1938 Superman Comic Sells For $1M

slasher999 writes in to note a new world record sale for a comic: an instance of Action Comics #1, 1938, sold for $1 million at auction. Both the buyer and the seller remain anonymous. This comic marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid.

Comments

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

bezinga.

Value, Price, and Worth

[mano.m]

It may be valuable as a cultural artefact, which pushed up its price to a million dollars, but is it worth it? A comic book, really?
Although imo, it's still far more meaningful than a lot of what passes as modern 'art'.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Jojoba86]

Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Some was willing to pay a million dollars, therefore that's what it's worth.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mikael_j]

Actually, it is possible to define the value of products and services in other ways than just "what people are willing to pay for them". An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

/Mikael

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mano.m]

I understand, but my comment was more along the lines of what Buffet says about gold -

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.

Gold at least is a store of value and a safeguard in bad times. A million dollars for a comic book? Cannot compute. To each his own, I guess.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be so, but you're leaving out movie and merchandising rights.

That's where the money is!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[AuMatar]

Why is gold? I can't eat it. Can't drink it. Can't hunt with it. Can't heal with it. Can't fuck it. It has some use in electronics, but there's better materials. The only reason to think it has value is because it did historically. If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless- people would want food, ammo, medicine, sex, they'd have no use for gold. The comic book is just as likely to stand up as gold is.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Sobrique]

Electronics and a corrosion resistant coating.
But when the Cybermen invade, you'll be pleased you have a stash of gold on hand.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[timmarhy]

Oh so all the people throughout history were just too stupid to realise it was worthless. is that your stunning point?

gold has 2 properties that you have totally failed to comprehend. it doesn't corrode, and it's rare. i don't expect you to actually understand why this is so important, but lets just leave it at modern civilisation wouldn't exist without gold.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mano.m]

modern civilisation wouldn't exist without gold

if by civilisation you mean economy, and even then it may very well have.

As long as there are stores of value that are backed by some form of permanence (nobility/national credit), economies can go on. Gold is only important by popular consensus, and that keeps it important, in an unending cycle. There are no objective reasons why it should be so valuable as a metal - one which can be replaced in most technical applications by less expensive alternatives.

And I don't like your tone. What makes you assume another person wouldn't "actually understand" your point, Einstein?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

it doesn't corrode,

A small fraction of it is used for that reason - electrical contacts, jewelry.

Though there are other substances that don't corrode either.

and it's rare.

So are John Lennon autographs and George Washington's teeth.

modern civilisation wouldn't exist without gold.

Fascinating. Would you care to explain why? I'd say iron's a lot more important. It's even got an age named after it.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[prionic6]

Actually, there is a "Golden Age". Closing the circle to the article topic.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[badzilla]

Great - I'm rare! There is only one of me on the entire planet. Although I do corrode. If rarity means something then I'm putting myself on ebay right now!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[demonlapin]

Value is what someone will pay, inputs determine whether you can produce it at a profit. You can turn lead into gold in a particle accelerator at fantastic expense, but when you get done it's worth no more than gold from the ground.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[c6gunner]

An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

I've heard that argument before, and it's never been convincing. The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD. Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality. The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.

Of course, the biggest problem is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can charge for my product, or what I can pay for yours. Implementing your "hypothetical economy" would require a regime more oppressive than the old USSR. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Orwell's vision brought to life.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[demonlapin]

The gold bug is a particular type of troll. Some of them eventually give up on it, after losing vast sums of money investing in gold. Some don't. There's nothing you can do to hurry along any transition that may occur, so don't feed them.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Trepidity]

That's exchange value, one of many kinds of value. Since Aristotle, people have recognized multiple kinds of value. For example, if a major copper mine shuts down temporarily, the price of copper pots will go up. But you copper pot does not become better at cooking; as a kitchen item, it is no more or less valuable than before, even though it has greater value on the market than before, if you wanted to sell it. Similarly, if a huge new copper mine is opened, your copper pot does not lose any value as a cooking implement, but is again just as good as previously.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[gijoel]

If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless- people would want food, ammo, medicine, sex, they'd have no use for gold. The comic book is just as likely to stand up as gold is.

Don't forget the bottle caps.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[c6gunner]

If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless- people would want food, ammo, medicine, sex, they'd have no use for gold.

That's one of the things I loved about Fallout 3 - the idea of using bottle-caps as currency was sheer genius. If we're going to pick arbitrary metals as a system of exchange for our post-apocalyptic world, why not have some fun with it.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Chris Mattern]

Possible to define? Perhaps, although you are still left with the problem of how you are going to define the value of the resources, or how you will account for the risk of creating new products or services. Practical to use? Not in the slightest. People will pay what they are willing to pay; if you try to regulate it out of existence, you will simply create a huge black market where people will continue to pay what they want to get what they want.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[jonadab]

> If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the
> dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless

No, that doesn't follow.

There have been many situations in history (frequently involving the near-certain imminent collapse of a government) wherein currency rapidly lost all its value. In each and every case, gold was still valuable.

Gold is inherently rare. Nobody knows how to make counterfeit gold. Unless some brilliant physicist discovers an affordable way to do transmutation, that's always going to be the case.

Gold also has a distinctive appearance that makes it easy to tell apart from other metals, even at a glance. ("Fool's gold" may look sort of like it might possibly contain gold ore, but you can't refine it and get anything that looks even vaguely like refined gold.)

These features give gold a durable value that has outlasted innumerable currencies and governments.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Cassius Corodes]

I don't think you are being fair in your analysis - many of the problems you state are also problems in the real world but not show stoppers (i.e. the Chinese knock-off is even cheaper). You can also sell a substandard chair for a higher price (And I dare say this is actually a business strategy for some folk :( ) but this doesn't cause our economic system to collapse. Remember that just because the price is not being set by the market, instead by some central agent, doesn't mean that you cannot select between different products or that you cannot have competition.

Nor does it mean we are going to live in 1984. In many parts of the world the government sets the price of goods - but is not a totalitarian system. It may not be the best economics but such horror stories are not warranted either.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[jonadab]

> > modern civilisation wouldn't exist without gold.
>
> I'd say iron's a lot more important.

If I had to name a material that defines modern civilization, I would have said aluminum and/or plastic.

Iron and gold refining have been around since antiquity. If these commodities could have made a civilization modern, it would have happened several thousand years sooner. Even steel has been around for a couple thousand years.

> It's even got an age named after it.

So do gold, bronze, stone, and ice. What's your point?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[kale77in]

Factors which make gold valuable are easily identified:

1: Gold has aesthetic value. It's pretty, and stays pretty by not tarnishing. Like silver but with colour. That makes it a tradable commodity, and then other values attach to it...

2: Because there's not a lot of it, the price goes up; this then gives it the additional quality of encapsulating high value in small objects that can be carried easily for trade purposes. It concentrates wealth for storage or transportation. This had obvious trade benefits in the past, but today allows a single facility (Fort Knox) to secure a whole system of currency.

3: People will always want to assert and demonstrate status over other people with bright and shiny things. Gold is not only rare and desirable but is also malleable into all manner of gaudy artifacts. Platinum might technically be more ostentatious, but it's too rare to become a trade standard, harder to work, and looks too much like silver to impress people generally.

So gold is uniquely valuable. I don't see an apocalypse changing these factors much, If anything a reversion to the bronze age would give them a shot in the arm.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[c6gunner]

I'm not sure that you actually read what I wrote, and I'm too tired to try and re-explain it now. I'll get back to you after I've had some sleep - meantime, maybe you could re-read what I wrote and see whether your response actually makes any sense.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Abstrackt]

That might be so, but you're leaving out movie and merchandising rights.

That's where the money is!

Why would I want to see a movie about some guy buying a comic book?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[MadKeithV]

Why would I want to see a movie about some guy buying a comic book?

It's been done, sort of. "Take On Me" - A-Ha.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.

It's essentially a "cost plus" model. You do find it occasionally in government/military contracts. As you suggest, it doesn't produce much of an incentive to keep cost down; quite the opposite, in fact.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Yamata no Orochi]

"Hurrr, re-read my post," is a fascinating rebuttal, but maybe you could retype it so that it actually rebuts.

I'll get back with you after I snort this line of coke.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Yvan256]

Some people are even willing to pay for Microsoft Windows!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Yvan256]

You silly person. Cybermen don't invade, they're already all around you!*

* in unprocessed form.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

If these commodities could have made a civilization modern, it would have happened several thousand years sooner.

Raw materials are one thing. The knowledge of how to use them is another thing entirely.

You mentioned plastics. They're mostly made from oil, which has been around for a long time too. But without the knowledge... no plastics.

