This past weekend, Wizard World decended on the Bay Area for the first time. I was able to attend this con on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised how much fun it was. I attended with my 18-month old son along with my twin brother and his son and met my coworker and his daughter there as well. So I guess you can say it was a family affair.
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.”
We continue our countdown to San Diego Comic-Con 2015 by talking about a big part of the show, in my opinion, the artists! Comics wouldn’t be what they are without the talented visual artistry of these individuals who bring countless stories to life. They create these elaborate worlds where we can live in, interact with the characters, and see how the stories play out, albeit in the pages of the comics we read. And, San Diego Comic-Con bolsters tables after tables of these skilled artisans, creating sketches, signing autographs, and selling art fit for framing.
I tend to spend a lot of time at Artist Alley, just walking up and down the tables, seeing if anything catches my eye. I’ve fallen in love with a few artists along the way as a result of this, and as a comic fan first, if the art grabs my attention as I pass by, I’m more or less going to grab it for my Batcave wall. Since this is a guide, I’m going to try to give a few suggestions on getting the most out of Artist Alley. In the ever-capable words of Benedict Cumberbatch,
The key is to know who is going to have a table at Artist Alley. Some big names like Francis Manapul, previous writer/artist on The Flash, Joe Benitez, known for his latest creation, Lady Mechanika, and Stanley Lau aka Artgerm, known for being an awesome digital artist, have had tables in Artist Alley in years past. Artists like Stanley Lau typically will cap the number of prints he sells per customer and you can bet your bottom dollar that certain characters will sell out each day (he allocates a certain number of character prints per day in order to give patrons a chance to purchase the character they want). So if you really want to get certain prints from a certain artist, you may want to dedicate visiting them first thing! I typically follow my favorites artists via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and they typically will have a nifty advertisement of what they are selling at SDCC. I know that helps me decide on hitting up Artgerm before others if there’s a character print or art book that I want to pick up. You can check out the list of artist who will be at Artist Alley here.
In my Retcon post, I touched on the idea of using a death to propel a story forward. I wanted to expand on this by discussing three deaths that happened in our beloved comic pages that were both surprising and pivotal in comics. As an added wrinkle, these three deaths weren’t super heroes but were impactful nonetheless in the story lines of the super heroes we know and love.
The first death actually made the news when it happened, calling for comic book writers to be more responsible because kids were reading these stories. All this uprising for a fictional character! That character was Gwen Stacy, the love of Peter Parker’s life. What was so surprising about this death was how it occurred. She was taken by Green Goblin and as she fell from the bridge, Spider-man catches her, making us believe he saved her. But due to physics and gravity, the impact of Peter catching her from her fall actually caused her death. Because Peter had super strength, his body could withstand a lot more than normal humans.
Nothing thrills me more than visiting my local comic shop every week and picking up the latest and greatest issue from the various titles on my pull list. It’s like Christmas morning every time where a glimpse into the ongoing story is revealed. But sometimes with how some titles are published, the wait can be unbearable. Take for example Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Image Comics releases this title every month, therefore, I have to wait a substantial amount of time to continue the ongoing epic. And sometimes it’s tough to remember what happened in the previous issue. Yes, there’s a section at the beginning of the issue to remind me of the major points but it’s still consuming a chunk of the story every month.
With the advent of Netflix, binge watching became relevant. I, for one, fell into this statistic when my wife and I watched the entire 6 seasons of Lost within a week’s time. Yeah, it was like being unable to put down an engrossing book but with an entire television series. There’s just something satisfying to continue watching a tv show from start to finish, of course, with the hope to get all your questions answered. I’m not going to weigh in on what I thought of the ending of Lost or of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, for that matter, but you get the picture, right?
I’ve been an avid comic book reader ever since I stepped foot into my first comic book shop, years ago in the early 90’s. It was one of those hole in the wall stores behind a Montgomery Ward department store that had an assortment of comics, toys, and collectible cards. This was what I considered my local comic store, and, I left the store every Friday with a bag of goodies to keep me busy until the following week. Fast forward to today and I still make the trek to my local comic store every Wednesday to pick up a bag of goodies, but there is another way that I consume comics, too, through the digital realm.
