As usual, as the show wears on, our obligations pile up, leaving less and less time for blogging, which is totally lame. Saturday, long dreaded as the ultimate Con-Mageddon, was instead a lovable pussy cat. For whatever reason — Twilighter defection, massed lines outside Hall H, Ballroom 20 AND the Indigo Ballroom at the Bayfront Hilton, people huddled in fear at home — everyone we mentioned it to agreed the floor was less crowded and had more open space than any other day.
In fact, everyone agreed that Preview night has become the much dreaded “Saturday” of the con, with no programming to keep people off the floor.
Most folks also noted fewer costumes on the floor. Coupled with the smaller displays in the movie section, it does seem that the real economy has slowed the fantasy economy a bit.
In comics news, Jim Shooter is back at Dark Horse, reinventing the Gold Key Universe. Bill Willingham is at IDW, writing ANGEL and a new series with Gene Ha for IDW.
We spent a long time talking to Dean Mullaney on a non-Marvelman/Miracleman related matter, but he told us his version of what the contracts say — Marvel’s new Marvelman stuff is based on the original Mick Anglo stuff, apparently, hence it being called MARVELMan. We’ll have more on this when we can devote the time to it that it deserves. The short version of our own takeaway is that the legal web is so complex and all-encompassing that reprinting all those old MIRACLEMAN would almost be an anticlimax at this point.
In the social scene, we hit the Pop Candy meet-up and drank amazing comics-themed cocktails with some swell folks. We were thwarted in attempts to order room service, so ended up very, very late at an awesome sushi place that unfortunately decided to kill some of the sushi right in front of us. Hooray for Beef Jerky!
After that, it was the fab PopKult party with a kabillion peeps and then a final wind-up at the Hyatt where the other kabillion folks were hanging out. We reunited with some old friends, made a new one or two and then called it a night, hoarse and baggy-eyed. Yet another Comic-Con. Since these reports have been so lame, here’s some piccies.
This “Walking” statue may well be the emblem of Comic-Con.
Surly nerds who were camping out Thursday night.
Jackson/Cameron
Russ Heath briefly and graciously accepts his Eisner Hall of Fame award.
Judges just appointed new heads of Elite Security.
Gilbert Hernandez, Diana Schutz, Mario Hernandez
A little Green Witch!
Dylan Williams of Sparkplug eats his last scrap of food as Austin English contemplates the future.
The Isotope’s James Sime and Pop Candy’s Whitney Matheson.
iFanboy’s Ron Richards, Cecil Castellucci, Hope Larson and Mark Bernadin (named new co-writer on THE AUTHORITY…AND winner of the SD Fat Bastard Challenge! What a con!)
Shane Helms, Nick Barrucci and Dave Gibbons
The beginning of the end…
Go read “Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd” edited by Cecil Castellucci and Holly Black! It has fiction from just about every geek tribe you can name, with cool cartoons from Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O’Malley. Buy it, if for nothing else, the short story, “Once You’re a Jedi, You’re a Jedi All the Way”, a story about forbidden love. *sniff* s’beautiful man…eep.
The Dark Horse-Shooter (Gold Key) deal doesn’t make much sense, from a creative standpoint. If Shooter is going to rework the characters, (“start from scratch” and “reinvent”, Dark Horse’s Richardson was quoted as saying), then why use those characters? Is whatever name recognition factor that’s present more important than anything else? I doubt that the “essence” of any of the characters is unique.
I’m used to seeing Marvel and DC publish stories using certain characters simply to preserve their trademarks, but how much financial value is assigned to a given trademark? Is there some formula used for calculating the value of name recognition, based on the number of issues published starring a character over a certain time period?
With all due respect to Shooter’s creative abilities, trying to revive the Gold Key heroes makes as much sense to me as a producer wanting to do an updated version of Gilligan’s Island.
SRS
That pic of the walking statues made me think of a league of Gumbys, ready to take over the world…
I’m not even tired, yet in your last sentence, I read “horse and buggy eyed”.
Maybe I need new glasses.
Did you see the tna match?
Meltzer told me it got raves.
Good job, Heidi. Wanted to point out all my daily con blogs are now up, here’s the one for today:
http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=4859
Steven:
I’m curious to see to what degree Jim Shooter and other writers and artists wil reinvent the Gold Key / Valiant / Acclaim characters, but I think there is a point to reviving them. If you try to release a comic book featuring new superhero characters, you’d see how hard it is to find a place in the market and probably agree that any name recognition is better than none. The Valiant runs of those characters are fondly remembered by a lot of fans.
In short, it makes at least as much sense as Dynamite releasing new comics with the Black Terror and the Golden Age Daredevil.
Fewer costumes than last year? Didn’t seem like it to me; must’ve been all those ‘Twi-fans’ normies diluting the Con population number…
Smaller movie booths? Sure, there wasn’t any “Owl Ship” or full-size “X-Wing” taking up Floor space this year; but when those booths started handing out freebie swag, the aisles felt just crowded as they were last year— ‘smaller’ booths and all. The biggest logjam being when WB gave out those huuuuge bags of theirs [new and improved with a poster tube section!], forming lines that went AROUND the booth and down the middle of the aisle. (PARAMOUNT did the queing thing better by having their line form up against the western wall and then ferrying small batches with redemption tixs for the foam fingers, etc.)
And: “the real economy has slowed the fantasy economy a bit”? Maybe for the cosplayers and Hollywood followers as postulated above, but NOT for the Gaming Industry.That southern section with PLAYSTATION, CAPCOM, SOE was as crowded with Con attendees as I’ve seen the “movie section” ever been— and even more so when THOSE booths started giving out their swag! Freebie posters and shirts— just like those movie booths!
(So maybe this is the year when “Comic-Con” began morphing into
“Gaming-Con”, after it morphed into “Movie-Con”?)
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