"Wonderful World of 'Weird Al' Yankovic" at Comic-Con 2014

Saturdays at Comic-Con are often the busiest days of the entire event.  It has a feeling of "let's squeeze in as much as we can before it's all over".  Sunday, in contrast, is pretty mellow and relaxed.

I was nervous about this particular Saturday weeks in advance, though, because it was announced that "Weird Al" Yankovic was going to make a rare Comic-Con appearance in the form of a panel at the Horton Grand Theater.

The Horton was a new offsite location for Comic-Con in 2014, and it took some obvious cues from Nerd HQ and its intimate celebrity panels.  Nerd HQ does everyone a favor and distributes tickets to its panels before the events, so there's very little time spent waiting in line, a staple of Comic-Con-run panels.  As the Horton Theater seats only a few hundred people, I had nightmares of waiting in line overnight just to get the chance to take in this panel, which was at the top of my list for the entire show.

Comic-Con, though, chose to hold a random drawing for tickets on Saturday morning, much in the same way it gives out tickets to autograph signings and certain (LEGO) exclusive offerings.  I had never waited in line for a random drawing, and I found the entire concept a bit suspect to begin with, so there was a lot of trepidation over whether it would even be worth it or not to try and get tickets for this event.

I'm glad I gave it a chance, because it obviously worked out, and it was much more painless than I imagined.  Of course, I say this as someone who was able to get one of the few tickets available, but overall I think that Comic-Con has a good system in place when it comes to events like these.

I got in line about an hour before the doors officially opened for Saturday, and by this time the line was already stretched out of the convention center, down the stairs, across the street and onto the sidewalk near the water.  Some people thought better of it and left when we didn't seem to be moving by 9:15, but soon after we were steadily on our way to the entrance.

Once inside the autograph pavilion, the lines split up further depending on what event you wanted to go and see.  There were quite a few people who wanted to try for the Weird Al tickets, but still, I would say that before 10:00, it was my turn to grab a ticket.

The system is so low-tech to the point of being ridiculous.  Comic-Con volunteers hold a cloth bag with generic "keep this ticket" tickets inside.  You pick one, and if there's a stamp on the back (for me it was an image of a frog), you win.  Luckily, if you get a ticket with no stamp, you can get in line once again, which by this time only takes five or so minutes to get back to the front.  Even luckier, my wife pulled a winning ticket.  Luckier still, each winning ticket gets you two event tickets, so we were all set, and not much worse for the wear.

At this point, I decided to press my luck, and I got back in line for the Weird Al autograph session, which required a different ticket.  My wife took off for the George R.R. Martin line, and - wouldn't you know it - we both got tickets to those.  I'll talk more about the autograph session in a bit.

The tickets to the event came in an envelope and looked like the picture above.  For me, it was pretty cool to get a specially printed ticket with the Comic-Con logo on it, and I was even happier that we were able to keep our tickets after we entered the theater - they were checked, but not collected and not even torn.  So I got a nice keepsake from the event that I was somehow able to keep in good shape all the way back home.

The Horton Grand Theater was a few blocks from the convention center, and it's obviously designed for small performances, either theatrical or musical.  It sat probably 300 people.  There was a lot of nervous energy in line as we waited to enter the building.  Once inside, there was a poster with the Mandatory Fun branding on it, as seen above.  I wonder who walked home with that thing.  I'm sure someone claimed it.

Once inside, my wife and I got seats about six rows from the front, as assigned on our tickets, which were great.  After a few minutes, the event organizers asked to see if there were empty seats, as they would then let in the "stand by" hopefuls, otherwise known as the teeming masses who took a chance and waited outside the building.  There just so happened to be two seats in the very front row, and I grabbed them up quick.

Al and the host, comedian Jonah Ray, came out a few minutes later, after a video introduction, and the crowd, of course, went wild.  Keep in mind that this was a matter of days after the Mandatory Fun album was released, and almost right after it was announced that the album had reached #1 on the Billboard charts (Al's first, and the first comedy album in about half a century to hit that mark...which is a really big deal!).  Everyone was excited to be there and especially happy to be one of the few to see the event in person.

