Are you acclimated to Star Trek: TOS Remastered? (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

... focusing more on independents and books which have endings (it may take 5 years but they *do* end eventually).

For a brief time over 2010 and early-2011, I looked into independent titles. It turned out I chose the wrong ones to read, such as:

- Warlord of Mars (basically an R-rated version of a Princess of Mars) - published by Dynamite
- Dungeons & Dragons - published by IDW
- World of Warcraft (Wildstorm/DC)
- Nemesis (Icon/Marvel)
- etc ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(Icon_Comics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_(comics)

They were largely awful for the most part.


After coming across one too many lousy indie comic titles, I eventually gave up and moved on to buying a lot of dvds/blurays sometime in early-mid 2011.

 

[jcroy]

After too many bad experiences, I've come to the realization that most "tie in" literature is more likely to be crap than not, such as novels, comics, etc ... which were explicitly written to be a "tie in" marketing for a movie, video game, tv show, etc ....

 

[TravisR]

I'm so far behind I keep telling the manager I just need to switch to TPB (it'd be less expensive) but just can't bring myself to give up the floppies.

Floppies are 'real' comic books to me because I feel like the story is designed to be broken into chapters (similar to an act break on a TV show where they make sure something happens that brings you back after the commercial) and part of the fun is the anticipation of next month's issue. Granted, if you're a couple years behind, I wouldn't blame you for going to trades. I used to have a big backlog too and managed to catch up on everything so now I make sure I read everything I buy that week.

 

[BobO'Link]

For a brief time over 2010 and early-2011, I looked into independent titles. It turned out I chose the wrong ones to read, such as:

- Warlord of Mars (basically an R-rated version of a Princess of Mars) - published by Dynamite

I *think* I purchased that one - at least it was one of the ERB Barsoom comics, whichever one was the first. I jumped off when I realized they were doing a arc adapting one of the novels and then a arc of new, none ERB, material. I pretty much enjoyed the adaptations but the others were pretty lame... like:

After too many bad experiences, I've come to the realization that most "tie in" literature is more likely to be crap than not, such as novels, comics, etc ... which were explicitly written to be a "tie in" marketing for a movie, video game, tv show, etc ....

Exactly. I don't purchase those at all - ever - no matter how much I like the franchise as I've been burned too many times.

OK... there's *one* exception. John Byrne's "Star Trek: New Visions" series. That's a pretty good book and true to the series.

I could give you a few "good/better" indie series but won't in fear of you picking them up...

Floppies are 'real' comic books to me because I feel like the story is designed to be broken into chapters (similar to an act break on a TV show where they make sure something happens that brings you back after the commercial) and part of the fun is the anticipation of next month's issue. Granted, if you're a couple years behind, I wouldn't blame you for going to trades. I used to have a big backlog too and managed to catch up on everything so now I make sure I read everything I buy that week.

That plays a huge role in my not giving them up. I have good intentions of getting caught up and plan to work on it as soon as October (aka Horror month) is over. I participate in a Horror Movie Challenge on another forum and can't give it up. It's somewhat a obsession to reach the goal and to do so pretty much means I give up reading and watching *anything* that's not horror related. Of course that challenge is what caused me to get a bit behind to start with and it just steamrolled...

 

[Carabimero]

I go for collected edition hardcovers.

 

[Jason_V]

A while ago, I picked up the electronic version of every Trek comic through the early 2000s. They're all on disc as PDF's. Started rereading from the beginning and just dropped off. I love the idea, but the computer is clunky...having to zoom in, not having something in hand, etc.

This is really the only way I'd collect any comic now. I just don't have the space for multiple titles every month. A long time ago, my Trek pull list was everything they were making: Starfleet Academy, DS9, Unlimited, Untold Voyages. That's been the biggest haul I've ever had.

 

[jcroy]

I go for collected edition hardcovers.

Those hardcovers look very very tempting.

Awhile ago I came across a newer omnibus of the first Superman issues (ie. from Action Comics #1 and onward), when I was at a local bigbox bookstore. Knowing that this could be another potential OCD treadmill, I had to trick myself into NOT buying it that day. I wanted to do more research on this newer DC golden age omnibus series and similar titles, before I jumped onto another explosive OCD treadmill.

When I got home that day and did some googling, I came to the realization DC was going to be doing these golden age omnibuses on a continuing basis. They already released Batman (ie. starting from Detective Comics #27 and onward), and recently Wonder Woman also. For that matter, DC was also doing similar hardcover omnibuses for the silver age and bronze age. They appear to be in the same "series" of new omnibuses.

At that point, I had to say no. To trick myself into not jumping onto this treadmill, I immediate looked at the sticker-shock of buying all these hardcover golden age and silver age DC omnibuses already released and preorders. It would be at least $500, even at heavily discounted amazon prices.

 

[TravisR]

I go for collected edition hardcovers.

While I'm an advocate for regular issues, I definitely enjoy the nice hardcover editions for the golden and silver age stuff. If only because it would cost more than a house to buy some of them and I'd never want to read them for fear of messing them up. Plus, the colors in the hardcovers look much better than what you'd get in a copy of the actual issues since after 50, 60 or 70 years, aging and yellowing of the paper is pretty much inevitable.

