Sorry about the lack of substantive posting. But, you know, not a whole lot to report. Jamie and I have been sticking close to the homefront, and not much has been going on.
Mer B.
Facebook is a strange and funny place. Thanks to Facebook, I think Jamie's circle of high school pals is having an impromptu reunion of some sort this fall.
But, I am not without people who once liked me.
This evening an old High School Chum called. For those of you KOHS folks, it was Meredith B., now married and still a Meredith B. Mer sounds great, and it was fantastic to catch up with her. And, yes, she'd found me on Facebook.
In high school I adored Meredith. She was smart, funny and if you were looking for someone to make spot on observational snark, she was your gal. We were in drama together, and were in plays from "The Crucible", to "All My Sons". And she a good actor, too, if I recall.
Meredith's moment of "the show must go on" took place when, in the middle of a show, she was supposed to be breaking ice with an ice pick and neatly stabbed her hand, just above the thumb. Meredith, being Meredith, just stuck her hand in the ice to slow the bleeding and then carried on the scene and then the play. Just one of many, many reasons why I tip my hat to the lady.
She's now in N. Carolina, married to a great guy and mother to three boys. My, how life marches on.
Bagging and Boarding
As for me:
I've been bagging, boarding, boxing and inventorying about 8-9 months worth of comics. Not all bad, but a little tedious. I've also set aside a stack of comics I've decided not to keep in the collection. Not bad stuff, just... it doesn't need to disappear into the closet in a polybag. I can share the wealth, if anyone wants me to send them some comics.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that I need to find a process for shedding some of the stuff I like reading, but won't ever return to. I will want to hang onto Action Comics and Superman, but the stack of Fantastic Four and Black Panther? A good read, sure... but I'm just not all that attached.
I am increasingly more pleased with my Superman comic collection, but its also true that it is a teeny, tiny fraction of the total published Superman comics over the years. There's just so much out there. And so little of it in reprint. With back-issues costing more than a new comic, my purchase of the back issues has to be managed. Lest Ryan go broke and crazy.
Still, it makes it a hobby, I suppose. If I could get my hands on all that stuff easily, what would be the fun?
Web Comics
Which makes me really, really wish Marvel and DC would get their @#$% together on the whole digital comics thing. How wasteful is it to have trees cut down and pulped, paper printed (using noxious chemicals), shipped (using fuel), and taking up space on a shelf, shoved in a plastic bag to take home, and then read in about fifteen minutes or less? And for obsessive guys like me, a ploybag and board?
Digital comics, DC and Marvel. Oh, I'll still pick up my paper copies of my collector titles (Superman, GL, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc...). And I might still pick up trade collections of series that were really good which I'd read online.
I want to love you, monthly installments, but you're killing the earth. You'd be cheaper if you had no physical form until I say you do. I do wonder what the tipping point would be for DC and Marvel before the cost of printing was high enough, and the cost of shipping impacted cost enough that retailers couldn't move the product...?
I wonder how strong web comics proponents (like Lea Hernandez) foresee the whole web-comics thing, if and when it plays out, affecting retailers?
I'm not trying to put the Direct Market out of business. That certainly seems like it would be an unintended side-effect. But I also wonder, if the cost were right, how that might affect the number of actual readers per comic.
Keep in mind, comics used to be shared and traded by kids, so the publishers saw only the profit of one purchase to something like 5-10 actual readers.
I'm just saying.
Ub Iwerks
Also watched a really good documentary on Walt Disney collaborator Ub Iwerks I recorded off Ovation, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story. If you don't know who Ub Iwerks is/ was, I highly recommend reading up on the man. His contribution to animation is incalculable, and he later turned that same genius to film technology.
The documentary is well done, but seems cleaned up by Disney to make the history fit a little better into Disney's version of things ( I believe they produced or released the doc).
Anyhow, I'm going to be looking at those DVD collections of really inexpensive cartoons to see if they have any of the Iwerks non-Disney cartoons available.
Read here
and here
and here
Completely inappropriate Superman link
Whatever you do, do not click through to read the following article. Especially you, Mom. DO NOT CLICK THROUGH. DO SO AT YOUR PERIL.
Sent, of course, by Randy.
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