262 Books

    In my living room, shoved back in a corner next to the window, there is a shelf with 262 comic books on it. 

     Okay, so they're not all comic books. Some are sketchbooks, art collections, books of comic strips, and other anthologies me and my wife have collected, but for the moment it's 262 books. I counted them about 3 days ago, and I counted that I've actually read 152 of them cover to cover. So over the course of searching, buying, ordering and drooling over these books I've only read 58% of them. Barring one's I've had since I was a kid, I started gathering a big collection back in 2009; so over the course of 5 years, I've only read about half of what I've bought.

    Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with this, it just is. When you live in a town where you don't have a lot to do, you tend to splurge as much as you can on the things you like. We're always going to keep more books than we can possibly read around, that's the nature of books. Some of them I'll fully admit I'll probably never read. Fables is a great series, but I don't think I'l ever read them all (let alone buy them all), so I content leaving them for my wife to enjoy. It's a side effect of the current age, there's so many great artists putting out so much good stuff, that trying to absorb everything would drive you mad.

     On the opposite end, I have a lot of books that are terrible. I bought these knowing they were going to be terrible, but I spent good money anyways. I loved critiquing things for a while there and this was like fish in a barrel, but it wasn't good to do. Making fun of the Highlander comic is kicking a man while he's down and I don't need to be doing that anymore.

   So I'm changing my ways. I'm reading good books while I have them, and trying not to stare or obsess over stories as they come out (IT'S GONNA BE THE BEST THING SINCE SHAKESPEARE!) and try to read the small stories I already have. One of the one's I just read was Lucy Kinsey's Relish, which is a fantastic book if you've never taken a look. 

The Magic of the Movies

  Opening with a story. You're standing outside a magic shop. There's a man there who's showing off tricks to people. You get closer and notice that he has a deck of cards in his hand. He flips through them, showing that it's a perfectly normal deck, then has a little girl tell him where to stop and let's her take her card. She proudly shows off an ace of diamonds to the little crowd and slips it back into the deck. The man swiftly takes the deck, puts it in the girls hand  and snaps his fingers, and tells the girl to look through it. The girl gasps and drops the cards , spilling the deck.on the ground. You look over and see that almost ever card there is an ace of diamonds.
    I'd like not to view myself as a negative person. I guess we all like to see ourselves as positive, but after a visit from my brother, I've come to notice it more. I like to critique. A lot. I like to deconstruct what people like and see why they like it, and whether or not that's a good reason to like it. But what constitutes a good reason. I try to go into it with good intentions (don't go waste money on this movie, it's 80% likely to be total crap) but at the time I feel like a kill joy and even if my hunch is right, the person won't want to admit that that negativity was justified.
       Now, this is in the end my problem. It's not anyone elses issues to work out. Although I accredit it to watching a huge amount of critics that are usually quite snarky, they aren't ruining people's fun. I am. Yahtzee Croshaw isn't the one who no one wants to show a trailer to at work for fear of what he'll say. Because Yahtzee works from home.
   Although it's cliche, Iife's too short. Life's too short to keep harping on everyone else, and it's too short to worry about $10 at the movies. I don't want to keep vreaking things down, I just want to have fun. I feel like it's ages since I've watched something and just watched it, instead of looking at how they made it, what went on behind the scenes, be it movies, video games, or a TV show.
     I haven't lost myself in a world in what seems like forever. In the years of collecting facts about productions and game design, I've made it almost impossible to sink into a world. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking at things like this.
      Closing with a story. You're standing outside of a magic shop. A man stands outside doing tricks. You watch as the he pulls out a completely normal deck of cards, then riffles through them. You know that he's holding a Svengali deck and that the rest of the crowd is fooled. You see him flip through it in such a way that you don't notice all the duplicates. You know exactly how it's done, and you can appreciate the skill it takes,but  you'll never be as impressed as that little girl.

Kandor

     I love superhero comic books. I feel like I need to say that before I go any further, but I love them for everything they are. I love the high flying super heroes, the melodrama, and everything else. Well almost everything.

