It’s been a little over a week since my last update, so time again to pull out those overused words: man, what a crazy past couple of days. So what’s been going exactly? Well….
Lots of stuff really. One obvious highlight was the 2nd New York Comic Con that took place last weekend. Most might recall me (and many others) bitching about the clusterfuck that was the first attempt at brining a small slice of the San Diego Comic Con to the Big Apple. Well this second try was a total 180; it was a really great show! As far as mainstream comic shows go, of course. It was no MoCCA, but it was still miles ahead of, say, the crappy church comic shows us New Yorkers have been forced to deal with for years now. And there was issues to be sure, but given that this was year two, there’s still time to work things out, and all things considered, it very promising event, and further proof positive that mainstream comics still has some life in it.
The Obligatory/Belated New York Comic Con Report
I was pleasantly surprised by how San Diego-esque the show was, since most folks, myself included felt it would be a total impossibility. Granted there were obvious differences: its still much smaller than the grand daddy of all comic cons, and Hollywood didn’t have as much of a presence, but given that its not a stone’s throw away like San Diego is, that’s hardly a surprise. Plus, one of the best parts of the San Diego con was sorely missed, Seaport Village, which is this wonderful little waterfront villa that’s right next to the convention center that has tons of awesome food. Meanwhile, at the Jacob Javits center, there ain’t shit to eat for blocks around, so you either pay $5 for a chicken sandwich at the show or you starve. And once again, those rude ass fuck teamsters were in there, but that was to be expected, and this time around, with things being organized a billion times better than before, they had little chance to abuse their authority.
One smart move was to have the show be three days, with the first being a primarily industry only day (which I missed out on due to…. more on that later). So by Saturday, all the important folk had done their business, leaving just nerds to fill up the space. And they sure came out in droves once again. Here’s the scene outside Saturday morning…
It was just as freezing cold outside this year as it was last, but things moved along much better this time around, or as far as I could tell, so no one was stuck outside for long (previously, some had to stand outside for like three hours).
And inside, the place was bustling with comic folks, with everyone in generally good spirits (again, a contrast to the year prior where everyone was pissed and stressed out). Naturally, lots of said folks came out in full regalia….
I also ran into last year’s breakout star early on, Unemployed Skeletor. Not only is the dude still jobless, but you really can’t tell from the pic, but I think even fatter than last year…
The big primary presence was, of course, Marvel and DC. I didn’t bother to take any pics of their set-up, though I kinda wish I did take at least one featuring Iron Man. As anyone who knows me is well aware of, I am a MAJOR fan of old Shell Head (that’s what the hip kids call him), and I couldn’t be any happier that he’s become a major focus in the Marvel Universe these days, though I also get the impression that everyone just plain hates the guy (and not because he’s some asshole in the storyline, in which he’s heading the charge to have all super heroes in the US register their identities to the government, with all the political and social implications that one would expect, but because he’s everywhere and no one liked him in the first place). There were smaller publishers on-hand, but not that many; correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall ever seeing a table for Top Shelf for example (either that or they got lost in the sea of the major publishers and toys). Once again, not much of a surprise since I know it was the independent guys that really got fucked over last time, which is why most people I know had no interested in attending this year’s event.
So without many of the indie guys and Hollywood on hand, the space was primarily filled with folks peddling anime and manga, as well as toys. There were a ton of awesome designer toys on-hand, including these robots from FLCL…
And here’s some more from the same booth….
There was also a lot of bizarro shit, stuff that folks were trying to get investment for, like this line of toys that is based upon, well, shit…
One booth had all these dolls dressed up as various characters from comics and movies, and given how everyone also knows that I’m obsessed with the Hermione character from Harry Potter (well more so the actress, but anyway), I simply had to take a picture…
… It was hard to take since there was another creepy photographer that kept getting in the shot.
Another booth that peddled Lego-esque little dudes had famous movie posters adorning featuring their characters, and they were… interesting….
Back to people in costumes! Here I am with Soundwave, and given my love for the character, and how kick-ass the costume was, I simply had to have a pic with me in it…
Though what truly blew my mind was when I discovered that it was a GIRL in that outfit!
Here’s a guy who totally nailed the elder statesmen Superman from Kingdom Come look….
And here’s the Flash and the Blue Beetle…
Some girl as Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix…
Captain America ordering a hot dog…
Aside from super heroes, you had plenty of Star Wars folks roaming around, mostly Jedis, a few Stormtroopers (including one cute female one, and one… not so hot), and a fat Boba Fett. Check out this pic featuring a girl with huge breasts doing Slave Leia. They aren’t that huge, just for that character/outfit. So much so that even MK insisted that I take a picture.
