The had a copy of the original Marvel Savage Sword of Conan #1. Price and condition weren’t too bad, so I picked it up.
I felt fortunate a few years ago to get Savage Sword of Conan #3 in a condition that WASN'T so good, because in good condition it probably would have been out of my price range. I wanted that issue in particular because it bridged the gap between "Black Colossus" and the issues of Conan the Barbarian that Roy Thomas wrote in the early 1990s.
This month, I sprang $70.90 to buy 27 issues from Mile High Comics. It's kind of weird - because for the last 40 years I've regarded myself as a bigger fan of DC than of Marvel - that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 27 issues I ordered was a Marvel comic. But they were of the four titles I wanted.
I mentioned each of those four titles in this thread lately. I told you earlier that I had 2 issues of Kitty Pryde and Wolverine. Now I have two more. I mentioned six months ago learning about the Magik limited series. Now I have all four issues.
And for years - ever since I first read Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle - I've been curious to read about Tony Stark's alcoholism relapse which led to him handing the reins to James Rhodes. I got 9 issues of Iron Man from that era.
And most of all, I got Alpha Flight. I mentioned earlier in this thread that I have - and recently re-read - the first issue and wanted to contine reading from there. But how many issues should I get? In July I was thinking of ordering and getting only 4 issues of Alpha Flight (and only 4 issues of Iron Man). Then I said "I won't feel content with so few issues!" So I put off ordering until this month, when I went nuts, daring to go all out and buy TWELVE consecutive issues of Alpha Flight! I felt nervous doing so. There's a strong possibility that after I read just a few issues I'll get bored of the series and regret buying so many. I guess that's the problem with ordering online: it's not feasible to buy one issue at a time, so I wind up committing. At least I qualified for free shipping this way. And now I have a lot of reading ahead of me.
(I should try to play that, if I can bring myself to play the piano again. But lately I've been feeling an aversion to doing so.)
I went 20 months without playing piano before I went back. Even when I went back to playing, the first piece I played wasn't classical, so I didn't post that news here. But then I played that same Bach Prelude myself.
Back in 2016, I first drafted the Top Ten list of my favorite novel series' of all time. Since then, I revised that list many times. I added two series' to the list, disqualified another one, and merged two items on the list into one. I promoted some series' to higher spots on the list, which obviously pushed other entries further down. But in the 7 years since I first wrote the list, I've never promoted anything all the way up to the #1 spot... until 2024. The new reigning champion is Dragonlance.
Oh, there will always be a place in my heart - and several places on my bookshelves - for the former #1 listing, L Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz and its 13 major sequels (The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, et al). I first finished that series back in my childhood - around 1981 - and it gave me a fascination for fantasy fiction that hasn't left me since, and it led me to so many other things, including, predictably, Dungeons & Dragons in 1983.
Yet oddly, I never read any D&D novels (apart from Endless Quest books) until 1996 when I got started with Dragonlance (or DL for short). I loved the Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlance Legends trilogies so much, I went on to buy and read dozens more DL novels over the next four years. And when Dragons of Summer Flame broke my addiction, that freed me to re-read the Chronicles and Legends and even some second-tier Dragonlance books, including Weasel's Luck, Flint the King, The Kinslayer Wars, and others.
And when I started the Chronicles a THIRD time, my timing happened to be perfect. I finished the first novel (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) and sought to move on from there in 2006, just my local public library made Dragons of the Dwarven Depths available, so I could fit it into its proper place in continuity between the first and second Chronicles books. This was no second-tier book; it was a rare gem, worthy of the original novels! I went on to insert Dwarven Depths between books 1 and 2 in my every subsequent reading.
Of course, not everyone liked it. This conversation in 2016, in which SmiloDan disrespected that novel, made me realize something two days later. (Here's a link to those two posts in which I realized it.) When I like some early novels in a series but not later ones, it's best to pretend that those later ones simply don't exist, particularly when I judge and rate the series.
And as I wrote those posts, I started thinking seriously about writing the list of my 10 favorite novel series' of all time.
And in case you read those posts and that business with the "biscuits" makes you wonder, I should mention that I refuted that point in this post.
But getting back on track, when I had difficulty deciding how to rate the series' in my Top Ten list, I felt the need for concrete criteria, so decided: the more times I voluntarily read a series, the higher it should rank on the list. That made sense... but what about when I read two series' the same number of times? To break the tie I needed a secondary criterion. After some thought, I came up with the tiebreaking rule: when comparing two series' that I read the same number of times, the higher-ranking one should be the one I first read more recently. The theory is that the longer ago I first discovered a series, the more time I had to re-read it, so the more chance it got.
Now I'll admit that last criterion can split hairs sometimes. For instance, I first read my #9 favorite series in 1984-1985. After finishing that, I first read my #8 favorite in 1985-1986. Should that measly one year - an accident of history - really make a difference? Or for another example, my #6 listing is a great, famous classic of science fiction. My #5 favorite is science fiction, but not a classic. Does it really deserve a higher ranking? But whenever I consider such examples, I wind up deciding that the results aren't so outrageous, so I stand by them.
And there could be no question of which entry reigned supreme. In 2018, when I finished my fifth reading of the Oz series and began my SIXTH (!), even though I didn't get very far into my sixth reading (because by that time, I just knew the story too well) Oz seemed untouchable.
