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It's December and that brings on the chaos of the holidays and having family and friends over, the mailing off of cards and the wrapping of presents. It also brings up the time of year where people reflect on what they have done the past year and look forward to the start of a new year. I thought I would use my article this month to look back on some things that have happened the past year.
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DC's Reboot
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We are now four months into the reboot of all the DC Comics, and DC has finally taken away the majority market share from Marvel and it looks like there is no slowing this freight train down. The thing is that we are getting close to the six issue cut off for under performing titles, and so far the only scuttlebutt I have heard is that Men of War, OMAC and Static Shock might be on the chopping block, but that is just based on two months worth of numbers. At least all of the titles I pick up are not going anywhere for a while. I think the DC reboot came at just the right time. They were looking at declining sales on their books, and needed something to shake up the industry. I personally used the reboot to look at some of the books that I was reluctant to get because of years of back story and constantly changing that back story to fit in with whatever superstar writer is writing. DC brass must have said, "Reset everything and let's get stories out that are not mired in continuity from 70 years ago." They unfortunately had to cancel some really well done titles like Booster Gold and not bring him back in his own solo book, but instead a team book where he is the leader of the team. That is okay because he plays the reluctant leader so well in the book that Booster really does not need his own book right away. I'm just wondering how three different writers and work out three different Batman titles where he is main character and make them make sense. I guess that is the great thing about comics; you can have a main character in three different books and not have to worry about them working out and coming together in any way because they could be in alternate dimensions or take place months apart. I guess that is the reason why I am getting only one book with Batman in the lead role rather than all three, so I don't get confused.
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For the New Year
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I thought about something several months ago; I was wondering how I could do something similar to Jess Willey's 52 book reviews that he did all of this year. I don't have the patience to sit down and read one book a week for 52 weeks. After all, I have Spanish and Web Design classes to take in the spring semester and that leaves me very little time to do independent reading. I also wanted to get someone else's point of view on something as well to have a counterpoint to my writing. I like collectable card games and miniatures games so why not do articles about learning to play them every month. The only thing is that I have no one to play with right off the bat unless I can bribe someone into learning with me. Looks like this little plan may go belly up before it even gets started.
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The Little Things that Annoy Me
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Sometimes there are just little things that will get under my skin and annoy the heck out of me. Whether it be on television, the radio or on the internet it can really turn me off. For example, I was on a message board and someone was asking about how to get started in the Collectable Card Game, Magic the Gathering. Some people had responded with posts that were appropriate, but there is always one jackass that has to be "cute." By "cute" I mean that they post something that they probably think is helpful and funny at the same time, but can really annoy the heck out of people that give good answers to questions that people ask. In the case with the message board above, the person who thought they were being "cute" posted a link to an e-bay auction of an alpha print of Black Lotus that had been graded a 10.0 by some card grading company. The opening bid on the Black Lotus was $100,000 and had nothing to do with helping this person who asked the question get any closer to their decision. That is not helpful. Since the message board software has the option of putting people on an ignore list that keeps you from seeing their postings, I went ahead and did that. That probably makes two dozen people I have on my Ignore List on this particular board. Some of them have been banned so I can take them off, but I'll keep them on there anyway. What happened to the good old days of the internet where you could ask a simple question and not get a jackass answer to it?
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Wizard World Magazine Buh-Bye:
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For a little while in the last half of this year, Wizard Press decided to stop producing the print versions of their magazines, Toyfare and Wizard and instead take everything online. That kind of sucked for some people that had just renewed their print subscriptions and really did not want to have to go to the internet for their comics news. I'll admit for a while there I did have a print subscription to Toyfare, but it lapsed several years ago and I did not bother to re-up for another year after four years of being a subscriber. At the Wizard World in Austin, Texas last month Gareb Shamus was chased across the dealer's room floor by a cosplayer that was dressed as Lando Calrissian (even though the cosplayer was white and Lando is black) trying to get answers on video tape on what had happened to the money that people had paid to get their print subscriptions renewed. Mister Shamus gave some very non-committal answers and hemed and hawed a lot and would not give a straight answer. No mention of shutting down the web magazine and no mention of what they were doing to get the funds back to people other than "We're working on it." Late in November; Wizard decided with no forewarning whatsoever to its writers or subscribers, that they would just yank all mentions to the Wizard online magazine from their web site and in fact yank the magazine from their site all together and replace it with a Twitter Feed and a Blog done by Gareb Shamus. I don't know if this is going to effect the convention side of things, but I think they are barely treading water on those in terms of profit. They have already had to cut down on the number of conventions that they would do in 2012 so that may be an indicator of things to come. So long Wizard Magazine, you served us well for a long time. It is too bad you had to go out like this.
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The Ongoing Poster Saga
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I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before, there has been an ongoing battle between the Star Wars Artist Matt Busch and a gentleman named Rick Olney over the possession and rights to sell some posters that Mister Busch had created for Lucasfilm. Here's a brief overview of what has happened up to this point: Rick Olney said he was going to have a convention for Military Veterans on Veterans Day Weekend. Matt Busch was invited to the convention and asked Lucasfilm if he could do something special to sell at the con and give the proceeds to a charity helping disabled veterans and their families. Lucas said sure and they decided to make up a world map of the various artifacts and where they were located from the Indiana Jones movies, television show and I think comic. Matt Busch does all the work on it and the prints are sent to Olney for people who pre-register at a certain level of admission. It was not until that Mr. Busch did a Google search for Rick Olney's name that he found he was hoodwinked. Mister Busch decides not to attend the convention and politely asks for the maps to be returned. E-mails are exchanged and Olney decides not to return the maps and instead decides to keep them and sell them online even though Lucasfilm said he could not do that. About a month or so later Olney sends a threatening e-mail to Matt Busch saying that he was going to burn the posters instead of returning them. On September 18th Olney cancels his convention and on October 7th Lucasfilm sends a cease and desist letter to Olney saying not to sell any more posters and to return them and any money collected to Lucasfilm. Here's a link to the latest information from Matt Busch about this whole situation I think his words sum it up nicely: link. Hopefully this will all be resolved by the end of the year and that veterans from the Iraq side of the war on terror will get the help those funds will provide.
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