Panel of the Week

From Crossed: Psychopath #4:

Kastles do it again

It wasn't quite as dramatic as last time, but the Washington Kastles won their second championship on Sunday. They came alarmingly close to blowing it in the final set, as the St. Louis Aces forced overtime and kept winning points, which would have eventually led to a super tie-breaker. (Look, I'm not going to explain. Just Google "WTT rules.")

Finally, right around 1 a.m., just as it looked like Bobby Reynolds had won match point, this happened:

You're not likely to ever see Bill Belichick ever cost the Patriots a Super Bowl victory due to premature celebration, but that's almost what happened here.

And you know what? That's exactly why I'm really gotten into WTT the past couple of years. How can you not love a professional sport where the atmosphere is still laid back enough for something like this to happen, and for everyone--coach, players, announcers, fans--not to completely lose their shit, and indeed, see the humor in it?

(Granted, it's easy to say that now, since Reynolds finally won the match a couple of minutes later, but still.)

If you haven't gone to a Kastles match yet, you have almost an entire year to make sure your schedule is clear in July. Even if tennis isn't your thing, you should still go. In a city full of teams with sociopath owners, slumping $100 million free agents, perpetual underachievers, and playoff choke artists, wouldn't it be fun to root for a team that's none of those things?

Best and Worst Comic-Con Exclusives

Once again, nerds have made their annual pilgrimage to San Diego for Comic-Con. And even though, in theory, this is in my wheelhouse, I still don't get the appeal. As best I can tell, the entire process is an unpleasant experience. First, you have to get your badge, which usually sell out in lightning speed and involve at least one major computer glitch. Then you have to secure lodging, which also quickly sells out and can be pricey if you don't get the Comic-Con rate.

Then once you get there, you have to navigate through thousands upon thousands of con-goers, all of whom want to attend the same panels and get the same autographs you do. I wonder how many people started off this weekend with grand plans of attending the Avengers panel and getting autographs from the cast of Doctor Who, but ended up settling for the Warehouse 13 panel and meeting Erin Gray.

The one undeniably cool benefit of going to Comic-Con, though, is access to exclusives, some of which are pretty fucking awesome. Then there are others that might be pretty fucking awesome, but just to a small subset of people. Then there are some that aren't in any way pretty fucking awesome.

Pretty Fucking Awesome:

Stitched DVD signed by writer/director Garth Ennis - $15

The last time a noted comic book writer got it in his fool head that he should direct a movie, the result wasn't pretty. I have more faith in Garth Ennis's debut as a filmmaker, as A) This is just a short film, and B) It has zombies. It's amazingly hard to screw up a zombie movie. It happens sometimes. But it's not easy.


Duck Tales #1 variant cover - $10

I don't read Duck Tales. But goddammit, that's an awesome cover. Also, one of the better NES games.


TARDIS Bobblehead - $20

Generally speaking, I think there are too many bobbleheads in the world. Athletes are okay, but for some reason it really irks me that I can go to USA's website and order bobbleheads of the characters on Royal Pains. I'm willing to make an exception for something as cool as this, though. Added bonus: It makes the TARDIS sound! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Or something like that.


Rayola Plush (Grayscale Colorway) - $50

Aw. It's a sad plushie. A sad, colorless crayon plushie. Deep. If you color him in with a magic marker, does he stop crying?


Not Pretty Fucking Awesome:

Emilia Clarke Signed Trading Card - $100

As awesome as Game of Thrones is, and as hot as Emelia Clarke is on it, I couldn't see myself paying $1 for a card with her autograph on it, much less, $100. Even if she was naked and covered in dragons. Also, she looks better as a blonde.


Baby Doll Mini Bust - $65

Proudly display this in your home, and people will think that you're both a perv and have horrible taste in movies.


Green Lantern Movie Light-Up Bearbrick - $16.99

You don't use an iconic box design like the one from the '80s Super Powers line, arguably the best superhero action figures ever made, for a weird Japanese toy ("weird" and "Japanese toy" might be redundant) based on a crappy movie.


