Comic-Con@Home, day two

My first day of Comic-Con@Home went pretty well. I watched a total of six panels, which is probably a bit more than I’d get to at a real con. I complained yesterday about not being able to watch the Star Trek panel on my TV. That was the only one that was blocked in that way, so I watched all the others on my TV, from my couch. So that’s definitely more comfortable than typical convention center folding chairs. (Edit: this is probably why I couldn’t watch that Trek panel on TV.)

I didn’t do much in the way of creatively simulating a con environment, or doing anything special to get me in the right “con mood,” though I tossed a few ideas around. I remembered there being a “comic con jukebox” episode of Paul Dini’s old Radio Rashy podcast, and I think I found the entry for it, but the audio file itself is gone. That would have been fun to listen to.

I’m starting out today pretty much the same way I started yesterday: still getting up at 6 AM and eating my usual boring breakfast of cereal, a banana, and coffee. I had some ideas about getting creative with breakfast on my days off, but they went down the drain when faced with my usual morning pre-coffee headache. I did manage to find an old San Diego con shirt to wear today, from the 2002 con blood drive.

Here’s a list of the panels I watched yesterday:

  • Star Trek Universe — As I mentioned yesterday, the Discovery table read was a bit weird, but fun. The stuff about the new Lower Decks show looks interesting. I kind of want to watch that now. And I skipped out on most of the Picard stuff, since I still haven’t seen the first season and didn’t want anything spoiled. I should really give in and sign up for CBS All-Access, but I’m still being stubborn about that.
  • Oddball Comics — This was probably my favorite panel. It was really just Scott Shaw!’s usual Oddball Comics slideshow, which I’ve seen several times before. I guess the familiarity of it was comforting. And it’s the kind of panel that translates well to YouTube. it’s just Scott talking over a slideshow. I do miss the audience laughter, but it’s still a really fun presentation and it really took me out of my own head for a while.
  • Humanoids Legacy — This was hosted by Humanoids, so it was of course a promotional panel to some extent, but it was still a good discussion of the history and influence of Humanoids, with a few really good creators, including Mark Waid, Brian Bendis, and Mark Russell. I bought this Humanoids Humble Bundle yesterday too. I already have two copies of The Incal, so I don’t really need a digital copy, but it can’t hurt. And I don’t have most of the other stuff in the bundle, and a lot of it looks pretty good.
  • Twenty Years of Harry Dresden — This was a one-on-one discussion with Jim Butcher. It was pretty low-key, but enjoyable. I’m four or five books behind with the Dresden series, but it is a favorite of mine. I need to get back to it and catch up.
  • Bugs Bunny’s 80th Anniversary — This was a promotional panel by Warner Bros for an 80th anniversary Bugs Bunny Blu-ray set, but it was a lot of fun. The panel included three voice actors who’ve all voiced Bugs. And it included Jerry Beck and Leonard Maltin, who are both quite knowledgeable about animation history. The Blu-ray set is coming out in the fall, I guess. It looks interesting, but I’m not sure I really need it. I tend to buy a lot of DVD and Blu-ray sets that I never get around to watching.
  • Superhero Kung Fu Extravaganza — This is another one that was kind of comforting to watch. This is the 23rd time Ric Meyers has run this panel. The online version is a lot different from the in-person ones that I’ve attended, for a number of reasons, but it was still cool to see that he’s keeping this thing going. The in-person version generally lasts two hours (or more) and features a whole bunch of movie clips. For the online version, he obviously has to limit himself to stuff he can get permission to put on YouTube, so it’s mostly promo clips from recent movies. I’m a bit interested in the new Enter the Fat Dragon movie, though maybe not interested enough to buy the Blu-ray. (Again, I need to remember how many Blu-rays I own that I haven’t watched yet, including stuff I’ve bought based on recommendations from previous Kung Fu panels. For instance, I’m looking at a DVD set of Donnie Yen’s Kung Fu Master TV series that’s been sitting on my shelf for at least ten years.)

I have eight panels on my schedule for today. I’ll probably watch five or six of them. Meanwhile, it’s a rainy morning in Somerville, but I should probably still try to get out for a morning walk.

