Random Thoughts 23

I know it's been almost two months without a post...



I'm a terrible blogger.



It's not that I haven't been writing stuff for this blog. It's that I can't finish what I do write. Or that I'm not satisfied with whatever I do finish to post it here. So I've committed myself to do something for this weekend...and here it is.



A few news items first:



The leaks of Thor, Cap, X-Men and Spidey set photos- These have to be a marketing ploy to "test the waters" and get the public, or rather the geek fanbase, used to the look of the costumes so when the movie hits less attention will be paid to the them. A sort of desensitizing campaign, if you will.



The Dark Knight Rises casting- The news here for me was not so much as who the actors were, but rather which character they would be portraying. I trust Nolan to take Bane back to his strategic mastermind criminal roots instead of having him be dumb muscle. I also noticed that Anne Hathaway is credited as playing Selina Kyle. I wonder if the exclusion of the Catwoman name is significant or a fake out.



Fredrick Wertham spins in his grave- This week both DC Comics and Archie Comics dropped the long standing regulatory (censoring) commission for their comics in favor of their own ratings system. The Comics Code Authority was created in the mid-1950's by Marvel, DC and Archie (as well as others) to avoid being shut down for corrupting young minds. While the movies developed a scaled ratings system comics were stuck with a pass or fail stamp. Literally having a comic without a CCA on the cover was verboten (anti-drug issues aside). Loosened in the 80's (what wasn't) it remained a part of the industry. Marvel bucked the system for it's own ratings in the early 2000's. Now that its two other major supporters are out...it will most likely die.



Digital River(dale)- Archie Comics announced that they will offer their comics online same day/date as at retail. I must say that Archie Comics is really impressing me as a company. To have the "married Archie" and "student that happens to be gay" story elements as well as the modernization steps with new ratings system and same day digital releases ends my perception of the company as an out of touch stale entity.



FF Tuesday?- Well it's been a few weeks since retailers have been allowed to get books shipped on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. This was done with the implicit understanding that books would not be for sale until the next day. Marvel is now testing this new deal by allowing early sales of Fantastic Four #587. They say it's to stave off the spoiler of which member of the Four dies, setting up the next arc and relaunch of the team. This is just a test to see if certain books can be marketed like this as being "early".



Holy E-footnotes, Batman!- I grew up loving the comic book tradition of referencing past issues of not only the same title but other titles where the events had some bearing on what was happening in the issue I was reading. This habit was slowly phased out during the early 2000's. I was surprised when Amazing Spider-Man #652 had something that reminded me of those footnotes. Referring readers to go to the Marvel.com online OHOTMU entry for the old and somewhat obscure villain the Looter. I wonder how many people were unfamiliar with him enough to check out that page.

So that's all for now..... Glad I got that done as I've been "busy" reading the DC Showcase Teen Titans and watching all the streaming Tom Baker Doctor Who I can through Netflix.

Hopefully I will have another post up next Mon.