The Bum’s Rush #33

I was supposed to start a multi-part Best Of 2005 column this week but I decided to put it off a week so I could a) do more research and b) write up a little something on the Cage Con that the Stumblebum Crew attended this weekend. I suppose I could have started the Best Of 2005 this week and done the Cage Con report but I decided it’d be better not to split the focus of the column. So, next week kicks off the Best Of 2005. For now, on with the con report!

Cage Con

Last weekend Dana Place, Dave Sherrill and I attended Cage Con I, a comic book and gaming convention put together by the fine folks responsible for the long-running anime convention, A-Kon. There were some pretty impressive names on the guest list, guys like Cameron Stewart (Seaguy, Catwoman, Manhattan Guardian), David Finch (New Avengers, Moon Knight), Aaron Williams (Nodwick, PS238) and Scott Kurtz (PVP), among others. The show itself was kind of tightly jammed into the available space on the second floor of the Adam’s Mark hotel in Dallas, but despite that I had pretty high hopes for the show.

Unfortunately my hopes were somewhat dashed when the show opened Saturday morning (Friday was mostly set up). Our table was smaller than I expected, placed up against the wall in the hallway that ran in front of the dealers’ room. Still, we might have gotten some traffic from people filing into the dealer area, which had several entrances. For some reason, though, the only entrance that was open was the very first one, several yards away from our table, which pretty much ensured that no one would be venturing anywhere near us. After an hour or so of watching people look in our direction but not actually approaching us I had pretty much given up on selling any books or even getting to talk to somebody.

At the very lowest point it was Dave who swooped to the rescue. He had been wandering around the show and ran into his buddy Aaron Wilson, artist for the Geek Like Me webcomic, who was sitting in the main guest area, a nice sized open room where Aaron Williams, Ben Dunn, Cameron Stewart, David Finch and other guests were sitting. Aaron informed us that there was plenty of space still open in that room and invited us to move our stuff in there, next to him and the Splash Page Art  booth. Immediately upon arrival in the room it was clear they weren’t getting much more traffic than we were out in the hallway, but it was still uplifting to move there with all the pros.

I got to meet and talk with Cameron Stewart, Aaron Williams ((who did an awesome sketch in my sketchbook) and Ben Dunn, all of whom were extremely friendly guys. We all sat around joking, laughing and occasionally pausing our conversations whenever a con attendee happened to accidentally wander into our area. It quickly became apparent that most of the people attending the con were gamers solely interested in… well… gaming. They sat out in the gaming area and rarely wandered far from their seats.

My sister and her husband showed up late in the afternoon, my nephew in tow. They came to the show to meet Sean Teague, the voice actor who played the character Koenma in the popular anime,
Yu Yu Hakusho. Both of them are huge fans of that show and they even managed to convert me. Unfortunately they didn’t really have anything for him to sign and they weren’t able to find any Yu Yu Hakusho merchandise in the dealer room (though I’m sure if they’d approached any one of the creepy, odd smelling anime nerds dressed as their favorite obscure cartoon character one of them would have been able to produce an action figure or DVD or something, seemingly from thin air). My sister suggested I try drawing the Koenma character that they could then take to Sean Teague to sign. Having no reference made it a little difficult, but with the help of my sister and her husband I was able to recall enough details to fake a pretty decent picture of Koenma. Sean was a really friendly guy and talked with my sister, her husband and I for quite a while.

A few times I had to take my nephew to wander around the show, he was getting too antsy and frustrated having to stay in one place. We wandered into one part of the hotel where some other convention or something was going on and there in the middle of the room was a guy dressed as Santa Claus. He really looked the part. I introduced my nephew to Santa Claus, his first time meeting the jolly old elf I believe. Santa was extremely friendly and made a fuss of my nephew, who pulled his usual “I’m so shy and cute” routine. After a few minutes we left and my nephew waved goodbye to Santa. After all this we packed up and all of us, including my sister, her husband and my nephew, went out for dinner and watched as my nephew dipped his food in ketchup and proceeded to run it through his hair.

We started out a little late on Sunday. Things were definitely slower than they had been on Saturday, which was pretty amazing considering how slow it had been for us Saturday. Aaron Wilson brought his guitar and played it on and off all day, singing and entertaining us, which was great. Dana and I read our preview comics that we were to review for the site. Mine were pretty bad… well, Marvel Zombies was okay. Apparently all of Dana’s were great. Jerk.

After that Dave and I wandered around the dealer room, which was almost as dead as our little area. We happened upon a booth selling toys and on one corner of the table were a bunch of He-Man knock-offs from Mexico, made by a company called Flexitron I think. Dave bought a couple because they were so amazingly ridiculous looking. We went back to our table and played with the toys, laughing our asses off as we had them fight and yell at each other in Spanish. El baÒo de la muerte! Hee. Anyway, I went back to buy one of the figures and the guy at the booth sold me the rest of them for eight bucks.

We went to lunch and just as we got back a couple guys came up to the table and bought some of our books and requested sketches from Dave and I. They said we could do whatever and having just read Marvel Zombies I decided to do Zombie Spiderman, which was pretty fun to draw. Dave, following the theme, did Zombie Angel. As we drew Aaron played a couple of Cash songs and everybody, including the fans we were doing sketches for, sang along. That may have been one of my favorite moments of the whole show. Man, I wish I had a photo of the sketches or something. Guys! If you’re reading this send me a scan of the Zombie sketches Dave and I did! I’d really appreciate it.

