1. Gail and JB have teamed up before with very good results on Action Comics.
2. It's not the Atom you are used to, you might like this one.
3. Online ordering is so easy, with no minimum orders that you never have to step into a comic shop again.
4. An investment of three bucks or less for one month might prove you wrong.
5. Instead of spending the energy making up reasons why you can't read a book, try it out. Where is the actual harm?

Jacob P Secrest wrote: But his status does say "Not Active", I thought that meant that the person was banned. Did I misunderstand the purpose of the "Status" in the profile?

Don't know how much simpler I can make this... 

Dave was not banned. Banning means that a person is refused entry do to something they did or said.

Dave quit the forum.

Since he quit the forum, his membership was switched to "Not Active".

Whatever may or may not have happened to another forum member when they quit is of no concern to the question at hand. 

Once again, Dave Farabee was not banned.  He left of his own volition, as stated in his last post two pages back.

End of story.

Me:  "What's a "chicken-fry"?  Is that a reference to people who work in the fast food industry?  Or some kind of diagonal reference to the old "black people like fried chicken" chestnut?  I don't get it."

Chad Carter:  It's a term originating from my mind from "chicken-fried steak", which is a Southern type thing. As in THE STAND miniseries when Stu Redman is told, "It makes me sick to see good men die while chicken-fried crap like you lives." Paraphrasing.

I'll go ahead and say that your usage, in this case, by no means references a universally understood nomenclature.  The fact that you needed to incorporate both "from my mind" and "Southern type thing [sic]" in your explanation tends to bear me out.

Chad:  Of course you're ready to play the racial angle. Why would I be on this forum to begin with, and in this thread, if my whole stance is using racial epitaphs? How about some common sense?

"Of course" I'm ready to "play the racial angle"?  What makes you think that, Chad?  All I was doing was trying to make some sort of sense of the confusing language you employed.  What it is about me, I wonder, that makes you think I have some sort of racially-motivated agenda?

Chad:  And my assertion that this culture is D-U-N is valid, friend. Where's the advancement? Where are the great minds? The technology age is the new Dark Age. Originality cannot form in the soil of mediocrity. And what the technology age has provided is the immobilization of self, of the rise of the idea that "everyone has a chance". Well, they don't. That's a reality. Real genius, real talent, is now buried under mountains of mediocre voices crying out for attention.

Wow.  I hear a lot of horse shit in my average day, but this rant has to rank right up there.  Chad?  Quick heads-up, here.  What you know about the human race, you're apparently learning from television.  And television is shit.  Television, to quote Jules Winfield, lives and roots in shit.  That's a filthy animal. 

Of course things look bleak from the couch in your living room.  The evening news?  Reality TV?  It's all jam-packed with assholes and "celebrities" and fame junkies, people with nothing to offer the whole of society in the long term, and maybe not even the short term.  Mediocrity, to use your word, is exactly what's taken over the airwaves.  Why?  Because there's money in it.  There's ratings in it. 

But that's not all there is of our quaint little species.  There remain geniuses and heroes and visionaries.  You don't see them on the Jay Leno or Jon Stewart shows because market research has shown that the people who buy cars are more interested in seeing movie stars and "musicians" (yes, that word is in quotation marks for a reason) than people who actually have the intellect and determination to make the world a better place.  You also don't see them on TV because more than a few of them live outside of the United States of America.  Surely those people can't matter, right?

Chad:  Stephen Hawking is the closest approximation of "greatness" this culture has left, one of a few voices left who might impart something that could change everything. And not everyone has to do that, but in this day and age, how would you know it?

You're not going to hear me bad-mouth Hawking, or say that he's anything short of a world-class mind.  I will, though, point out that the only reason you've ever heard of him is because a publicity agent somewhere realized that there was money to be made by foisting him onto the public.  (The wheelchair!  The stuff about time!  This is a no-brainer, fellow cigar-chewing guys from central casting!)  The academic physics community knew who Hawking was long before he was showing up on THE SIMPSONS and STAR TREK and wound up having a movie made about him...and that's part of the point I'm making.

Chad:  I simply assert that the unborn aborted millions do not contain the key to mankind's modern or future relevance.

If anyone is saying that the aborted millions do contain such a key, then he/she is disregarding, if nothing else, the law of averages.  It is true that if someone is never born, his/her potential can never be realized, but that doesn't hold up as a reason to ban abortion.  In this we agree.

Chad:  The culture is currently exhausted, and most likely only catastrophe will both result and solve the issue of lost potential.

You have no way of knowing this.  Acting as though you do makes you look like a moron.

Chad:  In 1968, man walked on the moon. 37 years later, where have things gone?

Just to add a third or fourth millstone around your neck at this point, (a) APOLLO 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969; and (b) even if your 1968 gaffe had been correct, that would have been 38 years ago, not 37.  (Oh, and (c)?  You can't start a sentence with a number.)  Thanks for playing, though.

Chad:  Where are the advancements? Did all those abortions result in the death of the man who would have taken mankind to the stars, or to some subatomic dimension?

We'll never know.  Again, I agree with you that the "Every aborted child is a lost chance at greatness!" agrument is a flawed one, but to say with certainty that you feel certain that none of the abortions performed in the past kept a world-changing human being from being born is nothing less than ridiculous.  How the hell could you know that for sure?

Chad:  Highly likely that cat would have merely contributed to the next strain of ebola which will, no doubt, arise as nature attempts to balance out all of this overpopulation.

