OK. In what ways did I make personal insults...to people that I don't even know (and who, for the most part, hide behind fake screen names). Hard to get personal through the magic of a message board. Of course, if someone takes it personally...then that's their flaw.

I don't have a timeline.

But at this point, most members of the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and various and sundry others, heroes, villains and supporting cast members, have "died" in the Marvel Universe, only to return to life, sometimes within a couple of years or less. When Captain America "died" a while back, every fanboy asked when he would return (two years). Same for when Nightcrawler "died" recently. *Yawn.*

I don't recall whether or not JB was against JB's resurrection, but I do know that, in regards to Jim Shooter's decision to change the original story in which Jean Grey was given a lobotomy to dying, JB apparently thought this change was for the better.

LOL! Never saw THIS one coming from a million parsecs away. I'm glad I held back from making such a joke to my buddy Necro.



The cool thing about Jean's resurrection, was that the REAL Jean was not held accountable for the deaths of the Asparagus people, so we got the REAL (what? again?) Jean Grey back. Bringing characters back from the dead wasn't really a trend back then (that didn't really occur until AFTER 2003), so it was an exciting cross-over story that led into X-Factor.

I certainly agree that this return from the death trend is yawn-inducing, but the implication is that the blame lies at JB's feet (not saying YOU, Lawson, are implying this, of course), and this I do NOT agree with.

Of course, if this is NOT being implied, then my apologies.

I don't know what Byrne had to do with Jean Grey's return, if anything. I thought that happened in X-FACTOR no. 1, which was produced by other people. I'm coming late to that argument. I was just discussing the merits of bringing her back from the dead at all.

Incidentally, a buddy recently sold me a big stack of comics -- the complete John Byrne run on MARVEL TEAM-UP and MARVEL TWO IN ONE -- that everyone said was so good. I got 'em for, like, 50 cents each. He cut me quite a deal.

I'll read them soon and let Paul and everyone know what I think.

Here's my Diary of a Budman: NYC Comicon official review:
I'll cut right to the chase and say that overall, I had an awesome trip. That was myofficial vacation of the year. I did the wife and kids thing earlier in the summer and truth be told, I love 'em but I was more stressed at the end of that vacation than I was going into it. This was me having fun and enjoying every second of it.

Got there Fri around 1:30. I was supposed to have a speaker/panelist badge but ended up with a Professional badge around my neck. How? When I checked in at the area I was supposed to get my badge, the lady who waited on me kept getting pulled away with questions from other employees. She would comeback about 30 seconds later and ask me what my last name was. This happened about 7 times. And when she finally did check my name I wasn't on the list. So I put my shit down and start making calls to my buds who are already inside. And of course no one is answering. So I start to text and she asks how I'm doing and I told her I was still trying to contact people. She calls me over and tells me that because I was so patient with her she had a professional cancel and I could have his badge. Pretty fucking cool.

Was there all day on Sat as well. It was jammed packed on Sat. Javitz is still too cheap/ignorant and wasn't wifi.


I'm not in to getting autographs but I did stroll over to see the famous folk of yesterday. Saw Lou Ferigno. Bruce Campbell who had the most fans lining up. Sara Douglas from Superman 2 was there with no one in line to see her. The big one for me was 3 cast members from three's Company. The guy who played Larry Dallas (Jack Trippers pal), Joyce Dewitt and Priscilla Barnes was there as well. Woof. Priscilla Barnes did not age gracefully. Neither did Joyce. Larry looked great! They all were nice to the people going up to them though. I thought Priscilla was the shit on that show. Then she had a topless scene in Mallrats andI finally got to see the goods after all those years. Screw it, I'd still do her.

Saw the Black Beauty car from the Green Hornet movie. I want to se it when it comes out. For the past couple of Halloweens I dressed up as GH and handed out candy at the door.


A couple of gripes:
No Wifi. Come on people. Wisen up on this. Especially at events like this.
Signage with pricing on it for what your selling. I hate asking shit like that. I went to a booth that was selling cool tumblers. I looked and looked and finally had to ask and of course they tell me butI shouldn't have had to ask. ($10ea/6 for $50)

Kudo's to DC comics. They had major presence with plenty of free swag--comics, pins, quick moving lines. And it was constantly being restocked. They were all over it. Marvel was too crowded.

I was reading over at The Beat about the lack of security at entrances. I have to agree with that. People were flowing through check points where you needed to show your badge in order to get in and because of the sheer volume of fanboys/geeks and other cosplayers, they were only able to check a small percentage of them . Dangerous if you ask me. We were sitting ducks for some fiends if they really wanted to come in commando style and start shooting.

More later if I think of anything significant. Chew on this for now. I know, my spelling sucks

From what I remember, Kurt Busiek came up with the idea for resurrecting Jean. It started in Avengers, then crossed over to FF then it was to be continued in the pulse poundingpages of XFactor no.1!

Thank you for your agreeance, as that is my point exactly. It had already been done, so this was nothing new. Besides the pseudo-resurrection of Jean as Maddy Prior.

Like I said, Jean Grey's return was the tipping point when mainstream comics ran out of new ideas. And Byrne had a major hand in that.