Category: Entertainment

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Via PeterDavid.net:

To promote Fallen Angel, DC re-released the first issue as a free promo edition and sent it out to comic stores this week.

It seems someone’s already selling it on eBay as a “Hard-To-Find Retailer Variant.” In fact, based on the auction start time, it looks like it went up Thursday afternoon, within hours of it being available to, uh, “sell.”

Keep in mind that this has the word “FREE!” emblazoned in at least 48-point type on the cover (you can read it clearly even in the thumbnail).

Of course at $6.49+$3.85 shipping it’s already creeping up on the cost of the trade paperback ($12.95) that contains the first six issues. Anyone who’s just curious about the book and can’t find the promo copy would probably be better off ordering the trade instead.

This is the kind of thing you’d expect on Opposite Day. Selling something free. Marketing the reprint as a collectors’ edition. Heck, just targeting the collectors’ market for a book that’s more suited to people who actually read comics.

“We’ll clean ’em out the American way.
For something free, they don’t care what they pay!”
—The Engineer, Miss Saigon

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Yes, Star Wars has changed again [archive.org].

Looking at the comparisons, it seems most of the changes really have just been cleanup. They finally fixed the compositing in the Rancor pit, for instance. And some of the Special Edition bits that didn’t work quite right, like the Jabba scene in A New Hope, have been redone. (He now looks closer to the Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace versions.) They’ve also cleared up some continuity glitches. Nothing wrong with that — I’m all for fixing things that are genuinely broken.

Then there’s the annoying stuff:

  • Han and Greedo shooting simultaneously is better than the Special Edition… but really, there was no reason to change it in the first place. Han’s a smuggler, and he was in an obvious shoot-or-be-shot situation. Why not just restore it?
  • Inserting Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Again, not necessary. First of all, under the helmet he’s so smashed up you can’t even tell it’s him in the new version. (Edit: Oops — it turns out it isn’t him in that first scene. They just erased the original actor’s eyebrows.) Secondly, what was wrong with the shot of his ghost? I suppose they appealed to continuity, but if they really cared that much they’d have waited until Jake Lloyd grew up so they could use him in Episode II. (It also doesn’t help that he looks younger than Mark Hamill.)
  • Since the Hayden Christensen rumor turned out to be true, I really hope they haven’t decided to insert a gratuitous Natalie Portman flashback to the “Do you remember your mother?” scene (as has also been rumored). Nothing against Natalie Portman, I just don’t see how it will add anything. More likely it would break the scene up.

Anyway, for those who want to skip the commentary, here’s the USA Today article and here’s the side-by-side comparisons.

Update 9/10: Here’s another writeup that goes into more detail on the changes and reviews the DVD set as a whole.

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On the way to work this morning, Katie noticed one of those ubiquitous catering trucks and remarked, “With a name like ‘Superior Coffee,’ you know it probably isn’t.” It’s a useful guideline: if a company has to tell you something is gourmet, for instance, that means it can’t count on its reputation alone.

That reminded me of a story David Weber told at a convention about the first Honor Harrington book. They were almost ready to go to press when he got a call from his editor.

“I’ve been thinking. Your viewpoint characters are in the Royal Manticoran Navy. The villains are the Republic of Haven. Isn’t that backwards? Shouldn’t the monarchy be the bad guys?”

They went back and forth a bit, until one of them said, “What if it’s the People’s Republic of Haven?”

They agreed that was a good solution, and then proceeded to look through the proofs for a place where they could insert the word without moving the page breaks around. As I recall, he said they only found one spot, and possibly the map, but he used the full name in the rest of the series.

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A few years ago I lived in the city of Lake Forest (formerly El Toro) for a bit. One of the interesting things about Lake Forest is its collection of streets named after characters and places in Lord of the Rings. (And yes, these were around long before the movies were made.)

I still drive past Gondor Drive on my way back from the comic store, and I’ve been meaning to get a picture of the street sign for a while. It turned out to be too hard to shoot without actually aiming, so I turned onto a smaller street where I knew I could catch Elrond Lane:

Corner of Elrond and Ridge Route

Other Tolkien-inspired streets include: Buckland Lane, Bywater Road (and it is at least near water), Rivendell Drive, Shadowfax Drive and Brandywine Lane.

While checking the Thomas Guide for some of the ones I missed, I just discovered a neighborhood with Sesame Street, Muppet Lane, Big Bird, Oscar, Grover, and Cookie Monster. And Kurmit [sic], though I suppose that could be a typo.

And then there’s Dana Point, which has the Street of the Green Lantern. Of course, it has about 20 named Street of the fill-in-the-blank Lantern — Blue, Amber, Golden, Silver, Violet, etc. [Update: Here are some Green Lantern Street photos.]

Update Sep. 24: Here’s a blurry picture of the Gondor street sign:
Gondor Street Sign

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Microsoft responds to Apple’s contention that portable video isn’t a big market:

“Ask kids in the back of a car on a two-hour trip, ‘Hey, would you like to have your videos there?’ My kids would,” Gates said. “I guess Steve’s kids just listen to Bach and Mozart. But mine, they want to watch ‘Finding Nemo.’ I don’t know who made that, but it’s really a neat movie.”

Yeah, who was that?

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While looking at website referrer logs, I came across an article at Radio Heroes detailing Gorilla City (Or, What if Grodd Was One of Us?)

The site is all about “reviewing—well, okay, making fun of” a series of audio-drama comic books, and this one tells a tale of Batman in Gorilla City, and how he uses trancendental meditation to defeat Grodd, the Super-Gorilla!

No, really!

I haven’t listened to the sound clips yet, but the write-up is great!

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I found this while looking for pictures to scan for some new profiles on my Flash site. It’s very interesting in light of where Hal Jordan has gone since:

[The Flash and Green Lantern argue over trying to reverse death]This is from Flash #276 (1979), right after the Flash’s wife, Iris, has been killed. Barry goes straight to the JLA satellite HQ and asks Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern to bring her back from the dead. Hal, being sane at the time, refuses. (The others don’t have the ability.)

The thing is, in the past decade or so, Hal Jordan has become DC’s poster boy for the phrase, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He’s tried to recreate a major city and its inhabitants, destroyed a planet, destroyed the universe and attempted to build his own universe to replace it — and that’s just before he died. He’s now tied with the Spectre — a powerful supernatural being — and he’s brought at least one person (Green Arrow) back from the dead, and mindwiped the entire human race to forget the identity of the current Flash. He’s probably done even more questionable stuff in his own series or in JSA.

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