Boulder

Once again, I could use some help. I'm looking to get into X-Men before X-Men #200 and the Endangered Species stuff. I've already got the first three issues of Brubaker's run on Uncanny and I'm going to pick up the rest, but beyond that, where do I go? Also, has anybody been reading the First Class miniseries? How is it?

I think there was some time between Avengers Disassembled (the end of Avengers and beginning of the New Avengers) and House of M, as Wanda was held in Genosha for a while after flipping out.

<-----look at this <----then read this

Yes, Buffy starts on Wednesday. I think Joss Whedon is writing the first four issues, then handing it off. Also mark March 31st down on your calendars, because that's when the first issue of Tek Jansen comes out.

Yes.

Speaking of Ghost Rider.....I have a question:

There was never any reference, direct or subtle, to Eric using drugs. He was just pretty lazy in the earlier seasons, and really stupid in the later ones.

I've been reading a shitload of comics these past 6-7 months, but only Marvel. Is there a good jump-on point for DC? Is it worth it? I was planning on picking up Superman and Batman versus Alien and Predator out of sheer curiosity, but apart from that, I'm really not sure. I heard this week's Batman is good, so I might pick that up. Help!

I enjoy Elvis quite a bit. I'm not as big of fan of his as I am of, say, Johnny Cash, but I still appreciate the man's work (chiefly "Suspicious Minds," "Burning Love," and "You Were Always On My Mind"). As for my favorite tidbit, it is a known fact that Elvis's favorite Elvis impersonator was Andy Kaufman.

Bless this thread. Since July, I've been an absolute comic junkie. Or Marvel junkie, more accurately. I've been getting into a lot of the Civil War stuff, plus Annihilation and Planet Hulk. I've really been going crazy with the back issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Wolverine. As far as favorite writers go, I think I'd have to put Peter David towards the top of the list. I haven't read a whole lot of his stuff, but his part in The Other was great. I'm not sure which title it was, but the issue where Tracer pretended to be an Avenger and met with Aunt May was just brilliant. They had this awesome discussion/minor argument about theology that really caught my attention. I enjoy JMS as well, and though it may be questionable at times, I respect his penchant for putting his own spin on the long-running histories of his characters. Fabian Nicieza is great, but I can't pick up Cable and Deadpool anymore because I loathe the character of Cable. A friend of mine recently mentioned that he spends all his money on weed and comic books. Basically it's the same thing for me, minus the marijuana.

Two seasons of Rock Star prove that Dave Navarro owns nothing except makeup, a wardrobe, and a throne that make him look like the love child of Satan and a Greenwich Village drag queen.

Frasier, Cheers, King of the Hill, Futurama, 3rd Rock from the Sun, South Park

The Omen (original) The Ring In The Mouth of Madness The Thing Hellraiser The Relic The Mothman Prophecies Rosemary's Baby Prince of Darkness The Wicker Man (original)

Spider-man 2 was great. At the time I saw it, I wasn't into comic books at all and I hadn't even seen the first one. I expected to strongly dislike it, but I ended up enjoying it immensely.

What a terrible show. Jericho was unbelievably bad. If he would rather be doing this than wrestling, more power to him, I guess, but I guess it also shows that he was really, really tired of wrestling. Even Smokey Robinson, one of the greatest singers of all time, couldn't save this. I'll be watching Rock Star now. It may suck, but at least Ultimo Dragon's not making an ass out of himself on it.

Fry, Frasier and Niles Crane, Ernie Pantusso, Blackadder, Dick Solomon, Jerome "Chef" MacElroy, Hank Hill, Ted Baxter, Al Bundy, Dwayne Wayne

