San Diego memories (in Greek)

With the 2010 convention season approaching for me, I went looking for an article I wrote for the website Comicdom Online after the 2006 San Diego Comicon.  My buddy Artboy_X and I, wide-eyed and still wet behind the ears (as opposed to now where I am old and bitter), brought Mr. Massive to the con - and immediately got overwhelmed by the grandeur of it all.  I'm expecting more of it when we take Teddy and the Yeti to the New York Comic Con this year, though hopefully we'll all be a bit more prepared.

Comicdom Online is primarily a Greek website, so I have no idea why I got to publish an article there - really, the artist of the book just e-mailed me shortly after and said "write something for these guys", and I did.  I wonder if the site's regular readers went to my article and had no idea what it said.  I realize that it's more likely for people from Greece to speak English than it is for Americans to speak Greek (we're kind of jerks like that), but still...I have no idea what most everything else on the site is saying.

The picture links are down on the article, but I've reposted most of them in any case, and you can see some here and here, if you click the links.  You can read the actual article here, with my tips on convention-ing for those sitting behind a table.  Yes, sigh, I called it "An Explosive Point of View" because the name we gave the 'company' was "Explosive Comics".  Don't judge.  I'll paste the first paragraph or two here; be proactive and read the rest on your own.  Do it.  Do it!

To put San Diego's 2006 Comic-Con International into perspective would be a difficult task from any standpoint, but seeing as this was my first encounter "behind the table", so to speak, the undertaking seems an even greater challenge. Growing up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my initial experiences with comic book conventions were limited to yearly visits to the Pittsburgh Comicon, the name being fairly self explanatory. The Pittsburgh convention continues to be a well coordinated and enjoyable show, but my perceptions of what a convention could be were shattered the first time I ventured to the other side of my state for Wizard World's Philadelphia convention, as the fanfare and sheer size of the venue left me feeling lost in wave after wave of exhibitors and both established and burgeoning companies.

San Diego's show, then, is the next step upward from that experience. It is wonderful and it is overwhelming. It is incredibly taxing but it is supremely worthwhile.

Tell your friends.

The above advertisement appears in the special "convention edition" of the soon-to-be-released Teddy and the Yeti #3.  I decided to check out a folded titled "logos" on my desktop one day and said, "what am I going to do with all these logos?  I have way too many.  Perhaps I'll create an advertisement and put in as many as I can."  And thus was born this eye-catching gem!

One might question the effectiveness of an advertisement promoting the Pittsburgh Comicon when the book the advertisement appears in will first be available AT the Pittsburgh Comicon, but...what can you do.  I suppose that is what the Internet(s) is for.  Where is the "viral" button on the Mac located, again?  I'm sure it has one...

FREE CHICKEN!! (and also comics)

Wilmington area Fanboy Comics is promoting an upcoming Free Comic Book Day-related panel at the New Hanover County public library just about one month from today.  This event will feature a presentation by artist Tom Fleming and a question and answer session with Fleming and several local creators, such as...uh...me.  What fun!  But really, Chick-Fil-A will be there giving out sandwiches of some sort, and this is what I'm most excited about.  Chick-Fil-A makes such great chicken sandwiches - I had never eaten there before moving to Wilmington, and every day of my life I lament all of those missed opportunities.  If you've never had some Chick-Fil-A before...do it.  Delicious.

I'm still a little short on the details of this event, but Mr. Fleming will also be attending the upcoming Pittsburgh Comicon, so I'm planning on hassling him there to figure out just what I need to do to prepare.  I do know that I'll have the third issue of Teddy and the Yeti with me at that time, and there's a planned signing event at the library after all the other festivities are concluded, so if anyone wants to drop on by and pick up the complete T&Y run so far, I'd be happy to do my part.  Also, there will be chicken there.  Did I mention that?

More details to come...

Someone please invent a time machine.

A week or so ago I had a conversation with a very nice Teddy and the Yeti fan from the spacious state of Texas.  She bought the first two issues of the book, and I wrote to thank her and to ask how she had heard of the title - I'm always curious how people find the book, especially when they are from Texas, where I've found few inroads so far.  She mentioned that she had seen the first issue listed in an issue of Comic Shop News, which resulted in my head exploding.  But only in a metaphorical sense.

Comic Shop News is a weekly promotional publication that many comic shops give out; it previews upcoming books and has a few other features - articles and the Spider-Man newspaper strips, for example.  It's mostly used as a tool for comic shops to suggest new books to customers, as it lists titles and short descriptions of new releases.  I'd imagine that if Teddy and the Yeti was included in an issue it would be as a simple four-to-five line text piece with the official description, but still...I need to find a copy of this.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Teddy and the Yeti would have appeared in an issue distributed sometime in October 2009, which is when the book was listed in Diamond's Previews catalogue (the picture at left is just a random recent issue; not necessarily the one I'm looking for) and two months before it was supposed to ship through Diamond.

