An update from Stainless Steve Steve Englehart sent a note around to some of us this evening concerning some past and upcoming work, so I thought it a good idea to note it here, too. I'm mainly just reprinting his note, putting in hyperlinks where they seemed to make sense. If you have any problem with the link to Amazon - maybe a bad experience with them, or you're an independent bookseller who sees them as undermining you - blame me , not Steve. I just thought it might prove handy if, like me, one likes to put wish lists together or place pre-orders. Hi there - This is another in the occasional series of emails from me, which you get because at some time or other you expressed some interest in my work. As always, you can turn them off by just asking. (Conversely, I do run into people who haven't contacted me but want to get on, so if you know somebody in that category, they just have to ask, too.) This one's the latest update on The Long Man , coming from Tor this J
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This was posted by a fellow comics fan and reflects a general discouragement with some pricing policies. I wouldn't be caught dead with some of his selections, but that's not the point. For me, the comparison with a title put out by a smaller publisher, lacking any ads other than house ones and for a title that doesn't appear to crack Diamond's Top 100 is the bottom line. Marvel's current pricing policies (and, to be fair, the same brush would have to tar DC to some degree) don't come out as being very defensible. I thought it a good post to spread word of -- to such extent as I can in this dusty, neglected place. I'm glad I'm not paying close to cover price for anything, but even with strong discounts it's a fairly irrational expenditure each month. I can clearly remember when one pal from that era, Jack Pizzo, dropped comics because the price had jumped 33.333% (damn you, editor CryptLeak!) to 20 cents each.
Watching the Watchmen Nicely done. After so many years, it's finally here -- and turns out to be the first movie we've made a point of going out to see in 2009. (Unless you're completely clueless about the movie I consider this piece to be safe with respect to any significant spoilers.) Nick and I caught the 10 am showing today. I read the original 12-part Watchmen series as it came out in 1986 & '87, then in collected form multiple times over the years. Nick had never read it. Zack Snyder's film adaptation of it worked for both of us. A sweep of story that looks at an alternate universe where a costumed hero and villain fad - rather than simply being the launch of an enduring comics genre as it was in our universe - became a real world one. This had an impact on the 20th century, but not as much as one that occurred in the late 1950s, when a young physicist was accidentally taken apart in an experiment gone awry and ultimately reassembled himself as a immortal