Please don't jump to tell me what I would be doing in hypothetical situations. Once again, you're jumping to conclusions about me, assuming I don't "let" myself enjoy the show. The Simpsons was my favorite show pretty much from its inception until 1999. I can't state exactly how big a part the show played in my childhood, but suffice to say that I've spent more hours watching The Simpsons than I have any single show, be it Futurama, Raw, or Nitro. The point is, I never took it upon myself to decide that I no longer wanted to enjoy the show. It simply lost me as the plots became exceedingly repetitive and incoherent, and the humor turned from subversive satire into blatant one-liners. What you're describing as one-sidedness was, if anything, a consistency. A TV show is, at its core, about its main characters, and peripheral characters like Barney, Moe, and Flanders worked primarily in how they interacted with Homer. If they were one-sided, at least they served as representations of classic behavior we all generally encounter at some point. The one-sidedness that they show today is, again, a product of punchline after punchline being fed out from any available source. And on another note, as far as I'm concerned, the writers extracted more comedy from their "one-sided" characters in the first 100 episodes than they have in the subsequent 275. Please speak for yourself, because to me, the show didn't become dull until the change began. And while we're on the subject of dull, even changing the characters hasn't stopped the writers from repeating plots (Let's see what The Simpsons do 10 years in the future... no, 15 years in the future... no, 30 years in the future!). I would never deny that it must be hard to create new episodes of a show that already has several hundred in the can- but the truth is, there are a few options that are always present: 1) Keep writing funny, original episodes. Sure, as I said, it's hard, but it's possible. There are always writers to be found and ideas to be heard that involve real world situations transposed into an episode. You know, stuff that doesn't involve Groundskeeper Willie getting a makeover. 2) Age the characters. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities in terms of both dealing with familial situations and relationships, and interactions with peripheral characters. It's not ideal, I'll admit, but it beats what we're getting. Of course, the problems with 1 and 2 are that the plots are only a portion of the problem. My only hope is that more centered plots will help the show rediscover its realness and heart. 3) End it. Remember Seinfeld? I'm really not trying to sound condescending here, but I'm not sure if you guys are old enough/familiar enough with U.S. pop culture to remember the fanfare when the show ended. Personally, I was never a fan, but I respect the originality of both the show and its tactics. NO show was hotter from 1994-1998 (TV Guide named it the best show ever. Literally. EVER), but after only eight seasons, Jerry Seinfeld decided that he wanted to go out on top. Of course, it's hard to turn down more juicy paychecks, but hey, we're talking was to preserve quality. Speaking as a fan, I wish the show went off the air after season 8.

I couldn't disagree with you more. The Simpsons from seasons 2-5 was, IMO, possibly the single best written TV show of all time. That "fluff" you dismissed was the heart that's missing from the show today, and takes a show from being a bunch of jokes to being a great piece of art. Of course, I think I'm in the minority these days; otherwise, I doubt Family Guy would have been brought back. But when you think about Futurama, for instance, and some of the stellar, most beloved episodes ("Luck of the Fryrish," "The Sting," "Jurassic Bark") you can see that there's still an appreciation for shows with heart. As for The Simpsons, the heart was zapped around season 6-7, when Homer forgot he used to be a loving father and caring husband (albeit an oafish one with many poor qualities), and became a proto-Peter Griffin. Through season 8 the writing was still sharp, but season 9 represented a decent drop-off. Since then, it's been getting progressively worse and worse, lazier and lazier. NO show should have five clip shows, I don't care if it lasts 1000 years. And it seems as though every once in a while, the writers will give the audience a little wink as if to say "Yup, we've been around forever. We may not be as great as we once were, but by acknowledging it, we make that okay."- just check the end credits for "Behind the Laughter." Characters who once served as brilliant examples of satire have been destroyed for the sake of cheap jokes . Take Skinner, who was the archetypal disciplinarian (with even his name being a reference to that). The Armand Tamzarian episode (which wasn't that funny any way you slice it) rewrote his past, and then retconned it at the end- all to provide a mediocre 22 minutes. The same is being done with Ned Flanders, though more gradually. When the show started, Flanders and his family were perfect. That was it, no real puzzle. They only served to show how dysfunctional The Simpsons were, and more importantly, to show what a jerk Homer was for hating him. These days, Ned has turned up the bible thumping to the point where he's a tool for the writers to get their own political jokes across ("I finished first in the race for the cure... for homosexuality!"). The show has become cheap joke after cheap joke, like Family Guy. To be honest, I don't think it's horrible, nor do I think FG is horrible. I just think that they're both really, really unmemorable, which is sad considering what The Simpsons used to be.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=80636 Personally, I'm not too pissed, simply because this gives me a chance to catch up on some stuff from the past few months. But for the majority of readers (who aren't new to Marvel), this has got to be a bummer. Not to mention the stores which stock the books. On the plus side, I guess this gives Captain America and his crew extra time to evade S.H.I.E.L.D.

Was On The Line that freaking movie where he played the guy who met the girl on the train and didn't get her name so he had to take out ads? Whether it is or not, they used to advertise that movie on the screens at the Hollywood Video near my house far too frequently.

He used to date Danielle Fishel, which made me jealous in 1999.

My AIM Screen Name is a reference to Boy Meets World.

No argument here, Tiny Toon Adventures was great, with "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" and "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli" being standout episodes.

You think that's bad, I caught an episode of "Looney Tune Babies" a couple of years ago, which is basically what it sounds like- Muppet Babies, but minus the imagination and any other redeeming qualities. Tweety was upset because he thought everybody was ignoring him. Turns out they were planning a surprise part for him.

One of Petty's new songs (can't recall the title, unfortunately) opens up exactly like "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" by George Thorogood. Now that's a disappointment, when you're expecting to hear Thorogood.