Books that Don't Show Up Locally

I don't know if it is just here in Toronto,

or wether it is a phenomenon being experienced elsewhere too

but over the course of the last few years, 

the comic book shops, here in town, sometimes fail to stock 

some of the larger, more expensive books.

The first time that I realized that I could not rely on, "I'll check out a copy at the store...", was in relation to the first printing of the Jim Starlin art book, from IDW, way back in 2010.

I never saw a copy.

Neither of the two mainstays, of the local comic book scene, ever had a copy on display and I eventually got one, 

when AfterShock Comics reprinted it a couple of months ago.

BUT

this time I was smarter and placed an order for it, in advance!

 This is the latest example.

Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise,

the Graphitti Designs, Gallery Edition.

It was scheduled to be on the shelves this past Wednesday, July the 18th of 2018 but no one, here in town, had a copy!

Here is another example,

published in October of 2016,

Girl Power: Amanda Conner Gallery Edition.

Amazingly, when I questioned the, usually knowledgable guys at The Beguiling, they actually fobbed me of with the line,

" A lot of those books never see the light of day..."!

They didn't even try to search for the item, on-line, I just wasn't worth their effort, I guess.

The fact is, the item does exist and if I was so inclined, I could order a copy from one of the on-line book sellers.

I have been visiting dedicated comic book shops, since around the beginning of 1974, when I lucked into meeting a couple of far more knowledgable young guys, in Birmingham, England.

Derek Powell and Vince Harris, were both younger than I was, at the time and both of them had collections of older Marvel Comics, that made my head swim!

They were far more astute and connected to the fledgeling British Comic Fan Scene, than I was.  They escorted me to the newly opened Andromeda Bookshop and the basement of Japetus Bookshop, where a young, long haired guy, Alan, operated Warp Comics.

Forty four years on, I am still a regular visitor to the local outlets but I buy a whole lot less than I used to and what I buy is, in some ways, quite different from the items that I began this hobby with.

It used to be four colour comic books, specifically, The Fantastic Four, before I began buying out the collections of my classmates and broadening my base.

I hate to say it but except for a couple of rare exceptions, the monthly colour comic books hold no interest for me and these days I spend my allowance on related Art Books, magazines and the like.

I have also watched the amazing rise of the dedicated comic book shop and I am beginning to admit, that I seem to be witnessing their demise too.

I am grateful that we still have several Comic Book Shops, here in the city but there are a lot fewer than there used to be and truthfully, I don't understand how they manage to stay in business... in the face of skyrocketing commercial rent fees and the equally high costs of the stock.

I wait and wonder, what the future will bring.

Changing Technologies and Video Files

I was saying, to my old friend Nigel, the other day, that when it comes to the saving and sharing of movies, the technology we use has changed beyond all recognition.

It wasn't that long ago that Video Tape was the only way to go and thirty years ago, we jumped in and over the years, between the self recorded tapes and the prerecorded tapes, we amassed quite a few of them.

Well, then came DVDs, well technically, the Video CD came somewhere in there but the quality was not great but DVDs were the best.

It seemed to take quite a while but eventually the venerable VCRs started to lose ground and once the recordable and re-recordable DVDs arrived, their days were numbered.

Of course, almost overnight, we all became accustomed to HUGE Hard Drives and Multi GigaByte Thumb Drives and by then we were simply saving videos as computer files.

Then, to muddy the waters, Netflix arrived, in 1997 and with almost limitless access to old movies, old TV shows and the like, these days, many people don't feel the need to actually own their own copy of anything.

Things changed so much that Blockbuster, the destination for millions of us to rent videos and DVDs, went bankrupt in 2010.

The point of all this is:

Over the course of the last few weeks, I simply sent my huge collection of VHS video tapes to the landfill.  It was not an easy decision to make but in the end, no longer having a large sized CRT TV set to show them on and the fact that showing them on my computer screen, via my Elgato video device, only highlighted their grainy quality... it was time!

 Now, instead of a thousand, thick, bulky and heavy VHS tapes, which took up a lot of space, we have less than a hundred DVDs and less than fifty Blu-Ray Discs...

Everything else is saved as computer files and that has turned my computer into a Movie Jukebox, which is great and very convenient.

It has certainly changed the way that I watch movies.

I used to want to watch a movie, from start to finish, all at one sitting because video tape was supposed to stretch out of shape, especially if one didn't completely rewind the tape, before removing it from the machine.

But with advent of watching digital video files, it is easy and none damaging, to simply stop and resume watching, any old time, that I find myself, these days, watching movies in much the same way that I used to read books... one chapter at a time.

Freedom is a great thing.

I try not to think of all of the dollars that we invested in those old video tapes because in the early days, they were not exactly cheap and even averaging out the costs, over the years, it would represent a tidy pile of cash!

C'est la vie.

Joan Greenwood and Fenella Fielding

This one is for all of the men, of a certain age, who found both of these women to be extremely sexually attractive.

Joan Greenwood

Fenella Fielding and Kenneth Williams

in

Carry On Screaming.

They both had very distinctive voices and a way of delivering their lines, that was singular, to say the least.

Unfortunately, the beautiful Joan Greenwood died in 1987, at the age of 65 but Fenella, no longer quite as beautiful, is still around and is now 90 years old.

But back in the Sixties, they brought a certain sexual chemistry to life within me and I wish that I still had a way to feel that way again.

Life has a way of taking it's own route, regardless of how we want it to go and inevitably, we just have to live with the life we get.

There was once a time, when I truly believed that I would never have changed a thing, in my life because I was so very happy with the life that I had.

Then life changed and that certainty is a thing of the past.

C'est la vie.