I had originally planned to have this up by Sunday night (two days after my Comiccon visit should have plenty of time to get my thoughts together, right?), but there were too many things to scan and not nearly enough time in the day to put it all together...
Comiccon 2008
I may be getting too old for Comiccon.
Not because I feel out of place, despite having never worn a costume in the 10-15 years I've attended, but because the comic convention itself is evolving into something that I really don't enjoy as much anymore. My fondest memories from past conventions are of meeting up-and-coming comic creators, artists or writers and receiving treasured character sketches, buying sketchbooks and hearing stories about the inner-workings of the comic industry, the creative process behind their art or even just hearing about a day in their lives. And I did still have a few of those experiences this past weekend, but many of the faces have been changing over the years and I lament the loss of so many old friends. I especially miss seeing Mark Oakley, Mike Kunkel (who still attends and can be found if you're really lucky, but hasn't exhibited the past couple of years) and Ryan Woodward.
The emphasis of the con has been steadily evolving away from comics for the past several years. Video games, movies, toys, even TV shows dominate the largest displays now. Some of them have a comic book heritage, others...not so much. Star Wars has been in comic form for about thirty years, though I don't think it started out there, but it has long since been a mainstay of Comiccon. But James Bond? He-man? Chuck? The Office? My little Pony? Ghostbusters? (The booth wasn't even for the movie, it was for a video game.)
I can't deny that it's always great fun just to go and see the costumed attendees (and exhibitors). I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a big part of the attraction.
Sadly, for the first time in several years, I didn't give blood at the Con. I had intended to, but there was so much to see and so little time that I just never quite made it. I also usually get there before the con opens, so I have time to be leeched in the morning, but I arrived an hour or two after the con's opening this year...so I had no time to spare.
Sadly, while the story continues to be a fun read and well-illustrated, the last couple of issues have become less visually impressive (not the art, but the materials on which they're printed). Issues #3.5 and #4 (and his recent sketchbook) are much smaller than a standard comic and are printed on heavy, but not glossy, paper. If I wasn't already a fan of his work, I doubt I would have been inspired to pick up a copy. I wonder how may new readers he's attracting.
The first three issues of Alcatraz High are beautifully done, so it's obvious that the potential is there, but the cost of self-publishing and being a family man have likely become too much to keep up that standard of quality. As always, Bobby will happily sketch a character inside the book when you pick up a copy.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an Alcatraz High film being put out by Pixar one of these days (Bobby works for Pixar). The story sems like a perfect fit for an animated feature.
Laurie B
Laurie and Kandrix are the creators of A Monk's Tale, a comic about three do-gooding monks helping the helpless in the battle against evil government thugs (or something like that). It's a nice little comic and was printed in a full-sized comic format on quality paper with heavy card stock covers, but...it never really seemed to catch on with the comic-buying public. So Laurie shifted gears this past year and re-invented herself as "Laurie B". Her new web site, The Art of Laurie B, doesn't mention her previous endeavors and her current style leans more toward Dean Yeagle than the Asian/martial arts style of A Monk's Tale, but I love the new direction. I'm a big fan of Dean Yeagle (he's another Comiccon exhibitor that I see and buy a book from every year, but he's way too big to remember a little guy like me) and the really-cute-but-a-little-naughty school of art, so this is right up my alley.
I picked up both of her new sketchbooks, The Art of Laurie B (sketchbook 1) and Pure Heroine (sketchbook 2). She signed both and even did a cute color sketch inside one of them. I also received a cute color sketch from Laurie in my comiccon "please give me a sketch" book and would have picked up one or two of the glossy re-prints of Laurie's recent drawings (her Disney characters and Princess Leia sketches are especially cute), but they weren't available in the 11" x 17" size and I didn't really want the 8.5" x 11". I'll probably try to buy them from her web site. I predict that it won't be long before Laurie will be too big to talk to me anymore. I give her a year or two before her amazing talent is discovered and she's whisked away to fame and fortune. Sigh.
Dean Yeagle
Speaking of Dean Yeagle, he drew a sketch inside the sketch book I bought from him, Scribblings 2. There are a bunch of other Dean Yeagle books that I wanted to pick up, but I was trying to contain my spending as much as possible (will little success).
Dean Yeagle also did the art for the recent Gremlins comic book for Disney this year that I really enjoyed. I meant to chat him up about it, but I totally forgot when I was confronted with the man himself.
Chris Sanders
Another influence Laurie B (or maybe Kandrix) mentioned when I was talking to her about her new style was Chris Sanders. Ironically, I had just come across his boot and his sketchbook not longe before I found laurie and Kandrix. I wasn't really aware of Chris before this Comiccon, but I'll be following his art more closely in the future.
I was also hoping to see Mark Schultz and pick up another sketchbook (I've seen him the past two years and purchased a sketchbook each year), but I couldn't find him this year. I didn't actually look anyone up in in the index - I just wandered until I found people, so he may have been there. I don't know.
Emily Warren
I met a talented young artist in Comiccon's Artist Alley, Emily Warren, and I had every intention of buying her sketchbook...but I never quite made it back to her ( found her early inthe day before I was making many purchases).
