The birthday haul, 2014

Happy birthday, me!  Why thanks, Blogger, I really appreciate it.  How did you know?  Why, it's simple: at this time every year, I post pictures of some of the cool things that I get, and I make some half-hearted joke about how incredibly old I am getting.  So why should this year be any different?  Let's pull up a walker and take a peek at Jeff's birthday things!

We start with the above picture of my requisite Dairy Queen birthday cake, adorned with green roses and the word "Pants".  Classic!  This will live on in the annals of great birthday cake sayings.  Yes, it's a Franks and Beans reference, thanks for noticing.

Amazon was a busy site/warehouse/depository/future site of human enslavement the week before my birthday, as many of my gifts were droned in from the company.  First up on the list, the first two volumes of the early '90s Swamp Thing series!  Apparently, the episode bundling went like this: season one - 13 episodes.  Season two - 13 episodes.  Season three - 50 episodes.  Fifty!  That's Hollywood for ya (I have no idea what that means).  So with these two volumes, I picked up seasons one, two and half of season three.  It should be fun to check this show out.

Next on the list is the critically acclaimed "Heck" graphic novel from Tick alum Zander Cannon.  I've heard nothing but great things about this since it hit the shelves a few months ago and I'm excited to check it out.

I also got the latest collection of the slightly more well known Walking Dead.  If you've only watched the show, don't stare at the cover too long.

I finally got a Pirates shirt that I can wear outside of my house.  It's a nice, soft shirt with that "distressed" look that is so popular these days.  I credit the shirt with the Bucs' early 4-2 start.

The next two items are gifts my wife (who has a birthday just a little while after mine) got, but I like them so much I'm including them on my own list.  The first is the Blu-Ray collection of Firefly.  Amazon had a huge sale on all Joss Whedon properties, so why not get a different version of a series you already own?  We've got to prove, if to no one else other than ourselves, that the show is still popular and should be revived, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

Also included in my wife's gifts that I will use as if they were my own is this silicon Firefly ice cube tray!  Just pour some water in and get mini, temporary replicas of Serenity.

The detail on the ice cubes is really amazing, even if it doesn't come out in this picture as well as it could.  The trays can also work for Jell-O molds or chocolate, which would be better if there weren't just six molds.  I suppose that I could just buy three more of these...and maybe I will.

Larry came over, great guy that he is, and blew my mind with this present - it's Optimal Optimus from Beast Wars!  Because of events too embarrassing to recollect here, I missed out on my opportunity to buy this toy when it was first out in stores, and I've regretted it ever since.  Larry was diligent enough to buy a figure that is complete, which is a big deal as many figures out there today are missing numerous parts.  This is because Optimus's arm plates are made to fly off (battle damage) and he shoots clear missiles, both of which would be very easy to misplace in the 15 or so years since this figure was first produced and sold.

Look how happy with this post-transformed figure!  It was a challenge to figure it out but it was a lot of fun.  If anyone on your (YOUR!) list has a birthday coming up, you could do worse than the items on this post.  And of course, I'm happy to spend this next trip around the sun with you, faithful readers.  Every damn one of you.

Pictures from the 2012 Comic-Con, part 6

You might think that we're running low on pictures from Comic-Con, but no!  We are not!  And we're going to keep motoring ahead until we finish.  All of these pictures are from Saturday and Sunday of the convention.  At top you'll see what I looked like for most of the day - on Saturday, Larry and I dressed up like Jet Boy and Jet Girl, also known as 21 and 24 from the Venture Bros. cartoon.  Take a look at what ended up being hours and hours of tedious, expensive work.  I'll write a separate post sometime soon specifically about those costumes.  Suffice it to say, we had a great time in those suits.

The Iron Spider!  Not actually made of Iron.

These costumes were just great!  And so current!  If you're a girl and a redhead, there are many options for comic book costumes.

The '90s X-Men cartoon theme song is playing in my head.

