Category: comics

Last day of vacation

Today is the last day of my planned NYCC vacation. Several months ago, I put in a PTO request for Thursday and Friday of last week and Monday (today) of this week, thinking that maybe I’d try for a “normal” NYCC vacation: going into NYC for all four days of the con, maybe staying at a hotel, and using today to get my laundry done and rest. In reality, I went to the con on Thursday, came back home that evening, then spent Friday through Sunday mostly sitting on my couch, watching con videos, watching random stuff on TV, and not much else. I was low-level sick on Friday and Saturday, and started feeling better yesterday. I feel mostly “back to normal” today, and should be fine for work tomorrow.

I was surprised yesterday to realize that I was thinking of this as a “successful” vacation. I didn’t really do much, but at least I got into NYC for a day, and I got the chance to avoid thinking (much) about work for several days and relax. And, while I was a bit sick, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t know if this is a sign of my admirable zen-like equanimity, or if my soul has been crushed by everything that’s happened over the last few years, so just “going into NYC for a day and not getting COVID” counts as success.

Getting back to the MacBook issue that I mentioned in my post from Saturday: I thought I’d fixed it, since it didn’t recur at all yesterday. But the MacBook crashed again this morning, while I was watching an NYCC video, so I guess I didn’t really fix it. My current theory is that it’s got something to do with the battery misbehaving and/or the CPU overheating. It seems to happen only when I’m watching video, with the MacBook unplugged from A/C power, and only when I’ve been using it for awhile. I got a full Carbon Copy Cloner backup done on Saturday, and it didn’t crash, and of course I had it plugged in to A/C power for that. And it hasn’t crashed at any point when all I’ve been doing is browsing the web or working in Evernote or whatever. It’s always when I’m watching video (or have recently been watching video).

So I don’t really know what to do about it. I could bring it into the Apple Store for service, but it’s out of warranty. so it’ll cost me some money, and they might not even find and fix the problem. I could assume it’s software-related, and do a full wipe & re-install of the OS, but that’s a lot of work, and might also be pointless. I could trade it in for a new MacBook, but it’s only three years old, and I don’t really want to buy a new MacBook right now.

I guess I’ll live with it for now, and see if it gets better or worse. Maybe the macOS Monterey upgrade will fix it? (Or maybe Monterey will be a good excuse to get a fancy new M1 MacBook Air, as some features of Monterey will only work on M1 Macs.)

I’ve also (reluctantly) considered switching from Firefox to Safari on the Mac. Safari is supposed to be much better at managing CPU usage and battery than Firefox, so maybe just switching would solve the problem. But, since I use both Mac and PC, that means dealing with different browsers on the two platforms, which will create extra work and frustration for me. Well, I’m going to try to postpone any decisions on that for now.

Getting back to NYCC and comics: I’ve now watched a bunch of the panels from the con. Some were live, and some were Zoom-style panels. Some were really good, but a few had enough technical issues that I gave up on them. I enjoyed the spotlight panels for William Shatner, George Takei, Adam Savage, and David Harbour. I enjoyed the Ghostbusters and Animaniacs panels.

I would like to have watched more panels that were specifically about comic books and comics creators, but honestly there weren’t that many that I was that interested in. There were a couple that I started watching, but gave up on, due to sound issues and/or the fact that they just weren’t that interesting to me. I did enjoy the Brian K. Vaughn panel (though I still haven’t watched the whole video for that, since my laptop crashed while I was watching it this morning).

For TV-related panels: I still want to watch the Expanse panel, and the two Star Trek panels (Discovery and Prodigy).

