Author: Gene

October 27 / Gene / Cons

The Complete Guide to Buying Comics at a Comic Con

Hunting for back issues at a comic book convention can be a very fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be stressful and expensive! After attending many cons myself and spending countless hours flipping through long boxes, I’ve designed a fairly effective process that works well for me. Everyone is different and has their own goals and objectives at a con, so feel free to use this information in a way that works best for you.

The focus of this guide is strictly on buying back issues at comic book conventions; not toys, artwork, trade paperbacks, high value CGC-graded books or anything else at a con. Each of those has its own unique approach, but if you’re attending a con to try and fill some gaps in your collection, pick up some key issues or dig through dollar bins, then this is the guide you should be reading.

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February 24 / Gene / Guides

DrawerBoxes Review and Assembly Guide

After much back and forth, I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade my short boxes to DrawerBoxes. I say “upgrade,” because that’s what it is – they are higher quality and have more functional utility than standard comic book long boxes and short boxes.

DrawerBoxes by The Collection Drawer Co. is a comic book storage system designed to create a stackable system of boxes that slide in and out like drawers (hence the name), creating a more efficient way to access your collection. For most collectors, long and short boxes are simply stacked on top of each other, or on shelves, which is a fine way to store your comic books, but it’s very inconvenient to unstack boxes or pull them off shelves and remove the cover and replace them just to have access to your books. It’s not the end of the world, or the most difficult task, but it does get very annoying and repetitive. DrawerBoxes aim to solve that issue.

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December 30 / Gene / Comics

Staff Picks: Our 10 Favorite Comics from 2015

2015 has been a great year for comics – we got two reboots from Marvel and DC, Image kept pumping out winners, and some of the best series from 2014 kept going strong.

It’s also been a great year for Shortboxed! We managed to hit lots of cons up and down the California coast, made it up to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con, visited some comic book shops overseas, and we got to attend the mecca for comic book geeks, San Diego Comic-Con. We also added another member to the Shortboxed crew this year, Jeremy, who’s been crushing it with his reviews and opinion pieces! All this on top of reading some amazing stories from our favorite creators this year! So thank you to all of our readers and followers on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for allowing us to geek out with you and connect over this passion of ours.

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November 22 / Gene / Comics

Stan Lee’s Comikaze 2015 Cosplay Roundup

Can’t believe it’s already been a year since Comikaze 2014! This is one of our favorite cons, and for good reason – it’s well produced, draws a lot of celebrity and creator talent, tons of interesting panels, it’s affordable, easy to travel to, and SoCal cosplays come out in full force! We managed to snap some cosplay photos throughout the weekend and have created this galley to share with you. If you recognize or know any of these awesome cosplayers, please send them to this gallery!

Check out the full gallery after the jump!

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July 15 / Gene / Cons

Our Favorite Moments from Comic-Con 2015

San Diego Comic-Con 2015 just wrapped up, and we’re still trying to decompress and soak in all that we experienced. This was personally my favorite SDCC I’ve been through, for many reasons. I’ve chatted with other Shortboxed editors who went and these are some of our favorite moments from 2015 and we’re excited to give you a tiny glimpse of our con experience.

Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo reunion. During the second half of the Star Wars panel, JJ Abrams brought out the Holy Trinity of the original Star Wars cast – Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. When Ford came out, all of Hall H went into a frenzy and gave him a standing welcome. We were among the first on our feet!

Photo courtesy of ilpost.it

Lauren Cohan texting the cast of The Walking Dead. During The Walking Dead panel, one person was missing from the table – Lauren Cohan, who plays Maggie. She was with her family at the time and couldn’t make it to Comic-Con, unfortunately. She texted the cast and asked Steven Yeun, who plays her lover Glen, to read it aloud. She apologized to Hall H for not being there with us – it was very personal and a nice way to thank the fans and give us something special. She ended the text by asking Steven to, “say something funny.”

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June 25 / Gene / Cons

How to Camp Out in Hall H Line for SDCC

In Norse mythology (or simply just Thor continuity in many of our readers’ cases), Valhalla is where Asgardian warriors go to in the afterlife when they have died honorably in combat – it is their reward for a life well-lived. Hall H is Valhalla for San Diego Comic-Con geeks.

We battle all night, fighting off hoards of line cutters, the growl of hunger pains, the shiver of the pre-dawn sky and the sister of death herself, sleep. For those that survive the long, grueling night, they are gifted with entering the majestic Hall H.

Many have heard horror stories about camping out for Hall H – all the questions and confusion about when and where to line up, what time you can enter, who’s allowed in and out, something about wrist bands and an unofficial line, and so on. Once you do figure out when and where the line starts (we don’t even know ourselves, and we likely won’t find out until the actual con itself), the next important thing to do is figure out how to make your overnight campout pleasant enough so it doesn’t feel like you’re sieging a castle for six months.

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June 15 / Gene / Cons

How to Avoid “Con Crud”

There’s no way around it – human beings are filthy, germ-spreading animals. We use our hands to touch everything, we sneeze and cough in public, and some of us simply have bad hygiene habits. All of this gets cranked up at comic book conventions like SDCC. Imagine 130,000 germ factories all squeezed into one place, side-by-side, for four and a half days and you’ll begin to see the importance of taking preventive measures.

At a mega-con like San Diego Comic-Con, everyone is too busy and too stressed to think about personal hygiene and proper manners, so it’s up to you as an attendee to make sure you don’t catch or spread any germs, otherwise known as “con crud.” It happens to the best of us, no matter how extreme your measures are, because there’s nothing you can really do if the person sitting next to you in Hall H sneezes on your face and you have to spend the next 8 hours pressed up next to them.

One of these Hall H attendees could be Patient Zero.

Thankfully, over the years I’ve learned some best practices to at least lower the chances of catching con crud. I personally follow each of these rules myself, so they’ve been through many real-world tests:

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