Selkie

why are manga viewed seperately from the other comics or graphic novels/trades? I think because they don't want to show that manga is selling a lot more than regular comics.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Amen. Although ...

I think part of the separation in terms is a marketing ploy by the manga (re)publishers themselves. Comics have such a negative connotation in the general market that they *want* to differentiate "manga" to attract readers. How many manga-only readers have you encountered who try, passionately, to argue that manga is somehow inherently different, and "cooler" than regular ol' comics could ever be... :rolleyes:

Mind you, I'd love to latch onto some manga. Aside from Uzumaki and Hotel Harbour View, I really haven't been enthralled with much. I'm positive it's out there, but I'll be damned if I can find it. Would probably love Lone Wolf & Cub if it weren't reprinted in those tiny little books that are way too hard to read. I prefer my comics oversize, thankyouverymuch.

Whither the quality, or imagination? Are the vast majority of comics buyers really still impressed by shit like this?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Judging by the bitching I read on other boards, the buyers of the mainstream crap often don't even seem to like what they're buying! Why they persist in purchasing it is yet another Comics Thing I Don't Understand. It's not like they complain about a single subpar issue, or about dropping a series they once liked but which has, over a relatively short amount of time, jumped the shark. Oh no. They continue buying issue after issue of material they never liked in the first place, or haven't enjoyed for years. Why? WHY?! They're clearly reading the books, so they can't even use speculation as an excuse.

This vast majority of the industry's readers baffle me. They really do.

Doubt I'll drag my butt into the shop this week just for the Ex Machina TPB, which I'll be buying on the strength of Tony Harris' art and good word of mouth, but I will pick it up whenever the next issue of Sleeper comes out. (Got to spend my 52 cent gift certificate somewhere). Glad to see the price point; I greatly appreciate those $10 TPBs that DC puts out occasionally.

Criminy, someone shoot me now. That list is terribly sad. My hat's off even more than ever for anyone who tries to provide anything other than cookie-cutter-same-as-it's-always-been superheroes. Is there a single Oni title on that list - anywhere? Nice to see Hellboy, Fables, Y, and Walking Dead doing slightly more than invisible sales in TPB, but that's a bit like being the cleanest whore at the Bunny Ranch.

Slickevil, I feel your pain. I'm desperate for some in theatre movie-viewing, but there's nothing playing (that I haven't already seen) at the local multiplexes that I'd watch for free, let alone pay for. I want to see Hotel Rwanda, but apparently I have to go to the art house theaters (?!) to do so. Sideways has disappeared too.

Assault on Precinct 13 holds a glimmer of promise on the strength of its cast, but the mere fact it's being released in January speaks volumes. Either it's a bold marketing ploy a la "Silence of the Lambs", or it's shite. The odds favor the latter.

I've been living off BBC documentaries and comedies rented from the local library. THAT's how desperate this life-long movie buff is!

I do pride myself on not sinking to the level of watching Elektra, as neither skin tight leather nor lesbian kisses blow my hair back.

What type of Dyson is it? Don't they make one for pet hair called The Animal?  :D

Yes, the Dyson DC07, which is what I bought. A stunningly ugly purple thing, but it's the first household appliance I've ever actually gotten excited about

Selkie, you have all these pets and a white carpet! You must have hoovered a lot! Either that or you could only get white animals!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The greyhounds have been black brindle, dark blue, black particolor, and brindle particolor. The Ibizan hounds were red. The cat is a mostly colored calico. The only light colored animals that have lived here were the cream particolor whippet and the blue point Birman cat. Worse yet, the white carpet is at the back door of the house where the animals go in and out of the yard, and the current pack of two hounds and one cat is nothing compared to the historic levels (five hounds and two cats). I've learned to live with increasingly "off" shades of white, until now!

I'm just thankful we don't let the macaw loose in the house ... or the dove ... or the turtles ... or the tortoise ... or the snake ... or the frogs ... or any of the lizards (at least, deliberately - the escapee who mocked me on a daily basis has been recaptured) ... or ... you get the picture! The living room (tile floor) is so full of plants that I've threatened just to plant dirt on the floor and be done with it. Nowadays it's much more overgrown than what you can see in this picture but you get the idea.

Does it pick up cat hair?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Like a dream! Hound hair too. It's a white carpet, so everything shows. After a simple once-over it looked like I had bought a new one. I'm a believer now.

Pooka:

I LOVE MY NEW DYSON

That is all.