Or did it? I kept getting the urge to read Dragonlance, and I just couldn't get through those second- and third-rate DL novels anymore, so I kept going back to the best ones. In 2022, I finished my fifth reading of the Dragonlance Chronicles / Dragonlance Legends sextet, and thought: but Dragons of the Dwarven Depths deserves a place in that series! So then when I kept getting that craving for DL again and again, I read Dwarven Depths for a fourth and fifth time. (I mentioned that in this post last year.)
And this year, I started my SIXTH reading of Autumn Twilight! I'm not very far into it, but still, I've officially read that series six-and-a-fraction times, just as with Oz. And this isn't even splitting hairs; I've been acquainted with Oz for well over a decade longer than my Dragonlance reading!
(In my system, when comparing the number of readings, I don't compute the exact fraction; a fraction is a fraction, whether it's one thousands, or 999 thousands, or anything in between.)
Whew! I congratulate anyone who got through that long ramble about numbers. It may seem weird that I went on for so long about that without mentioning any reasons WHY I like Dragonlance. But hey, what can I say about it that I haven't said already? For instance, there's this post,this post,this post,, this post,this post,this post,this post,this post,this post, and... well, many others.
You know, it's a funny thing about X-Men. Sometimes I try to emphasize the positive. Like... you mention #136, the cover picture of which is very famous, and was imitated so many times.
But... maybe it's the mood I'm in, but I feel like mentioning some rather less positive things about X-Men. Yes, it had many great ideas, but those ideas were mired in stories full of... less-great ideas. That famous cover of issue 136 we both mentioned advertised the death of Phoenix, yet she didn't really die until the NEXT issue. It made her actual death seem almost anti-climactic. And that was supposed to be the high point of the series!
Like I said, X-Men was chock full of good ideas. Consequently, other media were able to adapt that series well by distilling its best ideas into a more concentrated form. For instance, there were those seven wonderful X-Men movies, running from 2000 to 2019. Oh yes, I even liked that third movie X-Men: The Last Stand which so many people trash-talked. I defended it in conversations, such as this thread and this thread.
And the Dark Phoenix movie came up with some interesting twists on that story.
So yeah, the X-Men comic had some wonderful ideas. But readers have to wade through a lot of unconvincing and poorly explained stories to mine those ideas. In recent months - probably due in large part to this thread - I kept feeling a desire to read those stories, so I would read an issue, or a few, before getting bored and giving up until the next time I had such a whim. In that way, in recent months, I read issues 145-154. Sure, Chris Claremont could write with AUTHORITY. That is, when he wrote about the X-Men, he convinced me that X-Men history happened the way he wrote it. Many later X-Men comic book writers lacked that ability. But Claremont failed to explain so many of his ideas, which he sometimes could have done very easily!
Ah, Harlan Ellison! Although I found most of his stories that I read to be too weird for me, I take exception to a certain one of them. When I sought out a post-apocalyptic story, I couldn't find one - in prose, anyway - that I liked better than A Boy and His Dog. I read that one twice (although I never saw the movie).
And there's another story which I thought could have been written better, but I love its dramatic title: "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream".
My goodness. I should think that even if I collected a lot of old, valuable comics I would know whether I had Conan the Barbarian #1.
Granted, back when I was ordering a lot of Conan comics, I did order a copy of Conan Saga #40, having forgotten that I already had one. But in that situation, I had read the short story Legions of the Dead by L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. What with my chasing down a big, complicated web of Roy Thomas' Conan stories, I don't blame myself for having forgotten getting the Marvel version.
But #1 of the series that started it all? I think I would have remembered.
Actually, earlier in this very thread, I commented that I had forgotten having gotten a few issues of some X-related titles.
But... a #1 issue, costing... what, hundreds of dollars?
I'm fortunate enough to have X-Men Visionaries 2: The Neal Adams Collection which reprints X-Men 56-63 and 65. There's a cliche about making computers fail with logical paradoxes and like that. But convincing those computers to fly into the sun? I can't think of any other examples of THAT.
I vaguely remember seeing - decades ago - a sketch in which Ed McMahon interviews a character - played by Johnny Carson - who was competing in a Nude Bowling tournament. I hoped to find that sketch on YouTube and watch it, but I didn't find it there. I only found still pictures, such as this one.
The only bit of dialog I remember is McMahon asking "What is the advantage of bowling in the nude?" Johnny's character replies "If you get a hernia, you'll know right away."
Why can't you just make up stats if you want to use a creature in your game?
Heh. I was tempted to ask the same question, but then I realized something. I generally run low-level games, so my conversions were relatively easy, such as Tasloi.
I remember shortly after PFRPG 1e came out, I spent some time converting The Root of All Evil to it. By the time I ran that module a second time, two years later, most of those monsters I had converted had PFRPG stats posted on the internet, making my work worthless. But even before those stats were posted, most of those were low-level monsters. The biggest exception by far was the Guardian Familiar which was CR 9.
The same goes for Night's Dark Terror. By the time I ran it in PFRPG 1e, most of that stuff was on the net. What I did have to convert, such as Hutaakans and Traldar, had low CRs. Again, the biggest exception by far was CR 9 (the Kartoeba).
But on this thread people are discussing Kaiju, oni, and demigods. That's high-level stuff that I feel no desire even to attempt.
