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Well, 2013 has come and gone and now we are into the first month of a brand new year. I normally like to go back and review what went on in popular culture over the past year, but with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pintrest and Instagram I think anything that has been said already is pretty much covering what I wanted to say. I'm instead going to talk about what happened in December 2013.
Disney Buys Indiana Jones Franchise
This was trending on Facebook back in early December, and only one thing popped into my head. That thing was, "Why is Disney trying to buy up all the properties I liked as a kid?" Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the first movies my biological father showed us as a kid. He used to buy videos of movies from this one store in Duncanville that sold the rental video tapes to mom and pop stores for them to rent out. This was not a very inexpensive proposition. I think when he purchased Star Wars back then he paid like $100 for the copy. I'm going to stop there because this is getting off topic. Back to Indy, I saw the first movie for the first time and was blown away. Not as blown away as my older brother who had to own the action figures, but I liked it because it was an action movie that had all these great moments in it. From Marion matching a guy shot for shot of alcohol in her bar, to seeing the rather gruesome way the German Mechanic (Gotta call him German because the 'N' word is not allowed to be used in Germany) died while in a fist fight with Indy just rocked my five or six year old mind. Then a few years later I saw Temple of Doom and was terrified of what happened in it. I have not seen an Indiana Jones movie since then, and have been trying to sit down and get to watching all of them, but it is right up there with "going to the dentist" on my list of things I need to do.
Disney announced that they had acquired the rights to start making new Indiana Jones movies while Paramount retained the rights to distribute the original four movies. This is much like the same deal that they struck with Lucasfilm when they bought Star Wars earlier this year. How does the Disney acquisition of the Indiana Jones Franchise make me feel? I'm not really sure. Every fan on the Internet seems to think one of two ways. First is the Knee Jerk, "OMG Disney bought Indiana Jones everything is ruined they are going to turn it into the Star Wars Special Editions, better go onto the internet and bitch about it." The second is, "All right, there's maybe going to be a fifth movie. Who Whoo! Better go onto the internet and celebrate." For me I had a third type of reaction, "I better not look at message boards of fandom over the next few days and let all of the information come out before talking about it." You see, I was suckered into commenting about the Star Wars acquisition by Disney before all the information was out, and I got a little too bitchy. Then when the information came out I made a much more informed decision. (Not going to see Star Wars Episodes 7-9 simply because to me the series ended at Episode 6 and that was it.)
This was bound to Happen
It seems that there is going to be an X-Box television series that starts production next year. This is not going to be some fluff stuff about the X-Box One or 360, but instead it is going to be covering the history of video games. The first subject they are going to tackle is the ET debacle from 1983.
For those of you who don't know, the ET debacle was seen as the first sign in the downhill slide of the home video game market back in the 1980's. Atari made a really poorly done ET video game for their 2600 console and rushed it out to capitalize on the success of the movie. The unfortunate thing was that they simply made too many copies of the game. Much like the "New" X-Men book of the 1990's that split the team into the Gold and Blue groups that Marvel had over printed to excess. Unlike the X-Men book, the unpurchased copies of the ET game were buried in a landfill in New Mexico never to be seen or spoken of again. The X-Men books on the other hand are still languishing in some dealers' quarter boxes at conventions waiting for someone to buy them as a gag gift for a comic fan.
The X-Box television series will start as content for the X-Box One and the 360 and then later on might be offered on regular television networks. I'm kind of curious about how they handle the whole documentary thing. Sometimes video game documentaries are not handled with the greatest of care and can make video games and their players seem rather stereotyped rather than being normal folks.
Somewhat Personal Business Covered in 2013
Okay, so this past year has not been the best for the Collector Times. Our Editor was sidelined by injuries and illness and that meant that the magazine was only put out about once every other month. I personally had to take a month off every now and then because of personal reasons, but after getting my head right once again I have seen the quality of the articles I have written go up and down. Mostly down and I am trying to fix that right now.
I thought going all trades would make sense in 2013 because hey, they cost less per issue than a normal copy of a comic, but when my Amazon Prime Membership expired back in October it meant I could not buy trades for the rest of the year. Damn life got in the way and money had to be paid for a new kitchen appliance, then Christmas came and went, and because I missed comics so much in October I decided to hit up the local used book stores and see what comics I could find from the 1980's. They sell most of them at half of cover and since comic prices ranged from about 60-cents early in the decade to a full blown dollar (Blasphemy!) in the last few years of the decade it is still a good deal. It has gotten me to try to go back and revive my Random Read column that I started a few years ago. Look for it to begin again in February.
Stuff to do in 2014
Well, since it is 2014 and the year is new and things are alive with possibility here are some things I would like to accomplish this year for the Collector Times:
- Start the aforementioned Random Read column again.
- Keep doing Random Crap columns for your enjoyment.
- Keep every column going from February 2014 to February 2015.
- Attend at least two local conventions and do reports about them.
- Maybe start up a blog once again.
There's other stuff I would like to accomplish that is not Collector Times related, but these are what I would like to do to keep the Times going in 2014.
Let's welcome 2014 as a year that will be much better than the last.
As always feel free to e-mail me with ideas for Random Crap columns, comments, suggestions and praise at the e-mail below and I'll get back to you when I can.
E-mail: mlbcollectortimes@gmail.com
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