2007
People love us (when we say nice things about their books!)
October/26, 2007
Actually, the letter from IGOR: FIXED BY
FRANKENSTEINS creator Chris Reilly reminded us why we
liked the book so much. He begins:
Hey Gutter Geek,
I wish I knew your name, because I really didn't want to call you "Gutter Geek."
Actually, if you knew me, I call everyone Gutter Geek, so this is just a happy coincidence.
We love coincidences! Turns out (still more coincidences!) these guys are both really fun in interviews, too. Check out their schtick in their Pulse interview. But mostly check out the book.
And thanks, Chris, for the link: http://slg-news.livejournal.com/217701.html
Hey Gutter Geek,
I wish I knew your name, because I really didn't want to call you "Gutter Geek."
Actually, if you knew me, I call everyone Gutter Geek, so this is just a happy coincidence.
We love coincidences! Turns out (still more coincidences!) these guys are both really fun in interviews, too. Check out their schtick in their Pulse interview. But mostly check out the book.
And thanks, Chris, for the link: http://slg-news.livejournal.com/217701.html
New Issue, Old Issues
October/21, 2007
Yes, we are late. And not in a good way. But we hope
the new issue proves worth the wait, with our usual
blend of... stuff. OK, I used up every good figure,
every image, pretty much every word on the new issue,
so that should show you how good it is: when I am
reduced to "stuff" (and when, as is happening right
now, the word "stuff" makes me giggle, it is also a
good indication that it is time for bed.)
As always, we would love to hear from you about the new issue: your rebuttals, suggestions, and unconditional love. For November we will have some more "stuff," followed by a new annual tradition in December as we review all the ones that got away (the good ones for 2007 that we missed) and the bad ones that we tried to make go away but which people keep talking about anyway. If you have any candidates for the "how could you have missed it" or "why the hell does this book have any buzz at all" lists, send 'em on.
As always, we would love to hear from you about the new issue: your rebuttals, suggestions, and unconditional love. For November we will have some more "stuff," followed by a new annual tradition in December as we review all the ones that got away (the good ones for 2007 that we missed) and the bad ones that we tried to make go away but which people keep talking about anyway. If you have any candidates for the "how could you have missed it" or "why the hell does this book have any buzz at all" lists, send 'em on.
Festival of Cartoon Art
September/04, 2007
Come one, come all, to the hometown of guttergeekHQ
for the triennial Festival of Cartoon Arts, hosted by
the divine Cartoon Research Library (where I am
typing at this very moment). Alison Bechdel, Jessica
Abel, R. C. Harvey, Guy Delisle, Ted Rall... the list
of illuminati goes on and on.
If you've never been, trust me, the Festival is unlike anything you have attended before. Not a Con or a dreary academic conference, it is instead a chance to hear up close and personal from creators and professionals in the field about the craft and the life.
Link: http://cartoons.osu.edu/FCA/index.php
If you've never been, trust me, the Festival is unlike anything you have attended before. Not a Con or a dreary academic conference, it is instead a chance to hear up close and personal from creators and professionals in the field about the craft and the life.
Link: http://cartoons.osu.edu/FCA/index.php
We Love You Too, Journalista!
September/01, 2007
A nice nod from Dirk Deppey and
Journalista:
Guttergeek is an impressive review site, with essays on work by Jason Shiga, Gipi, Andy Hartzell, Tom Neely, Paul Hornshemeier, Jeff Lemire and many others.
Yeah!
Link: http://tcj.com/journalista/?p=428
Guttergeek is an impressive review site, with essays on work by Jason Shiga, Gipi, Andy Hartzell, Tom Neely, Paul Hornshemeier, Jeff Lemire and many others.
Yeah!
Link: http://tcj.com/journalista/?p=428
New Issue
August/29, 2007
The August issue of guttergeek is up, just in the
nick of time (September being just about thirty
seconds away). A splendid issue, if we do say so
ourselves (and we do, often). Check it out and let us
know what you think about what we think about what we
read....
And now, New & Improved with a search feature to help you track down the growing archive of informed and acidic reviews from guttergeeks past.
And now, New & Improved with a search feature to help you track down the growing archive of informed and acidic reviews from guttergeeks past.
