Year: 2018

comic book indecision

I feel like I should be posting about something other than comic books, since that’s just about all I’ve posted about lately, but honestly I’m not really moved to post about anything else right now. I have a couple of ideas for programming-related posts, but it’s Saturday and I’m not thinking about work today. So, more comic book stuff.

Since my last post, I’ve gotten my first shipment from Westfield. I didn’t really expect to get anything until the end of this month (August), but I ordered two comics that shipped in July, so I got a July shipment. I’d rather they held those two books though, since it cost $7.80 for shipping, and the two comics only cost $6.53 total. But, oh well, the next shipment will have a better comics/shipping cost ratio.

Also since my last post, I found out that my local comics shop has started using ManageComics.com to manage their pull lists. If they’d had that in place a month ago, I might not have jumped back to Westfield. They used to use Comixology’s pull list service, until it was discontinued earlier this year. And I had been kind of hoping that they’d use Diamond’s Pullbox service when it becomes available, since that sounded like it would probably be a pretty smooth way to handle things. Well, if things don’t work out with Westfield, I’ll probably go back to the local shop and give the ManageComics thing a try.

I just placed my August Westfield order (for comics shipping in October). I ordered all of my usual books, but then had to decide on whether or not to order any of the new Sandman Universe books. I read Sandman: Overture last weekend, so I’m experiencing a little bit of Sandman nostalgia right now. So I picked up the Sandman Universe one-shot at the comics shop this week and read it. I think I’m a little bit interested in The Dreaming, but not the other three titles. All four books look good, honestly, and if I had a lot more spare time and money, I’d pick them all up. In the end, I decided not to pre-order The Dreaming. When it comes out, I’ll check the reviews, and maybe pick up the first couple of issues at the comics shop before committing to it.

I also read the first arc of B.P.R.D Hell on Earth last weekend. Back before I stopped buying comics regularly in 2009, I was a regular reader of all the Hellboy and B.P.R.D. comics. I’ve since filled in some of the stuff I’ve missed via Dark Horse Digital, and read a little bit of it. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump into Hell on Earth. It’s a long story, and it looks to be fairly bleak. But I liked that first arc, so now I’ve ordered the first two hardcover collections, (Volumes One and Two). I don’t think I’m going to start buying any current B.P.R.D. comics though. I’m going to try to stick with trades/digital/hardcovers/whatever. I’m not sure if buying the hardcovers was a good idea, really. I probably should have waited for the next big sale at Dark Horse Digital. But hey, I got both hardcovers at a good discount.

Speaking of nostalgia for stuff I was reading 20+ years ago, I see there’s a Cerebus comic in the catalog this month too. It’s a one-shot, apparently, and looks like it might be funny, but I’m not ordering it. I’m definitely not ready to jump back into the Cerebus vortex! This is an example, though, of some of the difficulties with trying to buy comics these days. I would never have seen this at my local comics store. And, even with Westfield, it wasn’t in their printed catalog. I only stumbled across it because I noticed Aardvark-Vanaheim in the publisher list on the web site.

Beau Smith has a column up at the Westfield site that’s kind of relevant to all this indecision of mine regarding comic book buying. Relevant quote:

Be conscious and particular of where you are tossing your money. Make sure you throw it at what YOU want to read about. Make purposeful choices. Be entertained and informed.

I’m going to try to remember that. I should wrap this thing up and get back to actually reading comics now.

buying comic books is complicated

For the last couple of years, I’ve been visiting my local comic book store once a week and picking up a few books. I started doing this around the same time DC’s Rebirth started, in 2016. I was originally looking at it as an experiment to see if I could get back into buying and reading regular superhero comics again, after a fairly long break. Well, I found a few books I liked and I stuck with it for quite a while. A few things happened recently that got me thinking about whether or not I wanted to stick with it though. Some changes in creative teams on the books and stuff like that.

I thought about jumping off the “weekly comic store visit” bandwagon in January 2017, and wrote a lengthy blog post about that, but I decided to keep going to the local store, and I stuck with most of the books I was reading. Well, I’ve now somehow managed to talk myself into switching back to getting my comics from Westfield Comics again. I placed an order with them today, for comics coming out in August and September. Maybe switching to Westfield will cause me to spend more money on comics, or maybe it’ll be less money. (Placing just one order per month, and seeing the total for the month all at once, might lead me to manage my comic book budget a little better.)

My plan is to stick with Westfield until the end of the year, then reevaluate. I might then give up entirely on monthly books again, or switch to just getting stuff digitally from Comixology, or go back to the local store. I don’t know. The thing I need to watch out for is my tendency to build up a ridiculous backlog. I think I should set a rule that if the pile of unread comics gets taller than me again, I need to stop buying them altogether.