Then again, plastics are artificial materials, so the comparison with gold is hardly relevant.

So do gold, bronze, stone, and ice. What's your point?

Never heard of the gold age. When was it?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Rhaban]

Actually, it is possible to define the value of products and services in other ways than just "what people are willing to pay for them". An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

/Mikael

Say I take some duct tape, and a bunch of the latest nvidia graphics cards.
I take the main chip off each card, remove all legs and stick them together with the duct tape in the shape of a chair.

What do I get:
A - a chair worth several thousand dollars, because it required expensive ressources to make, and my hour of labor isn't really cheap?
B - a useless pile of crap not worth its weight in dirt, because nobody would ever want to buy it and I can't use it since I'm likely to break my back as soon as I sit on it?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[karcirate]

and George Washington's teeth.

Actually I just read yesterday that GW had 7 (or was it 9?) teeth removed from slaves' mouths to be implanted in his own. And since you can believe everything you read, before you go buying any of his teeth, make sure they are originals, and not some slave's tooth.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[SatanicPuppy]

Value can't be pegged to the value of the components, or the energy that went into making the item...That's a core fallacy of socialism, actually.

If that were the case, all comics would be worth the same, all art would be worth the same, all cars would be worth the same, etc, etc, assuming their component parts had equal value and they took the same time to make.

Value is completely relative to the consumer. Doesn't matter how "good" it is if no one wants it.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[SatanicPuppy]

Sure it would. There are other rare mediums for exchange. We'd have been on the platinum standard, or the silver standard. Nothing magical about gold, in an economic sense.

Gold served as a medium of exchange, and media, as I shouldn't have to tell someone on slashdot, are irrelevant to the actual exchange.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[insufflate10mg]

*crushes up 10mg*

"Cheers!" *sniffffffffff*

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[bkr1_2k]

Actually, it is possible to define the value of products and services in other ways than just "what people are willing to pay for them". An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

/Mikael

That will only determine its initial value, not the value it has upon resale at some arbitrary future time.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[bkr1_2k]

Gold isn't that rare. People used to think it was rare (kind of like diamonds though they were wrong there too) because it wasn't easy to get (in most places). That's simply not the case with modern technology. The only truly redeeming quality of gold is that it doesn't corrode.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I pity the fool who doesn't like gold. You better stop your jibba jabba, sucka.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[wurble]

As the AC who posted before me stated, bottle caps were the currency of Fallout 1, a game by Black Isle. They switched in Fallout 2 and it was one of the changes people didn't like. When Bethesda did Fallout 3, they switched the currency back to bottle caps.

If you're going to call something "sheer genius", please give the credit where the credit is actually due: the folks from Black Isle. I loved Fallout 3 and think Bethesda did a great job, but there is very little in Fallout 3 that Bethesda actually came up with conceptually on their own; it's nearly all expanding on Black Isle's previous work (it IS after all a sequel).

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mdwh2]

An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined

Sure, you can fix a price at whatever you like, but that's not the same as how much it's worth. In our own economy, companies can put whatever price they like, but I don't think people would say that therefore the product is worth that much. Otherwise I've got a rotten sandwich that's worth a million dollars.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[bkr1_2k]

1. Gold definitely has aesthetic value.
2. You do realize we (the USA and as far as I know all other major economies) are not on the "gold standard" anymore right? Fort Knox doesn't "secure a whole system of currency" and hasn't since the 60s at the latest.
3. Yes, all of that is true. People won't care about any of it when they're looking for food. They will care about it once they've been fed and have shelter. That's when gold becomes valuable to people, when they have enough of what they need to start having the things they want so they can prove they have enough to other people.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[demonlapin]

Let me know when you find a world where there is no scarcity of anything.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Lord Bitman]

Your hypothetical example is merely absurd. Sure, it's possible to put a price tag on something which is equal to the amount of energy, etc it took to produce it, but that doesn't define worth.

Two examples of why you are wrong:
1) A company spends all its time and resources smashing rocks to in a specially devised shape which makes them utterly useless. It takes thousands of man-hours to produce one. Is the rock worth anything?
2) Two companies produce widgets. Company A has one man who can produce 5 widgets an hour. Company B takes five hundred men to produce one widget an hour. The end result is the same widget. Which company's widgets are worth more?
2.a) Bonus question: which company, in your hypothetical economy, would be considered to be worth more, and what is the logical repercussion on society as a whole?

Now stop reading about martians and do your economics homework.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hatta]

I think this is a case, not where the buyer thinks the comic is incredibly valuable, but where they have so much money that 1 million dollars isn't really that valuable to them.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[SimonGhent]

modern civilisation wouldn't exist without gold

if by civilisation you mean economy, and even then it may very well have.

I think the point that was being made was that gold had an agreed-upon value and could be transported from place to place, country to country. It allowed the growth of commerce and the construction of the current free-market world, for better or worse.

I don't think the original poster necessarily meant gold as such, it could well have been something else rare (but not too rare), durable and relatively easy to identify as genuine.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hatta]

The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD.

Why is that a "problem". If a B&W TV costs the same to make as an HD LCD, why shouldn't they be priced the same? If nobody wants the B&W TV at that price, don't make them. More people would have better quality stuff under such a system, that doesn't seem like a problem to me.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[westlake]

It is possible to define the value of products and services in other ways than just "what people are willing to pay for them". An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

If there is no buyer, there is no production.

Even the goods you produce for yourself come at a price. You can grow your own tomatoes. But you will have to tend the garden.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[xystren]

Where are my mod points when I need them?!?!??! This should undoubted be modded +1 Innovative use of Duct tape

Cheers,
Xyst

PS: I think the OP deserves an obligatory Simpson's comic book guy quote..."The absolute worst comic book sale... evverr."

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[DaFilthee]

Can't fuck it.

But it can fuck you!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[nedlohs]

Did you really not notice that you used *different* examples. The benefit is that both are true. John Lennon autographs decay, as do George Washington's teeth - plus Washington's teeth are too rare.

Here's a bigger (off the top of my head, so not complete) set of properties that make gold a good substance to use as a currency:

* It has the right ballpark rarity - rare enough that small amounts can be worth enough, not so rare that there isn't enough to "go round". You don't need a wheel barrow full to buy a loaf of bread, but don't need to use pieces so small as to be unmanageable.

* It doesn't decay, so it doesn't lose value over time due to corrosion or spoiling.

* It's physical properties are about as good as it gets to be hard to fake. It's both denser and softer than almost everything you can mix it with (either alloying or using a non-gold center weight). Making it very simple to weigh and test hardness to check it is in fact gold. This is less true now (tungsten makes an almost perfect center weight, for example) than it was a thousand years ago.

* It is easily worked - it is cheap to make small coins, it is easy to melt and cast.

* It is a commodity - two John Lennon autographs are not identical. Two 1-ounce pieces of gold are identical for monetary purposes (obviously one could be a sculpture, etc but that's no longer purely monetary).

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[AmiMoJo]

If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.

I'll have you know that's my patented business model and any attempt to start your own shitty chair business will be met with litigation!

Joe Shitty
Shitty Chairs LLC

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

Hypothetical, indeed. You might as well imagine mathematics where 1 + 1 = 3.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mcbutterbuns]

Can't fuck it.

I really hope Rule 34 of the Internet is wrong...

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[jonadab]

> You mentioned plastics. They're mostly made
> from oil, which has been around for a long
> time too. But without the knowledge... no plastics.

I'd argue that plastics are qualitatively different from oil.

Iron and gold are basically the same iron and gold today that they were in Nebuchadnezzar's time, refined to roughly the same extent, and mostly used for the same kinds of purposes. It's not just that they had iron ores and gold ores in the ground. They also had the technology to mine them, refine them into pure form, and make things out of them, more or less exactly the same way we do it today.

Whereas, we couldn't really do that with aluminum until the nineteenth century. Sure, alumina and other aluminum compounds were around, but aluminum metal really wasn't, not until somebody figured out how to use electrolysis to separate it from oxygen. And yes, oil was around, but plastics weren't.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[westlake]

Why is gold? I can't eat it. Can't drink it. Can't hunt with it. Can't heal with it. Can't fuck it. It has some use in electronics, but there's better materials. The only reason to think it has value is because it did historically. If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless

Gold is rare and challenging to extract.

In your post apocalyptic world, the chance that the supply will dramatically increase in your lifetime - or that of your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren - is negligible.

Gold endures.

Excavation of the Varna Necropolis retrieved gold jewelry from 4600 BC.

Gold's appeal to the artist and craftsman is universal. The gold cup can be worth more than its value in bullion.

Gold is dense.

The counterfeit coin is easy to detect.

