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The ARTC show the weekend of the 24th went very well. If you weren't at the Academy Theatre, you missed out. (Don't you just hate messages like that?)
Hallowe'en has come and gone, thank goodness. I really hate Hallowe'en, and always have. Did no partying, my children are too old to go trick-or-treating, my porch light is burned out so we had no visitors. Just another quiet evening at home watching NCIS reruns.
The userpic accompanying is a crop from a photo included in a recent (!) publication of Clayton State University, in celebration of their 40th anniversary. It was neither credited nor labeled, since no one there has any idea who those people are. They know it was taken on Clayton campus because of the distinctive "bent tree" in which one of us is sitting. The tree is still a campus landmark even though it was removed to make room for the new library. A plaster replica stands near one of the entrances, but it isn't the same.
The picture was taken in 1973, and is a portrait of the student newspaper staff at the time. I was the editor. The university archives have no publications from that time. I could lie and tell you it was a phenomenally good paper, since no one is in a position to contradict me.
Interesting to be part of the "lost history" of Clayton State.
- Mood:
nostalgic
The Great Price Increase of 1961
For most of their history, comic books had been priced at a dime. Oh, there were Nickel Comics, and the annuals were generally priced at a quarter, but these were definitely exceptions to the rule. Not that there hadn't been inflation anyway; that dime bought you a 68-page mag in 1940, a 60-pager in 1944, a 52-pager in 1950, and a 36-page issue by the time the Silver Age started.Dell Comics made the first move effective with their February 1961 issues:
Although Dell persisted with the 15 cent price for over a year, it's not hard to see that they had troubles, especially as the rest of the industry held out until the end of 1961. First, they began advertising contests on their covers, and eventually, in mid-1962 they dropped their prices to the new standard of 12 cents.
As far as I can see, the other publishers mostly went to 12 cents around the December 1961 issues, but you could see that a change was coming. In the March 1961 issues, DC began putting a box around the price, noting "Still 10c". That was dropped in favor of just "10c" with the August issues, and then in December we finally saw the new price-tag of four-color entertainment:
Archie, Marvel, and other publishers pretty much changed their prices at the same time. Not surprisingly, this resulted in a significant dip in sales. Of the 36 titles reporting sales in both 1961 and 1962, only seven reported increased sales in 1961, and three of those I'm a little suspicious of; the ACG titles Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds apparently reported identical sales in both years while their Unknown Worlds book showed a 500-copies-per-issue increase.
What comics did the best? It looks like Archie comics were the most successful at retaining readers, with the flagship title only losing a couple hundred copies per issue and backup titles like Betty and Veronica, Jughead and Archie's Pals & Gals actually picking up a bit in sales. On the DC side, only Justice League of America increased sales, from 335,000 per issue to 340,000.
On average, all titles lost about 8.7% in sales, but the decline was far from uniform. The Superman line's losses ran from about 5% (Lois Lane) to 12.5% (World's Finest). Batman's books other than WF declined from 15.5% (Batman) to 18.5% (Detective). The Silver Age DC heroes fared better with Flash dipping 11.5% and Green Lantern losing 5.9% (from a smaller base).
What really got hammered? Three DC titles dipped by over 20%; Mystery in Space, House of Mystery and My Greatest Adventure. The only DC war title I can find sales for those years, Star Spangled War Stories, dipped by about 4.9%.
Some of these numbers make sense if you think about them. Wonder Woman didn't decline all that badly; down 6.5% in this market was practically up, so the two female-oriented books that we have stats for, Wonder Woman and Lois Lane, both did better than average. Girls that bought those comics didn't find their budget as pinched as might their brothers because they only had two heroines to choose from. It's not surprising that the war stories didn't do as badly as some of the others; they were probably purchased by older readers on average. Sugar and Spike, the only comic on the list designed for very young readers, suffered a pretty steep drop of 18%. Ditto with the monster-oriented issues like House of Mystery and My Greatest Adventure; the kiddies who read them were more price conscious.
What about Marvel Comics? Well, Fantastic Four didn't report sales for 1961 and 1962, but we can see that their two monster titles got crushed. Tales to Astonish slipped by 25% while Tales of Suspense declined by over 31%. So there is certainly ample evidence that Stan Lee's incredible Marvel Silver Age was half inspiration, and half desperation. In 1963 both those titles featured superhero stories and gained back all the readers they had lost in 1962.
Note: Most titles would gain sales over the next few years, although frustratingly, the main publisher (DC) did not report sales for 1963 and 1964, making it hard to gauge the recovery apart from other effects.
posted by Pat at 6:51 AM Comment |
Read the whole thing.
Surgery took a little longer than expected due to the discovery of a deviated septum -- which Dr Patel went ahead and fixed, while he was in there.
But some of Oreta's sinuses below, behind and between her eyes were all but completely blocked by polyps. Dr Patel is very happy with the outcome, and it should leave Oreta able to breathe better than she has in years. It should also positively affect her sense of smell, which has been missing in action for years as well.
We don't know what the anaesthetic was, but it must have been pretty good. Two hours after surgery, Oreta was still groggy and unable to wake fully.
As of now, she is much more like her old self, and very appreciative of everyone's well-wishes. So am I. Thank you, one and all.
- Mood:
happy
"The Wild One"
"Tea for Two"
"One Two Three"
"Nineteen Eighty-Four"
"Slaughterhouse-Five"
"The Deep Six"
"Return of the Secaucus Seven"
"Dinner at Eight"
"Secret Agent X-9"
"Five and Ten"
"Ocean's Eleven"
"The Dirty Dozen" (So I cheated. Pickin's are slim.)
- Mood:
bored
- Music:ittle Island - Michae
- Music:I Will - Alison Krauss
I say ... and you think ... ?- Log :: Lincoln Logs
- Plaything :: Toy
- Broom :: Roomba
- Heels :: High?
- Smoke in :: the boys' room?
- Guests :: be seated
- Attraction :: Magnetic
- Shiny :: Firefly
- Risked :: Everything
- Velvet :: Blue
- Mood: calm
I say ... and you think ... ?- Road trip :: Beach
- Pool hall :: Trouble with a capital T
- Extraordinary :: Gentlemen
- Jackson :: When Phil Harris was the band leader on the Jack Benny radio show, that's what he used to call Jack.
- Heartfelt :: Thanks
- Wet :: Pavement
- Strangle :: jangle ("It's a strangle-jangle Christmas" by Charles Manson...)
- .com :: .org
- Touched :: in the haid
- Insipid :: flaccid
- Mood:
late
I say ... and you think ... ?- Studio :: Ghibli
- Meetup :: Didn't we already have a word for that? What makes it different from a "meet"? or a "meeting"?
- Ostrich :: Fantasia
- Jokes :: Are accordions the American bagpipes?
- Estranged :: Lovers
- Random :: Association
- Slap :: [see below...]
- Hotel room :: Did you ever notice that the higher the base price of the room, the more "additional charges" the hotel finds to slap you with on top of that? And the higher those charges are? I think being a paying guest in a hotel should be worth free parking, but most downtown hotels don't seem to agree. I also find it curious that Krystal and Starbucks can afford to give away wi-fi, but Marriott and Hyatt can't.
- Inscribe :: Monogram
- Polar :: Opposites
- Mood: amused
I say ... and you think ... ?- Mourning :: Misspent Youth
- Approval :: Egoboost
- Lotion :: Suntan
- Perspire :: "Glow"
- Language :: Skills
- Defection :: [I got nothin']
- Play :: Script
- Graphic :: Novel
- Spicy :: Detective Stories
- In love :: Can't Help Falling
- Mood: calm
I say ... and you think ... ?- Pain :: Nerve
- Lego :: my eggo
- Trooper :: Super
- Flicker :: Candle light
- Character :: Assassination
- Determined :: [I got nothin']
- Wing :: Nut
- Control :: Panel
- Automatic :: Transmission
- Yeah :: Yeah Yeah
- Mood: relieved
I say ... and you think ... ?- Carpet :: Bomb
- William :: Tell
- Oh! :: Klahoma
- Board game :: like Monopoly
- Sunlight :: Orange juice
- Delay :: [I got nothin']
- Winner :: takes it all
- Concubine :: Nihao my...
- Comatose :: 3 a.m.
- Satisfy :: Snickers
- Mood:
blah
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) *Star the ones you loved.
3) Italicise those you plan on reading.
- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- * Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- The Bible
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
- His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
- Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
- Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
- Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
- The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
- Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
- Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
- The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
- Middlemarch - George Eliot
- Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
- Bleak House - Charles Dickens
- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- * The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
- Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
- Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
- Emma - Jane Austen
- Persuasion - Jane Austen
- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
- The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
- Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
- Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
- Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
- Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
- The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- Atonement - Ian McEwan
- Life of Pi - Yann Martel
- Dune - Frank Herbert
- Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
- Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
- A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
- The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- * The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
- Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History - Donna Tartt
- The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
- Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- On The Road - Jack Kerouac
- Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
- Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
- Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
- Ulysses - James Joyce
- The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
- Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
- Germinal - Emile Zola
- Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
- Possession - AS Byatt
- * A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
- Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
- The Color Purple - Alice Walker
- The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
- Charlotte’s Web - EB White
- The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
- * Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
- The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
- A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
- The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I heard Orson Welles' radio version, will that do?)
So they count the whole Harry Potter series as one book, eh?
Well, 22 out of 100 isn't too bad.
- Mood:
curious
Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test...
Joe Normal
43 % Nerd, 39% Geek, 43% Dork
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.
This is not to say that you don't have some Nerd, Geek or Dork inside of you--we all do, and you can see the percentages you have right above. This is just to say that none of those qualities stand out so much as to define you. Sure, you enjoy an episode of Star Trek now and again, and yeah, you kinda enjoyed a few classes back in the day. And, once in a while, you stumble while walking down the street even though there was nothing there to cause you to trip. But, for the most part, you look and act fairly typically, and aren't much of an outcast.
I'd say there's a fair chance someone asked you to take this test. In any event, fairly normal.
Congratulations!
If you enjoyed this test, I would love the feedback!
Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Professional Wrestling
Love & Sexuality
America/Politics
Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST
- Mood: chipper
I say ... and you think ... ?- Cups :: of sugar
- Brilliant :: Hue
- Disobey :: Authoritah
- Abstain :: "No Comment"
- Daily :: Planet
- You make me :: Feel Like a Natural Woman... (Huh?)
- Hurl :: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skasper/18
04715451/ - Intensify :: Turn it up!
- Fuck! :: Allan Sherman used to say that this word is the reason we call all obscenities "four-letter words". It doesn't often show up in my vocabulary, written or spoken -- not because it particularly offends me, but because I'm too literal-minded.
- Race :: card
- Mood: chipper