But with the smaller CR range... well, yeah, I do wonder why some people can't write up stats themselves. I must have converted dozens of monsters to D&D 3.0 to get stat blocks with low CRs.
Yes, The Silver Chair by C S Lewis has a Marsh-wiggle that joins the party.
I don't know if they'd make such an attractive option for PCs, though. They could get a +2 bonus against enchantment spells and effects. They might get a +2 bonus to Swim checks... and maybe to Survival checks made in swamps and like that. Well, maybe their webbed feet could give them "Stability" like dwarves have? But other than that, I don't recall any racial traits all that different from those of humans.
But then again, I haven't read the Narnia books in many years either. Maybe someone who remembers that book better might suggest some more racial traits to make the race a bit better.
Yeah, a few months ago, on this thread, I mentioned reading my friend's comics back in the 1990s, including many of his old Batman issues. I neglected to mention that what drove me at that time to read Batman was Knightfall, Knightquest, and KnightsEnd. I started with earlier issues than that, in case it gave me a feel for the background, but reading that Bane / Jean-Paul Valley story was my goal. And I surpassed that goal; I must have kept reading for a while after KnightsEnd because I remember reading the story where Bruce persuades Alfred to come back.
I'm finally reading a book which I first wanted - badly - to read over 30 years ago.
Back in the twentieth century, I was a big Doctor Who fan. To this day, I've never been crazier about any other TV show. And I wasn't content only to watch; for those times when I couldn't watch TV or video, I collected over 100 novelizations of the original Doctor Who television serials and read all of those that I got. I read the vast majority of them many, many times, in fact. Terrance Dicks wrote over a third of those that I got (and still have). I liked the way Dicks stayed faithful to the original stories, providing the closest thing I could get to watching the original without actually watching TV/video. It seemed to me like only occasionally would he deviate slightly from the original script (sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse).
And more than any of the other Doctor Who books, I wanted to collect novelizations of the missing stories. Many Doctor Who serials (that is, multi-episode stories, each one of which would typically have one corresponding novelization) from the 1960s were missing some of its episodes, the British Broadcasting Corporation having purged them. And my State's public TV station did not show any Doctor Who serial that was missing any episodes (with the exception of Invasion of the Dinosaurs). So the best way to find out about what happened in those stories was the novelizations. And there was just one missing story whose novelization I couldn't find at any of my local stores: The Abominable Snowmen. I tried asking and writing to people, looking for some way to order it by mail, but nothing worked out. It was especially frustrating as I read The Web of Fear multiple times; I generally avoid reading a sequel before the original.
Also, in VHS format, I got a hold of the surviving episodes of the serials I didn't see on TV. At least, I got all of those episodes I COULD get on VHS at the time. That included episode 2 of The Abominable Snowmen. But all I could get for the other 5 episodes was a brief, vague summary that didn't make for fun reading.
After about a decade, I grew tired of Doctor Who and stopped reading and watching it. About a decade after that, I grew un-tired enough to read a few of my old novelizations. By that time, I had started ordering old books through Amazon from third-party sellers. But whenever I looked for The Abominable Snowmen, I only found copies being offered for insanely high prices. I thought that maybe they were rare by that time, and I despaired of ever getting a copy.
Later, I started getting a craving to see - or read the novelization of - The Sunmakers, which was in the minority group of those Doctor Who novelizations (of the 1963-1989 series) that I had never gotten. But again, when I looked on Amazon, I found only prohibitively expensive copies.
But later still, I heard about ThriftBooks.com, from which, last year, I ordered The Sunmakers as novelized by Terrance Dicks. I figured: Great! Dicks always stays true to the original!
Well, maybe not. Granted, I haven't seen the TV serial in roughly 30 years, but as I read the book, I felt pretty sure that the dialogue had many differences between the TV serial and the book. I seem to remember more eloquent lines in the televised version. I still had fun reading it, especially because I had forgotten a lot of the plot points and action scenes. But I can't feel certain that the plot and action are exactly the same as in the original, since I know that the dialogue isn't.
This year, I finally got Dicks' novelization of The Abominable Snowmen from AbeBooks.com! Again, thank you Aberzombie for telling me about that site. I feel fortunate to get this opportunity to read it, after all these years. But while I read the part that adapts the second episode, I felt certain that the dialogue in the novel is different from the televised version, even more so than in The Sunmakers. And I also felt pretty sure that the action happened a little differently. Maybe Dicks was drawing from the original script. Maybe the director, or someone, changed the televised version to make it fit the show's limited budget. Maybe the differences in the book are a GOOD thing.
In any case, I'm glad of the chance to read it at all.
It seems like anyone who's ever studied classical piano with any degree of seriousness has learned at least one of Clementi's piano sonatinas. On this thread, I've posted my own performances of some of those. Their simplicity can make them so accessible both to performers and to listeners.
It can be easy to forget that Clementi wrote a lot of virtuosic music as well. I recently discovered the third movement of his Piano Sonata Op 8 No 1. That piece has surprising - almost Beethovenian - intensity.
Speaking of intensity, I've once again found that a Prelude from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier - but not its Fugue - has grabbed me. This time it's the G-Sharp Minor one from Book 2. I've heard other recordings of it, but never with that much intensity. It reminded me of when I played this Prelude with that same kind of emotion. Once again, I could have fixed the link to play only the Prelude and stop before the Fugue - at around 4:02 - but what the heck. If you liked the Prelude, maybe you might want to give the Fugue a chance, even though I don't particularly recommend it.
