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...

Just a small portion of the Vendor's floor Another Heroes Con is in the book. This was my eleventh straight year going and my initial excitement for the event is always the same. The past three years (the two I had to drive) ended up being times I had something happen at the Con that served to frustrate me. Two years ago, the AC did not work and that led to a hot drive back home. Oh and to top things off, there was a huge traffic delay that got us there about two hours late. This year, there was the nearly hour long wait in the PRE-REGISTERED tickets line. Seriously, what's the point of buying tickets to avoid a line if you just end up in a line anyway?! People could walk off the street and buy a ticket and get in while we were waiting. If I hadn't already paid for my tickets, I would have got out of line and bought some tickets. However, it's not as bad as San Diego Comic was a few years ago. If I can stand in a line for three hours, I can stand in line for anyth...

Like the summer solstice, it's that special time in the summer. Heroes Con in Charlotte! Oh, I'm sorry, with a lead in like that you thought I would say something thought provoking? You should know me better than that. Anyways, this is that special time of  year for me where I catch up on a few years of comic books on the cheap. However, I want everyone to know it's more than that for me. Well, not really, but let's just pretend it is. Not everyone has been to a convention with me, so I thought I would use this post to reveal what I am typically like at a con. I've been to many cons (mostly repeats of this particular one), but I have developed a pattern that has me performing my tasks with a laser like efficiency that could probably put me in a more serious light than people are used to. So here I am, baring my soul. I have a list. Yes, every year I go to Heroes Con, I have a list of books that I'm looking for. When I first started, I had slips of paper....

I should have wrote about this sooner, but I saw something in a comic that I really enjoyed and it's such a small, innocuous thing. I was reading "Ultimate End" #1 from Marvel comics a few weeks ago. Marvel has a big event where they are smashing together the regular (616 as it is affectionately called) universe as we fans have known it for fifty plus years into the "Ultimate" universe, which was a re-imagining of the universe for the modern era. So right now there is a mish-mash of comic characters mingling with each other. Some of the characters are so similar, it's hard to tell which universe they belonged to. Then I noticed it. The font of the speech bubbles for the regular Marvel characters used bold, all caps font. The Ultimate characters used a more subdued font that uses proper case in the lettering. I thought this was such a cool little thing, that when I noticed it, I was surprised. At first I thought, "No way are they that clever.". ...