Comics

I have placed an order with Amazon on the basis that they may have got their prices wrong. Certainly, even if it is correctly priced, it has come down to a reasonable level.

Essentially Marvel comics have been publishing omnibus volumes of some of their titles: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk etc, with each volume containing three-year runs of the comic including covers and letter pages. It's nostalgia in a bucket for some of us.

Big as these volumes are, the price is generally a prohibitive £65, so Fantastic Four Omnibus vol 1 (issues #1-36 and annual #1, from 1961-1964) has been sitting on my Amazon wish list for months largely as a reminder of the huge price. Now, however, they are offering it for £22.99, which is less than the shop price for the much smaller Marvel Masterworks reprints.



Never let it be said that I won't take a 65% discount on something I want, so I have ordered it before they change their minds. The only problem is that they do not specify a delivery date, so they may just wait until I give up in disgust. In the meantime, however, here's hoping.

Comics

I have placed an order with Amazon on the basis that they may have got their prices wrong. Certainly, even if it is correctly priced, it has come down to a reasonable level.

Essentially Marvel comics have been publishing omnibus volumes of some of their titles: Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk etc, with each volume containing three-year runs of the comic including covers and letter pages. It's nostalgia in a bucket for some of us.

Big as these volumes are, the price is generally a prohibitive £65, so Fantastic Four Omnibus vol 1 (issues #1-36 and annual #1, from 1961-1964) has been sitting on my Amazon wish list for months largely as a reminder of the huge price. Now, however, they are offering it for £22.99, which is less than the shop price for the much smaller Marvel Masterworks reprints.



Never let it be said that I won't take a 65% discount on something I want, so I have ordered it before they change their minds. The only problem is that they do not specify a delivery date, so they may just wait until I give up in disgust. In the meantime, however, here's hoping.

Thank God that's finished for another four years

Ah, that's that then. The Olympic tedium is over for another four years. Back to merely dreadful TV programming instead of wall-to-wall coverage of sports no-one usually cares about and fewer play or understand. Now it's time for us to watch the costs for London 2012 spiral inexorably out of control and our council tax along with it.

There may still be those who think it's a great thing for London to host the next games, but I'm not one of them. The city has done it twice in the modern era and being the first to do it for a third time is transitory fame that will soon be of interest only to pub quizzers. Far better if the French had won, I think. Cheaper and much less hassle. Those who think the country enthused by Britain's Olympic haul of 19 golds and sundry other medals are countered by the ever-surly Scots who want to enter their own team in 2012, rather than be part of Team GB.

It's done that much for national unity. How long before they insist on using the name Alba for the country, just to get it alphabetically higher than England?

In the meantime, it seems that promotion of the 2012 games has got off to a slightly sour start as a row has erupted over the promotional video shown in Peking, which includes a portrait of infamous moors murderess, Myra Hindley. Good to know that our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot is still worthy of a gold medal in its own right.

The Chinese will, of course, not care in the slightest. The world now thinks of them very positively and they can continue to grind Tibet under their collective heel and threaten Taiwan.

Thank God that's finished for another four years

Ah, that's that then. The Olympic tedium is over for another four years. Back to merely dreadful TV programming instead of wall-to-wall coverage of sports no-one usually cares about and fewer play or understand. Now it's time for us to watch the costs for London 2012 spiral inexorably out of control and our council tax along with it.

There may still be those who think it's a great thing for London to host the next games, but I'm not one of them. The city has done it twice in the modern era and being the first to do it for a third time is transitory fame that will soon be of interest only to pub quizzers. Far better if the French had won, I think. Cheaper and much less hassle. Those who think the country enthused by Britain's Olympic haul of 19 golds and sundry other medals are countered by the ever-surly Scots who want to enter their own team in 2012, rather than be part of Team GB.

It's done that much for national unity. How long before they insist on using the name Alba for the country, just to get it alphabetically higher than England?

In the meantime, it seems that promotion of the 2012 games has got off to a slightly sour start as a row has erupted over the promotional video shown in Peking, which includes a portrait of infamous moors murderess, Myra Hindley. Good to know that our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot is still worthy of a gold medal in its own right.

The Chinese will, of course, not care in the slightest. The world now thinks of them very positively and they can continue to grind Tibet under their collective heel and threaten Taiwan.