Also seen in Wisconsin this past September.
Yes, it seems the Weiner Man is prepping himself for some form of auto-cannibalization.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Nash Rambler
I meant to post this a while back. When we were in Wisconsin in September for Jamie's cousin's wedding, there was a car show. The car I'm posing with here is a 1951 Nash Rambler. This isn't the exact car, but its the same make, year and model as the car driven by Lois Lane (played by the lovely Noel Neill) in the TV series "The Adventures of Superman".
Sadly, I started telling Jamie about how this was Lois Lane's car and how exciting it was to see one, before I saw the license plate. Yup, it read "LOIS LN".
By sheer coincidence, I'm wearing a very pro-Lois shirt in the photo.
Sadly, I started telling Jamie about how this was Lois Lane's car and how exciting it was to see one, before I saw the license plate. Yup, it read "LOIS LN".
By sheer coincidence, I'm wearing a very pro-Lois shirt in the photo.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Howdy, Leaguers.
It's in the 80's during the days right now and someone on the street perpendicular to mine has hung Christmas lights. Thanksgiving is at the end of this week, so its hard to say that its too early to hang the lights. After all, Christmas commercials hit the air in the days around Halloween and we've already sent out the announcements about our own Holiday party (you're coming, right?). Which means I'll be using the Monday after Thanksgiving (I asked off way back in September) to climb a ladder and string the front of the house with a million twinkling white lights.
There is a point: This Fall is going by too fast. Just how summer seemed to come and go too quickly, Fall is only a month from wrapping up. Hell, there's only one football game left in the regular season for the Mighty Texas Longhorns. With the change in time, the windows of my office (which face out onto a derelict building, complete with hobos, smashed bottles, graphitti and the occasional colorful act) aren't waiting until 7:30 to begin to go dark like they were during the summer. At 5:00 the sun dips low enough that my office is abruptly plunged into darkness, leaving me typing away by the light of my monitor. So I get up, turn on the $15 floor lamp, and sit back down to spend another hour-and-a-half or so wrapping things up, trying to catch up for another day.
It seems like there's been a lot of catching up lately, which makes me wonder where the time is going.
This weekend I bagged, boarded and boxed more comics than I want to think about. We made time on Friday night for grabbing BBQ at the Green Mesquite and then 18-holes at Peter Pan Mini-Golf on Lamar and Barton Springs. Matt demonstrated some amazing superhuman ability at the course, coming in pretty well under par and sinking at least four hole-in-one's.
Two photos can be seen here. As always, I wound up mixing and matching friends from various concentric circles in my life, with Julia from the office coming along with Matt, Jamie and Jason.
A somewhat impromptu Austin-Thanksgiving was cut short when poor Nicole, who'd planned to cook, was laid low with an illness I have yet to hear properly described. She's been out of pocket, staying at Matt's, so hopefully they've gotten all that resolved.
As much as I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving with the family (we're headed to Lawton), a part of me is really trying to figure out how to better incorporate friends into the Holidays. Sure, we throw the Holiday Heckstravangza, but that's also seeing 40 people in the span of a few hours. My mother always had some folks at Thanksgiving and Christmas who (especially when I was in college) I really didn't know. I used to wonder how on earth that happened, but generally was so busy emptying the Box O' Wine at the end of the table that the mystery was never fully resolved... but I think I get it now. You open your doors and your table to your friends and even folks who maybe you don't know all that well, you feed everyone and pass around a few bottles of wine and hope for the best. Maybe that's where I'm headed, trying to coordinate some force of will that insists we'll all see one another on the Holidays despite the shopping and perfunctory office parties.
There won't be time enough for everyone between now and Christmas, and that's too bad. Hell, there's a birthday or two in there (right CB? when is that), and I know people with kids and jobs and all that are even more busy than their usual crazy schedule...
All that said, this weekend Jamie and I stuck close to the house and had a weekend not unlike the ones we'd have in Arizona. I was dinking around with comics, Jamie was on her laptop or puttering with the pets. It was very quiet and, should I go to bed sooner rather than later, I might actually catch up on my rest.
Time for bed, Leaguers.
I have no idea how busy I'll be over the next several days. Hope everyone has a good Turkey Day.
It's in the 80's during the days right now and someone on the street perpendicular to mine has hung Christmas lights. Thanksgiving is at the end of this week, so its hard to say that its too early to hang the lights. After all, Christmas commercials hit the air in the days around Halloween and we've already sent out the announcements about our own Holiday party (you're coming, right?). Which means I'll be using the Monday after Thanksgiving (I asked off way back in September) to climb a ladder and string the front of the house with a million twinkling white lights.
