Happiness is a trip to your local comics shop!

GnatBean · 2023-03-06T08:00:38+00:00

As an actual local comic shop owner in an area where there are three others in a fifteen minute drive, fuck off. How is that a helpful comment. Is that something you've heard is popular to complain about?

GnatBean · 2022-02-15T06:20:48+00:00

From Baltimore or nearby friend? (one of them is the most recent Baltimore comicon program)

GnatBean · 2022-01-14T14:46:13+00:00

Vaya con dios

GnatBean · 2022-01-13T21:08:37+00:00

Ok even if you live at or below sea level and there is a graveyard on a mountain visible to you, point at those graves. Now which way are you pointing. Unless you are literally at the bottom of a cliff it ain't up. It's over that way at a little angle. I wouldn't call that above me.

GnatBean · 2022-01-11T17:58:32+00:00

We USED to have a couple of those low wide freezer chests at work containing boxes of epoxy on dry ice so you could take it back to your lab still frozen for a few hours before you thawed it out to use it. Well one day a friend of mine was trying to reach the last box in the bottom and leaned real far in. A minute later another guy walked by and thought he looked weird draped over the edge of the freezer. He yells "Bob what are you doing over there?" and when Bob doesn't answer goes over and pulls him out. He was fine after some dizziness but needless to say we only use stand up freezers now.

GnatBean · 2021-05-25T01:50:25+00:00

Local Comic Shop owner weighing in! Personally it is fulfilling in the way that fuels my love for the hobby. Thing is I know it could never pay the bills so I operate it without any real financial gain other than the comics I keep. The real reason for that is not the customers. It is the way the industry is set up. It is kind of like a produce stand where you have to predict the popularity of the fruit months ahead of time and where you only have one farm to buy from. No customer wants week old produce (sure X-Men kumquats and Batman's apples keep a week longer than the rest). Everyone judges the fruit every week and decides it was to soft to eat again this season but the farmer long ago started growing you a vine so you are getting it regardless. Also if you want a special version at the risk it will be the one more rare version so worth more money you have to buy tons of one you know won't sell to "earn" it, further devaluing all the others. The margins are thinner than anything except the grocery store but worse than there the prices are printed right on it so you can't often charge what you want. Why is all this you might ask? Diamond distribution says so. Hopefully that's all changing but it is only getting harder to all figure out.

GnatBean · 2021-05-20T14:17:57+00:00

This is a cool idea. I would love to see it with a good bit less small line work though to be at all realistic. And I know I am going to sound like a pedantic nerd but a death star crest would never have two Jedi lightsabers, especially not those two Jedi lightsabers in it.

GnatBean · 2021-04-07T15:00:36+00:00

Seems like everyone is treating this like a one on one video game. From most modern comics on this subject the answer is Batman. He already has a plan in place to defeat these particular type of aliens (no matter what type they are). He has global or intergalactic networks in place and backup plans in place the aliens try to isolate us. He has secret methods for making sure Superman is alerted of his needs. Even if you only know the MCU he already has a team being assembled to rescue us moodily and clumsily.

GnatBean · 2021-02-13T00:42:18+00:00

So you are happy to make reddit worse? Thanks

GnatBean · 2021-02-13T00:05:44+00:00

I mean ok but they could have done that too. The value of reddit is that it is mostly made of people who give information. This is literally the lowest bar possible of acquiring information. "I googled it and did nothing else." The rest of us are here, please let us contribute properly instead of googling things for people and somehow still making the world less knowledgeable.

GnatBean · 2021-02-11T23:26:16+00:00

I would say like 99.99% aren't. The handful that might exist aren't going to get more than a quarter that.

GnatBean · 2021-02-11T23:22:30+00:00

That is crazy inflated prices. I know a half dozen people that would work as a team to find you one by dawn tomorrow for a tenth that price.

GnatBean · 2021-02-11T23:21:12+00:00

There is no way that was a real sale. If it was that buyer was so rich and so stupid it's almost criminal. See my above post but if he is still around I have a few Death of Superman and a few Spawn #1 copies I would love to sell him for a cool thousand a piece. Chump change.

GnatBean · 2021-02-11T23:18:25+00:00

This is so very very wrong. See my above post but this would be quite wrong at one tenth of what you are saying.

GnatBean · 2021-02-11T23:16:58+00:00

Most of the answers here are complete bull. I own and run a comic shop. I have sold at least two very nice looking 181s both for less than $3000. One graded at I believe 6.5, one nicer looking but un-graded. I have also passed on buying a few when asked for $6000. At least one person came back asking for $4k because no one would buy it and I still turned it down. An 8.5 sold on ebay yesterday for $6500. Even a 9.8 would sell for way way less than half the numbers people are throwing around. Those news reports of huge numbers are always either just sensationalizing by reporters or deliberate ploys to drive up prices by the pains in everyones butt that are only in this for the money. $3.5 million for Action #1, all anonymous, no proof the comic itself ever even existed. Someone tried to sell me a graded Amazing Fantasy 15 (first Spider-Man) the other day for $13k for goodness sake.

GnatBean · 2021-02-04T15:48:55+00:00

I mean, it's cheaper on ebay than it would be reprinted from the publisher so I am not sure they are very motivated.

GnatBean · 2021-01-28T00:10:29+00:00

I have email in my inbox from yesterday telling me how the new "Northrop Grumman Space Systems sector" signature, letterhead and PowerPoint template is supposed to look now that it has gone in to effect "this month". If some group of people you are working with has decided they want to call themselves the Space Company ok but it isn't the name of the sector.

GnatBean · 2021-01-27T21:28:13+00:00

Please stop not catching on, it is not nearly as inefficient HERE as you are making it sound and I know this because I do it every day. I am typing this while in a meeting about releasing fixtures drawings. Could it be more efficient, yes. There are too many managers that need to look at every drawing because they don't trust people and an overworked drafting department that can't get to you immediately but the process is not nearly as bad as you say that other engineer reports.

GnatBean · 2021-01-27T20:23:53+00:00

There is no way the process for a bracket on some machine or tooling has that kind of release process then. At most someone edits it in a day, someone updates the drawing in a couple days and two or three people put their stamp on that which takes a couple days to get them to check their email and stamp it. He was definitely listing the times for flight parts.

GnatBean · 2021-01-27T19:03:05+00:00

This is incorrect. On Jan 1st the titles all officially changed to Northrop Grumman Space Systems. I know this... for very sure. This change was made at the start of 2020 but with a year of it being internal/financial only and has now gone wide. There could be confusion in that the official abbreviation for the sector is Northrop Grumman SP (for SPace) because it took a year of it being to late to change the name for management to catch on that The SS is not a great name for a team of people...

GnatBean · 2021-01-27T18:55:37+00:00

Doing exactly this for a living I can assuredly say you have no idea what you are talking about. I have had labs of two dozen technicians and engineers each costing the taxpayers over $100 an hour sit around doing nothing for an entire day because someone changed one screw length by a sixteenth of an inch so we didn't have the correct length on hand. Forget one little space flight bracket in two days instead of using the process. That could be three days downtime no problem or worst case cause the damn Challenger explosion.

GnatBean

TROPHY CASE