The panel itself was a lot of fun, though nothing revelatory transpired.  Jonah Ray might have been the most excited person in the hall, and that led him to talk...and talk...and talk about how much he enjoyed being there.  That's great, and I probably would have felt similarly, but I suppose he didn't realize (or didn't care) that no one in the hall was there to see him.  Seriously, I hate to gripe about it, but rather than moderate the panel, Ray wanted to interject his own opinion into everything that Al said and every question that was asked by the audience.  Now I know a lot about Jonah Ray, I guess.

About half way through the panel, a Q&A session broke out, and I was able to leap out of my seat and in front of a microphone, which was placed not too far away from where I was sitting.  The session was as strange as you might expect, with some people asking the almost requisite "do you remember me from..." questions to one lady telling Al that she sat on his lap at some point back in the '80s.

From my time at the Toonseum, I had learned that Al had recently been given the ACE award (Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinaire) by the National Cartoonists Society.  I knew that he had always been a fan of Mad Magazine, but I didn't have any clue that he did any drawing of his own, so I was able to ask him about it.  The end of my question was something like "I'd like to know why don't we see any of these drawings...and can I have one?"  The last part was a joke, of course, but it got me the meanest look you can imagine from the staffer who had earlier asked us all what our questions were going to be.  This in itself was pretty funny.

Someone sitting on my side of the auditorium, near the back, managed to record sections of the panel (about half altogether), including most of the discussion between Al and Jonah Ray:



You can pick me out in my trusty gold Steelers hat near the beginning, as seen below.  You could probably also see me by my enthusiastic fist pumping:

The panel ended after about 50 minutes...but it wasn't Al's last appearance of the day.  I had mentioned earlier that I had also gotten a ticket to a signing event.  This event was to take place before the panel.  And even though I've got probably too many things signed by Al in my possession, I thought it would still be fun to get in line, say hello and get an autograph if I could.

Earlier that morning, Shout! Factory made the announcement, obviously with Al's Comic-Con appearance in mind, that they were releasing a 25th anniversary Blu-Ray edition of the movie UHF later in the year.  I caught it, purely by chance, on Twitter, and as I knew that Shout! had a booth at the show, I decided to seek them out and see if they had anything - I was thinking a postcard or flyer announcing the release - that I could grab to get signed.

This was around 10:30, so the convention hall had already been open for quite a while, but I walked down to the main floor and found the booth, only to see an incredible UHF poster print resting against one of the sides of the booth.  I looked the guy working the book in the eyes, pointed to the poster, and said, "uh, what is this?", fearing that they'd be on sale for, like, a hundred bucks.

HOWEVER!  It turns out that I really hit it big.  The first 50 people to ask ask about Weird Al were given a wrist band to an exclusive poster signing later in the day, right after the panel at the Horton theater.  This was not announced!  It was pure luck that I was there at the right time.

HOOOOOWEVER!!  I was an idiot and was worried about getting back into the convention hall in time to make the signing.  This wasn't completely unfounded, as it is difficult to walk from one side of the hall to the other at Comic-Con, and I was coming from outside and blocks away.  So I asked the guy if I could forgo the wrist band and just get a copy of the poster, which, I figured, I could take to get signed at the event that I already had a ticket for.

The guy looked at me like I was crazy, and to his credit, I kind of was.  The posters were on hold until the signing event, so I couldn't get a wrist band and still get a poster, but I could, he told me, get a poster with no chance of getting it signed later.

I took him up on this proposition and, a little bit later, went up to the autograph pavilion...only to see literally hundreds of people waiting in line to get Al's autograph.  Realizing I had made the (terribly, horribly, inexcusably) wrong choice, I nonetheless waited at the back of the line for about 15 minutes...only to not move at all.  I was one of the very last people in line, it seemed, and in the time I was waiting, only about three other people showed up to stand in back of me.

