Pictures from the 2015 Comic-Con International, part 5: Saturday (Game of Thrones, March, Nerd HQ and more!)

Well, two things have been established regarding this blog, I think: first, I can't stay away. Second, I will always have pictures from Comic-Con to post. Here are some more, even though it's January and I told myself (and Larry) that I wouldn't do this again this year. So much for that! Here are some pictures from the Saturday of the show, the busiest day of the event.

Let's start off with some Game of Thrones characters.

And follow that up with some more Game of Throne characters.

And finally, more from Game of Thrones. This last one is great. If they need a stand-in for Petyr Baelish, I hope they call this guy.

I managed to luck my way into line for a signing by the creative team behind the incredible graphic novel series "March", including Congressman John Lewis. This was one of the highlights of my trip to be sure.

These guys did a really nice job. They added in a few other references as well, which I appreciated.

Look, it's Wonder Woman, and...someone else! Wait...is that Rocket Raccoon? Yes, I believe it is.

C-3PO did a great job with this costume. There was a real live person in side and he even had a voice modulator to talk in the character's voice. Really incredible.

The Tick and Arthur came to the NEC booth. Townsend Coleman (voice of The Tick in the animated series) is in the center.

I, of course, had to get my picture with them before they left. I learned that these guys are actually from Pittsburgh. How is it that I don't know them already?

Jubilee and Captain America. I like this. That is all.

I got tickets to the Nerd HQ "Mystery Panel" this year. There were six guests from different ABC shows and Zach Levi.

The person in the middle was probably the only one I recognized? She played in "House" and was also Captain Kirk's mom in the 2009 Star Trek movie.

It was a fun hour.

I still need to watch...SOMETHING that Zach Levi is in. He does such a good job at putting this together every year, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. Wait, I guess I did watch the Thor sequel. So there's that!

Taking a break after a long day at the convention.

Comic-Con after hours.

Weird things happen on the streets of Comic-Con after the show ends. I'm not sure how much is obvious from this picture, but there was a group dressed up like Buddhist monks (maybe they were actual monks? You can never tell at Comic-Con) dancing in a circle. Plenty of people joined in.

It was back to Nerd HQ to finish up the evening. Plenty of photo opportunities there, including this one of my butt.

I jumped into this picture at the last second. I don't know who anyone else is. But they were all pretty cool.

These folks danced around in these raptor half costumes for quite a while. It's a shame that they had to compete with this:

That's a full-size Chewbacca costume, complete with lifts or stilts or something. The guy in this danced for hours and must have lost ten pounds over the course of the evening. Every once in a while he'd take the head off and you'd see him sweating profusely. But he was a real trooper (haw) and kept at it. He got invited to the VIP section after a while. He worked for it.

Here's more Weird Al vandalism. I admit no guilt.

I hit a bit of a wall early on Saturday, and I don't think I took as many pictures as I did on other days. Comic-Con hours take their toll and I really felt it this day. But my second wind finally came during the afternoon and Sunday finished up strong.

Are there more pictures? YES! Will it be another three months before you see any? Hopefully not! See you soon!

Support "Honcho" on Kickstarter!

Howdy, folks. It's been a while, but I hope you haven't missed me too much. 2015 is crawling to a close and, all things, considered, it's been a good one for me and comics. I've been very lucky to work on some really fun books and I feel like I've made a little more headway this year than in years past. I apologize for not updating this blog as much as I probably should, but I guess that when my choices are to write a blog about how much I hate the Fantastic Four movie and work on a comic script, I'm best served by doing the latter (usually). Now the real key is to figure out a way to quit my day job so that I can write both a lot more often. Who knows? Maybe one day it'll happen.

Here's some exciting news to close out the year: I'm working on a new book with FUBAR's Jeff McComsey and Paul Little and Pietro titled "Honcho". The book is currently campaigning on Kickstarter, and I hope that you'll take a few minutes to check it out and, if you'd like, pre-order the first volume!

