Musings from the God of Cities

once again, goldberg and i went to the the big apple comic book, art, toy and sci-fi expo. unlike the 1st annual new york comicon i went to a couple of years ago, there weren't a lot of cosplayers. there were, however, a buttload of celebrities. val kilmer, hayden panettiere, and katy segal were there. sadly, i was too cheap to pay to get pictures of them. plus it's kinda creepy to pay to have your picture taken with someone. i still got pictures of celebrities, though. and by "celebrities" i mean "people that you've probably never heard of unless you're a gigantic nerdlinger." people like

the most dapperest man in comics, jim steranko


sergio aragones, father of groo


jim calafiore, who did art for exiles and countdown (and whose art i kinda don't care for. sorry, calafiore fans!)


daredevil cover artist, the not uncute alex maleev


uhm... lynda carter?


and perhaps most famous of all (if this were 1978) haywood nelson, aka dwayne nelson from "what's happening" (and possibly "what's happening now" though i don't feel like looking it up on imdb)


but the big apple comicon wasn't just about the glitz and glamor of celebrities, it's also about mounds and mounds of ridiculous crap. how ridiculous, you ask?

naked girl dressed up like a gorilla-ridiculous


sci-fi-puppy-ridiculous


unintentinally supergay hercules bust-ridiculous


wee super hero penguin-ridiculous


(that's a lot of ridiculousness, y'all.)

and to make a painfully long post mercifully short, here's the last of the stuff i saw at big apple con 2007:

lightsabers


evil lyn bust


iron man statues


a ninja named stan



and bringing up the rear (pun gratuitously intended) is this controversial statue of mary jane watson parker.

you're welcome, fanboys!

(for more pictures from the 2007 big apple comic book, art, toy and sci-fi expo, check out my flickr page here.

Labels: comicon, comixxx, pitcherz, they're not dolls

being the sneaky fella that i am, i managed to score a pass to the 2007 American International Toy Fair. the highlight was obvs seeing the d.c. figures (marvel didn't have anything particularly interesting out. there, i said it.) it was an "all business" kinda place, so i couldn't mess around too hard, taking pictures and whatnot, but it was still really cool seeing everything... and i unleashed the ninja and took some sneaky pictures of the d.c. figures. some of the pictures came out kinda polly-wolly crappy 'cause i was being all sneaktacular. i think i probably could have been less sneaky about it, since the d.c. folks seemed more relaxed than any of the other folks there. anywho, here are pictures of the new d.c. comics/d.c. direct action figures, busts and other ephemera such as


batman statues and a batwoman bust


zatanna "women of the d.c. universe" bust


busty busts (l. to r. big barda, power girl, wonder girl donna troy)


superwoman, batwoman and bizarro from loeb and mcguiness's "vengence" storyline in "superman batman"


more mcguiness bat-people goodness

it was a touch... ironic? that the two pictures i took that came out the best least worst were of some fey elseworlds flash i'm not familiar with and...


...the new aquaman, arthur joseph curry. at least you can see the variant blue beetle figure.



my favorite thing at the toy fair had to be dr. fate's helmet of nabu and amulet of anubis. they were so realisitc, i was afraid to put it on, lest it turn me to water.

oh, and tobey mcguire was promoting the new spiderman movie there. i tried to get his autograph, but he just hopped in a cab, which is when i snapped this picture of him.

he really has put on a lot of weight.

a few more pictures from the toy fair can be found here on my flickr page.

Labels: comicon, comixxx, pitcherz, stuff, they're not dolls

big, fat nerds that we are, goldberg and i once again braved the elements to go to a comic book convention. specifically, the new york comic-con. what makes the new york comic-con better than your previous new york comic book conventions is that this one is a whole heckuva lot bigger than the rest, and it included much bigger names than any other cons they've had in the city. (and by "much bigger names" i mean "comic book writers and artists that about 99% of people reading this have never heard of, but that comic book nerds would give their copy of incredible hulk #181 to meet. people like comic scribe and harry goldenblatt look-alike brian michael bendis

when i saw him, i had approximately the same reaction as my mom would have if she ever saw oprah. but i bet that most of you bitches don't even know he brought back spider-woman from obscurity. like most everyone at the show, he was supernice and ultrafriendly. also, he's totally short. like, chloe dao-short. not that there's anything wrong with that.