She has done color work for at least one cover of Zenescope's Grimm Fairy tales issues and has done a Little Miss Muffet cover (naughty and nice versions) that were gorgeous. Her art isn't quite as "cute" as Dean Yeagle's or Laurie B's, but it is definitely very nice.
I'll have to try to buy the sketchbook from her web site.
Travis Charest
Travis Charest was signing his latest book (a little hardcover measuring about 3" tall and 8" wide) called SpaceGirl. The story is sorta like a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers piece of pulp space-silliness and the artwork, though not as finished as I had hoped it would be, was still a worthy acquisition. Some of the books pages were colored, but others were barely more than rough sketches.
I also picked up a bunch of other really cool comics:
Beyond Wonderland
I found the J Scott Campbell alternate cover of Beyond Wonderland #1 in the Zenescope booth. Campbell is another artist who does really-cute-but-a-little-naughty art (usually for Danger Girl).
Caliber
I found the stunning Caliber #4 at the Radical Comics booth. I also picked up a couple of other brand new issues of their comics, but this one is my favorite. I love its old-west-meets-Camelot storyline. And the interior art is as impressive as the covers.
Joe Linsner's was there selling his latest Dawn convention sketchbook. Joe can do the really-cute-but-a-little-naughty style, but he seems to stick to the more grown-up naughty imagery more these days.
I missed the 2006 edition, but I have all the others.
Hack/Slash
I happened across an alternate cover of a comic I don't usually buy, Hack/Slash, at the Devil's Due booth.
I've been intrigued by this title, but it hasn't really managed to grab my attention to the point that I was willing to buy it. The Suicide Girls Annual version certainly did, though (at least the cover I picked up). The interior art was also well done (some panels more well-done than others, but overall it was pretty good).
Fervor
I found a comic from 2005 caled Fervor that caught my eye immediately.
The black and white interior art isn't as polished as the cover, but it's very original. The writing is a little disjointed and hard to follow, but i don't regret making the purchase (I do kind of regret having the comic's creator mar the cover with his autograph).
Wonderland
The SLG booth didn't have any copies of the Haunted mansion for me this year, but they did have the last two issues of Wonderland, a less dark (than the Zenescope or Abacus versions) version of the Alice in Wonderland story. The interior art is colorful and very Alice in Wonderland. Last year, the artist was on hand to sign my copies, this year it was the writer.
Blue grind
My surprise favorite unexpected acquisition: Richard Moore's Blue Grind. If you're a fan of the re-imagining of classic stories and appreciate risque (definitely cute, but more definitely dirty) art, you'll get a kick out of this book. It's the grown-up version of what happened to Dorothy when she went to Oz.
In addition to the books mentioned above, I also picked up a bunch of others, but I don't feel like talking about any of the rest of them at the moment.
I went to the Mysterious Galaxy signing on Tuesday, July 22, for Neil Gaiman's The Dangerous Alphabet. As always, it was great to see and hear Neil. I'm guessing that his busy schedule has caused him to miss the last few appointments with his barber because his hair was looking especially shaggy. Even for Neil.
I wore the black Scary Trousers t-shirt I got at last year's Comiccon, fully expecting to be one of many sad nerds awash in a sea of Scary Trousers, but I was - surprisingly - the only person wearing this shirt. Which was kind of cool, because it gave me something to talk to Neil about when he was signing my books.
But before the signing took place, Neil talked to us about his other new book (available in October), The Graveyard Book. He explained that even though this book tour was for promoting The Dangerous Alphabet, if he read from that book, he'd finish reading the entire book in under five minutes. So he was going to read from The Graveyard Book instead. But before he did, he explained the premise of the book and told us a little about the main characters.
After reading for about thrity minutes (the entirety of chapter five), Neil answered several questions from the shaggy-haired, snaggle-toothed, mostly-black-wearing crowd. Several were about films adaptations of comics or novels and others were about planned sequels and release dates for books. (In summary: the rights to The Graveyard Book have been sold, but Neil's not writing the script, the rights to Death and Sandman have reverted to DC, so Warner Brothers is in negotiations to get them back to be able to make a movie, and there's also interest in making an Anansi Boys> film.) Two of the questions were from the same cute little girl standing at the front of the crowd, but I only remember one of them. She asked, "Why did the book take place in a sewer?" Neil's response was, "because if it hadn't there wouldn't have been a story." And then there were the other questions about planned sequels to American Gods, how one becomes a writer, etc, how he started writing children's books (which was a good one because he mentioned that if your kids can't wrap their minds around what you do, then you don't really do anything worth doing in their eyes).
He also mentioned another children's book he wrote (Crazy Hair) that has been illustrated by Dave McKean. Instead of being the nice, fun little children's story Neil had envisioned, Dave's illustraions turned it into a frightful adventure. So...it's perfect for small children.
And then Neil signed and signed and signed. I was number 15, but there were at least 30 people ahead of me (I'm not sure how that math works, exactly). I had planned to bring my copy of Absolute Sandman Volume I, but decided at the last second that I didn't really want to lug it around (it weighs a good 7-8 pounds), so I only took the Charles Vess illustrated version of Stardust and The Dangerous Alphabet. His personalized message in The Dangerous Alphabet is priceless (and doubtless duplicated a thousand times a signing). And he drew a shooting star in Stardust.
