It took forever setting up a payment method. I was originally going to upload the comic to Comixology and Apple's service until I read those sites' policies on things like depictions of genitalia would make utilising them impossible or restrictive to the point of useless. Then I found The Not .99 Method which allows one to receive payments from buyers directly through PayPal without anyone taking a cut--which is particularly attractive compared to Comixology which wanted to split things 50/50
The only problem is that PayPal seems to have changed its notification of payment system since 2011 when the MASSIVE Squirts guy came up with the Not .99 Cent method--the canned reply I made to provide people with a download link for the comic doesn't automatically go to the buyer because the e-mails from PayPal now come from "member@paypal.com" instead of the buyer's e-mail address in their PayPal account. However, the buyer e-mail addresses are still shown in the subject lines of the payment notifications so it's a relatively simple matter for me to forward the download links in the evening from all the purchases I've received during the day. It's still better than Apple's two to four week delay.
So if you buy the comic, expect delivery within the day and curse PayPal for not allowing things to work faster. If I sell enough of The Casebook of Boschen and Nesuko #1 I'll switch to a subscription system for subsequent issues which should make things easier for everyone.
Now I can concentrate on Comic-Con. I've been looking at the schedule and from what I can tell the panels I most want to see are on Thursday and Sunday. It's going to be hard choosing between the Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary panel and the Neil Gaiman panel on Sunday. I'm not even sure which'll be more popular, though Gaiman's in a much smaller room so his'll probably be the harder to get into.
The panel I want to see on Thursday is Terry Gilliam's for his new movie but it looks like I'll need to somehow get into Hall H ahead of the crowd for Ender's Game which'll mainly be there for Harrison Ford.
Oh, Harrison Ford. In a weird way, I kind of pity him. As much as you can pity a hugely successful iconic film star. His career since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hasn't come close to equalling the heights of Blade Runner or The Empire Strikes Back. There were okay movies like The Fugitive and the Jack Ryan films but mostly his choice of roles was puzzling. He's often talked in interviews how he sees himself as at heart a typical working man, just trying to make a good product for an appreciative audience but it seems like he's been living Joel McCrea's character in Sullivan's Travels--he's only recently realised that people loved the adventure films far more than plodding issue movies. So he made Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Cowboys and Aliens, and both met with disappointment.
This despite the enormous reception he received from the crowd in Hall H when he made a surprise appearance for Cowboys and Aliens. I think that's the main reason he's come back for Ender's Game--I think he realised the crowd love from several thousand geeks has the genuine impact of a rock concert crowd, it's not the phoney, opportunistic fawning he may be used to from award shows and screenings. Here's his average fellow he wants to make a good product for.
And now Ender's Game, which he probably thought was a safe bet as the book's considered a Science Fiction classic in many circles. Maybe he didn't know about Orson Scott Card's backward and nasty views on homosexuality which has prompted a boycott of the film which I plan on participating in. It'll be interesting to hear whether Ford addresses the issue on Thursday. Certainly he'll get an appreciative reception again but it'll mostly be from people who don't plan on seeing Ender's Game--only a fraction of whom will be boycotting it. Most people, I suspect, will skip it because it simply doesn't look very good. The Ender's Game movie is not going to give Ford the crowd pleasing home run or even the enduringly beautiful oddity like Blade Runner he might be hoping for.
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