pictures from the 2021 Comic-Con Special Edition, part 2

 Is it time to look at more pictures from the 2021 version of Comic-Con? It is! These are all from Saturday, the second day of the show.

For a number of obvious reasons, this Special Edition show was much more stripped down than what you would expect from a regular, pre-2020 convention. The banners were even more low-key, with the toucan taking top billing, rather than having the usual Marvel movie franchise as a sponsor.

Black Widow gets set up as doors open.

Here's a Kingdom Come-era Wonder Woman costume!

I was surprised that I didn't see more costumes that incorporated masks at this show. Here's a perfect example of what you could do with a great costume that you happen to be wearing during a pandemic. What a great Shredder!

The huge SDCC banner made its return to the front of the convention center!

I hear that there are a few Toys R Us locations still functioning in Canada. Maybe Geoffrey is starting the long trek.

HBO's Peacemaker show was by far the most popular offsite event, and it's one of the few things that got close to feeling like how things used to at the show.

And true to Comic-Con fashion, this line took forever to get through. I didn't make it on Saturday, but I kept an eye on this site all weekend.

The barbell is a nice touch. I wonder if he could've brought it in during a more normal year?

Sam Wilson's Captain America and Spider-Punk!

If you moved, she shot you, straight up.

Is this War Machine/Punisher mashup canon? Also, look at this War Machine/Punisher mashup's cannon!

Bob and Linda Belcher continue to be a solid middle-aged fan costume, and the masks add another fun element to these.

What...what is this Captain America statue? An anime thing? It looks like an anime thing.

I asked these folks for their pictures because at first I thought it was a weird Planet of the Apes/Gilligan's Island combo. I quickly realized that they were actually dressed as characters from an anime series. It was too late for me to back out. I took the picture.

I went to some panels this year! I usually plan on going to a bunch but then never find the time. This one was about the Comic-Con museum and their new Gene Roddenberry display.

This was the best group costume by far. How did they get 10 people to go to Comic-Con and all dress up? I don't think this could've happened in a regular year. 

These shots are mandatory.

I don't know what "Under the Oak Tree" is, but good on them for getting the strongest man in the world to help out at their booth. Also, it was great to see a big, gaudy Comic-Con display under any circumstances!

Here's another good use of a costume with a mask. Sub Zero here also had a vape pen that he used to blow smoke for pictures, which certainly broke a lot of convention floor rules, but, okay, it did look like he was breathing out frost.

This was a great Adora costume!

It didn't get much busier than this on the show floor, which is of course a wild departure from years past. You can see here that there also wasn't any carpet on the convention floor. I miss the crowds! But it was nice to be able to walk wherever you wanted to on a Saturday.

Here are a couple of space cowboys.

I guess these are also space cowboys?

Toward the end of the day, I went back outside and checked out the Peacemaker display again. In addition to the trailer/obstacle course that was the main attraction, they also had a food truck set up with free food for the whole day. That was quite a throwback! When I arrived, there were maybe 10 people in line, and everyone could get one item from the menu...but you were allowed to get back in line as many times as you wanted to. Did I try everything on the menu? No, but I did all right. The mozzarella sticks were great! 

Peacemaker's sidekick Eagley was on hand, too, complete with a really thick Brooklyn accent. 

Eagley was also available for more formal pictures.

I enjoyed getting to hang out at this offsite for a little while as the show was nearing a close. I was determined to get in to the actual obstacle course the next day.

There were a number of themed tables and chairs set out on the lawn. It was all very laid back. I definitely enjoyed it.

NBC's La Brea also had a small offsite nearby. I have not seen La Brea. I hear it's about falling into a sinkhole and finding a new world inside the earth? Like hollow earth theory stuff? I mean, okay. Anyway, I got my picture in front of the glowing logo, pretending to sink into what I imagine is prehistoric earth for some reason.

The whole thing took about three minutes to get through, if you took your time. You walked past the logo and saw some wreckage, like a stop light and street sign.

And, uh, an ambulance. The folks working the display gave away from branded swag from the back of the ambulance. I got a water bottle and a portable charger.

And there was also a Wooly Mammoth skull? And some mysterious fog. This was a weird event.

I went back in the convention center for an after-hours panel and found this dancing robot just hanging out and having a good time. It's Comic-Con, baby!

Hawkpeople!