Alex on the Con II
August/04, 2007
Another Comic-Con has come and gone. I’m back home
now, in the middle of a Kentucky heat wave, wishing I
were still in the more temperate coastal breezes of
the San Diego Harbor. I generally consider Comic-Con
week to be the most invigorating week of the year for
me every year, and this one was no different. I
imagine I have the same complaints that many in
attendance have: Foot traffic, overcrowding, and the
unrelenting marketing blitz is always out of control
and seems to get worse every year. (This is my fifth
Comic-Con, so I have some measure of how these
problems aren’t resolved from year to year.) But on
the whole, SDCC is an exciting, stimulating event
that is always more rewarding than it is daunting.
Below I’ve outlined some notes and reflections on
this year’s Con.
• The large panels at which more than five creators are gathered to inform readers of what’s coming in the coming year are almost always uninformative, unprepared, and a waste of time for all involved. Granted, it’s cool seeing a bunch of writers and artists whose work I enjoy gathered at one table. Readers who enjoy superhero books have to be impressed at seeing Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Paul Dini, Carlos Pacheco, and Ivan Reis lined up in a row. But beyond that initial “wow” moment, there’s not much substance involved. At best, readers see a slideshow outlining covers from upcoming comics. At worst, the moderator moves straight into a Q&A session in which the questions don’t move much beyond plot questions and the answers are variations of the following stock responses:
- It’s possible. We’re not ruling anything out.
- Wait and see. We’re getting to that in a few months.
- Maybe. How many people would like to see something like that?
I almost always leave these panels feeling unfulfilled and a little cheated.
• The “Spotlight” panels are where Con attendees (at least readers, scholars, and fans of comics) are most likely to find what they’re looking for. This year provided an impressive assortment of sessions focused on single writers, artists, and cartoonists. In fact, this year is the best variety of Spotlight panels I’ve ever seen at SDCC. Featured creators included Darwyn Cooke, Alison Bechdel, Matt Wagner, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, J. Michael Straczynski, and Kent Williams. I generally learn a lot at these sessions because the creators have an hour to talk in depth about their work—not just about the projects they have coming up, but also about the creative process of their craft.
• Alison Bechdel’s Spotlight panel was easily the best session I attended at this year’s Comic-Con. I’m not sure it it’s because Bechdel is a novice at this show and therefore doesn’t know how little work generally goes into preparing panels, but she clearly put a lot of thought and time into her presentation. I think this was the first time I felt genuinely respected by the author/artist I was coming to hear from. Bechdel began by outlining the arc of her career in comics, from her work on the “Dykes to Watch Out for” series to the recent success of her graphic novel Fun Home. She used slides in a PPT presentation to guide her through her talk, and the DTWOF cartoons provided a humorous, engaging companion to her discussion. After she talked about her career, Bechdel provided a reading from a chaper of Fun Home. She read from the novel as she clicked through slides from which the narrative captions had been cropped. Hearing her voice match the detached, occasionally darkly sardonic tone of the words I’d read on the page was incredibly enjoyable and moving. And it was clear from the Q&A session following the reading that her audience was different from the audiences of most of the other panels I attended that day. It was heartening to see so many people gathered at a panel focusing of “reality-based” or memoir comics. Whether Bechdel realized it or not, she set the bar against which I’ll measure all other panels in the future. Again, it was the most elevating hour I spent at the Con this year.
• An addendum to Alison Bechdel’s presentation. One of the things I appreciated most about Bechdel’s Spotlight panel was her discussion of craft. One would think that a comics convention would be the perfect place to talk about the creation of comics, but this happens too infrequently. So much attention is paid to the buzz factor and marketing of upcoming books that creators rarely focus on comics as art. After Bechdel’s discussion of her career and before her reading from Fun Home, she showed many slides that explained the creation of her work. She showed video clips of her setting up reference photos, drafting pencils and inks, and layering paper on her drafting board to watercolor her work. This was probably the most fascinating part of her presentation. She also revealed that her next major project will be another memoir book focused on past relationships. If Fun Home created tension in her family over the book’s revelations, I imagine the next project will be equally difficult for the book’s subjects to read. But given the intelligence, humility, and candor with which Bechdel deals with difficult subject matter, I personally can’t wait to read it.