For the most part, they hung out at this stage area where every lightsabered each other to music to either Star Wars Episode 1 or the Matrix.
But at one point, they ran some comedy, and aside from some stand up comic trying his best to make fun of Doctor Who fans to get a laugh out of Star Trek fans, here’s some fat dude dressed up as Batman eating a bat (actually, a hoagie, but it was supposed to be a bat in the sketch)…
Here’s a booth babe (I think I should probably withhold her real name) that was passing out postcards to comics based on old Grimm’s fairy tales, “but all messed up!!!”, whom I ended up chatting with. I asked how it compared to working at car shows and the like, and she said that nerds were far nicer and well behaved (whereas at car shows, every asshole is trying to grab her ass). When I asked if this was her primary gig, she said no, it was something she was doing on the side. And when I asked if it was for the money or just the fun of it, I was told that it was most definitely was for the former; her house is getting foreclosed and she needs the cash, bad. Yikes.
At one point on Saturday, I hooked up with Joe (Simko) who was on-hand to have a meeting with the designer toy folks to talk about the upcoming line that’s based on his characters, and with some time to kill, us and June decided to check out the You Want To Be A Superhero auditions that was taking place (its some reality show on NBC I think). And here I am with some super hero hopeful… I forget his name, but he was super friendly, and his power had something to do with electricity…
And here I am with some girl whose gimmick was that she was on rollerblades, but wasn’t very good with them and was in constant need of staying up.
The one dude that had all the buzz is the guy on the right, who apparently made it all the way to the very end of the first season but lost, and many seemed to feel that he should have been the chosen one. In this pic, he was just chatting as a guy dressed up as Dante from Devil May Cry (he wasn’t trying out, but just wanted to say hi to the hero guy).
Oh, and here’s a blurry pic of me with a ninja turtle. He was super popular, with everyone wanting to have their picture taken with him, but I did manage to tell Leonardo that he was my favorite turtle…
I lied. My favorite is Donattello.
There weren’t just folks in funny outfits. As previously mentioned, last year’s show was so bad that it scared off quite a few comic producing friends, though a few decided to take their chances and set up shop. Here’s Dave (Roman) and John over at the Comics Bakery table, their new imprint, which also includes Raina and Marion, over at the artist alley.
There a few indie folks sprinkled across the main floor as well, including the Comic Alliance, which is SVA’s imprint (again, its nice that cartooning is so celebrated at my alma mattar… wish it was the same when I was going there, but oh well). That’s where I found Joe (Flood) with Hilary…
Like I said, the animu was strong at the show. Here’s the cover of a new manga starring Avril Lavigne…
And these posters were pretty popular freebies amongst pervs…
Then there was this guy…
I’m disappointed that this pic didn’t come out so well since the chicken girl in the back was really neat….
I’m a big Range Murata fan, but it?s kinda hard to really advertise this fact when the guy has such a strong loli following, thanks to stuff like this…
That same booth had some really neat figures from Japan, including this Optimus Prime that Jason had given me the head’s up on earlier in the week…
And here’s some others by the same company…
Plus here’s some mecha from Capcom’s new Xbox 360 hit, Lost Planet…
Speaking of video games, they too had a presence at the show. Konami had perhaps the biggest booth… here’s the set-up for Lost in Blue 2. I barely touched the first one, whereas MK almost beat the game, so I’ll have the get sequel for her…
As I was sneaking in this show of this old guy, just standing there and watching some kids play DDR, all confused like…
… this guy snuck up from behind…
… and said “Hey, I know see you all the time!” He then went on to say that he keeps running into to me at various local game related functions, like DigitalLife, and has even seen me at ICON. Oh to be a staple of the NYC game scene….
I also got to play Monster Madness for the 360, which I was originally going to pass on, but MK insisted since there was a chance to score a free 360, plus she’s all about games where you can beat each other up, plus the motif (kids running around beating up zombies and monsters, and other kids) was right up her alley. And we even got Joe and June to play, even though they don’t do video games, and both were also drunk at the time (this was Sunday, the last day, and they wanted to get a leg up on the festivities later that evening, which I’ll go into a bit later). Anyway, the game was pretty neat. Decent multiplayer action. Was kinda hard to see what was going on, though that can be overcome in time. Overall, good for what it was.
