Tagged: San Diego

Marc Alan Fishman: Hey Wizard – You’re Running Outta Magic!

This past weekend Unshaven Comics attended our fifth Wizard World Chicago Comic Convention … as creators. As fans, we’ve been going to this every year since 2000. It is, for all intents and purposes, our home show. We sell the most books, meet the most fans, and generally enjoy an amazing time. Some, if not all of this is derived by selling the most books, but don’t quote me on that. I am quite proud to report that we hustled and bustled our way to our “soft goal” of a 10% increase in sales over the year past. 333 books left our table, and into the eager hands of friends, fans, and passersby who were lured by the pitch of Kung-Fu Monkeys and Zombie Cyborg Space Pirates. For that? We’re elated creators.

That being said, this was easily the worst Wizard World we’ve ever been a part of –be we just fantastic fans or curmudgeonly creators.

Where to begin: how about show length. As I recall this show used to be over a Saturday and Sunday. Then they added Friday. Then they added “preview night.” This year? They made it a full four days. Hey if it works in San Diego, right? Wrong. When the two largest booths on the convention floor are Chevy and “Smell Like An Avenger” and your panel listings fit on a black and white 11 x 17 photocopy? You don’t have four days worth of con. You have a weekend con stretched to the absolute limit.

Next? The floor plan. There’s a saying, I’m not sure if Wizard is familiar, that goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s a great saying. Since Wizard obviously hasn’t heard it (and they most certainly are reading this) let me make it clear as the Invisible Woman. For 20 years the show floor has followed a very simple layout. Enter into the exhibitor zone with small press booths behind them, move to the dealer zone, and then the Artist Alley. Autographs and appearances? Wrapped right into the exhibitor booths. This year? They littered exhibitors with dealers all over the floor, put the autograph area smack dab in the middle of the convention hall, and then shoehorned the Artist Alley in the back third of the hall, split by a few jutting walls and the ATM.

And just to stick it to artists on the far end, they placed the photo op zone right at the end of the hall, ensuring a lengthy queue that stretched into the alley at all times during the convention. Nothing better for book sales and fan interaction like a line in front of your table that only cares about snagging that shot with Lou Ferigno, right? Wrong.

Far too many of my friends extended smiles coldly bookended with sighs of exasperation. Our neighbor from Mid-Ohio Con, the always amazing Eliza Frye, was forced to move her table three times. Three times! Which meant this show, which she flew in for, was a wash at best. Our close personal friend and arch nemesis, Dan “Beardo Comics” Dougherty, was one of the unlucky ones shoehorned near the photo op booth. He “made table” (as we in-the-know like to say) but didn’t quite reach his personal goal. Given that he makes comics for a living? This means less living for Dan. On one hand, I’m glad my arch nemesis failed. On the other hand? He’s an awesome creator who got the shaft by Wizard.

Concerning our Unshaven table… life was somewhat better. Our neighbors, both very awesome in their own ways, out-flanked our paltry table decorations with elaborate PVC and metal shelving installations. Our roll-up sign, and clear plastic tabletop book holder certainly didn’t impress. So much so that we heard from several fans after the show that they simply didn’t find us. It didn’t help that we were table “3113,” but there were no markings on the show floor (or provided program map with font size only Hank Pym could read) that would have assisted people in finding us. It also begs to note that prior to the show, Wizard e-mailed all the artists asking who we might want to sit next to. We listed six friends, all similar in fame and similar in style. We sat nowhere near them. While traffic on the floor itself was steady, it was always apparent how weary the fans were. Suffice to say (and it’d been said before) four days for a two day show does not make for an energetic crowd. Had it not been for our fevered pitching, I doubt we could have even topped the prior years’ sales.

Ultimately the show was just okay. Most creators saw enough sales to warrant their appearance. Most dealers left pissed at their spotty placement. I’m sure all the celebrities enjoyed being the star attraction of the show, in addition to getting to charge anywhere from $20 to $50 for signing their name.

