#From The Longboxes

[lesbiangiratina]

Okay i learned why the seller offered to give me 10% off on this cd. Theres no case. Soooo if anyone knows where i can get a fucked up oblong cd case let me know

[fortunefavorsthebrave-dude]

shoutout to the absolute king i had a conversation with at work like MONTHS ago where he was selling his cards and asked if i knew somewhere that would take his page sleeves, and i mentioned that i could use them for my own wildly out of control card collection, who not only gave me those sleeves but then returned recently and handed off even more sleeves and binders he didn’t need. not even to me. to one of my coworkers, with instructions to get it to me. we didn’t even know each other’s names when we talked before but he still did that just because he could. i just finished organizing the last of my cards today and it feels so fucking good thank you again king

[shinesurge]

Webcomic rings run by people within the community are cool and you should support them

I've been loudly struggling a little bit with corporate webcomic Stuff lately so I want to mention something positive to balance it out: webrings run by small groups of creators earnestly trying to support each other are slowly making a comeback and I for one am delighted.

If you weren't around for them in the before times, webrings were just some folks who hang out a lot who feature each other on their websites. That's literally it lmao. There's generally no money involved and it only really functions the way it's supposed to if people have control over their own websites AND genuinely want to participate and get excited about other folks' work, which means the practice has pretty well fallen by the wayside over the years in webcomic culture given. Everything. In the rare event someone decides to do something like this it's usually in the form of a link list somewhere on their website; this doesn't usually indicate any sort of mutual support, it's just a list of what the creator is reading themselves.

A webring, though, is an official banner or hub that people gather under intentionally where each member is more or less on equal footing. It's essentially the concept of "a rising tide lifts all boats" put into practice, each creator brings their own audience to the table in a passive, opt-in sort of way that's different from working for a publisher since there isn't necessarily a Top Spot or a paycheck everyone's vying for, and individuals retain autonomy over both their own work and how (if) they promote each other. You're all at your own tables in an artist alley rather than fighting over the table in the front of the book store, essentially.

I have two rings and one collective for you today!

Webcomic Ring was brought to my attention AGES ago by Holly, one of the artists featured there, and I might have brought it up at some point but I'm doing it again lmao. This is exactly the kind of thing you ought to be looking for; a small group of enthusiastic folks having a good time making their weird little comics. You probably haven't heard of much in the catalog, that's PERFECT in the context of webcomics that's where the GOOD SHIT is. Finding something like this is A Gift go dig around in the longboxes for a while.

Then a few people have pointed me in the direction of the KNIFEBEETLE collective and that's neat too! Most of the comics there are already fairly well-known, but the vibes are excellent and I haven't seen a lot of talk about the collective /itself/ outside folks already in the know. I think it's important for this sort of thing to be more visible to folks who aren't terminally steeped in webcomic culture already so here I am telling you about it. You were probably reading several of these before I suggested it, but that's how a webring works! For it to do its job you should take those bigger creators' tacit recommendation of the less popular titles as a sign to go read something new and strange. Wild, I know these are practices held over from the old internet, but I think we should try and bring them back.

Lastly, I want to mention Spiderforest, which is a collective (slightly different from a webring) BUT still a very cool project readers starved for new stuff should pay attention to.

You've probably seen Spiderforest kicking around for a long time already; they're wonderful and have always been an overall positive force in the community in my experience. They really focus on building up a community, and especially welcoming newcomers and helping them get their feet under them. Full disclosure, I've been asked to apply by a few different folks over the years and the only reason I never did is I don't have the ability to participate in their forums and such as frequently as they want their creators to; it's a very good system (from my outside perspective) that might contribute to the community staying mostly healthy in ways that art communities usually don't and I appreciate it a lot!

ANYWAYS that's all I got for now, just trying to balance out some bad feelings I've been having by talking about some good stuff. Please go binge an archive this week.

[sightkeeper]

A request fill for my patron @comicgeekery who wanted a scene from their fic "A Longbox of Issues" in which Crowley's comic collecting comes to light, and Aziraphale tries to be supportive!

This scene had me giggling so much!

[neil-gaiman]

I was a teenager when I found Death of the endless. A few years after “A Game of You.” probably sometime near or at the time the “The Time of Your Life” collected version came out. I didn’t have a ton of money but you’d better believe that what I did have went directly to those books. 

Later, I’d figure out how to afford a few collectables. I think somewhere I even have the first “Action Figure” of the character. 

I haven’t exactly fallen out of love with comics, but I’m now a decades older, married with two children-person, who has significantly less time and attention for anything these days. Video games are often easier escapes from reality, though usually less rewarding. In short, I haven’t touched my longboxes in a while. 

About 8 years or so ago we adopted our second dog, a beautiful Chocolate Lab. 

