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Like, everything. The collection that I stopped counting and cataloging decades ago, but if I had to ballpark it, I'd have to number it around 7000 floppies (is that what you get with 25+ longboxes?) Plus another couple hundred in trades and manga. How cool would it be to have it all in my pocket. Obviously MB storage is a concern, and a goodly portion of my collection is weirdass B&W explosion books that would never be included, but you get the point. I'm always saying how I would like to re-read 52 or whatever, and having it on my iPhone would make that so, so much easier. Read over lunch. Read in the car. Read on the couch. All without having to dig and unwrap and refile the books. Comics Alliance posted a nice piece today about the inevitability of digital comics. And how the publishers are purposefully pussyfooting around in it, creating a doomed strategy because they can't afford to tick off the retailers. I'm sure I'm not alone: I'd like to have both. For every comic I buy, hard copy, at the store, I'd like a ride-along digital version. Right now, a brand new issue of Justice League: Generation Lost - the only new book that DC is fielding day-and-date both digitally and on racks - costs $3 each. That is nuts. I'm sorry, but a digital book should not cost the same as a printed book. DC puts out a lot of older material at discounted prices (and a lot of interesting books by indie creators that have signed on with DC), and that's cool. The usual price is $2, which is not a fantastic discount for material I already own. And how do you keep retailers in the equation? Comics Alliance says they're just going to have to accept it and stay afloat however they can... with a comparison that nobody worries about Netflix affecting retail movie sales. Of course, "buying movies" is not adrift in the same cultural morass that surrounds "buying comics." What if the publishers started syncing up their customers (buyers of actual, physical comics) with accounts on the ComiXology app. Like, DC knows that I buy Green Lantern every month. So my ComiXology account gets a credit for the digital version... not for free, but for something nominal like 50 cents. Or maybe it is free once the system becomes self-supporting. And DC uses the retailers to communicate this. Based on what they actually sell to me, they kick that info back to DC and ComiXology. The retailers are the trusted watchdog gatekeeper on this. It means adding a customer database infrastructure, which I'm sure is another publisher headache and retailer nightmare to manage. But what if that becomes the natural evolution of the business? You'd just do it, right? Just like adding credit card scanners back in the '80s. Now take it a step further. DC starts adding more and more selections from their near-century back catalog. My local comic shop visually verifies that I own the entirety of Crisis on Infinite Earths and that gets added to my ComiXology account. Again, for a price. $4 for all twelve issues. $3 goes to DC, and the retailer and ComiXology split the rest. DC (and the rest) want to think that I'd pay $24 for that set of Crisis. Or, if I'm being written off because I already own it, that new readers would pay that price. I don't know. Something has to change for comics to stay viable. The industry supports itself on licensing, something that used to be a sidebar business. Lots of people out there would like to read comics, but are put off by the high price tag... when you're comparing media as non-fans would, $3 for a comic just does not seem to measure up to a $1 blockbuster movie rental. A $15 trade doesn't carry the same perceived value as a $15 DVD purchase. The pricing is all wrong to bring new people in, except for one-off novelty purchases.
Last week, our office was visited by a Rubbermaid full of classic 1960s comics.
Basically, this boils down to me wanting to carry everything I own around with me at all times.
posted by Joe
09.01.10 09:34PM
One of the recurring thoughts whenever I check out that DC Comics app on my iPhone is how cool it would be if my entire collection was digital.
I touched some original Galactus.
posted by Joe
08.31.10 07:50PM
They belong to co-worker Anna's father, and she was blindly cool enough to bring them in for me and Josh to manhandle. Delicately.
The collection has great runs on Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, Daredevil (even Awful Original Costume Daredevil).. and my favorite, the Fantastic Four.
I was bold enough to actually remove issue #50 from the bag and leaf through the finale of the Silver Surfer / Galactus story. I was torn, because human beings really should not be touching this stuff. These books are in great condition. But I had to see the original. The newsprint, the colors... the aura of Stan & Jack, just as we first met them. Books like this don't fall around me that often these days, so this was like some kind of personal enlightenment.
Over ten hours on the clock, with a percentage complete around 67%. Got four of the five Trophies, did six or seven of the 25 gang wars. Barely bothered with the bike delivery missions. Certainly didn't care about getting my gang brothers' Like rating up to 100%. Did not spend a single second in multiplayer. So plenty more to do there (about 33% more), although I think I'll just move on to Ballad of Gay Tony. The motorcycle focus was not as bad as I had suspected. Having driven very few bikes in GTAIV, I anticipated a lot of me spinning off the road and losing the mission. That only happened a few times; the vast majority of missions were fine, despite being largely on motorcycles. The motorcycle physics are crazy. You can hit the curb of a sidewalk and end up careening end over end. And if you're on a bike, and you hit a car head on, you can enjoy seeing Johnny Klebitz sail six stories into the air before arcing gracefully into the road half a block away. Makes me wish the PS3 version had YouTube support. Even though it's been a while since I lived Niko's story in GTAIV, it was fun seeing how his and Johnny's paths overlapped. Most of the crossovers are fairly blatant - like, Niko is right there - but there are some subtle points that make me hope Gay Tony will be just as meshed in. Let's follow the release chronology. Peter Moore (then at Xbox) first revealed the episodic DLC in 2006. GTAIV came out in April 2008. Microsoft continued to call the DLC "absolutely exclusive" and it was expected in the fall of 2008. The number thrown around that Microsoft paid for that exclusivity was an absurd-sounding 50 million. Personal pause: I restarted my unfinished GTAIV game in October 2008 when the PS3 Trophy patch came out. Lost and Damned didn't actually come out for 360 until February 2009. Ballad of Gay Tony arrived on Xbox in October 2009. Reports of the two episodes coming to PS3 began in January 2010. And in April, the two episodes showed up as a pair of $20 downloads on PSN, and in a $40 retail edition. Clearly, the move to PS3 was in the works for a long time. In August, Amazon put the PS3 edition of GTA Episodes from Liberty City on a special sale for $20. That was my bite point. (I've seen it at Target for $30.) So, $10 for 10+ hours of gameplay inside the familiar GTAIV world, two years after GTAIV was first released and a year and a half after the "exclusive" DLC finally bowed? Not bad at all.
