Oh, honey, my feet are still tired. I have finally administered myself enough medicinal martinis to get back in the game, though, and I have to tell you I had a pretty freaking fabulous time at Dragon*Con 2011. I did take pictures and you remember that part where I said my phone camera was good enough? Yeah, not so much. Next year I'm sucking it up and taking the real camera. That I am already thinking about next year should be taken as a sign of the kind of time I had, though: a very good time, indeed. The Rainbow Flag Party was packed and lots of queer cosplayers were happy to pose for your intrepid reporter; the gaming track was fantaaaaaaaaaaaastic OHMYGODSOMUCHFUN and I only got in one shoving match with other Con-goers which, given my redneck roots, I count as something of an accomplishment.
Read on for the skinny on this year's trip! Oh, and here's an early caveat: the con staff themselves were extremely and very personally rude to me this year so I feel no real compulsion to be nice for niceness' sake. Every opinion expressed in this post is (a) mine alone and no one else's and (b) as honest as it gets.
Holy Mother Madonna and Her Sacred Cones! Is Dragon*Con 2011 really only a week away? The husboyfner and I are attending along with two of our dear friends. The very center of my calendar is the Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night, courtesy of the ever-fabulous OutlantaCon and the Brit Track. Last year it was the absolute highlight of the weekend and I am expecting even greater things this year! Other things high on my to-do list: losing my convention gaming virginity and stalking Garrett Wang.
I know there are PK readers who go - including one who may be doing a presentation at a panel? If you're going to be there, look for me; I'll be the goateed tall guy with the badge that says KlarionPK. If you're going to be running or participating in any special events or you want to meet up with some fellow queer fans for coffee and convo, speak up and let us know to attend! If by wild chance you're also signed up to play Savage Worlds or D20 Modern this weekend, especially give me a shout! You can email me at klarion at pink kryptonite dot com or you can hit me on the tweets as @KlarionPK. If all else fails, leave a comment here and I'll try to check it.
If I don't see you then have a great time, play safe and remember to take a snack so you don't get cranky. I'm not trying to be your mother, I'm just trying to be mine.
Technically we don't do weekends and holidays at Pink Kryptonite, in that we never or almost never post on them, but a tweet from @Marvel yesterday asked readers to identify for what they were thankful in comics this year and that made me decide to post this: a very quick listing of the five books / storylines / comics experiences in general for which I'm thankful as I look back on 2010.
It's not a "best of" list, in no small part because I haven't gotten to read the new Batwoman book yet (and it's a strong contender for a spot on that list if my hopes are at all to be sustained by the work itself), but it is a list of the first five things that came to mind as having been really enjoyable and enjoyed: a gay alien warrior, a gay detective, a new breed of bloodsucker, some young and angsty Avengers and those pictures of Grant Morrison in his underwear Rubber Justice was kind enough to link - er, I mean, Bruce Wayne's return from the dead-ish.
Read on for more, plus a hunk of love-to-hate-it fruitcake at the end!
I confess that my wallet and I were both happy to read the following in a story at ComicBookResources:
During the ICv2 Conference On Comics & Digital - a Thursday afternoon industry pre-event to New York Comic Con - Marvel Senior Vice President of Sales & Circulation David Gabriel confirmed that new books launching in January 2011 will not debut at $3.99. "A lot of talk I've heard [today is] about the pricing increases overall...because of the digital comics sales, prices will decrease," he said as part of a panel whose focus was "Print Vs. Digital."
I have no interpretation of "because of the digital comics sales" other than that it's proving to be sufficiently profitable that Marvel is trying to tie it to an overall drop in prices. I'm no businessman, but I do still have a couple of questions and comments raised by that idea - and there's an important part in all this that isn't being discussed at the headline level.
Read on for more random breeze-shooting about the business decisions of organizations I can't rightly claim to understand!
Whew! What day is it? Where am I? Who am I? Did anyone get the license plate of that convention that just went by?
I just spent Saturday and Sunday in the company of a few tens of thousands of fellow fans at Dragon*Con 2010 and I think I'm finally ready to lift the cucumber slices from my eyes and dish about the best and worst of Dragon*Con. I didn't get to do a lot of comic book stuff this weekend - Dragon*Con is so wonderfully/woefully diverse in its topics that any given corner of fandom is constantly in danger of being lost in a sea of other ways to get one's geek on - I did get to see a ton of stuff: animated short films, a panel on the future of pen and paper roleplaying games (I keep a set of d20 dice in my messenger bag at all times, no lie), a magic show by Brian Brushwood, most of the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 talking about the early days of the show, Farscape's Virginia Hey and Raelee Hill, Adam Savage of Mythbusters, a cosplay parade, Peter David live and in person and the fabulous Rainbow Flag Party thrown by OutlantaCon and the Brit Track from Dragon*Con 2010. I mean, sure, I wanted to go to the Stan Lee talks but as it turned out so did everyone else in our half of the galaxy. Sorry, Stan, but no amount of X-Men love can make me skip a day's worth of events to stand in line for that one. Instead, I have a hundred other topics to discuss.