It’s fairly typical for me to spend a bunch of money at a con, buying back issues, graphic novels, toys, and other stuff. At the con itself this year, I only bought one book (Love and Capes: The Family Way, by Thom Zahler). But, back at home, sitting on the couch, I wound up ordering a few other items, prompted mostly by stuff that got mentioned on panels. During the David Harbour panel, I remembered that I’d never seen his Hellboy movie, and I noticed the digital version was on sale at Amazon for $6, so I bought (and watched) that. (It’s not a great movie, but I guess it was worth the $6.) And during the Ghostbusters panel, it occurred to me that I haven’t seem either of the original Ghostbusters movies in a long time, and that I could buy both movies on Blu-ray from Amazon for $13. So I did that. And something on some panel or another got me thinking about Fables, and led me to buy Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland from Comixology, which was on sale for 50% off, and was (probably) the only major Fables book I didn’t already own (physically or digitally). So, overall, I didn’t blow a lot of money, or bring home a lot of physical stuff to clutter up my apartment, so that’s a win. (But I feel a little guilty that most of my con-related spending was through Amazon, and didn’t really do much to support the comics creators who showed up for NYCC.)

It’s now past noon, and my last vacation day is quickly passing by. I had a few more things to blog about, but I’ll stop here. I should probably try to eat something interesting and different for lunch today, so it feels more like a vacation day, but I’m probably just going to make a turkey sandwich.

NYCC and MacBook stuff

So I went to NYCC on Thursday, as planned, and it wasn’t too bad. The vaccine check-in was smooth and quick. Getting in to the con itself took a little while, but not too long. I got there around 10:30, so the initial crush of people trying to get in at 10 (assuming there was one) had subsided. It still took a while to get in, due to the usual metal detector, bag search, empty your pockets routine. (I kind of wish they could have skipped that this year, but I guess that kind of thing isn’t going away any time soon.)

I honestly didn’t stay too long, just a few hours. I bought a book from Thom Zahler in artist’s alley, but that’s all I bought. I spent a good bit of time wandering the show floor and browsing. I didn’t make it to any panels. I had intended to go to the Sandman Audible panel. I watched that yesterday, at home, and I don’t feel too bad about missing it. It was a good panel, but it was just a typical COVID-era Zoom panel. And I think it was pre-recorded, so the “live” panel at Javits was apparently just a showing of the Zoom call on a big screen.

I had also thought about going to the William Shatner spotlight. That actually was a live event, with Shatner doing his usual thing, talking about his recent projects and telling some stories. I watched that this morning. That would have been fun to go to, but I’ve seen Shatner live before, so I don’t terribly regret skipping this one either. I’ll probably watch some more of the panels today and tomorrow, from the safety of my own couch.

I started feeling a little sick yesterday, and I’m still feeling it a bit today. Hopefully, this is just my usual post-con malaise, and not COVID or anything serious. I’m fully vaccinated for COVID, of course, and I’ve also had my flu shot this year, so this is probably just the typical “con crud.”

While I was writing this post, my MacBook crashed. It’s been doing that a lot lately over the last few days. I initially thought it might be an issue with the NYCC video player, since it seemed to be happening most when I was watching NYCC videos. Then I thought maybe it was a Firefox issue, since it was only happening when I had Firefox open. (But, honestly, 90% of my MacBook usage is just doing stuff in Firefox.) Anyway, I’ve now run macOS diagnostics, Disk Utility, and Onyx. None of them found any issues. And I’m almost done writing this blog post, and the MacBook hasn’t crashed, so maybe that’s a good sign. I should probably hook up an external drive and run a full Carbon Copy Cloner backup, just in case. (And if it does that without crashing, that’s another good sign…)

NYCC tomorrow

I guess I’m going to NYCC tomorrow. I got tickets for Thursday and Sunday back in July. Since then, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I should go. As of right now, I’m planning on getting on a train tomorrow and giving it a try.

I’ve got the CLEAR app set up with my vaccine info. The procedure for this year is that you first need to check in at a site across from Javits and verify your vaccine status, and get a wristband. Then, you have to get in line to get into Javits. So this could be a pain, depending on how long the lines are.

I’m honestly not that excited about anything at the con. There are two panels I’d like to see. The first is on the new Sandman audio adaptation from Audible. The second is the William Shatner spotlight panel. The Shatner panel is at 6:45 PM though, and I’m not sure I’ll want to stay that late. But that’s it for Thursday. And I could watch those from home, if I wanted. There are a few virtual panels I’m interested in too, but those I can only watch from home. (Well, I guess I could watch them on my phone at Javits, but I doubt the wifi is good enough for that.)