Aside from walking the isles and checking out books, plus people dressed up as folks from said books, there were also panels at the show, and I managed to check out a few. MK and I caught the Minx panel Saturday morning, which was mostly about the first book from the new young female focused imprint, The Plane Janes, Both talents behind the book, Cecil Castelucci and Jim Rugg were on-hand to talk about the project and show some art, and that was cool. Also got to chat with Jim beforehand, which was nice. They even had special pre-release copies of the book on-hand, which was quite the score. And they also previwed the other books in the line-up that’s coming out, with Good As Lily, the new Derek Kirk Kim/Jesse Hamm collaboration that looks to be damn good. A great panel, though I wish someone had brought up how lame the name is for an imprint that geared towards girls. I guess Pussy Reads was taken?
Another highlight was the humor in comics panel, which was supposed to have a bunch of folks, including Michael Kupperman and Bob Fingerman, but in the end it was just Kyle Baker (hey, cartoonists tend to sleep in on Saturday morning when they can help it), but it was all good since he’s such a great speaker. He mostly touched up how overly sensitive television producers are these days, as well as the overall sad state of animation these days. Kyle was full of great anecdotes, like the time he was working on some project about Noah’s Ark and how he kept getting story notes from executives asking such inane shit like “Why does God have to be so mean?” He also discussed how the era of classic slapstick cartoon violence is more or less dead, because everyone is so hung up on crap like character motivation and the such (as well as directing jabs at folks who blindly follow the advice of Robert McKee, whom many consider to be a God when it comes to the proper way to write a story, while also conveniently overlooking the fact that the guy hasn’t written shit himself). A lot of people compare Kyle with John Kricfalusi, and aside from having very similar art styles, their attitudes towards animation are practically identical; I still remember reading about all the dumb story notes that John K had to endure when working on Ren & Stimpy (and Kyle also has little love for Nickelodeon as well). Much like Kricfalusi, I don’t agree with everything that Baker had to say, but I always appreciate anyone that laments how no one trusts their instincts anymore these days, and the insistence to service bullshit demographics, as well as standards and practices, especially after the Friday I just had…. again, more on that later.
Michael Kupperman did in the end show up, but for a panel the very next day, for Nick Mag. It was mostly for kids, so it mostly bits involving a number of the magazine’s comics and their creators; one involved two of human cartoonists facing off against a computer cartoonist, Big Orange, to see what was funnier, man or machine, but it ended being more of a corporate shill and a shit talker than anything else. Though the best part had to be the special Kupperman strip all done in 3-D (and everyone even got those old timey glasses). Anyway, here’s a pic of Dave with Big Orange…
Though the best panel of the entire weekend, as well as the true high point of the entire show, was the Venture Brothers panel. MK & I both knew well in advance that if there was just one thing he absolutely had to check out, that would be it. And boy, it did not disappoint. The room was totally packed with VB loyalists, which in itself was pretty awesome, and the energy level was simply electric. Pretty much all the primary talents behind the show were in attendance, and they all seemed like dudes you totally want to hang out with (especially James Urbaniak, the guy who does the voice of Dr. Venture). The audience had tons of questions, and all of them were really good; no retards in the audience, at least for Venture Brothers! I’m really glad the first person asked them what its like to have, when compared to all the other Adult Swim offerings, a coherent plot, actual characters, jokes that makes sense, and the like. Then you had the little kid that asked if there was actually a testicular torsion board (referencing the ball twisting episode). I guess the best part was finding out that the guys behind what in my humble opinion is the best damn cartoon being produced today is that they hate all the things I hate! Like Family Guy and a host of other crap, much of which is also on Adult Swim. At one point they even started to take random things, like coffee cups and toe nails, gave them “funny” accessories like hats and mustaches, and created a whole new seasons worth of shows for the network.
Also, check out this girl with the boss Venture Brothers tat…
As for what books I got, not too many really. Was watching my money that weekend, though I did take advantage of the special they had going over at First Second. Got Garage Band, A.L.I.E.E.N. (I can’t find any info on the book online, but I did find this little web game), and Klezmer, all for just $20!
A few final, random pics. First another robot shot, but this one’s cardboard, and it even moves! From some Brooklyn based DIY booth…
Next, some more of those designer USB drives that a few might have seen here and there, this time featuring Gloomy Bear and a few Star Wars characters…
Here’s some guy dressed up as a banana….
Steve Flack bought this issue of the Flash, with him getting assaulted by hippies….
And what’s comic con without celebrities? Here’s Steve sporting his autographed picture of Gary Coleman, along with his camera that’s showing a picture of him with Gary Coleman (yeah, I know, how meta). Though what’s most impressive is Steve’s Brocktoon hooded sweatshirt, which I’m actually more jealous of than his Tron one.