I feel compelled to share a few personal notes. I remember, during my childhood and teens in the 1980s, listening to my father's PDQ Bach records. Also, my father took my brother and me to some PDQ Bach concerts.
In the 2010s, long after I had thrown away my record collection, when my father was moving away, my brother and I were going through some of his belongings to decide what to keep and what to throw away. This included some of his old records. I didn't even have a turntable at the time, so I didn't feel inclined to take many records, but somehow, I felt compelled to keep a few of them, including The Intimate PDQ Bach.
Later, I got a turntable, and - 3 years ago - feeling surprised that The Intimate PDQ Bach wasn't up on YouTube, I recorded it and uploaded it myself: Link
As with many of my efforts on the internet, my work later proved redundant, as someone else posted the record there as well: Link
But my involvement - however limited and superfluous - led to one thing. On this page...
Ah, who can forget a story with a title like "Professor Xavier is a Jerk!"?
And you got the first appearance of Nathan Summers; in fact, he was BORN in #201. Sweet! That would make for a good prelude to X-Factor.
Also sweet is the first issue about Genosha, #235. I think I recall you mentioning on this thread some time ago that you got the SECOND issue of that story.
Years ago, when I was high on my Conan kick, I got Conan Saga issues 22 through 25* because they reprinted Roy Thomas' adaptation of Hour of the Dragon. The main reason I wanted that story was that first issue, in which Conan first met Zenobia, the one woman that Conan ever married, and thereby made the queen of Aquilonia. That first issue was definitely the high point of the story; the other 3 parts were kind of slow and dull, in my opinion.
And you went and bought the original printing of that first part? "Just for s$&ts and giggles"? I... sort of... envy you. I haven't bought anything in a comic book store in years; I found it much cheaper to buy comics online. Gone are the days when I just see a comic book on a shelf or in a bin and buy it on a whim. And you went and picked up Giant-Size Conan #1, just like that.
* And the following is more detail than I'd expect anyone to want to hear: I also got Conan Saga issues 26 and 27 because they reprinted Roy Thomas' adaptation of The Treasure of Tranicos, a story that I quoted on this very thread last year. I mention this because my getting those issues proved a stroke of luck; issue 27 reprinted the final page of Hour of the Dragon which was accidentally omitted from issue 25. That was the page in which Conan first announced his intention to free Zenobia and make her queen of Aquilonia.
I keep meaning to write about the book I'm currently reading, World War Z by Max Brooks, in which the (unnamed) "editor" travels around the world interviewing survivors of a global zombie apocalypse. I greatly enjoyed the first 200 pages (or thereabouts) of it.
One of the - many - reasons I dislike so many horror stories (such as Night of the Living Dead) is the way the heroes spend the story struggling to survive... and in the end die anyway. I mean... what's the point? They could just as easily have died right in the beginning and saved us the time it took to watch the movie or read the story. In World War Z, yes, many people die, but we hear the story recounted by the survivors.
Another reason I dislike such stories is their assumption that the armies of the world are useless. The officers make some pretty speeches, but in the end, it's up to individuals to form gangs and take the law into their own hands. And chaos ensues. In World War Z, yes, the military initially makes some foolish decisions. One chapter repeatedly emphasizes that point. But it provides details to make it plausible. And it certainly doesn't mean that the author may then conveniently forget that the military - let alone the whole government - exists! Civilization is temporarily defeated, but the governments of the world learn from their mistakes, roll with the changes, and make a recovery, albeit at a high price. And while I'm on the subject, the book also relates how the peoples and governments of different countries, based on different cultures with different mindsets, cope with the crisis in their different ways. Max Brooks understands these different cultures well enough - or at least has enough writing talent to fake that understanding - to present a holistic, worldly approach, when so many global-catastrophe stories gloss over that point.
But lately, I've been finding the book boring. One contributing reason is that I've grown jaded with the Zombie Apocalypse sub-genre altogether. Also, it's been a while since I read some surprise plot twist or food for thought.
But maybe another problem I've had with the book lately involves its format. The book is divided into phases of the war. So the "editor" interviews someone about how the interviewee survived ONE part of the disaster... but what about the rest? For instance, one chapter focuses on a character who has no practical survival skills because he had spent his life in cyberspace. The chapter emphasizes his physical ineptitude. All he had was the theoretical knowledge he had acquired from the internet. He seemed totally disconnected from reality - except for VIRTUAL reality - until the zombies came to his very door... literally! So okay, we hear how he survived the first three days after that, but how did he manage after those few days? Presumably we'll never hear the answer because this book never gives us more than one interview with any one person. The only clues we have are what tools he managed to collect during those few days, and some vague plans he made at the time.
In the following chapter, one character - Kondo - tells another - Tomonaga - that he, Tomonaga, was insane for thinking that the two of them, in isolation, could survive against millions of zombies. And Tomonaga replies with religious babble about the gods. Is that really supposed to explain their survival to the reader? Because that's how the chapter ends. Again, I doubt that the book, in the format it's in, will ever explain these characters' survival, so these stories seem unfinished.
