In researching a slightly more serious piece I stumbled across this highly interesting examination of the price of comic books over the years. This isn’t about the investment price of older comics, but the cover price of new comics and how, since the early ’60s, that price has shot up some 2,400 percent. It’s a very nice little disquisition that uses The Amazing Spider-Man to examine a bit of market failure (or maybe I should say, counter-intuitive market behavior):

Except for the boom years in the early 1990s, the title’s popularity has actually waned. That this hasn’t caused a drop in prices seems to defy economic logic. Even the dramatic plummet in demand for Spider-Man from 1994 to present day has been accompanied by more than a doubling in monthly prices from $1.25 to $2.99. What gives?

The answer the writer gives has to do with the the Federal Reserve and I may very well be wrong, but I get the sense that there’s a gold-standard subtext in there somewhere. Whatever the case, it’s a fun read.

In other comic book news, I did a little piece on the Jerry Siegel Superman decision last week that some of you might be interested in. It’s a really fascinating bit of IP jurisprudence.

JVL is not the type to post such announcements so allow me to take this opportunity to let you all know that my esteemed colleague and his lovely wife had a beautiful baby boy yesterday. Cody John Paul Last came into the world at 8 pounds and 20.5 inches. Mother and son are doing just fine, he tells me.

And when you change his diaper, JVL, don’t forget to tuck it down.

I’ll be on hiatus (mostly) for the next couple weeks, so before I check out an assortment of random thoughts from the 2008 installment of March/April Madness:

* I’m sure Billy Packer is a wonderful human being, but he needs to be taken off the air. Now. He’s threatening to eclipse Vitale as the worst color-commentator in college basketball. He’s so bad that I find myself rooting against whichever team he’s not-so-secretly rooting for. Why does this man have a job?

* D. Rose is a pretty nifty player. He could even be a star at the next level. But I sure wouldn’t want to use a top-three pick on him.

* Ditto Kevin Love, who’s the most skilled big-man I’ve seen since Andrew Bogut. I don’t know that there’s even Luke Walton or Scott Pollard NBA prospects for him, but he really is a pure joy to watch at the college level because he clearly knows so much more about the game than everyone else on the floor.

Also, maybe the single most gasp-worthy play of the tournament was an inbounds pass Love made after a made Xavier basket in the round of eight. From behind the baseline, he threw the ball three-quarters of the way down the court to a streaking Bruin, putting it right in his hands on the way to a lay-up. But here’s the crazy thing: It was a chest pass. Unbelievable.

* Last night, somewhere, Jana Novotna cried.

* Worst ad of the tourney: The Volkswagen ad with the beeping car alarm. Annoyed the crap out of me (Beep! . . . Beep! . . . Beep!) and made VW owners look like d-bags (“No, this works just fine.”). Way to dent the brand.

* But the two ads which struck me most were the ATT Wireless spots with the cell-phone alter-egos talking to the camera. There were three of these ads, but two of them–the black guy playing Super-Shot in a bar and the biker shooting pool–really stuck out because of a single word.

In the biker ad, the guy’s phone calls the biker a “dill-weed.” The word sticks out like a sore thumb in the spot–it’s so strange and out of the ordinary that it must have been very consciously chosen. Why “dill-weed” and not “jerk” or “loser” or some such?

In the Super-Shot ad, toward the end, the cell phone laments that his owner will be “shooting tiny hoops with the townies“. Here, “townies” makes no sense whatsoever. The ad’s main character is a generic twenty to thirty year-old in a bar with others his own age. “Townie” is a disparaging term used to describe the full-time residents mainly in college towns and vacation destinations. The ad gives us no context to think that this bar is in either of those settings. “Townie” sticks out even worse that “dill-weed” because it’s a word we never hear in ads, but also because it makes absolutely no sense.

So what’s going on? Who knows. One guess might be that the original ads were written a lot more radically, with words like “d-bag” or “jack-ass” or something totally, like, edgy, man. Maybe someone was initially thrilled with the idea of pushing the envelope, but then was overruled and forced to find more anodyne replacement words. Hence the jarring, imperfect fit.

Or maybe it’s just poorly-written ad copy and it’s as simple as that.

Joe Carter makes the case that BSG is the best sci-fi TV show ever (an easy call) and one of the best shows ever on TV. If you’re a skeptic, his spoiler-free piece is worth reading.

If you want more, spoiler-filled stuff, AICN has some details on the Caprica BSG prequel, which hint at the origins of the Cylon religion. I’m not going to lie–it’s pretty hot.

It keeps getting worse: Brendan Fraser is Gung Ho and The Rock is Shipwreck.

Jenny gets all misty about when Saturday Night Live used to be funny. It’s a common lament but she’s got a great Chris Farley story. Check it out.

Galley Friend R.S. sends us this Deadspin post on the NBA’s Least Valuable Player. Marbury is strong, obviously. But I’m partial to Chris Webber, remembering his amazing LVP years as a Sixer.

I had kind of lost track of my friend Dawn Eden, a great writer and exceptionally cool gal. Then I came upon this post reinforcing her coolness: She’s doing a piece for InsideCatholic.com on the “New Feminism” which will quote Pope John Paul II, G.K. Chesterton, and Inigo Montoya.

So awesome.