Comic Book Resources

The novelty of impact webbing when I first saw it in the 90s really did make it seem so cool. But after rethinking it, was there ever any practical use to it that couldn’t be accomplished with the old-school Spider-Man webbing? It seemed to not really be capable of anything the old webbing was capable of.

Wait, Mark Millar on Miracleman? Why?!?

I really never got “impact webbing.” All I remember is that it somehow, inexplicably, tore Venom’s costume off his body.

I think everybody gets addicted to a “bad” book at some point. Me, I read Jeph Loeb’s Hulk. It’s like eating Krispy Kreme donuts: they’re horrible for you, but you can’t bring yourself to stop.

The only special property I recalled impact webbing having was the idea that it could “creep” along surfaces, and even then sometimes the classic webbing seems to do the same.

The stingers were a bit more innovative, I suppose, with the slight problem that spiders don’t have stingers. (They don’t have spider-senses either, but at least Stan Lee has the excuse of writing in 1962 when a prefix could make anything fit a character’s theme. Isn’t that right, Bat-shark-repellent?)

OK, only special property beyond being a sort of “webbing bomb.”

I loved that the snow suits matched the costumes they would don as young women without being too overt with the visual cue.

What did the original impact webbing and stingers look like? I thought they were just balls of webbing?

I’ve decided to officially stop caring about sales figures. Not my business. I buy what I like and I’ll focus on that.

You say that, and it’ll be good not knowing for a while.
But then you’ll start hearing of something you hate shooting up the charts, or something awesome bombing in them, and suddenly you’re looking at them again.

I can relate to reading a crappy comic knowing that it’s crappy; if it’s bad enough, it has its own sort of perverse entertainment value. Oh, Cry for Justice, I wish I knew how to quit you!

I don’t care about sales charts either. Sales charts are perfectly useless tools that tell us nothing about the overall quality of a book. They just exist to provide gossip and speculation.

Feel the same way about weekend box office receipts. Why should I care where Saw VI landed in the top ten? And don’t tell me about this or that sales record broken. The only real record that counts, number of tickets sold over seats available, has remained unchanged for something like 70 years (That’s Gone With the Wind, by the way).

I, uh, think you forgot to close a link, Chad. The last seven Random Thoughts all link to your Blackest Night review.

Feel the same way about weekend box office receipts.

Opening weekend receipts are a bizarre thing to share with the public.

Basically all they monitor is the marketing campaign.

Which of course is all the marketing people care about, so those are the figures they push – doesn’t matter if there’s a sharp drop after that, or a massive increase… that’s down to the quality of the film, and marketing couldn’t care less about that.

The only thing I dislike about a lot of the reviews on CBR (or any site) is that you get a low rating for something like Blackest Night #4, but then a 4-star review for the latest issue of Green Lantern. Granted, they are two different issues, but they’re writing the same story, from the same writing, and there wasn’t that great an incongruity between the two artists. So what’s going on here? Obviously differing tastes, and truth be told, I preferred Green Lantern to Blackest Night, but the scoring system and remarks were so disparate that it was kind of hard to swallow.

Part of that, stealthwise, is that the reviews were written by different people. So it’s probably a good thing to read the reviews themselves and not pay attention to the ranking, because I think the reviews do a pretty good job most of the time explaining why the score was given.
If you want more consistency you’ll probably want to stick with the blogs written by fewer people.

Chad, you need to fix the coding. The last several Random Thoughts are all part of the link to your review of Blackest Night.

Re: stealthwise’s post —

When reading reviews, you get to know the tendencies of the reviewer, so it is often possible to know when one reviewer’s 6 is another reviewer’s 8. Then you can tell when you might like a book that got a lower review by any one reviewer. This theory goes out the window when a reviewer is unknown to you.

When Siskel and Ebert disagreed, I most often agreed with Siskel. When Ebert disagreed with Roeper, I knew it was because Roeper was an idiot and didn’t know squat about movies.

Not knocking Chad’s opinion. He doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it. I disagree with his opinion, but that doesn’t make Chad an idiot, just a guy with a different opinion. (But he is Canadian.)

I believe I fixed the coding error.

I thought Clone Saga #1 was very impressive for the insanely difficult task it was given.

Brian — Thanks for the save. This went up at the same time I left for work this evening, so I didn’t see it until just now. Also, I enjoyed the first issue of Clone Saga, but the second just showed that it will be the story on fast forward with some random changes thrown in (and, I don’t buy the changes happening at the beginning as much since the beginning of the story played out as they intended, so nothing should be different).

On impact webbing and stingers — Impact webbing was a web bomb. A quick way to trap and take out an opponent. The Scarlet Spider used it effectively against Venom to keep the symbiote and host apart in order to defeat him. Stingers were small, metal spikey things… that looked like the stingers on bees or wasps… not spider-related as much, but a nice offensive weapon.

On sales figures — they belong in the business section of the news and that’s a section I don’t really care about.

I’ve never paid any attention to sales figures. I don’t even know where to find them. It seems to me that that is something only the publishers would have any interest in. Unless maybe you’re looking for advance warning that one of your favourite books might be cancelled.