Stan Lee Limited Edition Package - $300

This is similar to the Stan Lee VIP package for the Baltimore Comic-Con, but this one comes with a bust of Stan Lee. Look, while I'm certainly not into every aspect of geek culture, I try to take a live-and-let-live approach, passing no judgment (well, okay, some judgment) on how my fellow collectors spend their time and money. But...if you proudly display a bust of Stan Lee in your home with the same reverence my grandmother used to display a picture of the baby Jesus, you probably deserve to have your lunch money stolen from you.

Panel of the Week

From Power Girl #26:

The great Netflix tantrum

One of the best and worst things about Twitter is that it gives you people's immediate and unfiltered reaction to just about anything. Sometimes, like when we found out bin Laden was dead, or the Women's World Cup team beat Brazil, it's great. Last week, when Netflix announced it was going to raise its subscription fees, it was not great. I've never seen a bigger collection of crybabies. People were threatening to cancel subscriptions, the company was being called things usually reserved for Bank of America and BP, and the Huffington Post quickly whipped up a feature that listed alternatives for anyone thinking about leaving Netflix.

You know what? Go ahead. Quit. Please. There's really no reason why there should be long waits for movies like Battle: Los Angeles or Red Riding Hood, but there are. Maybe with fewer of you, it won't take as long for me to receive two movies that have a combined Rotten Tomatoes rating of 46%. I've also noticed that sometimes the quality of streamed movies isn't as good as it probably should be. I can't say for certain that it's because so many Netflix users are clogging up the internet and slowing my movie down, but hey, it seems plausible.

We live in a culture where it's possible to get a ridiculous amount of content online cheaply, if not for free. iTunes put CD stores out of business. Amazon sells books at 40% off. Hulu claims to have been charging for its premium service for a year now, but I can still access pretty much everything I want to see for free, so I'm not sure what's going on there. And through the wonder of BitTorrent, you can find virtually anything you're looking for at no cost at all.

So the complete meltdown following Netflix's announcement; the sheer indignation at actually being asked to pay a higher--albeit, still extraordinarily fair--price for something great, was too much for me to take. From the online reaction, you'd think Netflix was going to start charging testicles.

I'm on the 3 DVDs at-a-time/streaming plan. As of September, that'll increase to $23.98. Honestly, I couldn't even tell you what I've been paying. Since it's been years since I signed up for Netflix and because I'm one of those fiscally irresponsible people who never really examines their monthly credit card statement and just takes it on faith that no one would want to steal their identity, my reaction was basically, "Wait, you mean Netflix doesn't already cost $23.98 a month?"

Let's break that $23.98 down. I'd say I get approximately 15 DVDs a month from Netflix. (Although I don't actually watch all of them. I tend to have a lot of low-budget horror movies in my queue, so I'll often pop one in and decide after two minutes that it's too shitty even for me. Seriously, how can a movie with a brilliant title like Cheerleader Autopsy be so bad?) That means I'll be paying $1.60 per rental. In a world of $9.50 matinees at a theater, that seems like a steal. And guess what? If I have a particularly slothful month, where I'm doing little more than watching and returning movies, that means I'm paying even less! So if I get fired tomorrow and spend a depressed month on my couch, I'd probably increase to something like 25 DVDs a month. Then I'm just paying 96 cents per film! At that price, it almost seems irresponsible to even have a job and/or ever leave your couch!

And of course, that's not even counting streaming. I don't stream a lot of stuff, just because whenever I get a sudden urge to watch a particular movie and check to see if it's available for streaming, the answer is almost always no. But it's a nice feature to have access to. After watching a fair amount of the World Series of Poker on Saturday, I was in a Vegas mood, so I went out on my balcony and watched Casino on my laptop, fantasizing about what Sam and Nicky would do to some of the douchier-looking players in the WSOP if they'd tried wandering into the Tangiers wearing hoodies and mirrored sunglasses and lecturing about EV or pot equity. Broken fingers all around, probably.

But you know why I really can't get upset over the Netflix rate increase? Why, even if they'd announced they were going to start charging $30 or $40 a month, I wouldn't leave? Because I still remember Blockbuster. Do you? You know, Blockbuster Video? Lousy movie selection? Two-day rentals? Late fees? Being ready to go to bed before suddenly remembering that you hadn't returned the movies you had checked out, so you'd have to jump in the car and get to the store before midnight?

