I realize that, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be an instantaneous result. These are huge events.

I’ve long said that Stephen King is a great storyteller but not that great of a writer. I will stand by that. Personally, I don’t think King has that many comma splices. His sentences tend to be too short. I actually prefer well-structured longer sentences with plenty of commas. YMMV.

A whole hell of a lot better, I’d say.

My theory is that the Doom of Valyria was a result of the raising of the Wall. In this world fire magic and ice magic are like yin and yang—you can’t use one without affecting the other. Raising the wall used a shit-ton of ice magic, and as a result it triggered a massive release of fire magic, which, Valyria being…

I take it you’re also a Straub fan then. Me too. I actually think he’s a better writer than King, but King is the consummate storyteller. They play off each other’s strengths well. I wish they’d team up more often.

Perhaps. I’m just saying it’s a nice cover design. I have not read anything by him yet. But I don’t see what Ernest Cline’s novel has to do with Jeff Noon.

You need to read them. They’re both my all-time favorite Stephen King works and near the top of the list of my favorite books/series of all time. I’m not generally a fan of long fantasy series, but this one is a must. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever read before, honestly. It truly is King’s magnum opus.

As an artist/graphic designer myself, I totally get where you’re coming from. The Correia cover is definitely the worst of the batch. Makes me never want to read anything from him, and I probably won’t. The best covers here are the Noon cover (nice Art Deco feel to it), the Jemisin cover (reminds me of the weird and…

Oh, sweetie, how did you get in here? The door to 4chan is right over there. Ta-Ta!

Even so, he’s seen by most other Northerners now as uniting the North. That shit isn’t taken lightly, nor should it be. The Northerners values their rules, true, but they now realize that Jon played a major role in defeating the Boltons, who were serving the Lannisters. Not only that, he helped to “tame” the Wildlings…

I think they would all make an exception for someone who, through no fault of his own, inherits the mantle of a very important—one might say THE important—family in the North, especially when he just defeated the traitors who were working for Cersei and reclaimed the kingdom for the North. What Northerner in their…

No, I haven’t. I’ll take your word for it. It was never really my cup of tea anyway. I think it was just a case of having such low expectations when I went into it and being mildly entertained by it anyway.

Hmm. If I was the religious type, I might be inclined to view this as God’s punishment on this country for this shit. But I’m not, so this is just your garden-variety tragedy. Glad to hear nobody died in this incident.

Yeah, if you were a young kid in the 90s, I could see how the big comics trends of that time would kill any interest you might’ve had for the rest of your life. If anyone cares, I can vouch for the fact that it was indie and foreign comics, as well as the new adult-oriented imprints like Vertigo that generally moved…

Hmm, odd that I missed that article when it came out. Nevertheless, it’s hard for me to see how it could be a feature film unless they focus on/develop some of the side stories and make it more like an anthology. It would work far better as part of a Twilight Zone-ish TV series, but okay.

Read the story again. There was a murder of a wife by her husband in which he shoved her through the portal. It’s a side story, not the main focus, but it was considered a murder nonetheless as she ultimately could not have survived that.

It also pushed a lot of people away from superhero comics. I remember it well. My best friend and I grew up on those comics, but we both gave up on them in the 90s and started reading things like Stray Bullets, Love & Rockets, etc. as well as picking up older stuff, collections of underground comix, foreign…

Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s been many years since I’ve seen it.

I didn’t say his art sucked. In fact, I acknowledged he wasn’t a terrible artist. I just think there are a way better artists who never got the kind of adoration McFarlane (undeservedly) got back when he first came onto the scene. He was in that group of 90s artists who never quite grasped the concept of subtlety and…