There is a point: This Fall is going by too fast. Just how summer seemed to come and go too quickly, Fall is only a month from wrapping up. Hell, there's only one football game left in the regular season for the Mighty Texas Longhorns. With the change in time, the windows of my office (which face out onto a derelict building, complete with hobos, smashed bottles, graphitti and the occasional colorful act) aren't waiting until 7:30 to begin to go dark like they were during the summer. At 5:00 the sun dips low enough that my office is abruptly plunged into darkness, leaving me typing away by the light of my monitor. So I get up, turn on the $15 floor lamp, and sit back down to spend another hour-and-a-half or so wrapping things up, trying to catch up for another day.
It seems like there's been a lot of catching up lately, which makes me wonder where the time is going.
This weekend I bagged, boarded and boxed more comics than I want to think about. We made time on Friday night for grabbing BBQ at the Green Mesquite and then 18-holes at Peter Pan Mini-Golf on Lamar and Barton Springs. Matt demonstrated some amazing superhuman ability at the course, coming in pretty well under par and sinking at least four hole-in-one's.
Two photos can be seen here. As always, I wound up mixing and matching friends from various concentric circles in my life, with Julia from the office coming along with Matt, Jamie and Jason.
A somewhat impromptu Austin-Thanksgiving was cut short when poor Nicole, who'd planned to cook, was laid low with an illness I have yet to hear properly described. She's been out of pocket, staying at Matt's, so hopefully they've gotten all that resolved.
As much as I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving with the family (we're headed to Lawton), a part of me is really trying to figure out how to better incorporate friends into the Holidays. Sure, we throw the Holiday Heckstravangza, but that's also seeing 40 people in the span of a few hours. My mother always had some folks at Thanksgiving and Christmas who (especially when I was in college) I really didn't know. I used to wonder how on earth that happened, but generally was so busy emptying the Box O' Wine at the end of the table that the mystery was never fully resolved... but I think I get it now. You open your doors and your table to your friends and even folks who maybe you don't know all that well, you feed everyone and pass around a few bottles of wine and hope for the best. Maybe that's where I'm headed, trying to coordinate some force of will that insists we'll all see one another on the Holidays despite the shopping and perfunctory office parties.
There won't be time enough for everyone between now and Christmas, and that's too bad. Hell, there's a birthday or two in there (right CB? when is that), and I know people with kids and jobs and all that are even more busy than their usual crazy schedule...
All that said, this weekend Jamie and I stuck close to the house and had a weekend not unlike the ones we'd have in Arizona. I was dinking around with comics, Jamie was on her laptop or puttering with the pets. It was very quiet and, should I go to bed sooner rather than later, I might actually catch up on my rest.
Time for bed, Leaguers.
I have no idea how busy I'll be over the next several days. Hope everyone has a good Turkey Day.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Chronological Snobbery
If you are not reading Chronological Snobbery, you hate America. and Freedom.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Marvel DCU
It's probably not a good omen for the new online effort from Marvel, but they've named it Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, aka: Marvel DCU. Keep in mind, DCU is also how DC Comics (Marvel's prime competition) refers to its entire line of comics: The DC Comics Universe. Sadly, I doubt anyone at DC ever thought to copyright "DCU", or else they couldn't. Apparently DCU is also the stock ticker for Dry Clean USA.
Yurgh.
In addition, Marvel hasn't made it clear what you're actually buying if you sign up for their annual subscription service. It's a $60.00 investment for a year, which... when comics are going for $3.00 a pop, that's not a bad price for access to thousands of comics. Especially when you know it's less than $5.00 a month.
The problem is that I'm not sure which comics they're making available. I'm certainly not interested if Marvel is placing all of their failed series online, but only a few issues of a series I want to read. If they're placing a bunch of their content online and planning on keeping it there, that's great (think Netflix comics).
Right now the entire first 100 issues of FF, Spidey and X-Men are online. Buying collections, that might set you back over $100. But what about newer stuff? What if I want to read all of Annihilation online?
It seems almost as if Marvel is using the online effort as more of a marketing effort than a new way to approach comics. They seem interested in providing back stories, etc... but they seem overly concerned with treading on the toes of their current distribution model (ie: 32 page comics followed by trade collections).
Marvel isn't going to want to step on the toes of their distributors. It doesn't behoove them to lower the number of folks walking into comic shops and killing the golden goose, so it more or less makes sense that they aren't putting new comics out online. The fact is, had Marvel or DC gone online in the 90's or early 2000's, they probably wouldn't be as worried about cutting into the comic-buying/ paper collecting audience. However, with an audience that only ever expands to about 150,000 for a best-selling comic (and down to about 20,000 before it faces cancellation) losing any sales from comic shops is a major problem. Especially at $5.00 a month.
Whether Marvel learns to offer their newer comics online at a premium rate remains to be seen. It certainly seems like a possibility.
Despite the better arguments of Scott McCloud for how comics were going to go online and change the world, comics don't work terribly well online. clicking to reach the next panel doesn't necessarily jive with the composition and gestalt of the comic page (and I am not limiting comics to the usual folded tabloid size here). There's no flow between panels as a passive experience when you have to engage the page.
