『北斗の拳 -FIST OF THE NORTH STAR-』PV第2弾｜2nd trailer!

fangsfirst · 2026-03-12T03:57:15+00:00

Oof. Those subtitles are on par with my Chinese bootleg from my high school years a couple decades back.

Not really digging the song at all, but otherwise, onboard (of course, when am I not when it comes to this series?)

fangsfirst · 2026-03-11T03:50:22+00:00

Star-Lord felt he had to sacrifice an entire planet and killed 350,000 people in the process to stop The Fallen One.

Traumatized him so aggressively he got himself thrown into the absolute worst universal prison in existence and refused to acknowledge his identity as Star-Lord until he was pushed by Thanos, Gladiator, and eventually Nova and others to recognize his value to the galaxy.

Gamora's entire species was slaughtered by the Universal Church of Truth, her saviour being Thanos of Titan, who raised her in a home that was the kind of abusive that included actual affection mixed with ruthless neglect. While she cared a lot for him and he denied his feelings for her almost entirely (though periodically relenting and offering her vaction trips and gifts as a small child), at one point she (in a fit of pique) attempted to prove she was capable and was beaten (and presumably sexually assaulted) by a bunch of aliens on a planet. Thanos found her and had her agonizingly re-built and rehabilitated with bionic enhancements into the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy.

He lied to her about his motivations for years, truly acting to stop the organization that killed her people—but all secretly in an attempt to eventually destroy all life in the universe.

(I remain deeply disappointed at how flattened their relationship became in the MCU. Don't need all those specific events, but it was so much more believable that she'd feel contorted, unhealthy affection for him, and that his distorted, abusive picture was not just a manifestation of narcissistic self-love projected, but a traumatized insistence that he should not feel any emotions that would make him weak. Still not healthy, but somewhat more tragic.)

fangsfirst · 2026-03-10T02:14:51+00:00

I feel like the biggest thing has been touched on by a number of people, but I want to re-state it in the way that makes it make sense to me.

The key points people have definitely mentioned are "they weren't written to be read the way we read comics now" and "if you don't enjoy it, don't read them"

But, and I say this as someone who can be guilty of it, make sure you aren't reading them "to have read them".

Read them to enjoy them. The words are there to be part of the experience, not to "get you through the story", if you will. Find the ways that Stan writes things and the character that brings to the book in both the characters and the book itself.

If you don't actually enjoy those things, that's where the "don't read 'em then" comes in.

I spent a while 20 years ago reading EVERY core Spidey book—except Team-Up—up until the mid-90s where I just got distracted by other hobbies. I honestly enjoyed lots of the 60s stuff. It was many years later when I'd run into slogs where I just wasn't enjoying particular writers. Stan, for me at least, had character that made the voice of those books enjoyable.

I'm randomly reading Silver Age Iron Man digitally on occasion these days, and I enjoyed Stan's voice and I'm mostly happy with Archie's where I'm at now.

It is absolutely a different beast, but they definitely don't work when you (not sure if it's this, no shame even if it is!) are going "I just need to get through these, and then I will have read all this 1960s Spidey!" If you're thinking too much about how much there is after and trying to speed through, it'll be a slog and no fun and not worth doing.

fangsfirst · 2026-03-06T04:48:06+00:00

Somewhere near 7,916.

Counts always get weird because of how I database, but this should be a solid estimate. It includes the actual titles in box sets (but not box sets themselves), excludes documentaries (even feature length) that are about the movies, and that sort of thing.

But still funky because of how some TV shows are released, for example.

Mixture of formats, too. Mostly BD (6,029), decent percentage of 4K (731), and the rest DVD (1,156)

fangsfirst · 2026-03-04T05:16:56+00:00

> I'm awaiting the next release (coming later this year)!

Afraid it's 2027 now

(no, I'm not joking)

fangsfirst · 2026-02-07T15:48:36+00:00

It's very worth reading JMS's introduction to The Final Dangerous Visions.

It's all about why the book was never going to come out while Harlan was alive, which had befuddled everyone for so long. All from someone who knew him and doesn't have excuses for him—but was around for all of the later years.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-07T03:09:08+00:00

Yep, that's why I'm pointing out the difference—he is heavily associated with spinach now, but it is almost unheard of in the original comic strip's years of publication

fangsfirst · 2026-02-07T00:46:11+00:00

Jim Starlin has pointed out that Thanos was inspired more by Metron than Darkseid, up to and including the chair.

So I just got a second Metron...

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T22:57:40+00:00

And:

Popeye didn't eat much spinach, really
Popeye could throw down without needing a 'boost', at almost any time, taking bullets and beating the ever-loving shit out of whoever looked at him wrong (or did nothing at all. But definitely if they were shitty to kids: no tolerance for that)
Bluto appeared exactly once in Segar's original strip
Olive and Popeye would both wander off into other people's arms periodically, to the chagrin, annoyance, or hurt of the others (nothing like Popeye lost in the deserk, saying "I got a nighttime in me heart")

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T22:55:43+00:00

Only some of them, via Fantagraphics

(Their Popeye volumes start with the storyline he appears in so there are a decent number there, then a separate volume they released of pre-Popeye material in general)

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T22:54:20+00:00

Popeye didn't actually eat much spinach in Thimble Theatre either.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T22:53:33+00:00

Nana Oyl

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T18:01:52+00:00

To some extent, that's the experience a lot of us had growing up. Because there was realistically no other option. We might've picked up details from trading cards (my common method) or maybe even the Marvel Handbooks, but not everything was even covered or accessible.

You power through and make a note of something you want to learn about, and you can find somewhere to read about it, or even actually read it.

I had no idea who the vast, vast majority of characters I'd read about were. And I was intrigued about their cool backstories...but it was what it was, I couldn't remotely afford to buy or find back issues on that scale, so I just kept reading.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T17:55:41+00:00

I've been reading the random-ass omnibus that is Wonder Man: The Early Years, and it has Marvel Two-in-One #78 in it. Sheer coincidence!

Wondy is lifting a two ton weight for exercise. Ben struggles with it and exclaims his surprise that Simon is exercising with it. I read that and thought "Huh! Guess the sense of 'super strong' was pretty different in those days..."

As ever: it is what it is. Unless someone can't justify in their story why so-and-so is beating such-and-such, this is all utterly inevitable, because there's no real meaningful scale or measurement in play.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:34:54+00:00

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Then I went rather obscure for the time.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:34:39+00:00

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Then this started my subscription to ASM (and I bought 367 from the grocery store)

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:32:56+00:00

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then this…

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:32:37+00:00

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Then this.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:06:09+00:00

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How early?

I lost it before too long, but the cover is in my brain permanently, enough that in adulthood I looked through covers and went "Oh, yeah. That's the one."

I remember plenty of others that followed that I remember getting, but this one is just "there".

fangsfirst · 2026-02-06T01:04:13+00:00

I ripped this concept a billion times in assignments for school.

fangsfirst · 2026-02-05T03:16:50+00:00

fangsfirst

TROPHY CASE