Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Some Random Stuff

I've got a few things, and rather than doing a post for each I'm just going to mash them into one long post. Deal with it.


TV Reviews

Smallville Finale - I this season was the best so far. Some good action stuff, finally some motivation for Lana, strong Lex story is building and those eps with Green Arrow were awesome. (I hope they do more again next season!) Michael Rosenbaum who plays Lex says he's in for one more, and only one more season, so the next season could be the end of the series. The finale definitely built things up so that you can really see Lex's hatred for alien life and his plans to "protect the planet from the threat" regardless of financial and ethical costs. (Hidden spoiler - highlight to read) But Lana blowing up - yeah I didn't buy that for a second. And Bizarro Superman - not bad, but he should have talked all crazy.

Heroes Finale - Great show. I'm looking forward to next season already. My only problem - I thought Peter and Sylar should have had a better fight there at the end. I was really hoping for a good fight, and didn't get it. But otherwise I felt that it was a solid show and a good ending.


Graphic Novel Reviews

I read Walking Dead Vol. 5 and loved it. This is always one graphic novel I make the time to read. Let's just say there's some sweet revenge at hand - even if it might cost her her sanity. It's one of the best fiction stories of people in the worst conditions trying to survive that I've read - always a good examination of humans at both their best and their worst, and this volume was no different.

Plain Janes is the first release from DC's MINX line of books for teen and pre-teen girls. Overall I thought it was good. Not great, but good. Some of the things - a girl all hung up on a foreign guy in a coma, art making everyone - even the popular girl - happy and liberated - I felt were a bit of a stretch. The middle part of the story was kind of drawn out, and most of it was fairly predictable. But, I could see how pre-teen and teen age girls could relate to it. There were things like crushes on boys, finding friends at a new school, and overprotective parents that I could relate to when I was younger. I hope girls will read and enjoy it - although so far we've only sold one copy to an adult woman. My one criticism of the whole line of books is that they should be in color. I know they're trying to appeal to manga readers - but manga readers read manga, they probably won't read this. And color, even in manga, always sells better - ALWAYS.



Game Review

Well, it's not much of a review as a comment. We tried playing Marvel Heroes board game last weekend and it took us over an hour to set it all up, and we still haven't figured out yet how to actually play it. The instruction book is deceptively thin. I'm sure once we get it figured out it will be easy, and it's supposed to be pretty fun. But dang, figuring out how to play it is enough to get me not to play it.



Random Question

WHY is Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born #4 selling only about half of the first 3 issues?


Rumors

Lots of rumors about our local comic book community. Stores closing, stores for sale. But you can't believe a one of them. We're still trying to figure out how to get a second store open. If we could just get a partner to buy in...


Reminders

Next week Monday the 28th is Memorial Day. UPS will be closed on Monday, so comics are a day late.

The Star Wars stamps will be available starting this Friday the 25th. My post office clerk said get there early because they expect them to be gone by the end of the day and there will be several weeks before they get more in stock.

Previews orders are due by Friday the 25th - if you're ordering something from the May catalog better let us know soon.


News Bit

What city, divided by a river of the same name, was the imperial capital of Vietnam? The answer to this question — Hue — won 14-year-old Caitlin Snaring from Redmond, Wash., a $25,000 college scholarship Wednesday at the 19th annual National Geographic Bee. Caitlin is only the second girl to win in the bee's history.

YOU GO GIRL! Read the full story by clicking here.

4 comments:

Darren said...

Regarding the Dark Tower question, obviously this is just my own guess, but I would think one of the reasons for the drop in sales would be that the King fans who picked up the first three issues are bored at reading a story they've already read.

I loved the Dark Tower series, and it went on my pull list straightaway -but the only reason it's still there is for the art.

If I wasn't a fan of the medium itself I would have given it the flick already. I think if it had been an all new story, then the sales result might be a little different.

Lisa said...

Interesting point Darren. I hadn't considered that. Marvel says they're planning on doing more Dark Tower stories - but again I think they're going to do stories already in print in novel form.

Darren said...

It's not far enough along yet, and there are obvious differences in marketing and the target audience etc but...
if you compare the Dark Tower comics with the new Buffy Season 8 - both Buffy and the Dark Tower have a fan base outside of comics, both have creater input (if not being solely written by them) - but, I expect that the Buffy season 8 sales will stay the course longer than the Dark Tower books, at least in part because they are an ALL NEW! FURTHER ADVENTURES OF...! kind of thing.

Anonymous said...

On the rumors: We've been hearing rumors about the other local comic book store (as in the one downtown, if that's the one you're refering to) since at least the first anniversery. What's that indicative up is up for speculation, but there it is.

Taylor