Comic-Con@Home, day one

Today is the first day of my short vacation, “attending” Comic-Con @ Home. I started the day with a number of vaguely creative ideas in my head about how to simulate actually being at a San Diego con. I didn’t actually execute on any of them. I did wear my WonderCon 2019 t-shirt though, so that’s something.

I’m currently watching the Star Trek Universe panel, my first panel of the con. I knew that the panel was going to be prerecorded, and I’m OK with that, but they’ve also done a couple of other things I’m a little disappointed with. First, they turned off comments on the video. I know that YouTube comments are often terrible, but allowing comments would have made it feel more like a real event, with other real fans in the “room”. They also blocked it from being watched on Apple TV or TiVo, so I’m stuck watching it on my computer. I guess that’s a copyright thing, but it’s still weird. If I wanted to make a copy of the panel, it would be way easier for me to do that on my computer than on my Apple TV or TiVo. Oh well. They’re in the middle of a table read of a Discovery episode right now, which is kind of fun, but also kind of pointless. It would be really fun at a live con, but, prerecorded, it’s kind of boring, to be honest. They’re getting into a Q&A now (with questions that they must solicited in advance, I guess). One nice thing about prerecorded video is that I can pause it if I need a break, and I can skip past any boring parts. I’m going to get back to it now, and see if I can single-task for awhile and just watch the video and relax, without having a bunch of other tabs open and switching back and forth to other stuff.

getting ready for Comic-Con @ Home

Comic-Con @ Home has officially started. And I’m done with work for today, so I’m now officially on vacation. There’s not much going on tonight that I’m interested in, so I really won’t start “attending” the con until tomorrow. Looking at old blog posts from today, I see that in 2008 on this day I was getting ready to leave for San Diego the next day. And I see that I didn’t go in 2009, so I guess 2008 was my last year until I lucked out again in 2012. And I know 2012 was the last time I went. So I guess it’s kind of cool that I get to participate, to some extent, this year.

The souvenir book for this year has been posted as a free PDF. And they have a bunch of other PDFs posted here, including a do-it-yourself badge and some door signs. So if you want an official SDCC restroom sign, you can print one out. I’m slightly tempted to do that, but that would just be silly. They also have an odd selection of recipes posted here. Pretty much all of those are… a bit much. But hey, it’s all in fun.

I’ve been trying to think of things I can do to make my Comic-Con @ Home mini-vacation feel more like a real vacation, and I’m not coming up with much. I’ll probably spend tomorrow morning just reading comics and relaxing, then watch some panels in the afternoon. That’s good enough for now, I guess. Maybe I can get some Mexican food. That’ll help.

One aspect of SDCC that definitely can’t be recreated at home, in NJ, is the weather. We’ve been having a heat wave this week, with temperatures in the 90s and high humidity. And we’re currently in the middle of a thunderstorm that’s caused my electricity to blink out twice so far. Meanwhile, San Diego is in the low 70s and partly cloudy. Well, hopefully, I won’t lose electricity (or internet) entirely. That would make for a pretty rotten con!

thinking about Comic-Con

I’m continuing to torture myself by looking at the “on this day” widget in the sidebar of this blog, and the “on this day” view in my Day One journal. The last time I went to SDCC was 2012, and it was going on right now! (And, looking at my journal, I see that, two years ago today, I went to the library and checked out a couple of books, and also went to a Somerset Patriots baseball game. Sigh. Eventually, I’ll be able to do those things again…)

I’ve got my schedule all planned out for Comic-Con @ Home next week. I’ve bookmarked about 35 panels total, from Thursday through Sunday. I’m not sure how many I’ll actually watch, but I’ve got plenty to choose from. I think it’ll be fun. I’ve also been getting myself in the mood a bit by reading some stuff that’s related in some way to the con. I read some issues of Rob Hanes Adventures last weekend, which I bought directly from Randy Reynaldo at that 2012 SDCC I mentioned above. (I’m not sure why I let them sit in my “to be read” pile for so long. It’s a fun series, and the issues are all basically “done in one” stories.) I plan on checking out his virtual booth this year, and maybe picking up all the issues that have come out since 2012.

