Into the Longbox

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...

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 mat...

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, ...

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 tic...