• I also attended the Spotlight panel for Neil Gaiman, and I was more conflicted about this one than I was about Bechdel’s session. I grew up on Gaiman’s work. It’s been with me longer, and I’ve had a long-lasting respect for the comics fiction Gaiman has produced (though with the exception of Good Omens, I’m a bit ambivalent about his prose fiction). But I’m a bit tired of seeing all the ways in which Gaiman’s work has been adapted to other media: comics to film, prose fiction to comics, screenplay to novel to comics (Neverwhere), etc. I appreciate that Gaiman has proved successful at writing in several different media, but not every work needs to be cross-pollinated. Sometimes comics work best at comics, film as film, and prose as prose.
Additionally, a large segment of Gaiman’s panel represented many of the things I find objectionable about the Con atmosphere. Most of the questions during the Q&A portion of the session focused on adaptations of Gaiman’s work to other media. “When will Good Omens be a movie?” “Will Death be a movie?” “What’s coming up?” To a certain extent, I understand the interest this year. A film adaptation of Gaiman’s Stardust is set to debut in August, and he wrote the screenplay for the Beowulf movie that will hit theaters this fall. But given all the media attention, most of the answers to these questions are available in interviews. I wish more time were devoted to discussion of artistic creation.
The most interesting part of the session was found in Gaiman’s answer to one of the half-dozen aspiring writers who lined behind the microphone to ask him advice for breaking into the business. Gaiman sidestepped the “breaking in” question and offered instead some good advice for aspiring writers: WRITE. Rejecting the idea of “writer’s block” as an excuse for not working, Gaiman recommended a technique he stole from a friend. He said that when writers hit a wall, they should allow themselves to do nothing but sit there in the chair. No e-mail. No sorting or alphabetizing CD collections or bookshelves. Just sit there. Given the options of writing or sitting in utter boredom, writing suddenly will become far more interesting.
One more note from Gaiman’s presentation I found interesting if frustrating: The Miracleman debacle is no closer to being resolved. Every time one issue is solved legally, another emerges to complicate the legal entanglements to the rights of Miracleman. Thus, it seems that we’re no closer to seeing past books (by Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Alan Moore, John Totleben, and Gary Leach) in print anytime soon or seeing Gaiman’s and Buckingham’s “Silver Age” arc ever completed. This is disappointing, as I still believe that Miracleman is one of the most important superhero comics ever published.
• One of the most enjoyable panels I attended this year was the “Reality-Based Graphic Novels” panel at 11:30 Saturday morning. The panel featured cartoonists who write memoir, travel, and historical graphic narratives. Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), Joe Matt (Spent), Miriam Katin (We Are On Our Own), Rick Geary (The Bloody Benders), and Guy Delisle (Pyoungyang) discussed a variety of topics introduced by moderator Andrew Farago (from the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum). One of the things I found most engaging in the panel was the diversity of voices and perspectives. Delisle is a French Canadian who writes travel diaries about his travels in Asia and Europe. Katin is a Hungarian immigrant. Matt’s slacker persona and self-effacement provided an interesting contrast to Bechdel’s well-articulated high seriousness about her work. All of the panel members had interesting things to say about how they work. Delisle says he works quickly, producing a complete page a day so that, if the page has to be discarded later, he hasn’t wasted too much time drafting it. Matt, meanwhile, said that all the options available to him as a cartoonist (panel layout, timing of panel progression, perspective, etc.) make cartooning more and more difficult the older he gets. As a relative novice to the field, Katin generally seemed to be as curious about and interested in the others’ work as the audience was. Aside from the moderator’s questions, there wasn’t a whole lot of preparation put into this panel. But again, the variety of responses and approaches to technique added up to a provocative, well-spent hour.
