In case the regular Ghost action figure released in 1998
So as promised, here’s a pic of Employee Aaron’s fiance Kempo dressed as the Red Lantern cat Dex-Starr. BONUS: she’s in the pic with Dex-Starr’s co-creator, Geoff Johns:
Also, she got to ask during a DC Universe panel if Dex-Starr would be fighting Krypto the Superdog EDIT: Streaky the Supercat at some point, and Johns responded in the affirmative. WE’RE HOLDING YOU TO THIS, JOHNS.
Apparently, Employee Aaron was also in line to ask a question, but he wasn’t able to ask before question-time was cut off. His inquiry? How DC plans on reintroducing Swamp Thing into the regular, non-Vertigo DC Universe. …I’ve trained the boy well.
BONUS: Cover art, as seen above, by The Rack‘s Benjamin Birdie. He’s also a swell cat who deserves your support.
Anyway, Eugene has gifted us with plenty of free songs over the last few months (including multiple theme songs for the comics podcast War Rocket Ajax) so please, throw down a buck for at least this one thing. Help a brother out.
And yes, I realize the rap and the hipping and the hopping isn’t to everyone’s taste. Not my own preferred musical genres, usually, but I’ve been enjoying Euge’s work over the last few months, and hopefully most of you will, too.
So of course I totally stole it. SWAMP THING IN AN “M” HAT WANTS TO BE FREE.
— a commenter on this story about a 3D adult film being made in Hong Kong
And why was I looking at an article about a 3D adult film being made in Hong Kong in the first place, you may ask? Well, 1) wouldn’t you? — and 2) because I was seeking out some choice material for a new side project: Estate 4.1, where I pick out some charming and witty samples of the sorts of comments you’ve come to expect from any online news source allowing The People to affix responses to their stories.
…We laugh so we don’t cry, friends.
Ah, I feel more serene already.
…Wait, what’s….
Oh goodness, are these his henchmen?
What th —
OH MY GOD
LET THIS NIGHTMARE END
Keeping it as short ‘n’ sweet today as I can manage, since I’ve been under the weather…but I’ve recently been rewatching some early episodes of Lois and Clark, the mid-’90s Superman TV show starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher, spurred on a bit by some recent discussion of the show on the Twitter, due mostly, I think, to the show’s entire run being available via streaming Netflix.
And I have to tell you, seeing the pilot episode for the first time since it aired in 1993…boy, they sure got a whole lot right. Clark’s inherent niceness and caring for humanity, the most perfect Perry White ever (“Great Shades of Elvis” and all…which, let’s face it, isn’t any more ridiculous than exclaiming “Great Caesar’s Ghost”), a great Jimmy Olsen (actor replaced after the first season, of course), the wonderful relationship between Clark and his Earth parents, a sufficiently bastardly Lex Luthor, and so on. And I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before on the site, but this is the one instance of the live action transformation of Clark into Superman and honestly thinking “hey, maybe the glasses thing actually would work.”
Now, I watched the show through about the third season, when I just sort of lost interest, I guess. But after watching a handful of the early episodes…well, there was enough good stuff going on that I think I will continue revisiting the series via Netflix for the time being. I may just stick to the more interesting-sounding episodes, though I did spot one episode which had a Netflix-written description that included the words “guest-starring Sonny Bono,” and baby, that’s next in the queue.
A couple of memories of the show:
ADDITIONAL READING:
Reader Leroy had a question in response to yesterday’s post:
“…Do the ‘Deadpool’ books sell as well for you guys as Marvel claims they are across the country?”
“…I just keep finding it harder and harder to believe so MANY ‘Pool books are being supported by such a fragile market. It’s just hard to believe, seeing as though the character made a brief, mostly-horrible appearance in the “Wolverine” movie, he’s suddenly seen such a huge resurgence, which I assume will only peak and crumble once Deadpool sooner than later has his own movie. And is this trend in your opinion caused by people STILL thinking they can retire on comic books sparked by movie interest?”
