Category: comics

more Comic-Con stuff

I heard back from the Comic-Con folks today about registration, and it turns out that they are just late in sending out the registration paperwork. They said they’re sending stuff out this week. That’s a bit of a relief, since I was starting to think I’d lost mine.
Meanwhile, I’ve been checking in with SignOnSanDiego.com every few days to keep an eye on the weather and local news. Let’s hope we don’t have a big quake while I’m out there!

San Diego Comic-Con

Only about a month until Comic-Con. I realized today that I haven’t received my little registration confirmation card yet. I registered back in March, so I’m not sure if this is a problem or not. They may just be late in sending them out. I guess if it doesn’t show up, I can maybe talk my way in with a copy of my cancelled check and a photo ID. Or I can sneak in the back door. Or I can just spend the week at the San Diego Zoo instead. Either way, I’m looking forward to the vacation.
Every year, it seems like I really start to get enthusiastic about the Con around this time. It just seems like I start to go stir-crazy in mid-June and really start wanting to get out of New Jersey, and get away from my job for a few days. This year’s probably a bit worse than usual, for a few reasons, mostly work-related.
And, regardless of any bureaucratic worries, I always wind up having a good time in San Diego, so I probably shouldn’t worry about anything this year either.

under the weather

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today. I’m hoping I feel better by Monday, since it’s likely to be a hectic week at work. I guess it was a good day to feel a bit bad, since the weather was pretty bleak anyway.

I finished watching the first season of 24 today. I bought the DVD set off eBay a few weeks ago. I’m kind of hooked on it now. I have the season two set waiting, and I’ll probably pick up season three at some point. (I’ve seen the last two seasons on regular old TV, so I don’t think I’ll pick up any DVDs past season three.)

I had been thinking about going to Wizard World Philly today, but just didn’t feel up to it. I walked across the street to the local comic book store instead. I actually didn’t buy anything, but I was seriously thinking about picking up the first few issues of Warren Ellis’ new Marvel series Nextwave. I’ve heard good things about it.

Tomorrow is the Somerville Street Fair. I’ll probably have to avoid the gyros and other tasty treats, if I’m still feeling off. I’m hoping at least that it doesn’t rain, so everybody else can have some fun, even if I’m mostly lounging on the couch drinking herbal tea.

Well, it had been a while since I blogged, so I let this entry become a bit of a ramble. Hope I didn’t bore anybody.

Eisner Awards

CBR has an article listing all the Eisner award nominees. Although I’m way behind in my reading, I have actually read a few of these books, and I’m planning on reading several more. I’ve never actually gone to the Eisner awards ceremony at the San Diego con; there’s always something else going on at the same time that I’m more interested in. Maybe this year I’ll go.

X-Men

I’ve been on a bit of an X-Men binge lately. I read Ultimate X-Men volumes 1-7 on the plane trips out to San Francisco and back a few weeks ago. I finished Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men 1-12 last week. I just started reading Chris Claremont’s recent Uncanny X-Men run (starting from #444). And I bought all of the Grant Morrison New X-Men trades on eBay this week.

I’ve been looking at some X-Men sites on the internet tonight, just to see where all the pieces fit, from the Morrison era to the present. Grant Morrison’s site has a list of all his X-Men work. The X-Axis has reviews of Morrison’s run, and much more. The Comics Journal has an interesting article on the “X-Men Reload” event, with a little overview of Morrison’s run, and reviews of the first few issues of Whedon’s Astonishing run and the other stuff that came out at that time. There’s a big index of Morrison-era stuff at Seqart.com. And there’s a review of the entire Morrison run at PopMatters.com.

I enjoyed the Ultimate X-Men books, even though they’re in their own little world, continuity-wise. They’ve gone in some interesting directions, different from the main Marvel universe, but still clearly exploring many of the themes that the X-Men titles frequently play with.

The Astonishing X-Men series was a lot of fun to read. Joss Whedon is great at writing a certain kind of story, basically the same kind of thing he did so well in Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. He handles dialog really well, maintaining a certain economy that still succeeds in establishing character traits and relationships. It’s a lot different from the way Claremont writes, but he’s clearly a fan of the original Claremont Uncanny stuff. John Cassaday’s art is incredible, too, though it’s not quite as inspiring as his work on Planetary.

The new Claremont stuff is fun to read, too, reminding me (of course) of his original work on the title. The Comics Journal review mentioned above really rips into Claremont for his caption-heavy writing and clunky characterizations, but I enjoy it. It’s all kind of obvious and predictable, but it’s fun, and the key characters are all likable. The baseball game at the beginning of #444 is a perfect example; a standard Claremont method of enumerating his cast for the new reader, and sketching out a few of their relationships. Alan Davis’ art on these issues is great too; I’m a big fan of his work on Excalibur from some years back, and it’s nice to see him on an X-book again.

I’m looking forward to reading through all the Morrison stuff. I’ve never been a huge fan of his, but I saw him on a few panels at Wondercon, and I got interested in tracking down some of his work. From some of the reviews I’ve seen of his New X-Men run, it sounds like it ought to be pretty interesting.

New York Comic Con

I’m kind of glad I didn’t go to the NY Con last weekend, since reports are indicating that it was a zoo. Most NYC conventions seem to face problems with overcrowding. I remember some big problems with the last Big Apple Anime Fest, for instance, and the Big Apple Con tends to have overcrowding problems too. I guess I’ll stick with Wondercon and San Diego, for now! Even though they’re on the other side of the country, and even though San Diego attracts over 100,000 people, both are very well organized and always fun.

San Diego hotel stuff

Well, I decided to take a chance and book a hotel for San Diego through Hotwire. I got a room at the Sheraton Suites San Diego for less than the con rate, so that’s good. It’s farther away from the convention center than I’ve ever been though, so that’s not so good. It’s on the con shuttle route, and it looks like it should still be OK walking distance (ten blocks), though a bit too far if I just wanted to make a quick trip back during the day to drop stuff off.
Hotwire doesn’t tell you which hotel you’re in until you’ve paid for the room, and their “downtown” area extends all the way out to the far end of Harbor Island, so I could have wound up quite far away.

Comic-Con 2006 – Hotels

Today is the first day that you can make hotel reservations for Comic-Con. And maybe the last day. I just went on-line to check availability, and there’s NOTHING open whatsoever. I remember from last year that a few of the hotels were all booked up on the first day, but not ALL of them! Hopefully, this is a temporary glitch of some kind, or some hotels will block out more rooms for the con. Otherwise, I’m either not going, or sleeping in a cardboard box on the street.