At this point, I had almost nothing to lose, so I went back to the main floor and the Shout! booth and asked if I could make the trade, once again, of the poster for the wrist band.  It just so happened that there were still about six wrist bands left, so my monumental stupidity didn't end up costing me on this day.  And it's a good thing, too, because the signing was really great!

After the panel ended, I beat a hasty retreat back to the convention hall.  I, of course, understood that Al had to travel the same distance, but I imagined him taking a secret underground route or something reserved for celebrities and was thus anxious about getting there in time.  Not to worry, though, as I was about 20th in line and it was still about 15 minutes before Al walked in.

Convention security did, as it turned out, kind of sneak Al in through the back.  Probably for the purposes of crowd control, the signing wasn't advertised, so there were a lot of stunned people standing near the booth when "Weird Al" Yankovic came walking in to sit behind a table.  A lot of people (innocently enough) tried to sneak in line only to be told of the wrist band policy.

Being first in line sometimes has its benefits, but I find that there are sometimes more benefits to being back a bit, as was the case with this signing.  The first three or four people in line got a poster, said hello, got it signed and were on their way.  As the signing progressed, everyone loosened up a little bit, and soon people were chatting away with Al, getting their pictures taken, shaking hands, asking questions, the whole bit.  Al started personalizing the posters after the first half dozen or so, too.  I know that not everyone likes to have autographs personalized, but this was one item I was happy to get my name written on.

Shortly after Al arrived, he was joined by another special guest - UHF director (and Al's longtime manager) Jay Levey!  Not everyone knew who he was, but listen, people: he played the lead role in the "Gandhi II" spoof from UHF!  This was a big deal!

The line moved fairly quickly and the crowd of onlookers grew.  The overall mood was pretty low-key throughout.  Check out that oversized UHF print behind Levey...I also wonder who walked away with that.

I've been looking to give Al a copy of the UHF "Six Panel Cinema" that Jeff McComsey and I worked on a few years ago for a while now.  I took it to his Washington, PA concert in 2013, but didn't get a chance to see him after that show.  So when I heard about his Comic-Con panel, I thought that I might was well lug it to San Diego with me in case I was able to toss it at him from me seat or something.  It was a gigantic stroke of luck that this just happened to be the day that the Blu-Ray was announced. So many things came together - what were the odds that I'd get to meet Al in this context and actually have the UHF print with me?  But it worked out and I was able to give him a copy, which both he and Levey seemed to enjoy.  This was - of course - a big thrill for me.

Other things of note:

1) I was wearing my Transformers "Dare to Be Stupid" t-shirt on this day.  Both Al and Jay noticed it and hadn't before seen it; "Dare to Be Stupid" is a song of Al's that made it onto the 1980s Transformers movie soundtrack, hence the reference on the shirt.  I told Al where I bought it (the locally-based 80sTees) and he pulled out his phone to search it out.

2) This is probably the best picture that I'll ever take with Weird Al.  I should have played the lottery this day.  So much was going my way.

3) McComsey's Six Panel Cinema later took a trip to the first page of Reddit, at which point Al tweeted a copy of the UHF entry to his (literally) millions of followers (if you'd like to buy a print, you can do so here).

4) The poster, thankfully, made it back to Pennsylvania with me safely.  I bought a protective sleeve at the show and it has stayed in there ever since.  I realize that this is a pretty rare Weird Al collectible, but I'm just happy to have this memento from what turned out to be a pretty good day.

5) The poster had what turned out to be the front artwork for the Blu-Ray release of the movie, which is out and available to purchase now.  It is very similar to the previous DVD release, with a notable exception: it includes the entire Comic-Con panel as a special feature (I wish it also included footage from the signing event, which was filmed in its entirety).  It's a more professional feed than what was on YouTube, which is nice...and I also make a couple appearances on it.

