Secret Wars

I think it's time I finally took a moment to talk bout Marvel's Secret Wars event and all the subsequent spin off books.

Jonathan Hickman's Magnum Opus of his Marvel run is playing out before our eyes. All of his Avengers work (which honestly left me cold) has culminated up to this point. The Secret Wars series itself has been really good. It's been in the classic tradition of mixing up the characters into groups that you don't normally see. There have been truly shocking moments. The spinoff books however have been mostly terrible.

Here's the premise of this whole crossover in a nutshell. Reality has been destroyed by cosmic forces (isn't that always the way) and the Marvel Universe as we know it ceases to exist. Dr. Doom, who has become all powerful, saves bits and pieces of this reality and has cobbled it together into a place called "Battleworld" where he has affixed him self as a God.

This has given Marvel a chance to mine all of our childhoods by having many books focus on returns to various eras throughout their history. A clever ploy, but you're not going to get me, Marvel. I was burned by your LAST return to the "Age of Apocalypse" universe. I do not care how you want to play out your alternate realities of Civil War, Future Imperfect, Armor Wars, Infinity Gauntlet, Korvac Saga, X-Tinction Agenda and so on. Did I miss a few? Of course I did, but I'm not going to name all of them.

What bothers me is you have all these different realities cobbled together into one world. So basically you can have 20 Wolverines running around at the same time in this new world. Of course they never run into each other because each of these stupid stories are self-contained in this weird way. Honestly, the whole thing is an absolute mess.

The true gems out of this event have been "Master of Kung Fu", "Years of Future Past" and "Runaways". Oh yeah, I also have a soft spot in my heart for "X-Men 92'". Even IF it is a mish-mash of the Blue and Gold teams! Anyways, each of these books speak to some of my comic book sensibilities. I tried some of the others and just could not muster up the ability to care. There are just way too many of these books. It's this kind of cash grab that makes me very cynical as a fan.

Fortunately, as an educated consumer I don't have to buy all of these. I definitely don't feel compelled to. To summarize my thoughts in a nutshell: Secret Wars Mini-Series = good. Everything else = bad. I just want this to be all over so we can get to our All New Marvel Universe.

Ant-Man

I give up. I give up trying to doubt Marvel with their movies right now. I thought Guardians of the Galaxy was an over reach when it was announced. I loved it so much it is in my top three favorite movies that Marvel has put out.

When I they announced Ant-Man, I was like "Really? WHO is asking for an Ant-Man movie?!" and I thought this would be the one to due them in. I really liked this movie too. So what do I know. I can't doubt these guys anymore. Everything will come up roses for these guys.

So let's talk about this movie. First off, I liked that the scale for this movie was small. (See what I did there?) By that I mean, there was not some evil villain that was trying to take over the world. You just had a d-bag business man doing bad things. At the end of the day, this was essentially a heist movie. That is about the best direction you could take with this character.

Like most of my comic movie reviews, I'm not going to compare this to the source material. That kind of thing serves no one. I look at these like I would any other films. Sometimes with rose colored glasses. So let's dive in.

First off, I want to say this movie was a lot of fun. In Paul Rudd, you had the right amount of snark and charisma to play some of the scenes tongue in cheek. You have to when a guy's power equates to shrinking down and talking to ants. Anyways, he helped to keep things light. When the movie started to sink into melodrama (one particular scene with father and daughter pouring their hearts out), he cuts the scene with a quip.

I could talk about Michael Douglas or Evangeline Lilly. They were good, but that's not who I want to give praise to. Michael Pena stole every scene he was in. He was how you use comic relief. Sparingly, before he wears out his welcome. There was such an innocence to his character that you can't help but to love him. When I first saw he was added to the cast, I didn't know what to think. He's a great actor, but I didn't know how he'd fit in. In this weird little universe, perfectly.

I do like how they did the fight scenes in this movie. The shrinking back and forth was pretty cool. I really loved the cameo they have from one of the Avengers in here. I won't spoil it.  There were also a couple of little easter egg moments, typical to these movies. It's that little bit of deep cut, nerd lore that speaks to me. At one point, the villain made a comment about "Tales to Astonish" and I broke into a wide smile.

There were a couple of things I didn't like about this movie, however. As movies rely more and more on special effects, I yearn for the days of practical effects. So I did not like seeing all these CG ants running all over the place and the CG stunt men used in the action sequences. Honestly, there's no other way you can do it. It's just that this kind of stuff takes me out of a movie.

The other thing that bothers me is that Marvel has a real problem with the villains in their movies. The heroes are always layered, fallible and well-meaning. The villains are always one note, cookie cutter caricatures. They practically twirl their mustaches. They are clearly an afterthought. I think the only good villains we've had so far are Loki and practically the whole stable of villains in Winter Soldier. I love Marvel, but you can only go on so long with crap villains weighing down your movies.

With all this being said, I think you should definitely go see this movie. If you're reading this, we both know you're already invested in these movies. Go have fun and see this one too.

San Diego Comic Con - The Past Strikes Back

So in my previous post, I talked about my journey to Comic Con. Let me give you my account of my adventure there. I won't do this in chronological order or anything.

The first important point I want to make is this: San Diego Comic Con has very little to do with Comic books, despite it's name. The convention center is massive, with gigantic booths, towering displays and tons and tons of vendors. Those that actually sell comic books is quite minute. For those that know me, I am a bargain hunter for comic books and everything else is secondary. To learn this first had was the most disappointing thing for me.

The comic book panels themselves are not really full. The big halls are reserved for TV and movie events. Some comic book based, but this convention is more about pop culture in general. And video games. Video games had such a huge presence there. I was able to go to Nintendo, Xbox, Sony and Sega events to play games while I was there. Not that I'm complaining. ALSO, we went to a free video game music concert, while really cool (did I mention it was free) had zero to do with comic books.

