Tagged: Chicago

JOHN OSTRANDER: Hits and Misses

Like everyone else, I watch too much TV and see the occasional movie or read a book or two and I have my own reactions to them. Here’s some of what I’ve seen, good bad and indifferent.

Boss, on Starz starring Kelsey Grammar as a tough mayor of Chicago. I’m an old time Chicago boy and a series set in Chicago, dealing with its mayor, and using actual Chicago locations, will always attract my eye. I was so looking forward to this. However, by the third episode, I was taping it and I haven’t gotten around to watching those episodes and then I just stopped. I didn’t care. Too much melodramatic bullshit.

The main character, Tom Kane (obviously named for Tom Keane, a formerly very strong alderman in Chicago, later imprisoned), is diagnosed in the opening moments with some sort of brain disease that can’t be cured, can’t be operated on, and is going to mess him up royally before the end and, of course, he opts to tell no one. We never get a chance to see who he is without the disease; it’s part of what defines the character from the beginning. His wife is an ice queen although very supportive politically. They have a daughter who is now an (I think) Episcopal minister. The parents are estranged from her because she has also been a junkie in the past and looks like she’s going to be that way again. The mayor also has a young female aide who is pretty and has sex with inappropriate men apparently in semi-public places because, you know, ratings.

The creators have a good cast but they don’t apparently trust the setting enough to generate real material because they saddle it with all the nonsense above. You only have to look at political drama in Chicago and Illinois in recent years to find plenty of material. The prison bound Rod Blagojevitch alone could have been a stunning model for a TV series if some of his doings (real or alleged) didn’t appear so preposterous. He sounds too made up. He’s also a hell of a lot more interesting to me than Boss turned out to be.

You want something of Chicago that has real snap and bite? Max Allan Collins has released a volume collecting his Nate Heller short mysteries called Chicago Lightning. I recommended his Nate Heller novel, Bye Bye Baby, earlier and I’m equally enthused for this. It runs the gamut of Nate Heller’s career and is great reading. Highly recommended.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve gotten heavily into Westerns. I’ll plug myself by reminding folks that DC is releasing The Kents historical western miniseries that I wrote. It was originally done in twelve monthly issues and then gathered into a single TPB. This time they’re releasing it in three 100-page spectaculars, each gathering four issues (it was written that way, every four issues an arc). The first two of these are now out and the third will be out next month. Some of my best stuff, I think, and my artists – Timothy Truman and Tom Mandrake – have been my partners-in-crime for a long time.

Anyway, this is really a prelude to my looking in on AMC’s western Hell On Wheels. Another series I was looking forwards to and, again, I started taping it and then abandoned it. Very violent (which is okay but it seems violent for the sake of violence) and I haven’t gotten into the characters. You could spot who was going to be dead early on. It wants to be Deadwood which, even with its faults, was superlative. I may give it a try again at some point but I’m just not feeling drawn to it right now.

Finally, to end on an up note – Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Saw it and loved it. It’s a love letter to the movies from a master film maker who loves movies. It drew me in from the opening frames. There’s a long tracking shots (who does long tracking shots these days? How many directors can?) that pulls you right in. I’ve seen some grumblings about its length and pace, but you won’t hear that from from me. Scorsese loves movies but he also loves story and he weaves a wonderful, rich, emotional story with a wonderful cast and an eye towards detail.

We saw it in 3-D and that’s how it should be seen. Simply one of the best uses of 3-D I’ve seen, and I’m including Avatar. This is what happens when a master filmmaker gets a new tool – not a gimmick, but a tool – and figures out how to use it. Every effect is to tell the story and make it more real, more immediate.

I also know a lot of people who are waiting to see it on DVD or their iPhones or iPads or whatever and that would be a mistake. It’s meant to be seen in a theater; if I could find it somewhere near me in IMAX, I would go see it that way. I’ll own the eventual DVD but it will simply remind me of the experience I had at the movie theater. That’s what Hugo was for me – an experience and one I’m so glad to have had.