So are you referring to that new Clone Saga thing? What is that, anyway? Is it a retelling, or a summary, or reprints, or what? I keep thinking that maybe I should read some of the old clone issues. I never have, except for three issues of Ben Reilly as Spider-Man, which occured during a break in the storyline. (And I didn’t seek those issues out. I got them at a garage sale years ago; I didn’t even know they starred Reilly until I read them.) I skimmed through a few issues back when the clone mess was going on, but they looked so bad I couldn’t ever get myself to buy them. But I keep thinking now that I should read them, just so I can learn about an important part of Spider-Man’s history. And it would certainly help me to understand the story that’s going on right now in Amazing.
Anyway, I think wanting to read bad stories that are historically important to a series is clearly justified. And there’s always the simple fact that some books that are widely considered to be bad are actually pretty good. And you can’t ever be certain if you don’t read them yourself. (I happen to like Englehart’s Fantastic Four, for instance [although not ever single issue], but it seems most people really hate it.)

(Oh. I guess I should clarify that when I said I haven’t read any of the Clone Saga, I meant the stuff from the mid-90s. I do happen to own #149, with the original Spider-Clone story. I never saw much point in a sequel, though.)

I know that the reviews were written by two different people, hence, the “differing tastes” comment, but it just reads as retarded to have a feature up on the main page that says “read about the FOUR-star Green Lantern issue here!” and then have the main feature that it’s tying into get such a low rating. Every reviewer will be different, but it just felt really off to have different people reviewing what is essentially one long story. I’m not sure if the person who reviewed GL would have given BN a lot more, but in terms of looking at the work as a whole (because this is a massive crossover event, like I said, written by the same guy), it just doesn’t make much sense.

Also, I enjoyed the first issue of Clone Saga, but the second just showed that it will be the story on fast forward with some random changes thrown in (and, I don’t buy the changes happening at the beginning as much since the beginning of the story played out as they intended, so nothing should be different).

Yeah, that’s fair.

While I was impressed by the first issue, not so much for the second one.

It seems to me that that is something only the publishers would have any interest in. Unless maybe you’re looking for advance warning that one of your favourite books might be cancelled.

If we had accurate one’s, not just diamonds figures which are known for not being accurate, you’d be able to look and see how a shift in policy at a company affects sales, spot trends, see companies experimenting and learning etc.

You can do it a little with the current one’s, but not much.

I do wish more people would look a them before jumping on message boards and going ‘Why do they exer let X write a book? They are terrible. It makes no sense.’, because often, the answers are in the sales figures.

I don’t need advance warning for cancellation… I buy the book until I can’t anymore. How does me knowing about a possible cancellation change anything?

Well, I can’t afford to buy all the books I like, so some of them I only buy an issue now and then. But if I know it’s going to end soon, I want to make sure I buy the last few issues, because I know I won’t get the chance again. (I did that with She-Hulk, for instance.)

How does me knowing about a possible cancellation change anything?

Well, you can go onto message boards and tell off everyone who likes something you don’t like which is successful, for not buying the book you do like!

Or, you can organise a write in campaign to save books no one cares about, like Manhunter!
(I’m not sure why companies don’t wait until they’ve had more write-ins than sales on those last issues, but they only ever seem to need a few hundred).

I think the theory is that if people are upset enough to start writing letters, then the book has the quailities necessary to really hook people if the company just amps up the marketing and gets it in a few more faces. If they get no letters, it might imply that everyone was following it with only casual interest or out of momentum, and the book is therefore unlikely to ever expand its base much.

However, since books saved by write-ins are inevitably cancelled eventually anyway, it might be time to rethink that logic.

Um… Millar on Marvelman? Tell me that’s just a random negative thought, and not related to any news I may have missed over the last week? ‘Cause that would be attrocious.

I thought M&M were on a book called Nemesis? (Or at least that’s what Rich Johnson tells me.) Then again, those fellows on MarvelMan does indeed sound like something Marvel would do. *shudder*

Millar on *earth* is “just a random negative thought,” to be honest. *shudder*

The reason opening weekend box office is stressed is because that’s when the distributors make the most money. In the first two weeks, the theater gets practically nothing from ticket sales. That’s why Raisinets cost $5. The percentages shift as time goes on, which is why the studios aren’t really interested in movies having long runs.

I’ve not got much to say about impact webbing or Blackest Night these days and, frankly, I wish I did. Biggest problem in making comix is how fast the pleasure of reading comix gets lost in the shuffle (thank god for trade paperback collections!).

But I did want to stop in and thank you for the mention on my ULYSSES “SEEN” comic, Chad. I’ve been a lurker on your “random thoughts” for awhile now. I’ve found it to be a great way to keep up with the mainline word of comix as I spend more time in the studio than a comicshop these days. Imagine the treat I got making the rounds of my messageboards and seeing a plug for my own comic!

Thanks again, man. And you’re completely right, it’s a crazy idea adapting Joyce into comix. Problem is that from a year of playing with different ideas this one seems to be catching some attention so I’m signed on to the ten year plan. A classic example of the most important lesson in comix; “be careful what you wish for…”
-Rob

Well, it’s a great idea/strip… and there are worse things you could be locked into doing.

Thanks, again.

Part of it comes down to the collaborative side of comix. Trained as a painter, I think collaboration is a really exciting facet of comix. Obviously, I grew up thinking Lee and Kirby were like one gestalt mind (yes, I grew up in the Seventies).

I remember joking with friends about how drawing comix took so ridiculously long and how the only thing that saved an artist from that trial is knowing he was working with writing that might consistently challenge his decisions about narrative voice.

Yeah. Joyce. Chapter after chapter. Again, “careful what you wish for…”

Great thing is working with Joyceheads. Some of these guys are like Trekkies with. Ph.Ds. There’s a deeper, broader understanding these guys can give to the first-time reader of ULYSSES, but only comix presents a forum for that kind of interaction.

Hey! If this s the kind of strip you’d draw yourself, then maybe you’ll tell me what I’m doing wrong…

Thanks again,
-Rob

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