HijiNKS ENSUE At San Diego Comic-Con 2012

I am leaving for San Diego Comic-Con in 4 FREAKING DAYS!!!PANIC!!!AHHHHGHGHGH!!!

SDCC con-goers will be able to find my merch (t-shirts and books) with Blind Ferret at booth 1332 in the webcomics area. Due to our booth accidentally getting cut in half this year, I will not have table space to sit and draw, but I will be hanging out during the weekend.

CHECK MY TWITTER through out the weekend for scheduled booth/signing times. I will have sketch cards and prints with me when I’m at the booth.

Since the Grammar Dalek shirts couldn’t be ready in time for SDCC, I am bringing a limited number of Grammar Dalek prints. I don’t know if they’ll be on display so you may have to ask me for them if you want one.

San Diego is a special kind of chaos that both invigorates me and drains the life clean from every cell in my body. I am going to run 1, maybe 2 new comics during the week of SDCC, then I am going to run sketches from the Fancy Sketch Drive for the rest of the week. Possibly for the rest of my life. I usually don’t want to do much of anything but sleep for about 6 months to a year after SDCC. See you there!

Iron Man and Cape 4

You’ll be hearing a LOT from me about Iron Man (and probably seeing a couple more comics on the subject) so I won’t bother with a long review.

Here’s a short one instead: It is the best comic book movie to date. They got EVERYTHING right. Casting was perfect. RDJ is Tony Stark. The effects were perfect. Gadget porn galore and CGI so believable you never noticed it. The balance of action to story was perfect. No drawn out origin, no side love story, no emo. They got him in the suit, he had two fights, it was over and you wanted more. Brilliant.

I’m not saying it was the best movie of all time (I am). I’m saying in leu of all turds Marvel has dropped recently (Daredevil, Punisher, Blade 3, other Punisher, Elektra, FF1, FF2, Hulk, etc, etc) Iron Man just got it right. And get this… I NEVER liked Iron Man in the comics. I left that movie with a thirst for more of the source material. That is what a great comic book movie should do: serve the die hard fans, while equally bringing new ones to the franchise. Well done, John Favreua, Robery Downey Jr., Marvel, et al.

Here’s an even shorter review from Josh:

Iron Man Fucking Rocked

2008-05-03-josh-iron-man.png

Continue reading

Wizard World Arlington 2007

I was (this) close to getting a booth at this year’s Wizard World Arlington Comic Con. At the last minute I decided to just go an observe rather than participate. This turned out to be the right choice.

Comic Con’s are an interesting animal to be sure in that they have less to do with comic books and more to do with “I made a Taun-taun costume, do you want to sleep in my stomach?”

Josh, Eli and I loaded up and trekked to Arlington last Saturday the 17th. Almost immediately we realized no one brought a camera. The heinousness of this error was immediately evident when, as soon as we arrived, we were greeted by a young man in a Hank “Beast” McCoy costume. It looked like he had killed Cookie Monster and a dentist then combined them into a suit. I applaud his efforts because I was able to recognize him immediately. There’s a somber quality to seeing someone draped in Muppet fur then simultaneously feeling excited and remorseful. It’s sort of a “man that guy is… only 5% geekier than I am…(cry).” You think, “Dear god, it could have so easily been me in his place. A few dateless nights, a few more LAN parties and that could be me with blue clown makeup sweating off my forehead. There but for the grace of frequent sexual intercourse go I.”

It’s humbling.

Also, there were Ghost Busters, which fucking kicked ass. No Winston though. Racists.

Wizard World is VERY small compared to medium to large sized Cons. You can walk the whole thing and see everything you need to see in 45 minutes or so. There were some fantastic artists and some not-so-fantastic-more-so-depressing ones as well. By contrast this one guy had these amazing paintings of The Joker, and another guy had Sexy Naughty Bugs Bunny Characters as X-Men. No joke. That’s a niche fetish if I ever saw one. Its a niche within a niche… a “nested niche” if you will.

I ran into DJ Coffman at the Drunk Duck booth. He was pimping his new book “Hero by Night” about a kid who finds a super power ring and tried to sell it on eBay but gets sucked into super heroism. Check it out. I used to read his webcomic “How To” blog. He stopped a while back to go pro. You can read his old webcomic here.

He gave me some great tips on getting the most from Project Wonderful. Thanks, DJ! You are now my third favorite DJ next to him and her.

Regarding extreme sadness at Cons:

  1. I saw a furry. A real live (if you call that living) fury. That is all.
  2. Dermot Crowley from Star Wars: ROTJ was there. Who the eff is that? He’s General Madine. Who the effing ess is that? Exactly. No One talked to him. He stood near Mark Hamil at one point in time (oh shit, I want his autograph). At one point they came over the PA to remind people that he was there. I got so sad.
  3. Herb “Non-hot-Asian-Boomer” Jefferson was there. Original BSG sucked and the con goers seemed to agree. See #2.
  4. Lou Ferrigno was there. This was only sad because he was awesome and the line was too long and he wanted money for pictures. Fail.
  5. Saddest of all, Noel Neil was there. She played Lois Lane back when TV’s were powered by coal and coal was powered by steam. She is 240 years old and looks every bit of it. I made Josh take a picture over my shoulder with my phone. I think I may have removed a bit of her life force because she seemed to age while the picture was being taken.

2007-11-20-lois-lane
The ghost of Lois Lanes passed

2007-11-20-foam-sword-barbarian
This guy was VERY serious about hitting people with foam swords.

2007-11-20-foam-sword-barbarian-2
Very Serious.