All the above are just my reactions. Your mileage may vary.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

FORTIER TAKES ON FAIRIES AND GOBLINS!

  • News
  • December 11, 2011

ALL PULP REVIEWS BY RON FORTIER

GLAMOUR JOB
By Doug Farrell
BookSurge Publishing
484 pages
ISBN – 10: 141967496X
ISBN – 13: 9781419674969
Release date – Sept 21, 2007
(fantasy – adventure – pulp)
No Contact Data

About the Author –
Doug Farrell has been a professional actor most of his adult life and spent several years performing comedy a Los Angeles improve troupe. He’s married to his best friend Ellen and raising three remarkable children with her. He taught college classes, was a vegetarian chef and installed home theaters. Recently at night he’s been a guide for ghost tours, telling Savannahs’ paranormal stories to people from around the world. This is his first novel.

Every now and then, I trip over a book that’s really hard to describe genre-wise and this is such a case. It’s a madcap adventure that falls somewhere between fantasy, slapstick comedy and social satire. That all these elements mix effectively and in the end produce a heady concoction of genuine adult delight is a testament to Farrell’s own imagination in brewing what he aptly describes as “A Fairy-tale for Grown-ups.”

The set up deals with a fairy war that occurred in another dimension wherein the goblin race lost and was forced to flee to our world, arriving in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. Convincing certain human scientist to help them, the goblins invented special disguises that allowed them to go undetected in our world and for decades walked among humans, some even interbreeding with them. Ultimately the same scientists who developed these sophisticated camouflages saw the potential for monetary wealth by using the same formulas to create beauty aids for human women. They create Glamorine, a Chicago based million dollar cosmetic empire built on the results of these techniques and certain globin magics.

The book’s theme plays with duel definitions of the word glamour. The first being a quality of fascinating, alluring, or attracting, especially by a combination of charm and good looks. It also means magic or enchantment; spell; witchery.

The protagonist is super model and the face of Glamorine, Laurie Morgan, whose grandfather was one of the scientist who created the company. As the story opens Laurie has become disillusioned by her near perfect life and is in the process of divorcing her loving husband, Nick. Laurie is suffering from ennui unable to explain her own dissatisfaction and believes she’s become trapped in a dull, boring routine of existence. No sooner is the divorce granted then she is contacted by a blue gnome name Hawley disguised as a little girl. He warns Laurie that her life is in danger. As if confronting an actual blue dwarf weren’t enough, Laurie begins to running into women throughout Chicago who looked exactly like her.

As paranoia begins to set in, Hawley explains that there is a goblin revolution in the works. After decades of living in secrecy amongst mankind, a group of goblin leaders have concocted a scheme to take control of Glamorine and replace its board of directors, including Laurie and her grandfather, with phony disguised goblins. Once they’ve achieved this end, they plan on poisoning the cosmetics produced to Glamorine to eliminate all of mankind and take over the Earth.

Needless to say having an army of vicious goblins out to do her in is more than enough motivation to snap Laurie out of her malaise and back into living at full tilt if only to stay alive. Before the book’s conclusion arrives, she will have been held prisoner in an underwater complex below Lake Michigan, met and been devoured by a fire breathing dragon and allied herself with tiny pig-fairies only she can see. “Glamour Job” is a rollicking tale that never lets up and is filled with satirical jabs at how we treasure a make-believe beauty that is simply an illusion devised by Fifth Avenue to milk millions from starry eyed little girls all wanting to grow up and become runway princesses. But do be warned, this is only the first chapter in a trilogy and the ending does come somewhat abruptly.

We also note by the print date that “Glamour Job” is four years old. All the more reason to seek it out as it might have flown under your radar. Urban fantasy isn’t one of this reviewer’s most favorite genres, but “Glamour Job” has enough action muscle to sustain it for even the most jaded pulp reader. If you are looking for something truly different and fun, you would be hard press to do much better than this book.