Not sure why he decided to incorporate the doctor/nurse theme, but hey!  Not bad.

Apparently, this lady wants you to go to the Cinema Makeup School.  I'd say she makes a pretty convincing argument.  It probably doesn't count because it's basically an advertisement, but this might be the best costume from the entire convention.

If you look closely, you'll see that the girl is wearing Green Lantern headphones.  She did a great job with her costume.

Movie Cap!

At night on Saturday, we once again walked around the Gaslamp Quarter, across the railroad tracks from the convention center.  We checked out the Chuck Jones art gallery, which had a lot of cool looking (and expensive) film cells, art prints and original cartoon and comic book art.

Batmen.

This guy was standing outside of a restaurant/club, dressed as a tree.  He fooled a lot of people.  I don't think he was going for Swamp Thing, but it would have worked as that for sure.

Here we are at the LEGO booth on Sunday morning.  Every day, people got to build scenes on the wall outside of the booth, and every evening, the staff worked at meticulously at taking a lot of the LEGOs down.  Here's one that was apparently left up - a great 8-bit Super Mario Bros. scene.

The Golden Age Flash!  We both chatted about how disappointed we were at the recent DC relaunch.

Super...SUPER...Hank Venture.  Look at that ascot!

Thanos got some skinny legs...

These guys were there to promote, obviously, the FX show Wilfred.  They were intentionally rude the entire weekend, which was funny to see.  At one point they heckled a guy outside of the convention center because they thought he looked like Willem Dafoe.

One of the great joys of the convention was the taco truck that parked outside.  Rather than eating overpriced, terrible convention food, I got tasty tacos for five bucks.  They were really good.  What a lifesaver!

The show ended on Sunday and teardown began almost immediately afterwards.  People seemed anxious to get out of there, but I tried to soak in as much as I could.  I'm not sure what next year will bring - another trip to the west coast for Comic-Con 2013?  Or 2013 could be a year I sit it out.  I haven't decided yet, and thankfully I've still got a few more weeks before I'd want to get any paperwork in.  Comic-Con was a great experience, but exhausting and expensive.  We will see what happens.

As I said at the beginning, there are more pictures.  Oh so many more.  And I'll post those up in due time.  I hope that everyone is enjoying this look at Comic-Con!

Random thoughts on the DCU reboot

Like many comic fans, I was surprised at the recent news that the entire DC Universe will be starting over, with 52 (FIFTY TWO!!!) new #1 issues to be released in September.  And, also like many fans, my first reaction was something akin to this: "I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS!!"

But now that there's a little more information circling about and, more importantly, we've all had some time to process this announcement, my opinions have mellowed somewhat and I now have a more stoic approach.

When it comes down to it, DC Comics is a money-making enterprise (though it could be argued that their greatest monetary value comes as an R&D tool for various other entertainment purposes, not the least of which can be witnessed from the slew of DC-related movies in development), and the company certainly has the right to retool its line of books and its characters as it sees fit.  And when you look at the state of the industry, it's no surprise that one of the biggest companies would want to try something different.

I recently found out that Doom Patrol had been cancelled, and for good cause - issues were selling in the 9,000 copy range.  When one of the two biggest comic companies in the world is selling a book that has only 9,000 readers, change is bound to happen.  (I will say that Doom Patrol, month in and out, was my favorite book that I could barely understand what was going on while reading it.)

Overall, though, I'm not going to worry about, say, Superman's lack of red underwear, because I'm fairly certain that, after a while, the things I like will eventually be reinstated.

 

Sure, there are things that irk me about this new direction for DC.  I hate, for example, every single costume in the above Teen Titans image.  Sure, Robin's going for the retro-cool look (that's similar to Firehawk's costume, isn't it?  Something like that), but the others...holy moley.  Superboy's taped a piece of paper to the back of his shirt?  And he has a big Superman tattoo?  R...really?