There was a time when Wizard World Chicago was the crown jewel of a Chicago comic geek’s summer. Nowadays? It’s a second rate flea market peppered by those of us fighting in the trenches to earn one fan at a time. Will we be there next year? In order to be successful, we have to be. Will be bitch about it then, too? You better believe it. Wizard has a whole year to improve upon the car wreck they displayed a weekend ago.

In the simplest terms: Put the show floor back the way it was, attract more comic creators and publishers to return, make panels that celebrate the medium that spawned the creation of the show itself; You’re not San Diego, and you’ll never get close. It’s time to own that, Wizard. Excelsior.

Footnote: Post show, we received an e-mail from Wizard asking all creators to “put a good word in” for them to respective fan bases and with other creators. Nothing like owning up to shared feelings of failure, right?

SATURDAY: John Ostrander

 

Sally Ride: 1951-2012

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.
Sally K. Ride, the first U.S. woman to travel into space, died on Monday after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, according to her organization, Sally Ride Science, in San Diego. She was 61.

Ride, a physicist, blasted off in the U.S. space shuttle “Challenger” on June 18, 1983.

“Sally’s historic flight into space captured the nation’s imagination and made her a household name,” Sally Ride Science said in a statement.

via Sally Ride, first U.S. woman in space, dies – Yahoo! News.

Six Most Important Comics Stories From San Diego Comic-Con

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We’ve all had a chance to recover and step back a bit, and we can now look at what are the most important pure-comics stories out of San Diego Comic-Con. (No, not movies, or movies based on comics, or video games based on comics, those are all for other posts.) So what are the ComicMix Six Comic Stories from Comic-Con International?

1. Neil Gaiman returns to write “Before Sandman”.

Neil Gaiman is returning to his most famous comics creation, The Sandman, one more time, for a prequel miniseries to be released next year to be drawn by J.H. Williams (Promethea, Batwoman). “When I finished writing THE SANDMAN, there was one tale still untold. The story of what had happened to Morpheus to allow him to be so easily captured in THE SANDMAN #1, and why he was returned from far away, exhausted beyond imagining, and dressed for war. It was a story that we discussed telling for SANDMAN’s 20th anniversary… but the time got away from us. And now, with SANDMAN’s 25th anniversary year coming up, I’m delighted, and nervous, that that story is finally going to be told,” said Gaiman.

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Martha Thomases: Las Vegas vs. San Diego

While the rest of the pop culture community prepares for Comic-Con International in San Diego, I’m in Las Vegas. Since I don’t gamble, it has been an interesting sociological experience for me. And also, the spa at my hotel is awesome.

I have been to Vegas four times now, and to SDCC about fifteen times. The two share more than one might think. Both are really crowded at all hours. Both mostly take place indoors, but if you need to go outside, you probably won’t get rained on. There’s a lot of noise about every little thing, so that you lose all sense of proportion.

And both count on dazzling you with enough glitz and glamor that you won’t notice how much you’re being hustled.

Still, I’m having a great time on The Strip, and I never need to go to Comic-Con again. What’s the difference?

Although things have improved somewhat in recent years, the city of San Diego doesn’t feel welcoming to me. I went once for a library convention, and that was much more pleasant. As a Comic-Con visitor, I feel like the city regards me as a pig, a beast to tolerate because I spend money. The convention brings in celebrities, whom I’m sure are treated well (if only because they have people on the payroll to guarantee it), but me? I’m the rube paying $4 for a bottle of water.

The water in my Vegas hotel room mini-bar is $8. And I don’t drink it. But you know what? A lovely woman comes by twice a day to ask if I want anything. She is thrilled when I have a request for her, even if it’s just for more free shampoo.

At Comic-Con, I have to stand in line for hours to see a panel, which I may not get to see because thousands of other people want to see the same panel. In Vegas, if the hot new Batman slot machine is being used, there are more around the corner, or down the street.

At Comic-Con, if I don’t make a dinner reservation by five, I can forget about eating anyplace where I can sit down. In Vegas, there are world-class restaurants (many outposts of places I love in New York) stacked up on top of each other.

I was a little afraid to come to Vegas as an older, single woman, afraid I would feel unattractive and unworthy. The hotel at which I’m staying, the Cosmopolitan, goes out of its way to make women feel welcome. Everyone who works there is super-friendly and helpful. In San Diego, there are, instead, lots of jokes about how unsexy geeks can be. True, lots of those jokes come from us geeks. I don’t think that kind of self-hatred would be funny anyplace else.