At the time, we blindly accepted this, because we couldn't imagine any alternative. It wasn't until Netflix started doing to Blockbuster what Blockbuster had so gleefully done to hundreds of independent video stores over the years, that we realized exorbitant late fees and unreasonably short rental periods actually weren't a necessary evil of the video rental business. All of a sudden, Blockbuster tried making up for years of customer abuse. No more late fees. Five-day rentals. More copies of new releases. But it was too late, and the company's currently circling the drain. You always hate to see people lose their jobs, but is anyone going to be sorry the day the last Blockbuster gets shuttered?

If I'd rented 15 DVDs a month from Blockbuster, the total cost would have been upwards of $75. Additionally, that cost prevented people from experimenting too much. The only reason I can rent a movie called Cheerleader Autopsy that I know has a 99% chance of sucking, is because I know that if it does, it goes right back into the mail, and the only thing it's cost me is a slight delay in seeing the next movie in my queue. Remember browsing through the shelves and finding a movie you'd never heard of before that looked like it might be good, but not being able to bring yourself to take the risk? Or getting it and hating it, but feeling like you had to stick with it to get your money's worth? Two things we'll never have to go through again.

So stay with Netflix, leave, switch to a different plan, whatever. But don't for one second pretend the service isn't worth every penny you're paying for it. Not when we were paying so much more for so much less just a few years ago.

Panel of the Week

From Flashpoint: Citizen Cold #2:

Sports hell

If Dante lived today, he could have cut the length of The Inferno down considerably by combining the First Circle of Hell (Limbo), the Third Circle (Gluttony), the Fourth Circle (Greed) and the Eighth Circle (Fraud) into just one really big circle that contained all these things: A sports memorabilia show.

I went to the Dulles Expo Center on Saturday for the semi-annual Collector's Showcase of America show. I'd never been to the Expo Center before. I've heard about it for years, typically in radio commercials for gun shows, career fairs, and other things that I'd never travel all the way to Dulles for. But this time, curiosity got the better of me, and I made the trek out there. Just based on the name alone, I was expecting this big, grand building, along the lines of the Baltimore or D.C. convention centers. It turns out the Dulles Expo Center was simply either a remodeled former Walmart or was designed like one. Frankly, it was kind of a letdown.

 

The show itself was...strange. Obviously, I'm familiar with large gatherings of nerds who flock together in order to expand their collections, meet their heroes, get autographs, and so on. This felt different, though. The people at this show seemed...I dunno. Sadder? More desperate? I can't exactly articulate why I'm mostly fine with comic book collectors, but I found sports memorabilia collectors to be so profoundly disturbing. And even if I could, it would likely just come off as self-serving rationalization, since I identify much more with the former than the latter. But a lot of these people seemed weird. Yes, comic book readers are also weird. These people were more weird.

 

One possible reason for this reaction is that as a sports fan, I'm uncomfortable seeing favorite teams and players, amazing accomplishments, and treasured memories, all broken down into dollars and cents for easy mass consumption. You might have the fantasy of, say, catching a home run ball, meeting the player who hit it after the game, and having him sign it for you. But the reality is, the closest to that you're likely to get is by attending one of these shows, where you can pay exorbitant prices for one of the dozens of baseballs that player has signed each day in the clubhouse. Or maybe you did catch the ball, but the only way you're able to get him to sign it is by coughing up $100 he's demanding so he can pay the mortgage on his third home.

 

The age of some of the attendees might have had something to do with it. You go to a comic book convention, you mostly see guys in their 20s or 30s. Lots of disposable income, few life priorities. Here, it wasn't at all uncommon to see guys in their 50s, 60s, or even older, wearing jerseys and flipping through a stack of baseball cards or whatever with the glazed-over eyes of drug addicts who just stumbled upon an expo center full of heroin. For me, as a collector, it was a bit like seeing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. You'd like to think these guys have better things to do, like spend time with grandchildren or blow their social security check in Atlantic City. God knows, I'm not still going to be collecting comics at that age. At least, I hope I'm not. 