I also hate, with a passion, the renumbering of long-running titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics.  It took 73 years for Action Comics to reach issue #900 only to have it dialed back to a new issue #1?  Bah.

But here's the thing: there is no way on Earth that Action Comics won't be renumbered by the time it would reach issue #1000.  Heck, there's even a chance that Detective Comics will roll over to #900 in the less than two years that it'll take.

Superman will eventually have his classic "S" shield back.  Flash will probably lose that weird chinstrap thing he's got going on.  The good stuff will stay, the unnecessary changes will change back.  It's that simple.

And there are some cool things being solicited for this "new" universe, in fact.  For example: A NEW SWAMP THING SERIES  BY SCOTT SNYDER!

I am so excited for this book, after reading Alan Moore's fantastic work on the character and Snyder's impressive current Detective Comics run.

Also, DC is taking real steps to reach out to digital readers: it had to happen sooner or later, and releasing digital copies of books on the same day physical copies come out is historic for the medium.

I'll admit, though, that most of what I'm hearing is rather ho-hum.  No real big name creators and such seemingly random choices as to which characters get books of their own.  It seems like DC is trying to create a lineup of varied books (featuring culturally diverse characters) that, in a perfect world, would appeal to a wide range of readers, new and old.  But there's a reason that the Demon, Hawk & Dove, Sgt. Rock, OMAC and Mr. Terrific don't currently have books on the shelves.

The litmus test for this new direction, of course, will come in the months following September.  I'm sure that the new Justice League title will sell like gangbusters and that many others will start out strong (the media push has to count for something, after all), but I'm also sure that some of these other new titles will fail - it would be foolish to think otherwise.

The only thing we fans can do is wait and see what happens.  I'm willing to let events unfold as they may - I'll buy the titles I enjoy and I won't buy the titles that don't interest me or aren't well done, as I always do with few exceptions.

But really...Superboy's new costume is horrendous.

What I'm reading right now

There are few unequivocal truths in the universe, but here are two of them:

1) I will never be as good a writer as Alan Moore

2) I will never have a beard as scary as Alan Moore's

I hesitate not in the slightest at either one of these statements.  In all seriousness, I think of Alan Moore as the greatest comic book writer in the medium's history.  I am an absolute captive to Neil Gaiman's writing, and it can't be denied what Will Eisner has done for the industry, but Moore is the writer who, for me, sits at the top of the field.  I think he has the body of work to back up such a claim, as well, with Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell on his resume.  So when DC Comics (through their Vertigo imprint) released the first volume of Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing collection, I bought it right away, and it has not disappointed.

The Swamp Thing might best be remembered for the live action television series that lasted three seasons in the early 1990s, but the book with Moore at the helm is the definitive take on the character.  I mean, think about it - the character is called "The Swamp Thing".  Literally, "the thing from the swamp."  A guy gets blown to hell and lands in a swamp...and becomes a super hero.  With all due respect to Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, creators of the character, what?!  This is the origin tale?  Not that there aren't tons of unbelievable creation stories out there (nearly every Marvel character from the 1960s should have died of radiation poisoning), but this one just seems silly.  Moore took that concept and made it work.  Swamp Thing wasn't Alec Holland, it was just "a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland."

Horror comics usually are simply filled with gore or just have some ironic twist to them; Swamp Thing is genuinely frightening.  Super hero books are sometimes vapid and shallow; Swamp Thing is layered and meaningful.  Comics from the 1980s are often lackluster; Swamp Thing is fulfilling.  From Moore's first issue, you can tell that he has a plan, and he sticks to it throughout.  Supporting characters add meaning to the overall story.  Guest stars, including the Demon and the Justice League, are used appropriately and respectfully.  But through it all, you know that this is the Swamp Thing's book, even when he/it doesn't appear much in some issues.  All in all, it's a breathtaking piece of work.

If you couldn't tell, I am in love with this book.  I can't recommend it highly enough.