Chekov Manga: The Adventures of Pavel Chekov

Top Ten Lists I Did Not Make For The Year-End Wrap-Up That Every Comics Blogger Seems To Be Doing

1. Top Ten Comic Books That Only Bloggers Seemed To Read


2. Top Ten Classic Newspaper And Golden Age Reprint Books I Did Not Buy, Instead Choosing To Spend My Money On Multiple Copies Of DC’s Invasion! Trade Paperback


3. Top Ten Art Comics That Irritated More Than Entertained Me, Featuring Sophie Crumb’s Appearances In MOME


4. Top Ten Reprints I Bought Like Six Months Ago But Haven’t Gotten To Yet


5. Top Ten Superhero Movie Moments That I Wish The Comics Had A Bit More Often Like When Batman Totally Punches The Joker’s Face In During The Fundraiser


6. Top Ten “Chris Ware, What The Hell, Man? Are You Trying To Ruin It For The Rest Of Us By Being So Fucking Good And Creepy At The Same Time?” Moments In Acme Novelty Library 19


7. Top Ten Moments From The Flood Of Jack Kirby Reprints That Came Out This Year (Using images swiped from Chris Sims’s blog.)


8. Top Ten Marvel Panels That Did Not Feature Cannibalism And The Mutilated Corpse Of The Wasp


9. Top 47 Comic Books In Which Batman Appeared


10. Top Two Comic Books In Which Batman Did Not Appear

“Don’t you guys like heroes any more?”

Happy Holidays! Here’s three murderers with a popular yuletide hit!

Jonah, man, I love you, but that’s not what freedom of press means.

Also, realizing that riots sell newspapers and that you’ve got a story while you’re in the middle of one? Awesome.

They’re Tough! They’re Tight!

I’ve got questions here.

• If the car is remote controlled, why doesn’t one of the pit guys just sit behind the wheel? Why pluck a spotted youth who happens to be gawking at the contraption?
  
• Who identifies someone by the pants they’re wearing? I mean, outside of people in Lee advertisements.
  
• Frankly, I’m appalled at the engineering team behind this vehicle. If the control system in the car couldn’t last ten laps without having trouble, why risk the life of someone…oh, I see what they’re doing; saving their own skins from their shoddy workmanship!
  
• Is this the least enthusiastic race announcer ever? Signs point to yes. “The winner! Some kid. Yawn.”
  
• I’m not homophobic, but isn’t the slow zoom in on Jim’s ass in the final panels with that pedo-tastically charged dialogue a bit much in an ad for “grown-up pants?”

Stan Was Hip Before His Time.

“Little Johnny.”

Great Moments In True-Life Horror.

Lying in the Actuarial Gutters Volume 2 Column 97

Welcome to the most popular and longest running insurance column on the internet. In its various forms, Lying In The Actuaria Gutters has covered rumors and gossip in the insurance industry for twelve long glorious and quite scary years.

All stories are sourced from well-connected individuals. But I urge you to use your judgment and remember, context is everything.

The traffic lights are an indication (and only that) of how reliable I believe the story to be, based on source, context and gut feel. Red lets you know I think this rumor is bunk, but it is still being spread by the community. Amber indicates I think there is a heavy bias involved here, or it just seems a little fishy. And Green as far as I can tell (as far as I can ever tell) is the real deal, junior.

Nevertheless, do remember, Lying In The Actuarial Gutters is for your entertainment. Neither Fair Nor Balanced. Please don’t shoot the messenger.

NO ONE’S IN THE DC WHEELHOUSE

Cathy Donaghue, a customer care representative from Delta Consolidated’s Poughkeepsie branch was recently found using the office copier for her child’s school project, a clear violation of the employee handbook’s Workplace Equipment section. She was let off with a slap of the wrist by Marketing VP Dan Fahey, who you may remember recently admitted that he used the company-provided Lexus to go leaf-peeping in New Hampshire last month. What’s going on in Poughkeepsie? Is no one minding the store? With Delta Consolidated reducing site staff and outsourcing email customer care to India, now is not the time to make waves.