 

[jcroy]

Awhile ago I came across a newer omnibus of the first Superman issues (ie. from Action Comics #1 and onward), when I was at a local bigbox bookstore. Knowing that this could be another potential OCD treadmill, I had to trick myself into NOT buying it that day. I wanted to do more research on this newer DC golden age omnibus series and similar titles, before I jumped onto another explosive OCD treadmill.

When I got home that day and did some googling ...

(Long story).

More generally, one trick I've been using a lot to fool myself into NOT buying something on the spot (ie. impulse buying), is to say to myself that "I'll do more research/googling" on the particular item. Especially when I'm going through amazon and other online stores, it's VERY EASY to do a lot of OCD overdriven style "impulse buying".

Another recent example of this is I've been buying some highly technical engineering, math, physics, etc ... books. Since many of these technical books can be easily $100 or higher (even with amazon discounts), I don't want to end up on another OCD treadmill of really expensive stuff. (In contrast, dvds/blurays is a very inexpensive hobby nowadays. Even in the case of an OCD treadmill of compulsively collecting dvds/blurays).


To figure out which technical books are worth buying, I force myself do a lot of research + googling before making any purchasing decisions.

The first step is reading all the 1-star/2-star/3-star low ratings on amazon and googling for other reviews, to see whether a particular technical book has any major problems, such as: too many typos, difficult to follow, misleading content (ie. the author is not an expert), lousy editing, etc ... (ie. Technical books frequently have considerably less editorial quality control, than mass market books).

If I'm still interested after the first step, the second step is googling for information about the authors. If the authors are experts on a particular technical topic, there would usually be a lot information online (relatively). If a particular technical book was published within the past 20 years or so, there might also be legitimate rough drafts and previous "lecture notes" still online (typically on the author's personal web site if they are a university professor) which are precursors/prototypes of the technical book (ie. the writing style would be similar). I also look for whether there were any "review papers" written on the topic, to determine whether or not a particular technical book is popular among the experts.

These two steps are usually good enough to weed out the majority of the technical books on a particular topic. Frequently only 2 or 3 books are left which I might be interested in.

 

[jcroy]

Exactly. I don't purchase those at all - ever - no matter how much I like the franchise as I've been burned too many times.

OK... there's *one* exception. John Byrne's "Star Trek: New Visions" series. That's a pretty good book and true to the series.

Back in the day, I had some of the Battlestar Galactica episode novelizations. At the time I really liked them. Though I now suspect it was largely due to the original Battlestar Galactica going off the air, and me jonesing for anything Battlestar Galactica related.

When I tried reading these same books a few years ago, I came to a startling realization that they were largely crap.

 

[TJPC]

I know what you mean.

This is the primary reason why I never got back into collecting comics. My extreme OCD compulsive completionist/collecting mentality got a lot worse as I got older, and thinks that I HAVE TO read everything starting at the dawn of the silver age (ie. since Marvel started in the early 60s) to the present. DC is even worse in this regard (ie. the golden age).

When DC did the revamp/relaunch back in 2011 and more recently this past summer, at the time it was very tempting to jump onto that treadmill. Similar story with the Marvel relaunch last year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_52
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Rebirth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-New,_All-Different_Marvel

In the end, what held me back from jumping onto the comic book treadmill again, was the sticker-shock realization of $3 or $4 a pop for new issues. (This is in addition to how much I was already spending on dvds/blurays every month).


(More generally).

Nowadays to avoid triggering my OCD, I actively avoid book series/franchises which have new titles being regularly published.

 

[TJPC]

As a child I collected every comic I could find connected to Superman. These included: Superman, Superboy, Adventure, Action, Jimmy Olsen, and even Lois Lane comics. I also collected newer series like Metal Men and something called Magnus Robot Fighter.
All my relatives gave me their comics and my mom often took me to a local junk store to go through past issues. I had subscriptions at $1.00 per comic per year. One came in the mail folded in half and wrapped in brown paper it seemed like every day.
I eventually had a huge collection with almost every issue of my magazines from 1948 to the early 1970s. The attitude was very different then. As I entered high school, I had to hide my addiction, because comics were only for children and nerds. I would have been severely mocked if people saw me buy them, hense the subscriptions. I was too embarrassed to be seen buying them.
There were no comic stores for collectors so when I was to go to University I decided to have a huge garage sale and get finally rid of this "childish habit". I sold a fraction of them at about 5 cents each and gave the rest to my best friend's little brother. I can still see my prized collection spread all over the floor in a heep in his messy room.
This was 1971. I still feel a sense of loss and often think about them. This was just before comics became collectable.

 

[jcroy]

Nowadays a collection ^ like that, would probably be worth a fortune!

 

[jcroy]

(Long story).

More generally, one trick I've been using a lot to fool myself into NOT buying something on the spot (ie. impulse buying), is to say to myself that "I'll do more research/googling" on the particular item. Especially when I'm going through amazon and other online stores, it's VERY EASY to do a lot of OCD overdriven style "impulse buying".

(More elaboration).