The standard gold bar weighs about thirty pounds. That's a significant problem for a thief.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Draek]

Which is why the currency standard should be cows. You can eat them, you can drink their milk, you can use their hides for clothing and you can fuck them in a pinch as well, they're the perfect standard to base an economy on.

Some may suggest women instead, but human milk tastes like crap and human meat can be toxic, so cows are still better. Goats would be another option, but the idea of fucking them is just sick.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[jonadab]

> Never heard of the gold age.

Is English your first language?

> When was it?

Well, in various contexts you'll get different answers, but in general the golden age is most closely associated with near-eastern empires such as Assyria, Babylonia, and Medo-Persia, in much the same way that the bronze age is associated with Greece.

Sometimes you'll also see references to a silver age in between them.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Blakey Rat]

I'd also like to see the "value based on resources" applied to real estate.

A house built with identical labor, energy, and raw materials at the side of a lake is worth more than one in a valley. I wonder how they rectify this situation, or if they just fall back to the "what people pay for it" explanation.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Draek]

Funny thing is, this "art collector" market is based on the same stupid model that got us into this economic mess to begin with: the price of things aren't based on what it's worth to *us* but, rather, how much we're planning on eventually reselling it for. And it only takes a single outbreak of common sense for your precious investment to plummet to the ground.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

If you fix the price, then the only way to increase profits is to make something as cheaply as possible. This is a race to the bottom in quality. How's that for a rebuttal? Hurrrr...

I'll get back to you after I'm done with YOUR MOM.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

Why is that a "problem". If a B&W TV costs the same to make as an HD LCD, why shouldn't they be priced the same?

He's saying that AT THE TIME IT WAS PRODUCED, a B&W console TV cost as much as a big LCD TV costs now. With socialist price fixing, we would never enjoy the diminishing costs of technology that we do now. No one could ever cut their losses and sell off unpopular stock at reduced prices, either.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

Did they stop teaching kids about the monetary system in the public schools? We learned why the barter system tends to give way to a monetary system back in the 1970s and 1980s. Hint: it has to do with the fact that the goods and services your produce are not necessarily of value to everyone else.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Last_Available_Usern]

Can't fuck it.

Says you.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

Gold has some inherent value. Just because you don't personally value it, doesn't make it less valuable. Paper money, on the other hand (and modern coinage, to a lesser extent), is fiat and worthless outside of the promises made by its issuing authority. I find it hilarious that geeks are debating the value of gold while their wallets are full of fiat currency and bank accounts full of imaginary fiat currency.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[okooolo]

well actually you could also increase production/sales

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[operagost]

You are correct. I should have said "profit margin."

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[kalirion]

Heh, I remember when was 5 or 6, I thought diamonds were so expensive because they can be turned into really sharp knives.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[c6gunner]

I wonder how they rectify this situation, or if they just fall back to the "what people pay for it" explanation.

They usually mumble something about property being theft, and then quickly change the subject.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Cytotoxic]

I think you've got it! Everything is the same. A doctor is the same as a school teacher is the same as a CEO of a multinational.... Everything is equal. Nothing is better or worse than anything else. Therefore, all outcomes should be equal. All jobs should be guaranteed, all salaries should be the same, all products cost the same.... It's all equal. The only reason anything deviates from this is because people are greedy and evil, so we set up a government to keep that from happening.

In a perfect world, everyone would get a car. All cars are equal, so it doesn't matter which one - Yugo or BMW, whatever - they are all equal and guaranteed. In fact, since nobody wants a Yugo and everyone wants a nice luxury sedan, the BMW M5 is the only car anyone can make from now on. And everyone gets one. That's a huge market - and since an M5 takes so much labor to create, just think of the jobs we created! Same goes for food, clothes, housing.... same for everyone everywhere. You invented the computer and built a company that provides them for everyone - great! you get a car and an apartment, just like the guy who is supposed to clean the bath downstairs, but usually doesn't show up for work. I can't foresee any problems with such a system.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Yamata no Orochi]

You are correct. I should have said "profit margin."

Which is exactly what everyone on the opposing side of the argument from you (which I didn't actually put in one way or the other until this very post, so I'm not sure why you're talking to me about it) probably had in mind.

If you have a superior product at the exact same cost as an inferior product, you could perhaps count on better sales, resulting in more money. So it isn't a race to make the cheapest crap possible, necessarily.

And quit being so hostile, I was picking on an asshole.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Atanamis]

I'd also like to see the "value based on resources" applied to real estate.

A house built with identical labor, energy, and raw materials at the side of a lake is worth more than one in a valley. I wonder how they rectify this situation, or if they just fall back to the "what people pay for it" explanation.

What they do is just leave the house built in the valley vacant until all superior sites have sold. The valley home can't be sold for less money, unless the cost of the inputs was lower (such as if the property purchase was less). This means that if you want to sell a house with higher craftsmanship for more money, you have to use more expensive raw materials to justify the increase. If you make a poor quality house with expensive materials / labor costs, you can NEVER sell it because you can't undercut those who made a better house for similar costs. The economics of a "cost plus" model aren't QUITE as broken as most free market advocates believe, but they do make it impossible to sell things at clearance prices or to charge more for finishing quickly or at higher quality.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[drsmithy]

Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality.

While I'm not supporting a centralised model, this is not true - depreciation can be accounted for. Further, quality differences are _inherently_ identifiable because an end product with lower quality must, by definition, have been made with cheaper (=lower quality) parts and/or labour and therefore would cost proportionally less. Indeed, it would be a far superior model for identifying product quality than the free market system, which is little better than "cross your fingers and hope for the best".

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Tetsujin]

Actually, it is possible to define the value of products and services in other ways than just "what people are willing to pay for them". An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.

/Mikael

What are the resources required in 2010 to provide a comic book produced in 1938?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Tetsujin]

Why would I want to see a movie about some guy buying a comic book?

It's been done, sort of.
"Take On Me" - A-Ha.

Pipe wrench fight!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[demonlapin]

I have a modest proposal regarding this problem...

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[FiloEleven]

The only reason to think it has value is because it did historically.

It is a sad fact of contemporary Western culture that this is taken to mean "gold has no real value." All of the rights we enjoy in our society are here for the same reason--they were historically valued. It is woefully ignorant to ignore the thrust of history. You can make a case against the use of gold as a currency, but "it has historically held value" is a talking point for your opposition. After all, *every* currency has value only because we choose to agree that it does. Utility in a currency is a bad thing, because then your money supply will keep shrinking as people use the currency for other purposes.

Some kind of currency is necessary to avoid the extra problems that the barter system brings, such as the coincidence of wants. Gold has certain properties that make it a good currency, which is why it has been so often used throughout history. These properties are arguably not as important in times of societal stability, but they become increasingly important when things fall apart.

• Gold is fungible, meaning that one piece of gold is equivalent to another. Its size and purity can be easily tested. This is unlike comic books which, especially as they age, end up in different conditions--and then there's the quandary of "is this Punisher 2099 worth as much as that #1 Superman?"
• Gold is stable. It takes much effort to pull more up from the ground, which means that devaluation is very slow--especially in bad times. The question of durability also comes into play: food is good for bartering, but food spoils or gets eaten so does not make a good store of value.
• Gold is transportable. It's rare enough that a large amount of wealth can be easily carried, yet small payments can be made without using microscopic pieces.
• Gold is divisible. It can be divided and rejoined as necessary without losing value.
• Gold is easily recognized. Due in part to its particular nature and in part to its historical role.

Try to understand what money is for and why a good currency must have the properties it does before making half-cocked statements about it. Your entire list of reasons for ruling out gold (can't eat it, can't hunt with it, etc.) are all things that make it good for a currency. The fact that you were modded +5 for such stupidity only shows that there are sadly many moderators as ignorant as you on the topic of money.

There are schools of thought that say commodity-backed currencies aren't good for our society, and some of their arguments have merit. But "in bad times," as this thread is about, the only alternative is the barter system which is rife with inefficiencies. If you can't see why gold makes a good hard currency then, then I will gladly trade you all of my comic books for all of your gold.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[FiloEleven]

Speaking only for myself, I was never taught about the monetary system in the American public school system. Nor did I ever have a class on civics. These two deficits, which I luckily stumbled into correcting for myself, are partially responsible for the polarized political tone, the public apathy, and the continuing financial problems of the United States.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[BryanL]

Gold still has value inside a semi-closed system tht collapses in on itself because it still holds value in a larger system. In other words, if the US economy collapsed, the dollar would lose value but not gold because people in other economic systems would still value it. If, on the other hand, a global economic collapse happened, gold would lose its value. How much much value it lost would depend on the extent of the collapse.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mattack2]

They rectified it by only the good Soviet leaders getting the dacha by the lake.