That was pretty much the height of the excitement on Sunday. Scott Kurtz entertained the room by taking a Narnia mini movie poster, cutting a hole in Aslan’s mouth and holding the poster up to his face, speaking as Aslan and reminding everyone that he was a metaphor for Jesus. He jokingly tried in vain to explain what metaphors the witch and the children represented but kept coming back to “Aslan is Jesus.” It was pretty damn funny. Kurtz is always a blast at conventions. After that it was pretty apparent to us that the show wasn’t getting any busier and we decided to pack it up and take off a little early. I managed to get Cameron Stewart to do a sketch in my sketchbook just before we left. He showed me the cover he did for the second Seven Soldiers trade and it was amazing. That guy is just a great artist and all around cool guy.

Once we got back home we all passed out. It may not have been the busiest convention, but we all had a lot of fun and met some really cool people, which is pretty much the best part about going to these comic conventions anyway. I wonder if they’ll have another Cage Con next year? I’m honestly not sure whether the show was successful for them or not, but I hope that it was, I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I’m really getting into this convention thing.

X3 – C’mon, they had two good movies, it’s okay if the 3rd one blows

The X-Men 3 trailer debuted on the internet the other day. Being the loyal and socially awkward fanboy that I am I’ve already watched it about 12 times. It’s a good trailer (no, I don’t care what they say, that was not a teaser, that was a full-blown trailer) for what I am convinced will be a mediocre movie.

Let’s break it down shall we, Sergio Leone style:

The Good –

1. The special effects look amazing
2. Colossus is back!
3. Kelsey Grammer as The Beast doesn’t seem so bad after all… except… no, we’ll save it for “Ugly”
4. Rebecca Romijn… in naught but blue paint and a couple of scales… mmmmm
5. Ian McKellen is just awesome in every movie he does
6. This is pure speculation on my part but judging from certain scenes in the trailer it looks like there will be a pretty extensive Danger Room sequence, possibly featuring Sentinels!
7. Friggin’ fastball special!

The Bad –

1. Thanks trailer, for giving away some obviously major plot points! There are more than a few scenes that clearly show Jean Grey joining Magneto’s team.
2. Doesn’t seem like Cyclops has a very big part in this movie. I could be wrong.
3. It does seem, however, that Storm has a much bigger role. Oh, yay. Halle Berry sucks.
4. That spinning top move Storm pulls more than once? Seriously, what is that?
5. Too many friggin’ characters!
6. Two words. Brett. Ratner.

And The Ugly –

1. Beast looks kinda cool and all, but… doesn’t it kinda look like he’s just wearing a bunch of blue makeup? I mean, obviously he is, but shouldn’t it look like he’s actually not wearing blue makeup. I don’t know. Hopefully he’ll look a little better once they put the whole thing together and add whatever effects they’re going to add. Plus, there’s a scene where it really looks like he’s just wearing a shirt covered in blue fur. Huh.
2. Halle Berry’s hair. What’s that? It’s all dirty looking.
3. Juggernaut, huh? More like Juggernope. Aww, I wish I hadn’t typed that now. Boo on me. Still, Juggernaut looks crappy.
4. A lot of those mutants hangin’ with Magneto look a bit too much like Mad Max rejects.
5. Beast in a suit? Oh, I laughed and laughed. Just looks funny is all I’m sayin’.
6. Brett Ratner. Man, that was kinda mean. He’s not ugly. Seriously though, he’s not my favorite director. Guess they coulda gotten McG. That’d be worse.

Quick Bits

1. Bill Willingham will not only write a new Shadowpact series, spinning out of DC’s Day of Vengeance mini-series, he’ll also be drawing it!
2. The new Moon Knight series by crime novelist Charlie Huston and New Avengers artist Dave Finch has been upgraded from a mini-series to an ongoing.
3. Mark Millar and Steve McNiven have been announced as the creative team behind next year’s big summer event at Marvel. No title announced yet, just the tagline “Whose Side Are You On?” Personally I’m on the side of no stupid and/or pointless summer crossovers. Marvel’s on the other side of that, I think.
4. Just a few weeks after being announced (with an original release date set in early 2006) Stephen King’s planned Dark Tower mini-series for Marvel has been delayed until the beginning of 2007. Good job guys!
5. It’s also quite possible that Stephen King won’t even be doing the actual scripts for Dark Tower. It started out as such a big and important event too. Oh well.
6. Looks as if Robin, like a number of other DC Comics post-Infinite Crisis, is going to be cancelled and started up again. Writer Adam Beechen and artist Karl Kerschl are on board as the new creative team. What else is new about Robin? Apparently a new costume and perhaps more importantly, a new character in the role of Boy Wonder. Maybe. You didn’t hear it from me. Go away.
7. The “Ronin” arc just wrapped up in New Avengers. The final issue revealed at last the true identity of the newest of New Avengers, the mysterious Ronin. Who was it? Echo. That’s right, Echo, the second string Elektra knock-off Daredevil villain. She’s deaf. And she can do anything once she sees someone else do it. Why, oh why couldn’t she have seen someone put a bullet in their head and then followed suit. No wonder no one was able to guess who was behind the Ronin mask. Because no one thought it would be someone so meaningless, unimportant and ultimately forgettable. Yeah, you really pulled the wool over my eyes Bendis. I never saw that shitty ending coming. I wish I were blind like you, Daredevil.
8. Fantastic Four 2 has been greenlit for a 2007 release by Fox. Director Tim Story, screenwriter Mark Frost and most of the original cast (minus Julian McMahon) are set to return.

NEXT WEEK: Starting the multipart Best of 2005 column! For real this time!


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