• The Comic Arts Conference (CAC), the scholarly conference within Comic-Con, is the ostensible reason why I make my pilgrimage to San Diego every year. Obviously, this conference provides perks like no other academic conference I’ve ever been to. But this doesn’t take away from the seriousness and intellectual engagement that most of the scholar-presenters bring to the CAC every year. This year, the CAC was relocated from the general presentation room area (mixed in with most of the comics-related panel) to the back (south-west) corner of the convention center. This move was made for practical reasons—primarily growing demand for “main-area” space—but the move actually worked well for the CAC. The room had more space for larger audiences, and the larger audiences surprisingly managed to find the CAC even though it was somewhat hidden away. Each of the sessions I attended drew larger audiences than I’d expected or witnessed in previous years, which is a promising change. All of the audiences seemed engaged (perhaps because they were being asked to think, rather than being told to buy something), and the Q&A sessions that followed the presentations showed that most of the audience was receptive to and engaged in the ideas that were being tested there.
This year I presented a paper entitled “The Godot Effect: Stasis and Paralysis in Contemporary Superhero Comics Books.” The panel was one of the last of the Con (Sunday from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.), and I fully expected to be talking to an empty room. Instead, the group who gathered was larger than in any panel I’ve even been a part of (at CAC or otherwise). And the conversation that followed the presentations was the most invigorating and stimulating discussion I’ve ever experienced in any panel I’ve been a part of. Overall, the move could prove fruitful for CAC in the long run. I think that the conference would benefit from more involvement from industry professionals, but I know for a fact that some of this is in the works for next year. I look forward to seeing how this relatively small academic inset continues to grow within the larger marketing machine that is Comic-Con.
--Alex
• The large panels at which more than five creators are gathered to inform readers of what’s coming in the coming year are almost always uninformative, unprepared, and a waste of time for all involved. Granted, it’s cool seeing a bunch of writers and artists whose work I enjoy gathered at one table. Readers who enjoy superhero books have to be impressed at seeing Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns, Paul Dini, Carlos Pacheco, and Ivan Reis lined up in a row. But beyond that initial “wow” moment, there’s not much substance involved. At best, readers see a slideshow outlining covers from upcoming comics. At worst, the moderator moves straight into a Q&A session in which the questions don’t move much beyond plot questions and the answers are variations of the following stock responses:
- It’s possible. We’re not ruling anything out.
- Wait and see. We’re getting to that in a few months.
- Maybe. How many people would like to see something like that?
I almost always leave these panels feeling unfulfilled and a little cheated.
• The “Spotlight” panels are where Con attendees (at least readers, scholars, and fans of comics) are most likely to find what they’re looking for. This year provided an impressive assortment of sessions focused on single writers, artists, and cartoonists. In fact, this year is the best variety of Spotlight panels I’ve ever seen at SDCC. Featured creators included Darwyn Cooke, Alison Bechdel, Matt Wagner, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, J. Michael Straczynski, and Kent Williams. I generally learn a lot at these sessions because the creators have an hour to talk in depth about their work—not just about the projects they have coming up, but also about the creative process of their craft.
• Alison Bechdel’s Spotlight panel was easily the best session I attended at this year’s Comic-Con. I’m not sure it it’s because Bechdel is a novice at this show and therefore doesn’t know how little work generally goes into preparing panels, but she clearly put a lot of thought and time into her presentation. I think this was the first time I felt genuinely respected by the author/artist I was coming to hear from. Bechdel began by outlining the arc of her career in comics, from her work on the “Dykes to Watch Out for” series to the recent success of her graphic novel Fun Home. She used slides in a PPT presentation to guide her through her talk, and the DTWOF cartoons provided a humorous, engaging companion to her discussion. After she talked about her career, Bechdel provided a reading from a chaper of Fun Home. She read from the novel as she clicked through slides from which the narrative captions had been cropped. Hearing her voice match the detached, occasionally darkly sardonic tone of the words I’d read on the page was incredibly enjoyable and moving. And it was clear from the Q&A session following the reading that her audience was different from the audiences of most of the other panels I attended that day. It was heartening to see so many people gathered at a panel focusing of “reality-based” or memoir comics. Whether Bechdel realized it or not, she set the bar against which I’ll measure all other panels in the future. Again, it was the most elevating hour I spent at the Con this year.