(OK, I'm not sure if that's entirely true, but that's the first thing I thought of when you gave that example of identical houses in different environments.)

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[poopdeville]

Let me know when stores start keeping forges next to their gold registers, so I can split my bullion into "non-microscopic pieces" of gold and barter for my groceries. Gold is a FANTASTIC currency.

And if you have any good comics, I might take you up on that.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[ajlisows]

If society collapsed, the immediate rush would be to food, ammo, guns, medicine, alcohol, etc. After that, society would start to recover. The guy with the Food would want Ammo, the guy with the ammo would want guns, the guy with the guns would want medicine, and the guy with medicine would want food. Instead of figuring out some complex trade agreement between all of these parties, some currency would emerge. Gold being the most likely as random pieces of paper probably wouldn't be trusted in a post-disaster scenario.

Of course, some type of complete communism could emerge too, where people just give and take what they need, but I highly doubt that.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[BKJay]

Thank you Sid Meier. Who said video games weren't educational? Look at what we've learned!

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[BKJay]

The rareness of gold: I recall reading an approximation of the entire amount of gold ever mined by mankind would allow you to build only one-third of the Washington Monument. http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Maniacal]

I know you're just screwing around but the scary thing is there are people out there who believe this could actually work.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[lennier]

So all the stories about Montezuma's palaces of gold were just that?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[jonadab]

I suspect they probably significantly underestimated the amount of gold mined in ancient times. Part of the reason the amount produced per year is so low now is that most of the easy-to-mine gold, and all of it near the surface, was already mined more than three thousand years ago.

If I had to guess, I'd figure their estimate of the total amount is low by at least an order magnitude, maybe more.

But yeah, almost all of it is still around, scattered throughout the world, probably mostly in the form of jewelry and other small trinkets.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[haruchai]

You can eat and drink it fine but you can't digest it. It'll (eventually) pass right through your system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Food_and_drink

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Virtual_Raider]

Further, quality differences are _inherently_ identifiable because an end product with lower quality must, by definition, have been made with cheaper (=lower quality) parts and/or labour and therefore would cost proportionally less.

Really? How would you propose to identify lower quality labour? Based on the education level of the workers? On some sort of XBOX live-like ranking? on the country of origin (would German craftsmanship be always more expensive than American)? on the conformance to specs of the end-product?

If the latter, wouldn't it actually be a better quality product if its made with cheaper materials but it still complies with the specs?

Note: emphasis in quote added by me

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[drsmithy]

Really? How would you propose to identify lower quality labour? Based on the education level of the workers? On some sort of XBOX live-like ranking? on the country of origin (would German craftsmanship be always more expensive than American)? on the conformance to specs of the end-product?

Uh, how about the most obvious one - by testing them before they're allowed to make anything ?

If the latter, wouldn't it actually be a better quality product if its made with cheaper materials but it still complies with the specs?

No, since with a centralised model those cheaper materials could only be cheaper if they weren't as "good" (for whatever reason). Ie: quality must be inherently lower.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[CodeBuster]

The value of gold lies in its inherent usefulness as a medium of exchange. The idea of a proxy for value in a barter based economy, obviating the need to satisfy the coincidence of wants problem, is so useful and efficient that just about every organized non-tribal society eventually hits upon the concept of money. The inherent value of gold stems from several desirable "moneyish" characteristics, namely:

1. It is easily recognizable to everyone.
2. It doesn't rot, spoil, corrode or otherwise deteriorate over time.
3. It is easily divisible into smaller pieces or fuse welded by hand hammering into larger ones.
4. It is practically impossible to pass off fake substitutes. There are no good substitutes.
5. It is rare enough to be useful as money.

For these reasons gold has always been the most logical choice for the money commodity in organized societies, even primitive ones, wherever it has been available in sufficient quantity to serve as such (which was just about everywhere). In places where gold was scarce other rare commodities, including salt (necessary for life and where we get the term salary) and even large rocks with holes bored in them (Rai Stones), have served as money but if people get organized for long enough then money inevitably appears eventually.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Virtual_Raider]

Really? How would you propose to identify lower quality labour?

Uh, how about the most obvious one - by testing them before they're allowed to make anything ?

It would seem like a good option, except that even now people in the educational field disagree whether current tests really do measure accurately what they intend or not. Is a grade of 100/100 an indication that you actually understand, or just that you can parrot the answers? Is an IQ score of 90 an indication of your intellectual prowess or just of your (lack of) ability to fit in the cultural frame where you took the test? There are studies that have shown how otherwise highly intelligent and high performing Asians score low on certain western intelligence tests because they simply look at some problems with a completely different mindset.

How about a tech-related example. Take two individuals, one with an MSCE and one without. The most you can say about them is that one passed the knowledge test and the other hasn't. It doesn't tell you if the certified individual understands or can apply the concepts. Maybe he is just good at memorizing stuff while the other could have extensive hands-on experience. My point is that there is no simple way of evaluating labour quality.

If the latter, wouldn't it actually be a better quality product if its made with cheaper materials but it still complies with the specs?

No, since with a centralised model those cheaper materials could only be cheaper if they weren't as "good" (for whatever reason). Ie: quality must be inherently lower.

I guess the word inherent is causing me trouble. Suppose that you do use material that is brittle for the case. Suppose that it has less space than a nomad and no wireless. You can still come up with a superior product based on factors other than the raw ingredients, i.e. design (intellectual labour) and production (technical/manual labour). Its just not a "black-and-white" issue, there are great many shades involved so to speak. What is "inherently" lower quality materials? Cardboard because it gets wet and becomes useless? Its also lighter, recyclable, cheaper. Dried compost because making products out of literal shit is disgusting? Not everybody will share that value judgement so then you would have to come up with some other 'objective' way of evaluating. See where I'm going with this?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[drsmithy]

It would seem like a good option, except that even now people in the educational field disagree whether current tests really do measure accurately what they intend or not. Is a grade of 100/100 an indication that you actually understand, or just that you can parrot the answers? Is an IQ score of 90 an indication of your intellectual prowess or just of your (lack of) ability to fit in the cultural frame where you took the test? There are studies that have shown how otherwise highly intelligent and high performing Asians score low on certain western intelligence tests because they simply look at some problems with a completely different mindset.

Talk about shooting off on a tangent. We're not talking about end of school exams, we're talking about whether worker A can produce product B.

How about a tech-related example. Take two individuals, one with an MSCE and one without. The most you can say about them is that one passed the knowledge test and the other hasn't. It doesn't tell you if the certified individual understands or can apply the concepts. Maybe he is just good at memorizing stuff while the other could have extensive hands-on experience.

If the benchmark is some end result, and that end result is reached, why is the methodology relevant ?

My point is that there is no simple way of evaluating labour quality.

There are very simple ways of evaluating nearly all labour quality. The vast majority of jobs do not require creativity, initiative, advanced skills, or deep thought. They require a typical, easily measurable end result.

I guess the word inherent is causing me trouble. Suppose that you do use material that is brittle for the case. Suppose that it has less space than a nomad and no wireless. You can still come up with a superior product based on factors other than the raw ingredients, i.e. design (intellectual labour) and production (technical/manual labour). Its just not a "black-and-white" issue, there are great many shades involved so to speak. What is "inherently" lower quality materials? Cardboard because it gets wet and becomes useless? Its also lighter, recyclable, cheaper. Dried compost because making products out of literal shit is disgusting? Not everybody will share that value judgement so then you would have to come up with some other 'objective' way of evaluating. See where I'm going with this?

It's irrelevant. The purpose is to assign an objective value to a finished product that does X, not come up with new products to do F, P, Q and Y.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[mikael_j]

I believe you could call that "artificial scarcity" (or use some other similar term), despite the fact that a new copy of the comic book could be made that is of higher quality collectors would rather fight over an old copy.

/Mikael

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[AuMatar]

Oh, money would eventually appear. There's just no reason to think it will be gold. And whatever it is will still take time to appear, it would be all barter at first. The problem is that the gold people don't think of things in terms of medium of exchange, they think that gold itself magically has this extremely high value of hundreds of dollars an ounce. It doesn't. It has some value from being pretty and easy to make jewelry with, but claiming it has value and the dollar doesn't is idiotic.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[JackieBrown]

I never thought I would want to see a movie of two guys buying a hamburger but then I never thought I would see Neil Patrick Harris snort coke off a woman's ass.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

> Never heard of the gold age.

Is English your first language?

Yes, what's yours?

Well, in various contexts you'll get different answers

No, you'll get the answer that there's no such thing.

but in general the golden age

Someone who thinks four out of six letters in common means a word is the same - and you ask me about what my native language is?

