Category: comics

Black Friday

There was no repeat of the Christmas music incident last night, so I got a good night’s sleep (or at least as good as I can manage these days). So I may actually be in shape to do a few of the things that I was too frazzled to do yesterday. However, it’s still very cold out: 12° this morning. And Raritan Valley trains are running about 30 minutes behind schedule right now. So, combining those two factors, going into NYC today might be a bad idea. I’m not going to completely rule it out, but I’m definitely not heading out to the train station right now to stand outside in the cold for a half-hour, hoping the train eventually shows up. If I see the trains get back to normal, and if it gets up into the twenties, maybe I’ll go in later.

I started my online Black Friday shopping yesterday, and I think it might be amusing to list out some of the stuff I bought, yesterday and today.

  • I picked up some random comics on Comixology, from DC’s big Black Friday sale. I got Batman: White Knight, which I’ve heard a lot of good things about. And Tales of the Batman: Gene Colan Vol. 2. I really liked Colan’s run on Batman, back in the 80s, after he left Marvel for DC. And I got Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman: Earth One Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. I generally like anything Morrison does, so I’m pretty sure I’ll like these. (These were $5 each.)
  • I bought Blade Runner 2049 and Isle of Dogs from Vudu. I hadn’t previously bought any digital movies from Vudu, but with the whole Movies Anywhere thing, I can buy from Apple, Amazon, or Vudu and the movies show up in all three libraries, so it makes sense to buy from whichever service is cheapest. (I was originally thinking about going out to see a movie today, but I think that, instead, I’ll likely stay in and watch one or both of those.)
  • I picked up Fantastical 2 for iPad for $3. (It’s regularly $10.) I’ve been using the iPhone version for years, but never got around to picking up the iPad version.
  • I bought a $100 iTunes gift card for $80 from Costco. It seemed like a good deal.
  • This morning, when I went into Lose It to log my breakfast, I got a popup offering a deal on a lifetime subscription. I’m always a bit leery of lifetime subscription deals, but I’ve been using Lose It for five years, and renewing my premium subscription every year, so I went ahead and paid $75 for a lifetime sub. Since I did that in-app, that came out of my iTunes account, nicely using up most of that gift card I bought last night. (Maybe I’ll pick up another $100 card today.)

And here are some things I’m looking at today:

  • Pluralsight has their usual Black Friday sale going on, where you can renew your subscription for $200 instead of $300. I’ll probably do that again this year. I don’t get a ton of use out of Pluralsight, but I guess I get enough that it’s worth the $200.
  • Jetpack has a 30% discount off all plans for Black Friday. I’m currently only using the free Jetpack services on this blog, but I could step up to their “personal” plan. About all that really gets me, beyond what’s in the free plan, is site backups, but that could be useful.
  • Apple’s Black Friday weekend event has started. As usual with Apple, it’s not that compelling. But it might be worthwhile for me, since I was looking at getting some new Apple stuff anyway. On the iPhone front, they only have deals on iPhone 7 & 8, and I was thinking about the XR, so I’ll probably skip those. Their Apple Watch deal is for a $50 Apple Store Gift Card when you buy a Series 3. That’s not much, but might be a good deal for me. My current watch is a “Series 0,” so a Series 3 would be a good step up. I can use the $50 towards my eventual iPhone purchase.
  • I’m thinking about picking up a second Sonos One speaker, either from Sonos directly, or from Amazon or Costco. I get a fair bit of use out of the one I bought earlier this year, and it would nice to have two, for stereo. I don’t know if I really need that, though.
  • It’s not exactly a Black Friday thing, but a friend of mine has a story in this anthology about… cannibalism. On the one hand, I’d like to support him, on the other hand, I don’t much like reading about cannibalism. But hey, it’s only $4 for Kindle.

Since I started writing this blog post, I see that the NJ Transit delays are now at almost an hour, so things on that front are definitely going in the wrong direction. And the temperature is up to 22°, so that’s going in the right direction, but maybe not far enough to motivate me to spend much time outdoors today.

a little more on Stan Lee

I feel like I need to add a second post with some links related to Stan Lee’s passing.