I almost never make it into the Marriott Hotel for a regular year of Comic-Con, despite them having some things that I'm interested in. It's just hard to find the time (and it takes so long to wind through the crowds to get there)! This year, though, in the time between the end of the show and my panel, I got to check out some of what they had to offer, including this awesome (and dimly-lit) pinball room. The machines were set up to play for free, and I played for a solid hour before leaving. It was a lot of fun, and something that I miss out on during a normal year. 

Back to the convention center, where I ran into Mr. Nimbus. A shudder to think what it was like walking around shoeless all day.

Up the escalator.

And into the panel room, where I saw this guy casually walking around with a copy of Action Comics #1. Now, is this the 1938 original? Let's not ask so many questions and just believe that it was.

The panel I was so excited about attending was the Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog! One of my favorites. There was no after-show karaoke this year, for the standard reasons, but I hope to make in back in 2022 for another round.

The night ended and I took the trolley back to my room. I waited with Magneto and wondered why she couldn't simply pull the trolley to us with her incredible powers. It was a long day for everyone, I guess.

That's it for the middle day of this Comic-Con adventure. There are more pictures to come!

Whatcha reading? Part 3! (Plus some Thing news!)

It seems that comic shops are opening up around the country, and most publishers are returning to a near-regular shipping schedule. That means it won't be long before my "to read" pile starts to build up again, so let's have one more entry into the long-running and highly popular "Whatcha reading?" series.

It would be foolish for me to ignore the grim scenario it took for me to have time for these books in the first place, but I will say that I have enjoyed finally getting to some of these comics that have been waiting around in a box for a very long time. Here's what I've been up to while the comic industry has had a delayed output!

DC's 1980s/'90s Star Trek series were a high point for the franchise's comic adaptations, in my opinion, with long, unbroken runs for both Star Trek and The Next Generation series. The Modala Imperative is something of a crossover between the two series, with four-issue miniseries with the same subtitle for both properties. The first series is a classic Star Trek tale, and the TNG followup is fun, too, with appearances in both series from an older Spock and McCoy. I liked it!

It's been a while since I completed my '90s Marvel 2099 collection, and now I'm getting around to reading them all in order. The first crossover of the line was the "Fall of the Hammer" story, which runs through all of the titles, even the quarterly 2099 Unlimited book. It is...a bit uneven, though I suppose you could say that about the line in general. But at least Spider-Man 2099 is great!

I grabbed the Wonder Woman-focused "War of the Gods" miniseries recently, and BOY, is it dense. as the title suggests, it pits different pantheons against one another as they fight for supremacy. The problem is, I don't necessarily care that much about the various Greek and Roman gods, so this one was a bit tough to get through?

I really like Bongo Comics, though often I find that I like the idea of the books they made more than the actual execution. That hasn't stopped me from collecting a bunch of their titles, though. I'm the proud owner of full series runs of Futurama Comics, Radioactive Man and Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, all of which took me a long time to complete. Simpsons Illustrated is nothing more than a reprint series, but I started picking up issues because it reprinted both Radioactive Man and Treehouse stories in some of the issues. And now I have the compulsion to complete my run of this series. Oh, and next on my list is all of the Free Comic Book Day issues, which I already have most of.

Last up! We've got the "Panic in the Sky!" storyline that ran through four Superman titles in 1992. I started collecting comics right around Superman #75, so these issues are just a few months behind that. I'm halfway through this storyline, and as you might expect, the overall story is a bit predictable, though some of the art is really good.

Well, I guess that does it for this look back. But wait! There are some new Thing items that I want to discuss!

Mondo recently came out with some Fantastic Four enamel pins, so I (of course) grabbed the Thing pin right away. 

These are some stickers that were made. How and why were they made, and why am I using passive voice to describe their production? We may never know. Please look for these soon in your favorite spots for vandalism.

The image was originally from the cover to Not Brand Echh #13. I liked the message, and I think ol' Ben Grimm would approve.

Funko is releasing a limited Thing Pop figure next week, featuring the Marvel Zombies version of the character. This one is another 10-inch giant Pop (with the regular-sized Captain Marvel to scale), similar to the Target-exclusive figure from earlier in the year. This figure implies that the Thing maintains a human-like skeleton in his cosmic ray-mutated form, with five fingers (and, presumably toes). I've seen artists float this idea before, that the Thing's fourth and fifth digits somehow fuse together to create his classic four-finger look. It's an interesting suggestion, I guess.

This one is a Comic-Con exclusive, so I'm going to try and enlist some help in getting one. Wish me luck!