Fitting that his name was Buddy, we wanted someone to help keep our other dog company. At the shelter, we were waiting to see some dogs, when one of my kids asked to pet a dog that was waiting to be placed in a shelter room. He’d just been dropped off, the shelter said “by an older couple who said they just couldn’t keep up anymore.”

My kid had barely touched his head when he leaned against her with full adoration and trust. I’m not sure if he hadn’t gotten much affection in a while, or just fell in love. With us, he was always very affectionate. At 9 years old already, we knew that our time with him was relatively limited, but there was absolutely no question from that moment that he was going to come home with us.

A regular fixture in the lives of my family, including my kids and my dogs, my mother adored Buddy. My mom had always loved dogs, but hadn’t been able to keep one for the past few years in her apartment. But she would come over daily, and spend hours with Buddy, just slowly stroking his fur and chatting with him about his day. 

In 2020, when my mother passed away, and she no longer showed up at our door, Buddy noticed. He would look for her. He missed his friend. He did his best, as a dog, to console us as we wept, resting his head in our laps, putting his paw on our knees. 

Today was Buddy’s last day with us.  For the past few weeks, his health had been in steady decline. I did the hardest thing I’ve had to do yet, and scheduled an appointment to let him go peacefully. He was so well behaved, he gave no trouble to the vet, and he passed away resting his head on my legs.

Because the universe works the way that it does, between waking up today, and Buddy’s appointment, I found myself with several hours to spend. Maybe because of the recent new about the Sandman show, or something less knowable, I remembered that I had those comics. 

I knew right where they were. 

And so, I spent my morning with Buddy’s head in my lap, gently stroking his head, reading comics, and dreaming of a friendly person, who loves everyone, even the creepy and weird ones. Someone who would make sure that Buddy wasn’t scared or lonely. Someone that could make sure he knew he was loved. Someone who would lead him to where my Mom would be waiting for him to ask him how his day was. And for a little while, I was very happy.  Thank you.

That made me very sad, and made my day at the same time. I'm glad you wrote it. I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you.

[atopfourthwall]

can I please ask since we have established that moarte has a multiple choice past; would the next movie you do if you do another one still be his? Like does he end up hosting an anthology movie styled like creepshow or an extra long tales of the crypt episode?

His past isn't actually multiple choice. One of those ten was his definitive origin as written in the Longbox movie script (which I still hope to do someday). And no, the Longbox movie is not an anthology. But the next movie I'm making is once again unrelated to anything I've done before (aside from blink and you'll miss it background references).

[iinsawdious]

another poll tag going around that im jumping on the bandwagon for bcos it looks fun!

not tagging anybody in particular but feel free to steal this!

[decepti-thots]

like, ok. so does everyone know about comic cover variants? you know how every issue has like eighteen million covers? and they're typically referred to with ratios. "1:10" or "1:50" or whatever.

what those ratios refer to is that for every ten issues of a comic a store orders from the publisher, they'll get one issue of the variant. this is essentially a way to get retailers to order more of a comic than they think they can sell organically so that they can offer the invested collectors/fans the rare variant cover at a higher price, which offsets the potential loss of money ordering more copies than they can realistically expect to sell causes. comic book stores make most of their sales from regular customers who have a pull list- you tell them what comics you, the customer, want them to order in for you monthly and they use these preorders (typically made at least one month in advance, with the standard being three months) to decide how many of an issue to order. they'll buy a few extra for walk-ins, of course, but comic book shops are for enthusiasts. most of their clientele are regulars with a pull list, unless you're a very succesful comic book shop indeed. (i used to do mine online because i was too far away to drop in regularly. shipping was a motherfucker. nowadays i live near one of the most famous shops in the country so if i want comics i can go in person, haha.)

this is not ideal for a publisher because it reveals how fucking low their circulation numbers actually are. but if you have a regular who loves a series, they might pay you $10 or $20 or even more for a highly desirable variant cover. they're an enthusiast. they're already in a hobby that is a money pit. so you buy the extra fifty issues and the cost is hopefully offset and maybe over the next year or two you sell (most of) the remaining back issues in the longbox section in the back where people wander through to look for old stuff they didn't buy at the time, or stuff which in the five years it's been sat there unsold has become interesting to new collectors. multiply this effect across a thousand stores and incentive covers with ratios as high as 1:500, and you can shift a lot of product to stores who are basically gambling every month on risk and reward, all these decisions having to be made months and months in advance in many cases.

anyway the comics industry is fucking ridiculous. imagine if books were sold like this. you can't, that would be batshit

[rraaaarrl]

Look at my girl go 🥹

Yes, it’s one of those issues, emerging from the depths of the dollar longbox of your dreams.

