Musings from the God of Cities

i've been so disappointed with dc comics' countdown series for so many reasons. i think the last line (from countdown to infinite crisis 21) is awful and the only way this could have been worse is if piper looked at the 'camera' as he delivered the line.

Labels: comixxx

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

1.

2. "Captain Carrot is reunited with his Zoo Crew after a long hiatus, but things are looking pretty grim for our heroes. When The Salamandroid causes a disturbance at the Sandy Eggo Comic-Con, it is up to the Zoo Crew to come to the rescue."

Labels: comixxx

jeers to "the descent" which, despite positive reviews, i didn't care for. i just didn't think it was that scary. there were a few good moments, sure, but overall i was hoping to crap my pants with terror, but didn't.

cheers to "the graduate" which i saw for this weekend for the first time. good stuff, good stuff. i realize i'm coming into this way late, but like a wise old woman once said, "it's better to be late than pregnant. besides the obvious reasons why the movie is enjoyable, i thought it was neat to see dutin hoffman as a young, nervous buck, and to hear all those classic simon and garfunkel songs in their original context.

more and bigger cheers go to the manpanion and the brand new, totally awesome camera he bought me. i don't have a memory stick yet, so i can only take about eight pictures at a time, and therefore didn't take it outside. instead, i stayed indoors and started teaching myself how to use the camera. i'm still learnding, so the pictures didn't turn out great, but some of 'em came out pretty good. mostly 'cause the camera is so great. it has more than twice the megapixels and three times the optical zoom of my old camera. anywho, here are the highlights of the pictures i took with my new camera:

the jack knight starman action figure i have in my bathroom


and here it is up close


here's the golden age sandman action figure i have next to starman


this is the "justice league unlimited" action figure i have across from the two former JSA members


here's my arachane-variant spider woman chase action figure


here's two of the three hydra henchmen that come wih the spider woman figure


here's a homer simpson christmas ornament


here's a mochi i was eating that i thought looked kinda like some weird "dark crystal"=y creature. (which, p.s. did you know they're making a dark crystal sequel?)


finally, i tried taking some pictures from far away to test out the zoom. i'd say the camera really held its own in these pictures of stamps taken from across the room


this detail from a map several feet away


and this lord of the rings bookend on my top shelf

Labels: comixxx, pitcherz, stuff, 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

Now that i'm a year older than I was a few days ago, I've gone through some changes. I'm now the one-eyed head of Checkmate, after having gone on a year long trip to find myself, during which time I lost my powers, and was replaced by Donna Troy because I killed Maxwell Lord. I also became the mayor of Star City, and am bonded to Firehawk, while leading the League of Assassins. I spent some time in Kandor, but still managed to get knocked up by Sam Bradley before rejoining the Doom Patrol. A lot can happen one year later.

[note: if you have no idea what any idea what the hell i just wrote about, get to a comicbookery quick! if, however, you got every reference, you should probably spend a little less time at the comicbookery.]

Labels: comixxx

cheers to this sequence from this week's x-men 189 (not to be confused with x-men: the 198):




jeers to the goddamned "masked marvel" nonsense they keep sticking in the back of marvel comics lately:

Labels: comixxx

Newsarama.com: And speaking of that... Brain and Mallah. There've been stories going around that their relationship is...a little more than just teammates?

Geoff Johns: Yes. Which is what Grant Morrison established so brilliantly in his run on Doom Patrol. There's a connection between them - they are soulmates in a way no one else can understand, including the Doom Patrol. I think the trick is with the Doom Patrol and the Brotherhood of Evil is that as crazy and as bizarre as they look on the outside, on the inside there are even more cracks and fractures in their sanity. The DCU doesn't have a lot of "weird" characters and we're hoping to but a little more of that unsettling "these guys are super-heroes?" into the team.

NRAMA: But Brain and Mallah...?

GJ: Brain and Mallah.

NRAMA: Sitting in a tree?

GJ: That's how the song goes.

NRAMA: And here, the press was all over Batwoman, when over here, there's a nice brain in a tube cloning a new body so he can physically express his love with his gorilla lover…

---Newsarama.com interview with writer Geoff Johns.

Labels: comixxx

Hawkman, Issue 39, page 12, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, art by Joe Bennett

Labels: comixxx

Birds of Prey Issue 93, Written by Gail Simone; Art by Paulo Siqueira and Robin Riggs

Labels: comixxx

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

one of the things that makes me me is my love of comics. i've been reading comics since i was about 4 and taught myself to read italian by poring over my brother's old marvel comics during long summers back in the old country. i never really looked back, and now have more comics than a man my age really ought to. despite all this, i'd never been to a comic book convention. so, when good ole goldberg suggested we go to the big apple comic convention, i happily agreed. here are some of the notable things i saw at the con:

incredibly famous celebrities such as:


former monkee peter tork


and daniel logan, the lil' dude who played young boba fett

adults dressed up like fictional characters:


goldberg with boba fett. (the antenna on his head allows him to call his mother to come pick him up.)


goldberg with the power girl of... earth prime? earth-c-minus? earth-12? i never could get the dc multiverse straight.

there was also tons of merchandise which made me wish that i was rich and had some kind of tesseract house where i could keep oodles and oodles of useless crap and never run out of room:














these decals reminded me of how several years ago i thought it'd be cool to get a tattoo of the cobra logo from g.i.joe, but never did. i was glad i didn't when i went to the now defunct krazyfest a few years ago and saw literally about 7 or 8 kids with that tattoo.

this being a comic con, there were obviously comics, including marvel spotlight #32:


the first appearance of (the original) spider-woman, jessica drew. i take some small amount of... pride? less shame? in the fact that i managed to track down and acquire all of her appearances in the funny books before she became the marvel darling that she is now.

by the end of the day i was left with the feeling that the con, as a whole, was a bit of a let-down. the space the con was in was super-crowded and difficult to navigate, all of the merchants had a lot of the same stuff, and everything was priced kinda high (especially the entrance fee) for my cheapskate ass. that said, i did come away with a few good finds, despite the fact that i've put myself on a bit of a budget when it comes to comics and comic-related memorabilia. so, while i wound up buying full runs of "all star squadron" and "infinity inc.", i couldn't justify spending $40 to own the closest thing that most of the fan-boys at the con would ever get to seeing a woman's breasts:

Labels: comixxx