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I've been working on a lot of projects for a while. One of those is that I've done a deep loving dive into any kind of weird offshoots of a license. A lot of this is video-game based because that's the kind of thing I can toss on a flash drive and dick with on the toilet, but there were a lot of comics involved. It's probably not a huge surprise that a lot of the comics side of things involves attempts to work with a license that got discarded, or all contradict one another, or so on. Today I'm gonna pull out one of my favorites. It's part of the many scrapped attempts to revive TRON.  Back in 2003, a game called Tron 2.0 came out. The actual creator of the original film said he considered it to be as official a sequel as would ever be, and it did relatively well for the time, only hampered by the fact that ever since the 16-bit era, Disney licenses and video games have been a muddled, poisonous mess. Still, the game's plot (where Alan's son is sucked into a modern PC after his father is kidnapped, and has a similarly lovely experience to Flynn) got a continuation a few years later in a comic series called simply Tron.  The book wasn't particularly pleasant but it was definitely an interesting wrinkle: Flynn left the computer world and became a CEO and got all the fame and money he was owed for his labors. Jet did not. He got PTSD and tried to get off the grid, away from anything with a microprocessor after seeing the inside of what we'd created, and how the whole thing had gone well beyond anything humans would ever control again.  But meanwhile, the book, like the actual game, did try and do its research on actual tech and how that would map to the digital world, and unbeknownst to anyone, while Jet was inside a massive tech company mainframe in the game, he got backed up along with everything else on the network, so there's now a digital clone of him running around inside the system which is insisting it's a) human (or a User, I guess) and b) doesn't belong there. The series was basically the human trying to come to terms with the hosed up experience he had while- no, they lied!  See, Jet-as-code remains in the system but there was absolutely no way that it could be backed up fully. So the final issue reveals that: - PTSD-Jet is one of three fragments of the backup that were split apart to try and stabilize them, using the "TRON Legacy" code from 2.0 - Another one of the three has basically been acting as a tyrant over the system from behind a mask - The third was in a fantasy land and just exiled by the tyrant to keep him out of the way, since the "damaged" Jet was in his own little loop trying to figure himself out. - The real Jet left, continued experimenting with "himself" as a User from outside the system, and effectively offers the fantasyland Jet a chance to be a real boy in the end since he's the final survivor and is now somehow able to compile properly. Also, for some reason, Lora (Jet's mother, mentioned to be deceased in both 2.0 and everything to this point) is now alive again because digital magic.  Because he knows that to leave the system would effectively unmake it, since he is the system now, fantasy-Jet decides to stay digital and the series ends the same way as Sphere does: he wishes away his god powers to be normal, but without the "or did he" twist. This series actually made me kind of mad that it had a cool concept and tossed it out the window at the last minute because it's a bit rare to see a story actually work with "Hey, that grand adventure actually had some real mental consequences for the hero" without going full-grimdark. Anyway I love licensed comics talk about licensed comics or other comics it's December now.
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Dec 2, 2017 07:36
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I had a customer in today looking for Zelda or Mario comics and it reminded me how shocking it is that Nintendo refuses to license those properties out for proper NA comic series.
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Dec 2, 2017 07:41
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Tron 2.0 owned There was also a tron graphic novel that bridged some of the story between the two movies that I remember being not entirely poo poo, but I can't remember the name of it
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Dec 2, 2017 07:41
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Rhyno posted:I had a customer in today looking for Zelda or Mario comics and it reminded me how shocking it is that Nintendo refuses to license those properties out for proper NA comic series. Maybe they saw what happened to Sonic.
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Dec 2, 2017 07:50
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I remember randomly picking up a Married...with children comic ages ago. Because if there was ever a thing that needed to be turned into a comic it was Married...with children.
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Dec 2, 2017 07:53
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Madkal posted:I remember randomly picking up a Married...with children comic ages ago. Because if there was ever a thing that needed to be turned into a comic it was Married...with children. NOW decided licensed comics were the thing to do so they grabbed whatever they could get their hands on. Their Quantum Leap comics were also lovely.
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Dec 2, 2017 08:01
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I'm certain there were Alf comics.
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Dec 2, 2017 08:01
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Lurdiak posted:I'm certain there were Alf comics. About 50 issues worth.
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Dec 2, 2017 08:03
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Rhyno posted:I had a customer in today looking for Zelda or Mario comics and it reminded me how shocking it is that Nintendo refuses to license those properties out for proper NA comic series. Well, considering Valiant did a comic back in the day about a scummy, middle-aged man being possessed by his Game Boy and being in the thrall of the alien guy from Super Mario Land with the only hope being a very tiny Mario... yeah. The Captain N comic was a million times better than it had any right to be, though.
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Dec 2, 2017 08:35
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The Valient Mario comics I read in some big hardcover I got were pretty fun. I wish I knew where that book went to.
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Dec 2, 2017 09:23
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Rhyno posted:About 50 issues worth. 50 issues, 3 annuals, 2 winter specials, and 1 spring special. No, I don't own all of them. Yet.
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Dec 2, 2017 17:00
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Rhyno posted:About 50 issues worth. I read a bunch of these! It's actually the only way I knew of Alf, because we didn't have cable growing up and I almost never watched TV. I don't remember them being worse than the millions of Archies / Archie related content that I was reading at the time.
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Dec 2, 2017 18:04
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First comic I was ever into was a licensed comic: Sonic the Comic, which was the official UK publication by Sega and had a lot of other Sega game adaptations before it became all Sonic all the time.
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Dec 2, 2017 19:37
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Gavok posted:The Captain N comic was a million times better than it had any right to be, though. I loved the Nintendo power comics back in the day Hell Nintendo power itself was extremely my poo poo even if I never won a single contest 
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Dec 2, 2017 20:27
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Yeah, I wanted that Majora's Mask guitar so bad. I used to have paperbacks of the Mario and Zelda NP comics, but no idea where they're at now.
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Dec 3, 2017 03:28
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I treasure my LttP TPB. That was straight-up art.
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Dec 3, 2017 07:47
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Picked up a Jack Kirby Mister Miracle collection and you can tell he had a lot of fun designing the various machines that Scott would constantly find himself locked in.
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Dec 3, 2017 08:02
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CapnAndy posted:I treasure my LttP TPB. That was straight-up art. Hell yeah. I have mine still from middle school. Dark Horse has reprinted that and the Super Mario Adventures comic recently. Still no reprints of the Star Fox or Super Metroid ones.
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Dec 3, 2017 18:41
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Rhyno posted:NOW decided licensed comics were the thing to do so they grabbed whatever they could get their hands on. Their Quantum Leap comics were also lovely.
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Dec 4, 2017 03:51
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The best licensed comic is Transformers vs GI JOE by John Barber and Tom Scioli. It was a 12 issue mini and has a completely bonkers story involving the Joes fighting against a team up of Cobra and Decepticons. However since it is out of continuity they were able to go completely wild with it. Also the art is fantastic. 
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Dec 4, 2017 04:35
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The director of a college writing center I used to work for (during my first round of grad school) is the guy who writes the biography comics with the terrible art for Bluewave or Storm or whatever. I think they briefly went by Stormfront, which, whoops.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:36
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Jesus dude why are you teleporting your own guys then
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Dec 4, 2017 05:15
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Timeless Appeal posted:My tenth grade Spanish teacher wrote some of those comics apparently. Well that would explain it.
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Dec 4, 2017 06:34
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I remember reading some grunge comics in 90s as well. By grunge comics I mean comic biographies of grunge bands. It was a good time to be alive
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Dec 4, 2017 06:41
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When the Starship Troopers movie came out I got a bunch of Dark Horse comics out of it, it was pretty cool. I haven't actually watched the movie yet, lol (though I'm sure I'd love it because I really really liked Total Recall).
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Dec 4, 2017 07:01
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Schneider Heim posted:When the Starship Troopers movie came out I got a bunch of Dark Horse comics out of it, it was pretty cool. Starship Troopers is the best of the Verhoven trilogy of Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers. Get on that poo poo.
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Dec 4, 2017 07:04
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Starship troopers was a movie I enjoyed as a 15 year old and and adult, and I enjoyed it for completely different reasons at both stages in my life
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Dec 4, 2017 07:39
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Starship Troopers is the most incising, razor-sharp satire of the entire Bush years and the War on Terror in particular ever put on film... which is downright creepy, as it was shot in 1997. Special effects held up really good, too.
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Dec 4, 2017 08:19
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The weirdest Paul Verhoeven movie that I have seen is Hollow Man because it's a perfectly competent take on the Invisible Man that anyone could have made, and when I think "Paul Verhoeven", I don't tend to think "a film anyone could have made". 
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Dec 4, 2017 10:11
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muscles like this! posted:The best licensed comic is Transformers vs GI JOE by John Barber and Tom Scioli. It was a 12 issue mini and has a completely bonkers story involving the Joes fighting against a team up of Cobra and Decepticons. However since it is out of continuity they were able to go completely wild with it. Also the art is fantastic. Yeah, this is great stuff. Someone post the panel of Scarlett telling the psychiatrist that Cybertron was invented to sell toys by three executives named Cy, Bert, and Ron.
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Dec 4, 2017 14:27
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CapnAndy posted:Jesus dude why are you teleporting your own guys then I'll refer you to the second panel. Also IIRC Destro in this comic is barely human any more and is hundreds of years old by this point.
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Dec 4, 2017 19:06
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Wheat Loaf posted:First comic I was ever into was a licensed comic: Sonic the Comic, which was the official UK publication by Sega and had a lot of other Sega game adaptations before it became all Sonic all the time. Speaking of video game adaptions, I seem to recall the Brazilian Mega Man adaption has acquired an infamous reputation. I have no idea how they got away with half of the poo poo that apparently happened in that book - I guess back in the 90s, people didn't give a crap.
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Dec 4, 2017 21:06
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Yvonmukluk posted:Didn't Mark Millar write some of those? Yeah, it was some of his earliest professionally published work and of all the things he's written in his career, they're the ones he was ashamed of for a looooooong time until he made his peace with them, since he did them because he needed money fast to pay for his wedding. (Spoiler: they're not very good.)
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Dec 4, 2017 21:48
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Just wanted to touch base with those kind enough to leave me some ideas to add to my library in the last thread.Madkal posted:Ahem. Glad you asked. As someone who works in a library (though for older group than yours) here are my recommendations: This is a good list, thank you! a couple of these I havnt heard of and some I plum forgot about like March that I very much want to add to the ever growing list I have. Skwirl posted:Sandman. I dont think libraries are allowed to NOT have at least one Sandman floating about. Samuringa posted:I would add Jimmy Corrigan, Habibi, Orange and The Silent Voice to these. Way ahead of you on Silent Voice, I'm told I'm only really likely to get 3 in any given series at a time but Im gonnareally insist we get all 7 of this manga. Orange I've heard good things about too so I'll add that. Madkal posted:Forgot to mention Ronin, Maus and Persepolis as well. You could also through in some Eisner stuff if you want as it is always great to have Eisner in a collection, but I don't think those will get taken out too much. We have Maus and Persepolis in our 1001 books section which is a list of books that go down as 'must reads' but I think i'll be liberatin these for our comics section display a bit more as they just get lost there. Madkal posted:The local library here does the same which can be a bit confusing as some titles are put in the "adult" section while some get put in the "young adult" section but you sometimes end up with titles like Blankets in the adult section and Punisher in the young adult section and such. We've had some weird additions to various sections along those lines, for instance Fear Agent and the later volumes of Savage Dragon, being in the young graphic novels section and some volumes of Naruto and Toriko in both YGN section and Adult GN sections, like vol5 in one and vol6 in the other. Mostly it seems its to be sent pre-categorised by an external company but there wasn't really anyone into comics to second guess these choices until came aboard. Thank you guys, this was really helpful.
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Dec 5, 2017 00:48
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Can anyone tell me what the big deal about the newest issue of Savage Dragon is? My LCS owner freaked out about it on Facebook and said something about 'CHILD PORN', but I can't find any details online about it. Sure if something like that happened there'd be a big stink online about it, right? Is my LCS owner just spouting bullshit, or did something actually happen?
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Dec 5, 2017 01:27
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Dexie posted:Can anyone tell me what the big deal about the newest issue of Savage Dragon is? My LCS owner freaked out about it on Facebook and said something about 'CHILD PORN', but I can't find any details online about it. The book has basically been porn for a while now. Dragon Jr is having threesomes with his girlfriend and adopted sister.
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Dec 5, 2017 04:40
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Someone on Twitter was talking about it having a straight up cumshot or something? Where is that one guy who defends everything about Erik Larsen and Savage Dragon?
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Dec 5, 2017 04:48
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Endless Mike posted:Someone on Twitter was talking about it having a straight up cumshot or something? Where is that one guy who defends everything about Erik Larsen and Savage Dragon? We stopped ordering it ages ago but several retailers are losing their poo poo over it. But to be fair, there's been graphic sex in that book since it began.
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Dec 5, 2017 04:50
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Last time I read anything Savage Dragon was when I was reading the Image TMNT run and Michelangelo slept with what appeared to be a 12 year old lizard girl thing and it was treated as a big funny joke.
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Dec 5, 2017 05:19
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It's not technically child porn in that the characters are legal adults, but it is still pretty extreme. Larsen basically realized about a year or so ago that the fact that his book is rated mature means he can basically put whatever he wants in it, so while he skirted the edge of nudity for most of the book's history (except for those couple of years where the book was first a Fantastic Four pastiche and then a Calvin and Hobbes pastiche), he's gone for it whole hog the last little while, with Malcolm Dragon enjoying some barely legal foursomes with his girlfriend, adopted sister, and an ex-girlfriend (the three babies he currently has are from this foursome, btw). Spoilered for gross: He has since married his girlfriend, and her horniness is surely leading to something, because he keeps making a point of how voracious her sexual appetite is. Anyway, in the most recent issue, Malcolm does a jism so hard that it blasts his wife across the room and she lands upside down, with his fluids dripping from her vagina into her mouth. It was not the most fun page for me to turn to while reading comics in an airport.
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Dec 5, 2017 05:30
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