My friend Pennie used to live here, back in the days when the Mob were the new guys in town. She says that there is a tradition of service here because the populace knows that’s how they keep their jobs. San Diego, on the other hand, is a city with more than just a hospitality industry. I don’t mean to say that San Diego is rude (because, as a New Yorker, how would I know?), but they don’t make me feel like my needs are a priority.

There has been talk for years of moving Comic-Con to Las Vegas. I don’t think it would work. This city is too expensive. It would be a lovely idea, however, to move Las Vegas to Comic-Con.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

 

 

Dennis O’Neil: Maybe…

Maybe you’re not reading this. Maybe you’re one of the thousands of computer users who lost Internet access on the interface between Sunday and Monday – that’d be midnight – because some really evil cyberstinkers infected your machine with the “Doomsday” virus and in the process made themselves rich. They were caught – sometimes the Feds get it right – but apparently nothing could be done about their mischief they caused and so, barring the unforeseen, at midnight on the ninth, some 69,000 U.S. computers until things get sorted out. I hope that yours isn’t one of them.

Maybe I should switch tenses and say that, again, maybe – is there no end to the maybes? – you won’t be reading this due to malfunctioning machinery. (I’m typing it at a little after five on Sunday. You think I know what will happen in seven hours? You think I know what will happen in two minutes? Please!)

So if you won’t be reading my blather, what will you be doing? Heading toward the annual mind-croggling San Diego Comic Con? If so, well… brace yourself. It’s an intense experience, that con, and I guess it can be an expensive one. Hotel rooms on beachfront San Diego don’t come cheap. Food costs aren’t too bad, but it is a tourist area. And inside the convention itself are hundreds of merchants who, in my experience, are nice people, but they do want to sell you something. And isn’t one of the reasons for con-going to buy stuff you can’t get on your home turf?

But – here it is again – maybe you’ve been bitten by the economy and a trip to southern California is not a current possibility for you. Always next year, but meanwhile… Can you afford a movie ticket? It’s a bit early to see the new Batman flick, which doesn’t open until the twentieth in most places. But the new Spider-Man is all over the place and – here it comes again – maybe you live near a multiplex that reduces admission costs during drive time and, being as financially strapped as you are, you aren’t doing anything else late afternoons, are you? If you have to pay the full freight, skip lunch. And dinner. And don’t even think about popcorn.

Although I haven’t seen the movie myself yet – ahem, maybe Tuesday? – I believe I can calm those who are wondering, What the heck? It’s only been five years since the last Spidey, and only a decade since the first big-screen Spidey and that one did include an origin story, thank you, and now they’re reinventing the whole mythos, including another origin? I mean, what the heck!

Okay, take comfort in remembering that the history of the filmed entertainment’s first cousin, comic books, demonstrates that a little reinvention, from time to time, is not necessarily undesirable. On the contrary. As for the small number of years between origin and origin revisited… There were two filmed adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s classic crime novel The Maltese Falcon in the ten years before John Huston gave us his version and the existence of the first two did nothing to harm the excellence of Huston’s work.

That’s a factoid you might miss if your computer’s on the fritz and you’re not reading this. Or – wait for it…maybe not.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases Writes From Las Vegas?

 

The Point Radio: Morgan Spurlock & That ComicCon Film


Just before LAST year’s ComicCon, the industry was buzzing about documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock‘s movie about the nation’s biggest pop culture event. Now COMICCON EPISODE IV:A FAN’S HOPE is out on DVD and Morgan tells us the ups & downs of the whole project, plus his view on where he thinks ComicCon is headed. And we already have some late breaking con rumors to share, too!

We’re headed to San Diego – but you can our reports direct from the show floor on The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or mobile device–  and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

A CLick Survival Guide for Comic-Con International

With Comic-Con International, ak.a. San Diego Comic-Con, now just days, almost hours, away, those traveling to the extravaganza are packing to hit the road. There are several noteworthy survival guides we can recommend to those of you less familiar with what it’s like being there. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter has his valued 150 tips, the gold standard of advice.

