Marvel Comics blabbery

When are we talking about? I've been reading for a few decades and it doesn't ring a bell (but my memory is terrible).

Frequent practice on both Marvel and DC comics throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s at least

More egregious - Marvel's early 70s trick of blowing up a single page into a double page spread

kinda amusing that marvel are decrying dc's commercial policies on the cover of yet another first-issue grab for those collector dollars

Also, it's maybe not wise to draw attention to advertising practices being employed by the Distinguished Competition. Marvel's ad department might start getting ideas.

This seems particularly egregious with the price of floppies skyrocketing, but it just underscores my belief that the Big Two are pushing to make floppies as undesirable as possible before ultimately phasing them out altogether.

most egregious: spelling ingest "injest" in the small print on that cover

or is that something americans do?

only Americans who don't know how to spell

Well, given that the front cover is, you know, in jest...

americans: bad spellers, bad punners

There's a helpful little entry on this blog about Marvel's half page ads period:

http://hayfamzone.blogspot.co.uk/

I read James Robinson's FF run that led up to the present the other day. It's decent, but if anything it seems really rote compared to the crazy stuff Hickman was doing and the villain is underdeveloped. The kids seem... too childish compared to the other recent portrayals? I mean, they are kids, but after the Future Foundation run Val and Franklin are a couple of my favorites.

kinda amusing that marvel are decrying dc's commercial policies on the cover of yet another first-issue grab for those collector dollars

specifically on a variant cover

I'm reading Infinity at the moment and resigning myself to the impossibility of getting caught up soon enough to read any part of Secret Wars in real time. For those interested, I'd break down the first year of Marvel Now! stuff (that I've read) thusly:

I think it's great and recommend it highly:
Captain America
Thor: God of Thunder
Avengers
New Avengers
Secret Avengers

I think it's quite good or at least appreciate the effort:
All-New X-Men/Uncanny X-Men/Wolverine and the X-Men
Uncanny Avengers
Young Avengers

I think it's, y'know, okay:
Fantastic Four/FF
Guardians of the Galaxy
Iron Man
Superior Spider-Man

I'm just not that into it:
Avengers Assemble
Captain Marvel
Fearless Defenders
Indestructible Hulk
Nova
Thunderbolts

The newest iteration (I think! it keeps iterating) of Secret Avengers has a Modok that is in love with Maria Hill

You just made me wonder how a physical relationship with a Modok would work so "thanks" for that.

I assume there's a lot of head

that's the DJP I know and love

lol, a+

Two things I'd like to see in the wake of Secret Wars: 1) fewer title reboots (preferably zero of them, but this is the new world we live in) and 2) fewer mind-bendingly colossal threats to the earth/universe/multiverse. I'm digging Infinity thus far but, between the Builders and Thanos and the alternate earth incursions, the MU threat level has risen to the point where I don't know how anyone could top it.

fewer mind-bendingly colossal threats to the earth/universe/multiverse.

feel like this is just the status quo for superhero comics from the 00s onwards. nobody just robs banks or fights crime or whatever anymore

Hawkeyes does, to critical plaudits.

fwiw the above is what I liked so much about Ms Marvel; the threats were definitely rooted in neighborhood sensibility, routed through Inhuman concerns

One of the downsides of the publishing side at Marvel is that they can go bigger and bigger and bigger with no increase in costs; they kind of forget to tell the human story. The MCU is kind of doing that neighborhood sensibility thing better, via the Netflix show(s), by virtue of sfx budget constraints.

Aaron's Thor is pretty good at doing both.

Warren Ellis's take on Karnak is a hoot. Well, maybe not a hoot, but very appealing.

Soule's Inhumans is less hooty, but there's an interesting thing about it: Steve McNiven, the inker, is billed ahead of Jay Leisten, penciler. Don't think I've ever seen that before. I know McNiven has the bigger name, but still odd and noteworthy.

It kinda drives me nuts that Marvel has stopped indicating in their solicitations whether something is an actual series or just a miniseries. I don't think a single one of their post-Secret Wars books were listed as miniseries but I can't imagine, say, Karnak continuing beyond the six issues Ellis writes before he moves on to something else.