Ebola.  A virus which probably originated in what was once Zaire.  Wasn't there a question about "the racial angle" a while back?  I might have to send it back your way.  It is "highly likely" that one's average aborted fetus would have contributed to the next strain of ebola?  How do you get there from where you sit, Chad?

Chad:  The point that was made was that pro-choice does not preclude the existence of hope for a better world.

That was not the point made by you.  If that's what you were going for, you missed.  By a lot.

Chad:  Frankly, I'm more in the Ambrose Bierce camp, and was he really wrong? Some people thought 911 was going to change the culture. And it did, in all the wrong ways. Vats of jingoist peanut butter with no expiration date. Congratulations.

Look!  Sound bites with no meaning whatsoever!  Fox News is awaiting its first pro-choice employee, Chad.  Give 'em a call.

Congrats right back atcha, by the way.

''They hate me because they're supposed to, JD.

Independent thought is discourage in fandom. ''

Just because others disagree with your view, doesn't mean they aren't expressing their own informed opinions.

And yes, there a lot of idiots out there, but they exist in all areas of life, and express all opinions.You don't seem to realise people are forming their opinions by your posts on this board, yet you can't seem to grasp that, let alone acknowledge it.

Your posts here are damaging only yourself, and only adding to your bad image.Heck, I'm a fan, and even I'm cringing.

You claim to be intelligent, then act like you are. Show yourself to be above reproach, and above your detractors. 

Craig,

Mostly people are forming their opinions through second hand distortions of posts Mr. Byrne made on this board and this is magnified by a loud body of people reflecting, refocusing, and further distorting them. This can be demonstrated to be a very large part of the "backlash movement" because when you ask them about what they read that bothered them, and they repeat what they claim to have read,  for the most part it's wrong, out of context, or such a bizarre reach that it's not really worth discussing further.

From what I've seen few if any of the people doing all the bitching out there are above reproach in any respect or even careful about being accurate in what they are reproaching in Mr. Byrne for. I'm not above reproach. Being above reproach is not really much of a prerequisite for being allowed to speak. Espcially on one's own forum. So the whole above reproach thing is a lot of self righteous idealistic crap. Still I have to wonder when the terminally bitchy bitch about bitchiness what is to be done? How can they be satisfied? Is attempting to satisfy them in any way productive?

Cringe all you want. It doesn't mean anything except that something made you cringe. People cringe at different things. Alan Moore's Lost Girls project obviously makes some people cringe(me amongst them) and yet it has been defended through thick and thin by many of the people who are now claiming offense at Mr. Byrne's behavior. Cringing is rarley objective or universally authortitative in its significance.

So who's right? And really who even cares? If you don't like how Mr. Byrne responds to people then why are you even here? What do you think is likely to happen if you come here to be in the presence of what you do not like?

Do you have an axe to grind? Were you chosen by some by obscure prophecy to change the world and save the internet from itself? Are you the guy who is gonna get Mr. Byrne to suddenly become tame? And if he did become "tame" then are all the self righteous slogan chucking angry mob kids really going to suddenly stop ragging on him and accept him back into the congregation as redeemed? I mean other than YOU tossing your two cents in just WHAT the hell did you think was going to be accomplished as a result of your post? Do you have anything to contribute here besides the "nyah nyah nyah shame on you" stuff? Did we really need to know that you now agree with the detractor crowd? Do you imagine that we don't read Mr. Byrne's stuff and draw our own (possibly different!) conclusions? Are you here to lead us out of slavery? Are you gonna be Moses to the John Byrne forum? Why are you here?

For instance, do you have any questions for Mr. Byrne about his career or work or his likes or dislikes or oinions? Are you even reading his comics? Are you curious about his role in making them as either artist or writer or contributor? Do you even have any interest in talking to him beyond "giving him a piece of your mind" or taking him to task on what you perceive to be his misbehavior?

If not I have to wonder why you came.(let me guess..it's the "free country defense" isn't it?) What is with all this "therapeutic dissenter" horse shit? As much as I criticize Alan Moore do I go to his website and toss rocks at him? No. I do not. Why?  Because(assuming he actually has a website) it exists for him (probably paid for by him) and for people who have a genuine interest in him so they can talk to each other. It is not a goddamned arena for would be gun fighters, snarks, and pissy offended critics to come and play king of the mountain. It is not the King of the Iron Fist Tournament. It is not a monarchy awaiting it's own historically inevitable equivalent of the French revolution.

This is proverbially speaking John Byrne's back yard. You get to have things how you want in your own back yard. So does he. You get to be arbitrary and capricious in your own backyard. So does he. The only way to see what's happening in Mr Byrne's backyard is to go there. He doesn't bother you in your favorite forum. He doesn't send out press releases. He posts HERE. In his yard so to speak.

If you don't like what happens HERE then you are free not to come HERE. If you maintain that you are above even caring about what happens HERE (because it sucks so much with all the yelling and insulting) then please don't prove that you DO CARE by taking what happens HERE back to THERE to use it as grist to stir up shit in the hopes it will come HERE. 

Trolls, their sock puppets, and well meaning but ultimately ridiculous attack dogs have nothing much to contribute to this board worth hearing except that occasionally it can be fun to throw eggs that them if they are obnoxious enough.

It seems to me that you came here to pick a fight because you've got nothing better to do. Please find yourself something better to do Craig. I hear that crocheting and water skiing are fun. And we could all use that quick and easy cancer cure.