Category: Comics

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Not that I saw anyone dressed as Thor, but it seemed an appropriate description for a Thursday at Comic-Con.

[Picture of Carmine Infantino]No earth-shattering news so far, but then it was only a Thursday. Katie went to the voice acting panel and the Animaniacs panel (mostly in connection with next week’s DVD release. I went to the Carmine Infantino retrospective. Other than that, we both roamed the floor.

Be sure to check out the back of the Snakes on a Plane booth. There’s a wonderful flight safety card on “what to do in the event of snakes on a plane.”

When I was in high school, I remember there being tons of comic book retailers. They aren’t gone, but there are a lot fewer, and listening to people at the booths, they have the same feeling: not only is the percentage of the con focused on comics shrinking, the number of comic sellers is shrinking too. I managed to pick up a couple of leads on my back-issue hunt. I also sold a couple of random Golden Age and Silver Age books I had picked up, freeing up some space in my backpack (though there’s plenty of stuff left that I didn’t bring).

I spoke with Phil Foglio briefly, and got him to autograph the remaining three Girl Genius volumes (amazingly, volume 5 showed up the the mail the day before we left) and got a photo of Sergio Aragonés holding up a little Groo statuette.

[Picture of Kelson with magician Misty Lee]At one point I started to take a picture of a woman in what I thought was a good Zatanna-style costume (though it evoked the look rather than copying the look). As I was setting up the shot, I realized that it was magician Misty Lee. I told her I’d seen her show in Burbank a few months ago, and she insisted on posing for a second photo with me in the shot. The guy who took the photo? Paul Dini. We talked for a few minutes (“You weren’t there on Saturday, were you?” “Uh, I don’t think so…”)

We ended up leaving around 6:00, went back to our hotel, showered, changed, and went out to dinner at the Indigo Grill (which we had walked past on our way to and from the con two years ago). It turned out to be very good. Highly recommended.

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We made it to San Diego around 1:00. After spending an afternoon in Old Town, and a self-guided tour of the Whaley House (which we missed last year), we dropped by the convention center to pick up our badges for Comic Con.

It was around 8:00, and it was Preview Night (only open to guests and pre-registered attendees), so there was basically no line. Only one problem: no one seemed to be willing to give us our badges!

We walked up to the first open window at the line of pre-reg booths. “Hi, we’re here to check in. Last name…” “Try those two guys over there.” “Oh, OK.”

So we walked across the way to the two guys she seemed to be pointing at. “Hi, we’re pre-reg, we’re here to pick up our…” “Try over there,” they said, pointing to a booth further along in the original line of booths.

So we walked across to that window. “Hi, is this where we actually pick up badges, because we were over there, and they directed us over there, and they directed us over here…”

It was, so I handed him the bits of paper from when we signed up, a whole year ago at last year’s con. I gave him my name, he didn’t seem to be able to find it, I gave him Katie’s name, he couldn’t find that, and eventually I had to dig out the receipt (which I had just ripped off of the sign-up sheets, since we usually have to go to separate windows), show him that yes, we paid, and somehow he was able to dig up our registration info, because the badges had the right city any everything.

So we got in, checked out the floor, and I got a few leads on Golden Age Flash books (though again, people seem to be bringing mostly the good-quality expensive copies), and we left when the hall closed at 9:00. Along with everyone else on the planet, as far as we could tell. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as any day last year, but it was more than either of us expected.

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Some interesting comments by Warren Ellis in today’s Bad Signal on film budgets, and Superman Returns in particular.

$250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie.

This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking more than the GNP of Luxembourg in a single weekend is not actually enough to put a movie in the black.

It’s the “spacelaunch” comment that I find most interesting, as I made the same comparison a few years ago, from the other side of the fence: Assuming that the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars are typical, price-wise, it doesn’t make sense to complain that we’re “wasting” money on space exploration when a mission costs as much as two summer blockbusters. Manned missions are, of course, more expensive, but robotic missions? If we, as a society, toss away $250 million several times a year on mindless action flicks, what’s so terrible about spending a similar amount to learn something about our universe?

Yes, I know the difference is public vs. private funding. Movies are financed by studios and private investors, and space exploration is usually financed by governments, and therefore by taxes. But comparing the dollar amounts puts things in a different perspective—whether you’re astonished by the literally astronomical movie budgets, or realizing that exploring outer space is more down to Earth than it seems at first glance.

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I read Shadowpact #2 last night. So far the book does read better than Day of Vengeance, probably in large part because Bill Willingham can set his own schedule instead of the must-be-6-issues policy of the Infinite Crisis lead-ins.

One of the villains struck me as familiar, though: an albino swordsman with a magic sword, apparently allied to a sinister god-like being, who has picked up the nickname, “the White Rabbit.”

Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer #3Maybe it’s just the timing—just a few days ago I read a comic about Elric, an albino swordsman with a magic sword, allied to a sinister god-like being, with the nickname, “the White Wolf.”

Michael Moorcock's MultiverseActually, I was first reminded of Count Zodiac from Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse, largely because Zodiac is based in the 20th century, rather than an ancient sword-and-sorcery landscape. Count Zodiac is one of at least three versions of Count Ulric von Bek*—the others appear in The Dragon in the Sword and the trilogy that begins with The Dreamthief’s Daughter—and, like Elric, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion.

The Eternal Champion in all his forms fights for the balance between order and chaos, and often finds himself fighting for order while indebted to a lord of chaos. At least two versions** of von Bek are albinos who wield the Black Sword (Ravenbrand, rather than Stormbringer), and while I don’t recall Ulric himself being linked to a demon the way Elric is reluctantly linked to Arioch of Chaos, the von Bek family has ties to Lucifer going back to the Hundred Thirty Years War. Continue reading →

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Fallen Angel TPB #1 (DC) coverIt seems that there will be two Fallen Angel collections on the shelves this August. To coincide with IDW’s book collecting the first story arc of their series, DC is reprinting their TPB of the first few issues of the original series.

Fallen Angel started as a creator-owned book at DC and ran for 20 issues. DC published a TPB collection of the first 6 issues, but stopped there. As much as the cancellation rankled, DC gave it a lot of opportunities… it just wasn’t a good fit for the DC brand (it probably would have thrived at Vertigo) or the DC sales targets.

Fallen Angel TPB #1 (IDW) CoverAfter it was canceled, Peter David took the series to IDW, with J.K. Woodward taking over the art from David Lopez. The first arc set in place a new status quo, and finally answered two key questions: Was Lee really a fallen angel? And if so, how did she fall? Fallen Angel proved to be a better fit with IDW, who immediately extended it from a 5-issue mini to an ongoing series when sales figures started coming in.

I highly recommend reading DC’s trade, which Amazon still has in stock. If you like that, pick up the next issue of the monthly. (Keep in mind that the art style is vastly different, and twenty years have passed, story-wise, between the end of one series and beginning of the next.) I don’t know how easy it’ll be to pick up the back issues, but the IDW trade will be out soon.

And who knows? If capitalizing on IDW’s success works out for DC, maybe they’ll see the light and collect the remaining 14 issues!

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Spam subject:

this going to expolad

It’s a stock spam, and what they’re trying to say is “This is going to explode.” But doesn’t “Expo-Lad” sound like a character from the Legion of Super-Heroes?

Just imagine:

“No one wants to come to our convention! What can we do?”
“Never fear! Expo-Lad will save us!”

Update: I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier, but maybe ExpoLad is related to TypoLad!

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