This little complaint pales in comparison to the one gripe I have that every con goer knows about, but the general public does not. You wait in lines...a LOT. If you are looking for exclusive items, you're waiting in a line for three hours. While waiting in one of these lines, I had plenty of time for self reflection. As in, "I'm standing in this long line for the right to BUY something." I still stood in that line, but that's beside the point. We really wanted to see go to the panel for Psych, one of our favorite TV shows. We stood in a line for about two hours and didn't come close to seeing that panel. We ended up getting out of line and doing something else.

After each panel, they don't clear the rooms out. So what happens is a little bit of gamesmanship. To get to the panel you REALLY want to go to, you try to get in as early as you can to a panel you don't care for and just sit there until the next panel starts. This is seriously a thing. I didn't want to waste my first comic con playing the odds on this. It would cause me to miss out on so many other things.

My last bit of complaints is this. It is really crowded there.

This is just OUTSIDE the convention center

We're talking, shoulder to shoulder crowds at some point. If you don't like big crowds, this is not the place for you. I just hate slow moving people and crowds is that. That's where my frustration comes from.

For all the complaining I'm doing, I really did enjoy myself. I enjoyed the spectacle of it all. The dealers room was really cool. In a rare thing for me, I kind of let myself go and treated myself. I bought most things that interested me, knowing that I would not find some of this stuff later. Mostly because I would have forgotten when I left. I didn't just shop for myself. I picked up various items for all my friends as well. It wasn't just about me. 

I did get to see a few of my favorite artists. I got to chat with Jim Cheung a little bit and bought a few pieces of art from him. I did get to go to a few panels, including a retrospective on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" which I really enjoyed.

The costumes at this convention are top notch. The best of the best show up for this. It's very easy to be impressed with what you see.

I got to play a lot of cool video games. This was right around the time the Xbox One and PS4 were about to be released, so there was a couple of rooms rented out in nearby hotels to try and grab gamers. 

At the end of the day, I just also like being around a bunch of nerds like this. I'm in my element here. However, this was a once in a lifetime chance and I got to do it. I really don't want to put myself through this again any time soon.

San Diego Comic Con - The Past

Inside the Convention Center

What's the point of having a blog about comic books if you don't talk about the single-biggest convention in the US? That's one of them rhetorical questions. I realized I have not posted in a while and I haven't said one word about this convention. To be honest, I didn't follow as closely as I have in years past. In my next post, I will do some quick thoughts on what has me excited coming out of that convention.

Instead, I thought I would write about my experience going to comic-con in 2013. I had posted about this before, so if any of this is known to you, indulge me. Maybe I got funnier since the last time.

Comic Con was a once in a life time experience. Something I can knock off the bucket list. By the end of this post, you will see why I probably do not feel compelled to ever do it again.

Getting Tickets
So anyone that has been to a big convention (Dragon Con, Otakon, PAX, etc.) knows what a pain it is to sometimes get tickets. Comic Con takes all of those and throws them out the window. To say it's near impenetrable is an under statement. So here is how it goes. You first have to sign up an account for the Convention itself. Having a login becomes important later. Feel free to get emails that get you both excited and disappointed in their frequency.

The day comes when you have to buy tickets. The ONLY place you can get their tickets is through their website. On a set day, at 9:00 am PST, the site opens up for ticket purchasing. Within 10 seconds, the site will crash with everyone trying to get tickets at once. No joke, my friend and I hit the site at the exact same time. We sat on the phone with each other fifteen minutes beforehand, so we can get ready. My nervousness and excitement was palpable.

Anyways, the site crashed for me and my journey ended. In the span of 10 seconds. So to recap, weeks of waiting for this moment and it all ended in a matter of seconds. My friend was able to get through. Four day tickets sold out almost instantly. He was fortunate to get four one day passes for each of us. In this day and age, given the popularity of this con, you would think they'd have load balancing on their servers or ANYTHING to keep it up with all the traffic that they should expect. But I digress.

Tickets were bought and this was just the first hurdle. Our stress was not over.

Reserving a Hotel
Unless you have some connection, you are going to have to pay money to stay near the con. For convenience, you want to be as close as possible. The convention has a list of hotels near by at low convention rates. Not so fast, you can't just call up and get a room for this either. On another pre-determined day, you have to repeat the shenanigans for getting tickets to get rooms. From their list of hotels, you have to pick SIX that you would like to stay in. If you're lucky enough to get into the site to reserve a hotel, you have to put down your six preferred location. Once you've done that, you MAY hear from one of your six hotels a few days later. For this leg of the journey, I accomplished this task. Surprisingly, this was easy and we got our #2 hotel. That's something.

Buying Plane Tickets
This was the easiest part of our journey. I won't detail it here. All I will say is that the convention starts on Thursday, we wanted to fly in on Wednesday so we can get a lay of the land and do some sight seeing. We expect to be busy.

Arrival and Ticket Pickup
After we arrived, we immediately went to the San Diego Zoo to do some sightseeing. We took a cab out there and cabs would be our way of getting around the city. Unlike our trip to Seattle, everything is not nearby in San Diego. Once we were done, we had to go pick up our badges. This is a ritual unto itself. While heading over, our cab was stuck in traffic for almost an hour. You see, the badge pickup is in a location nowhere near the convention center. That would make too much sense. So traffic is backed up for miles as everyone is heading over to get their tickets. This is the first of many logistical nightmares we would run into.

Once we finally arrive, we are introduced to our first line (first of many). Surprisingly, the line moved pretty quickly. Well, quickly for this convention. I think we were in and out in under an hour. It was cool to see the excitement in everyone's faces. We were all so ready to do this.

This was all the stuff before the convention. To keep this short, I will do a separate post on the convention itself.