How Should Comic Shop Owners Deal With Digital Comics? Start Drinking. (Really.)

How Should Comic Shop Owners Deal With Digital Comics? Start Drinking. (Really.)

  • News
  • December 9, 2011
A Kranz (wreath) of Kölsch beer.

A lot of pixels have been spilled recently about Dark Horse going day-and-date digital at a cheaper price point than the print edition, with many retailers feeling undercut. Mark Millar has said we shouldn’t be doing day-and-date at all:

I really think day and date release is a disastrous idea and makes no economic sense at all to comics as a business. It’s potentially ruinous for comic stores, and in the long term it’s not going to do publishers any favors either.

Brian Wood has a more nuanced point of view:

No sane creator, or publisher, wants to see comic shops hurt. We all have emotional connections to them, to the idea of them, and we count owners and employees as personal friends. We aren’t looking for digital to steal customers away from shops, but rather to be an additive thing, to be an additional source of income. To simply switch a current print consumer to a digital consumer does not solve any problems! It benefits no one at all. It will not save us.

So what will save us? In the words of Bluto Blutarsky: “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.”

If you’re in comics, you’ve spent time in bars. (Oh, don’t deny it, the photos are all up on Facebook.) But the question is: what kind of bars? Do you spend it in old man bars where the average age of the customers goes up by one each year? Are the places dimly lit and crowded, but it’s still happening– or have you not been in that dive since you graduated? Is it a friendly place where you and your friends can hang out? Is there a decent beer list, or do they only sell stuff from the big players, without a hint of imported beer or microbrews? Does the person behind the bar know how to make a decent Harbor Light?

And really, why are you spending time in bars anyway? You can get booze cheaper if you buy it and drink it at home. Much cheaper.

This is where we are now with comic book stores– compare them to your bar on the corner. Maybe it’s a place you’d rather not be at all. Maybe it’s okay for some people, but it’s not the kind of place you’d take your mom on her birthday. Maybe it’s a family place, maybe it’s sports only. And just as some bars die out for a variety of reasons, so too do comic stores.

There are great comic stores out there– Challengers in Chicago, The Secret Headquarters and Meltdown in LA, and New York City has a bunch like Midtown and Manhattan and St. Mark’s and Jim Hanley’s Universe. Each one has a different vibe and feel, but they all know how to reach their customers and they’re all places you want to spend some time in.

Is your store a place you really enjoy spending time in? Or is it a place that’s survived because it’s the only way to get your weekly fix?

There are comic stores that have taken these lessons to heart and made them places you want to go to and spend money, even though you can get stuff cheaper elesewhere.

Related articles

JOHN OSTRANDER: Max Allan Collins sez Bye Bye Baby

Nate Heller is back, and I’m a happy man.

For those of you who won’t have a clue to what I’m talking about, let me explain.. Nate Heller is a fictional private eye in a series of historical hardboiled detective novels and short stories written by the redoubtable Max Allan Collins. Some of you will know Max from his comic work on Ms.Tree and Wild Dog and more will know him from his graphic novel, Road to Perdition, which was made into a terrific movie by the same name which maybe even more people will know. (Actually, it’s fun to spring that on a lot of non-comics reading folks. The usual comic book movies – Superman, Batman, Iron Man, X-Men and so on – they know but lots of unsuspecting folks are stunned they when get told that Road to Perdition started as a graphic novel.)

What you should know Max for, though, is the Nate Heller series as well as the rest. A quick disclaimer – I know Max personally and like him but I got into the Heller novels before I met him and was a big fan of the series from the start. Heller is a private detective set largely in Chicago in the 1930s when the series begins and he gets neck deep in cases involving the famous, the infamous, and the scary from that time. Max, along with his research buddy George Hagenauer and, early in the series, Mike Gold, aids in the research on these cases and often comes up with interpretations and theories that I think are rock solid.

For example, in his Heller book on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, Stolen Away, for which he won his second Shamus Award in 1992, Max posits that the “corpse” of the baby that was found could not have been the Lindbergh baby so convincingly that I think it should be in every history book.

