I Won't Be Sorry

I’ve gotten into the habit of hitting the comic shop on Saturday mornings rather than on my way home from work on Wednesday afternoons, but this morning as I prepared to venture out to gas up and buy groceries I almost forgot about that newly-acquired habit.
I had a much smaller stack this week, but I ended up supplementing my regular purchases with some additional items.
I’ve mentioned writer Gail Simone here many times, for both her work in writing comics, and her former work writing about comics in an hilarious online column titled You’ll All Be Sorry!
(In fact, over on the right is a link to archives of her YABS columns.)
Some brilliant person had the bright idea to collect YABS into a book, and when I saw it at the comic shop I decided I’d pick it up. I know that I won’t be sorry that I did.
I actually stumbled across the book while looking for something else: the hardcover collection of Camelot 3000.
Camelot 3000 was a maxi-series published by DC in the early 80s that told the story of the return of King Arthur in 31st Century England.
I’ve never read it, even though as a kid I desperately wanted to. My desperation was created by the house ads DC ran for which featured the always beautiful artwork of Brian Bolland.
In any case, I snagged the last copy of the hardcover that the comic shop had, so that was my mini-coup for the week.
The reason I was never able to read it as a kid, by the way, is that it was a “direct sales only” book, which meant that it wasn’t available on the rack at grocery stores, being sold only by subscription or at comic book shops. It wouldn’t be until years after the maxi-series had ended that I would have a comic shop within 100 miles of me, and by that time I had other priorities.
Not much of interest has happened – shocking, I know – since my last entry.
Scott came over for Riff Trax night on Wednesday – we watched the Riffed versions of Fantastic Four 1 and 2, which were hilarious, as well as a comic-themed episode of Numb3rs from last season (which I wrote about here) that I’d recorded so he could see it – and he became the first person besides myself to actually make use of my new furniture.
On the work front, the first full week back after having time off is always the longest, and this week was no exception. After months of hearing an odd squeaking sound coming from the hard drive and putting up with my system locking up, getting a message informing me that my battery needed to be replaced served as the impetus to hand my laptop over to IT to get a new hard drive put in. I also got a new battery – one of the extended kind that has a much longer run time – though that wasn’t as vital as the hard drive, as I hardly ever use my laptop without it either being in the docking station or at least plugged in.
While the – always temporary – boost in speed that you get from a fresh install is nice, it’s always a pain to get things back to the way you used to have them. There are so many little customizations that I’d done – though fortunately I hadn’t had much non-standard software installed, so I didn’t have to worry about that – many of which I’d kind of forgotten were customizations, and which I therefore had forgotten how to set, that I spent about an hour or two getting things back to normal after I’d picked it up from IT.
Speaking of computers, yesterday Microsoft made the beta of Windows 7 available to the public as a free download. For a little while, at least. Apparently there was too much demand for the servers to keep up, so they pulled it and will be putting it back up once they get some more servers in place.
I was thinking about trying to resolve the weird power issue that Munin, my old computer, is having, and then installing the beta onto that to try it out. I still may after the beta becomes available again.
(Update: It’s available again. The download is a 2.44 GB ISO. I’ve downloaded it, but by the time I get around to burning the DVD and figuring out what’s wrong with Munin the trial period will probably have expired. If you want to check it out, go here.)
Other than having to deal with the usual obstacle course of old people and children when I went grocery shopping, and making a pizza – actually making it; I bought the components of a pizza rather than a frozen one – when I got home, that’s pretty much all that’s been going on.

Not Just By The Numb3rs

Lately, owing to the fact that so far NBC has not brought back Law & Order – perhaps a result of the need to deal with the loss of presidential candidate Fred Thompson as a cast member – I’ve been watching that show Numb3rs on Friday nights.
(As an aside, a recent episode of SVU revealed that Jack McCoy has moved into the big office and is now the DA in the Law & Orderverse.)
I’ve watched the show off and on for the past few years, and it’s actually pretty decent, in a geeky sort of way.
Last night’s episode, though, upped the geek ante, as it centered around comic books.
Once I found out what the show was going to be about I was a bit wary, as, despite the tremendous success of movies based on comic book properties – and the great treatment comics just received on The Simpsons – Hollywood has a tendency to seriously mishandle stories centering around comics and comic fandom.
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised, and that, except for a few clichéd representation of fanboy stereotypes, the overall tone was fairly respectful.
As always, it pleased me to see (well-researched) references to some of the more obscure comic characters, though it might have been nice to see some more DC characters getting some love.
I also liked the fact that the story was built around something that is an all-too common reality in the comics industry: legendary creators of failing health and limited financial means. There are far too many iconic creators who have fallen on hard times, so it was good to see this brought to life, though I would have liked to have seen a little more in the way of exploring why said creators have fallen on hard times. The primary reason? They got totally screwed by the companies that they did so much great work for during their careers as creators.
Still, that quibble (and another one that I’ll get to shortly) aside, I found myself wondering just how much research was done and who, if anyone, they talked to in the industry, as there were a lot of obvious analogues to the real comic personalities, such as the character portrayed by Wil Wheaton (a real-life geek), who was very clearly patterned after Todd McFarlane.
Being the target of a lot of fanboy antipathy himself (I mean, who didn’t hate Wesley Crusher?), I’m sure Wheaton had a blast playing the role of someone vilified by fans.
The relationship between the ailing creator – played by Christopher Lloyd, who had a great moment of meta-humor when series regular Judd Hirsch said to him, “I have a hard time picturing you as a hippie.” – and a much younger comics writer/artist seemed to be very much informed by the relationship between Jack “King” Kirby and his official historian Mark Evanier.
Anyway, it was a surprisingly fun episode that set a pretty high bar for any future handling of geek culture on TV and in the movies.
My only other quibble with the show as a statement made on how the value of a comic as a collectible is determined. The factors listed were rarity, age, and condition.
That’s most of the story, but I would submit that there is one other factor: significance.
Sure, pretty much any rare and old comic in near mint condition is likely to command a high price, but it’s the old, rare, and significant comics whose prices shoot through the roof. Action Comics #1 isn’t valuable just because it’s old and rare, but because it’s also the first appearance of Superman. The same goes for Detective Comics #27, which features the first appearance of Batman, or Amazing Fantasy #15, which gives us the first appearance of Spider-Man.
But I suppose that, all things considered, I can forgive them for this omission in their theory on the value of collectible comics.
It’s more than what the stereotypical comic fanboy geek would do, but I would say they earned it by producing a quality episode that dealt with a subject near and dear to my heart.