Plus, here’s a picture of June with Gary, which as you can see, is very color coordinated. And June’s wearing a shirt featuring that well know, at least around the web, picture of Gary and David Hasselhoff with KITT. Now that’s meta….
So I guess that was the show, at least for me. All things considered, it was a pretty decent affair, and I dare say worth the price of admission! They certainly made up for past mistakes, so if the show’s organizers are able to make a few changes (like the artist alley, which was too cramped, or simply have more panels), then next year’s will be even better.
Nice Hitler
Last weekend was a pretty social one, and not just due to the comic con. Job had his somewhat belated house-warming party and aside from plenty of Polish candy and Japanese wine, I got to test out Wario Ware for the Wii, which I hadn’t done since some press function many moons ago. There was about 10 people playing together, and while it definitely lacked the lighting pace of the original game mode, it was still lots of fun, and hey, 10 people were playing the same game together!
Beforehand we all got the chance to make Miis of ourselves, which was half the fun. I was really surprised that I was able to create one that looked just like me. Also got the chance to check out all the other Miis that Job had, many of which were sent by friends and family. He had a decent looking Michael Jackson, as well as Hitler. There was one that looked just like Divine, so I asked…
“Who’s that one that looks like Divine?”
“Its actually Divine.”
Though the real crazy thing about Job and his girlfriend Michele is that they have a cat that apparently not only plays Dr Mario, but is good at it. Good enough to easily beat human opponents, which I just had to see for myself. There was a NES with the game running in the guest room the whole time, but he/she was so spooked out by so many visitors that I never got the chance to issue a challenge.
Then the next night, Sunday evening, was Joe’s yearly Oscar bash, affectionately titled DEATH TO THE OSCARS. And like every year before, Joe and I were both pretty drunk well before the damn thing actually started. As for show itself, it sucked, but that was to be expected. Though Ellen Degeneres was actually more annoying that expected (her rambling comedic style is not that cute to begin with, but was down right insulting when she got to blow minutes trying to yuck it up with celebs in the audience, using valuable times stolen by those that could actually use them, such as those giving speeches when receiving awards for their life’s work). Then you had the Cirque de Soli bullshit act, which was creepy at first, but just got sloppier as the night went on. And when they accidentally referred to Infernal Affairs at Japanese and not Hong Kong, needless to say, I was more than irked. But at least I discovered that tequila and apple juice makes for a killer combo.
Lesson Of The Week: Hacking Ain’t Easy
As for this past week, I’ve actually been keeping a pretty low profile. Didn’t do much work… for reasons that I will be getting into in just a bit. On Tuesday I met up with Dave (Mauro) and got back my PSP that he had been working on. He managed to hack it, though it wasn’t easy. My system apparently has the “dreaded” TA-082 motherboard that was only recently hacked, and during the installation process the screen went crazy. But things are relatively working fine, though its not quite fine; my screen changes brightness whenever trying to run an emulator, Genesis games seem to experience slowdown almost randomly, plus it takes forever for PSone games to load. Also, Dave never did get either Vib Ribbon or Love Love 2/Love Love Truck to work, which is a real bummer. But at least I have the Parodius and Twin Bee collections on my system, as well as Pro Gear, assorted PSone shumps, and a PC Engine emulator, among other things.
Plus I’ve also encountered some weirdness with a stock UMD, though for the most part, I’ve just been playing Lumines, so maybe my copy is wonked? Sometimes when my session ends, instead of saving my progress, it asks to load my profile once again, which would wipe out the progress that I just made (this has already has cost me one skin thus far). Plus once while trying to get to the home menu from Lumines, the system flat out crashed. But otherwise…. dear God, well worth just having the system for. I may have to take back what I’ve said before and crown Lumines as better overall than Meteos. Believe it or not, it took me next to no time to get into Meteos, which for most has a very steep learning curve, while it took me a while for things to click with Lumines, But when it did, which was late Thursday night….. I was up till literally four in the morning playing the Shake Your Body skin over, and over, and over again.
Also, now that I finally have updated firmware, I’ve been able to try out all of my games, including Ultimate Ghouls in Ghosts, which I already like more than any other game before it in the series, simply due to the energy bar, but man does the jumping fucking suck. I’ve also tried giving Katamari 3 another shot, and I just can’t get over how atrocious the controls are.