Above all, what Collins does over and over again is take historical characters, people we know from histories or news reels or whatever, and make them real in ways that, perhaps, regular history can’t. They’re complicated, conflicted, contradictory human beings. Yes, Max makes up things for them to say and do but they are so close to what we know of their historical selves that it rings true to me, over and over again.

A case in point is the latest in the Heller series, and the first in nine long years, named “Bye Bye Baby.” It deals with the death of Marilyn Monroe and this is the place where you get the standard SPOILER WARNING. I may reveal things that are in the book and if you want to not take a chance I’ll spoil it for you, skip to where it says it’s okay to read again.

Heller, and Collins, make a strong argument that Marilyn Monroe did not commit suicide, so strong that its past arguing as far as I’m concerned. What’s more important is that Max fleshes out Marilyn as a person and a creative artist and not some poor bimbo who was a victim of her own success.

She’s not the only historical character Max brings to life in this book. Frank Sinatra, Sam Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa, Peter Lawford, Joe DiMaggio (in a not very flattering portrait), and especially Bobby Kennedy are all featured and really well drawn. While I’m not totally crazy about the solution to the mystery of Marilyn’s death, it plays and works within the context of the novel. I’d be really interested to talk to Max and find out who he really thinks was responsible but this is a mystery novel and something has to be worked out that is satisfying to the genre, the lead character, and ultimately the reader.

OKAY, IT’S SAFE TO COME BACK NOW. I’m recommending not just this latest addition to the Nate Heller series but all of the books which I believe have come back into print. Max himself suggests starting with his “Nitti trilogy” of True Detective, True Crime, and The Million Dollar Wound but it’s also true you can pick up just about any of the novels and start there. He also a collection of the Heller short stories out in paperback called Chicago Lightning. I haven’t read it yet but I’m going to and soon. Max says it’s also a good place to sample Nate Heller.

If you like a good hard boiled tale told well or just a chance to watch history really come alive on the page, give ‘em a try. You’ll come back and say, “Ostrander, I owe you one.” Glad to do it, my friend. Glad to do it.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Surprise Me!

I’ve been writing stuff for a while so it’s hard to take me by surprise. I can often spot where a story is going; I’ve been known, when watching a movie or TV show, to not only predict the next plot twist but sometimes the next line of dialog. Those around me, aside from shushing me, sometimes ask me if I’ve seen this particular movie or episode before. The answer in these cases is “no” but based on what I know of plot and character, you can predict where the story has to go or what a person has to say to get it there, especially when the writer(s) are going by the numbers.

On the other hand, I’m delighted when the writer surprises me. It’s not a matter of willy-nilly just writing any old damn thing but advancing the plot or the dialog in a way that completely makes sense within context of the story. The sort of thing that makes me go, “Of course! Why didn’t I see that?!” The fact that I didn’t see or hear that coming delights me. It makes sense yet is a surprise.

I first noticed Geoff Johns on the JSA title when he did that twice to me. He re-invented original Justice Society members Doctor Fate and Johnny Thunder in ways that surprised me but were completely true to the characters and the book. They didn’t come out of the blue but were what I call “fair extrapolation” of what was already given. Any chump writer can write a surprise or a “shock surprise;” the real difficulty is to make it work in context of the character or story. Geoff makes his surprises seem organic and inevitable – once you’ve seen the surprise. He’s a writing magician.

Another writer like that is Stephen Moffat, currently renowned for as the producer and lead writer of the current Doctor Who series. He started this season with an astronaut coming out of a lake and killing the Doctor, not giving him time to regenerate. Turns out this Doctor was slightly from the future so we still had the “current time” Doctor running around this season. (The Doctor, for those of you who don’t know, is a time traveler and Moffat makes very good use of time travel in this series.)