• An addendum to Alison Bechdel’s presentation. One of the things I appreciated most about Bechdel’s Spotlight panel was her discussion of craft. One would think that a comics convention would be the perfect place to talk about the creation of comics, but this happens too infrequently. So much attention is paid to the buzz factor and marketing of upcoming books that creators rarely focus on comics as art. After Bechdel’s discussion of her career and before her reading from Fun Home, she showed many slides that explained the creation of her work. She showed video clips of her setting up reference photos, drafting pencils and inks, and layering paper on her drafting board to watercolor her work. This was probably the most fascinating part of her presentation. She also revealed that her next major project will be another memoir book focused on past relationships. If Fun Home created tension in her family over the book’s revelations, I imagine the next project will be equally difficult for the book’s subjects to read. But given the intelligence, humility, and candor with which Bechdel deals with difficult subject matter, I personally can’t wait to read it.
• I also attended the Spotlight panel for Neil Gaiman, and I was more conflicted about this one than I was about Bechdel’s session. I grew up on Gaiman’s work. It’s been with me longer, and I’ve had a long-lasting respect for the comics fiction Gaiman has produced (though with the exception of Good Omens, I’m a bit ambivalent about his prose fiction). But I’m a bit tired of seeing all the ways in which Gaiman’s work has been adapted to other media: comics to film, prose fiction to comics, screenplay to novel to comics (Neverwhere), etc. I appreciate that Gaiman has proved successful at writing in several different media, but not every work needs to be cross-pollinated. Sometimes comics work best at comics, film as film, and prose as prose.
Additionally, a large segment of Gaiman’s panel represented many of the things I find objectionable about the Con atmosphere. Most of the questions during the Q&A portion of the session focused on adaptations of Gaiman’s work to other media. “When will Good Omens be a movie?” “Will Death be a movie?” “What’s coming up?” To a certain extent, I understand the interest this year. A film adaptation of Gaiman’s Stardust is set to debut in August, and he wrote the screenplay for the Beowulf movie that will hit theaters this fall. But given all the media attention, most of the answers to these questions are available in interviews. I wish more time were devoted to discussion of artistic creation.
The most interesting part of the session was found in Gaiman’s answer to one of the half-dozen aspiring writers who lined behind the microphone to ask him advice for breaking into the business. Gaiman sidestepped the “breaking in” question and offered instead some good advice for aspiring writers: WRITE. Rejecting the idea of “writer’s block” as an excuse for not working, Gaiman recommended a technique he stole from a friend. He said that when writers hit a wall, they should allow themselves to do nothing but sit there in the chair. No e-mail. No sorting or alphabetizing CD collections or bookshelves. Just sit there. Given the options of writing or sitting in utter boredom, writing suddenly will become far more interesting.
One more note from Gaiman’s presentation I found interesting if frustrating: The Miracleman debacle is no closer to being resolved. Every time one issue is solved legally, another emerges to complicate the legal entanglements to the rights of Miracleman. Thus, it seems that we’re no closer to seeing past books (by Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Alan Moore, John Totleben, and Gary Leach) in print anytime soon or seeing Gaiman’s and Buckingham’s “Silver Age” arc ever completed. This is disappointing, as I still believe that Miracleman is one of the most important superhero comics ever published.
• One of the most enjoyable panels I attended this year was the “Reality-Based Graphic Novels” panel at 11:30 Saturday morning. The panel featured cartoonists who write memoir, travel, and historical graphic narratives. Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), Joe Matt (Spent), Miriam Katin (We Are On Our Own), Rick Geary (The Bloody Benders), and Guy Delisle (Pyoungyang) discussed a variety of topics introduced by moderator Andrew Farago (from the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum). One of the things I found most engaging in the panel was the diversity of voices and perspectives. Delisle is a French Canadian who writes travel diaries about his travels in Asia and Europe. Katin is a Hungarian immigrant. Matt’s slacker persona and self-effacement provided an interesting contrast to Bechdel’s well-articulated high seriousness about her work. All of the panel members had interesting things to say about how they work. Delisle says he works quickly, producing a complete page a day so that, if the page has to be discarded later, he hasn’t wasted too much time drafting it. Matt, meanwhile, said that all the options available to him as a cartoonist (panel layout, timing of panel progression, perspective, etc.) make cartooning more and more difficult the older he gets. As a relative novice to the field, Katin generally seemed to be as curious about and interested in the others’ work as the audience was. Aside from the moderator’s questions, there wasn’t a whole lot of preparation put into this panel. But again, the variety of responses and approaches to technique added up to a provocative, well-spent hour.
