Hoping to capitalize on the latest superhero movies, we now present to you… Banana Rider!
Coming from the fiery depths, this banana flambé is here to protect fruit from going bad. Oh, and he’s also here for licensing. Never forget licensing.
We’re happy to see such strong work ethic from this individual — clearly he’s looking to avoid going back on the Dole.
Grammy award-winning Stevie Wonder is interviewed, DC’s weekly Countdown is discussed, and Tony Twist gets five million bucks from Todd McFarlane… all this and more (again) on our latest podcast from Mike Raub. Just press play:
In one of the smarter moves I’ve seen at this con, the people behind the AnimeNext convention have set aside a conference room at the Javitz center with shelves filled with manga that you can check out and read quietly in the room, in a nice quiet oasis from the hub-bub on the main floors. Absolutely brilliant, and the latest exhibit in why manga is kicking the tailfeathers of American comics.
At the NYCC “DCU: A Better Tomorrow – Today” panel, DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio may have let the cat out of the bag.
DiDio was asked if in the Countdown teaser image The Flash was Barry Allen and Red Robin was Jason Todd. DiDio got flustered before answering “yes.”
This drew icy stares from the rest of the panel members and applause from the crowd. DiDio’s mic was taken away for the remainder of the panel. The final question for the panel was “Who would you like to kill during Countdown?” and Greg Rucka closed the panel by looking at DiDio and saying, “I’m looking at him.”
A good time was had by all.
Image via Wikipedia
The marquee event on Friday night was “Stan Lee: An American Icon,” an event that did not go off without a couple of hitches.
There was a total lack of security at the event. When Lee arrived he came in through the crowd and took the stage. As anticipated the room exploded in flashbulbs when Lee took the stage. People started working their way to the front to get a clearer shot and soon there was a crowd five or six people deep around the stage. There was no one from the convention security there to disperse this crowd and it took five minutes for volunteers to arrive and disperse the crowd. Lee was totally unprotected.
While half of the 10001 zip code waits out in the cold, here’s what it’s doing to panel attendance inside the convention:
This was the scene at the Slayer Tales with Xander, Kendra, and Drusilla panel as of 10:45 AM, 45 minutes into the panel. If I was Nicholas Brendon, Juliet Landau, Bianca Lawson, Diamond Select (the sponsors of this panel) or Dark Horse Comics, who are publishing the new Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic, I’d be ticked.
Announced last night at the Marvel panel, Barry Kitson and Stefano Casselli have been signed to exclusive contracts with the House of M.
More information (like when Barry’s run on Legion of Super Heroes will end) as we get it.
If you were planning on coming to New York Comic Con today and you aren’t reading this from the line outside, you might want to consider turning around and going home. The convention staff is not letting anyone without exhibitor passes on the floor without standing in a line outside, in single digit wind temps.
If you got in line right at 10:00 AM, you won’t get in until after noon. That said, being in the line isn’t quite so bad because many high profile artists are stuck in the line as well. A person who identified themselves as a DC artist trying to get to a booth signing was told that his professional badge would not get him on the floor — “your day was yesterday.”
The line started at midnight Saturday morning and is currently half a mile long. Despite the promoter’s promises of twice as much space it seems that the 2007 con is marred by the same problems of overselling that made the last show a living nightmare. New York State troopers have been called out and are handling crowd control. Fire marshals are threatening show closure.
For as long as there has been a comics’ press, people have been wondering why there aren’t more women reading comics. And often those people wondering are, themselves, women: Maggie Thompson (who in 1960 co-published Harbinger, one of the first comics-themed fanzines back), The Beat‘s Heidi MacDonald, Trina Robbins (whom I’ve loved since the days of underground comix), cat yronwode of Eclipse, among many others.
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
Yet, like these women, I read comics. In my case, I read superhero comics. And I loved them. For all that time, when I was a girl, then a young woman, then a woman, a wife, a mom, I loved them. I still do.
How can this be? Don’t women hate superhero comics? Don’t we hate mindless violence, shallow characterization, demeaning stereotypes? Don’t we crave emotional connection and involving storylines?
Mark Wheatley informs us that the film Hero Tomorrow, playing at the Cleveland Film Society, features "many of the Insight Studios comic books — with Radical Dreamer and Frankenstein Mobster being front and center. In fact Frankie comic book collecting is a plot point! And the love scene in the comic book store takes place in front of a Radical Dreamer stained glass style window. Really a very nice film, pro quality and a lot of heart."
Hero Tomorrow is described as "a tragically hip look at the Cleveland comic scene as viewed through the lens of local indie filmmaker Ted Sikora. David is a young man with Rasta dreadlocks and nothing on his mind but Apama, his comic book creation. Unable to sell his stuff, David has to resort to mowing lawns. His relationship with gothically fashionable Robyn, an aspiring designer with a real job — working at the comic store — is on the skids. When even his friend Greg, off whom he’s been sponging for awhile, kicks him out, David reaches his darkest hour. It’s then that his character Apama takes over, avenging the helpless and weak of Cleveland’s suburban jungles."
The film is set to premiere March 17 and 18 at the festival.
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