As for Sunday, I might go back, but I’m not going to think about that too much until I see what it’s like tomorrow.

I really do feel like I need these few days off, to de-stress a bit. It’s been a long pandemic, and I haven’t really taken much time off. But right now, I’m feeling a bit like the stress of dealing with NJ Transit, and the lines at Javits, and so on, is more stressful than just staying home. Hopefully, once I’m on my way, I can get into a groove and enjoy myself.

Batman Day

Happy Batman Day, I guess. It doesn’t seem like there’s really that much going on for it this year.
I’m kind of interested in the Batman: The Audio Adventures thing, but I’m not going to sign up for HBO Max just to listen to it. Kind of weird that they’re putting out a podcast/audiobook thing through HBO Max. Do they have their own iPhone app for audio content or something? I don’t know…

Anyway, that reminded me that I still haven’t listened to Wolverine: The Long Night, Marvel’s scripted podcast, which has been on my phone since it came out in 2018. (And apparently it has a second season which came out in 2019.)

Along those lines, I started listening to Bubble, Maximum Fun’s scripted podcast, earlier this week. That has also been on my phone since it came out in 2018. I guess “scripted podcasts” were a big thing that year. I took a sick day on Monday, and didn’t have enough energy to do much else, so lying on the couch listening to a funny story seemed like a good idea. I listened to six of the eight episodes. It’s pretty good. I’ll probably finish it today or tomorrow. A graphic novel adaptation of it just came out. I’m interested in that, but not enough to buy a copy (just yet). I have way too much other stuff to read.

And in the same vein, Act II of Audible’s Sandman adaptation just came out. I bought the first part on MP3 CD in 2020, but haven’t listened to it yet. That first part is now free via Audible (no subscription required) until October 22.

So lots of crossover between comics and audiobooks (or audio dramas, or scripted podcasts, or whatever). This all reminds me of the old Batman book and record set I had when I was a kid. Or the issue of Nexus that came with a flexi-disc. Anyway, I need to listen to more of this stuff.

Hurricane Ida, and Labor Day weekend stuff

It’s been a rough week here in Somerset County. Hurricane Ida hit us pretty hard. A house exploded just a few blocks from here, and a building collapsed right here on Main St. I’m fine. My apartment building is fine. (I suspect we had some flooding in the basement, based on the smell coming from down there, but that’s the landlord’s problem.) Peters Brook overflowed, so that caused a bunch of damage to homes near it. I walk along the Peters Brook Greenway quite often; I walked along it yesterday, and saw a lot of downed trees and other damage.

It’s Labor Day weekend. In a “normal” year, I might go into NYC today, but the Raritan Valley line is still shut down due to the storm. And, even if it was running, the Delta variant has dimmed my enthusiasm for NYC trips this summer. So I guess I’ll be spending the day relaxing at home. I’d like to go out and see Shang-Chi, but, again, my enthusiasm for sitting in an enclosed space for two hours with a bunch of strangers ain’t what it used to be.

The Tour of Somerville, which is usually held on Memorial Day, was moved to Labor Day this year due to the pandemic. I guess the original thought was that the pandemic would be over by Labor Day. Of course, that’s not the case. It might actually have been safer on Memorial Day. Despite the Delta variant, and the flood damage, they’re still carrying on with the race tomorrow. I’m not sure how great an idea that is, but there’s not much I can do about it. I’ll likely hole up in my apartment all day and watch from my window. I wonder what the crowd will be like this year. It’s hard to imagine it being anywhere near what it usually is, but it could still be pretty big.

On an unrelated note, I got an email recently detailing some changes coming to ComiXology. In a nutshell, it sounds like they’re basically going to be shutting down the ComiXology web store and integrating it into the regular Amazon site. That makes sense, and I’m surprised that it took them so long to get around to doing it. Amazon bought them in 2014, but they’ve continued running their own site, separate from Amazon. I merged my old ComiXology account with my Amazon account a long time ago, whenever they first enabled that, but it’s still been possible for people to use a separate ComiXology login. I think that’s going to stop being an option, at least if you want to purchase new books. There’s some coverage of this announcement at The Beat and Bleeding Cool. Also, there’s some discussion on reddit, including responses from official ComiXology support.

