Category: But I Digress…

But I Digress flashback: 1971

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

digresssmlOriginally published February 23, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1423–Special “1971” theme issue

I think comic books just cost me a date with Debbie Moss, and that might be the last straw.

I can’t believe I’m saying that. I mean, y’know, when I first started reading comics when I was five years old, I felt like I’d found a whole bunch of friends I didn’t even know I was missing. And here I am, ten years later, and suddenly I feel like, y’know, these same fans are dragging me down.

Regular readers of this column know that this has been coming on for a while now. I mean, for one thing, y’know, I’ve been screaming about the skyrocketing prices for ages now. When I first started reading comics, they were a nice, tidy, twelve cents. One dime, two nickels. I could go into a comic book store with a buck and buy eight comics. Y’know, pretty much keep up with everything cool that was coming out.

I can’t tell you how bad it hit me the day I walked in and they’d gone up to fifteen cents. I couldn’t believe it. Is nothing sacred? Do they think teenagers are made of money? And I feel like we’ve barely recovered from that, and all of a sudden… twenty cents? Twenty cents? For a comic book? A twenty two page comic book? And now I’m even hearing rumors that they’re talking about it going up to twenty five cents!!! Twenty five cents!!!

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Chattacon

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

digresssmlOriginally published February 9, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1421

I’m rapidly reaching a point in my life where it’s split pretty much dead even between the time I spent as a fan versus the time I’ve spent as a professional… well, whatever I professionally am. Since fandom is where my roots are, however, I was more than willing to go along when my fiancee, Kathleen, wanted to head down to Chattacon in Chattanooga, TN, a convention she and her siblings frequented since she was a teen. (Indeed, her brother Sean’s theme parties have become an event in and of themselves.)

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Retcons and Stetcons

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

digresssmlOriginally published February 2, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1420

Once upon a time in comics, it was simple: No one really gave a dámņ about what other people were doing.

So when a new origin for a character cropped up, it needed no reason other than that a writer or editor (or both) had come up with what they thought was an interesting twist on the hero’s origin. Or perhaps it was nothing more complicated than that they had a ten-page space to fill that month and they were fresh out of ideas for new stories, so they decided to recycle the hero’s birth one more time.

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DVD Dread (circa 2001)

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

digresssmlOriginally published January 26, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1419

They almost had me. They almost had me totally sold on DVDs.

Several years ago, I complained quite bitterly, in this very column, about the new format which was rendering my beloved laser disks obsolete. This upstart, this annoyance. Sure, my lasers were taking up a ton of room, but the picture quality was great, you could jump around for specific chapters instead of trying to fast forward with video tapes. And then these… these little frickin’ coasters called DVDs come along, with patchy transfers and totally different players, threatening to push out my movie format of choice.

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