Just a quick note to remind any readers who are attending Dragon*Con this weekend that OutlantaCon and the Brit Track are throwing a queer-targeted Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night from 10pm to 12:30am. From the pocket guide it looks like that happens in the Sheraton but honestly I am not sure that I have quite worked out how to read this thing. I'll be wearing a nametag with my nom de plume and a black shirt. I know, I know, it's shockingly original con wear but sometimes one must simply pick a stereotype and lean into it. Feel free to come hang out at the party, say hi and get your groove on. I'll also have access to email all weekend.
Maybe after we can stalk Peter David togetherstalk cute nerds together compare notes on the Dragon*Con experience!
Irony can be a powerful tool, as the anti-Westboro church demonstrators showed yesterday outside of SDCC, but Matt Fraction and his wife Kelly Sue DeConnick found a better way to cancel out Phelps' bigotry. Organized under the #godlovesbatman hashtag on twitter, the duo set up a pledge
...in the spirit of love, we are pledging to donate $50 to amfAR if Phelps and his crew actually show up (often they don't) and $10 an hour additional to amfAR for every hour they stay. And we'll make our donation in Fred's name.
Frankly, the politest kick in the nuts I've ever seen, as it essentially turns the protest into money earned toward a cause he opposes, like AIDS reseach. Phelps and crew ended up making a poor show of it anyway, ditching the San Diego streetside in under an hour, presumably to wash off the smell of defeat by Bender's shiny metal ass. Truer to their word, the couple made up for the church's rather limp appearance with a $100 donation each to amfAR. The noble endeavor is still taking personal donations, and acts of kindness done in the name of the project should continue regardless of Phelps' presence. If you want to find a way to help, or to check out recommended funds, check Kelly Sue's blog for details.
Hallmark never quite did it for me. Which explains why I've consistently stuck with macaroni-and-glue Valentine's Cards since kindergarten. But this year's different. I've got the Batman & Robin Comic Generator. Well, okay, using a corporate preprocessed image and applying your own supposed beautiful and unique words doesn't stray very far from Hallmark, but it's sure to be cheaper.
This Valentine's Day, say it with love. Say it with a Bat-slap to the face.
I'm a big fan of Chris Sims' writing about comics. His slight obsession with absurd Batman panels makes me a little hot for him, so maybe I'm prejudiced, but I think he's a funny guy. Today he posted to Comics Alliance a list of Super-Hero Missed Connections ads that really and deeply amuse me. Well, OK, the one about Lobo? Enh, but I'm kind of reflexively that way about anything involving Lobo.
On his own blog, Sims links to the inspiration for them: a hilarious parody screenshot of a Gotham City Craigslist page done by Kevin Church.
I'm a big fan of any work that explores the more pedestrian, everyday corners of otherwise fantastical settings such as these - yes, I liked the first part of Gotham Knight best of all - and some of these are a perfect example of that: Bowser wants a friend, Adam Strange wants a day off from planet-saving, Batman wants at long last to have a good word with Catwoman. Anything that relies on the notion super-heroes are really just people after all will align nicely with my own entertainment tastes, as these mostly do.
Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark, discussed here in an earlier post and possessing what is surely one of the world's strangest titles, was originally scheduled to begin previews on 25 February of this year. A news release being reported today states that they're scratching that as their start date but that an opening this year is still planned. Given the huge names involved, I'd be awfully disappointed if this ran into problems but it certainly wouldn't be the first big weird idea to have trouble or delays reaching the stage.
It's worth noting that the "Buy Tickets" link on the musical's site is still live but following it still takes one to the site where American Express members can pre-order tickets for the very previews that have theoretically just been canceled.
I'd probably use this as a chance to discuss the widely-reported implosion of the existing Spider-Man film franchise, but honestly I'm a little too excited about that. For one thing, Spider-Man 3 was a dog of a film; for another, I went to a speaking and signing event when Bruce Campbell's memoir (If Chins Could Kill) was released. Someone in the crowd asked him if there were plans to do an Evil Dead 4 now that Raimi had such weight in Hollywood and Campbell's response was, "If you can convince Sam to do Evil Dead 4 instead of doing Spider-Man 2, be my guest."
So, with that in mind, maybe now is the perfect time for Raimi to return to his roots.
In observation and celebration of DC's 75th anniversary a line of DC-related & -inspired designer merch is hitting the shelves at Bloomingdale's. As a fan of Batman and a student of Japanese I have a particular appreciation for the Batman shirts that include "Bato-man" in Katakana. The hottie in the picture is purely a coincidence and in no way influenced my selection, I assure you, especially if you're my boyfriend.
Apparently there's a launch event featuring sales and cocktails at Bloomingdale's brick and mortar stores on Wednesday night. If you live out of range of a physical store, as I do, the DC goods are also available on their website.
Review: Stormwatch #1
Stormwatch #1, the first of DC's new 52 to feature LGBT characters (before the reboot, at least) is out to add a new cosmic dimension to the post-Flashpoint universe. There isn't much to be said for our beloved broship yet (though the last page shows a handshake between Apollo and Midnighter and promises a "Big Bang"), but the issue is a great gauge for whether or not you'll want to stick with the series to see the romance purportedly unfold....