SDCC day one

As I said in yesterday’s post, I am not at SDCC. But I am following the news. Or at least some of the news. So here’s a post with links to a few things I found interesting today.

Spotlight on Maggie Thompson panel: The panel I would most like to have attended today. I was a long-time subscriber and reader of CBG, and it’s nice to see Maggie get a spotlight panel. I learned a lot about comics (and a bunch of other stuff) from Maggie and Don Thompson, and I really miss CBG. (The linked article from The Beat is a little… off. I get the feeling that maybe it was written in a rush, at the back of the panel room, and uploaded to the site without any editing. Oh well. This is one of the reasons I miss CBG so much: well-written and well-edited articles!)

The Comics Journal returns to print: Not exactly SDCC news, but related, and probably timed to coincide with SDCC. I never subscribed to The Comics Journal, but I did pick up a number of issues, back when it was a regular monthly magazine. TCJ always seemed a little too self-important and serious to me, but they ran some great interviews and articles. The new print magazine will only be coming out twice a year, though, so it’s not going to be quite the same as it was in its heyday. But it’s still a welcome return.

Doctor Who Series 11 Trailer: Yeah, I’m looking forward to this! The Doctor Who panel today would be my second choice for “panel I would most like to have attended.”

DC Universe streaming service: I’m curious about this, but not sure I want to pay $8 per month for it. The Titans trailer is… interesting. I’m not sure what to think about it really. It could be a great show or it could be a train wreck. Hard to tell. You can pre-order a one-year membership for $75 right now, but I’m not sure I’d do that without having more of a clue about the new shows.

Grant Morrison on Green Lantern: This is a book I’m going to want to read.

Not at SDCC, preview night edition

Once again, I’m not at SDCC. Sigh. Tonight is preview night, and there are a few things going on, but maybe nothing too exciting (to me, at least). I see that they’re actually closing Harbor Drive during the con this year, which has got to be a pretty big deal. (They probably should have started doing that a few years ago, honestly.)

I’ll be keeping an eye on the news from San Diego during the con. There’s usually some interesting and fun stuff, and I could really use a break from serious news right now. The Union-Tribune has a landing page up with links to all of their con coverage. The local coverage of the con is usually pretty interesting. (They even have an article up about recreational marijuana use for con attendees! Pair that with the free Taco Bell, and you’re all set.)

I’ll probably also be spending some money over at Comixology this weekend. They generally have some pretty good sales going on during the con.

Email Newsletters (and the ever-present backlog)

I’ve blogged in the past about the ways in which I’m trying to shape my news/information consumption. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is get more info from email newsletters and less from randomly dipping into the Facebook/Twitter/Reddit fire hose. I have a “read/review” folder in my email where these newsletters get filed (based on some rules). Then, in theory, I read them. In practice, I’ve usually got about 400 emails in that folder, unread. I dip into it on weekends and read some stuff, but I never really catch up.

I discovered something interesting this weekend, so I thought I’d write it up. I subscribe to several newsletters from the NY Times. One of them is their “NY Today” newsletter, which has news and information for stuff related to NY (and sometimes NJ), daily. My current backlog has me reading stuff from April right now, so a lot of stuff in that newsletter isn’t too useful. But, on Friday, I wanted to check some stuff about what was going on in NYC this weekend so I thought I’d open up the current one and read it. When I went to the top of the read/review folder, I couldn’t find it, or any other NY Times newsletters. (And I checked my spam folder, and they weren’t in there either.) It turns out that I stopped receiving all of them in early June. I went to my subscription page, and I showed as still subscribed to everything. So I decided to fire off an email to customer support. I didn’t really expect much from that, but I figured that, as a paying subscriber, maybe they’d get back to me with something useful. Well, surprisingly, they did. It turns out that, apparently, if you’re not actively clicking links in the email newsletters, their system automatically stops sending them to you at some point. I’m a little unclear about how that actually works. The way they phrased it, it sounded like you’d be dropped if you haven’t clicked a link in a newsletter in the past 90 days. But I’ve clicked plenty of links within the last 90 days, though they were mostly in newsletters that were more than 90 days old. So maybe you need to have clicked a link within the last 90 days, in a newsletter that’s less than 90 days old?

Anyway, I found that interesting. I resubscribed to a couple of newsletters, so the backlog will start building up again, but I’m not going to resubscribe to everything I’d previously subscribed to. For one thing, their system requires me to go through that annoying reCAPTCHA “prove you’re human” stuff every time I subscribe to a newsletter. And that’s gotten more and more onerous lately. I’ve notice that it’s less annoying if I do it while not connected to VPN. (I guess that using a VPN makes me more likely to be a robot?)