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

Very nice. But you can still have an economy - and a modern one - without it. It's just a medium of exchange; what actually matters is the goods and services being traded.

In some ways I'm as materially well off as a medieval king, but I possess very little of it.

I'm sure that if it didn't exist trade would have still gone on - whether by barter or some advanced honor system similar to hawala. We wouldn't be still living in caves, which was timmy the dimmy's assertion.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[FiloEleven]

I have some Punisher 2099...

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[CodeBuster]

There's just no reason to think it will be gold.

Yes, it will be gold (and other precious metals, but gold is best). It has always been gold wherever gold has been available in sufficient quantities (did you read the list in my op?) and it always will in the absence in the absence of organized centralized record keeping; nothing has been more useful as money than gold and other precious metals. Gold satisfies all of the necessary requirements for a "money" commodity better than any other potential substitute; hence the reason why gold always wins out in the end.

It doesn't matter why people think that gold has value. You are just not understanding the basic economics here. Bartering, which occurs in the absence of money, is an extremely inefficient way to conduct exchange in an economy. If you don't believe that then just ask the Zimbabweans (they have some recent experience in this matter). As I said previously, money is such a useful and efficient concept that it is bound to appear spontaneously wherever people get organized for long enough to form bartering and trading relationships. This has been the case throughout human history in all cultures (even those which had no contact with each other before developing money).

but claiming it has value and the dollar doesn't is idiotic.

I didn't say that. The dollar has value because it satisfies the same money requirements listed in the OP (or at least it does when governments don't print too much of it) and people have collectively agreed to use it as the money. If you concede that money is inevitable in any sufficiently organized society than whatever serves as the money commodity, whether that is gold and precious metals or bits in a computer system for advanced modern economies like ours, must satisfy the list of "moneyish" requirements in order to be useful as money. Gold works best as the money in lower tech societies because it retains the "moneyish" qualities without organized and centralized control. In the post-apocalyptic scenarios favored by some here on Slashdot, gold and other precious metals would probably regain their primacy as money.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[RockWolf]

Some may suggest women instead, but human milk tastes like crap and human meat can be toxic

Out of morbid curiosity: [citation needed]

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[DarkEmpath]

Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.

Sorry, but I need to modify that statement to: Things cost what people are willing to pay for them.

"Cost" and "worth" are two very different things. I work in the finance industry and most of my clients learned that the hard way over the last few years.

Re:Value, Price, and Worth

[Hognoxious]

I thought everybody knew he had false teeth. It's the reason he's got that tight-lipped expression on the dollar bill - he's worried they'll fall out.

It's also, bizarrely, the very reason I chose them as an example of something that's rare.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I just sold this guy a comic book for $1,000,001. Sucker.

Of course, if we're both anonymous, how do you know I didn't just sell it to myself?

As a Computer Scientist...

[Anonymous Coward]

I say call me when you have issue #0 for sale.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[iamhassi]

I think we all know who bought it: Jerry Seinfeld. I heard there's a superman easter egg in every Seinfeld episode.

Technically speaking ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."

Re:Technically speaking ...

[lxs]

Now you've done it. Superman has gone into a super depression after you've questioned his super manhood. I hope you're super happy.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[L4t3r4lu5]

No, he's super! Thanks for asking. All things considered, he couldn't be better, I must say.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[SirWinston]

>Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So
>this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."

And hence my favorite Tarantino fanboyism, courtesy of Kill Bill Vol. 2:

Bill: "As you know, l'm quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology... The mythology is not only great, it's unique.... Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race."

Re:Technically speaking ...

[jonadab]

The whole Superman backstory has been rewritten and changed repeatedly over the decades. Are you sure that Superman was already revealed to be an alien in the first comic book he appeared in? I wouldn't be at all surprised if that revelation came later.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[DuckDodgers]

The linked article does not assert that this is Superman's first flight, or that this is the first super-hero working in the city. Where did the Slashdot author get that? One of the first tag lines for Superman was "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" - writers did not give him the ability to fly until some time in the 1940s, I think, and by that time dozens or hundreds of other flying superheroes had been created.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[kannibal_klown]

>Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So
>this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."

And hence my favorite Tarantino fanboyism, courtesy of Kill Bill Vol. 2:

It truly is a well thought out thesis and a stellar monologue, one of my favorite from the Kill Bill series. However I think it suits the Golden Age Superman better, perhaps even the Silver Age Superman.

Now-a-days they try to make the normal Clark Kent his true personality since that's how he was raised; he was raised on Earth, not on Krypton. In contrast, native Kryptons tend to be more logical and cold; they still love and show emotion but their behavior is seen as alien to humans (or at least Americans).

To complicate matters there's a third person, that of the "idiot Clark" which he uses as a defense mechanism around strangers or when he wants to diffuse people's speculations about his where-a-bouts while Superman was saving someone.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[karcirate]

I'm sorry, are you denying Mr. Kent his human rights? I'm gonna sick my liberal bad-ass buddies on you. Wait a minute, I don't have any liberal buddies...

But seriously (for real) who says the "men" of Krypton and the Earth men didn't share a common ancestry on the planet Gorgon?

Re:Technically speaking ...

[kehren77]

Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."

Technically the word man is defined as "an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman." So judging by the bulge in his pants, we assume he's a man. Granted arguments can be made that you never see his penis in the comic. And I suppose we are assuming that given his age his species would consider him to be a man and not a boy.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[MartinSchou]

Superman is not a man.

The trouble is, everyone assumes that "superman" is supposed to be something like "superior human". Superman is in fact an abbreviation. Just like IBM is actually International Business Machines.

Strong
Unstoppable
Powerful
Empathic
Red-caped
Male
Anthropomorphic
Neo-earthling

But it's a lot easier just to say superman.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[brucmack]

Maybe Superman flies while carrying a man?

Re:Technically speaking ...

[MMC Monster]

Loved that. And the dichotomy of Batman and Superman becomes evident:

Bruce Wayne puts on a costume to become Batman. Superman puts on a costume to become Clark Kent.

New York is Metropolis by day and Gotham by night.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[Blakey Rat]

The Shoveler: Oh yeah, well, maybe if we had a billionaire benefactor like Lance Hunt, then we could afford some advertising.
Mr. Furious: I think that's because Lance Hunt is Captain Amazing.
Blue Raja: Oh, here we go.
Shoveler: Oh, don't start that again! Lance Hunt wears glasses. Captain Amazing doesn't wear glasses.
Mr. Furious: He takes them off when he transforms.
Shoveler: That doesn't make any sense. He wouldn't be able to see!

Re:Technically speaking ...

[Jiro]

First of all, the Slashdot article is wrong (since when is that new?) Superman didn't fly in his early appearances. He only started flying after the Fleischer cartoons showed him flying. So it's certainly not true that Action Comics #1 shows a man flying. Second, the Kill Bill line is spoken by a villain and I'm amazed that anyone takes it seriously; the fact that the modern version of Superman is different makes it more wrong, but it was wrong even for the version of Superman he's describing. Clark Kent is not Superman's idea of a human, he's Superman's idea of a weak human. It doesn't mean that he thinks all humanity is like Clark Kent.

Re:Technically speaking ...

[Chris Burke]

Clark Kent is not Superman's idea of a human, he's Superman's idea of a weak human. It doesn't mean that he thinks all humanity is like Clark Kent.

They don't have to all be like Clark Kent for him to still represent a critique on humanity; a critique by its nature will often emphasize flaws.

But yes, the fact that the monologue is delivered by Bill is certainly relevant to how you should take it. Still, it's pretty insightful. :)

Re:Technically speaking ...

[blivit42]

Lois: If you wanna kill Superman, I don't know why you're going to Smallville or 1966.
Tempus: She doesn't know yet. Oh, this is good. This is really good. Um, Lois, did you know that, in the future, you're revered at the same level as Superman? Why there are books about you, statues, an interactive game. You're even a breakfast cereal.
Lois: Really?
Tempus: Yes. But, as much as everybody loves you, there is one question that keeps coming up: "How dumb was she?" Here, I'll show you what I mean. Look
[puts glasses on]
Tempus: , I'm Clark Kent.
[Takes glasses off]
Tempus: No, I'm Superman.
[Puts glasses on]
Tempus: Mild-mannered reporter.
[Takes glasses off]
Tempus: Superhero. Hello! Duh! Clark Kent is Superman. Ha, ha, ha. Well, that was worth the whole trip. To actually meet the most galactically stupid woman who ever lived.

Price a bit on the low side?