   Lets talk about Kandor. Kandor is a city in the Superman comics that was stolen from Krypton and shrunk down to the size of a bottle. Superman recovered it from the supervillian Brainiac, and since then he hasn't figured out a way to get the city back to normal size, and this is where the problem is.
   With superheroes, nothing is off limits. Just about everything has been figured out and is possible, and because of this, Kandor doesn't make sense. Nothing should be impossible for you, especially something as simple (for superheroes) as making something bigger than it is. Kandor is a symbol of Superman's failure, it's a humanizing factor that he's alone in the world, and the only surviving members of his race are tiny and vulnerable. The future of an entire race hedges on Superman figuring out this problem, and he can't do it. It's meant to show us that the Man of Steel isn't all powerful, he's not omniscient, he's vulnerable like the rest of us.
     All of this would be perfect if it wasn't for the fact that it's so easily solvable. Because the answer's so obvious, it breaks suspension of disbelief to have it left unsolved, but to solve the puzzle is to remove Kandor's purpose. Kandor doesn't function as a symbol if you make it bigger, it's just another place, another plot point. A couple of times in the comics they did make Kandor full sized, but it ended up as you would expect, important for a few issues, then gone and never spoken of again. It breaks the immersion of the story to leave it in, and it makes the city pointless if you solve it. Just something to think about.

Txting on Twitter

   I don't consider myself a great man by far. I barely consider myself a good man. But holy crap, reading the @forexposure_txt Twiitter feed, I'm feeling fan-freaking-tastic about myself.
    For Exposure takes samples from sites like.Craigslist and posts requests for artists/animators that are willing to work without pay ( or FOR EXPOSURE! Get it! Get it? Get- you get it). Now, some are normal humans, but some are so bad you reconsider activating your doomsday device.
   Example one, the creepy guy who clearly wants to skin you alive:

Female Friend Desperately Needed- No Pay. I can't pay you anything for your time but you can help me out with some projects.

Example two, the brick wall personality you wouldn't work with if they did pay you:

I need 100% control of the storyline, character development, etc I just need 100% control because I don't want my storyline to get ruined.

And my favorite, which I think speaks for itself:

looking for somebody to draw my webcomic that's based off my fanfiction.net story. I can't pay you, so if you want money , I'm sorry.

   This feed is full of scammers, creepers and people who don't know how to act around other human beings. People here will straight up ask for hours of work without batting an eyelash, and that's not okay. Asking a favor of a friend is one thing, asking a professional to design for you, then complain about the end result to their face is punching a gift horse in the mouth (eat it Mr Ed.)

  I understand that you want to see an idea come to fruition, and I understand that you're probably just getting by like the rest of us, so you don't have extra money to throw around, BUT NEITHER DOES THE BROKE GUY OR GIRL YOU'RE ASKING.

Cover Story

Among the shadier business practices in the world of comic books, from the refusal of artist royalties, to the abuse of the rabid collectors, comes the issues of covers. Covers were once a description of the events within, dramatic action and posing, the question of who did something and why. The have come to be nothing more than shiny candy bar wrappers to pry money away from unsuspecting innocents. The cover now has the grand finale ruined before you even open the book, in absolutely stunning detail. Would that detail reach the interior we would have a good product, but that would be to expensive for the corporate giants of Marvel and DC.

     Instead readers are treated to art that is simplistic, easy; leading to lazy,  incomplete and poorly colored pages. Cheap and quick artists tracing pictures to churn out another issue in order to keep the wheels turning. Quality is subservient to the almighty dollar, with companies burning out artists in order to make another quick buck. 

       Judging books by their cover has lined the pockets of the dishonest men and women who've set this machine in motion, with no signs of slowing down. Books are tightly sealed with bags and boards, nothing to help you choose besides cover art that has been proven to lie to the consumers time and again. But will consumers stop, protest against the companies who manipulate them like sheep? Or are you just going to buy it anyway?

Nintendo's Little Problem

   If you ask a person who considers themselves a retro gamer or a classic gamer what their favorite console is, you're likely to hear the word Nintendo somewhere in the response. It has become retro gaming's idol, either the NES or SNES have vast libraries of quality ties to show off, starring the first party likes of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. But. Among recent times it is the habit of the rambling games media to declare that Nintendo is passe. Mario is too old! If Nintindo doesn't change what they're doing, they're going to go out of business!

   FEH!

  Welcome my friends to the 1990's, where Nintendo is passe, Mario is too old and Sega is going to rule the world. Sonic is going to run the plumber into the ground and no one can stop him! Until someone did. Until Sony came out with the PS2 and destroyed the last console Sega put out, leaving Sonic to rot with terrible games and a stain on his reputation.
    Good ship Nintendo has weathered the storms my friends, they stand on failures past and present. The will survive this, like they have survived the rest. The last three consoles they introduce are massively sucessful, and you think they're gonna get hung up by the Wii U?
   When they stop making good games, that's when I'll stop buying them.