[arecomicsevengood]

Grixly by Nate McDonough

A central appeal of these is the low price point, at $3 an issue, but McDonough is a very solid storyteller, presenting no bullshit strips usually in one-page format, about the world of hanging out in comic shops finding cheap stuff to flip on Ebay. (His store, holidaycomics, prices things fairly, and I would recommend buying from him.) The one-page, nine-panel format also lends itself to Instagram serialization, so you can read at least some of the strips there. Whether this comic would make sense to a reader not immersed in that specific vantage point, where you are into independent comics because of the the idiosyncratic voices on offer but can also see interest in mainstream comics of the eighties and nineties, if not the current era, I don’t know, maybe? Part of me wants to make the case that, as McDonough moves across the country, selling things online to people around the world, this feels less like a comic about comics and more about America, commerce, and consumerism, told through a specific lens. The landscape is a true working-class one, of small businesses, flea markets, and eccentricities. But at the same time, if I am going to describe the comic and the anecdotes contained there, my mind keeps flashing back to Nate mentioning the character Typhoid Mary, only to have someone respond that they hate her because she raped Deadpool. Politics are rarely explicit, but it’s pretty clear a lot of people that Nate encounters have had their brains cooked by either the backdrop of culture war or deep immersion in fictional worlds, supplanting reality so that friendly engagement with strangers is difficult. Still, Nate recognizes and feels affection for people that just want to burrow through longboxes alongside him in peace, maintaining the largely agreed-upon standards of personal space.

The consistency with which McDonough releases issues makes it feel like a blog or diary, not trying to present a point but to tell a story of his days. Like a more subculturally specific King-Cat, reading Grixly is a way of checking in with a guy with whom the reader will likely find a great deal in common.

[drlockdown-reviews]

Okay, I'm sick of writing around and asking. I need your help.

Does anyone know where else I can get these specific comic sleeves? Amazon direct is sold out, and only 3P sellers have it (hence the inflated price).

Google shows nothing. Amazon is scalping. Ebay has two sellers that both cancelled on me and refunded. Reddit deleted my question and temporarily barred me from posting on the subreddit. None of my friends know anything.

Where else can I get these? Seriously! I want these specifically, not Longboxes. I like the way I store my comics; I don't want gatekeepey comic fans saying "it's not tradition".

I like taking my comics to friends houses and letting them get invested in the Energon Universe.

Where can I find more?

[thedevotionaltour]

What are you using to catalog your collection that's taking you so long? I can plow through a whole longbox in about an hour using the clz/collectorz.com comic book app.

i use league of comic geeks! the slowness is more just me being slow at logging more than anything else i think :P i'm just slow at stuff like this as fun as it is bc i get distracted and bored easily despite the fact that it's still like. fun.

the main reason a fair chunk of my comics are still not on there after this afternoon+evening is now just bc the remaining ones are in storage that is not the easiest for me to access/work with right now! or floating lost among other stuff. that i know is in my place. just not where exactly... but pretty much all of what is currently easy to access within my vicinity is now logged! so until i get back to large backlogs of comics i need to catalog, it should all go pretty fast from now on! especially since i don't envision i'll be buying 200+ comics in one go from anywhere ever in my lifetime lol

[rastronomicals]

11:35 PM EDT September 21, 2023:

Eno/Cale - "In The Backroom" From the album Wrong Way Up (October 5, 1990)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Back when it was new--and I was 25 years old--I eagerly purchased this compact disc. Oh, it was a time, man. The CD was packaged in--get this (if you can: most people today I would assume don't know what it had been)--a longbox. A theft deterrent then, and a music geek collectible now. Funny the way things transform, sometimes.

So. It being that time, I didn't know as much about Brian Eno or John Cale then as I do now, but I still knew Here Come the Warm Jets and White Light/White Heat. And because those records had been great, I expected Wrong Way Up to be pretty awesome.

Did I know then that the 3-1/2-minute revolution called "Sky Saw" featured Cale? Or that there was a cult album named June 1, 1974 that featured them both?

Not sure. Wise now, was I wise then?

Anyway, the excitement before the purchase turned into disappointment afterwards. This album, it did not rock, it bore no traces of Warm Jets or White Heat, and it wasn't weird at all, and I sold it and I forgot about it as quickly as possible.

Lately though, nearly 30 years later, thinner of hair, and wiser of the music, man, I've been on an Eno jag, and I came across a review of the album on Pitchfork that suggested the album, synthpop though it was, achieved nothing less than brilliance in its rather conflicted creation.

