Your Moment of Funny

What If we lived in a comicbook universe? Part 42

Yeah, this one is a bit of a downer. But oh well.

Pick the Best Caption

BECAUSE ONE PERSON DEMANDED IT

OK, the Scans_Daily vs. Peter David thing

In general, my opinions are pretty close to that of MightyGodKing (Here, and Here). There are a few points of departure, however, and I'll elaborate on those below.

I've made my thoughts on Peter David pretty clear before, so I won't spend a lot of time rehashing them. I remember an interview with PAD in the early 90s (although I don't remember where - I'm not sure if it was Wizard or some Marvel house organ that was around at that time) where he stated that he doubted he would be writing in 20 years because at that point he figured he wouldn't have anything left to say. And maybe he was right. His current writing doesn't effect me in any kind of positive way, and well, go here. I lack any kind of coherent response to what happens there, except to say that I really hope that the man's moral compass has not actually degraded to this degree. But hey, Dennis Miller was funny for a while too.

That said: David was right legally, even if he did it for the wrong reasons. As far as the personal aspect, and his own revulsion at the harsh language used on some Internet communities and forums, I'm sorry to say that expecting those standards is akin to waiting for Godot. It's also very strange coming from David, whom you would think would have had a long history of getting angry fan responses (or at the very least, would have heard some stories from Harlan Ellison).

As for the Scans_Daily community - look, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I won't even spend time discussing that at all. Sooner or later, someone who wasn't happy with you or what you were doing was going to bring the hammer down. It did. Now, I'm a little sad because Scans_Daily was one of the few online comic communities I even bothered to check the comments for because there was occasionally an insight or comment or snark that amused and/or enlightened me. It also helped me find new comics to purchase.

Now, to Marvel/DC and the Direct Market of comic stores:

Thank you for proving once again for proving yourselves less and less relevant. I've spoken about this before, and it saddens me to see it happening. Well, sorta. I don't mind, I just think that a lot of people are going to be hurt by this. But for me, it changes very little.

Oh, I know you want me to buy my weekly floppies from your special direct market friends and vendors. That's nice of you to want that. The nearest one to my hometown is a four hour drive. Now, I know you think that I should go and spend spontaneously on these things, but let me tell you, if I'm going to make a 4 hour drive for ANYTHING, and forget that I'm not making a 4 hour drive exclusively for comic books because that's fucking crazy, I'm going to know exactly what I want ahead of time. Now, the fact is that I don't make 4 hour drives to get my comics because I'm not crazy; I wait for trades and then order them through Chapters because I don't feel like paying $4 plus deranged shipping costs for a single issue; and if I'm going to plunk $20-40 on a TPB, I want some idea if I'm going to like it. So, libraries help, blogger reviewers help, and so do things like Scans_Daily. The only other alternative is outright piracy by torrents, and if you want to keep pushing people that way, go right ahead, but don't cry about Internet losses because you can't push your superhero stories outside of the rapidly shrinking direct market. It's disingenuous at best and suicidal at worst.

Ok, I'm done. See you later.