[bbbaldie]

Comic values are down overall. I suspect that AC #1 might get lots more money in a more favorable economy. This one may be a great investment. I remember saving #1 issues of comics in the early 70's. Anyone else notice what crap, worthless comics debuted during that era? ;-)

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just going to leave this here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/227765731/816ff19f/action_comics_01_-_superman.html

I thought Superman could just leap over things

[Punto]

not "fly" (at first at least)

Re:I thought Superman could just leap over things

[91degrees]

You're absolutely right. Well, presumably he had the retconned ability to fly at the time.

Not totally convinced by the argument that flight was a cost reduction thing for the animated series though. This was pretty high quality work, and flying would mean they couldn't use the rotoscoping technique they used for most of the animation.

Re:I thought Superman could just leap over things

[Blakey Rat]

If you watch the original animated shorts, they stick pretty close to the "jumping really high" idea. There are a few scenes that are a little iffy (changing direction in mid-air), and one really iffy incident with a magnetically-attracted asteroid, but-- it's a cartoon, right? You can't expect perfect continuity. The comics writers might have gotten the idea for flight from this, but I very much doubt the animators ever threw up their hands and said, "hell with it! let's just make him fly!!"

(Hell, in Superfriends, sometimes *Batman* could fly due to lazy animators.)

What's really interesting about the original animated series is that Superman:
1) Kills people with some regularity (or, at least, refuses to save them)
2) Is actually pretty defeat-able. I mean, sure he's bulletproof, but there are several shorts where ordinary gangsters almost defeat him in various ways. In one short, they almost suffocate him with gas grenades as he's saving a train. Gas grenades! Even in the late 90s when they toned his power level down to "sane" levels for the Superman animated series, he wouldn't be affected by gas grenades.

Re:Excellent time to sell

[Rennt]

Classic cars. When I was living in Europe about a decade ago there was a rush on classics - the consensus was that there was a limited supply and all the low hanging fruit was already gone. Collectors panicked and paid insane prices.

Anyway, those cars are now worth about half of what people were paying for them 10 years ago. But you know what? There is a limited supply of early Aston Martins and Jaguars, so as long as the cars actually survive long enough, they will probably see those prices again.

I wonder...

[chronosan]

How much this sketch is worth at auction: http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10206

Icarus flew before Superman

[GuyFawkes]

as subject, lameness filter, meh

Re:Icarus flew before Superman

[FornaxChemica]

the first time a man flew without mechanical aid

Icarus had wings built for him (by his father Daedalus, says Wikipedia), he didn't fly on his own. But this line ticked me off too, there must be earlier examples of men flying without mechanical aid or even natural wings.

Re:Icarus flew before Superman

[ari_j]

Please tell me that you knew that Daedalus built the wings for Icarus without resorting to Wikipedia. I really want to believe it.

Re:Icarus flew before Superman

[FornaxChemica]

Maybe I've known, but I certainly didn't remember, at least I knew he didn't have wings of his own. Do you really think this is common knowledge? Frankly I don't think so.

Re:Icarus flew before Superman

[Culture20]

Well, there're tons of examples on the christian bible

Actually, there are no examples of people flying without aid in the christian bible. The two closest are Elijah flying on the flaming chariot (mechanical aid), and Jesus walking on water (unaided defying of gravity/relative densities; unless you count the water as an aid).

Re:Icarus flew before Superman

[ari_j]

I guess it depends on where you go to school. It's a sufficiently well-known Greek myth that it was taught in my public high school. There are also numerous references in modern popular culture, from metal music (Iron Maiden's "Flight of Icarus") to video games (the Icarus and Daedalus entities in the game Deus Ex). I wasn't criticizing you, at any rate, but whatever school failed to teach you this simple and memorable myth - probably all schools, at that. =)

Insightfull

[Fotograf]

Because when you have gold, you can do all of it you mentioned :-)

Re:As you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Burma Shave.

Terrible Hero

[BlackHawk-666]

Superman is a terrible hero. He has every major advantage you could ever need to defeat any form of villain on Earth, and because of that there is never any reasonable doubt that he can get through any situation.

Tied up? Super strength out.
Locked in a mile deep underground basement - fly / tunnel out.
Screwed up and someone you liked died - turn time backwards.
Need to stop missile - use the fricking laers in your eyes.
Someone sneaking up on you with a crowbar (as if it matters)? Super hearing!

He has one weakness, to an element that might as well be called Unobtainium, but for story reasons keeps appearing in the hands of villains who don't possess FTL or even the means to detect it...they just get really freaking lucky and get some!

Even if he gets real unlucky and fights Lex Luthor, who has some unob....I mean Kryptonite, and he's been suckered once again into standing right next to a box of it...he could call a friend to close the box, or maybe nuke the site and spread it all over. All the baddies die, he lives, and the unob^H^H^H^HKryptonite is dispursed enough to not matter.

There's simply no other situation he can punch, fricking laser, or fly his way out of.

Superman makes me want to root for the bad guys.

Re:Terrible Hero

[kannibal_klown]

...

Screwed up and someone you liked died - turn time backwards.

...

He has one weakness, to an element that might as well be called Unobtainium, but for story reasons keeps appearing in the hands of villains who don't possess FTL or even the means to detect it...they just get really freaking lucky and get some!

Well the "time" thing was only for the film. The TV series Smallville had a time travel episode, but it was device in the Fortress of Solitude that could only be used once. IE, he couldn't keep traveling to "yesterday" and use it again, which was the plot point because he travel in time resulted in his father dying.

But that's it. Perhaps in the Golden Age or the early Silver Age he had the ability, but I haven't heard of it in the comics.

As for K, yeh it was a little silly for decades. Something that was incredibly rare kept popping up, they tried to explain some of it away as it being synthetic with a short shelf life but that grew old.

Recently they upped the amount of K on Earth due to Super-Girl's re-arrival. Her ship was trapped in a large asteroid *filled* with the stuff, so metric tons of K fell to the earth for villains and governments to use.

Re:Terrible Hero

[Jaruzel]

I am SO with you on this. I've always disliked Superman for many reasons, but mainly
  a) He's WAY overspecced so that no encounter is ever dangerous.
  b) Even though I know his reasons for being created (US Depression era), his Jingoism simply gets on my nerves.
  c) Theres no inner turmoil. In short, he's a dumb Jock who would have never graduated from High School.

This leaves us with very simplistic stories that fail to engage.

I'm bias though, because for me, Batman is the MAN.

-Jar

Re:Terrible Hero

[Jaruzel]

'bang regular chicks'

Who let the pre-schoolers in here?

*sigh*

Re:Terrible Hero

[dfxm]

You'd probably like The Dark Knight Returns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Returns

While Batman can't match Superman's strength, he makes up for it in cunning.

Re:Terrible Hero

[sproketboy]

Exactly. That's why he needs a reboot. Back to the original comics where he didn't have all those extra bat-utility-belt powers.

Re:Terrible Hero

[Remus Shepherd]

The point of Superman stories -- if they are well written -- is not to make you worry about whether Superman will survive. The point is to make you worry about whether everyone else will survive.

He's the archetypical protector. The dramatic tension comes from wondering whether he can do his job as a protector. His survival is not important to the narrative.

Re:Terrible Hero

[Dephex Twin]

What kind of pre-schoolers talk about banging chicks??

Re:Terrible Hero

[Blakey Rat]

You misunderstand.

Lex Luthor is the hero, selflessly fighting a continual battle against a super-powerful alien invader. Heck, he even was elected President once, showing that he has the consent and approval of the people in his battle.

Superman comics are more interesting when read that way.

Re:Terrible Hero

[westlake]

He's the archetypical protector. The dramatic tension comes from wondering whether he can do his job as a protector. His survival is not important to the narrative.

There are also the inherent temptations in possessing such unlimited powers.

Re:Terrible Hero

[kalirion]

Oh please, Batman is overpowered too, brainwise. Hell, he probably has an anti-Chuck Norris spray.

Re:Terrible Hero

[dwye]

Nice steal from Niven's "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex" article. However, the answer is obviously to move LL (all Superman's girlfriends had those initials) to an area receiving light like that of a red sun, which reduces Kryptonians to human-like levels. And it doesn't have any bad effects, since Kryptonians evolved in that light; Kal-El himself was born there, for that matter.

Re:Terrible Hero

[Chowderbags]

Don't forget:

In a talent contest: Super-ventriloquism your way out.

Seriously.

Re:Terrible Hero

[Culture20]

But as an episode of Bat-man Beyond shows, he makes an excellent foil.

Re:Terrible Hero

[damnbunni]

Superman used to time travel pretty frequently. He'd fly faster than ths speed of light - either on his own, or in a Kryptonian rocket.

He could apparently travel either direction in time this way.

Re:Terrible Hero

[kannibal_klown]

Superman used to time travel pretty frequently. He'd fly faster than ths speed of light - either on his own, or in a Kryptonian rocket.