• The Comic Arts Conference (CAC), the scholarly conference within Comic-Con, is the ostensible reason why I make my pilgrimage to San Diego every year. Obviously, this conference provides perks like no other academic conference I’ve ever been to. But this doesn’t take away from the seriousness and intellectual engagement that most of the scholar-presenters bring to the CAC every year. This year, the CAC was relocated from the general presentation room area (mixed in with most of the comics-related panel) to the back (south-west) corner of the convention center. This move was made for practical reasons—primarily growing demand for “main-area” space—but the move actually worked well for the CAC. The room had more space for larger audiences, and the larger audiences surprisingly managed to find the CAC even though it was somewhat hidden away. Each of the sessions I attended drew larger audiences than I’d expected or witnessed in previous years, which is a promising change. All of the audiences seemed engaged (perhaps because they were being asked to think, rather than being told to buy something), and the Q&A sessions that followed the presentations showed that most of the audience was receptive to and engaged in the ideas that were being tested there.
This year I presented a paper entitled “The Godot Effect: Stasis and Paralysis in Contemporary Superhero Comics Books.” The panel was one of the last of the Con (Sunday from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m.), and I fully expected to be talking to an empty room. Instead, the group who gathered was larger than in any panel I’ve even been a part of (at CAC or otherwise). And the conversation that followed the presentations was the most invigorating and stimulating discussion I’ve ever experienced in any panel I’ve been a part of. Overall, the move could prove fruitful for CAC in the long run. I think that the conference would benefit from more involvement from industry professionals, but I know for a fact that some of this is in the works for next year. I look forward to seeing how this relatively small academic inset continues to grow within the larger marketing machine that is Comic-Con.
--Alex
Guttergeek Reports from the Con I
July/28, 2007
Forced to man guttergeek HQ in the interest of
national security this summer, I am living
vicariously off of reports from Alex and other far
flung guttergeeks as to the happenings at the Con.
Here is Alex's first report from day
one:
If you thought last year was crowded, this year is worse. It's almost unmanagable on the exhibit floor. Thursday is usually a pretty calm, orderly day, but I'm exhausted.
The only panel I saw all of today was Darwyn Cooke's spotlight panel, which was the only one I really *had* to see. He's a smart, honest guy who had interesting things to say about his work, his contemporaries, and his industry. He said he'd only really heard and seen what's public knowledge about the forthcoming Spirit film, and he said it seemed to be a little too one-dimensional for his taste. He said Miller's focusing mainly on the sex and violence aspects of the Spirit (surprise, surprise) and marginalizing the human elements of what made Eisner's strips work so well. He revealed that he's not going to be working on The Spirit after issue #12, which to me was horrible news. The Spirit is my second-favorite periodical read from DC right now (after All Star Superman), so I'll be sorry to see him off that project. But he's working on two new graphic novels (of his own creation with his own characters) that will take up the next two years. He described one as an all-ages fantasy novel "with giant robots and such" and the other as a graphic novel for adults. He hasn't settled on a publisher for either project, but he said he's been approached by several publishers and isn't worried about finding a home for his books. I was hoping to see clips from the forthcoming New Frontier animated adaptation, but no footage is ready to go yet. DC's really pushing their inaugural animated film, Superman: Doomsday, which they'll debut here at the con tonight.
I stopped and talked to several creators about their work. I talked to Rucka about the Question article I interviewed him for, and it was nice meeting the guy who told me how 52 was going to end. I dropped by David PetersEn's booth, bought the first issue of the second Mouse Guard volume, gave him a GG card, and talked to him a while. I talked to Brian Wood about DMZ and to Cully Hamner about his work on the new Blue Beetle series. I gave him a GG card and told him about the review, and he did a Question sketch for me. I talked to Warren Ellis briefly on preview night, but the crowds were too crazy to really talk much.