STEP ASIDE, DANIEL CRAIG

One of the bits of news I got from the Northeastern Insurance And Actuarial Management Seminar Series was that fans would soon see more adventures of Esurance.com’s popular Erin Esurance. Not content with having her regularly appear in ad spots during prime time television, Esurance has decided to create another short film in the style of their popular Carbon Copy project from a couple of years ago. No details yet on what sort of adventures Erin might find herself in this time. Could she be re-teamed with Space Ghost in another cult classic adventure?

WHO NEEDS PROPOSITION 8 TO MAKE THE GAYS DISAPPEAR?

Look for redesigned term life investment marketing materials coming from Anderson & Campbell in the near future. Why are they scrapping the previous, $25,000 print campaign that included folder, custom letterhead, brochures, and an envelope? Apparently, Anderson & Campbell CEO Marcus Waton didn’t like the image of a female couple that was included in the banner that appeared prominently in each component of the campaign. Speculation from those inside the A&C camp indicates this stems from Walton’s estranged daughter, who has been in a happy, committed relationship with another woman since 1997.

SWIPE FILE

WHO IS THE DC INSIDER?

Since the blog that was originally up at http://www.dc-insider.blogspot.com has moved twice and has not reappeared again, suspicion rests on the recently-terminated senior claims analyst Raymond Costa. Costa was the only person to have been in the room during certain key meetings that were reported on the blog, including one in which Senior VP Maureen Rosenberg stated that they were going to “put Allstate’s nuts in a vise until they get some butter.” Other incidents of sexual harassment, misbehavior in the office, and abuse of company resources – see the story LITAG broke concerning the copier in the Poughkeepsie office – that were reported have been established to have occurred while Costa was on-site. Costa did not respond when emailed about the blog and the allegations made by the actuarial community.

FINE PRINT

Discuss this column at the Lying In The Actuarial Gutters Forum and add your request to what you want from future columns.

I’m still eBaying bits and pieces here and there, so look for seller ActuaryFan1. My social networking is pretty much all Facebook and Twitter these days, but I’m around at Bebo, MySpace, InsuranceSpace too.

Have a rumor about the insurance biz? Send it to LyingInTheActuarialGutters@gmail.com. You can also call or text it to 555-776-2323.

Change I can believe in.

Tomorrow, take the time to vote.

Hey, kids! Comics!

Cyblade #1, cover by Rick Mays.

Hey, remember that time that everything changed in the Batman comics?

I’m thinking about getting Panel 3 blown up to poster-size.

A complete list of single issues purchased today.

1. All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder #10

Super News: Uncle Sam and 9/11

Sexual Harassment at SDCC: Commentary by John DiBello.

John DiBello, if you weren’t aware, helps out Bully with his site by paying for cookies, holding open the scanner, and making sure that he gets to bed at 9:00 on the dot. I consider John one of my better friends, so when he asked me to run this piece, I didn’t hesitate, as he tackled this difficult and frustrating topic in a way that I never could.

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: “These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, ’cause I wanted to see what her reaction was.” This was only one example of several instance of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the “prettiest girl at the con.” They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he’d targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it’s to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you’re dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining “Convention Policies,” which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a “Where Is It?” guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There’s no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she’s sympathetic to the situation but who doesn’t have a clear answer to my question: “What’s Comic-Con’s policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?” She directs me to the nearest security
guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there’s little that can be done.

“I understand that,” I tell them both, “but what I’m asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what’s the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?” But this wasn’t a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like “Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX.”

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more red-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I’m looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I’ve retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn’t have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

I don’t understand why there’s no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.

Comics and Hollywood: The Spirit

From Comic Shop News, August 12, 1987

“#11 top right corner curled a bit, all the way through the comic, otherwise immaculate”

What.

A Question For Our Times

[poll id="2"]