Stan Lee

I was sad, but not surprised, to hear about Stan Lee’s passing today. He’s been in poor health for a while, and he was 95 years old. The NY Times has posted a surprisingly length obituary. I took a look at my Twitter timeline this afternoon, and it was full of people posting about him, both comics industry folks and, well, everyone else. I could link to a bunch of other stuff about Stan, but I’ll limit myself to one more thing: Paul Chadwick’s Stan the Mensch blog post from 2010. Just a little story about Stan being kind to a fan; look around the web today, and you’ll find a bunch more like it.

John Rogers

I was going to write a post today about how I failed, yet again, to get tickets for next year’s San Diego Comic-Con. But then I saw the news about John Rogers passing away. I hadn’t ever met him, but he’s been president of Comic-Con for the whole time I’ve been going to it (and/or trying to go to it). Thinking about it now, he seems to have kept a pretty low profile over the years, considering his position. So there’s not much I can say about him. But the con has brought me so much joy over the years, and I’m sure his work was a big part of that. So, thank you for your work, John, and rest in peace.

Batman: TAS on Blu-Ray

I’m tempted to pick up the new Batman: TAS Blu-Ray set, but it’s a bit expensive, and I probably won’t get around to watching it anyway. I have the first season on DVD, which I bought many years ago, and probably haven’t watched that yet. (Of course, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every episode of the series, more than once, back when it was on TV.)

Lazy Sunday

I had tentative plans to go in to NYC for the Frankenstein exhibit at the Morgan today, but it turned into one of those mornings where I couldn’t quite talk myself into getting all my stuff together and heading for the train station. Instead, I finished reading a big Avengers hardcover, then spent way too much time writing a review of it on Goodreads. I’m kind of in a mood to read some more Marvel stuff now, so I might spend the afternoon reading Avengers vs. X-Men, which I have in Comixology.

DC was really pushing their new DC Universe service at NYCC last weekend; every DC-related panel started with the DC Universe trailer, and the service got mentioned a lot in some of those panels. I’ve alternately been talking myself into and out of signing up for the service. On the one hand, I’m a long-time DC fanboy, so there’s probably lots of stuff there I’d like. On the other hand, I still have a huge pile of unread comics and graphic novels that I haven’t read yet, and DVDs and Blu-rays that I haven’t watched. And I haven’t watched the most recent season of any of the Marvel shows on Netflix. So I already have a lot of superhero content to consume, that I’ve already paid for. But at $75/year for the service, that comes out to $1.44 per week, which is less than the price of a single comic book. So… maybe.

I’ve been curious about the game Stardew Valley since I heard it discussed on an NPR podcast a couple of months ago. (Here’s the article that they mentioned on the podcast. And here’s another NPR article that makes me wonder what kind of Stardew player I’d be…) I was kind of hoping that the game would have been available for the Apple TV, since I have a game controller for my Apple TV that I never get to use for anything. But no. It’s available for most other platforms, including Mac, PC, PS 4, Switch, and XBox One. The only game console I currently own is a PS 3, so I’m out of luck there. I could buy it for Mac or PC, but I was looking for something I could play on the TV. I saw an article a few days ago announcing that it was coming out for iOS, so I had some hope that would include Apple TV. Still no; just iPhone and iPad. And I saw that Minecraft for Apple TV has been discontinued for lack of players. So if Apple TV can’t support something as popular as Minecraft, it probably can’t support any big, interesting, game. Oh well. Maybe I should buy one of the current-generation video game consoles, but I just don’t think I would use it enough to justify the price. (I was really hoping Apple TV gaming would take off at some point.)

I didn’t make it to the big Doctor Who panel at NYCC last weekend. I’m sure it would have been fun, but it sounded like it was going to be very crowded and I was too tired to deal with that. The full panel is up on YouTube now, on the official Doctor Who channel, so I’ll have to watch that later. I watched the first episode last week, and liked it enough that I’m looking forward to this week’s episode. I don’t get BBC America, so I get the episodes through iTunes, which means I don’t get it until tomorrow. I’m not liking this new Sunday night schedule for the show. When it was on a Saturday night schedule, I could watch the new episodes on Sunday afternoon. Now I have to wait until Monday after work. Well, at least it gives me something to look forward to after work on Monday.