And the next couple of chapters after that didn't satisfy me either. So I'm not sure how long I'll stick with this book before I put it aside and read something else instead. But even if I do put it down, I might pick it up again at a later date if I ever feel a craving for a zombie story again.
Well, I finished I Am Legend. Now my opinion of it is no higher than before.
I suppose I can understand why some people might like that ending, with Robert reflecting that he...
I Am Legend:
...became the terror, just as vampires had been the terror of humans when humans were dominant. But that kind of story doesn't appeal to me, and unlike Robert, I find no amusement in the concept. If I were Robert, I might have felt great regret in killing so many vampires, seeing as how they were the future of the human race. Before dying, I would have tried to console myself by thinking of the GOOD things I had accomplished in my time. Maybe I might have thought: I inspired love in Ruth; maybe I've influenced her in a way that will affect her life, and indirectly, the future of Vampire society. Or - if that's too vague - maybe my scientific discoveries might help society in a more concrete way. Or, if my experiences had really driven me to hate vampires so much that I refused to view them as people, then I might have reflected that I had done all I could to be a good husband and father, right up until the end. Hell, I might even have sought consolation in the thought that I had brought the DOG some love and comfort during its final weeks, if that was all I could think of. But no, Robert's greatest accomplishment - in his estimation - was becoming a monster?
Ugh! Pass!
And since two people have mentioned it, no, I've never seen any of the movie adaptations. And now that I've read the book, I would have no intention of ever seeing them, even if I had heard that they were excellent.
I picked up World War Z from where I had left off, and found myself enjoying it again. And now I'm reflecting - again - that I ought to write a post about THAT on this thread, one of these days.
It's been years since I read The Incredible Shrinking Man by the same author (and at least 5 of his short stories). I felt that book - although it had some good points - could have been written better. At that time, I heard that I Am Legend was his greatest work, but I didn't see the appeal of a vampire apocalypse story.
Years later, I watched Santa Clarita Diet, a silly comedy about zombies. It's arguably the only long-running video series that I watched in entirety TWICE; I liked it that much. Among other things, the heroes work to prevent a zombie plague from getting out of hand and (possibly, theoretically) starting an apocalypse.
That made me curious enough about the genre to make me watch George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (from 1968) and its first sequel, Dawn of the Dead (from 1978). I could go on and on about the weaknesses of those movies, but - after all these years of wondering what the big deal is - I began to understand the appeal of a zombie apocalypse story.
I figured there are so many zombie apocalypse stories out there, there must be some I would like better than those George Romero movies. So I sought out a few others. For instance, I started reading World War Z by Max Brooks, which I was greatly enjoying, and to which I should return soon. (I should also write a post about World War Z on this thread someday soon.) And one of these days I should read the comic book series The Walking Dead, and maybe look into a few other stories like that.
But I started reflecting. When I caught myself thinking that Night of the Living Dead started the whole sub-genre, I thought: Is that really so? Romero obviously must have been inspired by I Am Legend, which goes all the way back to 1954! Maybe I should read THAT to appreciate the sub-genre better.
Also, I was curious. The protagonist of I Am Legend is - as far as he knows - the only human left in a world where everyone has become a vampire. How would that work? How would the vampires feed, if there are practically no humans left? Would they kill and drink the blood of... other vampires? Or animals? Or what? If they kill other vampires, how would they be any more evil than a human who kills vampires? If they kill animals to survive, how would that make them any worse than us meat-eating humans?
So - although not even halfway through World War Z yet - I took an aside to read I Am Legend, which - like all the other Matheson works I've read or seen - has not terribly impressed me. The novel is too vague about what these vampires are like. Every now and then we get a brief flashback of the main character - Robert Neville - with his wife or friend. And I mean BRIEF. When Robert discovers that his wife, or whoever, is undead, we see only a split second of Robert having that revelation. Then the book goes on and on about how horrifying his experience felt. Why can't we SEE what these people are like when they're undead? I feel like the author gave us only the fuzziest picture because he couldn't figure out how to make it scary.
A lot of the time, the book goes on about Robert's feelings of loneliness or despair. Did Matheson really need vampires just to tell a story about that?! Sometimes Robert wonders what's the point of going on with his life, which certainly does nothing to dissuade me from wondering why I'm bothering to read about it. Just let those vampires kill each other! They can apparently do so without Robert's help.
And... I know that horror stories are generally very implausible, but come on! Robert is no biologist, but he just reads books about the subject and suddenly he can discover things that a world full of trained professionals never could? He just looks under a microscope and identifies the virus? How could he know which of the many viruses around is the culprit? And that nonsense isn't even necessary to get the plot moving! Even if it were, the author could easily have written that some scientists had managed to make some discoveries, the results of which got published in newspapers that made it to the public libraries during the final days before the human race went kaput. Like The Incredible Shrinking Man, this book could have been written better.
Now I just want to finish this book already so I can go back to World War Z.
I obviously needn't tell anyone what fictitious story that resembles. Dorothy even "felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle." And she was also asleep when found... or at least, when her HOUSE was found.
I read one book that collected science fiction stories that included "Sideways in Time" and another book that collected science fiction stories that included "A Logic Named Joe". But I never found a source that included both and I never realized that those stories had the same author. (I have a bad memory for names.)
