Covert Nerd Podcast

Today we will be talking about your first comic books, next an amazing book called the inevitable and lastly a great e-reader app. Lets dive right in.

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You never forget your first... comic books

We always remember ours firsts: First date, First car, First kiss, First job, First podcast…

Search on Twitter and Instagram about first comics I saw a lot of responses: “Best purchase ever!” “Several people said totally dating myself because it was 30 plus years ago” “The holographic cover drew me in and I haven’t left since.” “Read it so many times the staples fell out”

One guy purchased his first comic book, years later had it framed and is now hanging in his office. Many people could say the exact issue and where they bought it too For many it was most defiantly a walk down memory lane

Some nerds are passing it on and buying there kids first comic book. And documenting it on Facebook, Instagram or twitter

I had read a few comics from the spinner racks at the small grocery store my mom bought from. Never bought any. My mom wouldn’t let me. And of course being a child of the 80’s I watched Saturday morning cartoons with the Super-friends on the DC side and Spider-man and his amazing friends on the marvel side. My older brother was buying a few before I started collecting so I read a few of his. Then Christmas of 1991 he gave me one of those comic grab bags from I think Wal-mart that had a number one then 3 other random titles. And they were:

Guardians of the Galaxy #17 Jim Valentino New Warriors #16 Fabian Nicieza Dark Hawk #8 X-Men #1 Chris Claremont and Jim Lee

Can’t tell you how many times I have read these. Living in a small town we didn’t have a comic book shop so I had to order by mail any of the back issues. Because since all but one of the four was a number one I had to fill in the story gaps and learn more about these characters.

I still have these four and every time I see them or a cover pic of them online I instantly go back in my mind to being in my basement bedroom reading each line, analyzing each panel. Harkins back to a simpler time in my life. Do you do the same? When you see the cover of your first comics do you get flashbacks? When you see an artist or writer of your first comic books you can instantly remember the specific book you lover that they worked on. You have the emotions of the wonder at the combination of art and story telling. Thats why comic books are such a great medium, they amalgam two formats into one. It’s your first love all over again.

Times have changed in the comic book industry some good some bad, in my opinion. Still over all it’s the books I read that first year that still draws me back. It’s the excitement of seeing what they are going to do next with this character or story arc.

I don’t collect for value or money, I collect for the story and art. It doesn’t have to be first edition number one. I am content if it’s a TPB of the first 7 issues. If you want to be a collector for the money that's fine too, it’s your thing. For me again its the love of the medium. They group of people it takes to assemble the art with the story telling is genius, not to mention the lettering, inking getting the panels to look correct, it’s a lot of work. My hat goes off to them. Carl Smith on the Goad kicker podcast published his own comic book and has an episode where he talks about the work it takes to make a comic and how he finds it difficult to criticize comic book companies about quality after seeing first hand all the work it takes to put a book together.

Once in a while I will pull out these first comic books and it reminds me all over again why I love the comic book medium. It gives me the energy to dive in again, because life does tend to get in the way of our hobbies. That’s just the way it, is we have bills to pay kids to get to events etc. But picking up first comic books is a fresh reminder to escapism for just a little while and experience the wonder of these characters and their adventures.

If you haven’t done it already I strongly encourage you to go to that long box you have in a closet or drawer you keep your old issues and find some of your first comic books. They might be faded and tattered, but read them. Remind yourself why you kept them all theses years. Remember the fascination and wonder they brought you. Then go get some newer issues from the same titles or find some new firsts. I did that recently with Rai and Ninjak over at Valiant. Remember seeing these titles back in the early 90’s when they were first released. I was a bit of snob towards Valiant, and didn’t give them a looks. I checked out a reboot of both titles they did recently and found they were very good. Art and story were great, I encourage you to give them a look.

Being a father and husband I don’t have a lot of money and time to buy a lot of comics so I have to be a bit selective, but I still enjoy getting old issues of titles when I was young and picking up some new stuff too.

I hope your firsts both from the past and present are great. I am on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook chime in on your first comic books. What were they? How and why did you get them? Do you still like them? What would you recommend to readers now? If you have a first you are hesitant go ahead and take the plunge, I did when I started this podcast. Lets talk.

Next segment is what I call Book Nook and I briefly take a look at a book and recommend to you.

The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly who was the founding editor of Wired Magazine

According to Kelly, much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable. The future will bring with it even more screens, tracking, and lack of privacy. In the book he outlines twelve trends that will forever change the ways in which we work, learn and communicate:

1.Becoming: Moving from fixed products to always upgrading services and subscriptions 2.Cognifying: Making everything much smarter using cheap powerful AI that we get from the cloud 3.Flowing: Depending on unstoppable streams in real-time for everything 4.Screening: Turning all surfaces into screens 5.Accessing: Shifting society from one where we own assets, to one where instead we will have access to services at all times.[5] 6.Sharing: Collaboration at mass-scale. Kelly writes, “On my imaginary Sharing Meter Index we are still at 2 out of 10.” 7.Filtering: Harnessing intense personalization in order to anticipate our desires 8.Remixing: Unbundling existing products into their most primitive parts and then recombine in all possible ways 9.Interacting: Immersing ourselves inside our computers to maximize their engagement 10.Tracking: Employing total surveillance for the benefit of citizens and consumers 11.Questioning: Promoting good questions are far more valuable than good answers 12.Beginning: Constructing a planetary system connecting all humans and machines into a global matrix

He also talks about possible new minds that will occur because of AI like a Hive mind or Borg mind.

His prediction is By 2026, Google’s main product will not be search but AI

The first genuine AI will not be birthed in a stand-alone supercomputer, but in the superorganism of a billion computer chips known as the net. It will be planetary in dimensions, but thin, embedded, and loosely connected. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are. Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. More tools, more answers, ever more questions.

Our inventions allow us to spy into our ignorance.

Many are worried about robots taking jobs, but he gives us hope that we will be okay even though our knowledge is expanding exponentially, our questions are expanding exponentially faster. science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge. We have no reason to expect this to reverse in the future.

Application station: Bookari is an ereader that was Mantano reader and why I love it over the half dozen I tried is the fact I could highlight and export.

Shout out to Make Eternia Great Again Podcast

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