I may be spending some money at ComiXology this weekend. There’s a big DC Labor Day sale going on, with a bunch of graphic novels at $2.99. That includes all of the Sandman collections, which I’ve been thinking about buying. I’ve read the whole series, of course, but I don’t have all the original issues anymore, and I’ve been thinking about re-reading the series. (Oh, and the first part of the Sandman Audible adaptation is still free, for a while longer. The second part is coming out later this month. I bought the first part on MP3 CD some time ago, but I snagged the free Audible version too, since it’s convenient to have a copy in my Audible library.)

And as long as I’m talking about Neil Gaiman, I might as well mention that I started reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane yesterday. It’s good! I guess I’ll keep reading that today, as there doesn’t seem to be much else to do.

random comic book stuff

I didn’t manage to clear out my brain in yesterday’s post, so here’s another one, this time with some random comic book stuff that I found interesting.

First: On a number of occasions, I’ve regretted selling my copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, years ago, for a relatively paltry sum of around $100. At the time, I thought TMNT had peaked. But no. Here’s one that just sold for more that $10,000. Sigh. I ordered my copy direct from Eastman and Laird, for the original cover price of $1.50, plus maybe $1 for shipping, back when it first came out. I was likely one of the very first people to own a copy.

Second: There have been some interesting developments recently in the way that some comic book creators are choosing to publish their work, and a lot of talk about how Marvel and DC compensate creators.

Here’s a very good article from The Guardian about the backlash over the way creators are compensated by Marvel and DC when their characters are used in movies and TV. This is mostly stuff that I already knew, but it’s surprising to see this kind of depth in a general newspaper article.

A number of creators are leaving Marvel and DC and doing creator-owned work elsewhere. Scott Snyder is doing some stuff for ComiXology Originals. James Tynion IV, and a number of other creators, are going to publish some work via Substack. (Snyder is involved too, but rather than comics, he’s going to run some kind of writing workshop through Substack.) The usual route for creator-owned work over the last few years has been to go through Image, or maybe Boom or IDW. But it seems like more people are trying other routes now.

I have to keep reminding myself that I already have too many comics to read, so none of this matters to me. I’ve been tempted to sign up for ComiXology Unlimited on a number of occasions over the last year or two, but I keep putting it off. I really need to work through at least some of my backlog before I consider anything like that.

NYCC, COVID-19, and so on

It’s been about two weeks since I last posted anything here, and there’s a bit of a backlog building up in my head, so this post may cover a few subjects. (Or it might not, if I get tired or pulled away. Who knows…)

On the COVID-19 front, things are getting a little less optimistic since I bought my NYCC tickets a month ago. I’m starting to think that maybe I shouldn’t have gone ahead with that. The big auto show at Javits was canceled. NYC has issued a vaccine mandate for certain venues and activities, so that might apply to NYCC, though the specifics on it aren’t out yet. NYCC hasn’t officially updated their guidelines to reflect a vaccine mandate, though they did post an update on Twitter about it. So I guess I’ll just wait and see on that for now. I’d be more comfortable going if there’s a vaccine mandate, of course, but the idea that we need a vaccine mandate is kind of depressing.

Meanwhile, the “return to office” date for my company just got pushed back from September to October. It’s kind of funny how many times it’s been pushed back now. I just went through my notes on that, and I think we’ve had eleven different RTO dates, starting with April 3, 2020. It’s hard to even imagine back to when that seemed reasonable.

It’s pretty frustrating to see how hard it’s been for us to make progress on COVID-19. We should be doing so much better than we’re doing. Well, I had a bunch of other stuff to cover, but I need to wrap this up, so I guess this will just be a short note about COVID-19 and NYCC.

Comic-Con@Home, again, day two

Today is day two of the second, and hopefully last, Comic-Con@Home. This year, the con is only three days, and not the usual four. The length, of course, doesn’t matter that much with this kind of thing, since the panels are all prerecorded and dumped on YouTube, so there’s not really much of a sense of participating in a specific thing that’s constrained in time and space. I can watch the panels whenever I want, and there’s not much of a “live” aspect to it at all. But I did take a day off yesterday to “attend” the con and tried to get into the spirit of things.