On the action figure front, Hasbro is revealing all sorts of Marvel Legends goodness here (including a new, better version of Namor in his trunks, Tigra, and a slew of others I'm just not remembering). I'm getting the "business" She-Hulk and Stan Lee exclusive figures tomorrow after much difficulty getting a ticket just to get in line. I also found the fist wave of the "Legendary Heroes" line at Wal-Mart here in Temecula. (We're staying with Kristy's sister about an hour away from SD.) It's the indy character line; I never thought I'd have Savage Dragon, Madman, and Judge Dredd figures in the same scale as Marvel
Legends, but I'm not complaining. These things are as good as the last couple waves of ToyBiz's Marvel Legends run (which means they're much better than the first couple waves of Hasbro's Marvel Legends run).
So. That's the first day's report. Lots of good panels tomorrow, when I'll finally able to settle in and enjoy that part of the con. Thursday is usually the day when I run about chasing all my silly toy exclusives. Mezco finally finished off the BPRD with their Abe Sapien exclusive, so that made me quite happy. I also grabbed a battle Leonidas (from 300) and Harry Potter w/Hedwig from NECA.
--Alex
If you thought last year was crowded, this year is worse. It's almost unmanagable on the exhibit floor. Thursday is usually a pretty calm, orderly day, but I'm exhausted.
The only panel I saw all of today was Darwyn Cooke's spotlight panel, which was the only one I really *had* to see. He's a smart, honest guy who had interesting things to say about his work, his contemporaries, and his industry. He said he'd only really heard and seen what's public knowledge about the forthcoming Spirit film, and he said it seemed to be a little too one-dimensional for his taste. He said Miller's focusing mainly on the sex and violence aspects of the Spirit (surprise, surprise) and marginalizing the human elements of what made Eisner's strips work so well. He revealed that he's not going to be working on The Spirit after issue #12, which to me was horrible news. The Spirit is my second-favorite periodical read from DC right now (after All Star Superman), so I'll be sorry to see him off that project. But he's working on two new graphic novels (of his own creation with his own characters) that will take up the next two years. He described one as an all-ages fantasy novel "with giant robots and such" and the other as a graphic novel for adults. He hasn't settled on a publisher for either project, but he said he's been approached by several publishers and isn't worried about finding a home for his books. I was hoping to see clips from the forthcoming New Frontier animated adaptation, but no footage is ready to go yet. DC's really pushing their inaugural animated film, Superman: Doomsday, which they'll debut here at the con tonight.
I stopped and talked to several creators about their work. I talked to Rucka about the Question article I interviewed him for, and it was nice meeting the guy who told me how 52 was going to end. I dropped by David PetersEn's booth, bought the first issue of the second Mouse Guard volume, gave him a GG card, and talked to him a while. I talked to Brian Wood about DMZ and to Cully Hamner about his work on the new Blue Beetle series. I gave him a GG card and told him about the review, and he did a Question sketch for me. I talked to Warren Ellis briefly on preview night, but the crowds were too crazy to really talk much.
On the action figure front, Hasbro is revealing all sorts of Marvel Legends goodness here (including a new, better version of Namor in his trunks, Tigra, and a slew of others I'm just not remembering). I'm getting the "business" She-Hulk and Stan Lee exclusive figures tomorrow after much difficulty getting a ticket just to get in line. I also found the fist wave of the "Legendary Heroes" line at Wal-Mart here in Temecula. (We're staying with Kristy's sister about an hour away from SD.) It's the indy character line; I never thought I'd have Savage Dragon, Madman, and Judge Dredd figures in the same scale as Marvel
Legends, but I'm not complaining. These things are as good as the last couple waves of ToyBiz's Marvel Legends run (which means they're much better than the first couple waves of Hasbro's Marvel Legends run).
So. That's the first day's report. Lots of good panels tomorrow, when I'll finally able to settle in and enjoy that part of the con. Thursday is usually the day when I run about chasing all my silly toy exclusives. Mezco finally finished off the BPRD with their Abe Sapien exclusive, so that made me quite happy. I also grabbed a battle Leonidas (from 300) and Harry Potter w/Hedwig from NECA.
--Alex