Tags
Artists Alley, Comic-Con International, DC Comics, Eisner awards, Lucasfilm, New Yorker, racial stereotypes, San Diego Comic-Con, Seinfeld, sexual harassment, Star Wars
July 8 at 4:59pm
At the San Diego Comic-Con: It’s remarkable that at an event that attracts more than 150,000 people, some are always surprised that they have to wait in long lines.
July 9 at 5:24am
At the San Diego Comic-Con:
The DC booth displays an image of the Justice League that perplexes me. See it at http://www.dccomics.com/sites/default/files/files/2011/07/Rebirth_GScreen_front_lres1.jpg.
Thin, black lines run through the costumes of Superman, Batman and other characters. I think the lines add unnecessary complexity to designs that are clean and classic, but that’s just a matter of personal preference.
What’s odd is that the lines make the costumes look like segmented armor — skin-tight armor, but still armor. Putting Batman in armor makes sense; he’s human, he has no super-powered weaponry, and he fights up close, throwing punches. So sure, protect the guy with sheets of Kevlar.
But Superman, Mr. Invulnerable himself? And Green Lantern, who can conjure any shield or other protection just by thinking hard?
Superman’s costume is especially odd. I don’t mind that DC’s swapped his red trunks for a belt, although I don’t know why a guy who doesn’t carry tools and isn’t even wearing pants needs a belt.
No, I keep looking at his collar. Something that high and stiff says to me not “friend of the ordinary guy” but “Nazi commandant.”
And has anyone else noticed that Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash all wear belts or other costume elements that form a V pointing straight at their crotches?
July 9 at 3:48pm ·
At about 15 to 20 seconds from the end of this clip, when Han Solo is saying, “Great shot, kid, that was one on a million!”, is Han masturbating Chewbacca?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOFgFAcGHQc
I mean really, what IS Han doing?
July 9 at 10:30pm
“Comic-Con needs to get more proactive in its stance on deterring acts of sexual harassment. . . . Women are speaking up about verbal harassment, unwanted touching and drone-headed males who grab them for photographs and use photo-ops as an excuse to grope.”
I wish that this accusation were false, but I suspect that it’s often all too true.
May the enforcement be with you:Comic-Con needs to get more proactive in its stance on deterring acts of sexual harassment.
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/article-14363-may-the-enforcement-be-with-you.html
July 10 at 7:12am
Funny stuff:
The New and Improved San Diego Comic-Con Anti-Harassment Policy – The New Yorker
Rules include: No Supermansplaining, Batmanspreading, or Iron Manslamming.
My faves: “No means no, and sometimes ‘I am Groot’ also means no, depending on the inflection and context.” and “Under no circumstances should you invite any fellow attendee to ‘visit the wand shop’ or ‘kneel before Zod.’”
July 10 at 10:25am
A man is walking around the San Diego Comic-Con in an all- white suit and asking people to sign it. I signed it “Elvis Presley.”
July 10 at 11:02am
When you’re so tired that you fall asleep in the over-stimulating, anything-goes San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall, you get some funky dreams.
July 10 at 12:21pm
The aisles at the San Diego Comic-Con should be divided into two lines: People Looking and Gawking, and People Actually Trying To Get Some Place. And maybe another for People Moving At A Good Clip Who Suddenly Stop And Nearly Cause A Ten-Person Pile-Up.
July 10 at 2:52pm
One thing that distinguishes the San Diego Comic-Con from, say, a trip to Disneyland or a skiing vacation is that at the con, you see (or are one of) a lot of people intent on changing themselves, if only for a few days. Cosplayers get to take on the look of super-villains or Disney princesses, aspiring artists learn to transform themselves into published professionals. It’s something to respect and enjoy.
And some people are there just to buy comic books. And good for them, too.
July 10 at 3:52pm
I just walked past a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders in a head-to-toe fox costume at the entrance to Horton Plaza, downtown San Diego’s most elaborate shopping mall.
July 10 at 4:01pm
In the parking lot behind the Nordstrom’s in the imposing and sophisticated Horton Plaza stands a tent where people are selling rides on a mechanical bull. What a spring-loaded plastic rodeo attraction has to do with comic books or Horton Plaza I have no idea (except that some in the parade of passers-by might make willing suckers for their next back injury).