but comic creators weren't the only big names there. also in attendance were

chun li


flaming carrot


kevin from sin city


a jedi knight [update: turns out the knight's name is rich zak, and he was there promoting nyjedi.com. -thanks, flynn!}


uhm... some other guy from star wars (anyone out there know who this is supposed to be? i'm a much bigger comic nerd than a star wars one.) [update: turns out he's a rebel fleet trooper.]


supergirl


unemployed skeletor, who, p.s., has a myspace profile. is this guy the new blackface jesus or what?


green lantern (though, i don't know which sector's) yes, the picture is kinda crap-ay, but i realy loved the fact that it's a chick who is so into g.l. that she even had a light-up ring. i had to give homegirl a shout-out.


black... african-american... khandaqian adam (teth adam to friends) posing with goldberg. he (black adam, not goldberg) was actually working at the con, promoting this website.

there were also some cosplayers whose outfits i didn't recognize like these folks

(though, of course, the dude on the left is venom... actually, it was just pointed out that venom is actually spiderman in his black symbiote costume. the people he's with are from the anime naruto. specifically, uchiha itachi of the leaf, and momochi zabuza of the mist. thanks, rich!)


i think these guys are supposed to be specific anime characters (again, anyone know who they're supposed to be? lemme know, wouldja?) [update: a reader wrote in:
Regarding the cosplayers you have pictures of in post "Take Me Out to
Comicon": I believe the ninjas with the silver forehead covers are all characters from "Naruto", this new cartoon on Adult Swim. It seems like the show is getting pretty popular; at the con I saw at least 20 attendees dressed as such. Also, in the picture with the four cosplayers in front of the stairs, the leftmost is from Naruto, no idea who those two in the middle are, but the one on the right I also saw at the con; she seemed to be going for Dante from "Devil May Cry", a video game for Playstation2.

thanks, dustin! good to know.

update part deux:

"Jiraya
Uchiha Sasuke(as a girl)
Uchiha Itachi in his younger outfit (pre ANBU and Akatsuki) The 3 i named are from Naruto, jiraya and itachi don't come in until after the Chuniin exams and the sasuke is just a girl cosplayer as a guy character. the one on the right i have no idea though"

thanks, jon! also, since y'all are being so generous with your information, can someone tell me how so many of you wind up on this page from a comicon.com page from february of this year? I'm not complaining in the slightest. i'm just curious is all]


i think this guy is from a video game


as are these chicks.


i kinda almost don't want to know who this dude is supposed to be... middle aged man-man? [update: turns out it's the flash villain trickster. thanks, brian!] but i do have to give him credit for putting a good amount of effort into his costume, which is more than i can say for some people


*ahem*

it must get hot in those costumes




the thing that tickled me the most about all of these cosplayers is that they all had a pose ready. whenever i asked them if i could take their picture, they all totally struck a pose that had clearly been practiced in the mirror over and over again until it was just right. shit, if you're gonna go through the trouble of making a costume, you're gonna wanna make sure you look right in it.

but folks in costumes are just one of the things i went to the con to see. i also wanted to check out all the awesome, awesome merchandise. (non-into-comics folks, y'all might as well leave now, 'cause this stuff coming up will be of much less interest to you than the costumes were)

...are they gone? ok, my fellow nerds, onward to cool merch!


awesome upcoming marvel figures like iceman, phoenix, cyclops and colossus


baron zemo, captain marvel, spiderwoman, like cage, and old-school iron-man


rogue, mandarin, 'house of m' wolverine, and iron man


young avengers figures(!!!) hulking and patriot


'age of apocalypse' sabretooth


and antman, sentry, ms. marvel, and shadowcat (with lockheed, no less)

there were also some marvel statues like

colossus


mojo

of course, there was merchandise from other companies like

this tarzan (i think) statue


lex luthor, red tornado, atom, and greren arrow paperweights


batman puppet


hellboy statue

and some more... shall we say, "out there" stuff like these figures





fafi girls


goring and hitler dolls

and my personal favorite

pink astronaut jesus, aka the king of wtf?ville

for a big ole comic nerd like me, the con was pretty outta sight, and could be best summed up by this dudes jacket


oops, i meant this chick's shirt



p.s. i know a lot of fellow comicnerds find their way to this page, and if any of y'all wanna hook a brotha up, please check out my ebay comic book auctions. i'm selling off chunks of my comic collection after almost 20 years of collecting. it kinda kills me, but i need the closet space and the money. every little bit helps...

Labels: comicon, comixxx