At least the PSP has finally shaped up for me… too bad I can’t say things are going that well when it comes to my efforts to haxor my GBA. As I may have previously mentioned, Dave passed along a M3 cart to me to mess around with, but I really haven’t been able to do much with it. My primary problem is that the particular card I have, which is the M3 Mini SD Pro, cannot run GBA games above 4 megs, which is pretty meager. But also, and this is hardly a surprise, not having a PC my biggest issue. I was hoping to simply drag and drop roms onto the SD card, but aside from the fact that for whatever reason, my Mac would not recognize the card, nor the SD reader I recently acquired (even though it was supposed to be OS X compatible, and I have delt with SD cards on the Mac before), apparently you need the M3 software to treat the roms, which creates save files for each game.
What I want is the following…
- A Flash cart that will play GBA games, regardless of size.
- One that will also be flushed with the system.
- And one that I can manage via OS X.
I know there’s another M3 card, the SD Perfect, that allows for larger sized GBA roms, but it appears to be slightly bigger than the system, and I don’t want something sticking out the bottom of my GB Micro. EDIT: Actually, there’s the Mini SD Perfect that’s the perfect size I’m looking for! Though I still have the issue of incompatible authoring software. My Mac is neither Intel based (I just have modest little G4), nor do I have Virtual PC (and yes, I really don’t know how I can live with the fact that I can’t play the billions of awesome doujin softs out there, much of which I write about all the time). My only alternative is a Flash2Advance cart that Jeremiah turned me onto, which has OS X drivers, but they seem to be impossible to find these days. Damn.
On a non-game related note, Wednesday was MK’s birthday. We had dinner at Zen Palette, and then it was off to movie night. The feature was In Cold Blood, the movie based on the Truman Capote book, and it was pretty damn good, as well as drop dead gorgeous in HD. Also, some of the finest editing I’ve ever seen.
Otherwise, I’ve just been meeting up with and hanging out with folks whom I haven’t had much of chance to see in recent weeks. Earlier this evening was spent with Mike, who was kind enough to treat me to beef and booze (good thing for him I’m such a cheap date). The main topic of conversation with him, and most everyone else this past week? Well…
In The End
So I guess the really big news, which is from last Friday, is that I was fired from Black Hammer Productions. I am no longer their game designer. The reason? There’s many. Let’s just say that things just didn’t work out. I simply was not a fit for the company, nor was the company a fit for me.
There’s a lot I could say, and I’ve been debating all week what, if anything, I would comment on. But for the time being, I am going to choose to hold my tongue, though not for the regular reasons.
I will say that the past couple of days have been pretty rough for me. Hey, its never pleasant to get fired from any job, but this recent development was a real blow due to the timing and the circumstances involved. But all I can say is that I tried my very best with what I had, so maybe its for the best that I now look elsewhere, and torwards the future. These next couple of weeks are going to be difficult, but at least I have some of the finest friends one could ever be lucky enough to have. To those of you that have come to my side this past week and offered support, I sincerely appreciate it, I truly do.
Aside from being depressed by how everything played out, as well as being embarrassed (its been no fun telling said friends who were so happy for me about my new job that I just lost it only one month later), I’m also quite pissed off to be totally honest. So as far as what happened, I will tell the story because I honestly feel it needs to be told. At least certain aspects to it. Not just now, and not here. If anything, its somewhat a blessing in disguise since I now have the perfect ending to the piece I’ve been planning for The Gamer’s Quarter. So look for it Shaper!
At least this entire week hasn’t been all doom and gloom. The thing is, I had actually been building up a good deal of momentum over the past couple of months, much of which my tenure at Black Hammer put the kibosh on (for example, the recent dearth in updates), so its going to be tricky to get back on that horse. But I am looking forward to doing more writing, and back to updating on a more frequent basis.
Besides, I have 18,000 new visitors as of this week (Sup everybody!), thanks to an old blog post of mine getting Digged; my old i am 8 bit report, which keeps bring people to this place, even years after the fact. Granted most of those folks have come and gone, but for the six of you that have decided to stick around, welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay, and don’t forget to visit the forums (which I can finally spend some time on).
I also still have other stuff going on elsewhere. Nick Mag recently ran a piece by me, and I even got some fan mail. Its always extra nice when some nine year old takes time out of his or her busy schedule to pass along a few kind words! Unfortunately the poor kid thought me listing Dr. Robotnik and Eggman as the same person was a mistake (see what you’ve done Sega?). Anyway, its on newsstands right now.
Plus, my GSW column is back in effect, and for those who might have missed it, last week I reviewed Avalon. And this time, I finally hope to get around to doing some video game comic reviews sometime soon.
And of course, there’s my appearance at ICON later this month.
Finally….
Guess Who’s Back?
Jizzmoppa, that’s who! Yup, after a way too long an absence, my first web game, and I guess my most popular game period, has finally returned, thanks to the wonder if porn based ads. And finally, all is well in the world.