6) Mandatory Fun won Al his fourth Grammy award, which continues quite a year for Mr. Yankovic, and he's also announced the dates for his upcoming Mandatory World Tour.  He'll be in nearby Greensburg on May 31st.  I'll be there, too.  You should also come.

Megaton Man: Rebirth @ Half-Life comic art gallery in Brownsville

Don Simpson's "Megaton Man" is one of the greatest superhero spoofs to ever be put to paper, and I was a bit surprised when I learned that Simpson was going to have an art showing in, of all places, my hometown of Brownsville, PA.  It turns out, unbeknownst to me until I arrived at the Frank L. Melega art museum, housed at the Flatiron Building, that Simpson is a Pittsburgh native.

It's unusual to have something like this show up in Brownsville, so Larry and I took the short trip a few weeks back and caught a glimpse of the show.

The gallery includes an impressive display of Megaton Man artwork, with a few other items sprinkled in for good measure.

Simpson himself was at the gallery when the show opened.  I would have loved to have been there, but it coincided with the New York Comic-Con, which was a shame.

There were a couple reference to the Tick at the show.  It's hard not to see parallels between the two characters, and I got the impression that maybe Simpson wasn't too fond of the blue guy (Megaton Man showed up a few years before The Tick).  Obviously, I think there's room for more than one superhero parody on the market.

Interestingly enough, there was some art from the War of the Independents miniseries at the show.  I had all but given this series up for dead, as the series has been on quite the hiatus.  But it seems that Simpson himself is drawing the fourth issue, and that it'll be released this summer.  See here is a print and what I believe a cover for War of the Independents, featuring both Megaton Man and the Tick.

I'll admit that I hadn't read much of Megaton Man before going to the show.  Indy comics from the mid-80s don't often show up in the back issue bins I sort through.  But I decided to grab the 10-issue first series online and I have to say - it's got its moments of brilliance.  The relationship between Megaton Man and Stella Starlight is complicated, deep and sometimes tortured.  I soon after picked up the followup "Return of Megaton Man" and I'm working my way toward the '90s Image crossover titles (one issue of note that's on its way to me currently: "Yarn Man", a secondary Megaton Man character and Thing parody).

Also worth mentioning is Simpson's "Border Worlds" series, which I also picked up and quickly consumed.  It's a very ambitious sci-fi concept that I also enjoyed very much.

Near the back of the gallery, almost hidden, was a display of some bigger pieces, and art from Simpson's own collection.

Included in this collection are a few pages of original Fantastic Four art from John Romita.  Needless to say, it was just incredible.

The gallery was supposed to have ended by now, but according to Simpson himself, it's been extended to run into February...so if you haven't seen it yet, there's still time!  Do yourself a favor and, if you're from my part of town, go and see this great gallery.  Here's the address:

69 Market St., Brownsville, PA 15417

I'd love to see a Tick/Megaton Man crossover happen one day.  Maybe Simpson, who recently got his PhD (!) from the University of Pittsburgh, will hit a few more conventions in the coming months and years.  I'd love to meet the guy.

Pictures from the 2014 Comic-Con International, part 8

Who is still posting pictures from Comic-Con 2014?  Me!  I am!  Deal with it!

These pictures are all from different points on the Saturday of the show.  It was a big costume day!  Saturday was also the day of the "Weird Al" Yankovic panel and signing, which took up a big portion of my day...I'll post those images next.  In the meantime, here's a Yvonne Craig Batgirl costume/person underneath the costume!

I thought that this was a good view to get the Home Dome in perspective.  This was taken from the parking garage across the street from the convention center.  It was a huge structure!  I wonder what they did with it after the show was over...did they bulldoze the thing or is it being stored in someone's garage?

I don't know if there are comic book versions of these costumes.  They still must have taken a lot of time and skill to put together.  I approve.

Adventure Time always has a large presence at conventions.  It's a show - similar to the Venture Bros. in this regard - that lends itself to costuming.  Here's an episode specific, flashback Ice King.  Love the glasses.