OK, so this turned into a long rambling post, it’s almost noon, and I’ve killed my entire Sunday morning reading comics, listening to music, and writing pointless reviews and blog posts. Eh, there’s worse ways I could have spent the morning. Time for lunch.

NYCC 2018 haul


So I did give up on the idea of going back to NYCC today. I checked out of my hotel in the morning and went straight home. Here’s a photo of my modest haul from the con. Mostly trade paperbacks out of discount boxes, plus one Warren Ellis series, also out of a discount box. (Also, a signed Zorro novel by Peter David and a signed Motor Girl omnibus from Terry Moore.)

I think one of my main takeaways from this con is that I’m too old for a full four-day con in NYC. Especially if I’m not staying overnight for Sunday night. The thought of checking out of the hotel this morning, going down to the con, then having to come back to the hotel, pick up my bags, then get back to Penn Station and take the train home in the evening was a bit too much for me.

On the plus side, I get to enjoy a little of the Somerville street fair today, and watch the Giants game!

NYCC day three

Since I wrote up posts for days one and two, I might as well write one for day three also. As planned, I did in fact spend most of the day at the con, arriving a little after 10am and leaving a little after 6pm.

I wandered the floor for a little while in the morning, before it got too crowded. And I went through Artist’s Alley again, and stumbled across Terry Moore. I bought a signed copy of Motor Girl from him. (And that’s really all I bought, unless you count overpriced Javits food and coffee.)

I went to several panels today. The first was a “Coffee and Comics” panel, with a pretty random assemblage of people, including DMC (from Run-DMC), Larry Hama, Amy Chu, Sean Von Gorman and Ming Chen (from Comic Book Men). They did, indeed, talk about coffee a bit. But mostly they talked about comics, so that was fun. (There was a Will Eisner panel at the same time as that one, and I would have gone to that one instead, if I’d been paying more attention to the schedule. But I’m glad I went to the Coffee & Comics panel.)

Next, I went to a DC World’s Finest panel. (It didn’t have anything to do with the old World’s Finest title. It was just a random panel name.) They had a variety of creators at that one, similar to the previous night’s All-Star panel.

After that one, I went to the DC Superman 80th panel. I was expecting that to be more of a historical overview panel, as these anniversary panels often are, but instead it was a conversation between Brian Bendis and Frank Miller about Superman (moderated by Dan DiDio, as many of the DC panels were.) It was actually very interesting to hear the two of them talk about Superman. I’m now a little more interested in Miller’s upcoming Superman project, given some of the stuff he said on the panel.

I stayed in the same room after that one for the Adam Savage panel, which is the only non-comics-related panel I went to. He showed a trailer for Mythbusters Jr. and talked about that a bit. He also talked about cosplay and stuff like that. And he spent about half the time answering questions. I’ve seen him live a couple of times before, and he’s always great. Very energetic, funny, and kind.

Lastly, I went to a Brian Bendis spotlight panel. I had meant to go to a Tom King spotlight, but they switched up the schedule, so the Bendis panel was moved from earlier in the day. (I’m not sure what happened to the Tom King panel.) Anyway, that was also pretty cool, but the end result is that I saw a lot of Bendis over the last couple of days. I haven’t actually read any of his DC work yet, but now I’m looking forward to some of it.

I guess that was only four panels, but it seemed like a lot. I was going to go back to the con for a StarTalk All-Stars panel at 8pm, but I’m too tired for that.

Looking back, I seem to have gone to a lot of DC panels this weekend. I haven’t gone to any Marvel panels, or really any panels from any other publisher. That wasn’t intentional, and some of that is just timing. But a lot of that is that I’m not really that interested in anything coming out of Marvel right now. I’m interested in a few things coming out from Image, Dark Horse, and other smaller publishers, but there weren’t any panels related to them that were convenient for me to attend.