He could apparently travel either direction in time this way.

How long ago was this? Golden Age, Silver Age, Modern?

At one point (either late golden or early silver) he was insanely tough, I think fans sometimes jokingly referred to him as the planet juggler. Personally I only really followed the comics starting in the 1990s for a couple of years and then again recently, so my knowledge of the older stuff is hearse.

Eventually they started to tone him down some and take away some of his wacky abilities. I think at one point he could move so fast he could open a wormhole and pretty-much instantly transport himself anywhere on the planet. I imagine "ability to time-travel at will" was one of these insane abilities/tools.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[clickety6]

I always liked the way Superman fought for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" implying that whatever the "American Way" is, it doesn't include Truth and Justice ;-)

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[wcbarksdale]

The "American Way" actually wasn't an original part of the phrase, but added first during WWII and then again during the Cold War. Siegel and Shuster were liberal Jews and the early stories reflected that. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/opinion/30lundegaard.html?_r=1

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[ari_j]

Don't miss the other obvious implication: Truth and Justice are mutually exclusive.

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[Blakey Rat]

The only thing it implies is that there's more to "the American Way" than there is to the combination of "Truth and Justice." Of course they never really spell-out exactly what "the American Way" is... but your criticism here is just weird.

Car analogy: if I say, "cars, motorcycles, and motor vehicles" am I implying that cars are not motor vehicles?

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[kalirion]

Don't miss the other obvious implication: Truth and Justice are mutually exclusive.

If they were, you couldn't fight for both of them now, could you? Unless you're a politician of course.

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[ari_j]

I meant mutually exclusive in the sense that the concepts they embody would not intersect on a Venn diagram, not in the sense that you can't have both at once. I should probably have written that better. :)

Re:Truth, Justice, and the American Way

[religious freak]

Might want to check your logic on that one...

Re:Excellent time to sell

[Jaruzel]

Once, I was at a sci-fi collectables fair. One of the most popular stands was selling Beanie babies. My 1 year old daughter, whom I was carrying, started stretching out for one of the beanie babies (a small pig I think). I picked it up and asked how much. The vendor told me £30 or there abouts. Watched by the many other collectors who were all sifting through the stand, I bought the beanie baby pig, tore off the tag, and handed it to my daughter.

The silence around me was deafening... I quickly retreated to the Star Trek area, where at least they can take a joke.

-Jar.

PS. She's 12 now, and still has the beanie baby pig, without tag, and without most of it's fur.
PPS. I bought an original lobby poster of Star Trek V at that same fair, signed by Shatner. It's one of my most valuable collectables.

Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[sproketboy]

Is this comic available as a torrent somewhere? I'd love to read the original.

Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[clickety6]

Just read it online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/yeung/actioncomics/cover.html

Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[ari_j]

Is that, on page 5, the first recorded printed misuse of your in place of you're?

Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[Dr. Evil]

Give the guy a break, he's an alien.

I'm impressed at the writing. Most comics I've read have been unbearable, this is actually really good. It's campy, but really imaginative and cool.

Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[sproketboy]

Thanks. Nice link!

Re:Is this comic available as a torrent ?

[ari_j]

I was just surprised at how long ago that misuse had become a problem, particularly in as well-regarded a thing as Superman.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[kannibal_klown]

Eh, I think that Superman statuette on the shelf in his living room probably counts as 1/2 or 2/3 of the episodes. I can be seen in just about every one.

I know on occasion they'll drop a line or something, even when they're not directly talking about comics/heroes. If it's every episode they must be very very subtle.

Comics are a crooked business

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Collectible comics, that is.

I was heavy into collecting at one time. I still have my #1s of "The Nam" and whatever reboot cycle Supes was going through at the time.

Here's what put me off the whole business: At that time, the business model of collectible comics dealers was based on ripping off little boys. They'd come into shops with their few bucks and dealers would sell them crap by always hinting that "This is gonna be the next TMNT #1! Buy it now! Only a buck over cover!" I've never known any business that bought stock, put it out, stored it away when everyone realized it was crap and didn't sell, then dragged the same crap out of storage a year or two later, slapped on a higher price, and called it a "collectible". That shit is just ridiculous.

What broke the camel's back was when I managed, some time after the fact, to piece together what had happened with the Dark Knight hardcovers. When they were announced, you could prepay something like $75 and reserve a signed copy. There were delays and by the time all the signed copies had shipped, the book had totally blown up. The demand for the signed collectible hard cover was huge, with new stock selling for $300.

Every lousy fucking dealer in Houston that I was able to get info on (except one, A Few Books and Records on the SW side), told every kid who had prepaid for their book that their book never arrived and the order needed to be canceled. They refunded the $75. Some of them didn't wait a week before they stuck that kid's book in the display case with a huge price tag on it.

With just one exception, every comics dealer I've ever known has been a scumbag.

Re:Comics are a crooked business

[Nyder]

...

What broke the camel's back was when I managed, some time after the fact, to piece together what had happened with the Dark Knight hardcovers. When they were announced, you could prepay something like $75 and reserve a signed copy. There were delays and by the time all the signed copies had shipped, the book had totally blown up. The demand for the signed collectible hard cover was huge, with new stock selling for $300.

Every lousy fucking dealer in Houston that I was able to get info on (except one, A Few Books and Records on the SW side), told every kid who had prepaid for their book that their book never arrived and the order needed to be canceled. They refunded the $75. Some of them didn't wait a week before they stuck that kid's book in the display case with a huge price tag on it.

With just one exception, every comics dealer I've ever known has been a scumbag.

ya, I preorder/reserved a copy of that book and got a refund, plus a $25 gift certificate to the comic book store because "they didn't receive enough".

bastards.

Re:Comics are a crooked business

[gad_zuki!]

When I read comics, I read them for the story. I didnt see them as an investing opportunity. Shame so many did.

Re:Comics are a crooked business

[Blakey Rat]

The thing that bugs me most about comics is their ANCIENT distribution model. The high event in comics blogging is the monthly release of the Diamond catalog.

The only exposure DC and Marvel have outside the local comics shop (if you're lucky enough to even have one) is trade paperbacks that usually end up in bookstores-- of course, they don't bother printing trade paperbacks of most of their material in the first place. Marvel pulls nasty tricks, too, like printing a trade paperback of a popular series, but then *only* offering it for sale in the local comics shop... WTF Marvel!?

Hell, it's 2010, and it's still hard to find comic issues at reputable online retailers-- why!? Amazon was founded on printed material, it offers subscriptions to tons of products, why can't I go on Amazon and buy me a year's worth of Detective Comics? Where's the sense in that?

Marvel has made some in-roads here, and their online viewer is adequate. It's just boggles the mind that it took *this* long for comics to embrace technology, long after every other medium had already done it. It boggles the mind.

Re:Comics are a crooked business

[abigor]

I'm pretty sure this is Diamond's fault. They have the distribution locked down, unfortunately. I'm sure Marvel, DC, Image, etc. would love it if you could go to Amazon and subscribe to Wolverine, Detective, Cowboy Ninja Viking, or whatever, but their exclusive deal with Diamond won't allow it. And no Diamond, no direct market.

My hope is that eventually there will be a rebellion of sorts, kind of like what happened with creator-owned characters, and the distribution model will open up. Smaller publishers that Diamond refused to carry, like Dave Sim of Cerebus fame, managed to get distribution without them.

Note that Diamond was investigated by the US Justice Dept. for antitrust litigation in the late '90s, but nothing came of it, unfortunately.

Re:Comics are a crooked business

[Gizzmonic]

Comics are a worse mess than ever now. I used to read when I was a kid, and I tried to buy some Green Lanterns lately. The "Blackest Night" crossover does not have a printed checklist in the comics, they are already printing trade paperbacks with part of the story in them mere months after the publishing of the original comics. I gave up. DC, if you want anyone who's not a total comics freak to read your stories, you need to have a checklist, and a "Blackest Night: Chapter [X]" on the cover of each book. They had no problem doing this in the 80's and 90's. Did you forget how?

so, slashdot

[nimbius]

has anyone read this one yet? Ive only watched the movie, so i thought buying issue #1 would be a good way to figure out more about super-mans. is there more than one? why is his underwear on the outside?

Here you go!

[Aexia]

Action Comics #0, Zero Hour event tie-in from 1994.

A private buyer ?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

This belongs in a museum !

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[gid]

Nice, I'm going to print this out and sell it. I figure it'll only be worth a hundred grand or so since it's not an original.

And not to be picky about the short, but Superman could only "leap 1/8th of a mile; hurdle a twenty story building" in this comic, not fly.

A Million??