Next Saturday is the season finale and it looks as if they’re going to deal with all this. I have no idea how Moffat’s going to pull it off but I trust him. Not only has he done a sterling job on Doctor Who but he’s also done a modern update of Sherlock Holmes (simply called Sherlock) that totally works. He also ended the first three-episode season on a cliffhanger. I trust him to find a way out that will be cool.

Moffat’s also done a revised update of Jeykll and Hyde simply called Jekyll. I admire it a lot but the first couple of episodes creeped me out enough that I haven’t finished the rest. Remember, I’m the guy who wrote the real Wasteland.

The third on my list of writers who know how to pull off “logical surprises” is Jim Butcher and, in particular, his series of novels The Dresden Files. It features a “wizard for hire,” Harry Dresden, who works out of Chicago. Okay, that’s my hometown and so I’m already there and Dresden is a hard-boiled wizard – part private detective, part Doctor Strange. It was made into a short-lived TV series on SyFy and they completely screwed it up. If that’s your only encounter with the series, please ignore it.

The Dresden Files was good when it started and has just gotten better with each successive book. Terrific cast of supporting characters, well-developed mythology for the series, and each one leaves me panting for more. Whoever I think I know where Butcher is going, he throws me for a loop. Highly recommended.

While all these writers know how to do a twist, it’s never a twist just for the sake of doing a twist. It always involves pushing the story forward or reveals new levels of characterization. I don’t need a twist to love a book or story but I always appreciate it when I get blindsided by one and it works.

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

MIKE GOLD: 24-Hour Comics Day — Before

This weekend includes at least three elements: the Jewish holy week between the New Year and the Day of Atonement, the weekend, and 24-Hour Comics Day.

I note that first part just in case somebody reads this to my mother. Hi, Mom!

24-Hour Comics Day  was created by Scott McCloud and it is exactly what the name implies: comics creators get together in local conclaves (not autoclaves; that’s a completely different thing) “to create a 24-page comic book in 24 continuous hours.” It’s sort of a tribute to the days of yore when a creator would get an emergency over-the-weekend assignment and get a bunch of friends together to write, pencil, ink, letter and color the entire book over the weekend, deliver it on Monday, and hopefully get paid for their effort.

Of course, way back then comic books ran 64 pages – 48 pages after World War II hit speed. But today we’ve got to do all those poster shots and, you know, backgrounds and stuff so we’ll ignore the drop in pages.

It’s enormous fun for participants and observers, kibitzers (Hi, Mom!) and hecklers. Since the last thing these 24-hour comics creators need is the sabotage of an admittedly grossly talented editor, I’m going to drop by Challengers Comics and Conversation in Chicago (1845 N. Western Avenue, about a block south of the Blue Line Western Avenue L stop) to do what I do best: mooch food and annoy people. There will be about 25 creators creating, fulfilling the “Comics” part of Challengers’ name, and plenty of kibitzers to meet the “Conversation” part. It all starts at 11 AM Saturday; I’ll probably wander in around 1 or 2 PM after everybody gets down to the hard work. But enough about me.

The type of creativity and camaraderie shown at 24-Hour Comics Day is the lifeblood of this medium. It’s been there since day one when young fans of pulp writing, science fiction and newspaper strips got sought out employment in the new form. Everybody in the biz was a kid back then; Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane and many, many others weren’t old enough to get their driver’s license when they started out in comics.

This sort of enthusiasm endures to this day. I love going to “independent comics” shows such as MoCCA in New York just to soak in all that energy and see where the young creative spirits are wandering. Plus, I’m working on that incubus thing.

It’s pretty busy, so you’re trying to break into the racket 24-Hour Comics Day probably isn’t the place to schlep (Hi, Mom!) your portfolio. Call ahead to see if your local venue is receptive to walk-in presentations. However, it’s a great place to see how it all happens, how it’s put together, what people use as their tools (yeah, I know, laptops and iPads) and network. Not the Howard Beale type; you know what I mean.