It's just the Antipodean petshops you need to worry about, Red. We don't have quite so many stupidly venomous creatures lurking around our neck of the woods.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! Mark & Red, you crack me up. Think staying out of pet shops will keep you safe? Ha ha ha ha ha! These incidents all occurred at wholesale establishments not open to the public. Most of the time, the deadly creatures wind up in the hands of retailers who don't take them to their shops. Oh no. They take them home....

All of this reminded me of one of the scariest deadly creature incidents of all! This one's particularly good...

It's quite common for a wholesaler to keep invertebrates in specially designed systems. Imagine a shallow box, with mesh dividers that breaks the box up into compartments. No top at all, to maximize transmission of oxygen at the tank surface. For the most part, the system works quite well. Ffrom time to time a snail might climb over one of the dividers into a neighboring compartment, but since most marine invertebrates are sedentary creatures, for the most part everyone stays where they're put.

The biggest exception to this rule is the octopus. Octopuses are the Houdinis of hte marine world, and they are immensely, AMAZINGLY strong for their size. Even a very small one might require a keeper to load the top of the tank with bricks to prevent an escape. Even then, they regularly get out of their tanks.

Invertebrates are my special loves, so I always made a beeline for the invert tanks at the other major wholesaler in town whenever we went. (I mention this is a different establishment lest you think the one mentioned above was somehow aberrant in its restraint of the animals). As I'm looking down into the tank, I happen to notice a small octopus climbing from one compartment into another - distressingly close to my hand. "Distressingly" because, as much as I adore octopuses, there's no mistaking a Blue Ring Octopus for anything else - and I DO have SOME limits as to what I'll keep.

I leaned over to my father and, awestruck, said something insightful like "Look! A Blue Ring Octopus!" He casually replied "Do you want me to buy it for you?" apparently unaware that this was a rather, um, "special" species of octopus. I gingerly steered him toward another part of the store, and never did hear what became of the beast.

Then there was the electric eel incident at yet another wholesaler... but I'll save that one for another day.

Keeyah, "Cabbage" is lovely. Is he named for his diet, perchance? Not many people are successful at keeping large Hypostamus alive for any length of time, and I tip my hat to you. 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-)

[Ahnuld] You ah wahn ugly muddafukka [/Ahnuld]

 

Just fuckin' around. That is an amazing fish. Also amazing that you raised one.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Funny story about how I got him, too. I had wanted one ever since I was a little kid (another tale in and of itself) but absolutely no importer ever deliberately transports one. They're perfectly legal to keep, but their spines can puncture the bags they (and the other fish) are transported in and kill an entire boxload. They have to be kept isolated from other fish and invertebrates lest they eat them. And, of course, no sane individual would want to keep one anyway. Even the public aquaria generally don't mess with them.

However, occasionally, just occasionally, one of the smaller scorpionfish will get packed and shipped. Importers pay shipping by the box, not the fish, so often times "trash" fish get packed by the exporter to pad out an order. Our marine supplier loved when I would come, because I would take all their scorpionfish. They'd just hand me the net and tell me to "go get it" because these people, who routinely dealt in cone snails, woebbegong sharks, and other nasties, were scared to death of these itty bitty scorpionfish. (Based on what I understand, unless one were allergic to the venom, the pain from the sting might make you wish you'd lose the affected limb, but at the end of the day you'd probably retain all your digits. True stonefish are much, much worse). I had had a standing order with them for years for a stonefish, which they refused even to ask their family in the Philippines to try to catch for me. Mind you, these are the people who had a banded sea snake running around loose in their warehouse for DAYS, and who needed me to explain (a) the venom of sea snakes as a group is more deadly than that of land cobras, and (b) banded sea snakes are perfectly capable on land for extended periods of time, so next time they caught it (!) they'd be wise to put a top on the cage. But I digress...

So one day our pet store gets a call from a desperate fish keeper. He has a ten inch long stonefish he's had for five years, and which his girlfriend has convinced him to get rid of in favor of "pretty" fish. He was perfectly happy to give it away, but (very wisely) decided that he would give it only to a store that understood what they were taking on. He found quite a few stores that said "I don't know what it is, but sure I'll take it." He found quite a few more that said "I know exactly what it is, and there's no way in hell I'll take it." He made it all the way to "V" in the Chicago phone directory before he found us! And that's how Buddy came to live with me. I miss him so much.

I love the sound of your creature collection Selkie.

