Messages

Thank you. I did send a message to her yesterday, but have not received a reply yet. But it's only been a day, and that's the first time I sent a message directly to her. So I'll give her a couple of days to reply, but may end up taking you up on your offer...

Thanks!

I never received an email confirmation that my subscription had been renewed. For three weeks, I have been emailing every subscription-related email address I can find on this site, plus I've used the "contact" form on this site, and have gotten no response. Does anyone out there maybe have the direct email address for someone in that department, or any ideas of what else to try?

(I'd prefer not having to call them on the phone, because my phone isn't actually set up for making international calls.)

Thanks!

Another American here to echo what everyone else has said.  Why DC didn't attempt the radical move of publishing a single ad to see if that helped sales... the mind boggles.

And, FWIW, screw 'em.  The 2000AD and Humanoids books were eating up a sizeable chunk of the budget I allot to graphic novels per month.  So, fine.  I'll just reduce the maximum number of books I'd allow myself to order per month by three, because if that money won't go to the books I was looking forward to the most, it won't go to other comics, either.  And Rebellion will still get the extortionate amounts of money I pay at the current exchange rates for my subscriptions, so they come out okay.

Just finished Gordon Rennie's Rogue Trooper novel tonight, and I've got to admit, I was surprised at how much I ended up enjoying it.  Much of its success lies in the broader scope of the story, much more of a Nu Earth war novel, rather than just a Rogue Trooper story.  Yes, Rogue is there, and plays a prominent role in the novel, but his is just one story among many.  It sounds like a cliche, but this really did feel like a story too big to be told as a comic.  And now I'm really looking forward to the Rogue Trooper reprints from DC/Rebellion, so I can get finally read the whole Traitor General story, now that my appetite has been whetted by this book, Rennie's Rogue stories over the last few years, and the one Titan book I have.  And I want to read more about Rafe and some of the other characters introduced (or spotlighted) in this novel, so hopefully, one day, we'll see Rennie's Rogue Trooper spin-off strip...

Got Swimming in Blood yesterday, and it's got comics in color, comics in black and white, and text stories.  Despite Jamie's having said elsewhere that DC prefers not to include text stories, it's nice to see that there apparently isn't a hard and fast rule about everything having to be comics, everything in a book having to be either color or black and white...

I finished the book the other night, and enjoyed it more than I expected.  I'd only read Vermin Stars and the last Durham Red story before this, and neither one had made me a huge fan.  I made a stronger connection to the series through this novel, and now I'm looking forward to the next one, even if we already know how things turn out in the comics.  And maybe, now that I have a stronger sense of the characters, I'll enjoy rereading the comics stories more...

(The same thing happened with ABC Warriors: I didn't have a real history with the strip, so the recent stories had left me cold.  The novel gave me a more thorough picture of the characters, so when I next read the strip, I didn't feel so lost.)

Thanks.  Thought the DC deal might be the explanation.  If nothing else, at least I can get my subscriber discount if I order them from this site (I think).

Andrew

Are the Rebellion UK graphic novels (not the DC/Rebellion ones; the other ones) going to be distributed in the US at all?  I haven't seen anything in Previews since Button Man/Necronauts/that bunch.  (I realize I can order them from this site, too, but it's just easier to have my comics shop order them for me, rather than pay postage every month, or wait and order bunches at a time, for a larger cost all at once...)

Andrew

Jamie: With Newsarama posting a new list of upcoming DC/Rebellion trades, I need to ask if the following are any different from the Titan editions I already have:

ABC Warriors: The Black Hole
Judge Anderson: Anderson - Psi-Division (I guess the question is if it's the same as Titan's book one)

(And I'm presuming that Strontium Dog: The Early Cases does not simply duplicate the Titan Portrait of a Mutant collection.)

I figure Halo Jones must be the same, but there's a good chance I'll be getting a new copy anyway, to give to a friend who borrows my 2000AD every week and can't understand why I'm so excited about Ian Gibson drawing... well, anything, really.

As always, thanks in advance!