I haven't read any X-Men stories of the last 10 years. Greylurker's comment made me curious so I just looked up Nightcrawler's latest parentage story on a couple of websites. I agree: it is a bit Wow.
Twenty-some years ago, when my interest in X-Men was waning and I stopped (or perhaps planned soon to stop) reading my friend's collection, I got the first 3 Essential X-Men paperbacks. That third paperback included King-Size Annuals 3 through 5. I didn't remember reading those in my friend's collection, and I'm guessing that he didn't have them. So at home I got to read King-Size Annuals 3 and 4, but did I read 5? I don't recall that I did.
Anyway, in King-Size Annual 3, Arkon...
X-Men King-Size Annual #3:
...captures Storm and gets her to help his world.
Although I don't plan to read #5 any time soon, I'm now looking at the final page of it, where I see that Arkon...
X-Men King-Size Annual #5:
...and Storm show their attraction to one another. They even share a kiss. But they clearly acknowledge that they could never make that relationship work.
Read Larry Niven's "Unfinished Story #1". It will tell you the *real* origin of Maxwell's Demon. :-)
In one of my all-time favorite novels, Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy, the main character summons Maxwell's Demon to freeze water in the thumb of a glove (at the expense of heating up the water in the rest of the glove).
No, I did not know. I vaguely remember reading Uncanny X-Men back in the twentieth century and having no idea where this Longshot character came from. I never would have guessed that he had had his own miniseries, let alone that it had his first appearance.
Well, I don't care so much about special effects; that's not my motive for watching movies. I'm more interested - when watching movies in general - in the plot. What I think looks cool about that trailer is its implication that apes will hunt humans in ways reminiscent of the 1968 Planet of the Apes movie. And then - in 0:50 through 0:52 - it looks like Cornelius - or somebody - finds one escaped human and takes pity on her, and even...
Dare I say it? The look on his face suggests that he's sexually attracted to her.
Well, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm projecting. She DOES look hot, after all.
Still, although I've never seen The Shape of Water, I've gotten the impression that interspecies romances are no longer off-limits in movies. I do wonder.
In any case, 1:03 through 1:07 implies that Cornelius would help her. What will come of that? Will Cornelius have to defy ape society and run away? Will he have friends to join him, as the trailer implies?
What I find fascinating about all of this is that although the plot seems similar to the 1968 movie, the twist is that we'll be seeing it more from the apes' point of view.
It wasn't so long ago that I watched the Andy Serkis ones on DVD, so I got curious about what the next one would be like.
(For that matter, it wasn't TOO long ago that I saw the ORIGINAL five movies, and read the novel that started it all. I never saw the 2001 movie, though, except a few scenes here and there.)
And once, at work, I was designing a graphical screen and wondered why one control on it wasn't appearing. My office mate knew next to nothing about that graphics tool, and I was consulting with a different co-worker about what could possibly have caused the problem. After we both pondered the question, I suddenly realized that I was being foolish; I had hid the control myself. I loudly exclaimed "IT'S BECAUSE I MADE IT INVISIBLE!!!"
My office mate found this funny; it sounded as if I were playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I'm now very curious to know the context of that quote. Why did someone ask?
Good question. I was afraid to ask.
Once again, I feel like doing some rambling of my own. I remember back in 2005 when I made my last attempt at writing a novel. One of the main point-of-view characters was Alila, a female centaur living in a centaur society. Sometimes I referred to a centaur's "hearts" or "upper-heart" to imply that centaurs had one heart in the place where humans keep theirs and one where horses keep theirs. Or I might indicate a centaur's irritation by indicating that her tail was swishing despite the absence of flies. Okay, I'm drifting off the subject of anatomy here.
The book was coming out bad, and not the way I had envisioned it. About 70,000 words into the thing, I quit in disgust. But had I continued, I was planning one scene where someone, astonished to discover that centaurs were real, would ask Alila curious questions about her species. When he would ask her whether centaurs nurse their young as humans do or as horses do, she would growl, intimidating him into stopping his questions.
I remember reading my friend's comics back in the 1990s, including many of his old Batman issues. His earliest of those issues showed Jason Todd trying to help Nocturna - who had been stabbed - to escape in a balloon. We don't know whether she died, and I would assume that she did, because we never see that version of the character again. It was the first time I saw Nocturna (although I had heard mention of her in other books such as The New Teen Titans). I got curious about the character, so I bought what I thought were her first two appearances in Batman #363 and Detective Comics #530.
But a week ago, when your mention that era of Batman made me think back to those issues, I looked it up and discovered that no, Nocturna's first appearance was in Detective Comics #529. D'oh!
I got a couple of big surprises this weekend. But to set up the context for those, I should reprise a few points from earlier in this thread.
Two months ago, Aberzombie mentioned getting a lot of issues of The Uncanny X-Men from the 1980s, including #160. I waxed nostalgic, reminiscing about how, back in the 1990s, I used to visit a friend regularly and read his old X-Men material. I cited #160 in particular as the issue where Illyana Rasputin spent 7 years in Otherplace, hence aging 7 years, while only seconds seemed to go by on Earth.
Last month, the Kitty Pride and Wolverine limited series also came up on this thread. Reading about that stuff made me curious to read the 2 issues that I have of that title. I remarked on my surprise that I had no memory of reading one of them previously. It seemed ridiculous that I would buy an issue without reading it, but I can't imagine not remembering anything from it either, even if I should have read it over 20 years ago.