Trust me, there are many more. One of the privileges of growing up in a multi-generation pet store family was access to lost of weird creatures. I feel such an affinity for Hagrid in the Harry Potter books!

I used to have a catfish called Spike, he was 1 foot long. Beautiful fish but he would bite me when he got the chance. We fed him worms! Got a smaller catfish now called Cabbage.

OOo, you're my kind of fishkeeper. I used to "collect", for lack of a better term, African and South American catfishes. Great family of fishes to keep as pets. Surprised yours would bite you though; most of mine were quite tame. (The stingray, on the other hand ... )

The best pet catfish I've ever met was a several foot long South American Red Tailed Catfish owned by our biggest wholesale supplier. Tame as a kitten, would "come" when called, and altogether a wonderful beast. At the time, they weren't being imported at all so he was a novelty even on that level.

I feed my snails babyfood. Organic babyfood, nothing but the best for them. Hey I think I just found my eccentricity  :lol:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What kind of snails?! Sounds like fun.

Selkie, there's nothing eccentric about peanut butter & banana sandwiches. Try 'em with sultanas.

FINALLY! Someone who doesn't look at me like I've sprouted antennae when I say that! The other ones that flip people out are the peanut butter in my chocolate covered vanilla ice cream, and the shirmp and pineapple chunks in my morning omelette. *I* think these are normal and tasty foods, but they tend to repulse other people.

What's with the seeds in your bottled water? Do they enhance the taste?

If I drank the seeds I would go blind and then die. Messily. They're in the bottled water in the fridge as part of an effort to germinate them. There's something vaguely sinister about having that much bottled death sitting next to the applesauce, baby food*, and yogurt.

* the baby food is for the lizards

My guess is that the idea behind this collection is for Vertigo to have something that existing comics fans can give to girlfriends/family members/what have you. The selection of titles is probably a partial leader into some of the titles with better TPB programs, and also as an enticement for casual fans of a single of those titles. E.g., someone who goes into the shop only for, say, Transmet. Walk into the shop, see the Transmet name, see the price point, and view the volume as a "If you like this, try ... " situation. Why no Fables or Preacher, I don't understand.

The use of Death is, I suspect, a roundabout way of getting people into Sandman. If one's fixated on using only issue #1s - which does make sense - Sandman poses a problem, because issue #1 isn't particularly representative of the series as a whole.

I don't think the TPB is the worst idea in the world, but I don't expect it to be a big seller either. Hope I'm wrong, because anything to hook new readers (whether new to comics, or new to Vertigo) is inherently a Good Thing.

What's a stonefish?

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Meet Synanceia verrucosa

Pooka, I'm joining this thread late but wanted to join in the well wishing. Good luck, and may YOUR dream job work out better than mine did. :D

I'm sure that's very true, and I wouldn't want to sound patronising or arrogant (but I am, so that's the way it usually comes across  8-)  ). Obviously enough, all male opinions expressed in here are speculation at best. Feel free to correct us - it's the only way we'll learn...;)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All you did was give us "Rational, intelligant, and mature" women too much credit - and I'll happily take that to patronizing or arrogant any day 8-)

As I was puttering about with toxic chemicals today, I realized that I'm well on my way to becoming a card carrying member of the Eccentrics' Club. Besides reading comics (we'll take that as a given) what are yours? Major, minor, or somewhere in-between, let's hear about them.

A few of mine:

The bottled water currently in my refrigerator contains enough Mandrake, Black Hensbane, and Deadly Nightshade seeds to knock out half the town.

I once owned a 10" long pet stonefish named "Buddy."

I love eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches

What appears to be a large black log in one of my aquariums is actually a 20+ year old African lungfish called "Fish" that I raised from a hatchling.

I speak to my hounds, and expect them to answer. One-way conversations are a sign of madness.

It's yet another example of the craziness of popular media images of bodily perfection - rational, mature and intelligent women are able to discount the trend which suggests that hideous skeletal creatures are, in fact, beautiful women as the bullshit it clearly is, but young girls and more insecure women are given grotesquely distorted images and told that they are what they should be aspiring to. Is it any wonder we're messed up?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's a lot harder for rational, mature, and intelligent women to discount a lifetime of conditioning than you'd think it is. Believe me, many of us have had these attitudes so firmly ingrained that, while we recognize that they're distorted and screwed up, it's very difficult to deal with the emotional corrosion that results.