Another thing I've been doing to avoid OCD triggers offline, is to not go shopping at the local malls for non-grocery/non-household items. Essentially I avoid places which are not grocery stores, and only go grocery shopping once a week (mostly at Costco and occasionally Walmart).

Since I started doing this ^ earlier this year, I only really drive the car to and from work. It saves a lot on gasoline, since I'm not driving around town anymore checking out every dvd/bluray dump bin, nor checking out the goodwills and other thrift shops.

In practice, I find my OCD compulsive "impulse buying" is a lot more extreme and problematic offline. Online is still somewhat problematic, but nowhere to the same extremes as offline.

 

[BobO'Link]

As a child I collected every comic I could find connected to Superman. These included: Superman, Superboy, Adventure, Action, Jimmy Olsen, and even Lois Lane comics.

I did the same, Superman, Action, Superboy, JImmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Batman. That was the corner drug store with a spin rack of DC and Archie comics. Got lots of those 80 Page Giants too since they were only 25 cents. The store that sold Marvel comics used a grease pencil to put the price on them (even the ones which were already printed on) so I'd only purchase from them if it was something *really* good. I remember looking at that first appearance of Spider-Man and putting it back because of the price marker on the cover!

One of my dad's coworkers collected comics in the early 60s and talked me into "swapping" some comics with him. He cherry picked my best stuff and game me a bunch of Sgt. Rock type comics that I absolutely didn't like. I got took, but was too timid to speak up and just say *no* to a adult (I was ~8 at the time). I'd like to go back in time and kick his butt for that!

I stopped buying comics when I discovered Eerie and Mad Magazine. I switched to them, mostly Mad with the occasional Eerie, but stopped those purchases when I headed off to college in 73 (didn't have the funds to keep it up).

Nowadays a collection ^ like that, would probably be worth a fortune!

Just depends on what was in it. I have most of the stuff I purchased in the early-mid 60s. Most of it is DC and worth 25-50 cents each (double-quadruple the cover price) with a few pulling in as much as $3. The ones worth the most are my Gold Key Star Trek titles, and I only have the first 3. I didn't think they were as good as the series (see post above on getting "burned" purchasing tie-in stuff) so I stopped after #3. I purchased the Gold Key Green Hornet #1 just to get the Hornet insignia on the cover to make myself a Green Hornet badge. I still have the book but the cover is long gone.

 

[jcroy]

These two steps are usually good enough to weed out the majority of the technical books on a particular topic. Frequently only 2 or 3 books are left which I might be interested in.

(Here's a concrete example from last year.).

Over a year ago, I was looking at the unofficial dvd and bluray technical documents online which described their error correction systems. At the time, I didn't really know much about how these dvd/bluray error correction algorithms functioned. So I went googling around for web pages, lecture notes, etc ... on the topic. (I wasn't able to find any "review papers"). I was able to figure out some of the underlying math, and compiled a list of possible technical books to look at later. After checking on amazon, it turned out some of these technical books on error correction were already out-of-print. Eventually I was only looking at three viable books on error-correction which were still in print.

With more googling, it still wasn't easy to find good information about these three viable books. So during one of my excursions when I was driving around and checking out several dvd/bluray dump bins in town, I dropped by a local university's library which had some of these technical books on error correction. I ended up spending half the day in the universiity library, going through these books to see which ones might be worth buying. (I had no borrowing privileges at this university library). In the end, only one of the books stood out which turned out to be also one of the standard references (or textbook) on the topic of modern error correction algorithms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_detection_and_correction#Further_reading

The other books on error-correction I looked at were either difficult to read, or they were written for mathematicians, etc ...

I ended up ordering a used copy of Lin + Costello "Error Control Coding (2nd edition)", for less than $60 a year ago. (A new copy was still over $200 a year ago).

 

[jcroy]

Just depends on what was in it. I have most of the stuff I purchased in the early-mid 60s. Most of it is DC and worth 25-50 cents each (double-quadruple the cover price) with a few pulling in as much as $3.

(In addition).

I get the impression a lot of comics published after the mid-1980s or so, also only really tracked inflation of the original cover prices for copies in mint condition. Copies in lesser conditions, frequently became 50 cents dump bin fodder.

I'm not as familiar with the pricing of issues published before the 1980s

IIRC what seemed to have greatly devalued comic books since the early-1990s, was due to publishers printing up too much product. Silly stuff like multiple different covers for the same issue, etc ... which still seems to be done even today.

 

[TJPC]

I doubt that my collection would be that valuable. Each copy had multiple reads. I got my money's worth with each issue costing 12 cents at the store.

 

[Carabimero]

While I'm an advocate for regular issues, I definitely enjoy the nice hardcover editions for the golden and silver age stuff. If only because it would cost more than a house to buy some of them and I'd never want to read them for fear of messing them up. Plus, the colors in the hardcovers look much better than what you'd get in a copy of the actual issues since after 50, 60 or 70 years, aging and yellowing of the paper is pretty much inevitable.

Plus, some of these hardcovers have greatly appreciated in value in just ten years.

 

[Osato]

Not remastered versions but still the funniest reviews of the original series:

https://web.archive.org/web/20000608231228/http://dvd.ign.com/reviews/553.html