Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Books 2 Buy

The next few days, I'm going to post a mess of reviews, most of them recommendations, for new books about comic book writers and artists. A wide void is suddenly being filled, and while any book about some of these people is welcome, most of those we're getting are very good and pretty damn exhaustive. My fave so far is Bill Schelly's Words of Wonder: The Life and Times of Otto Binder. Binder was a writer of comics and science-fiction, the former including (but not limited to) a long stint as the major writer of the original Captain Marvel, followed by many years of Superman scripting. He contributed many key concepts and characters to both franchises. His Superman writing, for instance, included the first stories of Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Krypto, Brainiac and the city in a bottle, Kandor. I never met Mr. Binder but I felt like I knew him through his scripts, and thanks to Bill Schelly, I feel like I know him even better now. Bill did the kind of diligent research job that can only be driven by passion for a subject, and he got to darn near everyone who's still around and had any info at all on the late Otto Binder. The result is a complete portrait, not only of the man but of the industries in which he worked when he worked in them. If I were you, I'd run over to Bill's website and order me a copy. And while you're there, pick up copies of any of Bill's other books that you don't have. They're all as good as they sound.

• Posted at 5:15 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

The calendar may be about to say 2004 but it's starting to look like 1984 (the book, not the year) as the PATRIOT act gets expanded once more. According to this article, if the F.B.I. now wants to know anything about you and what you do with your money, all they have to do is hand a letter to whoever you do business with that says you are suspected of involvement in terrorism. They never have to prove you have any connection to any such activity. They just have to say that they think you might be, and the other party has to hand over all info on you, and is forbidden to tell you they have done this.

What do you want to bet that, in the cause of stopping terrorism, John Ashcroft and his minions will use this to inquire into every conceivable kind of financial transaction except the purchase of weapons?

• Posted at 4:54 PM · LINK

Font Festival

Speaking of lettering, as I think I just was: Richard Starkings practically invented the lettering of comic books via computer. If you've been thinking of purchasing any of the splendid fonts he sells over at Comicraft, there will never be a better time than tomorrow. New Year's Day only, he has 'em discounted to a price matching the year, thankfully with a decimal point between the zeroes. He who hesitates pays more.

• Posted at 4:31 PM · LINK

Something to Read...

How about a good interview with Tom Orzechowski, who's one of the best letterers the comic book business has ever seen?

• Posted at 11:56 AM · LINK

Just to Piss Us Off...

In honor of the new year, NBC has decided to cause trouble by shifting most of their weeknight prime-time shows a minute or two one way or the other. You may think (to pick one example) their Monday night schedule is three one-hour shows: Fear Factor at 8:00, Las Vegas at 9:00, Average Joe at 10:00. Nope. Fear Factor starts at 8 but it's a 59 minute show. Las Vegas starts at 8:59 and runs for an hour. Then Average Joe starts at 9:59 and runs for 61 minutes. On Tuesday, we have The Tracy Morgan Show at 8:00, Whoopi at 8:30 and then Frasier at 9:00...but Frasier is now a 31 minute show so the following program, Happy Family, starts at 9:31 and runs for 28 minutes. This enables Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which is a 61 minute show, to start at 9:59. On Wednesday, Ed and West Wing start at 8:00 and 9:00 but West Wing is a 59 minute show so Law & Order starts at 9:59. It's just as screwy on Thursday and Friday.

The first problem with this, of course, is that if you try switching channels during the evening, you'll wind up missing the beginning or end of some show. You have even more problems if you want to record a show for later viewing. Most TV listings seem to be ignoring these subtle adjustments but TiVo has the accurate times. This is great if you're not changing channels but if you do, it can get messy. If you tell TiVo to record Frasier, and then to switch over to ABC to record Less Than Perfect, it will not accept the second show because it will tell you they overlap...which they do.

So let's say you decide you want to get the entirety of Frasier even at the expense of the first minute of Less Than Perfect. You could accomplish that with the time-padding options of TiVo. It takes some effort to program but it can be done. Pad the recording time of Frasier by one minute at the end. Set Less Than Perfect as a manual recording beginning at 9:35 and then set "Start Recording" to 4 minutes early. Then Frasier would end at 9:31 and Less Than Perfect would start recording one minute into the show...which is, of course, less than perfect.

But there are some combinations that don't work. On Monday night, CBS airs Still Standing from 8:30 to 9:00 while NBC has Las Vegas from 8:59 to 9:59. What if you wanted to record both shows and chop off the last minute of Still Standing? Well, you can't. TiVo can pad the end of a recording 1 minute or 2 minutes but the next increment is five. You can't set a manual recording to end at 8:59. The best you could do is 8:57.

Obviously, this problem is even worse for folks who are trying to record with VCRs that program in five-minute increments. And there are other problems for everyone, like remembering that a favorite show starts at 9:59, not 10:00. There are no upsides for us. I'm skeptical that there's any great advantage for the network but I know there are none for us. Someone needs a serious beating. (Thanks to Earl Kress for calling this to my attention.)

• Posted at 12:11 AM · LINK