Saturday, July 29, 2006 - Have you been paying attention to the moves made recently by one of comic's founding fathers, Stan Lee?  Stan "The Man" may be approaching his 84th birthday this December, but he's still solidly in the comic game and, once again, he's proving himself to be quite the industry player filling the mixed roles of living legend, media mogul and a fount of creative ideas.

Over the last few years, Stan has been a bit focused on his lawsuit against Marvel Comics.  Last year he won that suit enjoying a $10 million settlement.  The suit dealt with the company's use of Stan's characters in several Marvel blockbuster movies and his fair compensation and proved quite the coup for Lee.  Following the victory, many a man would have taken the large monetary win, sat back and enjoyed the a quiet life.  That has never been the way Stan Lee lived his life and, once again, he's proving to be a creative powerhouse.

Stan jumped back into the media arena teaming with Gill Champion and Arthur Lieberman to form POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment [website].  Stan plays the role of "Chief Creative Officer" for the company.  After it's inception, the trio set their sights on the ambitious goal of developing film, television and video game properties around a stable of characters created, principally, by Stan Lee. 

Checking the company's site, the three principals of the company, combined, have over a hundred years experience creating, producing and licensing original intellectual properties. POW!, as a company, specializes in franchising the characters they develop for animation, live-action feature films, television, direct to DVD content, video games, merchandising and a host of related ancillary marketing spin-offs, all of which aid in the establishment of global franchises for each character created.  POW! is essentially the creative force that teams with studios and networks in creating new and exciting characters that will perpetuate the brands of both POW! and Stan Lee.  If you've seen the recent SciFi channel television movie Lightspeed or the network's new reality show Who Wants to be a Superhero? (which debuted this week) you've seen some of POW! and Stan's recent work.

How's the company doing?  At this time the company shows no sign of slowing and has become a bit of a stock market darling.  The company was picked by MicrocapAlliance.com for their Hot Stock list on July 21.  Stock Information Systems believes that "the volume of positive press for Stan Lee and POW!'s projects will spill over to the investment communities and POW! will soon start receiving the recognition it justly deserves". Their analysts [link] continue to give POW! stock a Strong Buy rating.

If you play the stock market at all, Lee's POW! Entertainment, in this comic fan's eyes, is a bit of a no brainer.  Who wouldn't want to invest in a comic legend while the company is still in it's infancy?  I would love to have had the opportunity to grab Marvel stock when it first went public (and I'm still kicking myself for not picking up shares when they stood on the verge of bankruptcy a decade or so back).  I'm certainly no expert in investing and I invite you to do your own research and make your own judgment, but based on the company's established ability to get products on the air and the long history of experience Stan and friends bring to the table, I'm stepping up to the plate to gamble that they will succeed and I'm putting a few dollars down to grab my own shares.

Excelsior baby!  Go get 'em Stan!

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 - As some of you may know, we recently relocated our base of operations for Comic Related moving from the city into the country [details].  Yes, we've moved far away from the world of man to a new ten acre horse farm we purchased last month.  At our old home, all we heard was traffic.  At our new home, all we hear are the crickets.  We've been there about five days now and we couldn't be happier.

In anticipation of the move, we had everything planned well in advance and we knew up front that internet connectivity would be a challenge.  Cable doesn't reach our new home and we never were the kind of people who warmed to old school phone lines (we're an all cell phone family) so dial-up and DSL weren't options.  Really, who could stand dial-up after spending years on broadband anyway.  That left only one option... satellite broadband internet.  About a month ago we contacted HughesNet [website] and laid out the plan for a seamless transition so our daily site updates wouldn't be interrupted.  Obviously, that all feel apart about the time of that install.

The local tech representing HughesNet didn't get the equipment for the install and we had to reschedule.  That left us unconnected and stopped the site dead in it's tracks.  We're still working out the bugs with that install, but we have pulled off a temporary workaround and the site is back on track (we hope) for updates until full access is established.

Long story short, please forgive the slight delay in our daily mix.  We're back and we're working hard to stay back...

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