITS remain commercially viable. I doubt they make much money from ads these days. They probably get a modest amount of money from their membership program. And they have something called the TidBITS Content Network now too, which is interesting. They used to run Take Control Books also, but they sold that off a while back. I should probably pay them for a one-year membership. I keep meaning to do that, but I never quite get around to it.

I like the newsletter model for this kind of content, and I wish more people would use it. I’d love to find a Windows newsletter that’s as good as TidBITS. Years ago, I used to subscribe to Windows Secrets and that was pretty good for a while. It looks like they’re still around, but as a paid newsletter only, and it appears that none of the original contributors to the site are still involved. I found a recent post on Woody Leonhard’s site that runs through a little of the history of Windows Secrets. It used to have a lot of good content, from people like Woody, and Brian Livingston, and a couple of other good tech writers whose names I can’t remember now.