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.
Do NOT read after the fold if you are trying to remain pure and virignal about what you see in Spider-Man 3. You’ve been warned.
This is the first time we’ve seen some of these items. Photos after the fold.
Piles of stuff from the Marvel previews panels and various toys around. We’ll be splitting this up into two posts, one with spoilers. In no particular order:
Matt Fraction and Barry Kitson have just been announced as the new creative team on The Champions.
Here’s a hopeful contestant auditioning for the next season of the Stan Lee-hosted Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, hoping to stand out from the rest of the bunch. Banana detractors, beware!
Auditions are continuing throughout the New York Comic Con, so check back to see who else we digitally capture.
ComicMix caught up with Neal Adams this afternoon to talk Batman, and received a couple nice surprises.
Adams is indeed collaborating with Frank Miller on a long-anticipated Batman miniseries entitled Batman: Odyssey, and originally slated for six issues but he believes the story will warrant enough material for eight. Adams has created and will be plotting and pencilling the story, with Miller supplying the dialogue. Adams will also be inking the first two issues — and NYCC attendees can see the entire #1 (beautifully detailed art, all of which you can see as there’s no lettering on the booth copy) — but expressed an interest in having other long-time (and as yet unnamed) inkers work over his pencils for future issues.
Until the book is finally scheduled by DC, the place to see the preview will be Booth A317 in Artists Alley.
Mike Raub’s interview with Neal Adams will be on our Podcast this Tuesday.
Everyone’s getting into the podcasting act! Jamal Igle (see pictorial) will be participating in a serial podcast called The Mighty Mighty Adventures of Earl-Wayne and Chuckchuk (come on, you know you want to tune in on the basis of the name alone), which should be fun as he has such a terrific voice. And an old friend from college, David Levin, tells me his company, Brainstorm, Inc., is getting ready to do daily comics videocasts next month. With so much multimedia centered around comics, oversaturation might be a concern, but nobody ever complains about too much movie and TV coverage.
And in case you missed this news item amid the pictorial, Rob Walton’s Ragmop has been collected. This is huge news to those of us with very fond memories of that title. Lots of new words and art, updating ending, the whole shebang. Must dash and find out more stuff!
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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