Honcho is a story that takes place in the far-flung future of the 1980s, 15 years after World War III ruined much of the civilized world. Our protagonist, Captain Stanley, arrives on the shores of North Carolina claiming to represent the United States government in exile. He finds a country split into factions, many of which have taken to baseball to divide territory and settle disputes. Can Stanley unite the separate factions on his way to Charlotte? Is Stanley even in his right mind to begin with?

Honcho takes a lot of its influence from Miguel De Cervantes's Don Quixote, a book I've come to love in the past year, so I'm excited to try and channel some of that madness into this new graphic novel. The first eight pages of the story are available to read on Jeff McComsey's blog, here: https://mccomseycomix.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/honchovolume-one-preview/

The campaign has a few days left to go, and I'm happy to say that we've met our initial goal. There are plenty of stretch goals to be had, though (including some retro baseball cards, which I'm nuts about), and up next on the list are some Honcho mini comics, which I really hope we are able to do.

If you have a second, do me a favor and check out the campaign. It is set to end just after midnight on Monday, January 4th! Keep your fingers crossed for us. Here's to a productive 2016.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1607639297/honcho-volume-one

Pictures from the 2015 Comic-Con International, part 4: Friday (Rick and Morty, Rotten Tomatoes, Seth Meyers and more!)

I just got back from the New York Comic Con, so...I guess it's time to share pictures...from a different Comic-Con! Why not. Here's Friday at Comic-Con in lovely San Diego!

This banner always seems to tucked away. Unless you enter from one side, you won't see it. But here it is.

It's always fun to make new friends at the show.

This picture doesn't really do the thing justice. It's the Devastator combiner from the Transformers line.

This was a pretty popular display for obvious reasons. LEGO always seems to show up big for these events. I wonder if these get pulled apart after conventions are end, or if they're stored whole in a big LEGO warehouse.

While walking the floor, I ran into and probably embarrassed comic creators Mark Waid and Christy Blanch!

I'm not much of a panel goer at these shows, with a few exceptions, but I did take in a few.

This one was particularly interesting because a guy with stuffed dogs strapped to him came up and asked a question. I saw him a few other times over the weekend, and each time he had more dogs on him, including one time where the dogs surrounded his head. It was interesting.

It's the obligatory "going down the escalator at Comic-Con" shot! Yeah!!

I had took a few minutes on Friday afternoon to pick up my pre-orders from Mattel. I'm always a little stunned at the volume that big companies sell at this show. This is just one room full of items that were also on sale elsewhere at the show. There's even plastic wrap covering the floors to protect the carpet. Here's to consumerism, I guess!

While walking back to the convention, though the hotel, I found this gentleman with the Super Mario Bros. backdrop. This is the voice actor who plays Mario in the video games. Yes, he was doing the voice for those who dropped by, too.

Back to the convention hall - what a great Hawkgirl!

Here's Thanos and Loki.

I tried to make it to a Rick and Morty panel, but apparently I didn't get there in time. I was no where near making it in. It's a shame, but I got lucky later in the evening and it made up for this disappointment. On the way over, though, I saw some good costumes, including this one of two-ton 21!

X-23 and Wolverine.

Adult Swim had a big presence at the show, as in years past. This time they were set up behind the convention hall.

Rick and Morty seemed to be the biggest focus of all the [AS] displays and events. It's my favorite new show on the network (is Adult Swim a network?), so it was nice to see that other people apparently enjoy it as well.

There are always impressive costumes at this show, but this one might have been my favorite because of how dang accurate it was and how much this lady looked the part. I half expected to see her start stretching. Fantastic job.

CHECK OUT THIS AMALGAM COSTUME! That's the Storm/Wonder Woman hybrid from DC and Marvel's joint venture in the '90s. The Storm costume is really impressive as well, but I can't get over the great mashup.

Entertainment Earth had a number of celebrity signings at their booth over the weekend, and they were surprisingly easy to get into. I won the opportunity to meet late night host and SNL alumni Seth Meyers, who, by the way, is a big fan of Pittsburgh sports. We talked about the Pirates and Steelers briefly, and I got a few signed items from him. It was an incredibly smooth process, so hats off to Entertainment Earth for setting this up.

