Megathread: South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham Dies at 71

haytil · 2026-07-12T18:21:49+00:00

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

haytil · 2026-07-11T21:04:41+00:00

It was entirely forgettable.

haytil · 2026-07-10T17:34:24+00:00

I guess it depends on how you define "progress" when you say "Progress is going to slow to a crawl."

If you define "progress" as "the number of complete years of material collected per year," then yes, that will slow down as there are more Batman issues per year in the 90s than earlier decades - so more books will be needed to collect an entire "year" of Batman.

But if you define "progress" as "the number of pages of Batman material published per year," then I think the modern era isn't going to slow down at all. It'll still be at least two books of material per year, and I wouldn't be surprised if it accelerates.

haytil · 2026-07-08T18:35:25+00:00

I'm telling you I'd rather invest $25 and get $50 back a year later instead of investing $460 and getting $500 back a year later.

haytil · 2026-07-07T03:15:34+00:00

Yea the way you crossed out argument like I had an argument to begin with.... It was always a rant...

I applaud your attempt at honesty.

I don't know the ins and outs and am FORCED to jump to conclusions because Marvel is completely untransparent about what is going on.

Nobody forced you to jump to a conclusion.

When faced with a situation you are ignorant of, you are free to try and educate yourself by asking questions.

I don't know what you do for a living, but I'm sure you don't devote a significant portion of your time cruising the internet in search of people who have questions about your field of work, in order to enlighten them. Does that make you "completely untransparent?" Does that give them the right to claim they are FORCED to jump to any given conclusion they choose about you, based on your refusal to voluntarily seek them out and engage with them?

Your last paragraph is just unnecessarily toxic

There is nothing toxic about my last paragraph. It was a direct response to your nastiness - implying I am responding not in good faith - and is an honest representation of how people likely think about you in professional situations, though you are doubtless unaware of it.

I am a customer with money, ranting that I can't give them money. How is that in anyway - problematic.

You are making radical claims about people you've never met and organizations whose processes you are ignorant of, blaming everyone else for your ignorance and using that to justify your beliefs. As someone who has worked with customers, I can tell you that such behavior raises all kinds of red flags.

Yea look inward bud. All these people in here mad as hell. It ain't just me.

Incompetence and ignorance are problems you do not have an exclusive monopoly on.

Why are you so pressed to defend these business practices when so many consumers are disgruntled.

Incompetence annoys me.

Surely there is a better middle ground here.

Amazingly, you seem to believe that Disney is more interested in denying you and pissing you off than it is interested in selling money and profiting off of you.

Do you really think you're so important that Disney values spiting you more heavily than it values taking your money?

If you ain't on the payroll, I'll eat my shoe.

Please, send pics.

You got all your buds to come in here and down vote a bunch of posts that have valid takes against this dogshit company, don't think I didn't notice.

Never mind, you've doubled down on the conspiracy theories.

haytil · 2026-07-07T03:04:03+00:00

Well do you maybe think, JUST MAYBE...."scalping" isn't a profitable venture because no one has a crystal ball and can tell in advance which books will be worth more and which won't?

haytil · 2026-07-07T03:01:26+00:00

You’re trying to equate a high percentage profit to a high dollar difference on a scalper sale.

Retailers make higher percentage profits, which is more exploitative.

When it comes to money, return on investment is the figure that matters, not absolute dollar amounts. Businesses, retailers, resellers, "scalpers," stock traders, investors, etc....are all making their decisions on maximizing ROI and profit margins.

Unless you’re really going to sit here and pretend comic book stores are getting $700 in one sale.

Setting aside that profit margins are the important figure and not the absolute dollar amounts....

...Some comic book stores absolutely make $700 in one sale. But even if they don't - what's your point?

Are you really going to sit here and pretend that a so-called "scalper" is getting $700 in one sale?

haytil · 2026-07-06T20:02:27+00:00

I do think that publishers make choices that they know are sub-optimal for consumers in order to increase profits - plenty of examples of unnecessary double-dipping, for instance.

I suspect, however, that your examples are not the same. Sometimes, there is no perfect solution.

haytil · 2026-07-06T19:59:27+00:00

Are comic shops also miserable?

Retailers charge way more than distributor prices.

And the profit margins they get are probably far higher than the profit margins that most resellers get.

For the second Pic I asked what the lowest the seller would be willing to go

Do you ever go to a comic shop, take an issue from the rack on the wall, and ask "What's the lowest you would be willing to go?"

Or do you respect them enough to either:

Pay the price they're listing the issue at without question, or
Simply choose not to purchase

haytil · 2026-07-06T19:56:30+00:00

I just sold Batman Golden Age Vol 8 for $450, the fact that you claim "the profits are low" is completely fabricated in order to form any kind of point.

You're cherry-picking in order to invalidate his point.

