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SDCC Day 4 Recap

Bones, Doctor Who, Mike Judge, Dollhouse, Supernatural, Peter Jackson, District 9, Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr., Smallville and more.

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SDCC Day 3 Recap

Battlestar Galatica: The Plan, Repo!, Iron Man 2, Joss Whedon, Cabin in the Woods, Vertigo, DC, LOST, Heroes, Kevin Smith, True Blood, Family Guy, The Middleman, The Simpsons and more!

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SDCC Day 2 Recap

Holy Crap, so many things happened on Day 2 of SDCC. What did you miss?

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LOST Panel Coverage

LOST panel reveals lots of stuff and nothing at the same time. Season 6 is going to be amazing.

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Greg Rucka Goes to Olympus

Greg Rucka comes to Texas and visits Zeus.

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Heidi MacDonald and Newfangled Technology, Round 2

You can’t swing a bought-out journalist these days without hitting a screed of free-floating rage directed at Twitter. I suppose it’s understandable: the newspaper business these days makes real estate speculation look positively stable by comparison, and there are a lot of career writers looking down the barrel of a future in which very few people may get paid a livable wage to write. These folks need someone to blame, and their apprehension is understandable, if ultimately not supportable.

But it’s a little less understandable when those screeds come from other netizens. It’s easy enough to find blog and LiveJournal posts about the vanity of Twitter, but a damn sight harder to find a blogger or LJer who recognizes that people were saying the same damn thing about their venues not a few years ago. I suppose there’s no one so vicious as a dreg with some scrap of seniority.

Which brings me to Heidi MacDonald and the non-scandal surrounding a few Twitterers employed at Marvel Comics. (Or Marvel Entertainment or Marvel Respectable or Marvel We Are Big Boys or whatever they’re calling themselves now.) The boys at Marvel were acting a little unprofessional and some net etiquette was breached, but as even Heidi notes, this was a bit of a non-story. Nominal comics “professionals” acting like children is a dog-bites-man scenario if ever there was one.

Have no fear. Heidi uses this flimsy pretext to hobble together a series of thoughts and quotes to prove—I don’t know, that society is crumbling all around us because people use Twitter or something. Setting aside the black-hole-intensity irony of someone defending “old media” from the vapidity of that newfangled e-thing called Twitter on their blog for a moment, I’ll be responding to her post point by point. This may seem a disjointed way to respond, but then, the original post was rather disjointed itself.

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Digital comics versus local comic shops

Digital comics threatening retail stores just like the internet versus dead tree newspapers is a false comparison. At least so far.

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Breaking: NYCC owns all your base

There’s absolutely nothing happening this weekend.

Well, there’s one thing happening.  Some kind of gathering about things that use to be about comics, but now revolve around movie spoilers and tv show panels.  What a con.

Robot 6 has it right though.  All the blogs in the world won’t keep you as up to date about the NYCC events as a few twitter accounts to follow.

My favorite Twitter post so far?  JoeQuesada Hey @JimMcCann where’s our booth this year?

In other news…

My gloom and doom over online sales tax is coming to fruition.  First New York, now Florida.  Oregon may be the only place left after too long.

Aron Head brings some common sense to a common sense starved blog post.

Obama likes Batman too.  Expect a bunch of upcoming Batman varient-reprint-palooza as well.

Wizard World Chicago is now Wizard Chicago Comic-Con.  Why they changed their name is up for speculation, but out right calling themselves Chicago Comic-Con is probably a matter of brand recognition.

It’s not the printers that are expensive, it’s the ink.  Spranq has come up with a font that uses 20% less ink by putting a bunch of white dots in the letters, yet look practically impossible to tell at a normal text type size.  Maybe this would be a good way to bring comic book prices down.

Here’s another way for the Big 2 to bring comic book prices down.  MOVE!

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Superheroes are people too

Let’s spin the Blog-o-fortune wheel and see where it lands!  (Bankrupt, Wah! Wah!)

In yesterday’s post about Newsarama’s need to edit its typos and homophobic posts, the few comments that got through (I tried a few times early on, but only got Word Press errors) were met with grace a dignity.  And by grace and dignity, I mean dismissive and sardonic.

Sigh…

I’m even less interested in teaching people to read than I am in explaining jokes Richard. I didn’t mean “gay” as in “lame” I meant “gay” as in “gay,” as I wrote. Am I supposed to rewrite the same thing again because you made a comment? Will repetition somehow make it clear?

Does being compared to a superhero personally offend you? Because it used to be the other way around, where superhero fans found people calling their superheroes gay which offended them. Progress!

Anyway, be offended or don’t be offended, comment or don’t comment, read or don’t read—it’s a big Internet. I’m sure you’ll find something else to your tastes if we’re not.

And by “teaching people” what gay vs gay mean, he’s addressing a gay owner of an Eisner Award winning comic shop.  But he’s right in that it’s a big internet.  Readers (and writers) have moved on from Newsarama, even if it’s still a major news site with a large public profile with little concern for its readers.

In other news

Let’s send some local love to the D-Hop.  David Hopkins is excited about How To Lose Big with artist Paul Milligan.  Sounds like it’s coming along nicely.  Can’t wait to read it.  Also, they write a mean comics strip on D Magazine.

Not related to comics, but if you were ever relieved Twilight finally left the theaters, you’re not alone.

Alan Gardner found an article about comics transitioning to the internet.  That’s not too groundbreaking (seems every other day that Marvel Comics takes one step closer to publishing their comics online as they hit the shelves), but the article brings up an interesting point when it comes to webcomic artists crossing over into print; using the web to decide what’s worth the ink. (link)

Um, there are real superheroes? (World Superhero Registry)

Isaac Magaña takes another stab at reading Watchmen.

And lastly, as we near the non-stop coverage of NYCC, Kevin Laurie explains a bit about this crazy thing called ‘con’ so we can all be better geeks.

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Newsarama needs our help

Because Newsarama asked for it.. literally, and because they couldn’t bother to think through why their post might come off slightly homophobic.

Make your own superheroes are gay joke: “Calling all superheroes and fairies”

Ya, it’s about a kids event.  Something that sounds like a lot of fun for kids in fact. How about these ones?

It’s not your daddy’s faerie gathering.
And the best Pink Lantern costume goes to…
Pixie dust is the new kryptonite.
X-men’s Pixie caught in the middle.
Kid’s costume event puts Wonder Woman in a tutu.
However, no amount of clapping would bring Superboy back.
Also known as Brian Andersen’s homecoming (Sorry, Brian, you’re super to me).

See what you can do with context?  Better luck next time.

Post your caption.

Full size screen shot

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