Comparing this year to last year, things seem a bit more organized but also a lot more subdued. All the folks who didn’t really know how to do Zoom panels last year have now figured it out, so the video and sound on those is generally a lot better than it was last year. I guess we’ve all figured out how to do Zoom (and Teams and WebEx and whatever else) pretty well over the last year and a half.

At the start of the pandemic, I made the decision to write a short post in Day One every day, and I’ve kept that going since. I just recently noticed that I’ve hit a 500 day streak in Day One. And then I noticed this blog post from Mark Evanier, pointing out that it has now been 500 days since the start of the pandemic lockdown/quarantine/whatever. I guess it depends on when you start counting, but, for me, I’d start from my birthday last year, 3/13/2020, and 500 days from then is 7/26/21, so we’re not quite at 500 days, but we’re close. Of course, things are starting to get back to “normal,” but COVID-19 is still with us, and I’m still working from home and wearing a mask when I go grocery shopping. Things will get much more “normal” in September when I’ll need to start going back into the office. (But that’s a topic for another post.)

Anyway, that 500 day mark, and the second virtual SDCC, has gotten me thinking about how long this has all lasted and where we are now and where we’re headed. But I really meant this post to just be about fun comics stuff, so I’m going to stop thinking about that and write up some notes on the panels I “attended” yesterday.

  • Ducks All the Way Down: Metafiction in Comics – This was a weird one, to start the day. A nice nerdy conversation about metafiction in comics.
  • Stan Sakai and the Usagi Chronicles – This panel was about the new Usagi Yojimbo animated series that’s going to be on Netflix. There’s an article about it here. They haven’t announced a release date for it yet. I’m cautiously optimistic about it.
  • Max Allan Collins–Three Hard Cases: Ms Tree, Mike Hammer & Nolan – This was a good one to watch, since I haven’t really been keeping up with Max Allan Collins recently. I loved Ms Tree when it first came out, years ago. I should probably buy the new Ms Tree collections coming out from Titan. I don’t really need them, since I’ve already read all of those stories, but it would be nice to have the collections and reread them.
  • 35 Years of Dark Horse: Past and Present – I’ve been reading Dark Horse books since their early days. Boris the Bear #1 was probably the first Dark Horse book I ever bought. Dark Horse has a timeline up on their site that goes from 1986 through to 2013. (I notice that it doesn’t mention Boris though.) The company has had an interesting history, with some ups and downs. The panel was more about the present than the past though. It would have been cool to have a panel with some of the original Dark Horse creators talking about the early days of the company, but that’s not what this was.
  • Greatest Geek Year Ever: 1981 Week – This was a a fun panel from the guys who usually do Starship Smackdown at the con. The idea of this panel was, basically, to program a week’s worth of movies from 1981. They do a podcast called The 4:30 Movie where they do this for a different theme each episode. This one brought back a lot of childhood memories for me. I hadn’t thought about Dragonslayer in years. I should probably consider subscribing to their podcast, but I’m juggling too many podcasts right now.
  • Scott Shaw! Oddball Comics: The Batman Edition – Scott’s “oddball comics” slideshows are always fun. He did an all-Batman edition for this year.

There are two panels from yesterday that I haven’t gotten around to watching yet: the Frank Thorne Memorial Panel, and the Eisner Awards presentation. I actually started watching the Eisner one this morning, but didn’t get too far. Much like last year, it’s kind of dry. It’s mostly just Phil LaMarr reading out the nominees for each category, then announcing the winner. Since it wasn’t done live, there isn’t really any excitement or suspense in it. And there aren’t any acceptance speeches. I was hoping that maybe they’d find a way to make it more interesting this year.

For today, I’ve got a list of about a half-dozen panels that I want to watch, including a couple of Mark Evanier’s regular panels. So that should all be fun. As I did last year, I’m trying to disappear into the con a bit and escape from the reality around me, to some extent. I had a good day yesterday, and can’t really complain, but watching panels on my laptop or TV doesn’t really compare to the real thing. Hopefully, I can have a good “in-person” con experience at NYCC later this year.

NYCC, anime, and pizza

NYCC

Newsarama has an article with some additional information on last week’s NYCC ticket sale. As I posted then, I got tickets for Thursday and Sunday. The Newsarama article confirms that they did, eventually, sell out of all tickets. The article also addresses one topic I’m very curious about: “ReedPop […] confirmed they have a reduced capacity this year due to COVID-19 precautions but did not give out the exact number of badges sold.” I’ve really been curious about whether or not they’re making a meaningful attempt to reduce crowding this year, or if this is just a token gesture to ease people’s fears. There are really two numbers that matter: to what extent did they limit ticket sales, and to what extent are they going to increase (or decrease) the amount of floor space they take up? The Javits Center expansion is apparently done now, so, theoretically, NYCC could spread out over a larger space and limit attendance, which could make for a nice experience. But who knows if they’ll actually do that. I haven’t read anything from NYCC about whether or not they’ll be using the entire expanded Javits Center.

I still haven’t quite decided on my plans for the con. I might just take the train in on Thursday and Sunday. But I’d really like to book a hotel room for the full four days, and use Friday and Saturday for museum visits and other NYC stuff. I should probably start looking at hotel prices now. It I book a hotel though, that makes it harder to back out if I decide that the situation in NYC isn’t safe enough, come October.

Anime

I decided to dip into my dusty stack of unwatched anime DVDs last night. I picked out Space Pirate Captain Herlock: The Endless Odyssey, which I bought in 2006. I got a sense of déjà vu while watching the first couple of episodes. I was pretty sure I’d seen them before, so I checked this blog, and yes, I saw them at Wizard World Philly in 2004. It’s funny how I can piece together stuff like this from my blog, email archives, and Evernote. I watched the first three (of four) DVDs. I guess I’ll watch the last one later today. I also ordered a pizza last night, which I rarely do these days. There was a big storm last night, so pizza and anime made for a nice cozy evening.

I’ve probably blogged about this before, but it’s interesting to see how some of the anime DVDs I bought back in the early 2000s at clearance prices are now out of print and selling for (relatively) big bucks. I see the full set of Captain Herlock DVDs selling on eBay for $250 right now. (It’s a fun show, but I don’t think I’d ever pay $250 for it.)

NYCC badges bought

As an update to my earlier post today: I got through the queue for NYCC badges at around 11:30, and bought badges for Thursday and Sunday. (Friday and Saturday were already sold out.) I also bought a 4-day digital ticket, that should let me watch panels on the web, on the days that I’m not at the actual con. Adding in the various fees, the total was $167, so that’s pretty steep, but I guess it’s worth it. It’ll be my first in-person con since NYCC 2019.

Just based on the amount of time I had to spend in the queue, and looking at comments on Twitter and Reddit, I’m guessing that a lot of people are enthusiastic to go to NYCC this year. I’m hoping that they’re serious about having limited the ticket sales, to keep crowd size down. And I’m hoping COVID is entirely under control by October. But who knows.

There’s an additional bureaucratic hoop that I need to jump through with these tickets, by the way. My “fan verified” account is under my old GMail address, and I’ve never been able to figure out how to change it to my new one. So, this year, I used the GMail address to buy the tickets, but assigned them to my current email address. So now I need to fan-verify my current email address, and accept the ticket transfer from my old address. I did that after I bought the tickets, and apparently it takes a day to get that approved, so I can’t actually transfer the tickets until tomorrow. (Assuming the new fan verification is actually approved.) So that’s a pain, but hopefully I can then use the new address going forward.

Back on the topic of virtual conventions: I just noticed that Shore Leave is being held this weekend. I’ve already missed most of it now, but it’s not too late for me to catch a panel or two. I see that a few of my favorite Star Trek writers are on the “What’s new in Star Trek Literature” panel at 3 PM. On the other hand, I’ve spent too much time indoors, in front of the computer, today already. I should go out for a walk.