Inspired by missing a couple of recent sci-fi and gaming conventions, I starting researching what cons would be coming up throughout the summer. Turns out, Super-Con 2007 was going on this weekend in San Jose and I had nearly missed it. I had more work to do (the theme of the weekend), but I decided to put it off four a couple of hours, grab my camera and head down to the convention.

Super-Con is a pretty small convention, and it turns out there wasn’t much to shoot. (There were a few costumed folk, but Saturday was probably a better day for that.) I took quite a few pictures still, since I decided it was a decent time to experiment with some of the more complex setting for my camera. Consequently, I deleted more photos than I kept. Oh well, nothing important.

The best thing about comic conventions has to be meeting indie folk who are putting out their own work. I really enjoyed talking to Martin Robaszewski, who’s writing a new comic called Zecta. It’s a sci-fi story based off a video game he was designing, but apparently shelved. Valentine by Dan Cooney at Red Eye Press (not to be confused with RedEyePress.com) looked interesting.

Another highlight is meeting and chatting with the fine folks at two of my favorite charitable organizations: The Hero Initiative and the CBLDF.

The Hero Initiative is a not-for-profit organization set up to financially aid comic book artists and writers in need. Creators from the Golden and Silver Ages of comics were fairly screwed by the big companies they worked for. (To be fair, Marvel and DC are now involved with the group. (On the other hand, still: Fuck the both of you for trying to trademark “super-hero”.)

CBLDF is the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights for members of the comics community. It’s been around since the mid-Eighties and it’s almost surprising how necessary this anti-censorship organization is. I’ve been a fan since the beginning.

As always, mixed in with the big names like Jim Lee and Frank Cho, are a bunch of odd semi-celebrities. The two that jumped out at me the most were Herb Jefferson Jr. (Boomer from the original Battlestar Galactica) and the Soup Nazi. Now that’s exciting, eh?

That is, until I came across what seemed to be the biggest non sequitur… Jane Wiedlin (official site) of The Go Go’s. While not a comic book fan, she is a big sci-fi geek, and got asked to attend. They had a Q&A with her that I attended. It was billed as a “Truth or Dare” but nobody came up with any questions she wouldn’t answer and that angle quickly faded. She’s delightfully cute in person.

Oh, and John Dolmayan (drummer for System of a Down) has the coolest drum kit I have seen in a while.

Anyways, now I’m ready for Comic-Con. :)

Edit: TheGreatWhiteSnark has a bunch of fun Super-Con photos.

Recently, the full trailer for 300 was released. 300 is the film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel which, in turn, is a retelling of the legendary Battle of Thermopylae.

It is, perhaps, the best trailer I have ever seen.

The Sin City movie was another adaptation of Frank Miller’s distinctive work. The Sin City flick was really well done and stayed true to Miller’s visual/artistic style, and 300 does as well.. but in a different way.

At any rate, I haven’t even seen 300 yet and I’m already looking forward to Zack Snyder (the director) taking on the Watchmen & Rainbow Six projects. That’s how good this trailer is. heh.

The movie comes out March 9th, 2007.

My favorite podcast, Geekdrome, is officially over. It had a good run, as podcasts go. 53 weekly episodes and most of them video. Podcasts run by hobbyists (as opposed to something like Keith and the Girl where it’s a business) tend to end “too early”, but I thought we had a few more months anyways.

There’s a very large community surrounding this particular podcast, and we’re trying to figure out how to maintain it post ‘drome. Who knows if it will happen, but even if the community dissolves, I know there’s a few people I’ll still keep in contact with. So, that’s cool.

However, in addition to a very entertaining show, it was also a great source of geek news and info. In one show, I was able to get movie, comic and gaming news for a couple of guys I learned to trust, or mistrust depending on the topic and now I am starting over at square one. Dammit.

AKA Lazy Geeky Sunday.

Leaving your Sunday alarm set for the horrid hour of 08:30 has one benefit, if you’re willing to resist turning it off and rolling over. After a couple of snoozes, I realized if I got up early I’d be able to get a lot more done today. Crazy theory, I know.

So shower n’ shave and head out the door, I go. After a trip to Pete’s to caffeinate, I realized I should have gotten dressed too. So, I rectified that and headed to the local Rasputin Music and Tower Records to hunt down an mc chris (more about him in an upcoming nerdcore post soon) record that iTunes doesn’t have. No luck, but no surprise either since it’s still sort of under ground (I guess? how does one tell in these days of the internets?) Did end up with a Dropkick Muprhy’s disc I didn’t have though. So, I decided I’d try CD Warehouse, across town.

On the way, I hit up my local comic shop, Little Shop of Heroes (best comic book shop name evah, btw) to pick up a couple of issues of a book I was missing which was preventing me from reading the series.