Many venues are doing 24-Hour Comics Day in association with a local or national non-profit group, and that’s great – particularly in these troubled times. But, really, giving young and new creators the opportunity is a great thing in and of itself. Helping out, even by simply attending and hanging out (although buying a few comics would be swell) is a great thing as well. As we Ashkenazi-Americans like to say, it’s a Mitzvah.

Hi, Mom!

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

JOHN OSTRANDER: Story Telling

I love stories. I love reading stories, I love hearing stories, I love telling stories.

I’ve been like this as far back as I can remember.

The way my mind works is that I see stories everywhere. Back when I was going to Chicago’s Quigley Prep Seminary in my freshman year of high school, I had to take the elevated train down to school and back at least five days a week. In those days, the first seat in the first car was a single seat right by the front window. When I could get it, I’d watch the tracks as we went. I’d assign one person’s life to one of the rails and another person’s life to the parallel rail and, at junctions, where another set of rails could switch you to another set of tracks, I saw those parallel lives coming together but then another junction would come and those lives would no longer travel on together. I projected a story onto the rails.

Yeah, I was an odd kid.

Sometimes I would come home after dark, especially during the winter, and when I could I’d sit by the train window and watch the apartment buildings as we passed them with rows upon rows of windows. Most would be dark or have the shades drawn but, every so often, the window would be lit and the shade would be up and you’d see someone in the window, just for a few seconds. You’d catch a bit of their life and wonder what the rest of it was like.

Years later, I lived in an apartment that was a half block or less from the train tracks. I lived on the third floor and I knew, from my previous experience, that if the lights were lit and the shades were up, people from the passing trains could look into my life just as I glimpsed into others. That seemed fair.

What I learned from this is that we play many parts in our lives. We are the leads of our own stories (or should be) although, as Charles Dickens, in the opening of David Copperfield, wrote: ”Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” We can be the hero or villain in our own life and sometimes are both. In the story of other peoples’ lives, we assume different plot functions – supporting character, antagonist, cameo, walk-on. We are part of so many different stories.

We are all stories; we are all storytellers. As my former rector, Revered Phillip Wilson, used to say, stories are the atoms of our social interactions. We use story constantly in our own lives, to convey experience, tell a joke, share an experience. Stories are how we understand the world into which we have been born. The stories we tell shape us both as a people and a nation.

The stories often get told and re-told just as DC Comics is now re-telling its stories. Events get altered because it makes a better story. When Del Close was telling portions of his life story in Wasteland, he was never concerned about the facts (although there were often some kernels of fact in the story) – he was concerned with what was true, what was good for the story.

A good story always reflects the storyteller and Del’s stories always did. Del lives in his stories just as Dickens lives in his stories just as Shakespeare does in his. As I do in mine. The stories aren’t real in that the events haven’t happened but they are hopefully true; lies told in service to the truth.

So – what’s your story?

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

JOHN OSTRANDER: Comic Books, Peanut Butter and Anchovies

For twenty-five years, Mike Malve down in Arizona ran a successful line of comic book stores called Atomic Comics. I knew him from his weekly e-mail messages that he sent out. Nice chatty e-pistles about what sold last week, what was coming out this week, assorted thoughts about the industry, various promotions he was running, different guests he had visiting and so on.

I’d never been to his stores but Mike and I exchanged several e-mails. He always struck me as a good solid sort of retailer, one who knew and loved the industry, worked hard, promoted the work and those who made it. The sort of guy you wanted to see make it.

Two weeks ago, he closed down all his shops. There were lots of factors contributing to the closings, as he detailed in his last report. When the times were good, he expanded into high profile locations but, as he said, “when the economy went sour, low sales could not support the higher rent at these high visibility locations. The leases at these particular stores which had originally provided the consumers with greater visibility and more foot traffic to our wonderful world of comic books, the higher overhead proved to be too much for Atomic as we faced declining sales.”

He traces the decline back to an incident in 2006 when a 16-year old uninsured driver crashed her car through the front window of his biggest store and best revenue producer. The accident tore up a water main and the flood caused a million dollars worth of lost revenue and the store closed down for over five months. This was just as the recession started.

Mike secured the leases on the stores with his house so he’s going to be losing that as well as going into bankruptcy. Throughout it all, he’s maintained as cheerful and upbeat an attitude as he can manage – better than I could in his circumstances. He hopes to find some way to remain in the industry he loves.

Just two weeks later, this last week, DC launched its latest version of its titles in a sweeping revamp that includes same-day digital sales. At the same time, we see Borders closing its doors and various and sundry people have announced the death knell of the brick and mortar bookstores of all stripes.

(more…)

MIKE GOLD: On Conventions and Baltimore

I attended my first big comic book show back during the Paleolithic Age. It was either Phil Seuling’s first or second New York Convention, and it was a blast. There were about 500 of us in a Broadway hotel, and at least 475 of us didn’t realize there were so many people who were, in this respect, just like us. We realized we were not alone.

Cut to the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con. Add everybody up – paid attendance, freebees, professionals, dealers, Hollywood types, publishing people, foreign distributors, Communist spies – and there were about 150,000 folks stuffed into that convention boxcar. That’s like a 300x increase. OK, it took over 40 years to get to that point, but still, back in the late 1960s the Seuling show was the only big game in the nation. Today, you’ve got huge shows in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston and/or Dallas and/or Austin, San Francisco… you get the point.

Sadly, as San Diego grew the comics presence diminished – and not just proportionately. Today, the comics part of the San Diego Comic Con is an afterthought. It’s so blatant that it was mocked on Futurama, by no less than Sergio Aragones.

I miss the shows that are truly about comic books. I don’t need the Hollywood whores, and if I want to see celebrities I can just walk around Rockefeller Plaza for about ten minutes. I want that feeling I had so long ago, at the ancient hotels Phil rented for the comparative handful of us to meet and greet each other, back in the days before the horrid eBay forced artists to charge for their sketches and before the evil eBay pulled the rug out from underneath the dealers’ feet.

I can’t say I miss those shows completely, as there are still a few around. The HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina comes to mind. There are others.

This coming weekend, I’m going to my favorite of these few shows. Once again, I’ll be at the Baltimore Comic-Con – I rarely miss it – and I always have a great time. It’s run by good people who love comics and know how to run a convention. It’s got a lengthy guest list and it’s got the Harvey Awards dinner.

There are three other factors that are probably more personal to me. A lot of my friends and collaborators go to it – Baltimore is one of the few shows that Timothy Truman frequents, Mike Grell comes out from the northwest, and Mark Wheatley (who puts me up while he puts up with me) lives in the vicinity. Robert Tinnell, John K. Snyder, Bo Hampton, Ted Adams, Marc Hempel, Denis Kitchen, John Workman, Walter Simonson, ComicMix’s own Glenn Hauman and Robert Greenberger … the list of my friends there just goes on and on. Most important, unlike San Diego or the New York Comic-Con or Chicago’s R2D2, I can actually hang out with my buddies and meet my fellow fans.

Of course, the show is a mere four-hour drive from Connecticut. That’s about as long as it takes me to get from my front door to wheel’s up at New York’s JFK International. The six-hour flight to the left coast is extra. And the Baltimore show is only two days long: Saturday and Sunday. Yep, no padding, no unending lines to wait in, just two solid days of comics’ fanboy fun.

If you can make it, please do. I’ll be mostly at the Insight Studios Booth, and I promise I won’t hit you with my cane. At least, not intentionally. Yep, this is my first show since I destroyed my back. My back’s back, so I’m back.

Drop by and say hello. We’ll probably get into a conversation or something. It’s that kind of show.

(ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold resumed his Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind rock’n’blues show, which streams four times a week on www.getthepointradio.com and is also available on demand at that very same venue. He also pens a very political column at Michael Davis World – http://mdwp.malibulist.com/ — where he joins ComicMix columnists Martha Thomases and Michael Davis.)

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks