...and the previous Pinky and the Brain post was a good start.

I miss comics; I've pretty much stopped buying them, except for Captain America and Nova. BENDIS! has basically run the Avengers franchise into the ground, and killed off or ruined (temporarily, at least) most of the characters I liked. Spider-Man ceased to matter to me back around the time of the Clone Saga.

Batman lost me when there were just too many fricking titles to buy to keep up.

X-Titles lost me loooooong ago, around Inferno.

Recently, the baseline price went to 3.99 - for a five minute read, what with "decompressed storyline" craptasticness and all.

*sigh*

About once a month (or when I have extra downtime at work) I go read Tom's "back issues" of the blog he has up at Marvel; while I may or may not agree with the points he makes, I usually find it a significant improvement over Newsarama or CBR's commentary by "experts".

Here is the blog entry: http://www.marvel.com/blogs/Tom_Brevoort/entry/1352

Tom writes:

"Russ's question was: if there's a series you're buying that you really like, and then something changes to make it not so good anymore (new writer or artist, status quo change, whatever), what is the amount of time you give it to get back on form before you drop it? In other words, how long will the momentum of purchasing a series carry you forwards after you've stopped really loving the book?

And my follow-up: once you've dropped a once-beloved title, what does it take to get you to pick up an issue again?"

( Read more... )

And y'know, it doesn't bother me a lot... from what I'm reading online and seeing on CNN and other news network shows (yes, even Fox network), the "progressives" (the artists formerly known as "Liberals"), mostly they're ranging from irate to pissed as hell over Obama cabinet choices; what they are ignoring is the history.

Back in the Bush-League Years, the liberal agenda went something like this:

* Get the USA out of Iraq
* Close Guantanamo Bay
* Disavow torture as interrogation policy
* Replace unilateral militarism with diplomatic multilateralism
* Ending Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy
* Advocating economic investments such as pump-priming spending on infrastructure
* Tighter regulations on High-Finance exploiters, cheats, and scoundrels.

Given the clusterfuck of the Cheney/Rumsfeld Hand Puppet President, those positions are no longer the dreams of the Lunatic Left (or as Fox network refers to them "non-Serious People", as all the Serious People supported the war in Iraq and embraced the necessity of gutting civil rights and using torture), these are now centrist consensus.

The center has moved left.

As regards Iraq - the Surge, the change in tactics, the Iraqi recognition that temporary cease-fires get the Americans the fuck out of Dodge earlier VS alliances with foreign forces (Iran and AQ) who will never leave if they get entrenched, American bribes to take the Iraq government's side, etc - all of it worked to one degree or another, and allowed Bush to do what he'd vowed NEVER to do for the previous six - agree to a timeline for withdrawal. He put the best face on it, but the agreement is there, and signed and approved, regardless of the statements of his own commanders that the peace and situation is excessively fragile.

Bush did what Carter did; his policies were such failures that he managed to push the nation the other way in opposition.

Meanwhile, the Left and Unions and more lunatic special interest groups feel betrayed.

QQ Moar.