But our friends over at Click Communications has also assembled a witty Survival Guide of their own. Click is a leading media public relations firm and we’ve been dealing with them for years. They talk the talk, walk the walk, and have plenty of good pieces of advice to share along with thumbnails on many of the properties near and dear to their hearts. While Tom’s tips are good for everyone, even veterans, this guide is great for newcomers and those who don’t speak Geek as fluently as the rest of us.

They explained to us, “This guide began as a way to offer some helpful tips—and a little entertainment—to anyone working the Con who might not count down the days ‘til July the way we do.  Now in its fifth year, our simple How-To manual has grown into something that “n00bs” and nerds alike can appreciate. This year, the guide also features original artwork from some talented, up & coming comic book artists: Tess Fowler, Tony Fleecs, and Scott Arnold.”

Since you’ll be stuck on lines for a good portion of the con, they have even come up with a useful way to pass the time: The Click Communications Comic Con Survival Kit Contest!

Enter to win a Survival Kit of your very own by visiting our blog, or join us in playing Comic-Con Bingo.  Grab the Bingo card from the back of the Guide and share your pics online via Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest to line up your finds to win fabulous prizes while in San Diego.  For more information, and to enter to win, visit either here or here.

Now for Click’s OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:

Click’s Comic-Con Survival Guide is just a little something they put together for your information and our amusement. There’s zero guarantee that the information they found online is 100% reliable.  After all, release dates change, actors need rewrites, directors run out of budget, writers go…insane. Things happen. Since we all know that, no one should take any of the information contained within as locked-in gospel or anything. Okay?  Okay.

Get the Gringo Swag and More at Comic-Con International

Get the Gringo, the latest action-comedy starring Mel Gibson, will be making its debut on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download July 17, 2012

Before the film comes home, it will be making an appearance at SDCC at Fox Booth #4313, where attendees can pre-order the film and participate in numerous activities. Fans will also be treated to loads of cool swag, including an exclusive mini-poster where fans are tasked to find the ‘Gringo’s’.

In addition to the mini-posters, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will be hosting a few fun activities to promote the release, including photo-ops with Lucha libre wrestlers and sexy ring girls (on Friday, July 13 and Saturday, July 14, 2012).

Attendees can also take part in the #GetheGringo San Diego Comic-con social media experience. The ring girls will be carrying posters with an exclusive QR code and fans who scan the code, post photos of the wrestlers via Twitter (using #GettheGringo) or upload pictures to Facebook, will receive a voucher for a free taco from Lucha Libre Taco Shop in San Diego.

Fans are also be encouraged to ‘like’ Get the gringo on Facebook via: https://www.facebook.com/GetTheGringo

*****

Written produced by and starring Mel Gibson, Get the Gringo is an explosive action filmed infused with dark comedy directed by Adrian Grunberg from a screenplay he co-wrote with Mel Gibson and produced by Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey and Stacy Perskie. Filmed in Mexico, the multi-lingual film also stars Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Jesus Ochoa, Roberto Sosa, Dolores Heredia, Kevin Hernandez, Fernando Becerril, Mayra Serbullo, Mario Zaragoza, Gerardo Taracena, Tenoch Huerta and Peter Gerety.

During a high-speed car chase with the US Border Patrol and a bleeding body in his back seat, Driver (Mel Gibson) violently crashes his car into the border wall as he tries to outrun them.  Driver survives the crash only to land inside a hard-core Mexican prison where he enters the strange and dangerous world of “El Pueblito.”  He finds unlikely guidance from a 10-year-old kid who shows him the ropes.

Marvel Expected to Announce Guardians, Big Hero 6 Films at San Diego

Marvel Studios is expected to announce the highly anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy movie at Comic-Con International. The film, according to Latino Review, will be their second 2014 release, completing a roster of films now dubbed Phase Two.

The time- and star-spanning team was first created by Arnold Drake and Gene Colan, appearing in the try-out title Marvel Super-Heroes #18 (January 1969). While never earning a title of their own, they went on to be recurring guest stars in a variety of titles all through the 1970s.