I wish I'd also at least taken Fragile Things, but I was worried about damaging it. Actually, I really wish I'd taken Sandman because Neil was drawing characters from the comic above his signature.
Oh well, next time.
I haven't had a chance to make my Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull observations coherent yet. And by the time I do, it will be old news...so it might not happen.
I'm off to Comiccon tomorrow, so I should have a full accounting of the fun in a few days.
I saw Chris Isaak perform on Tuesday night at the Valley View casino. I had reservations (har! giddit? It's a casino on an indian reservation) about seeing a show at this venue because I'd never been there and I didn't know what to expect of a concert held at a casino, but it turns out that it was outdoors (a very good thing because the interior of the casino is a giant smog pit) and very cozy so I had nothing to worry about. The acoustics of the venue were good - much better than any indoor venue I've been to (4th and B and the Sports Arena are awful).
Now, on to the show...
Chris Isaak came out onto the stage in a powder blue suit covered in goofy sequins (which he wore throughout the show). The combination of pompadour hairdo and goofy suit was very Elvis-like. Later, when he sang Love me tender (I think that's the Elvis song he sang - whatever it was, he did it perfectly) as he walked through the crowd and flirted with all the old women in the audience, the transformation was complete. This guy is Elvis reincarnate.
And speaking of the "old women" in the audience, I was actually one of the younger audience members, so that tells you just how old the rest of the audience was. We were surrounded by people (mostly women) in their 50s, 60s and maybe even a few who were older. And most of them lined up after the show to get an autograph (more about that in a minute), so these were pretty serious fans. Who knew he had such a following among the gray-haired set? Not me.
There was definitely a lot of Elvis in his show, but another impression - that I hadn't expected at all - was a Smothers Brothers vibe. Several times through the show he commented on how he was putting on a "sophisticated" show or would warn the audience that this was, in fact, not a "sophisticated" show, so if that's what they were expecting, they were in for a rude awakening. I think you had to be there, but it was funny.
He also covered a Cheap Trick song, a Roy Orbison song, part of a Johnny Cash song, and a bunch of others that I'm not real familiar with (even older songs). He and his band (bass, keyboards, two guitars including him, and two drummers) meshed really well together. There were a lot of playful shenanigans onstage and at one point, Chris commented that he and his band might just sing all night long because they knew a lot of songs after performing together for twenty years. Of course they didn't, but that would have been awesome.
Other than the covers I mentioned above, he also sang several of his older songs (and sang them so, so well) as well as a few songs from an upcoming album. Before he sang the first new song, he warned the bootleggers that they should start recording now because he was about to sing unreleased material.
I wish I could have recorded the audio from the entire show to listen to later, it was so good. But I only managed to record (on video, and not very well) most of Wicked Game. His performance of Wicked game was awesome - even without Helena Christensen along for the ride. I was sitting only twelve rows from the stage and was dead center, but from the video footage you'd think I was a mile away. My camera is just a cheap Canon Powershot, so I guess I got what I paid for. And on top of that, I accidentally turned the camera off, instead of starting the recording, when the song started. So...yeah, I'm pretty skilled.
When Chris (yeah, we're on a first name basis) came back out for his encore at the end of the show (about two hours later), he had changed from his goofy blue sequined suit into one that was even more ridiculous: a suite made of small rectangular mirrors. It was more Elton John than Elvis, but still all good fun. His last song (he did two for the encore) was an acoustic version of Forever Blue and was so good.
Here are a whole bunch of photos from the concert. The ticket warned against taking photos, so I only used a flash on one of them...thus the lovely blurred effect on all but one.
Before the concert began, I picked up a concert t-shirt that looked pretty cool. Making it even cooler was the fact that the artwork on the shirt was done by Chris Isaak himself (I even asked him about this as he was autographing the shirt after the show and he confirmed it, adding "I don't have a private life.")
After the show was over, the throng of people (500? 1000? I dunno.) made for the exit and the autograph area. In addition to several different t-shirts, they were also selling a greatest hits CD and 8" by 10" glossy photos. If you wanted a chance to see Chris up close and personal, you had to have one of these items, so there was a big crowd buying stuff after the show. I was - as I usually am - clueless and waited in the line to buy the shirt I already had for about ten minutes before an old lady took pity on me and directed me to the right line, where I waited for another fifteen or twenty minutes (which isn't bad, considering the size of the line and the fact that Chris Isaak was signing each item that came by him).
Here's the best part (maybe not "the" best, but a very, very good part): when I got up to the signing table, Chris Isaak shook my hand, thanked me for coming out to se him show, and then not only signed my t-shiort, but drew a very cool microphone on it too.
I'll definitely be seeing Chris Isaak when he comes back through town again. No doubt about it. You should too.
I'll be rambling about the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in a day or two. I just finished it, so I need to get my thoughts together. Oh, and I'll also be rambling on about my beloved fish tank when I get a chance, though there really haven't been any exciting new developments.
