Ironhold

It wasn't just OK, it was almost mandatory. The people back then didn't have the type of modern purification we take for granted today, and so drinking plain water was risky unless it came straight from a "pure" source like a well. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages were a way of countering this, as the fermentation process often killed any nasties that were in the water. Tea and coffee, meanwhile, emerged from the practice of boiling water to purify it. Boiled water is rather unpleasant to taste, and so people began mixing things into it to mask that.

For those who haven't been following the US comic book industry lately, things have been getting pretty dire. IDW is $7.1 million in the hole, and that's *with* them having the licenses to most of Hasbro's bigger in-house properties. They've just been hit left, right, and center by their own poor decision-making at the corporate and editorial levels. No one expects them to last more than a few years unless something big turns them around. Marvel is rotting from within due to poor corporate management and a slew of creatives who have no business working at a top-tier company. It's gone from being a house of heroes to a house of try-hards and political pundits. That Disney has been behaving in a questionable fashion towards it is also alarming. DC's leadership seemingly checked out some time ago given the way that their creatives are running riot on social media and generally embarrassing the company. That they've made some questionable decisions of late concerning what books to publish and the content in those books isn't helping. Archie... is a ghost of what it used to be. After the last of the old guard passed away, some technicality led to it being taken over by the last guy's widow. Once in charge, she divided her time between tossing out everything that made Archie Archie and sexually harassing the male employees. Archie very nearly went bust under her watch, and the current administration has been flailing about like a European futbol player to try and make things right. Image has slowly deteriorated into porn and political screeds, sometimes both at once. In other words, the dinosaurs are dying, and it's now time for the mammals to reign. Dark Horse, the one major comic book company to have maintained any semblance of professionalism, is now being joined by a number of indie publishers who have earned their readers' loyalty the old-fashioned way. This ranges from would-be titans like Alterna and AMP! to scrappy challengers like Splatto and All Caps. If there was ever a time for someone to start into comics, it's now. This has me wondering. Deseret Book is in a situation to where they could, if they wanted to, effectively materialize a comic book division overnight. All they'd need is the talent to produce material. Since it's Deseret, it'd all be family-friendly, something that there's a dire shortage of right now. Does anyone here think it might be time for Deseret to give it a shot? If so, would you read whatever they put out?

https://www.fema.gov/emergency-alert-test Those of us in the US are due to have a nation-wide test of the Emergency Alert System on the 3rd. Not only will radio and television receive broadcasts, this time around cell phones will too.

BTW - as I'm typing this, I'm listening to "The House of Hair with Dee Snider". He just started off the final hour of the show with a double play of KISS by request, and started it off with a personal anecdote about Gene Simmons. Yeah... Dee doesn't like Gene, and *really* doesn't like Tommy.

In "KISS and Make-Up", Gene outright says that his mother would only support his decision to become a musician if he went to college. I don't remember what he got his degree in, but it was enough to get him a series of white-collar jobs while the various bands he was in came and went. For example, he worked as a teacher for a year, and was working for a magazine when KISS formed. The big thing is that before KISS formed, Gene and Paul were in a band called Wicked Lester. The band actually got a record contract and had just finished recording what would have been their debut album when a mix of internal conflicts and meddling by the label resulted in the group falling apart. In the wake of Wicked Lester's collapse, Gene learned some hard lessons. Chief among them was the need to ensure that he left a paper trail. Hence his talking the rest of the band members into incorporating the group and putting as much as possible in the group's name, rather than in the name of any individual member or any label.

It was a feature-length direct-to-video movie. Just like the *two* feature-length, direct-to-video movies Scooby did with the WWE crowd.

The group originally planned to break up in 2001, in large part because Gene and Paul were feeling exhausted. Gene's first autobiography, "KISS and Make-Up", ends on this note. However, when Gene and Paul realized that the fans were still present and still wanted to see everyone going, they decided to see where the source of the exhaustion was. The source? Ace and Peter. The pair had spent the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s going hard into drugs and alcohol; this was why they were fired in the first place. Ace had modest success with his own group in the mid - to - late 1980s, but both guys were back to square one by the mid-1990s when they finally talked Gene and Paul into letting them come back. When the decision was made to do a regular tour again like in the old days, it became apparent in short order that the two didn't have it anymore. Their substance abuse had completely robbed them of their stamina, and Ace hadn't played any of his KISS material in so long that Tommy had to re-teach him all of his old guitar parts. The exhaustion Gene and Paul were feeling, then, was from having to carry the two. Ace and Peter were let go a second time, and the quest was on to replace them. Eric Singer, drummer #3, didn't have any prior commitments, so he was able to come back as a drummer. But Mark St. John (guitarist #3) and Bruce Kulick (guitarist #4) had active commitments with their current bands. So by mutual decision, Tommy - formerly of Black N' Blue and noted KISS cover band Cold Gin - was voted in. Ace and Peter tried to sue because Eric and Tommy were wearing their make-up, but the suit was tossed when Gene pointed out the fact that KISS was a corporate entity (that is, he incorporated the band as a whole) and each person's costumes & make-up patterns were the intellectual property of the corporation as a whole.

