Milestone missed

I just realized my 200th blog post was recently. Oh well I am not very big on things like anniversaries or things like that. There are more important things out there. Still it happened though. Yay!

So I am getting over being sick, and being depressed at the same time. When I say depressed it isn't the "something happened" sort but rather the chemical sort. So I am having trouble telling if I feel run down because I have a fever or because I feel like I'd be better off dead. But I am taking a two pronged approch to getting better...kinda. Physicaly at least I am more or less better but I still had to cancel Mutants and Masterminds tonight because I just wasn't feeling up to it for the most part. The idea of going to work then running the game feels pretty epically insurmountable at this point. Heck last night doing a little bit of prep for the game session felt insurmountable so I have no idea what would happen if I tried to run a game. Also I am pretty excited about the game session I have cooked up so that will just have to wait until next week. Bleh. Maybe I can reschedule to Friday, that would be pretty exciting since I am not leaving town.

But for the most part, over the last few days I have been spending extended amounts of time staring into space, zoning out, and trying to do something before forgetting what it is I was doing. There would be times when I would have a movie night declared and I would end up not watcing somehting until 11 because I just couldn't get myself together enough to get a movie from the box to the dvd player. Man that was a REALLY sad night. I don't like being sick. I did manage to get a few comic books read and I want to put that in its own blog post. So this one might be cut radically short. I also read a little bit about a lot of the terrorist action that is happening in Russia. Between reading about the terrorist action in Russia, the Brasque in Spain, and anything about Africa I realize that America is an exceptionally stable place, yet we have enough crime that the whole terrorism thing seems to balance out. I was unusually out of it when I read up on Russia and Spain so that is going to have to be done again because right now I am realizing just how little I understood what I read. Not due to complications mind you but because my brain didn't work.

Similiarly I really need to reread Tumor. That was such a fantastic graphic novel...I am going to write about that for a moment. Not the book itself that gets its own post but rather the price. Tumor caught my eye because it is an eye catching package. It is a black hardcover book that is slightly larger than your average paperback. The cover iteself has gold embossing on it, and the pages are made of nice thick high quality paper. The edges have that neat crickle feeling which is tres awesome. The binding isn't glue. It is that nice string binding that will last pretty much forever. This is important because I already have two trade paperbacks which need replacing because of the binding crapping out. In short the package in of itself is gorgeous it is a book that is worth owning for the pure and simple reason that it just plain old looks nice. Entranced by the book I read what was about and I knew immeadiatly that I had to own it. There are just certain things I don't have a choice about. Like I said I'll get into what's in it in another post. So I go digging for a price only to realize that it is 15 bucks. 15 bucks for a 225 page comic book. At that point I realized that we are all being taken for a ride. Your average paperback novel costs more than 15 bucks, and your hardbacks cost at least twice as much, packages as well desighed as Tumor? Costs far more than that. To compare the Agent Orange green lantern trade is 20 bucks for nearly half the page count, and the whole thing is pretty cheaply bound.

So why the money thing? First of all I find affairs concenring money to be fundamentally interesting. Unless it is how my signifigant other is spending money then I stay away from it as hard as possible because there are no arguments like money arguments. They are so very sad. ANYWAY there are lots and lots of talk about how various aspects of my hobby are falling on hard times. Local Game stores are having trouble keeping up with Amazon. Actually, they flat out can not compare to Amazon's prices end of story. For example the Blackest Night trade collection costs 30 dollars less on amazon. That is insane. Yet comic book companies are still crying about low sales and how profits being down. Roleplaying game companies are now currently enjoying more avenues of distribution than they ever had before. No seriously, being carried in every major book store is huge. Yet the hobby itself isn't undergoing any sort of rennisance because of high initial price point and lack of advirtising. I forget what rpg it is but they are charinging 75 dollars for their main rule book and then turning around to complain about low sales and piracy. No really? It is 75 fucking dollars what the hell is wrong with you people. TThe industry has compleatly lost touch with what should be its target audience middle/highschool.

Also it isn't like fantasy is being looded down upon like it was in the early/mid 90s. We have Harry fucking Porrter for christ sakes this shouldn't be that hard. Oh well it is upsetting because I care and I look at these basic mistakes and I have to wonder what the hell are people thinking? Then I see something like Tumor on the shelves and I realize that it isn't very much.

Tumor isn't published by the Big Two. Nor is it published by the small three Dark Horse, Image, IDW, it is published by a little company who is quite frankly taking a risk. The book itself started out as Kindle only and has only just recently been published. They didn't have to give it the special edition treatment but they did and I love them for it. I hope other people in the industry take notice, they need to. Well something needs to happen at any rate. I dunno alright I am moving onto comics.