lexid523

Name: Alexa Dickman

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lexid523's Recent Comments
August 20, 2013 10:28 am How do you feel about piracy in pursuit of research? I frequently pirate Golden Age books that are still under copyright, but that I know the publisher will never, EVER reprint or make available digitally. DC's "New Comics" or "More Fun Comics" have no superheroes in them so DC has no real reason to think anyone would want to read them. But from the historical perspective, they're fascinating. Or sometimes they maybe comics that have been/have a good chance of being reprinted (i.e. are superheroes) but I am merely looking for art samples (say, to compare art styles and try to attribute a known creator to an uncredited work) and piracy is the quickest/only way to get them. This may be similar to your Marvin Gaye example, but the way you frame it sounds more like a kid just looking for music to listen to with cursory historical interest. If the same kid wanted to write a thesis on the R&B roots of modern pop male solo artists, and they read a reference to some obscure artist whose albums are only carried in a library on the other side of the country, but they also find a torrent (possibly ripped from that very library's collection), what should they do? By the way, I'm not trying to say that any significant fraction of piracy comes from academia (except the piracy of textbooks, but those things are an unethical racket anyway), but there comes a point where copyright hinders its own purpose-- as defined in the US Constitution "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."-- the PROMOTION of arts and science. Limited quotation and excerpting (technically, unauthorized copying) from copyrighted works for academic use is protected under Fair Use. Arguably, piracy (i.e. unauthorized copying) could also be justified under Fair Use depending on the context of the piracy.
August 19, 2013 3:42 pm @BC1 The fact is comics readers are more entrenched in their ways than even hardcore audiophiles or bibliophiles. Even people who insist on vinyl and printed books have virtually no qualms about using Amazon to get them (a smaller class will still go to good indie record/book stores if the exist nearby, but most don't really care). Comics fans go to the comic shop. It's what we do with our Wednesdays. Combine with the fact that a) Comixology only JUST introduced a subscription model (making maintaining a pull list at a store the easiest way of keeping track what's new each week) and b) the comics industry is so small it basically has no where to go but up. Comic shops survive on incomes that would cause any larger industry to weep. Remember, Diamond was once taken to court as a monopoly but it was found that the comics industry was so small, one distributor was legally sufficient. Oddly, the comics market crash in the late '90s probably turned out to be a good thing because it meant the emergence of digital (legal or otherwise) soon thereafter couldn't really hurt the remaining stores more than they already were. It's like, we were already firebombed, so there was no point in nuking us.
April 23, 2013 9:16 am I could take Jason Statham as Midnighter if Daniel Craig was unavailable.
April 22, 2013 10:55 am Always wanted Kate Winslet for Jenny Sparks, but the old LiveJournal community consensus was that Midnighter should be played by Daniel Craig (if you're going to fantasy cast, why not dream big?) Also, Angie is Latina, so I'd go with Zoe Saldana if you wanted to go Afro-Latina.
April 14, 2013 12:41 pm Bond made the suggestion that "fieldwork's not for everyone" once (which sounded to me like him assuring her there was no shame in wanting to stay out of the field-- something he tried to do but couldn't stay out), but then she helped him beat up those thugs in Macau, and he kicked her a gun during the shootout at M's hearing. When she said she declined to return to the field, I thought he seemed surprised. And besides, she's now assisting the head of MI6, that's a hard job to turn down no matter how much you're into the thrill of fieldwork. I agree with Grandturk that we're probably going to see more of Moneypenny from now on than just a flirt behind a desk. But there's nothing inherently not-strong about a woman leaving a dangerous job for a desk job.
April 11, 2013 1:55 pm "Barbara is always shown as character who has physical strength and a sharp mind, but she still makes poor decisions." Exactly, I always prefer stories with character of some psychological richness-- which is to say, I can glean from their behaviors general patterns and attitudes that make their actions believable and defining a character in which to BE in-character. So when writers try to create conflict and/or show characters in some kind of distress, it makes a better story as well as better characters if it's because of some human error, mistakes we all make. Is she naturally stubborn? Or underconfident? Or hubristic? Or anxious? Look inward to your own weaknesses and the root causes of your own problems-- and then extrapolate them to fantastic situations. "Stolen baby" is a weak plot device and IMHO needs to be strongly justified by the story. It's also beneficial in an indefinite story-telling genre like superhero comics-- give characters traits that are not mere problems to be solved, but deep motivating factors. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor who has become the very thing he hates out of fear for his "people's" safety and liberty. You can write 50 years of stories about that character and that "problem" will never go away-- it's just a matter of putting him in different situations and how his issues manifest around them. A stolen baby problem is solved when the baby is found (alive or dead)
April 10, 2013 9:35 am Max Landis's YouTube video about this story is the best. Elijah Wood plays Hank Henshaw. Mandy Moore is Lois Lane.
November 19, 2012 2:35 pm I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I make a good salary, reasonable rent and bills, and have no dependents, so I don't pay nearly as much attention to prices as I did when I was just a student, or that I would if I had a kid or a mortgage. But I probably should.
August 16, 2012 1:03 pm The great thing about billboards is that most people drive past them everyday, which does tend to influence them in some way or another. There were billboards on the way into my old neighborhood and there was usually one alcohol ad at a time, and I can tell you, there were several times where I'd be walking home, see the billboard and think "Yeah, I could really use a drink." I wouldn't necessarily buy the exact liquor or beer being advertised, but it got me in the liquor store. I would love for someone to try this in Massachusetts because we do have a chain "comics" store that even non-comics readers shop at (it's mostly a music/movie/novelties shop these day, but they still have comics there), so we've already gotten over that hurdle of letting the mainstream know where to buy comics.
June 25, 2012 12:59 pm Bendis and Cebulski get living expenses to produce comics, I don't see what's wrong with indie creators wishing to do the same, especially giving the incredibly tiny size and relatively low budgets of the established comics publishers (relative to say, the major prose publishers). This isn't like some teenage fanfic writer being unable to find an agent who'll represent some cheesy Twilight rip-off (though those are apparently big money these days) and deciding they should get paid to write a book they're going to sell through Lulu.com. We're talking about established (and in many cases, award-winning) creators with a livelihood to make in an industry that can barely move 200k of the "top" book of the month in an increasingly restrictive genre field, that could never dream of paying some bored housewife a million dollars for some book she threw together in her spare time (which is basically what happened with Stephenie Meyer and Twilight). Hell, DC can't even afford Neil Gaiman anymore. If you're referring to Lea Hernandez who was trying to earn $40,000 on KS (which would have been $30k after taxes) for a year's work when she's a single mother of a special needs child-- frankly, she has every right to get upset that she couldn't raise that money. Because that's not about greed, it's about survival. Jack Kirby made a living at comics. Most established, award-winning professionals can hardly say that these days, even if they own every copyright and trademark to their own work.