These folks dressed up as the comic book Walking Dead - hence the black and white getups.  Comic Rick told me that their son had dressed up as Carl (Carrrrrrl...), but he was in the bathroom.  After waiting for about five minutes for Carl to show up, I took the picture and went on my way.

This guy was being interviewed by...someone...as I walked by.  The guy with the microphone asked something along the lines of "what made you decide to go as the Silver Surfer?"  The obvious answer was because he had the body type for it, and everyone agreed.

You've got to get a shot of the convention center and surrounding area when you cross the bridge over Harbor Drive to the Petco Park area.  This was one of a few I took.

...and here's another.

I spent some time at the New England Comics booth every day, and I got the chance to people watch, which doesn't happen very often as you're often too purpose-driven to really see everything that's going on around you.  This individual told me that she did this makeup job herself, which was impressive.  It looked even better up close.

Apparently I cannot take clear pictures of Grae Drake from Rotten Tomatoes.  She stopped by the NEC booth and we talked again for a bit.  Again, great MST3K costume.

Here's the convention center...but wait...look closely at the middle of the image.  It made my day.

On the way to the Weird Al panel, I got stopped (as is often the case) waiting to cross the street.  While waiting I met Rorschach from Watchmen.

The Walking Dead, of course, had a huge presence at the show.  Across the street from the convention center was a building set up to look like Terminus.

You could take your picture by the sign and enter to win some prizes.

A few blocks away, this thing comes barreling down the road (note: not barreling like in the movie).  I'm not sure if this van was outfitted like this as an official promotion of the Dumb and Dumber sequel, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

Great job with this.  More pictures (of course) to come!

Blender Magazine: The Tick and Ben Edlund on CD-ROM

I picked up a Tick oddity a few months back: a copy of the the CD-ROM magazine, "Blender", from back in the mid-'90s.  The date explains why in the world anyone would try to publish a CD-ROM magazine, I suppose...I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time but it comes off as a little ridiculous now.  Were you supposed to save every one?  Imagine a shelf full of these next to, say, National Geographic or something.

The content for this, uh, issue, was just about as '90s centric as you can get ("that Minnie Driver is the next big thing!!"), but it's interesting to see that among all of these real-life people, The Tick gets the cover and top billing on this second issue of volume two from 1996.  The technological limitations - the CD is pretty obsolete almost twenty years later - kept me from reading the issue as it was meant to be read.  Luckily, I was able to go in and pull out some files that looked relevant.  I didn't feel like going through the same hassle to learn about Gwar, for some reason, so I don't know just all that was included on this disc, but the image on the back cover gives us some clues:

So apparently this issue of Blender Magazine covered such diverse topics as sex, death, politics and religion.  I'm sure the writers gave a definitive take on each subject and that's why there's no more to be said in their regard.  Thanks for getting the heavy topics out of the way for us all, writers of Blender.

The CD itself is probably as detailed as 1996 could offer.  It's like a dang spin art wheel.

At the center of the CD is a tiny Tick symbol.  The Blender staff really must have been fans.

The problem with computer technology from this period is that it's been obsolete for so long that it's difficult to recover any of the files.  When I put the CD in my iMac's drive (an external drive to boot, as Apple is phasing out CD/DVD drives on their new models), I found these files, with what must have been super awesome graphics back in '96:

I have to admit that I was a little worried about putting in the disc in the first place.  I kind of thought that my computer might blow up just from trying to read the disc.  But then I'm confronted with a skull and crossbones icon and two "blendme" icons (one for PowerMac!) and I felt even more trepidation.  But I had got that far so I figured that I might as well keep going.

Clicking on the "Blender" icon took me to a list of files, each labeled by subject.  I found a handful of short videos that contained interviews with a young Ben Edlund, and in each he talks about one aspect of The Tick (yes, there's one file titled "TickSex.mov".  I was almost too terrified to click on it), both the cartoon and the comic.  I think Edlund would have been about 27 in these videos.  His sweater is pretty rad.

