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

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