 

 

Speaking of autographed baseballs! There were tons of autographed everything at the show, but especially baseballs. Naturally, all the signatures were guaranteed to be authentic. I'd love to know what percentage of them actually were. I'm not saying the dealers were shady, but God only knows how they acquire these things, so you have to figure at least a decent percentage were fake. If only life were like Pawn Stars, and I could just call a buddy who would come over with a magnifying glass and tell me whether or not Reggie Jackson really does form his R the way it is on the ball.

This particular dealer was charging over $200 for Bryce Harper autographed balls. By comparison, this was twice what Tim Lincecum's balls were worth. So basically, an 18 year-old minor leaguer's signature is worth two times that of a Cy Young Award-winning, World Series champion, All-Star pitcher. I guess part of that can be explained by geography, but still. Either way, I clearly should have gotten Harper's signature when I had a chance.

 

If autographed baseballs struck you as too mainstream and predictable, you could have bought autographed stadium seats. I was actually annoyed to see stuff like this. I mean, that seat has--or should have, anyway--sentimental value for precisely one person on the planet: The guy who was sitting in that seat during a big game and then tore it out. Even if you were a fan of the team who played in that stadium and/or of the players who signed the seat, would it really mean anything to you to own it? I suppose some people would say yes, but they shouldn't.

 

Yeah, I wasn't really sure what this was doing at a sports memorabilia show, either. Maybe it used to belong to Marge Schott?

 

 

In a building full of worthless items for sale, a Metro pamphlet for people taking the train to Nationals games was probably the most worthless. I don't even want to think about how pathetically obsessed you'd have to be with the Nationals to want this. I didn't ask the dealer how much they cost, simply out of fear I'd get annoyed and make a smart-ass comment.

On the other hand, as someone who's only a slightly pathetically obsessed Nationals collector, there were two things I saw at the show that I was tempted to get, although technically, neither one actually had anything to do with the Nationals. The first was a pennant from the 1969 All-Star Game held at RFK. The second was a ticket stub from the very first Senators game in 1961. I would have liked them, but not enough to pay $75 and $50, respectively. A couple of days later, I am sort of regretting not getting the pennant, though.

 

 

 

It says a lot that this was the highlight of my time at the show: Virgil, from  '80s/'90s WWF, was there! The poster behind him seemed to indicate that Ted DiBiase was on tour with him, but no, it was just Virgil. He was selling autographed pictures and posing for photos with fans (for a fee, of course). He even had the Million Dollar Belt--or at least, a serviceable reproduction--and would let people sling it around their shoulder when they posed for the photo.

 

I didn't speak to him (when it comes to minor celebrities hawking wares, I've never quite figured out how to say, "Hi, big fan. But no, I don't want to buy anything,") and he didn't appear to have a lot of people stop by his booth. But for those who did, he seemed just super, really out-of-his-way nice to his fans. It'd be great if the WWE gives him (and DiBiase) more work.

 

And that was my Saturday morning. Total amount spent: $0. I tried to find some inexpensive bauble simply to justify the $5 admission price, but I couldn't find anything. Well, other than that swastika. So I left empty-handed. As I walked out, I passed a father pushing his baby in a stroller. The baby was wearing a Vikings jersey. I guess it's nice that once all those old guys I saw die off, there'll be a new generation of collectors ready to take their place.

Summer Movie Scorecard

Have Seen:

X-Men: First Class: A-
Transformers: Dark of the Moon: B
Thor: B
Super 8: B-
The Hangover Part II: C+
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: C
Green Lantern: D+

Definitely Seeing:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Captain America: The First Avenger
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Fright Night
Final Destination 5

Might See:

Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Cowboys & Aliens
The Change-Up
30 Minutes or Less
Conan the Barbarian
Our Idiot Brother

Panel of the Week

From The Boys #56:

The search for Stan

Tickets for the Baltimore Comic-Con went on sale a couple of weeks ago. I got mine, but passed on the "Stan Lee VIP Package." Said package includes a ticket to the con, one Stan Lee autograph on an item (item not included), one photo with Stan Lee, access to a faster autograph line, an exclusive Stan Lee VIP badge and lanyard, preferred seating at Stan’s panel, and "exclusive commemorative items," whatever that means. All for the low price of $195.

The first two, I wanted. I guess the faster line access would come in handy, too. But I don't want a photo, I'm not going to his panel, and I'm not sure what I would do with a bunch of Stan Lee commemorative items. The guy's a convention whore these days. It's not like it's especially difficult to meet him. Certainly nothing worth commemorating with trinkets.