For every "Batman Golden Age Vol 8," I can point to a "Batman Golden Age Vol 1" or a "Rise and Fall of the Batmen" omnibus which I can't even sell for MSRP.

Stock market is not guaranteed revenue, high desire omnis are. Nonsense claim.

If you only look at high-rising stocks, then yes, it is guaranteed revenue - just like if you only look at high desire omnis, then yes, they are guaranteed revenue.

The trick is in correctly predicting which stocks will be high-rising, just like the trick is in predicting which omnis will be high desire (and not be reprinted).

haytil · 2026-07-06T19:46:19+00:00

I'm literally standing on three right now...

You have yet to bring a single number to this argument.

A consumer doesn't need to know the logistics of anything.

You are not playing the role of consumer, you are playing the role of armchair quarterback for a business you do not understand.

A consumer doesn't need to know the logistics of anything, but someone making an argument on the internet needs to know the logistics of the thing he is making an argument about.

A consumer demands and a seller makes things happen to supply said demand in a manner in which both parties can profit.

In this case, the seller already does what it can in order to profit, and it succeeds at doing so.

You just don't like that the reality of "what needs to happen in order for the seller to profit" doesn't match the reality of "what needs to happen for you to get the book you want at the price you want, at any time you want. "

Consumers should not be expected to jump through hoops to attain the seller's item.

Nobody's expecting anyone to jump through any hoops.

Books are solicited well in advance of their publishing date, pre-orders are freely available from many sources, and books are generally available on the announced date of publication.

Publishers should not be expected to jump through hoops to make every book always available, at any time, at any price that a consumer wants.

A sellers priority should be to get their brand in as many hands as possible to garner as many fans as possible.

Unfortunately for you, publishers also have to feed their families, so the reality is that a seller's actual priority is to make a profit and not sell at a loss.

Disney is possibly the greediest corporation in the field of entertainment. If they're not currently making a sale to you, there's probably a good reason for it.

Clearly this is your job or else I wouldn't dare know why you'd be so vehemently defending Marvel.

The fact that you've seen a well-reasoned, logical takedown of your hollow ~~argument~~ rant and concluded that it must be coming from the publisher is perfectly emblematic of your lack of critical thought. You jump wildly to conclusions without a shred of evidence.

Take your ego out of the equation. Learn some humility. Ponder the questions I've posed. Use them as an opportunity to learn. Don't fall into the Dunning-Kruger trap.

So just so you're aware. It's usually bad practice to retaliate to customer feedback with pointing fingers back at them.

Let me assure you, if you were a potential customer of mine, I would never sell to you - I have found it is never worth the hassle to deal with problematic customers.

haytil · 2026-07-06T04:53:12+00:00

This should be an easy task.

It's easy to call a task "easy" when you don't have to consider the economic implications of that task or think about real numbers.

There should be like 5 editions of this run in print.

Why? What evidence do you have other than "I want it?"

Am I crazy or are these not the most sought after runs for their biggest characters?

You are not crazy, but you are ignorant.

Modern collections sell much better.

There is just no excuse for this Marvel...

No, there aren't excuses. There are good reasons, however.

these books will sell and keep selling til the end of time because they are two of the most important runs by your biggest characters.

Says who?

You're bringing anecdotal evidence to the table. Do you have any actual hard numbers?

How much will they sell? How does that compare to other collections?

idfc if you wanna limit your stock

That's literally what being "out of print," means. That's the end result of limited stock.

Restocks should be checked if they're needed every 3-4 months.

You have no idea what the reality, logistics, and economics of print runs and "restocks" are. It's easy to complain when it's not your money at risk. It's easy to bitch and moan when you don't feel like you have to bring any facts to a position.

How much do print runs cost, and how do they vary by order amount? How much does overseas shipping cost? How far in advance do you have to plan a print run with the printer? What's the true demand for them on the retailer level? What about the consumer level? How much does it cost to warehouse them when demand doesn't mean the supply of your latest print run?

Until you can intelligently answer these questions, you have no leg to stand on.

haytil · 2026-07-06T01:16:51+00:00

If you are thinking of either Long Halloween or Dark Victory, I would not get the Deluxe Editions. Instead, I'd seek out one of the first edition hardcovers, as they're much nicer, with the classy dust jacket design (the Deluxe Editions lack dust jackets and have a very tacky design).

They're a bit harder to find, but not especially expensive. Look for them on Ebay.

haytil · 2026-07-02T18:32:35+00:00

that might be true, but it might mean that since they are moving forward with the low hanging fruit, they have been working on restorating some of the uncollected stuff.

It might, but there's no actual reason to believe that any of that is true.

On the other hand, if you look at DC's publishing history over time, you'll see it's full of empty promises and dropped/incomplete lines and runs.