The Week in Links | Joe, 08.27.10
GTA: Losted and Damneded
posted by Joe
08.30.10 02:55AM
Just finished the main storyline of GTA: The Lost and Damned.
Silverhawks Opening (YouTube)
The way they activate their facemasks is pretty badass. I remember the day I came to the stunning realization that this show was an unabashed palette swap of Thundercats. Still pretty cool, though.
I don't think sales should be this difficult. | Joe, 08.27.10
Maybe this is why people prefer used game prices at GameStop, because you need a slide rule to figure out the big box sales.
Oh good, this argument again. | Joe, 08.25.10
The used games fight flared up again today, thanks to Penny Arcade. They came out rather sternly against GameStop and the used game aftermarket. Gabe noted on Twitter that he was getting "Thank you messages from developers and fuck you messages from gamers." So he asked for some concise opinions and later posted them on their site.
Now, I talked about this back when Project $10 first made the news, and I don't think my opinions have changed much. I still think it's a shame that GameStop's aftermarket defines our hobby as disposable when other media hobbies have no comparable trade-in system. I know I'm stereotyping, but I tend to imagine the bulk of the Penny Arcade audience - IE, the gamers who sent Gabe the big middle finger - as mouth-breathing bit-torrenting dudebros who have set themselves up as the white hat-wearing victims in the retail equation, therefore screw the devs, screw the pubs, screw anybody who expects them to pay actual money for anything. That's not necessarily a knock on PA, just sort of the internet in general.
But I did like that Gabe posted anonymous thoughts, and now I'd like to make fun of some of them. [more]
OUTATIME: Chrononauts simplified | Joe, 08.24.10
I've read so much romanized Japanese that the famous Back to the Future license plate now looks like "o-oo-tah-tee-may" to me.
And now, some vintage DC wrapping paper... | Joe, 08.22.10
Something else from the files of Things I Never Threw Away.
Full archives available at fourhman.com.
game reviews:
Cooking Mama | nds
Starfox Command | nds
Odama | gcn
home webcam:
Bully | ps2
game review by Joe 01/13/07
When I initially walked through the gates of Bullworth Academy, the first student to walk past me yelled "I hate you!" Later on, I had that same kid eating out the palm of my hand. That's pretty much the character arc of Bully. You, as career ne'er-do-well Jimmy Hopkins, show up at a new school full of fools, and you end up as Mr. Popular. Not really the school slaying simulator that certain crusading lawyers and easily-swayed-by-the-press-release media outlets would have had us believe. Whether Rockstar intended Bully as a colossal bait and switch for the video luddite crowed, or... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 11/09/06
Two years out, the DS has nicely matured. We’re past the days of tech demos being sold as full games (ahem, Yoshi’s Touch-n-Go). We have enough new-concept, high-profile games to outweigh the launch day panic of N64 ports ahem, Super Mario 64DS). And thanks to the GBA’s agonizingly slow price point death, Nintendo finally feels confident enough to stop selling their first-party DS games at the $35 level (ahem, Pokemon Trozei). The DS rode out that initial wave of gimmicky criticism and has positioned itself as a must-have, just in time to lateral a little of that mindshare over to... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 09/12/06
I've been sitting out on the Starfox franchise for years, thanks to all the lackluster offerings during the GameCube era. It sucks, because I really liked Starfox 64 and I really want a new hip iteration in that style. For some reason, Nintendo is bound and determined to avoid that classic, blistering on-rails shooting action... giving us Starfox-as-Zelda and Starfox-as-Rogue-Leader-2 instead. Starfox Command is a return to the game's roots, but not in the way we all expected. Most franchises are ridiculed for not offering enough change-up. Starfox is the rare bird that gets smacked around for not maintaining enough... [continued at fourhman.com]
game review by Joe 05/24/06
I'm only about ten minutes into the first level when the thought occurs: "This is a pretty crappy game." That's never a joyous realization - especially when $50 was tossed like so much salt over the shoulder - but it is particularly grating when the game in question is something you've been anticipating for months. Odama is exactly the kind of offbeat, undefinable game that pulls me in. Games that offer up more than just various degrees of running / jumping / shooting / driving. I live for the thrill of locating games like this. They're underappreciated, underplayed... and in... [continued at fourhman.com]
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