If memory serves, his knees are also going. Gene is already semi-committed to his solo act, and in fact he had Ace's solo act opening for him in Australia not long ago. Eric has enough friends in the industry still that he can easily find work in another band or even go solo. Tommy's taken some heat from people, like Dee Snider, because of how he ended up being associated with KISS in the first place, but he's got enough rep and cred to where he could easily be a behind-the-scenes man for another group. It's time.

Senior year of high school. Back in my freshman year, the head principal had the idea for something called "mentoring". Every Tuesday morning, the first class of the day would end early, and we'd all shuffle off to our respective designated area while "Lean on Me" played in an endless loop over the intercomm. A group of us students, seemingly assembled at random, would meet with a designated staff member, who would lead us in a discussion on a specified topic. The general consensus among us students, and some of the staff, was that it was largely a waste of time. We'd just gotten into that week's mentoring session when word got around that something had happened, so those staff members who had televisions in their designated areas did what they could to raise whatever local TV channel they could in order to get the news broadcasts. Mentoring was nothing more than everyone watching everything happen, including the second plane hit the towers. The bells kept ringing for the rest of us to do classes, but almost no one actually taught their planned lesson that day.

"Kin" Don't believe any of the promotional material that you see. It's 100% bait-and-switch to hide what the movie's all about.

Pro tip: be wary of anyone who unironically says that they're on the "right" side of something.

"Mile 22" - The film was meant to dovetail right into a sequel, and so doesn't entirely stand on its own.

In all seriousness, if you have a favorite comic talent, be wary of looking up their social media accounts. Some of the newer peeps are actually a part of the whole "Let's punch Nazis!" crowd. But yeah - it's bad nowadays. How bad? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardian_Syaf This guy got anti-Christian and anti-Jewish propaganda into an issue of "X-Men Gold". And nobody at Marvel saw this despite it being plain as day. Either the editors assigned to the book weren't paying attention, or they don't deserve to be editors. This nonsense is a very big part of the reason why so many people are going to various crowd-funding platforms and indie publishers: they feel that the only way to get back to where things were is to do it themselves.

Careful. That's enough to get some of the modern so-called "pros" (re: social justice warriors and incompetents masquerading as people with day jobs) calling you a "Nazi" or any of the other insults they like to use to slander those of us who actually demand quality product. I'm not kidding. A lot of the current crop of talent in the industry are hacks who put their personal and social views ahead of their product, and it's led to fights and public meltdowns with fans and actual pros who try to hold the industry to a higher standard. Yeah... I've pretty much been shuffled off into #comicsgate at this point.

It's only letting me attach files in the open posts here. Oof.

Been collecting since I was a child.

I was looking at your artwork and wondering if you felt up to a project.

Thing is, I *am* going to need someone to do the art and the lettering. IRL I have nerve damage in both hands, and so can't do any of that on my own.

I had an idea for my own indie one-shot comic book. I'm 10 pages into the draft on what I'm targeting as a 30-page script, and I've got reference pics of the two main characters done via Hero Machine. http://www.heromachine.com/heromachine-2-5-character-portrait-creator/ I'm trying to look at a few publishers who might or might not take indie comics so I can check out their submissions guidelines ahead of time, and I'm not wholly impressed with those companies I'm looking at so far. Hence why I'm wondering: are there any comic publishers out of Utah, Idaho, or the like? Thanks.

I think that with some better creative choices they could have kept more of the whimsy. I honestly spent half the time I was doing the review up wondering what Don Bluth could have done with the premise.

It's in an odd middle area. Adults may find it too simplistic, while kids may not get what's going on.

Disney's "Christopher Robin" The premise was sound, but some questionable creative choices robbed it of its whimsy.

https://katu.com/news/local/non-profit-food-cart-closes-because-of-alleged-threats-from-occupy-ice-protesters The food cart was helping to support a charity that helped the homeless, but it had to close because Occupy was threatening the young woman who worked there with acts of violence.

https://katu.com/news/local/non-profit-food-cart-closes-because-of-alleged-threats-from-occupy-ice-protesters The food cart was helping to support a charity that helped the homeless, but it had to close because Occupy was threatening the young woman who worked there with acts of violence.

My entire body's a mess of pain some days, in part because of injuries that never healed right. Things that can cause the pain to flare back up again include over-exertion, being in the same physical position for too long, and changes in the weather. I'd suggest taking note of when the level of pain changes and what you're doing at that point.