Johnny Gigawatt

Are there as many weeks as filled with awesome as this one? We have DCU 0, Iron Man, GTAIV (still) and there’s comic day tomorrow! WOOOOO!!!! Heh, yeah, Sam Bambino is a happy kid. Enjoy the folks so, it’s also chalk full of awesome.

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Over at PvP Scott Kurtz has been doing something that very few storytellers can do well - engender real emotion. I’ve been reading his daily strip, and buying the collections from Image, for years now, and while it’s mostly quick jokes he’s very good at making you feel for the characters. Right now he’s doing the Wedding of Brent & Jade, and it’s an absolute masterwork. He hasn’t really done a joke in the strip for about a week, instead using the 10 years of history he’s built up for these characters to carry the story. I thought that strip from Saturday, with Jade being escorted down the aisle by Cole, a single tear running down his cheek, couldn’t be topped. Until I saw today’s strip, in which for the first time ever Brent takes his sunglasses off as he and Jade exchange vows. Lesser cartoonists would have felt the need to put a joke in - make him cross-eyed or something like that - but Kurtz does the right thing and instead uses it for a real emotional punch. The beauty of serial storytelling is in moments like this. Years of character development that can pay off with a simple line under the eyes. Bravo, Scott.

What do the Tiger Men do when they have nothing to talk about? They talk things that really matter. Like Countdown. What, Countdown did not matter all that much? Well crap. See what we have to say anyway, because that’s important. Really!

Thanks to We Are Venom over at Evil Avatar, we have found a official link to the trailer for Season 3 of the Venture Brothers! I think I just peed a little.

Another week, another awesome podcast of comic news! What do you want folks? Manga X-Men? Invasions? Crises? Well we got it all, so settle in and listen, cause it’s all kinds of awesome!

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“The Spirit” (looks like it should be called “Sin City 2″) finally has a trailer. Here it is, shortly after it hit the NYCC. Watch and weep, or cheer, depending on your love of Frank Miller.

Day 2 began much the same as day 1, just a bit earlier. When I showed up just before noon the floor was absolutely packed. And every time I ventured up to the show floor proper it got more and more crowded (apparently the fire marshal once again stopped new entries to the Javitz center for a while in the middle of the afternoon). The energy level on the floor was great. It’s nominally a comic-con, but pretty much every discipline of the nerdly arts was represented in full force. In particular today there were a lot of cosplayers and Gothic Lolitas all over the place. But most of all the place was just mobbed. The line for the theater where they were holding most of the TV and movie panels wrapped across the hall several times over. The lines in Hall 1E for the simultaneous panels covering the Venture Bros, Zombie Survival and Gothic Lolitas were so massive they closed off the hallway.
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New York Comic Con - Day 1

The first word that popped into my mind is ‘WOW’. After a hike from Penn Station over to the Javitz Center over on 11th avenue

The Floor

The main floor of the show is total sensory overload. Where do I go first? The card games? The pen & paper RPGs? Artist’s Alley? Dealer’s Row? My choice is made for me as I almost walk into the display for the Hellboy II toys. Hot damn, do they look cool. I spent a good 30 minutes just wandering around the action figure/sculpture section of the show, trying very hard not to blow an entire month’s pay on a conmplete set of Hellboy/BPRD statues.

Over by dealer’s row you start running into creators. I had a very nice chat with Rick Remender and Tony Moore and listened to them gleefully mock Jason Aaron, who was just wrapping up an interview with a very….earnest reporter. But before I could even get to half the floor, it was time to hit the first panels of the day.
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Sometimes you hear a bit of news that just makes you scratch your head and go “Huh?” This is one of those times. Apparently, Midway is going to be making a Mortal Kombat vs. DC fighting game. This rumor had been floating around for a little while now (I think I first heard it in December), but it was chalked up as slash-fic run rampant. But while Midway was clearly building up to an announcement of some sort, I don’t think anyone really expected something that…different. Now, mortal kombat online (which is getting absolutely hammered at the moment) produces something approaching tangible proof, a teaser image supposedly leaked early from Midway.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. I’m a big Mortal Kombat fan (hell, I’m a fighting game fan, period) so a new game, especially one built on the Unreal 3 engine, is right up my alley. But inserting DC characters into it? I just don’t know. According to Maxconsole a Midway source has said that the game will have “no fatalities and little-to-no blood”. That’s in line with DC’s policies on the characters, but an MK game without fatalaties? Combine that with the less than stellar track record of DC-based videogames (there hasn’t been a really good one since the NES, and at least 3 DC games are considered some of the worst games of all time) and I get a little nervous about this one. I’ll try to get some more news on this one at the New York Comic Con today.

Oh slow week of all news weeks. Why so slow? Well, it could be that a large comic convention is coming up, or that 2 universe wide events at the big two are coming up, or it could just be that the comic industry is closing shop as whole….no. It’s still there, and we’re still Here! It’s Eisners, Solicitations, movie news and our wonderful comic tawlk (thank you Linda Richman). Enjoy this internet cup of comic java.