Hell, I hadn't even known that the artists hadn't gotten along. . . . So I figured, what *had* I known, in my judgement 30 years ago? I'd been only 25, and had probably been a little bit um, over-influenced, by hardcore punk. My tastes are more sophisticated now! I could like an album that maybe wasn't so manic. Really I could. And shit, everything I've been doing for the last month was all about what a fucking genius Eno was. . . Maybe I'd been hasty in my dismissal of WWU back then, simply because it didn't sound like "Third Uncle," or "I Heard Her Call My Name." 'Cause hell, on reflection, thinking about it in 2019, in the midst of a Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno freakout, neither does "Luftschloss."

Goddamn, then, let's try it again, I thought. So last week, I bought a CD copy off Discogs. Received it yesterday, listened to it on the way into work this morning, and ... it's unabashedly awful.

It's lame, predictable, and without a trace of the genius which otherwise marks both men's work. You're tempted to say a few things, although you should probably resist the urges. You're tempted to say that it was a case of men outside the times attempting foolishly to sound like them, but that's wrong. 1990 had no great rush of synthpop albums.

1990 was about Jane's Addiction; Jane's Addiction, and Happy Mondays and Sonic Youth's major label debut. Nobody was making synthpop. That these two major artists felt like going there, I don't know, it's odd, it's strange, it's fucked up.

You're also tempted to say, maybe, if you're not that familiar with the facts, that this was the work of giants who had exhausted their creative energies prior to its making, young lions become old farts. But, of course, that's ridiculous. Five years after this mistake of a record, Eno would record Nerve Net, which showed him as able as his youngself to stretch things out. And if you want pop, shit, Eno made Another Day on Earth in 2005, as he was approaching 60, and that is a brilliant, quirky, intelligent pop record, even if it's not as much like M83 as I might prefer.

Wrong Way Up is a detour into mediocrity. Definite, and puzzling, that is.

It all goes to show many things, perhaps most importantly--and I swear I'm not looking to trash Pitchfork specifically here--that if an artist known for making good things makes something crappy, there will always--always--be somebody around to tell people that, fuck the facts, it is in fact pretty good.

There's also the reminder given that I had the suss of the thing down back in 1990. I like to think of myself as smarter now, wiser if you have to go there, and I was prepared to second-guess myself, and take a lesson from it too, but at least in this case, me and the version of myself that existed three decades ago are smack dab in agreement. There's a stolidity about that I find appealing, but maybe, just maybe, there's also a disappointing inability to evolve.

Funny the way things don't transform, sometimes.

https://lahistoriadelamusicarock.blogspot.com/2019/04/enocale-wrong-way-up-opal-records-back.html

File under: Fool Me Twice

[maniacwatchestheworld]

Ayo!!! Just got back from the comicbook store for free comicbook day today, and check out our curious little collection of a hall!

But most importantly... Guess what I got! Guess what I got!!! GUESS WHAT I GOT!!!

Lookie! Lookie lookie LOOKIE!!!!!

I got it! I got it! I GOT IT!!! And only for $15 too lol I got the cover! The much craved and desired cover!!!!!!! :3c I want to frame it! 🩵🩵🩵

Also this year we graduated from a shortbox to a longbow ehehe. BEHOLD!

A new baby longbox!

[cappadocius]

9 Fandom Peeps To Get to Know Better!

tagged by @sagaston .

3 ships you like: If I'm limited to only three: Bubbeline (Bubblegum/Marceline), M&M (Moxxie x Millie), and Amedot (Amethyst/Peridot)

First ship ever: Probably Han x Leia?

Last Song you heard: according to the station playlist, it was Watching From A Distance by David Ramirez

Favorite childhood book: I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman

Currently reading: The Green Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang

Currently watching: quite a few things. Lupin the III parts 1, 4, and 5; Cherry Magic; Mashle; Fist of the North Star; Fluffy Paradise; Mr. Villain's Day Off; Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable; The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses. If we mean currently, I'm not watching anything, I'm doing this thingie.

Currently consuming: water.

Currently craving: Spaghetti Bolognese

Tagging 9 peeps: @loquora @longbox-jockey @hamstergal @fadeverb @francinehibiscus @banana-smut-muffin @spankymerve @bakafox @king-in-yellow

Feel free to post, or ignore.

[atopfourthwall]

I've noticed with Longbox that after Gyo, it seems you've stuck mostly with Junji Ito's short story collections. Do you ever intend to cover more long form stories like Black Paradox, Dissolving Classroom, Sensor, and Liminal Zone, or are you saving those until you've done all the collections? Also, would you consider doing an Ashock the Fourth Wall seriesl for Tomie like you did with Remina?

Unfortunately, I'm not doing ANY Junji Ito in the future. In case you missed it, the three Uzumaki Longbox videos AND the AT4W live shows featuring them got taken down and I got two copyright strikes from them. Not ContentID claims - copyright strikes, as in the things that can get my channel deleted. Sooo yeah, I can't risk covering Junji Ito material again in the future.