Anyway, I felt intrigued enough to add the remaining issues of Kitty Pride and Wolverine to my wishlist (meaning that maybe one of these months I'll order something from Mile High Comics or Lone Star Comics, and add a few issues of that series to my order, once I'm paying for shipping anyway). And I thought: While I'm at it, what about other X-titles of that era? For instance, I have the first 3 of the 4 issues of Beauty and the Beast (starring Dazzler and the Beast from X-Men). Maybe I should complete my collection and find out what happens.
On Friday, after work, with such thoughts in mind, I dug out the bag containing my issues of Beauty and the Beast, so easily accessible from my bookcase. And in that bag I found... ALL FOUR ISSUES!!!
This weekend I read the whole limited series. I had memories from the first 3 issues, but none whatsoever from the fourth!
Could I, twenty-some years ago, have gotten some issues (one of Kitty Pride and Wolverine and one of Beauty and the Beast) and forgotten about them to the point where I forgot even to read them? How could that have happened?!?
Anyway, I began to wonder what other X-Titles might interest me. I noticed a few about whose existence I had never known back in the 20th century, like the Magik limited series and the Iceman limited series.
Also this past weekend, I happened to run into that same friend, from whose X-Men collection I had so greatly benefitted decades ago. I brought up Magik and he surprised me by saying that series described what happened to Illyana during those 7 "lost" years. That sounds intriguing!
I didn't bring up Iceman though. I'm not aware that anything interesting happened in that limited series. For that matter, I never thought Iceman was an interesting character outside of the movies.
I had originally intended to begin this post differently, but it's funny that Aberzombie recently brought up The Plague of the Zombies. I dislike horror movies in general, for several reasons, not the least of which is that I see no appeal in being frightened out of my wits. The real world is scary enough. So I have no intention of ever watching, say, Night of the Living Dead, but I acknowledge that movie's importance in forming the popular image of zombies, used in stories that I've enjoyed. Because some people have used those cliches to write some other kinds of stories... like FUNNY stories that made me laugh, such as Santa Clarita Diet. Yes, even murderous, flesh-eating ghouls can be funny.
I mean... I read and watched SOME horror stories. For instance, I read Bram's Stoker's Dracula and saw one of the movie adaptations of it, but one nifty thing about the popular vampire mythos is that it opens the door to so many FUNNY stories on the subject.
And that brings me to the topic I REALLY wanted to discuss here, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
For many years, I wanted to watch that show, but I wasn't in a position to watch much video. When I did have some leisure time, I could generally only read. So I tried to seek out a novel that imitated Buffy's show. But those imitations had problems. Most of them weren't even SUPPOSED to be funny. What was worse - and I remember griping about the problem on these boards, years ago - was that most of the heroines were pathetic. "Help me, friends! Save me from those scary vampires; I'm helpless against them!" Reading that stuff, I realized that one of the appeals of Buffy was that she was a strong, tough, kick-butt vampire slayer, and few imitators captured that.
Well, I'll admit to one major exception: Blood Song by Cat Adams. But I couldn't get far into the first sequel, Siren Song, because after a while that one got into the mundane day-to-day details of the business the heroine was running, which got boring.
The bottom line was that there was no substitute for Buffy. And I expected that the vast majority of the Buffy books and comics assumed at least some familiarity with the show. And my video-watching habits were such that it typically took me a week to get through one movie. Forget about watching 144 episodes of an hour-slot show!
But then in 2019, my life changed. In 2020, I found I was able to watch a lot more video. So I started on Buffy. And this year, I finally finished the show!
To me, it was quite an accomplishment. I've never completed such a big video-watching project before. And now I'm reaping the rewards! During those times when I may read for entertainment but not watch video - because such times still exist in my schedule - I'm free to read Buffy novels and comics.
My first thought - after finishing the 7 seasons of the show - was to read the "Season 8" comic series. And in fact, I HAVE ordered the first volume of the trade paperbacks which reprint that series. But as I was browsing those Buffy trade paperbacks looking for that stuff, I happened to find something that I bought first, and read over the weekend: the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Volume 1. That Omnibus series compiles Dark Horse's original 1998-2003 Buffy comic book series... but in chronological order.
What most made me want it was that it told the story of the 1992 Buffy movie as Joss Whedon intended it. Well, I was disappointed to find that version wasn't so different from the actual movie after all (at least in my view). But that volume had some other interesting stuff, like the reason Pike left.
But without a doubt, my favorite part of the volume was "Slayer, Interrupted", which relates how Buffy's parents (before their divorce) had sent her to a mental institution (as she briefly mentioned in the episode "Normal Again"). One highly controversial design decision of these prequel issues was their inclusion of Dawn. Surely, she wasn't supposed to exist in the original timeline; the past got rewritten to include her. But clearly, the writers wanted Dawn, so why not? After all, that's how Buffy (and everyone) REMEMBERED the past.
So as I read the story, I pondered. In the comics, 10-year-old Dawn read Buffy's diary, which talked about being a slayer. Dawn then told her parents about this, which is why they had Buffy committed. As I read this, I frowned. It looked like Buffy would never have been committed if not for Dawn, so why did Buffy get committed in the ORIGINAL timeline? And for that matter, in the episode "Becoming, Part 2", why did Joyce act like the "vampire slayer" stuff was completely new to her, if she had had exposure to the idea from Buffy's diary?