[BigBlueOx]

A million DOLLARS?? For this old thing?? Hell, he could have had this copy for half that. Tard.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[Lord Bitman]

and flying fish glide.

hmm

[nomadic]

I remember reading it (the reprint, obviously, not the original). It was pretty bad.

Re:No discussion of Superman is complete without

[MartinSchou]

That's actually something they paid credit to in Hancock (DVD only). Some of my friends thought it was a really tacky scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-tcxZ5VOBM

To me though, it really shows how he cannot be completely intimate with someone. He has to warn the girl before having sex with her, and for good reason. She doesn't listen, and he saves her life by tossing her aside before his ejaculation punches holes in the ceiling.

And of course she's now scared out of her mind and runs away through the bathroom window.

If that's how all your intimate encounters progress ... you'd probably shy away from it completely.

No, Batman is the *really* annoying one

[elrous0]

Yeah, well Superman is one of the few superheroes I *do* like. The superheroes I find truly annoying are the ones like Batman who have no special powers and yet act totally contrary to any form of rationality. If Superman is *overspecced* to be a superhero, the the exact opposite is true of Batman and other "regular human" superheroes. They fly in the face of every bit of common sense imaginable. They have no superpowers, but refuse to use guns or other practical weaponry which might actually give them an edge (there is a reason cops and soldiers carry those guns). They wear absolutely ridiculous costumes in which no one could possibly fight (Batman's costume is the worst of the lot--with no peripheral vision and that silly cape in the way he would be laughably easy to beat down). They have silly modes of transportation (why would a supposed vigilante who's trying to stay under the radar drive something as gaudy and easy to spot as the Batmobile/Batcopter/etc.?!?). Basically, the only "normal human" superhero who has ever made any sense was The Punisher (closer to what a real-world vigilante superhero would look like than any moron running around with a big cape on).

Superman may have too much Deus ex machina going for him. But at least he makes *some* sense, given his set of superpowers. Sure, it's silly for him to wear a cape too. But at least with him it doesn't matter (Superman could fight in a ballerina costume and still be every bit as effective). With Batman--the cape, the stupid costume, the ridiculous car, etc. are all just fucking stupid. He's supposed to be this smart detective, but he dresses like a drag queen and acts like brain-dead retard.

Re:Excellent time to sell

[Hatta]

Seems like NES collectibles are about at peak now, with Nintendo kids in their late 20s, early 30s. That's a time when most people start getting real incomes, but may not have as many responsibilities just yet. We've already seen the peak of Atari collectibles as Atari kids are getting older and spending money on houses and kids and some such. Sega Genesis stuff used to be dirt cheap, but prices are creeping up. We'll probably see a peak there in 5-10 years.

If we can add silly suffixes

[Hognoxious]

If we can add silly suffixes then what about the ironic age.

Like new outfit Ug, really suit you. I guess not fit the bear either?

Eugenics

[michaelmalak]

Wow, I never knew Superman was inspired by the Progressive Era fascination with eugenics. I guess after the Nazis it all got whitewashed with "high gravity" on Krypton and "lack of Kryptonite on Earth".

Re:Eugenics

[DesScorp]

After WWII, you'd have never known that the eugenics movement was so popular in Europe and the US. But everyone from Teddy Roosevelt to Margaret Sanger to Lenin thought the idea was just dandy, that a glorious new scientific dawn had arrived that would bring the perfectibility of man. Hitler simply took the idea to its inevitable conclusion. Thus the rush to whitewash the west's involvement after the war.

I knew it

[SmallFurryCreature]

It was in a Henson the storyteller like production, that did Greek mythology.

Bullshit

[Moraelin]

Bullshit.

1. Actually human civilization has existed for a long time without coinage or an equivalent in metals at all. See, for example, ancient Egypt. But really, the first coins appear around 550-600 BC in Anatolia, or according to other historians there is some stuff in 900 BC in China which could pass for a coin. Even the equivalent in metal weight comes actually after more than a millenium and a half of human civilization.

2. Even then, not everyone used gold. Chinese coins for example had for millenia been _bronze_, which had the advantage that at least you could do something with it. If all else failed, you could actually melt those coins and make a sword out of that bronze, or even viceversa. (Private minting of bronze coins was actually allowed for most of their history.) Or in ancient Egypt, we have plenty of transactions which happened in deben (a weight unit) of copper, or bronze, or whatever.

So basically if human civilization had actually waited for gold to begin, you'd probably still wear a leather loincloth and hunt gazelles.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[sexconker]

Of course, if we're both anonymous, how do you know I didn't just sell it to myself?

Shit, how do I know I didn't sell it to myself?

Re:Excellent time to sell

[dwye]

> Any analogs to other trends?

The comics market has already collapsed at least once since I was in college (so long ago that Star Trek needed no TOS), and it will again.

And, of course, California real estate.

The buyer remains anonymous...

[AugstWest]

...however, Kevin Smith has been spotted acting very giddily today.

Nicolas Cage is probably kicking himself

[haruchai]

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=1536

According to link about, he got a total of $1.6 milliion for his entire collection, including a mere $86,000 for
Action Comics #1.
True that was 7 years ago but geez, what a markup. Consider all the stories about his financial woes, I bet
he wishes he'd held on to his collection.

Re:Anonyrnous, huh?

[Tetsujin]

Wow, the guy who paid 1 million must feel like a jackass now.

You don't buy a vintage comic book to read it. You buy it to have it. The story has, no doubt, been republished in collections and so on - even without the download there were surely ways to read the story, if that's all you wanted.

Re:Anonymous, huh?

[russ1337]

but, but, but ... according to MPAA and RIAA doctrine, for every copy you distribute you're depriving someone in the market of the original. If you sell or give away 100 copies you've ripped the artist off over $100,000,000.... that he would have made selling originals...

oh wait...

That's why I always preferred Batman

[srobert]

Even as a kid I noticed that nearly all the comic book heroes had super human powers, bestowed on them by magic or some other pseudo-scientific explanation, except for Batman. Under the suit Batman was still only human. Very smart, in good physical shape, disciplined, and with all the technology his billionaire wealth could buy, but still just human. Comparing them to the ancient myths, Batman was like Odysseus, an extraordinarily smart man, while Superman, Spiderman, (Hercules, Perseus) etc. were gods. In my childhood fantasies, my understanding was that Superman's powers would forever be denied to me in the real world. But Batman was something I could actually become. (At least that's what I thought when I was five).

Re:Excellent time to sell

[fumblebruschi]

Some time ago there was a fad for a collectible card game called "Magic". The cards were sold in random packs, and there were some cards that weren't found very often and so became sought after among the people who collected the cards. Some of them sold for quite a lot of money -- in the hundreds of dollars. I had a friend who was working at a hotel where there was a big convention for people who, among other things, were really into collecting these cards. He went out to buy a big pile of the random packs and managed to round up a number of these rare Magic cards. He then laminated them, cut them in half, and used them as coat-check claim cards. He said the expressions on the attendees' faces when they saw their claim cards made that whole crappy job worth while.

This happens in the watch biz all the time

[professorguy]

This is a bunch of crap. Watch companies do this all the time to bump up the interest in 'collecting' their wares. The plan is simple:

1) Buy the item in a private sale at whatever price.
2) Hand it over to an auction house for sale.
3) Have an accomplice bid for the piece. If you want real big numbers (so you get the free publicity), bring 2 friends to bid against each other.
4) Advertise that your company's 'collectibles' are worth these huge prices, based on the auction price.
5) Profit when everyone runs out to buy the next big 'collectible.'

You don't actually believe this BS, do you?

bite me

[Tetsujin]

woooosh.

Yeah, OK, whoosh. Fine. Whatever. I didn't see anything to the post I replied to apart from face value. If there's anything more to that post, I still don't see it. So as far as I'm concerned, you "whoosh"ed me for no goddamn reason.

Re:bite me

[Hognoxious]

Fine. Whatever. I didn't see anything to the post I replied to apart from face value.

That is kind of how sarcasm works. Or in your case, doesn't.

Re:bite me

[Tetsujin]

Fine. Whatever. I didn't see anything to the post I replied to apart from face value.

That is kind of how sarcasm works.

No, the way sarcasm works is that one can see something beyond the face value of the message. That's central to the whole idea of sarcasm.

Re:bite me

[Hognoxious]

Some part of doesn't giving you trouble, Einstein?

Value is subjective

[Hognoxious]

Let's say I already have enough CPUs, as many as I can fit. My legs are tired, though. You, on the other hand, have a computer without a CPU and you prefer to sit on the floor because you're into manga. Or something like that.

The obvious problem with the GP's system is that the obvious solution to our problems wouldn't make sense.