Then I swung by EB Games to peruse their used X-box game section. Having never owned an X-box, I find the plethora of games out there that I’ve never played to be a wondrous thing. All at very likeable prices, btw. Crimson Skies for $5? ysplskthx

I took a moment to cheer up the dude at the cash register who just got burtally lambasted by the previous customer over some stupid store policy matter. I cracked wise, in more ways than one. He laughed and so I felt like I did a good deed and I leapt into the batgeek-mobile and sped away.

I was on my way home when I pulled up next to a “Geek Squad” car. I don’t appreciate them frontin’ and perpetratin’ like they’re true geeks, so I whipped out the nine-mil and blasted ‘em O.G. style.

Then I picked up some beer, got home, ordered a pizza and called my mom. She says hi, by the way.

I checked my mail (bills and a thank you note from a guy named Bill), then my email, and hey look… some new chick wants to be my friend on MySpace. Don’t they all? Her name is Angel (of course it is) and she “just moved here from college (I dunno where that is) and a horrible relationship (awww)”. I look at the picture. I blink. I look at the rest. Holy shit, I think this chick is a real doll (realdoll.com (NSFW) for those not in the know). Decide for yourself. Look into those eyes, man. Nothin’ there.

Ok, now I need to wrap up some chores, see if I can’t fix a perl script for work, crack open another beer and maybe get a little 360 in before it’s time to hit WoW with the gang. Ok, another beer. Check. One out of four down.

This blog posted is based on a true story. Some events may have been exaggerated to enhance the drama.

I saw X-men 3 on the Saturday after it opened, and have been meaning to post my thoughts on it ever since. Since I’m the only comics geek friend to several people, they keep asking my opinions and, while I’m happy to wax philosophical about the transition from comic books to film at pretty much any point in time, I do think I oughta put all my thoughts on X3 in one place. That’s here.

This might get long; moreover since I’m writing it in bits and pieces throughout a busy workday er two days er A WEEK of pure hell at work, it might get rambley. I might also make up new words like rambley. I’ll also let you, dear reader, know before I unleash any spoilers.

Ok, I feel you’ve been duly warned on all the dangers of proceeding.

Boring comic/movie geek stuff ahead.

Read more »

First, the request: I’m looking for a good comic book website with forums. See, I’m not as submerged in the comics world as I was 15 years ago, but still enjoy reading a few select titles. The one thing I miss about buying comics online (more on this in a minute) is the comic shop experience. Every shop has it’s own personality and atmosphere. Some guys behind the counter are like The Comic Book Guy, others are more like Dante and Randal from Clerks. It’s a great place to chat with psuedo-random people about comics and other geeky endeavors. So, I’m looking to find a site that has a decent crowd of people to talk comics with. (And, please, the less blank vs blank theory threads the better… (We all know Wolverine would eviscerate Batman. *Snikt*)) So, anyways, drop me a line if you have a good recommendation. c l s a t m a c d o t c o m, in case you didn’t know.

Second, the pimpage: Despite the above paragraph, the convenience of buying online cannot be trumped by the experience. At least not with the amount of time in my day. So, Sci-Fi Genre is where I buy my comics. They just redid their subscription interface, so I thought it would be a good time mention ‘em here. They offer good service and cheap shipping. Every comic is shipped bagged and boarded, for free.

No, this has nothing to do with the last blog entry I made about Superman… but that would have made for a great title.

Superdickery is not a porn site. It’s a site dedicated collecting and revealing evidence that Superman is a dick. The evidence comes straight from the source… the covers of various Superman related DC Comics. These scans are hilarious. I’m only a small ways into the site, but I already have a couple of favorites to share:

• Did you know Superman adopted Jimmy Olsen? Sound great? No. Not so much.
• Think he’s just mean to Jimmy? Nope, he screwed Bruce Wayne over too.
• But he must have been nice to Lois, right? Yeah, right.

Great stuff. Had me giggling like Frank Gorshin in my office cube.

PS: Oh, and by the way, on a related note… a big fuck you to Marvel and DC for trying to trademark the term super-hero. What a great example of collusion between industry giants to keep out independent competitors. Real nice. I guess Superman isn’t the only dick in comics.

There’s a piece of Frank Cho (yeah, the Liberty Meadows guy) artwork of for auction at ebay called Monkey Fight Club. It’s a Super Friends / Space Ghost thing featuring Gleek versus that Space Ghost Monkey. It was done for Wizard magazine, but never ran because DC has a stick up their ass. Or so the rumor goes.

It’s a funny. :) Check out Bats. And Robin. heh. Thanks to Scott Kurtz (yeah, the PVP guy) for linking it in his news.

On a lighter note, I JUST found out that my FAVORITE comic book creation team, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (the geniuses behind the Preacher series) took over The Punisher! (Thanks to Portal Dave for informing me of this and giving me more reading material for the down time.)