And all of a sudden, an answer came to me. Maybe, in the original timeline (without Dawn) Buffy NEVER WAS COMMITTED! After all, she had never mentioned the matter until AFTER Dawn's arrival! I think one of the fun aspects of fantasy is its ability to make me think in ways I never would outside of a fantasy context.
Another cool part of "Slayer, Interrupted" was Giles' backstory of how he qualified to be Buffy's Watcher... but I've probably talked about that story for too long already.
One day, I'd like to read "A Stake to the Heart", Dark Horse's story of Buffy's reaction to her parents' divorce. I'd like to see how she learned to cope.
Ah, there are so many Buffy stories available to me, now that I know enough to get the references!
On a whim, I’d decided to look for some old Doctor Fate issues. Lo and behold! They had issue #1 of the the old DeMatteis and Giffen. I can remember seeing an issue of this miniseries (either #1 or #4) when it first came out. Couldn’t afford it at the time. I’ve wanted the series ever since. So now, after 36 years, I have the first issue.
It's funny that you should mention those two issues - #1 and #4. Those are the two issues of the miniseries that I have.
We’ll be replacing the current Paizo Store with a shiny new one.
I hear that people who try to buy physical products from paizo.com run into some bug such that the purchase doesn't get approved. That physical item gets a hold charged and the financial institution never approves it. Has anyone looked - or will anyone look - into that before "replacing the current Paizo Store with a shiny new one"?
I had a physical item shipped to me not long ago from Paizo without issue.
I am not an expert on such matters, but the above sounds to an average consumer like me like an authorization issue with one's bank.
Okay, I ordered something from Paizo.com and it arrived today. So maybe you're right.
Picked up some more old X-Men comics - #95 (when Thunderbird dies), #99 (first appearance of Black Tom Cassidy), and #120 (I think the first of Alpha Flight, as a cameo).
Yeah, I touched on the subject in this thread last month, but maybe I should provide a few more details.
The first mention of Alpha Flight was in X-Men #109 in which Vindicator (who, at the time, was only called "Weapon Alpha") made his first appearance and tried to capture Wolverine. When more X-Men joined the fight, Vindicator fled, thinking "...next time, to equalize the odds, I'll bring Alpha Flight with me." That's the first mention we hear of the name.
But as you say, Alpha Flight's first appearance was in X-Men #120-121.
Back in the 1990s, when my interest in X-Men comics was at its peak, I bought a few odd issues that my friend (whose collections I was reading at the time) didn't have. I wasn't an avid collector, but now and then I found an issue in a comic book store or a flea market that grabbed my attention. I still have those odd issues, including issues 2 and 5 of the 6-issue Kitty Pride and Wolverine limited series. After I read mention of that limited series in this thread, I got curious about things I didn't remember from it. So just today, I re-read those 2 issues. To my surprise, I found that I had remembered NOTHING from #2 at all!
My guess is that I must have bought #5 early on, when I was a big X-Men fan, and read it multiple times. Maybe it was later, when my interest waned, that I bought #2. It seems too incredible that I would have bought it without reading it at all, so maybe I read it once, but only lightly and with little attention.
Yeah, that's why I got a lot of "Chronicles of Conan" trade paperbacks. (Dark Horse printed them, but they're reprints of the original Marvel series.) Without "Chronicles of Conan", collecting all those old stories would have been quite impossible for my budget!
On this thread (and elsewhere on these forums) I've talked about my favorite Conan writer, Roy Thomas. I must have collected hundreds of the Conan stories he wrote for Marvel Comics.
I'm not so much a fan of Robert E Howard, Conan's creator, but because of Roy Thomas, I read most of Howard's Conan prose stories to get an appreciation of the origin of the character. And one of the few Conan prose stories that I liked enough to read twice was "People of the Black Circle" which had a few interesting plot twists. But even that had its weaknesses.
One gripe I have about Howard is that unlike Thomas, Howard fails to give me a good sense of continuity. For instance, some Howard stories start Conan off as a leader of men very different from himself, but fail to explain how he achieved that position; Roy Thomas would fill in those details, making the story seem more real. Even in "People of the Black Circle" Howard starts Conan off as the Hetman of a tribe of Afghulis in Vendhya. The first time we see those Afghulis, they were quick to turn against Conan in distrust; how had they come to accept this foreigner as their leader in the first place? I never found any explanation of this, even in Roy Thomas' stories.
Until now.
I was in a public library, looking for some (unrelated) recreational reading material when I happened to find Conan the Gambler, a trade paperback reprinting some 2019 "Savage Sword of Conan" issues. And 2 of the 6 issues that volume reprints were written by Roy Thomas. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, Thomas is no longer the writer of the bulk of Marvel Conan stories, but he still does a good job writing what little of Conan he does write. So I took that out.
Even before the Roy Thomas material, I found those stories interesting. Even the blurb on the back cover made the stories intriguing (and that sort of thing usually fails to interest me). That "Conan the Gambler" story had some twists on the usual cliches, although the ending disappointed me.
But then I read Thomas' contribution, which had a weak spot or two, but I found it satisfying overall. After all these years, I finally got a story of how Conan became Hetman. And it wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have been.
