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Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our eighth calendar year!Number 399 (Vol. 8, No. 46). This edition is for the week of November 12--18, 2007.
• Ex-Pilots Demand Re-opening UFO Investigations
• Readers Comments
Dark Horse Comics now puts its monthly anthologies "Dark Horse Presents" up for free viewing on its MySpace site. DC Comics has also put issues up on MySpace, and recently launched the competition-based Zuda Comics, which encourages users to rank each other's work, as a way to tap into the expanding Web comic scene.
In the old days we could find a comics spinner rack at any local drug store or five-and-dime. These days the primary outlet for these publications are specialty comics shops and comic conventions, many of which are out-of-the-way for the casual reader/collector. (I'm pleased to say my local Borders Books still has a comics spinner rack.)
While I'm all for the adoption of internet distribution as a way to revitalize the comics biz, I can't help but feel sad that I may, in my lifetime, see the extinction of its hard-copy, printed form.
Increasingly, the newest titles in print sport a more cinema-like layout with simple rectangular panels filled with spectacular and colorful, albeit computer-enhanced, artwork. Granted, this may help enforce any movie-related tie-ins for a consistent look, but I think we're missing the point if we see start seeing comics as simply a printed version of a movie -- or movie wannabe. In my humble opinion, the much-prized hand-crafted look of older comics (which I always found desirable, especially when you could tell who-drew-what at a glance) has eroded in many current computer-enhanced titles. But....I digress.
One of the new moves planned for computer display is "frame-by-frame" sequencing, read one panel at a time. That sounds convenient on the surface, but suggests a homogenization of dimension that exploits a let's-pretend-we're-watching-a-DVD-version-of-this psychology. (I keep thinking I'm looking at a storyboard for an action movie.) One version of this I truly enjoyed was the old Stan Lee website sporting "webisodes" of comic stories he wrote set to Flash animations. I think that was pulled off really well, but that was designed specifically for web-browser viewing.
For the moment, the idea (as best as I can determine) of the comics-on-the-'net is to promote shopping for the printed versions at the store. All fine and well. I just hope the seductive convenience of scrolling through webpages for our comics reading doesn't eventually completely replace the neighborhood spinner rack.
But hey, just think how much more valuable those old Golden and Silver-Age titles are going to be -- all printed on cheap newsprint via 4-color press -- when it all goes electronic.
Ex-Pilots Demands New UFO Investigation An international panel of two dozen former pilots and government officials called on the U.S. government on Monday to reopen its generation-old UFO investigation as a matter of safety and security given continuing reports about flying discs, glowing spheres and other strange sightings (emphasis was placed on post-9/11 sightings, but many older cases beg re-examination as well). The panelists from seven countries, including former senior military officers, said they had each seen a UFO or conducted an official investigation into UFO phenomena.
It is unclear if Kucinich's admission, said during a televised debate, was the catalyst for this latest staging.
The government and the public has had a very uneasy and difficult communication on the subject of UFOs whose modern history is generally agreed to start with the 1947 crash at Roswell, New Mexico (the Air Force contends it was a downed balloon train). Dozens of high-profile historical cases include Betty & Barney Hill's 1961 alien abduction, and the 1993 "Phoenix Lights" where thousands of Arizona residents (including the governor) witnessed what they thought was a super-huge triangular craft floating over the city (the Air Force said it was suggested by the outline of dropped light flares during night-time excercises).
The Air Force investigated 12,618 UFO reports from 1947 to 1969 in what was known as Project Blue Book. Investigators concluded that the incidents posed no threat and there was no evidence of space aliens or a super technology in operation.
"Since the termination of Project Blue Book, nothing has occurred that would support a resumption of UFO investigations," the Air Force said on its Web site.
That doesn't stop them from blacking out huge parts of Freedom of Information Act documents requested relating to UFOs, so I, of course, beg to differ.
The Changing Face of Comics
Marvel is putting some of its older comics online, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared. It's a tentative move onto the Internet: Comics can only be viewed in a Web browser, not downloaded, and new issues will only go online at least six months after they first appear in print.
This is but one of several moves by the big comics publishers that has slowly unfolded for years and will continue: not only trying to re-introduce older characters to a younger audience via their natural habitat (in front of a computer screen), but parlaying the internet into the next likeliest distribution medium for the struggling art form.
Over the years, the youngest reader demographic, the one traditionally targeted by publishers, has dropped off the radar due to more colorful distractions like, say, video games. And, of course, the price of comics has increased to a point that takes them off the list of passive entertainment for any age group and encourages collecting as an investment -- which is a sub-industry in itself -- but takes it away from its original purpose.
Paranormal fan that I am, I know I missed a golden opportunity a couple weeks ago to spotlight Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich's claim he'd seen a UFO. He joins such UFO political luminaries as Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in putting a sort of fringe legitimacy on UFO investigations (for some of us it was always legitimate, but you know....)
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