Things I've Said Before

I've a friend, a former roommate, who is all about reading. She loves stories. She loves good stories. She likes long stories. She likes stories that make her think.

But she is not a bibliophile. She doesn't look at hardcovers and note the gluing and touch the paper and ponder the quality. She doesn't contemplate how long the bindings will hold and miss the days of when books were sewn together AND glued AND bound.

Text books do not give her a thrill because of their solid nature and heft and durability.

She likes the stories, the text.

I on the other hand always considered myself a bibliophile until the possibility arose that I could get comics in digital format.

This should be an entry about how the cover art on the Cable & Deadpool, particularly the art at the beginning, absolutely turns me off. And if it weren't for a friend showing me scans again proving I'd like Deadpool, I wouldn't have looked twice at it.

That's what got me thinking.

But that led to going to Marvel.Com and that led to looking through some of their sample offerings (the free 4 pages). And that led to me thinking all over again about how excited I get at the prospect of non flimsy issues and non bulky trade paperbacks and how much I'd love to give Marvel my money for their digital offerings if they weren't such privacy invading bastards.

Is there a word yet for someone who loves digital media? Digitaphile? That seems awkward sounding.

I've posted recently about how much I don't like photorealistic art. But I also loathed the art of the late 80's and early 90's. And it's not all Rob Lifield.

**Eyes cross and tear pinkish liquid at the sight of his name**

I really love getting to zoom in and look at the art up close. I love the crispness of it.

I'd love even more if there were layered options and you could lift the speech and caption boxes off the art and just stare at those clean pages.

I love the colours.

I love seeing a good combination in styles of artist, inker, colourist.

And then, I love seeing a good story in the midst of it.

Comics led to Animation led to Comics.

Have I waxed rhapsodic about the wonder, love, uber-cool that is Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles in this blog yet? If not, I should.

**sighs with love / sighs with love** So amazing for it's time in the history of cgi animation.

Anyway, back on topic, all this thinking about how much I love and would prefer digital product for comics (as an option, you flimsy lovers can have your cake too) led to me thinking about collectors. Would I understand the people who loath a thing, but buy it anyway so their collection isn't missing anything - if I liked the flimsies?

Cause the only time I want flimsies is when they don't bind all the stories, a and b and sometimes c plots all together in a trade. So it's not completest of me, it's me wanting to finish reading the damn story.

And yes, I can think various cover options are cool. But it would be easy of me to go with the one I liked the most (or just a little bit more). And yes, all the while I'd probably be thinking 'I wish this were on CD, with scratch art from the artist and maybe all the variation covers'.

Am I a product of an age?

Am I DVD spoiled? **hmmm DVD's... oh yeah, extras baby...**

Can anyone explain the completest collection comic fan to me? The comic book addiction? The people who loathe BND yet still buy it?

And while you're at it - could you explain the people who buy Rob Liefeld for the art?