That said:
Either a very good sign or very bad sign, the site has been so busy that Marvel hasn't actually made this work. In two days, I have yet to see an online comic. Not exactly awe-inspiring from a technical standpoint. I can understand the problems in the first few hours, but...
For collectors like myself, I'd like to not have a house full of comics or graphic novels I've read once, and I'd like the option of not dropping $20 to read reprints I may not find I enjoy. But mostly, I am sure Jamie would like it if I found a way to NOT bring more collections and comics into the house. I think that's easily worth a handful of shekels per year.
I'm still pondering the Marvel subscription. I'm never a first adopter, and this is one more case where I'm waiting to hear more before I jump on board. That said, if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas... a Marvel Digital Comics subscription would be swell...
***UPDATE***
I finally got on to try a sample. I did find their interface to be straightforward and easy to use. I'm still not sure all of what is available to the subscriber, but any fears I had about how the pages would be formatted is no longer a concern. You just need a decent sized monitor set to a decent sized resolution. I guess buyer beware on that count.
Yurgh.
In addition, Marvel hasn't made it clear what you're actually buying if you sign up for their annual subscription service. It's a $60.00 investment for a year, which... when comics are going for $3.00 a pop, that's not a bad price for access to thousands of comics. Especially when you know it's less than $5.00 a month.
The problem is that I'm not sure which comics they're making available. I'm certainly not interested if Marvel is placing all of their failed series online, but only a few issues of a series I want to read. If they're placing a bunch of their content online and planning on keeping it there, that's great (think Netflix comics).
Right now the entire first 100 issues of FF, Spidey and X-Men are online. Buying collections, that might set you back over $100. But what about newer stuff? What if I want to read all of Annihilation online?
It seems almost as if Marvel is using the online effort as more of a marketing effort than a new way to approach comics. They seem interested in providing back stories, etc... but they seem overly concerned with treading on the toes of their current distribution model (ie: 32 page comics followed by trade collections).
Marvel isn't going to want to step on the toes of their distributors. It doesn't behoove them to lower the number of folks walking into comic shops and killing the golden goose, so it more or less makes sense that they aren't putting new comics out online. The fact is, had Marvel or DC gone online in the 90's or early 2000's, they probably wouldn't be as worried about cutting into the comic-buying/ paper collecting audience. However, with an audience that only ever expands to about 150,000 for a best-selling comic (and down to about 20,000 before it faces cancellation) losing any sales from comic shops is a major problem. Especially at $5.00 a month.
Whether Marvel learns to offer their newer comics online at a premium rate remains to be seen. It certainly seems like a possibility.
Despite the better arguments of Scott McCloud for how comics were going to go online and change the world, comics don't work terribly well online. clicking to reach the next panel doesn't necessarily jive with the composition and gestalt of the comic page (and I am not limiting comics to the usual folded tabloid size here). There's no flow between panels as a passive experience when you have to engage the page.
That said:
Either a very good sign or very bad sign, the site has been so busy that Marvel hasn't actually made this work. In two days, I have yet to see an online comic. Not exactly awe-inspiring from a technical standpoint. I can understand the problems in the first few hours, but...
For collectors like myself, I'd like to not have a house full of comics or graphic novels I've read once, and I'd like the option of not dropping $20 to read reprints I may not find I enjoy. But mostly, I am sure Jamie would like it if I found a way to NOT bring more collections and comics into the house. I think that's easily worth a handful of shekels per year.
I'm still pondering the Marvel subscription. I'm never a first adopter, and this is one more case where I'm waiting to hear more before I jump on board. That said, if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas... a Marvel Digital Comics subscription would be swell...
***UPDATE***
I finally got on to try a sample. I did find their interface to be straightforward and easy to use. I'm still not sure all of what is available to the subscriber, but any fears I had about how the pages would be formatted is no longer a concern. You just need a decent sized monitor set to a decent sized resolution. I guess buyer beware on that count.
Monday, November 12, 2007
More time killing links
No matter how poorly written, I see no way in which this book wouldn't be a good read.
Here.
Poorly thought out comic strips
Here.
Marvel makes a move they should have made years ago. DC still trying to figure out if they can put comics online now or must wait until 31st Century (I love Superman comics, but I know DC will not be the first to make sense of late 20th century technologies like PDFs)
Here.
For whatever reason, these Jack Kirby monsters and pages have never been reprinted.
Here.
Also, New Spock. Same as the Old Spock?
Here.
Here.
Poorly thought out comic strips
Here.
Marvel makes a move they should have made years ago. DC still trying to figure out if they can put comics online now or must wait until 31st Century (I love Superman comics, but I know DC will not be the first to make sense of late 20th century technologies like PDFs)
Here.
For whatever reason, these Jack Kirby monsters and pages have never been reprinted.
Here.
Also, New Spock. Same as the Old Spock?
Here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)