As this publication has a limited span in which it is relevant, I can't imagine that many copies from last year are still around to be had - but then again, comic book fans are nothing in not stringent collectors, so I guess you never know.  In any case, if anyone reading this has any leads I might be able to follow, I would really appreciate the help - having a Teddy and the Yeti reference in a publication such as this is pretty cool, and I'd like to own a copy ("Oh, Zoidberg, at last you're becoming a crafty consumer!  Hello?  I'll take eight!"), even if it's nothing more than the same thing that was in Previews.

My ongoing struggle with Toyrocket/PuzzleZoo: why I hate them.

Back in November I briefly mentioned that I had placed an online order with the toy company Toyrocket: they were having a great sale in which everything on the site was between 50-90% off.  This was destined to be too good to be true as the sale was more a result of the company going out of business and trying to sell off as much of its stock before it closed up shop.  This unfortunately had the added consequence of screwing me over and taking my money.  Okay - that's not entirely true.  The store did ship the things I ordered that were in stock, but the two preorders and one backorder I placed never did arrive, and as I expected, they now never will.

I won't say that I'm completely surprised to learn this - once Toyrocket was taken over by PuzzleZoo I realized that my chances of ever seeing the items I ordered or the $35 I paid for them were pretty slim, but my one glimmer of hope came from the greeting on PuzzleZoo's "transition" page:

If you have an order backorder or preorder, this order will remain open for fulfillment by Puzzlezoo.com. Unless you choose to cancel the preorder or backorder, Puzzlezoo.com will still honor and fill those orders as they come in as a service to Toyrocket’s loyal customers.

After Puzzle Zoo opened its new site and some time had passed, I contacted them regarding my order.  This is the response I got from one of their representatives:

Thank you for contacting PUzzleZoo. We are sorry that we are not able to help you with your Toyrocket order. Toyrocket's estate is being administered by a consulting group called Broadway Advisors, LLC. You can find information about Broadway at www.broadwayadvisors.com. Tell them you need information about how to submit an admin claim against the Toyrocket estate for a refund. They should be able to direct you. 

We apologize for the confusion and hassle and hope that this information helps. Although we purchased Toyrocket's assets, we are not Toyrocket and hope you will give us the opportunity to serve you one day. Thank you again for contacting us.

This, of course, goes pretty directly against what they had previous said, but it's not like I had many high hopes for them to come through for me.  I wrote back asking what they meant by the first quote and did not receive any further response.  I did try to contact Broadway Advisors, but - surprise! - they haven't returned any of my correspondence to this date, either.  This is why I (naturally) won't be buying anything from PuzzleZoo, and I hope that this "buyer beware" warning might cause others to think twice before doing so as well.  I realize that not all of this mess is PuzzleZoo's fault, but they shouldn't be making promiseds they couldn't keep if that were the case.

And besides, don't they realize that the backorder I placed included a McFarlane Jerome Bettis figure?  Ack, the pain of coming so close to owning one...

today's fairly inappropriate entry

I saw this while walking through Wal-Mart a few days ago.  It's Batman-themed underwear with some classic Jim Aparo artwork adorning the cheeks.  Upon seeing them, my first thought was "I don't think I'd choose to put the sound effect 'whak' on underwear.  It's rather suggestive."

That is all.

That's blog-tastic!

I thought about opening this post with some April Fool's Day joke, like "I'm quitting Teddy and the Yeti!" or something similar, but I find that I'm never very good at them because I can never see them through.  Because of this, and because everyone is expecting them, I tend to avoid them altogether.  Now that that's out of the way, I am quitting Teddy and the Yeti forever.  APRIL FOOLS!  HA!  That was actually pretty fun.

Anyway, I realize that sometimes coming to this blog every day just does not satisfy your need for my random thoughts, and there are times when you would enjoy hearing what I have to say on things other than just comic books - shocking, I know!  That is why I sometimes write about other things...and then blog about them.  It's both a gift...and a curse.  But perhaps you can be entertained by them, so I will give you the heads up below.

First on the list is an old favorite, The Grouchy Gastronome.  I've published things before on this site dedicated to food and anger (perhaps not in that order), and I'm at it again.  In the coming weeks you'll find semi coherent ramblings from me on topics like burning in Hell and why people decide to eat food in Wal-Mart without paying for it, but for now there are my less inflammatory posts regarding Futurama-themed cupcakes and a suspiciously similar one on Spider-Man and his infatuation with wheatcakes.

Next up is Franks and Beans.  We all know that Franks and Beans is the place to go for videos that relay the inherent humor in growing a mustache, but did you know that I also write about WHY mustaches are so funny?!  Well?  DID YOU?  Now you do.  The blogs I write for that site are thorough to the point of being obsessive, and as such no one but Larry reads them, but I have fun with them just the same.  The latest one I posted has to do with our 26th episode, "Replacement Larry", which I'll embed below.

These are just some of the ways in which I help you waste time on a daily basis.  You're welcome.