I can sort of see the side of wanting to leave that status ambiguous in case it's a surprise hit. Has Ellis said specifically that he's only writing 6 issues?

Isn't that Ellis's thing now? Limited runs, self-contained story arc, on to the next thing?

Yeah, I just assumed. What's his longest run on a recent-ish Marvel title? Like 12 issues or so on Astonishing X-Men and Thunderbolts?

I definitely get Marvel's decision to be cryptic about series length from a business perspective and I assumed that was the main reason behind it. It's still annoying. Unless it really is their intention to make everything theoretically ongoing until and unless it becomes clear that a given series doesn't have legs.

McNiven, the inker, is billed ahead of Jay Leisten, penciler. Don't think I've ever seen that before.

When Alan Moore's Top Ten was running, you'd see reviews referring to "Zander Cannon's gritty inks" just because he was listed after Gene Ha.

Some of Alex Ross' books are like that where he is painting on top of someone else's pencils and quite a few times where he is top billed with doing just the cover and co-plotting the comic.

Holy shit, guys. Master of Kung Fu omnibus in this month's comics solicitations. With mentions of Fu Manchu in the blurb. So I guess those rights issues are no longer an issue.

I wonder if he finally hit public domain.

Isn't the standard copyright term in the US 95 years? So if the first Fu Manchu story was serialized from 1912 to 1913, it would've gone to public domain in 2007 or 2008, unless they managed to extend the copyright in some way.

It's usually X years from the author's DEATH. It's complicated by the way that in the US anything published pre-1923 is also public domain, so the early Fu Manchu is PD, but not all of it, and so the Rohmer estate uses the later stories to try to leverage the earlier stuff back into copyright.

I think they came up with a license. They are going to reprint the whole series in three omnibuses.

Wonder how many kids became Fleetwood Mac fans thanks to MoKF? Biggest regret of selling collection pre-college is no longer having the complete MoKF run. These omnibuses sound great, and realistically, the $112 price tag is much less than rebuying the individual issues, but still, ouch. $450 or so to rebuy what I sold for pennies on the dollar makes me sad.

$450 or so = Ran across one site yesterday that said four omnibuses.

Wait for it to pop up on Amazon and you should be able to get them all for a pretty steep discount. Just don't wait so long that Marvel's infamous single, limited print run completely sells out.

Thanks, will do. And yeah, stalled on the complete hardcover Calvin & Hobbes and watched it go from mid-$60s to $125. Fool me twice...

Yeah, the Marvel printing policy is ridiculous. I'm thankful I managed to get the Simonson Thor and Annihilation omnibuses in time, because now they're both going for 250 bucks at Amazon. The Annihilation omnibus only came out last year!

If I don't preorder it before the December cut-off date (which the holidays make difficult, money-wise), I'm gonna have to snag this and the Nick Fury omnibus as early as possible in the new year. Because, yeah, Marvel's incredibly stupid about this stuff and they don't seem to make much of an adjustment based on potential demand. You generally just have to wait 5-10 years until they get around to reprinting the material in a different format. I had no idea about the Annihilation omnibus price hike, though! Thankfully preordered both of those omnibi (after stupidly selling the original trades and watching their second-hand prices skyrocket beyond anything affordable).

Thanks, will do. And yeah, stalled on the complete hardcover Calvin & Hobbes and watched it go from mid-$60s to $125. Fool me twice...

The binding on the hardcover was really bad FYI, and fell apart a lot.

new Nick Fury omnibus? Does it have the same shitty re-coloring as previous collections?

I don't know as I haven't seen it in person. But it collects all of the Lee & Kirby and Steranko stuff, so I'll be able to hold my nose if the reproduction is a little off.

tomorrow is the end of the new Secret War

I am the only one looking forward to this after the last couple issues have had little more than "let's round up the forces," right?

No, I'm looking forward to it as well; it's bound to be better than most of the post-Secret Wars books I've been reading

(btw in case you were wondering, almost every X-Men book I can think of is now irredeemably terrible)

Vision book has an interesting premise but I find that in practice, I don't give a single, solitary shit about a solo Vision story

I'm finding it kind of interesting but so far it's domestic drama... with robots
...and now, witchcraft?