My own case is a pretty good example. My mother was an anorexic in her teens and twenties (96 - 98 pounds on a 5'7" frame) inspired in large part by the 1960's icon "Twiggy." When she actually gained some weight later in life - still under her medically expected weight, BTW - she became convinced she was "fat", and didn't want me to become fat.

By my teens, I was an active athlete, and even considered by my trainer a serious contender for the Olympic team a few years down the road. (Given that there were several current and former Olympians and international contenders training out of the same facility, I don't think she was blowing smoke up my skirt about that). And at that time when I had some significant muscle, and weighed just the slightest bit above the old cliche "100 pounds for the first five feet, then five pounds for each additional inch", I had to listen to her moan about how fat I was, and how huge my butt was, EVERY SINGLE DAY. And you know what? It worked. I believed her. The person I saw in the mirror was the person she conditioned me to see, not the person who was actually there. It wasn't until a few years ago that I ran across some of my old photos that I saw who I really was, and honestly, I'm still pretty damn bitter about the whole thing.

I didn't even get the worst such conditioning on the block. My mother's best friend was an RN who, by any standards was obese. She instilled in her daughter such a terror of being fat that she rarely ate, exercised hard after every meal, and wound up very short in height, the sickliest thin skeleton you can imagine, and was perpetually absent from school due to ill health. She wouldn't have looked out of place on an ad for hunger relief, but because her mom was a nurse, no one said a thing.

Incidentally, it's been well documented that "math phobia" is transmitted from mother to daughter in much the same way as what I've described above. It's not fathers who "teach" their daughters not to be good at math, it's their mothers. I read the synopsis of one of the research studies, but can't for the life of me Google up the name of the study., but it's out there.

I have one:

 

Why are so many women freaked out at the thought of having a big butt?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

YMMV depending on geographic area, but around here it's about the vilest insult one woman can inflict on another. Even "whore" isn't as vile, because whore implies you're having sex; big butt implies you're so ugly no man would ever sleep with you. I was amazed when my current Southern boyfriend preferred that I had a large butt! (I agree completely that most women's body image issues come from other women, not from men, BTW)

I'm convinced the vicious, hateful women draw on the images presented by MALE fashion designers, though. I swear the ideal woman from a clothing designer's perspective looks just like a man without the tackle, because clothes never seem to be designed to fit body curves. In fact, most of the time I wind up wearing men's clothes rather than women's, because they actually fit better - not to mention being better made AND cheaper. A designer could make a fortune selling men's "lounge pants" to women. Believe it or not, this most comfortable of clothing options isn't marketed to the distaffs.

Oh, Mark, I would have to say the guy who plays Said on Oz (Aemmon something or other) is one of the most desirable men I've ever seen.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm with you on that call, Pooka. Eamonn Walker is indeed a stunning man, and one we see far too little of on screen. Interpret that statement anyway you like...

I don't usually play the fantasy movie casting games, but I'd be first in line for him in the title role of a Black Panther film.

Charlie K, anyone who does think Willem DaFoe is an attractive man has (a) probably seen Wild at Heart, and (b) certainly hasn't seen The Reckoning. That man - or his stunt double - can do things with his body that just shouldn't be allowed.

My question, why do females get their haircut, then hate it so much they want to immeadiately get it done again :D?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

By law of averages, one of them has to get it right eventually. Hairdressers are, as a rule, incompetent dweebs incapable of understanding simple [insert native language for your country here]. It's almost always impossible to convince them that you want something in the vast middle ground between Cyndi Lauper and "Just Joined the Marine Corps." Hope springs eternal, and there's always this sliver of hope that the NEXT one will get it right. One more scalping, and I swear I'll shave it all off myself and save the bother.

Don't even get me started on ill-fitting clothing, shoes, etc....

Read. The Day Of The Triffids. Now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It was Little Shop of Horrors I was thinking of, but yeah, Day of the Triffids works, actually better than Little Shop does.

Triffids is a good read, then? Saw the movie ages ago, but never read it.

I've noticed that women don't usually find attractive the men I think are attractive. How do you all feel about Timothy Dalton? Peter Weller? James Spader? Michael Keaton?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Timothy Dalton - Nice.

Peter Weller - Not bad at all.

James Spader - Not bad.

Michael Keaton - You're kidding, right?

Consumed by a flesh-eating plant. Or a were-beast of a sufficiently carnivorous and impressive species (e.g., I don't want to be eaten by a were-sheep - that would just be embarassing).

Mark, glad to hear you're OK. Scary thing, that!