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Comics

San Diego Comic-Con '09

I spent all day Sat­ur­day in the San Diego Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, at­tend­ing Comic-Con with my brother. Once again, an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

The first thing we did was make a bee line to the SAE/FSM booth, where I picked up a copy of the Bat­tlestar Galac­tica Sea­son 4 sound­track. After that was done, we took a quick walk around the rest of the ex­hibit hall. This is a pretty damned big ex­hibit hall, span­ning the en­tire bot­tom floor of the con­ven­tion cen­ter. With all the peo­ple there to push through, it takes about 10 min­utes to walk from one end to the other.

While walk­ing around the hall I hap­pened to find Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game, with cover art done by friend Cyril Van Der Hae­gen. I men­tioned this to the guy be­hind the counter, but he just feigned in­ter­est hop­ing I would buy it! Oh well.

After that I went look­ing for the Oni Press booth, where I bought my brother the first Scott Pil­grim book. He fin­ished read­ing it be­fore we left (he was not so in­ter­ested in Ray Brad­bury) so we went down to the floor again and he bought him­self the next few books in the se­ries. With any luck, I'll have got my brother hooked on graphic nov­els! I also went to the Top Shelf booth hop­ing to pick up a copy of Blan­kets but they were all out.

The first panel we at­tended was for Dune, with Brian Her­bert and Kevin J. An­der­son. They were dis­cussing their lat­est novel The Winds of Dune and com­ment­ing on the process of mak­ing a new book every year. I must admit, I have read many of the new Dune books and al­though they aren't Frank Her­bert ma­te­r­ial, I have en­joyed most of them ( Sand­worms of Dune being a no­table ex­cep­tion for hav­ing a very shal­low plot and in­vok­ing sev­eral dei ex machina).

After that we headed back over to the SAE/FSM booth to get the CDs signed by Bear Mc­Creary. We were first in line! At the same time, Bryan Lee O'Mal­ley (au­thor of Scott Pil­grim) was sign­ing at the Oni Press booth—we went over there af­ter­ward but the line was so long that we didn't care to try for it. The Bioshock 2 booth was small—ba­si­cally a small veiled closet with a game­play trailer play­ing for 5-6 peo­ple at a time. But that trailer made the game out to look pretty awe­some. You play the first big daddy, the only one with free will. You can take air­locks to go out­side of Rap­ture into the ocean. You now make the choice to ei­ther har­vest or adopt lit­tle sis­ters. Adopt­ing them seems to store them in­side your suit some­where, it wasn't too clear on that. You can take them out to have them har­vest adam from cer­tain bod­ies. While har­vest­ing, you need to guard them from hoards of splicers. Then comes some­thing new—your lit­tle sis­ter says "Uh oh, I don't think big sis wants me to play with you any­more", and in comes the big sis­ter—these are very quick, su­per-ag­ile en­e­mies that pos­sess telekine­sis.

The sec­ond panel we at­tended was that of Ray Brad­bury. He talked of his fas­ci­na­tion of space ex­plo­ration and walk­ing on the moon for the first time. Per­haps most in­ter­est­ingly, he claimed to have total re­call of his en­tire life. He said he was a 10 month baby, and de­vel­oped hear­ing and sight within the womb. He claims his mem­o­ries go back to being in the womb and after birth.

The final panel was for Human Tar­get, the new TV se­ries from Fox. In the show, our main hero (Christo­pher Chance) gets hired by rich peo­ple to solve any prob­lems or threats against them. He is a very in­tel­li­gent de­tec­tive, im­per­son­ator, and all-around body­guard. It stars Mark Val­ley as Christo­pher Chance, Jackie Earle Haley as Guer­rero, and Chi McBride as Win­ston, with the score done by Bear Mc­Creary. We got to screen the pilot be­fore a short Q&A with the stars and pro­duc­ers.

Human Tar­get has some pretty awe­some ac­tion scenes, pretty sim­i­lar to the Bourne se­ries. It is some of the best ac­tion I've seen on TV for as long as I can re­mem­ber. The act­ing is stel­lar, and the score sounds some­where be­tween Caprica and The Sarah Con­nor Chron­i­cles. The char­ac­ters have a light quirk­i­ness sim­i­lar to Push­ing Daisies. The show is being billed as a pro­ce­dural with a light sprin­kling of se­r­ial, which is pretty typ­i­cal for Fox. They want to give you a new ac­tion movie every week. Un­for­tu­nately, the pilot had a lot of faults that I hope they steer clear of in the se­ries.

For one thing, the char­ac­ters are too flaw­less. The main char­ac­ters—all an­ti­heroes it seems—al­ways know ex­actly what to say, have a per­fect plan, and im­me­di­ately know ex­actly what to do to keep the plan on track (pun!) from any curve­balls. Not once did it show an im­per­fec­tion, and I had a hard time be­liev­ing or re­lat­ing to them be­cause of it.

An­other prob­lem I saw was with Guer­rero—he had no in­tro­duc­tion, and just sort of im­posed him­self on the story. He is a com­puter hacker, but it never re­ally showed that process. Most of his scenes were just quick cuts to him re­veal­ing some new in­for­ma­tion that he hacked off screen.

I had planned to meet some friends while I was there, but that was a pretty big fail­ure all around. One didn't pick up his phone. An­other didn't wake up until re­ally late and my phone died in the mid­dle of a con­ver­sa­tion with him. The one guy I was able to meet I didn't do any­thing with be­cause he spent the whole day play­ing D&D.

The BBC Amer­ica booth fea­tured a lot of Doc­tor Who trin­kets and ap­parel, with lots of ad­ver­tis­ing for the new Torch­wood mini-sea­son Chil­dren of Earth(which is pretty good, by the way—go watch it!). There was an awe­some life-sized Dalek on dis­play.

We spent the two hour ride home lis­ten­ing to the Bat­tlestar CD, and it didn't dis­ap­point!

Blankets

A few days ago I did some­thing I haven't done in over 10 years: picked up some comics and a graphic novel.

Today I fin­ished the graphic novel Blan­kets by Craig Thomp­son, an au­to­bi­og­ra­phy of the au­thor's life from child­hood on through high school and a lit­tle bit of adult­hood. It tells par­al­lel sto­ries of broth­er­hood and first love.

It was a joy to read, filled with beau­ti­ful art­work and an en­thralling story. Every page evoca­tive of what it's like grow­ing up, of that over­whelm­ing feel­ing of falling in love for the first time. This is a great book for any­one -- even if you don't like comics, I im­plore you to pick this up.

This is ac­tu­ally the first graphic novel I've read. De­spite hav­ing the ca­pac­ity to read more than your run-of-the-mill X-Men or Fan­tas­tic Four comics as a pre­teen (I dis­tinctly re­mem­ber read­ing my first Stephen King novel It and get­ting my feet wet pro­gram­ming Hy­per­Card around that time), I can't re­call ever read­ing a graphic novel or even being aware of their ex­is­tence. I rarely went to comic book stores for more than Magic cards, in­stead choos­ing to bor­row them from a friend's vast col­lec­tion.

After a cou­ple years of watch­ing The To­tally Rad Show, it fi­nally sunk in to me to go grab some comics. I chose Blan­kets specif­i­cally be­cause of the TRS guys rav­ing about it. Thanks guys!

I re­mem­bered a girl I be­friended when I was a child, who was liv­ing with her dad down the street from my house over sum­mer break. Hardly a foot­note in my life's story, I never saw her after that one sum­mer. Funny, the mem­o­ries this book brought for­ward.