July 10 at 6:22pm
On the exterior wall of the Marvel booth are drawings of Marvel characters, including one that’s a feast of Native American cliches: A person of brownish (or at least well-tanned) color, shirtless, wearing buckskins, a loincloth, and war paint, wielding a bow and arrow. Oh, Marvel. You’re so sensitive and thoughtful. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gGoE37a9dPw/maxresdefault.jpg
July 11 at 9:38am
Congratulations to Bill Morrison and Kayre Morrison on their Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award at the Eisners last night. Well deserved.
July 11 at 3:21pm
For some reason, the aisles full of retailers selling toys (not the toy manufacturers, even if they sell direct to the customers) have some of the most crowded and slowest-moving aisles of the entire San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall. And the hall contains more than 50 aisles and about a thousand exhibitors.
July 11 at 3:27pm
In the San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall, I heard someone explain, “There are these things called con exclusives,” but I heard it as “con excuses.” Works either way, really.
July 11 at 3:31pm
The TEEN TITANS GO! comics collection “Party Party” is sold out throughout the San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall. See, when a book contains Lea Seidman Hernandez’s work, it sells! Lea’s selling out of the single issues of the TTG book containing her art, too.
July 11 at 5:21pm
I try to live by this bit of wisdom from SEINFELD:
JERRY: Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun, you don’t stare at it. It’s too risky. You get a sense of it and then you look away.
Some San Diego Comic-Con exhibitors test my resolve to keep following this rule. Nothing pornographic, no nudity at all — but a few exhibitors are practically exhibitionists. I’m a married man, dammit! Have a little mercy!
July 11 at 6:27pm
At the San Diego Comic-Con’s Lucasfilm pavilion, watching STAR WARS clips on a giant screen and seeing characters fall (and sometimes leap) from great heights into terrible depths, it struck me that the galaxy far, far away has starships, light sabers and an entire galactic empire, but it hasn’t developed guard rails.
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24885/safety-railings-in-the-star-wars-universe?sfb=2
July 11 at 7:44pm
The San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall’s layout is weird.
Comics publishers are in aisles 1500 through 2700. Self-publishers and other small comics publishers are in 1400 through 1900, and web comics are in 1200 through 1400.
Where is Artists Alley, which includes dozens of the artists who work with these publishers?
Aisles 5000 and 5100.
Comic-Con bosses: Please put Artists Alley closer to the artists’ publishers and colleagues.
July 12 at 9:12am
Early afternoon today, the last day of the mad marathon known as the San Diego Comic-Con, will be what I think of as burnout time for exhibitors, when some of them would rather pack up and go home than keep trying to sell or promote their products. Beware the burnout.
July 12 at 9:14am
You know that it’s Sunday at the San Diego Comic-Con when your feet are already (or still) hurting as soon as you wake up in the morning.
July 12 at 9:22am
Artists Alley at the San Diego Comic-Con is next to Hall H, where movie and TV clips and trailers are so loud that you can hear — and feel — their deep bass music and explosions pound through the wall. Makes for bizarre interruptions when you’re gossiping about sleazy publishers.
July 12 at 9:37am
Hearing people talk about getting to San Diego for the convention reminds me of something I overheard at L.A. International Airport: a young woman saying, “I don’t know what she was so upset about. It was only a PINK diamond.” Oh, entitlement.
July 12 at 2:24pm
If you don’t have to talk or listen through it, the constant thunder of overlapping voices in the San Diego Comic-Con’s exhibit hall can sound like the roar of the ocean — not a bad background for a nap.
Of course, by this point in the show, when exhaustion weighs heavily on some of us and sleep seems like God’s most blessed gift, jackhammers would sound like a good background for a nap.
July 12 at 10:25pm
We are home from the San Diego Comic-Con.
My nephew, Andrew Conchelos, did a great job in house-sitting for us. Thanks, Andy!
The convention was, as usual, a combination of joyous moments, stressful moments, and exhaustion. Lea sold out of virtually everything that she brought to the show and the things that she made during the show. Lea’s daughter, Summer, was a superb table assistant, selling Lea’s work and her own with skill and enthusiasm.
As for me: as someone who’s done less and less work in the comics business over the years, it was a deep pleasure to see that my old colleagues were happy to see me. I really miss the comics world sometimes.
July 13 at 6:31pm
The San Diego Comic-Con reminded me that certain people in comics seem to be universally liked, even loved, for both their work and their personalities. No one, for instance, ever seems to say a bad word about Sergio Aragones or Stan Sakai. The fondly remembered Archie Goodwin was another whom everybody seemed to like and whose work everybody seemed to admire — an amazing feat for an editor.
Our field has been fortunate to have people like Sergio, Stan, and Archie.