And I also recently read an Usagi Yojimbo trade paperback. I didn’t buy that particular volume at a San Diego con, but I have bought a number of past volumes directly from Stan Sakai at cons, and I usually see him in San Diego, either at his booth or on a panel. I haven’t heard anything about Stan doing anything for Comic-Con @ Home, but I do know that he’s supposed to be on Mark Evanier’s Groo chat this Thursday, so I’ll probably watch that.

In less pleasant comics-related news, the Warren Ellis thing that I’ve mentioned previously has kind of blown up, with a new website going up this week aggregating the stories of many women who say they have been “targeted and manipulated” by Ellis. The website is… a hell of a thing. It even includes a bar chart graphing the number of women he was involved with per year, from 1999 to 2020. (Peak year: 2009, 22 women.) There’s some coverage of it on The Beat and in The Guardian. I joked about burning my CBLDF t-shirts recently, after the Brownstein thing. I’m not really ready to burn my Warren Ellis comics, but I think I might feel a little differently about them now. I’m not really sure that Ellis ever really understood what he was doing? Or understood how much he was hurting people? I don’t know. I can’t really see him as a super-villain or evil genius. I mean, he was clearly being dishonest with people. (You can’t have 22 girlfriends at once without lying to several of them, at least, I think.) I said in my previous post that I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, and I’m still not. This is all outside my areas of expertise…

Anyway, I need to keep this stuff out of my head and concentrate on positive stuff. Like the fact that NJ is still in the green on the CovidActNow map. (One of only three states in the green! Hope more states join us soon!) Or the fact that there are new Stargirl and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes coming out this week!

Comic-Con @ Home

Today, I went ahead with my plan to take a couple of days off from work for Comic-Con @ Home. (I put in for Thursday and Friday off.) They posted the Thursday schedule today, and it’s got some good stuff, including some old favorites like Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics and Ric Meyers’ Kung Fu Extravaganza. I’ve managed to find stuff to keep me busy from 10 AM to 7 PM. That’s PDT of course, so that’s 1 PM to 10 PM my time. I guess I need to find something else to keep me busy on Thursday morning. (I’ll probably spend the morning reading comics!)

In other comics news, I enjoyed watching Mark Evanier’s talk with Peter David last night. I missed seeing it live on Tuesday, since it was on too late for me (10 PM). They talked about a lot of stuff, including memories of old San Diego cons, so that was fun. I know Mark will be doing some panels for Comic-Con @ Home, but I don’t see any on the Thursday schedule. He’s specifically said he’s not doing a Quick Draw panel, which is kind of a bummer, but I can understand why he’s not doing it. It would be technically difficult, and it wouldn’t be nearly as fun without a live audience.

In yet more comics news, this article at The Comics Journal site goes into even more detail on the CBLDF situation. I said previously that I wasn’t quite ready to burn my CBLDF t-shirts, but now maybe I am. I think it’s going to be some time before the CBLDF earns back anyone’s trust.

On a more positive note, this article about Carol Kalish has been getting a lot of attention. It’s good to read about somebody who was almost universally admired. (By the way, I’ve noticed that any article about comics that talks about somebody “you’ve never heard of” is always about somebody I’ve definitely heard of, and probably know a lot about. This is probably because I’m old, and I’m a nerd.)

And in one bit of COVID-19 news, the company I work for has pushed back our “return to office” date from early August to early September. I was starting to worry about that August date, given how things have been going in NJ and across the country. (I kind of doubt that things will be much better in September, but here’s hoping. And if things aren’t better by then, maybe they’ll give up and just let us work from home for the rest of the year.)

physical media and lockdown anxiety

I’ve now reached the stage of the lockdown where spending $100 for four Avengers movies on Blu-ray seemed like a good idea. (I already have the first one on Blu-ray, but none of the others.) I’d been keeping an eye on iTunes and Vudu to see if maybe the digital versions would go on sale for $10 each or something like that, but yesterday, I decided that it was OK to just go ahead and get the fancy SteelBook box set.

I go back and forth with my thinking on digital vs physical media. On the one hand, my cable & internet went out last night, while I was watching a Blu-ray, so I patted myself on the back for still holding onto physical media there. On the other hand, I accidentally knocked over a big stack of DVDs this morning and had to pick them all up and get them back in order. You can’t knock over digital video. I guess I’ll still keep going back and forth on this for the foreseeable future. There’s an argument to made on both sides.

I have been feeling lately like the lockdown is starting to get to me. I’ve seen some articles about post-lockdown anxiety recently. I think my main problem is that I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be talking about “post-lockdown” yet at all. I see a lot of people without masks wandering around downtown these days, and I keep reading about the pressure to open stuff back up. I think we need to be real careful about that, and I think we at least need to be wearing masks more often. As of today, NJ is requiring people to wear masks outdoors, so that’s good, though there’s really no enforcement mechanism for this.

And I’m pretty steamed about movie theater chains suing NJ. This really seems like the last thing they should be spending time and money on right now. I’m fairly sure I won’t be entering a theater any time before the end of this year. And I probably won’t want to go into one until next summer, at least. (Assuming there’s a vaccine and/or treatment for COVID-19 by then.)

Some of my anxiety and restlessness is no doubt coming from the simple fact that it’s summer, and I really can’t do most of the things I like to do in the summer. Like going out to see a movie. Or going into NYC and visiting the Met and MoMA. Or going to a comic con. To address that last one, I’m thinking about taking a few days off for Comic-Con@Home later this month. Just sitting around in my apartment and watching panels online won’t come near the experience of actually being in San Diego for the con, but at least it’ll get me away from work for a few days and maybe let me recharge my batteries a bit (so to speak).

They have the Wednesday panel schedule up now, and it’s mostly not that interesting to me. It’s mostly serious stuff related to education. Which is fine. I assume the nerdier fan stuff will be Thursday through Sunday. So maybe I’ll take Thursday and Friday off from work and just chill and watch panels and read comics for a couple of days. I’ve been thinking about other things I could do to make the experience feel more like actually being at the con. I could skip my usual meal habits and get take-out on those days. Maybe I could even find some local take-out that reminds me of the kind of stuff I like to eat in San Diego, like fish tacos. I could sleep a little late and stay up a little late. (Or I could even try to switch to PDT for a few days.) Maybe I could try to ignore “regular” news for a few days and just read con-related news only. (That might be kind of hard to manage.) I guess that’s about it though. I can’t dress any more casually than I’m already dressing. I can do an excessive amount of walking, I guess, but just wandering around Somerville isn’t the same as wandering around downtown San Diego and the convention center.

Updates

The is going to be a general update post, with bits of news related to a few of my other recent posts.

eBay

It looks like I’ve made a little more than $100 from the comics I listed on eBay in July. I have the auto-relisting option turned on for most of my listings, so the stuff that hasn’t sold keeps getting relisted. We’ll see if the rest of my stuff sells or if I have to give up and donate it to Goodwill or something. I’ve only had one problem with shipping so far; there’s one package that made it as far as Dallas, TX, but somehow seems to have gotten stuck there, and hasn’t made it to its intended recipient in Austin, TX. I’m hoping it shows up this week, otherwise I’m going to have to give the guy a refund. Media Mail isn’t insured or guaranteed in any way, so if it’s lost, there’s not much I can do.

Equifax

According to the FTC, it’ll probably be possible to switch from the cash payment to the free credit monitoring option at some point:

For those who have already submitted claims for this cash payment, look for an email from the settlement administrator. They’ll be asking you for the name of the credit monitoring service you already have. Or, if you want to change your mind, you’ll have a chance to switch to the free credit monitoring.

I initially chose the cash, before realizing that it wasn’t actually going to be anywhere near $125.

Warren Ellis

I mentioned some of Ellis’ upcoming work in a post on Saturday. His weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays, and the most recent one contained some updates. It kind of sounds like the new WildCATs book might not come out at all, which would be a bummer. Batman’s Grave is still on the schedule, as is the new Trees series. So he’s got some comics work coming out, but it sounds like this might be the last new comics stuff we’ll see from him for a while.

Related to the WildCATs thing, I’m a little worried about where DC is going in general. This piece by Rob Salkowitz has been getting a lot of attention. I’m not sure I think things are that bad for DC, but who knows.

SDCC

After SDCC, I ordered a copy of the program book on eBay, as I’ve typically done in recent years. It finally showed up yesterday, so now I can spend some time reading it and fantasizing about what it would have been like to be there. On a related note, Maggie Thompson has a column up on the SDCC blog reminiscing about 50 years of SDCC. I always like reading her columns.

Cory Booker at SDCC

One more bit of San Diego Comic-Con news: Cory Booker Goes to Comic-Con.

I’m pretty darn jaded at this point, especially with politics, but this is kind of a nice thing. Cory Booker isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure he’s ready to be president, but, hey, wouldn’t it be nice to have a legitimate Star Trek fan in the Oval Office?

The last time I remember an important politician showing up at the con, it was John Lewis, cosplaying as himself, in 2015. (That was also hard to view in my usual ironic, detached, jaded perspective…)

 

more on SDCC and eBay

It’s been a very hot day here in New Jersey. I’d much rather be in San Diego today, but I’m doing my best to entertain myself and maybe even get a few useful things done here at home. Some of my eBay auctions ended, and I actually sold a reasonable amount of stuff, at almost reasonable prices. I had one TPB sell for $1, which was weird, since I thought I’d set the minimum bid on everything at no lower than $3, but I guess I screwed up on that one.

The highest prices I got were on the Akira TPBs, which all went for slightly more than my $12 “buy it now” price. It’s always a bit funny when auctions end up going higher than the “buy it now” price, but it can happen. One guy bought all three books, so now I’m faced with the problem of finding a box that can fit all three. I found a Priority Mail flat rate box that’s the right size, but I only planned on using Media Mail. I don’t seem to have any other boxes that are the right size. So I might go out and buy a plain box in the right size tomorrow, or I might just punt and use the Priority Mail box and take a hit on the shipping.

If I was trying to make a living at this stuff, I’d be doing a horrible job. Selling stuff for $1, shipping Priority Mail because I’m too lazy to buy a plain box, and so on. But since I’m in it just for the sake of clearing up space in my apartment, it’s fine.

I haven’t spent too much time today looking at SDCC news, but I did look at the list of Eisner winners. Tom King won in several categories, and his work is honestly about the only stuff on the list (both winners and nominees) that I’ve read. I’ve read the Ed Piskor X-Men stuff, and that was good. I have Sean Murphy’s Batman: White Knight, but haven’t read it yet. I’d like to read some of Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer stuff someday. And I’ve read a lot of the Brubaker/Phillips stuff, but not My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies. So there’s plenty of stuff there that I’d like to read eventually.

This short NPR story covers a bit about the history of the con, which is now 50 years old. And there’s some other mildly amusing coverage of the con up at the NPR site. There’s a playlist of videos from KPBS up on YouTube, including interviews with Scott Shaw! and Mark Evanier. (Though they call Scott “Stan” and omit the exclamation point he uses at the end of his name.)

not at SDCC 2019, day one

Once again, I’m not at SDCC. Instead, I’m suffering through a heat wave with the rest of the unfortunate souls stuck in New Jersey this weekend. It’ll only be in the 80s today, with some rain, but it’ll be back into the mid 90s tomorrow through Sunday.  Getting out of New Jersey’s summer heat and humidity for a few days has always been one of my favorite things about the San Diego con. (And the weather in San Diego looks pretty good this year: low 70s every day.)

I realized yesterday that my eBay auctions will be ending during the con, on Saturday and Sunday. I’m not sure if that helps or hinders things. On the one hand, anyone at the con probably won’t be looking at eBay. On the other hand, everyone not at the con (a much larger group) might be seeing more comics coverage in the news than usual, and might be more likely to check eBay for comics-related stuff. I have bids now on 6 out of the 31 books I’ve listed, and (assuming everyone who wins pays up), I’m guaranteed to make at least $20. So, that’s not great, but it’s not horrible either. It’s enough to buy a couple of sandwiches, I guess.

All three volumes of Akira that I’ve listed have gotten bids, and were the first items to get bids. I just noticed that I finished reading those volumes four years ago today, and blogged about it. Akira remains popular, possibly because of the upcoming live-action film. That’s apparently on hold now, but it’s still likely to happen, maybe in 2021 or 2022.

I haven’t had much time to look at today’s news out of the con, but I did read a bit about the DC Meet the Publishers panel. Most of the current stuff I’m buying and reading right now is DC, so it’s always interesting to see what’s going on with them.