So I opted for just the normal Stan Lee autograph ticket. For only...ugh...$50.

I feel vaguely nauseous over it. I guess this means I can no longer make fun of sports fans who pay exorbitant sums to athletes to sign a jersey or ball. I paid $5 for Neal Adams's signature a couple of years ago, but justified it because A) It wasn't that much, B) I really wanted his autograph on one particular comic, and C) Neal Adams doesn't get a whole lot of work these days, and what work he does get isn't especially good. So it actually almost felt altruistic.

Lee is different. To begin with, he's loaded. I'm not sure how loaded, but I'm fairly confident that he could travel around the country on his own dime signing comics for free, and his bank account would still be bigger than the combined savings of everyone reading this, times a thousand. It'd be nice if he signed stuff for free, like 99.99% of comic book pros do, but even if he absolutely feels the need to charge something, $50 is just obnoxious.

The other key difference is that with Adams, I really love the issue he signed. It's my favorite Joker story of all time. Conversely, I'm fairly sure I've never read a single thing Stan Lee's written. I'm a DC guy. He's a Marvel guy. Our paths simply never crossed. (I tried flipping through the TPB collection of those comics he did for DC a few years back, where he reimagined DC characters as if he'd created them. Interesting premise, but lousy execution. I don't think I made it through five pages.)

So why am I shelling out $50 for an autograph of someone whose work I've never even read? Because while I may not be a Marvel fan, I can appreciate the historical importance and indeed, the genius of the characters he created. So having a framed vintage Stan Lee-autographed comic would be pretty awesome. I mean, there aren't that many giants in the comic book industry left. Jack Kirby? Dead. Siegel and Shuster? Dead. Bob Kane? Dead. Gardner Fox? Dead. Steve Ditko? Alive, but a bitter recluse who refuses to sign anything. Stan Lee's more or less the last man standing. After he's gone, it'll just be the Jim Shooters, Todd McFarlanes and Geoff Johns of the world.

So that brings me to my current dilemma: Which Stan Lee comic do I want on my wall?

Initially, I thought not having sentimental attachment to any of his comics would make it easier to find one, in the sense that I wouldn't get hung up on feeling like I had to get one particular (i.e., potentially really expensive) issue. But it's actually even more difficult, because now the only thing I can judge a comic by is how nice the cover is. And it turns out that the covers of a lot of those Marvel comics from the '60s and '70s aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing.

I like Spider-Man. The movies, anyway. And the character is Lee's most famous creation. So I figured I'd start there. He wrote the first hundred or so issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, and having gone through a gallery of covers of each issue, it turns out that almost all of them look like...well, I won't use the word "crap," but definitely something similar to crap. Naturally, the only ones I really like are out of my price range.

Like this one:

Or this one:

I mostly like this one. And as a bonus, it's affordable.

But is it me, or does the "Spidey Saves the Day!" box completely ruin an otherwise perfect image? Isn't Spidey saving the day a bit of a given? You'd think "The End of the Green Goblin!" would be more than enough to sell a comic.

I guess after Spider-Man, my favorite Marvel property is the X-Men. But all the early X-Men covers are pretty ghastly. Case in point:

From there, the choices get a little muddled. Lots of great Fantastic Four covers, but I really couldn't care less about the characters. Ditto for Daredevil, Thor or the Avengers. Aesthetics may be important, but it also feels like I ought to have some affection for whatever's on the cover. Otherwise, I might as well just have Lee sign a blank sheet of paper and get that framed.

I'm not a big Silver Surfer fan either, but the character's always had a certain cache of coolness. Watch Breathless if you don't know what I mean. And I do really like this cover.

So this probably the front runner at the moment, but who knows. I have another month to troll eBay before I have to make a decision.

Oh, and just to further my point about how Stan Lee really doesn't need to be charging $50 an autograph, check this shit out:

This issue is from 1992. The fact that it's professionally graded means that a company paid him good money to sign comics that he didn't even write, largely featuring characters he didn't even create. And people actually buy them! What's up with that?

Panel of the Week

From Gotham City Sirens #24: