CONNNNNNNN!

This past weekend, I made a quick trip up to Toronto for the HobbyStar Fan Expo, my first convention in two years. I made a quick appearance at the New York Comicon in February of 2007, but was too excited at the prospect of being in New York for the first time to spend more than Friday afternoon there! I’ve been sort of cooling off on the whole convention tip lately—two San Diego trips will do that to you—but for whatever reason, I felt like throwing myself back into the game for one last score. Well, probably not last, but whatever. Turns out there were a lot of Canadian artists whose work I dig attending the show this year, guys like Cameron Stewart, Francis Manapul, and the Immonens, Kathryn and Stuart. The comic stuff is a draw, obviously, but the show’s horror component, the Festival of Fear, caught my attention—this year promised both Roger Corman and Tom Savini! Exciting stuff, and yes, I’m a giant nerd. Anyway, the good folks at Porter Air got me there safe and on time, with free beer on the flight to boot, and it was game time.

Friday morning brought swift disappointment, however, as I learned of Tom Savini’s last-minute cancellation. I brought my four-disc Dawn of the Dead DVD set for nothing! So it goes, I guess. The doors opened Friday afternoon and the craziness began. I had no idea how big this convention had gotten—it looked like it had tripled or quadrupled in size since the last Fan Expo I attended, which I think would have been 2002. I heard overall attendance was up by 23% this year. In any event, the joint was packed with vendors, exhibitors, artists, and celebrities. Like the guy who played the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, for some reason! I may mock, but dude always had somebody at his table. People went all out with the costumes this year, too. I got a taste of it on Friday, but Saturday would really kick it into high gear. Other than a few t-shirts, the only stuff I bought the first day was from Montreal-based artist Cameron Stewart (Seaguy, Apocalypstix). I couldn’t pass up the gorgeous art book he was selling (available at his website for a mere $20—a steal!), especially not when, for an extra $20, he’d do a sketch in it. Hence this radical Seaguy head shot:

We chatted a bit while he drew, mostly about legendary Mad cartoonist Mort Drucker and a very exciting, top-secret project he’s doing that should be announced any day now. Since Tiina was minding my cat Jones for me, I also grabbed a dope Catwoman print as a thank-you gift.

I also got my first taste of the costume craziness that the next day would bring.

C'mon, Black Bolt! Kudos for picking an obscure costume, but you gotta sell that shit! Get into character!

Deadpool was a favourite costume at this show. Not quite as many of them as there were Rorschachs and Heath Ledger Jokers, but pretty close.

Saturday at the show was bonkers. Some of the show’s organizational problems became apparent, as the lobby of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre was jammed up with a huge lineup of people who had no idea where they were going or what they were doing. Some of them already had their badges, some of them where waiting to get ‘em, and there were no Expo volunteers or employees around to tell anyone anything. Since this line did not appear to be going anywhere and I already had my badge, I left the Centre and found an alternate means of egress up by the C.N. Tower entrance. The line here was chugging right along, and I got into Day Two in no time. First up, Francis Manapul (Superman/Batman, Adventure Comics) was selling his hardcover art book with the option to get a sketch with it, so I asked for Brainiac when I bought mine. Check out this craziness…

Writer Kathryn Immonen (Runaways, Hellcat) and her husband Stuart (artist on New Avengers, Nextwave) were also in attendance. I scored a hardcover copy of the collection of their webcomic, Never As Bad As You Think, as well as Stuart’s latest Centifolia art collection, The Ladies’ Auxiliary Guild. Check them out on the web here, you'll be glad you did. I also bought a Flash print from Karl Kerschl (currently rocking the amazing Flash strip in Wednesday Comics, easily one of the best strips in the series) and a Daredevil print from Mike Cho (whose gorgeous artwork can be seen in the current issue of Illo magazine, as well as the Max Finder Mysteries books and The Age of the Sentry miniseries). Also, more convention attendees means way more costumes!

"Please, folks! Step back! I'm trying to transform myself into a productive member of society!"

Wow. No wonder Booster Gold was always hanging around.

There were nearly as many Deadpools as there are Deadpool titles on the rack right now.

These ladies definitely had their phasers set to fabulous.

The light cycle from the new Tron movie was there. Apparently, a lot of people are very excited about this. Me, I prefer The Last Starfighter.

I can't decide if these costumes are "charmingly handmade" or "intentionally crappy", but I love them either way.

And then there's this. We saw this on our way out on Saturday. I have no idea what was going on, but it was impressive.

That is one wrinkly turtle.

The final day of the convention is always a bit of a drag—you’re tired, you’re out of money, and you’re sick of elbowing other nerds out of the way. I didn’t buy much of anything on Sunday, just another t-shirt and a DC Direct figure of the Composite Superman—one of my most favourite ridiculous Silver Age creations, who I really have to do a blog post about one of these days. By the final day, I was resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to bother getting any autographs from any of the horror/sci-fi guests, like Leonard Nimoy, Billy Dee Williams, Mary McDonnell, or Roger Corman. Their lines were too long, a signature could run you as much as $60 a pop, and I’d rather spend my money in Artist’s Alley anyway. I still would have shelled out for Savini, though, had he showed.

All in all, it was a fun weekend, but it’s most definitely all the convention I need for quite some time. Big thanks to Sean Jordan, AKA the Wordburglar, for letting me crash on his couch, fellow convention goers Andrew Bartlett and Matt Morgan for hanging out on Friday before the doors opened (Matt’s first convention! He’s a big boy now), and my old buddy and super-talented illustrator Eric Orchard for joining me for coffee and fresh air breaks when needed (check out his work at his blog). One final note, I bumped into DC head honcho Dan Didio at the Porter Air terminal on the way home and, in the interest of shameless self-promotion, I gave him one of my minicomics to read on the plane ride home. Clearly, this can only lead to one thing—a greenlight for my Composite Superman hardcover graphic novel idea! Well, a guy can dream.

Hipless in Halifax

A cool indie comics publisher called Conudrum Press has recently moved to near-by Wolfville, Nova Scotia. With our pals, Invisisible Publishing putting out Mike Holmes's book, Darwyn Cooke and Steven McNiven living here, and all the wicked shit Strange Adventures does, Halifax is becoming the Portland, Oregon of Canada. Now all we need is a weather machine to lengthen our eight week summer.

Conundrum publishes all sorts of cool indie stuff for whiny indie babies like myself. The Hipless Boy, due out super soon, is a gorgeous collection of inter-connected stories about a young man named Sully, who lives in an arty neighbourhood in Montreal. His stories of black outs, art shows, crossing-dressing, and shitting on someone's doorstep as revenge, are beautifully rendered with clean black and white lines. The book is semi-autobiographical, but the author, also named Sully, doesn't allow it to become self-indulgent or rambling. It's more snapshots of moments in the lives of young urban adults—moments that are familiar but still fresh.

The real strength of The Hipless Boy is that Sully can really write. A page of prose opens each chapter, and they really enhance the comic. Unlike that prose issue of Batman that Morrison wrote, I actually read this. Sully has the ability to construct a story that's serious, but luminous, funny and current, but totally unpretentious.

I've already heard Sully compared to Tomine, and Craig Thompson, but I think these comparisons obscure that The Hipless Boy is more on the silly and sexy side of comics. Sully's comics make you want to burst into the world, and do something crazy, which is a pretty rare feat for indie comics.

But it's not just in his words—Sully tells a great story with images too. There's a great text-less story in which Sully chokes on a gobstopper while on a movie date. I'll leave you a little excerpt.

 

What I would like for my birthday

It's my birthday, so I thought I would make a little wish list:

WHAT I WOULD LIKE FOR MY BIRTHDAY, BY RACHELLE GOGUEN, AGE 29

The Wedding of Steve Rogers and Winter Soldier

The Torrid, Cross-Dimensional Affair of Winter Soldier and Batman

An ongoing Namor series, written by Matt Fraction

The replacement of Greg Land by Colleen Coover on Uncanny X-Men

Gary Frank signing a contact whereby only he can draw Superman and Action Comics (no offense to the other fine artists drawing those comics, I just really love Gary Frank)

An Aquaman series drawn by J.Bone

A Power Man and Iron Fist buddy movie, set in the 70s

A Booster Gold and Blue Beetle buddy movie, set in the 80s

A really great Catwoman series, written by Will Pfeifer

SOMETHING written by Will Pfeifer

A Blackhawks series by Darwyn Cooke

Absolute Top Ten

Another printing of the second volume of the Frank Miller Daredevil Omnibus

A comic about Batman where Batman is Bruce Wayne and is awesome

Another Matt Wagner Batman series

A charcoal grill

A really good World's Finest series

A poster of this:

Well, that's a good list for starters. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

The Lazer Tag Files, Part 1: Questions Are Raised.

 Or is it?

Blackest Night: Wrestling Women

I brought home this quarter bin issue of Maxwell Madd and His Wrestling Women because, well, I like an easy target.

Maxwell Madd is your classic skeevy, 80's cool dude who looks like an emoticon. He hangs with a crew of muscly sexxxy ladies who wrestle bad guys, and each other. In this issue they have to hang out at Madd's rich (but sadly deceased) uncle's haunted mansion, and fight vampires.

I was ready to make a bunch of snarky comments about this ol' hunk o' junk, but then I read it, and it really wasn't so bad. Sure it's pretty dumb and gross but you get the feeling the creator really tried. And there were a few good jokes in there! For real! 

The creator, by the way, is one David C. Matthews (avoid confusion and note the "C." Although wouldn't it be awesome if it turned out Dave Matthews had created Maxwell Madd and his Wrestling Women?) David C. Matthews has a dumpy little website where he chronicles his stunted comics career, the highlight of which is Satin Steele, a porny comic about a lady body builder.

Satin Steele dips a bit too deeply into the psyche of David C. Matthews for me, thanks. (There's something depressing about sketches of weird creater-owned characters just hangin' and the Satin Steele site has a montage of those). But in his Satin Steele prologue, DCM kinda gets to the heart of what we need from comics.

"[Satin Steele is] not my earliest creation (that honor belongs to the afore-mentioned "Leenah"), but the one that I felt sure would become my "signature" property, as Batman was for Bob Kane and Superman was for Siegel and Schuster. And whereas a majority of my work is designed to appeal, firstly to me, and secondarily to my fellow fans of "femuscle", Satin was aimed equally to the "mainstream" reader - the "normal" person who may not necessarily like even the idea of "muscles on girls" but who'll respond to a well-crafted story that provides drama, humopr and strong characters"

It's humoprous, for sure. Typos aside, I think duder is right that comics can be about anything, as long as there's good characters and a good story. David C. Matthews is also wise to bring up Shuster and remind us that the comic industry was built by pervs. I keep forgetting to mention this, but Vice Magazine, in their comics guide issue, had a great piece about Craig Yoe's new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's co-creator Joe Shuster.

It features Shuster's pervy soft-core porn comics that star beefy dudes who look just like our favourite Kryptonian. The book looks amazing, and the pictures on the Vice site are strange and sexy and hilarious.

So what am I saying here? That given the right circumstances David C. Matthews could have been the next Shuster? No. That a stupid, porny comic isn't necessarily bad? Maybe. That my brain has gotten a little soft from too many ten hour days at the comic shop this week? Definitely. I'll be back next week to make fun of stupid shit.

John Buys Batman Comics. And Also Some Other Stuff

Man. There was a lot of Batman this week. And ever since I started reviewing on a regular basis there is nothing I can resist less than a Batman-related comic book. Except for Gotham City Sirens.

Batman and Robin No. 3

Man, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely are a great team. I have heard it said that there will be a Quitely-free arc on this book in the near future and it will be very interesting to see how it stacks up against these first few issues in terms of how much I love it. I remember that the Frank-less issues of New X-Men weren't as delightful to mine eyes as the issues before and after them but I also remember thinking that the art on those issues was "actively bad" as opposed to "not sublime". How about it, DC? Can you provide a fill-in artist who isn't terrible?

Anyway, this issue provides plenty of examples of how well these two work together. Professor Pyg's pre-surgery psych-up/disco dance/psychotic break? Hot damn. I don't know of too many other artists who could put pictures to those words so well. I think I stayed on those few pages for five or six minutes. Heck, between Pyg and that Alice dame in Detective the bar is getting set pretty high in terms of the madness level of the Gotham City criminal element. Pretty soon guys like Firefly, with their garden-variety manias, are going to look like chumps.

The... character involved in the last-page reveal is another good example: an interesting Morrison concept, fantastically-realized by Quitely. My imagination is tormenting me with images of how other artists might have portrayed... that character, I love it that much.

I've been reading a lot of Batman recently, as I said earlier, and most of it has been decent, but precious few are providing me with as much glee as this here book. Hooray!

King City No. 1

Okay. Okay okay. Okay okay okay. I can do this. I can't do this. All of my summarization glands have dried up.

No, I can do it. King City is the best kind of crazy. Brandon Graham had, it seems, about a hundred neat ideas and took maybe half a dozen of them (utility cats, a city full of spies and spy hotels, and blah and blah) and deployed the rest of them liberally as vending machine concepts and street flavour and incidental character fun. The result: exactly the kind of comic that I like to devote half an hour or more to, which is good because it took at least that long to take a signifiicant portion of it in.

So there's this guy named Joe and he has a cat and he steals a key and is operating in this huge crazy cool town. There's a girl he'd rather not meet and some guys who wish him ill and that's all that I've managed to piece together yet but I'm already completely charmed. From what I've been able to gather through doing absolutely no research, some of King City has already appeared elsewhere but this series will mark its first complete run and that's terrific for one reason: it will be coming out very regularly if the publishing spirits are kind. Oh Typesetules, oh Shipontime, hear my plea! Do right by me!

The Red Circle: The Shield One-Shot

Okay! Thus concludes the introduction of the Archie Comics heroes to the DC Universe! Kind of!

I was waiting for all four issues to come out before commenting on this, because sometimes when I don’t wait I end up making an idiot out of myself (for instance, when I asserted that the killy Batman in Battle for the Cowl couldn’t be Jason Todd because hey, there’s a new Red Robin series coming up!). Now that it’s done, though… for a series with the avowed purpose of introducing characters to a universe, there was surprisingly little in the way of interaction with that universe in the course of the various issues. Like, none. No JLA fighting Starro on the teevee, no Web running into the Manhattan Guardian in one panel on page 10, nothing. There’s a guy in this issue who mentions how all the American super-heroes should join the Army, but he names no names. Now, this is probably a purposeful attempt to settle the characters into their own interconnected portion of the DCU before having the JSA stop in for a guest appearance, but dropping a few names now and again might have been nice. Ah well, looks like there’ll be a couple of ongoing series, so we shall see how this plays out in them, I guess.

As for the issue, well, it was just fine. The Shield is hardly the most distinct of super-heroes, despite his long pedigree. Generic superpowers, patriotic theme, war casualty-rebuilt-as-supersoldier? Check check check. The potentially interesting part of this iteration of the character is going to be the fact that he’s working directly for the Army, which is usually a role for psychotic assholes, though I have absolutely no idea how it’ll be handled here. The character was sympathetic and interesting for the first three or four pages, until he got blown up. After that, and well into his transformation into the Shield, he got a bit emotionally flat. Wait and see, I suppose.

Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen Special No. 2 - Pretty meh, I gotta say. The whole ‘massive military conspiracy’ plot that has been running through the Superman family of books has been in a holding pattern for a while now, and though this issue and the ones featuring the ugly-ass half ‘n half characters on the front seem to be designed to get the whole thing rolling again I may have lost a bit too much interest to care. At least there’s a wee little Odd Man shout-out, and on a week that saw me thinking about him, for some reason! Oh this madcap life of mine!

Superman No. 691 - As I said, it looks like they’re starting to ramp up this conspiracy storyline. Is anyone else being reminded more and more of Legends the longer this goes on? If they manage to work Brimstone into the plot somehow then I will regain interest a lot more quickly, as gigantic fiery wrestlers are just neat. Wait, does Death of the New Gods mean no more Brimstone ever again? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Flash: Rebirth No. 4 - I was pretty enthusiastic about this series and then I got less so and then I was positively grumpy about the whole thing. Now? I guess I’m okay with it. It doesn’t look like Johns is going to kill Max Mercury, and I can get behind that, but he hasn’t yet made a good enough case for Barry actually needing to be back. I was actually kind of hoping that he’d go back into the Speed Force at the end of Final Crisis, as it would have been quite tantalizing and fun to have him appear only in times of great peril, like a fast red Phantom Stranger. You could stretch out the explanation of why it was happening for years!

Batwoman in Detective Comics No. 856 -  Dang, yo. This is another of those quality Batman-related comics that I was talking about earlier. So nice-looking, such a high level of villainous craziness. Plus: an octopus man!

The Muppet Show Comic Book: The Treasure of Peg Leg Wilson No. 2 (of 4) - Gosh, is that a long title. Ah, but it's for a good cause, with lots of Beaker-abuse, rat abuse and general battering of felt to delight the senses. The various mysteries that are the theme of this miniseries are providing me with much joy.

Sherlock Holmes No. 4 - My brain feels a bit pummeled, as I'm not at home right now and so can't refer to the previous issues but can't escape the feeling that I should be able to figure at least part of the mystery out. Gah! Ah well, it's still a damn fine comic. Tune in next month to see if I figure it out before Leah Moore tells me whodunit.

The Unknown No. 4 (of 4) - I was all set to grump about how the mysteries of life and death hadn't been solved and how there'd better be more of this series and then the ding dong dang house ad at the back just shut me right up. Guess I'll just hold my tongue until next month, won't I?

Green Lantern No. 45 - Lots of great Corps vs Corps fun here: Sinestro Corps vs Star Sapphires! Red lanterns vs Green Lanterns! Blue vs Orange! Everybody vs the Black Lanterns!

ZOMBIE WATCH: Pariah, Planet Xanshi, Loads of dead Sinestro Corpsers, Qwardians and (hooray!) all of Larfleeze's victims.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink No. 4 (of 6) - This series was my least favourite of the four, butt I do believe that it's growing on me. I honestly hope that yon Tattooed Man makes it through with his life, tattoos and newfound heroism intact. Man, though, the characters in this have some terrible names. Not birth names, the kind you choose for yourselves. Twisttedd? Crim$o? Phat Diamond? G-Filter? SYNcK? Is it because they're all in gangs? Do gang folk not know how to name themselves well?

Wednesday Comics No. 8 - With four left to go, a quick rundown: Metamorpho, Strange Adventures, Supergirl, Deadman, Flash and Kamandi: going strong the whole time. Sgt Rock, Metal Men, Demon/Catwoman, Batman and Green Lantern have been perfectly serviceable. Teen Titans has gotten much better, possibly due to some art tweaking and possibly because it took a while to get up to speed. Wonder Woman has also gotten better but is still very very tough to read (but featured a really neato version of Etta Candy). I grossly underestimated Hawkman, it turns out, though elaborate joke or not, that first comic is still kind of painful. And Superman... I reckon that the only hope for this comic is for the next four installments to be one long alien-wrassli' exhibition, and that is way unlikely.

Batman: the Widening Gyre No. 1 (of 6) - I've never read any of Kevin Smith's comic work, did you know that? Most of it came out while I was in my poor times, when I would basically buy Astro City and one or two other titles and then eat crackers for supper. And I'm addicted to Batman comics, too. So I ignored the mockery of my blogmates and that of the dog that they had gotten from somewhere and bought this. And it ain't bad, really. It's too late for me to really articulate things, so I'll subject it to the ol' SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGMENT treatment later. Oh, but K. Smith is going on the big list of People Who Can't Write the Demon's Rhymespeak. Because he can't. The rhythm is all wrong and there are too many near-rhymes.

Anyway: good night all.