Under writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, a new incarnation of the Guardians have been a focal point of their cosmic stories, beginning in the Annihilation: Conquest stories. That particular cycle of stories ended a year or so back, paving the way for a new cycle, expected to be written by Brian Michael Bendis.

The new cycle of stories was teased with the arrival on Earth of Nova in the pages of Avengers vs. X-Men #1 followed by his digital exclusive story.

Meantime, Marvel has been registering domain names and laying claim to Guardian trademarks in a wide variety of merchandise, tipping their hands that such a feature was in development. It was even mentioned as one of several second tier properties being considered for later this decade but clearly it was a feint.

Marvel Comics has mastered the slow news leak, providing tips and nods in a certain direction, leading up to the not-so-surprising news announcement. You can trace this back to Joe Quesada badmouthing Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane Watson at least a year before the eventual One More Day storyline that altered the Marvel reality.

Over the last few months, Marvel has been teasing that things are about to take a dramatic turn as one creative team after another have announced wrapping up storylines and paving the way for a freshening of the Marvel Universe.  Several Thanos titles were announced for this September including two by Jim Starlin the character’s creator.

With The Avengers completing Phase One, the second cycle of films begins in 2013 with Iron Man 3 to be followed in November by Thor 2. For 2014, Captain America 2 was previously announced for April 4with a TBA on the books. (Sony, meantime, has Amazing Spider-Man 2 pencilled in for May 2 and Fox has saved July 18 for another X-Men First Class Sequel). IMDB already has a placeholder page awaiting confirmation.

While there’s no word on which members of either version of the team will be used, we’re looking forward to Groot and Rocket Raccoon being a part of the cast. Apparently, Thanos will be the Big Bad to tie things together with his arrival hinted at with a sighting of his Infinity Gauntlet in Thor and his cameo at the end of The Avengers.  Latino’s piece speculates Thanos will appear in Guardians which will be the final film prior to 2015’s The Avengers 2.

Meantime, Marvel’s corporate masters, Walt Disney, just revealed this afternoon that they are working on their first Marvel animated property: Big Hero 6. The timing is interesting in that the Previews catalog out yesterday contains a new Big Hero 6 project from writer Chris Claremont.The team was introduced in 1998’s Sunfire and Big Hero 6 from Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau.

Planned for 2014, the blog says in part, “I promised my Bothans that I wouldn’t reveal much about the Marvel project that Walt Disney Animation Studios was working on, that I would only allude to it until something else broke about it. Well, now a website has let the cat out of the bag. Remember that I mentioned that the property would be unlike anything the Mouse had done before? I also mentioned to some that inquired about it, that Marvel owns 4000+ characters and everyone was thinking it was an animated Iron Man or X-Men or even “Power Pack.” Well, it’s not. It’s not one of the top 100 or 200 characters even. The actual title is much more obscure than most people know. In fact, most comic book fans will not even know the title, or most of the characters. So, what is the title/characters that Disney is adapting into an animated film?”

 

REVIEW: Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture

[[[Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture]]]
By Rob Salkowitz
McGraw-Hill, 304 pages, $27.00

Comic book fandom was a natural outgrowth of science fiction fandom, splintering off in 1961 as the revival of superhero comics was clearly here to stay. In that year, sci-fi fan and future author Richard Lupoff published Xero, the first comics-only fanzine. Just a few years later, in 1965, the first comic convention occurred in New York City, birthplace of the first science fiction con back in 1939. The success of the zine and the con inspired others to produce their own tributes to the comics of their youth and comics fandom spread rapidly, fueled by the nationwide furor ignited by ABC’s Batman in 1966.

Interestingly, the first to write about comic conventions and its attendees was Fredric Wertham, the very man pilloried for almost single-handedly destroying the field with his poorly researched Seduction of the Innocent. Since then, fans and the ways they display their affection have been usually relegated to footnotes in other histories about the field or pop culture. One of those fans, Rob Salkowitz, has changed that with his new book, Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture. Coming from McGraw-Hill and billed as a glimpse into this world for the business reader, it breezily takes us through the 2011 Comic-Con International experience. (more…)