• 68 Posts
  • 164 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 30th, 2023
  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldMtoComic Books@lemmy.world•Here's what I don't understand about comic booksEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    Sooo… it’s complicated…

    First, you’re talking about 2 different companies and each has their own methodology.

    Batman is from D.C. comics and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. He became so popular that they added a second comic simply called “Batman” the next year in 1940.

    Same deal with Superman in Action Comics #1 in 1938 and then Superman #1 in 1939.

    In the 1950s, superhero comics became less popular, and comics in general were being attacked by a fraudulent psychologist named Frederick Werthham. There were congressional hearings, the whole 9 yards.

    To avoid government regulation, comics had to self-regulate, and so the Comics Code Authority was created.

    D.C. took this opportunity to re-invent itself and re-launched a new version of the Flash in Showcase #4 in 1956.

    That, officially, ended the Golden Age of comics and started the Silver Age of comics.

    But, D.C. started getting questions. Didn’t they already have a Flash? And a Green Lantern? Who are these new characters? What’s going on? How can Superman and Batman have been around 20 years and still be the same age?

    To explain this, D.C. introduced “The Flash of Two Worlds” in The Flash #123 in 1961.

    All the previous Golden Age stories actually happened… on Earth 2. The PRESENT day stories are happening on Earth 1.

    Once they set that precedent, they then began crossing over characters from Earth 1 and Earth 2 in Justice League starting in Justice League of America #21 and 22 in 1963.

    As D.C. gained other comics properties or introduced other variations, they would simply explain it away as happening on a different Earth. So when they aquired the Fawcett characters (Captain Marvel, better known as Shazam!) that became Earth S and so on.

    20 some odd years later, in the 1980s, they decided this was entirely too convoluted and decided to simplify things with the “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

    They outright destroyed multiple continuities and boiled it all down to 5 “Earths”, merged them down into one, and started re-telling the stories from scratch.

    This proved SOOOO massively successful, that D.C. has kept doing it. There’s an index of all the “Crisis” stories and each one serves as a new jumping on point for new readers. The most recent one being “Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths”.

    https://www.cbr.com/every-dc-crisis-event-comic-reading-guide/

    So, realistically, if you want to read something like Batman, you don’t have to read EVERYTHING since 1939, that Batman doesn’t REALLY exist anymore. Just follow it from the last Crisis or the most recent #1 issue indicating the book has been re-booted.

    MARVEL on the other hand, does NOT do this.

    Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962. It’s the same Spider-Man that has ever been. No reboots.

    I am NOT getting into One More Day. DO NOT GO THERE.

    As new creatives have come on board, new Spider-Man titles have launched, so Amazing Spider-Man #1 was the first following Amazing Fantasy #15, that was 1963, Marvel Team-Up #1 in 1972, Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man in 1976, Web of Spider-Man #1 in 1985, and the Todd McFarlane just plain “Spider-Man” in 1990.

    What Marvel figured out is that they don’t need some industry wide “Crisis” to reboot a book. They do it ALL THE TIME. Generally when a new creative team wants on board. They just did it with all the X-Men books.

    The old continuity is still there, but you don’t have to know it, just jump on with the new #1 and enjoy the ride.

    Just don’t get TOO attached, because Marvel will reboot AGAIN AND AGAIN for any reason at all or no reason in particular.

    So you get Amazing Spider-Man #1, 1963
    Amazing Spider-Man #1, 1998
    Amazing Spider-Man #1, 2014
    Amazing Spider-Man #1, 2015
    Amazing Spider-Man #789, 2017
    Amazing Spider-Man #1, 2022

    I wish I was making this up. The current series will have the present series # as well as a legacy number, as though the original title never ended.

    The good news is, to keep up, you really only have to go as far back as the most recent #1. In this case, 66 issues since 2022.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•'Like a miracle': N.C. couple free of nearly $100,000 medical debt after 15 years
    111·
    9 hours ago

    This is why it pays to have even shitty insurance guys!

    Me:

    Emergency room co-pay: $150
    8 days in the hospital + open heart surgery from the head of the department: $100
    All the drugs and oxygen bottles I could carry: $100

    4 weeks later, my company gets acquired, my insurance changes, I lose all my doctors, my hospital, and have to start over in a new medical system. I also developed complications.

    7 days in the hospital getting fluid drained: $6,500.

    That met my yearly out of pocket maximum and evaporated my signing bonus with the new company.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldMtopolitics @lemmy.world•DNC chair candidates say the party needs to do a postmortem of the 2024 election
    1·
    10 hours ago

    Ooh… that’s a FANTASTIC idea that Iowa and New Hampshire will never let happen. ;)

    I think the trick is each state would need to run two primaries, but then some already do, and some run a caucus AND a primary.

    The problem here would be burning through all the blue states and not getting enough delegates to become the nominee. Then you really WOULD have Red states picking the candidate.

    Yeah, based on this delegate counter:

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/delegate-count-by-state

    By the time you burned through all the blue states, you’d have assigned 2,541 delegates with 1,976 needed to be the nominee. It’s possible that someone wouldn’t hit that number just based on the blue states.

    Under this model, the Democratic Primary for 2028 would be this, then invert it for the Republican Primary.

    District of Columbia - 90.3% - 39 delegates
    Vermont - 63.2% - 33
    Maryland - 62.6% - 134
    Massachusetts - 61.2% - 132
    Hawaii - 60.6% - 24
    California - 58.5% - 587
    Washington - 57.2% - 132
    Delaware - 56.6% - 37
    Connecticut - 56.4% - 88
    New York - 55.9% - 274
    Rhode Island - 55.5% - 45
    Oregon - 55.3% - 89
    Illinois - 54.4% - 222
    Colorado - 54.2% - 104
    Maine - 52.4% - 46
    New Jersey - 52.0% - 175
    New Mexico - 51.9% - 56
    Virginia - 51.8% - 99
    NE-2 - 51.3% - 65
    Minnesota - 50.9% - 114
    New Hampshire - 50.7% - 46

    Pennsylvania - 48.7%
    Wisconsin - 48.7%
    Georgia - 48.5%
    Michigan - 48.3%
    North Carolina - 47.7%
    Nevada - 47.5%
    Arizona - 46.7%
    ME-2 - 44.8%
    Ohio - 43.9%
    Florida - 43.0%
    Iowa - 42.5%
    Texas - 42.5%
    Alaska - 41.4%
    Kansas - 41.0%
    South Carolina - 40.4%
    Missouri - 40.1%
    Indiana - 39.6%
    Nebraska - 38.9%
    Montana - 38.5%
    Louisiana - 38.2%
    Mississippi - 38.0%
    Utah - 37.8%
    Tennessee - 34.5%
    South Dakota - 34.2%
    Alabama - 34.1%
    Kentucky - 33.9%
    Arkansas - 33.6%
    Oklahoma - 31.9%
    North Dakota - 30.5%
    Idaho - 30.4%
    West Virginia - 28.1%
    Wyoming - 25.8%

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.world•FTC sues nation's largest alcohol distributor, alleging pricing discrimination
    31·
    13 hours ago

    Yes, that’s the trick. If you order in bulk, everyone doing the same bulk order should get the same pricing.

    Where it starts to get tricky is how you calculate “bulk”.

    Back when I worked a manufacturing gig, there were two types of bulk orders.

    Lets say you wanted 5 million envelopes, you got a bulk price on that, and everyone buying 5 million got the same bulk price.

    BUT -

    Clients were ranked based on overall spend and got additional discounts.

    So a client buying 5 million envelopes would get a better deal if they also bought 5 million custom forms vs. just the envelopes alone. Or if this was their 3rd order of 5 million vs. their first.

    Applying this to liquor distribution, I could see it working the same way. A mom and pop store buying 50 bottles of Jack is going to pay the same per bottle as anyone else buying 50 bottles of Jack.

    But a bigger retailer, buying 50 bottles of Jack + 50 bottles of Captain Morgan + 50 bottles of Maker’s Mark + 50 bottles of Crown Royal + 50 bottles of Grand Marnier + 50 bottles of Absolut is going to get a better per bottle deal than the mom and pop store. (I dunno, those are all the liquor brands I could come up with off the top of my head. :)

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