It's weird to say that I met Jamie Hyneman from "Mythbusters" in the bathroom at Comic-Con, but that's what happened. He was washing his hands and I didn't know how to approach him. The correct answer was to wait until we were both out of the bathroom, so I'm glad that I remembered some common human etiquette before getting this picture.

Matthew and John Yuan played on season four of Arrested Development. I saw them walking around in 2013 but managed to get a picture this year in which we semi-recreate one of my favorite scenes from the show. Both of the guys were very friendly and let me ask them the questions that they probably always get.

I was excited to once again make it to the Rotten Tomatoes "Your Opinion Sucks!" panel in the evening. This is one of the only panels that I feel I have to make it to every year, and it did not disappoint once again. It's lively and fun and everyone should try to see one at some point. This one was pretty crowded, so I guess people are getting the memo.

Emcee Grae Drake was in a Muppet costume.

And I got a picture with Rotten Tomatoes EIC Matt Atchity after the panel as well.

The show closed for the night after the panel, at which time I rushed out of the building in an attempt to make it to the Rick and Morty screening that was happening immediately after. We barely made it in, but it was a successful attempt.

There was a Star Wars event happening nearby...and soon after we sat down, fireworks started to go off. This drowned out everything else that was happening nearby, so we all just sat and watched the fireworks for ten minutes or so.

The screening consisted of Rick and Morty creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland acting out a scenario while animators drew the character. It quickly devolved into madness. Seth Green was in the audience, and he was invited up to perform as well. Most if not all had a few drinks beforehand, so it went how you might expect.

At the end of the night, we all got to see an early screening of a season two episode! This ended up being the second episode from the new season.

As we were leaving, I got to see my good Comic-Con friend, Russian Guyovich! There was apparently a Venture Bros. screening the night before, and an upcoming episode of that show was played for the unsuspecting audience. I guess I'll have to catch that when the new season (finally, mercifully) starts next year.

Two more days to go! We'll get there. And then maybe some NYCC pictures, too.

"The Incredible Hulk Meets the Ever Lovin' Blue Eyed Thing" 1980s fan film

Fan films based on comic book properties are nothing new, but I had quite a shock a few weeks ago when I found the above 8mm film featuring none other than the Hulk and the Thing.  At this point, it's almost 35 years old, so I'm surprised that a copy survived to be digitized, but I'm glad that one made it to YouTube.

Despite the technological limitations of the period, the film quality is decent, all things considering.  It's amusing to see all of the different costumed characters in this film, from Superman to Darth Vader (Star Wars was pretty new at this point) to the Thing himself.  The costume belongs to Gerry Giovinco, who relays the story behind this film here.  Joe Sinnott even drew what amounts to the flyer for the film, as can be seen above.

The film itself is fairly crude and, interestingly enough, it doesn't feature the Hulk and Thing fighting - they just hang out and drink for a bit.  Maybe the people behind the film were worried about messing up that great Thing costume.  As Giovinco explains, he created the costume to wear at a convention - and 35 years later, I still have yet to see a better Thing getup at any con I've been to.

The entire film has its audio dubbed, which is, of course, a sign of when it was filmed.  One of the directors listed in the credits is none other than Bob Schreck, who went on to be a top editor at DC for a time and is part of the Legendary line of comics (publisher of Holy Terror) today.

The film even has an IMDB page.  I can't figure out if the Thing only has one eye, as you can only see the right eye throughout the film, of if the other is just perpetually shadowed.

The date for this film is either 1982 or '83 (I found both dates listed), and the Hulk obviously takes its cues from the Ferrigno version.  What a strange find.  The film seems pretty random and madcap throughout - someone compared it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show - but it's fun to see.  I wonder what these guys are up to today.  I'd sure love to chat it up with Giovinco about his Thing costume.