I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but in general, as each new Deadpool series appeared on the stands, sales dipped slightly across all the series across the board. Not at first…sales were reasonably consistent and stable, if not high. Deadpool was in the lower-middle tier of sales for us, but in recent months it’s dipped lower than even that. A major problem is that as each new Deadpool title (or any other new title that effectively duplicates an already existing series) is released, there’s not suddenly another 30,000 new readers entering the marketplace to read that comic. It’s the 30,000 people already reading the one (or two, or four) Deadpool comics that suddenly have to decide to 1) ignore the new title and just keep reading what they’re already reading, 2) expand their comic budget to add yet another series to their regular reads; 3) stop reading another title to make room for this new title, or 4) decide that it’s too much to keep up with, and drop most of them, if not all. For a while, we seemed to be experiencing more of #2, but #4 is on the rise, it appears.
And if you’re curious, the multiple Avengers titles are going through #2, since it’s all Fresh and New…er, relatively speaking…but I suspect we’ll be going through #4 soon enough, with sales shaking out so that the comic actually called The Avengers will be the top seller, with the other titles selling only about a half or a third as much. I hope not…as a funnybook seller, I want every comic to sell lots and lots of copies, and for our customers to shove tons of money our way in order to buy them all, but realistically, something usually has to give. (I’ve written before on the topic of different sales levels for what are essentially the same books.)
As for movie interest sparking interest in Deadpool…there was some excitement for a while over the possibility of a forthcoming Deadpool movie, but mostly among the already-converted. If/when an actual movie actually approaches release, we may get some increased sales from new readers curious about the character…though, depending on the advertising blitz and the public’s reaction to it, I’m thinking those new readers may simply come from people already buying comics and not, um, “civilians,” I guess.
At this point in time, I don’t think too many people are buying movie-related comics in the hopes that they’d be good investments. I’m sure some people are (like the fellow who bought all our copies of Amazing Spider-Man #252, the first appearance of the black costume, in anticipation of the third Spider-Man film), but a lot of the interest in the comics spurred on by movies seems to be genuine interest from curiosity, not from financial concerns. Like I’ve said plenty of times before, that curiosity is usually satisfied by the actual film, rendering the comics redundant.
Well, that was a lot to write, considering I was just planning on slumming it today. Ah, well. I hope that sort of answers your question, Leroy. If you (or anyone else) have any questions or need for clarification, hie yourself hither to my comments.
So I asked you folks to pick your single favorite ongoing comic book (or manga/TPB) series, and boy, you certainly chimed in.
I actually went through the comments and tallied up how many “votes” each title received…not that I was planning on declaring a winner or anything, but more out of curiosity. I half-suspected that, even though this isn’t necessarily a large enough sample (or even a diverse enough sample, given that it was restricted to a group relatively web-savvy and, I’m assuming, perhaps slightly more aware of the reading choices available to them), that the votes may somewhat reflect a general relationship to in-store sales.
There’s a slight correlation between the votes and our shop sales, in that, say, Batman and Robin (the top vote-getter) is one of the bestselling comics at our shop, compared to, say, 2000 A.D. or DMZ, which each got one vote and sell very little at our store. (In fairness, I should note that while the monthly DMZ sells poorly, we do good business in the paperback collections.)
However, the correlation doesn’t remain the same across the board…Amazing Spider-Man only received one vote, but is still a consistent mid-range seller for us, while Jonah Hex received three votes, though in-store sales have plummeted since the film was inflicted upon movie theatres. So anyway, as far as correlation goes, it’s close in some cases, but no cigar.
Let’s take a look at what you folks voted for:
And then we get down to the middling vote-getters, the ones that got three, four, or five votes apiece:
And then there were a couple of things that sort of surprised me:
Okay, I’m going to cut it off here for now…if I have more to say about the results, I’ll pick it up tomorrow, but in the meantime — thanks for participating, everyone! This gave me a nice overview as to what you folks are reading and enjoying, and I’m glad you all took the time to leave a comment. I really do appreciate it.