I really think that the Times should hook their “paying subscriber” info into their newsletter system and just let the fact that I’m giving them money every month be enough evidence that I’m human. (And maybe also exempt me from that 90-day timeout thing.)

This has all got me thinking about news consumption in general again, and maybe tweaking things a little more. But that should probably be a subject for another blog post, on another day, since I think I’ve wasted enough time on this stuff today. I should go outside and get some fresh air.

U2 in Newark

I went to see U2 at the Prudential Center in Newark last night. I’ve been a fan of them for a long time, but had never seen them live. It was a little weird, since the friend I was supposed to go with couldn’t make it, so I went by myself. My seat was in the very last row of one of the “nosebleed” sections, basically as far from the stage as you can get. I’m glad I went though. It was a very theatrical show, with a lot of video stuff and big ideas and a loose narrative of sorts. (Maybe a bit of a muddy narrative, but still, points for effort.) Here a link to the set list. Lots of stuff from the new album, and a handful of “greatest hits.” That worked for me: I like the last two albums a lot. And I don’t mind hearing them play the older stuff either.

There’s some stuff in the show that could induce a little eye-rolling, but if you check your cynicism at the door and give them the benefit of the doubt, you can come out of the show feeling pretty good about things. It’s a been a rough week, news-wise, and U2 doesn’t shy away from addressing that in their shows, but it all ends in hope and catharsis, if you let it.

I do feel like this is probably the only time I’m going to see U2. I’m getting old enough that going to a show like this takes a lot out of me. I limited myself to water (no beer), left early so I could catch the 11pm train, and used earplugs, and I’m still feeling a bit messed up today.

Remembering Harlan Ellison

Following up on Thursday’s post, here are links to a few remembrances of Ellison by some of his friends and colleagues:

And the NY Times has now posted their obituary for him.

Harlan Ellison, RIP

I was sad to hear of Harlan Ellison’s passing today. Here’s an obituary from the AP (via the NYT) and another one from the Chicago Tribune. (I haven’t seen an official NYT obituary yet.)

I loved Harlan Ellison’s stuff when I was younger. I distinctly remember reading “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream” when I was way too young to read something like that. And buying a hardcover of Shatterday from the Science Fiction Book Club. (I really liked “Jeffty is Five” from that one.) And buying Dangerous Visions at a used book store in Cranford. And of course everyone loves his Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever. He was really one of my favorite SF authors when I was a teenager.

I haven’t read much of anything by him lately though. I picked up a copy of the 1000+ page doorstop The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective back in 2000, but have barely put a dent in it. It’s too big and heavy to carry around, so it mostly just sits on the shelf. I occasionally grab it and read a story, but it’s been a while. (I wish they’d publish a Kindle version.)

Best quote from the AP obituary:

When a publisher broke a contract by allowing a cigarette ad in one of Ellison’s books, the writer mailed him dozens of bricks and, finally, a ripe, dead gopher.

Library Book Sale

I went to the Somerville Library Book Sale after work today and picked up a few things. It was a pretty good deal: four Rick Geary books and two lemon bars for $3! I’m a big fan of Rick Geary. I used to make a point of visiting his table at SDCC every year, back when I was going to SDCC every year. (Those were the days…) He’s a good guy, and his “true crime” books are really good.

I also got a chance to see a few of the books I donated last week one last time. I hope someone picks them up and enjoys them. And I saw a few things that made me realize that I could have donated even more stuff: they had a good number of old CDs and DVDs (and even cassettes and VHS tapes), so I really could have gotten rid of some old CDs and DVDs at least. I do feel a little bad that I didn’t pick up any regular (non-graphic) novels, but they didn’t have anything I really needed or wanted.

NYCC 2018

After waiting an hour in the “virtual queue”, and spending an ungodly amount of money, I now have tickets for all four days of NYCC 2018. I had a good time last year, but only managed to get tickets for two days. This year, I’ll try to survive the full four-day con experience. When I was younger, I could get through a full four-day San Diego con with no problem, but as I get older, it’s hard to sustain my energy through four days of walking around a lot while carrying a backpack. We’ll see how it goes.

By a weird coincidence, I saw in my “On This Day” sidebar a post from 2005 referencing the announcement of the very first NYCC. (The link from that post is dead, but you can read it via archive.org here.) It’s been a highly successful con, overall. It’s hard to run a large con in New York, and other cons have failed. There have been some bumps in the road; for a few years, they didn’t seem to be managing the con well, and there were a lot of complaints about overcrowding. But last year wasn’t bad and they seem to have figured out crowd control, for the most part. So kudos to them for sticking it out and surviving!