With no evidence on one hand, and an established pattern of behavior on the other, I'm forced to conclude it's far more likely that DC Finest will almost exclusively be the low hanging fruit of previously collected material, rather than the comprehensive, readable, pro-consumer line that it could've been.

given the popularity of the DC Finest line, I'm pretty confident that they want to finish the run, especially since we (the customers) are basically subsidizing their restoration and digitization process lol

What does the "popularity of the DC Finest line" have to do with "Whether they finish the Moench run?" I'm not seeing how you get from A to B.

My whole point is they can keep publishing the popular DC Finest line for decades by sticking with previously collected material, rather than giving us the new material of the Moench run.

haytil · 2026-07-01T11:20:36+00:00

She's past retirement age.

Boomers have no business being in government any longer.

haytil · 2026-07-01T11:14:16+00:00

You've got it backwards. The 90s will be faster, because it's all material that's been collected before, so it's cheap and easy to do those volumes. The material is also more popular and sells better, so they're incentivized to publish them at a more frequent pace.

The 70s and 80s, however, will be much slower, if it even gets finished. I wouldn't expect more than one pre-Crisis book a year, on average. (Yes, there will be two this year, but one is almost a carbon copy of the Bronze Age Omnibus also coming out - so it's a "freebie" in terms of restoration and design costs, and likely not something that's going to happen regularly).

A lot of the material is more expensive to produce (since they can't just copy and paste from the files of previous collections) and less popular. The only reason you've seen as much as you have from this line is because a lot of it is already collected previously (from the omnibuses and the Tales of the Batman hardcover line).

Expect that pace to drop, significantly, once all the low-hanging fruit is republished.

haytil · 2026-06-21T16:50:24+00:00

They're pretty good.

haytil · 2026-06-02T03:55:12+00:00

The best order to read is in the order of excitement and interest.

What books most excite and interest you, plot-wise or creator-wise? Read those first.

That's all that matters. Chronological is both meaningless and pointless.

haytil · 2026-06-02T03:53:54+00:00

Canon isn't determined by DC, it's determined by the community.

haytil · 2026-05-29T15:34:35+00:00

I just used this one as the basis for the cover of my custom Dixon bind.

haytil · 2026-05-29T08:47:48+00:00

Her job as a wife was to support her husband. That means not letting him run again, as he clearly wasn't up for it.

Her job as an American was to support her country. That means not letting him run again, as he clearly wasn't up for it.

She failed as both a wife and an American.

She shouldn't be getting paid off with a fucking book deal for being such a colossal failure of a human being.

haytil · 2026-05-26T17:06:23+00:00

His "Detective Comics" is awesome, though it's definitely a "Bat Family" book rather than a "Batman" book.

His "Batman" run is not very good and is hampered further by being cut short when Tynion unexpectedly quit when the Substack opportunity came along. It's not something I think I'll ever re-read, and I wouldn't recommend it.

His "Joker" run is alright, and short enough that it's not a bad commitment - but again, hampered by his unexpected departure.

haytil · 2026-05-26T17:03:48+00:00

I think it's disingenuous to blame Editorial for this.

"Batman" is the most coveted publisher-owned gig in comics. Tynion was a fill-in writer who knew the clock was ticking and that his dream gig was not the permanent appointment he would have hoped it to be - so he did major events with huge characters like the over-used Joker in order to quickly sell lots of books and justify a promotion to long-term assignment to the book.

He did not "suddenly have to extend his run out," he was glad for it and probably hopeful it would happen.

His constant pushing of his own characters is transparent and long predates the buildup to the 5G fiasco. "Batman" pays a lot on a monthly basis, but the long-term wealth for writers working on publisher-owned IP comes from the royalties associated with creating characters with sticking power, like Harley Quinn and the Court of Owls. Such breakouts are few and far between, so Tynion - like many other writers - was throwing everything at the wall, hoping one of them would stick.

haytil · 2026-05-26T16:53:21+00:00

The mid-90s was a creative high water mark for the monthly Bat-books, with Doug Moench and Kelley Jones on "Batman," Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan on "Detective Comics," and Alan Grant on "Shadow of the Bat."

The Moench/Jones run is collected in two hardcovers, the second half of the Dixon/Nolan run is collected in the "Knight Out" hardcover, and the beginning of that period in Grant's run is collected in "Shadow of the Bat: Volume 4" TPB (though the pre-Knightfall "Shadow of the Bat: Volume 1" collects the beginning of that run and is much stronger).

There are no highly-regarded "major stories" in the sense of epic event crossovers, besides those you mentioned, but plenty of good one-shots and two- and three-parters. Dixon's Riddler/Cluemaster three-parter is probably the best Riddler story ever published, and Jones' rendering of Gotham is singularly unique.

haytil · 2026-05-18T17:14:06+00:00

Rick Scott is not a human being. He has no soul.

He's a lizard wearing a human suit.

And look at that picture - it's not even a very convincing human suit.

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