It seems apropos that an electronic magazine's articles would consist of video clips.  Perhaps there was also a text feature that went along with it, but I didn't stumble upon any nor did I poke around too much.  But I was able to take the various video clips and slap them together.  I uploaded them onto YouTube afterwards and voilà, now it's preserved on the Internets for generations to come, or at least until YouTube becomes as obsolete as Blender Magazine.

Take a peek:

The Christmas haul, 2014

These posts make me seem superficial, I'll bet.  But what better place to show off the stuff I got for Christmas?  It is a conundrum, I tell you.  Off we go!

I got some great comics and comic-related items this year.  I finally picked up the Fantastic Four cartoon series on DVD.  From what I remember, it wasn't a great adaptation, but I hear that the second season is actually pretty good.  We'll see.  I also got a copy of Jennie Wood's new book, "A Boy Like Me!"  Jennie's doing a lot of promotion for this book, so I'm happy to be able to grab one.  You can get one, too, here: http://smile.amazon.com/Boy-Like-Me-Jennie-Wood/dp/0692238069/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421198014&sr=1-1&keywords=a+boy+like+me+jennie+wood

I got a bunch of DVDs.  You know I've managed to get most of the shows I actually want to watch when I start asking for shows like the 1990s Flash TV series.  It's fun to have but I'll put it in the player and probably immediately regret the decision.  I also landed the complete Caprica series, True Detective and the reissue version of The Tick live-action series.  It's basically the same as the one I already have, but this is a one disc release.  Now you can hit "play all" and watch 'em all in a row without that pesky task of changing discs.

I only got a couple comics for Christmas, but I'd like to think that I did a good job at the ones I did get.  On the left is a reprint of a DC Treasury book from the '70s.  It features some great creators, most notably Joe Kubert.  The content is watered down a bit for a younger audience but it's still a treat to read.  On the right is the second volume of the gigantic Sandman collection from Neil Gaiman.  I got the first volume last year.  Each volume contains over a thousand pages and, if I'm not mistaken, the entire Gaiman run on the character (until last year's prequel miniseries).

I'm not sure if the picture does this justice.  It's a huge collection.  I've never read this series, but now I can read it in style, I guess.

It's not Christmas without a few new Steelers items.  I got a hat for the top of my body and socks for the bottom.

Larry and I went to the playoff game at the beginning of the new year.  It was disappointing.  But the Ravens lost last week so they can officially eat it.

I got some electronics...most notably a GoPro camera.  I imagine this will be used for both Comic-Con and Franks and Beans.  I also got a new flash drive and a 2TB backup hard drive.

Funko has the license to every brand in the world.  Here's a Firefly bobble head.

Every December, Gallery 1988 has a sale on their prints.  I got these two for myself, but they're too cool not to show off.  They are both limited, high quality prints.  Of course I go for the Weird Al prints, of which there are many.  This year I picked up two with a UHF theme.

This blue poster had a run of 200.  This one was a bit more rare.

Only 12 made.  Yikes.

This was an eBay find...but still too cool not to show here.  This is a postcard that was given out in advance of the movie's release in 1989 advertising a sneak preview at a college campus in California.

Larry got me some cool things this year.  Anyone can now pretty much dress up entirely like the Thing, thanks to the new jacket.  Grab the fists and feet that were made for the first movie and you're well on your way.  Please note that my dog totally did not see that clobberin' coming.

Lastly, we have this Fantastic Four storybook from the late '60s.  It's part of a series of licensed kids books, and Larry managed to get one that's in pretty nice shape.  It was made for younger readers, but now, of course, it's a collector's item.  Nearly ever page spread has some art, such as...

...the Thing beating up a chair.  Or...

...the Thing beating up Dr. Weird, who I think was created just for the book.  It's goofy madness, but I love it.

But my best gift of all was you, dear blog reader.  Okay, I'm kidding (but only a little).  Take your pick from these pictures.