Month: April 2010

Originally published December 25, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #997

It seems that Disney keeps upping the stakes with every animated release. The animation crews look at the success of the previous film and must bite their fingers nervously, because they don’t want to be the ones who blow the current roll that the features are on.

It started with The Little Mermaid, of course, and the advent of Broadway-quality standards to the world of the animated film. It bypassed The Rescuers Down Under, which drew some accolades for some interesting computer tricks but not much beyond that.

Then it took a quantum leap forward with Beauty and the Beast, upping the stakes tremendously with not only audience and critical adoration, but the unprecedented Oscar nomination for “Best Film”–and quite a few people (myself included) felt it deserved to win.

So now the focus shifted to Aladdin, Disney’s 31st animated release. The pressure was on. The heat was turned up. Not to mention it brought with it the fact that it represented the final collaboration of composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, the latter having succumbed to AIDS prior to the release of Beauty and the Beast.

The verdict?

Continue Reading “Reviewing Aladdin” →

Originally published December 18, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #996

There’s definitely something wrong with me.

I’m missing the boat. I’m out of the loop. I’m just not with it.

Why? Because I’ve gone beyond the saturation point with the marketing surrounding the death of Superman. I am now solidly repulsed by it.

Continue Reading “Truth, Justice, and Sticker Fun” →

Originally published December 11, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #995

And so we continue rolling with the first official But I Digress state-of-things-to-come poll.

Continue Reading “The BID Poll Results, Part 2” →

Originally published December 4, 1992, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #994

Douglas Kass, the author of the notorious Barrons article that set off a firestorm of negative publicity for Marvel—even though it was loaded with misinformation—was one of the earliest respondents to the “Future of Comics” survey. On his poll, he jotted down the question, “Are we having fun yet?”

The answer is, yes, we had a lot of fun.

From the tongue-in-cheek nature of the survey, I wasn’t certain how many people would take it seriously enough to respond. The answer was: 219. For a first-time effort that doesn’t result in plaques, awards, banquets, or anything except a few laughs and some intriguing insights, we here at BID were extremely pleased with the turnout. Heck, I thought if we topped fifty, we’d be lucky.

Apparently there are quite a few folks out there who want to be able to look for the future and say, “Ha! I saw that coming back in 1992.”

Here, then, are the responses, compiled with the use of Survey Tabulator, software from issue #9 of Big Blue Disk. We present, in each case, the total number of responses and the percentage they represent. In several instances, the percentages will add up to more than 100% since multiple responses were available for some questions.

Some of the replies were—curious. There was the fellow whose responses were primarily anti-Japanese and anti-Semitic. And then, of course, there was the respondent who wrote “Who cares?” to every single question. Imagine spending 29¢ to mail that in. It’s rare that you find apathy quite that contentious.

Any entry that got more than one vote is listed, as well as some of the more interesting single-vote getters. My (inevitable) comments follow some entries.

Here we go:

Continue Reading “The BID Poll Results, Part 1” →