I’m writing this on Saturday night, unsure about whether or not I’m going to actually go back to the con on Sunday. I have my badge, but there’s not much I’m interested in tomorrow. I’ve seen just about everything I want to see on the show floor. And there aren’t any must-see panels tomorrow. There’s the big Doctor Who panel at MSG, but that’s probably going to be crazy. There are probably people lined up for it already.

So I may just check out of my hotel tomorrow morning and go home. Or I might get a second wind, and/or remember something I want to buy, or whatever. (Or I might just want to delay re-entering the real world a bit longer, since I see we apparently now have a horrible new addition to the Supreme Court? Sigh.)

NYCC day two

I’ve got some time to kill this morning, so I might as well write up another con report. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to skip the con in the morning, and went to the Met instead. I saw the new Delacroix exhibit, then killed some time having a coffee and reading a book.

Then I went to the NY Historical Society for the Harry Potter exhibit. I had some time before my scheduled entry time, so I wandered around the museum a bit. I’d never been there before, so that was worthwhile. The History of Magic exhibit itself was very crowded. They were letting only ticketed people in, at their appropriate time, but it seems like maybe they were a little overly optimistic about how quickly people would get through it. I think that, if there’s a chance to see it when the crowds are more manageable, it would be pretty fun. The NY Times review, in fact, mentions a number of interesting items that I didn’t notice at all. (Oh, and the gift shop was almost as big as the exhibit itself. Lots of crazy Harry Potter paraphernalia for sale.)

After that, I went to the con. I didn’t do much, really. I just walked the floor a bit and checked out Artist’s Alley. I saw Peter David there, and said hello, and bought a signed Zorro novel from him. I went back to the hotel to grab some dinner and clean up a bit, then went back to Javits for the DC All-Stars panel. That was fun. I went back to the hotel after that and just watched a couple of Doctor Who episodes on my iPad, then went to bed at 9:30pm. (Yeah, I’m getting too old for this stuff.)

I don’t have much of a plan for today (Saturday). There are enough interesting panels today that I’ll probably spend the whole day at the con. I’m not sure how I’m going to get back to the hotel afterward, since the 7 line will be shut down and I haven’t had much luck catching cabs around Javits so far. So I’m liable to walk back to the hotel again, which I’ve done a few times already, and isn’t horrible, but it’s definitely a bit painful. (Again, I’m getting too old…)

NYCC day one

I’m sitting in my hotel room this morning, eating breakfast, after a pretty long day at NYCC yesterday.

I started the day off by wandering the floor a bit, and bought a few comics. Then I went to the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child panel. That was fun. They had the actors for all the lead parts there. (I need to see Cursed Child again one of these days.)

Later, I went to a DC Meet the Publishers panel, with Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. I’m cautiously optimistic about some of the stuff DC is doing right now, like Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern or some of the new stuff Bendis is working on. But other stuff definitely falls into the “not for me” category, like the Primal Age toys. They’re not for me, and that’s fine.

Then, after taking a break, I came back to the con for the StarTalk panel. That was mostly silly fun, but it ended with Dr. Tyson reading an open letter to NASA, on the occasion of their shared 60th birthday, that was quite touching. (I looked around online for the text of the letter, and couldn’t find it, but did find a similar one from ten years ago, for their shared 50th birthday.)

As an aside, I’m glad I stayed in the city last night, instead of taking the train home and back in this morning, since there was a NJ Transit derailment last night. No one was hurt, apparently, but it screwed up last night’s rush hour, and I think is still screwing things up today.

My initial plan for today was to go to the con in the morning, then head up to the NY Historical Society for the Harry Potter exhibit at 12:45, then back to the con. But I’m worried about how hard it’ll be to get a cab from Javits to the exhibit. The area around Javits is kind of a mess right now. And there’s really not much that I need to see at the con this morning. So I will probably skip the con in the morning and go uptown to see a museum or two. Then I can go to the con in the afternoon, after the exhibit.

I did a lot of walking yesterday, over 20,000 steps according to my watch. I think I want to be smarter about transportation today and maybe cut down on the walking a bit. I’m getting too old for all this exercise.