Andrew

Link: http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19121" target="_blank">Newsarama lists early 2005 DC/Rebellion trades

"The chapter breaks are there to help out confused American punters, to an extent"

As an American punter, can I just say that when I read the first Judge Dredd collection back in '82 or '83 or whenever I got my hands on it, I didn't have too much trouble with the different stories, even though there weren't chapter breaks separating them?  And there I was, American, and a young teenager as well.  And those stories weren't even in order!

(Of course, it's possible that I may not represent the average American comics reader.  I don't read X-Men, continuity isn't more important to me than a good story, and I don't need to be introduced to stories from 2000AD.)

Otherwise, I echo most of David's sentiments about the format of the book.  I like the size; it's big enough that the art doesn't feel too shrunk down, but a more wieldy size than the Titan volumes I'm used to.  I thought the printing seemed dark in places, but if that's how it originally appeared, I guess that explains that.

And while I've only been able to read 2000AD regularly in the last few years, I've been enjoying reading Sinister Dexter (don't judge me).  I was looking forward to the chance to see the beginnings of the strip, since it seems to get a lot of criticism on this board, but must have had something going for it to have lasted so long.  And while I still enjoy the recent stuff (don't judge me), I get a definite sense of "the thrill of the new" from these stories.  You can see things that have become the hallmarks of the series, but there's still an air of freshness to them.  There's a sort of joyful brutality that would--I would expect--necessarily have to be toned down as time went on, otherwise the strip would have risked becoming, well... Lobo, I guess.

Andrew

Thanks twice, Jared.  The first time, for making me laugh (and like so many things, the joke is funny because it's true).

And the second time for proving my point...

I saw it and enjoyed it quite a bit.  Definitely a love letter to the serials of old, and beautiful to look at.  However, I agree with most of the reviews I've seen: the film looks great, and is a film geek's dream, but the characters are pretty thin and the story is pretty weak.  Most of the reviewers seem willing to forgive those weaknesses in the face of the film's visual achievements, although that's pretty much the exact same thing George Lucas gets castigated for when people talk about Episodes 1 & 2...

Thanks, Jamie!  I know there's only so much you can put in Previews (and for most customers, what's there will be enough).  And, for the most part, what you guys are reprinting is pretty clearly stuff I don't have.  I don't mind some overlap, but when I'm not sure if I'll be getting anything new (to me) or different from the newer collection, I'll probably ask here, if that's okay.  As someone who's only been able to love 2000AD from afar for most of his life, I'm quite the reprint junkie.  As long as fortunes allow, I'll pretty much get anything I don't already have, as long as you'll help me steer away from those rare instances where I do already have it.

Here's the thing: having gotten back into 2000AD in the last couple of years, I got a bunch of the recent (last gasp of) Titan reprints.  Now, some of the new DC/Rebellion reprints look to have some of the same content, but might have some extra material that Titan didn't collect.  I get my comics mail-order, so I can't just look at them in the shop.  So, Jamie, can you please tell me if these announced DC collections have the same material in them as the Titan books, or if they contain additional stories?

Skizz (Does it include the Baikie-penned sequels?  Or am I misremembering hearing that there were Baikie-penned sequels?)
Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death
DR & Quinch (Including the Delano-scripted one-pagers?)
Necropolis (including The Dead Man?)

Sorry to keep asking, but the entries in the Previews catalogs can be vague at times.  And since I have to order the books sight unseen, I want to make sure I'm not getting the exact same thing I've already got.  So you'll probably be hearing from me again, unless you can somehow announce or post the exact content of each book a couple of months before they come out...

Andrew

Have to admit, on first glance, I wasn't impressed by Si's Spider-Man 2 review either.  It just seemed to completely miss the point.  Then I gave it a second read, and realized that it was really an essay about how silly comic book superhero standards appear when thrust into the real world, disguised as a review of Spider-Man 2.

And I still wasn't impressed.  Because, yeah, that's a position you can argue, and you can agree with it or not, but as something insightful and interesting, it's about as groundbreaking as someone pointing out the subtext of conflict and angst in Hamlet.

Andrew