Halfway done! Friday is the second full day of programming, pop culture, and who knows what else?! [Edit: WHO BOY! Do your diligence, or else it will come due.] I’m here, ensconced in an airconditioned apartment in Brooklyn, watching the occasional Netflix documentary (Funko, Toys That Made Us), keeping an adorable miniature dachshund preoccupied, and watching the Internet feeds for news that gets overlooked. That’s my whole weekend, hope yours is filled with fun and joy! So…what’s happening…
“Comic-Con Once Again Marred By Increasingly Popular Bully-Con”
Now in its fifth year, Bully-Con reportedly drew more than 125,000 tormentors of all stripes to the San Diego Convention Center, many of whom said that for people really into making life miserable for those weaker than themselves, there was nothing quite like the massive four-day gathering.
“I don’t necessarily have to travel to San Diego to slap a copy of Spider-Manout of some pussy’s hands, but there’s something special about coming together with thousands of people who really dig the same sort of cruelty you do,” said Houston-area goon Marty Badolato, adding that he quickly made half a dozen new friends while shoving people exiting a Q&A with Tick creator Ben Edlund. “It just blew my mind to be in a single building completely surrounded by so many people making nerds flinch.”
“Mayor Faulconer comments on Comic-Con’s impact on the city of San Diego” (video)
Comic-Con will remain in San Diego until 2021, but the convention center expansion remains uncertain. A citizen’s initiative to approve a funding mechanism via hotel rooms might be on the ballot in the Fall, once petition signatures are verified.
Here are the menu and photos of the “Demolition Man” Taco Bell.
Top Photos from AP Images:
- Night King, and son
- Life-size Rocket Raccoon
- Neil Gaiman, promoting Good Omens
- Cool Star Wars cosplay
- Frozone chills while waiting in line for Hall H
- Elvis was spotted.
- If National Geographic ever covered Comic-Con, this would be the cover photo.
“Why Hollywood marketing execs love Comic-Con activations, from ‘The Good Place’ to … a sci-fi Taco Bell from the future?”
This year, attendees crossing the trolley tracks into the sprawling San Diego Convention Center must first walk past the eye-catching, cheerily yellow house from NBC’s afterlife comedy “The Good Place.”
Inside the house, a Comic-Con-exclusive video starring cast members Ted Danson and D’Arcy Carden welcomes fans into a live “experience” involving giant shrimp cocktail carousels, RFID bracelets tracking fans’ voluntarily registered personal details, cupcakes and a host of in-world actors.
“ ‘The Good Place’s’ audience is very digitally savvy — and coincidentally we’ve learned over the years that the sci-fi audience overlaps a lot with the audience” of “The Good Place,” said NBC’s Gerry Logue, executive vice president of digital and print creative, who admits the Kristen Bell series falls outside of what historically has been considered the kind of geek property perfect for Comic-Con. “ ‘Supernatural,’ ‘The Walking Dead’ — they both index high with our [viewers]. So we felt like it was a natural fit.”
“Kiwi NBA star Steven Adams is comic book hero Kiwi Legend”
Kiwi NBA basketballer Steven Adams stars in the pages of a new comic book.
Adams has had a comic, Kiwi Legend created about him, which will be sold at Comic-Con in San Diego this weekend.
Comic artist Corey Lewis Reyyy produced the piece and said Adams, who grew up in small town Rotorua and plays for the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, was an easy subject choice.
“He’s a really cool kind of character to write and to draw,” Reyyy said on a video posted on the Thunder’s Twitter page.
Iconic “Brady Bunch” house for sale after nearly 50 years
The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the Studio City neighborhood is located along the Los Angeles River, CBS Los Angeles reports. It was used in the opening and closing shots of the classic sitcom, which ran from 1969 to 1974. The rest of “The Brady Bunch” was filmed in a Los Angeles studio. So the famously-blended family didn’t actually “live” inside the house, but its exterior has become so famous, it even has its own Yelp page. It is listed as a landmark and historical building on Yelp, and now it’s listed as a home for sale on Zillow.
Its asking price of $1.885 million represents a big windfall for the current owners, who bought the property for $61,000 in 1973, according to purchase records, the Associated Press reports. That means this is the first time the house will have changed hands since “The Brady Bunch” was still in its heyday.
The inside of the home has been updated but still has touches that match the 1970s facade. A MusiCall intercom, floral wallpaper, wood paneling and stone fireplace have been meticulously maintained. Even though the show wasn’t filmed inside the house, with these ’70s details, it could’ve been.
This clip speaks for itself.
“THE 10 MOST DIFFICULT-TO-DEFEND ONLINE FANDOMS”
Surprisingly, only three are geek-related.
“DOES COMICS CULTURE HAVE AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX?”
At Higgins’ store, business is booming—sales in 2017 were up 10 percent from the previous year, and 2018 is tracking to be 20 percent better than 2017. More importantly, for those worried the future is famine, the uptick comes from younger readers looking for titles like Bone, Amulet, Asterix, and Uncle Scrooge. “We have seen an explosion of young people coming in,” he says. And those youths are picking up everything from superhero titles to indie fare like the crime-fighting canine book Dog Man.
Higgins sees the stories foretelling dark days for the industry. He’s been reading comics since the late 1980s, and working in comics shops since he was teenager, and consistently reads the death-knell pieces on comics websites. Yet those narratives run counter to what he experiences as a comics shop owner. On release day, fans still show up religiously at Comics Conspiracy and elsewhere, like Star Wars fans lining up for new movies on opening night. “When you consider buying patterns, human beings usually don’t shop like that,” Quesada says. “Comics fans are motivated. There are industries that would kill to have the kind of following that we do.”
