Hey, kids! It’s the world-famous General Lee from TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard! Everyone likes TV cars, right? TV cars are pop culture and therefore totally on-topic at Indy PopCon. Please enjoy this eye-popping, gas-guzzling, moonshine-runnin’, crooked-cop-defyin’, Southern-fried, toy-selling idol of millions and be sure to Like and Share the heck out of it on all the best social media so I can finally take one evening this week to go rest and relax without fear of the oncoming post-convention traffic plateau. Remember, the power of my recuperation is your hands.

At long last, the week-long marathon reaches the end of its journey here on MCC! Presenting one last round of photos from the first annual Indy PopCon at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Yes, we here at Midlife Crisis Crossover realize we’re still reliving this shindig long after the rest of the Midwest has gone back to their daily routine and stopped reminiscing about last weekend. And I can’t deny it’ll be nice to move on to other subjects and writing forms after this. We’re almost there, I promise.

Part Eight, then: the sights we saw (besides costumes) and the personalities we met.

Highlight of the day and so far my year: meeting Joel Hodgson from Mystery Science Theater 3000. He’ll also be appearing at Wizard World Chicago in August, but most likely with a much larger line. In fact, none of Indy PopCon’s actor guests had a long autograph line. At all.

We also saw Joel do a fifteen-minute interview with local Q95 DJ-turned-podcaster Chick McGee. No plugging, nothing serious, just a quarter-hour of goofing around. This episode of “Off the Air with Chick McGee” also included a twenty-minute interview with Drew Curtis, founder of Fark. Our lone photo of him is iffy, and I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly gone to their site. But hey: Joel!

Another pleasure to meet: Ron Glass, a.k.a. the late Shepherd Book from Firefly. Indy PopCon marks the first time in my life I’ve seen a Firefly guest at a convention without at least 200 people in line. I couldn’t help feeling suspicious….

He might not be a celebrity to anyone outside Indianapolis, but he’s big to us. As late-night TV horror hosts go, Chicagoans had Svengoolie, Angelenos had Elvira, and we Hoosier kids had Sammy Terry. Alas, the original passed away in 2013, but his son assumed both the mantle and control of his dreadful puns.

Lines were thin enough that my wife’s attempt to snap a pic of Kristian Nairn, a.k.a. HODOR! (the guy at left with the biggest beard), went unchallenged. This was much more relaxed than the one time a Wizard World Chicago staffer leaped like a Secret Service agent between my lens and Jon Bernthal. This seemed pretty cool for a while…

…but when even a Buffy guest like the Nicholas Brendon has a clear line of sight from his booth instead of drowning in fans, there’s only one conclusion I could draw: the con didn’t sell nearly as many thousands of tickets as they’d hoped. That meant folks like myself, my wife, and Silk Spectre up there received top-notch customer service everywhere we went, but it was entirely due to lack of competing consumers.

Fun trivia: my longest line of the day was the wait for Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There were ten (10) whole people ahead of us. Even when we arrived at 8:30 a.m. for our traditional long wait in line before the exhibit hall opens, there were maybe only six people ahead of us, not counting VIPs. So yeah, meeting Eastman was cool and definitely not hurried.

Among the other artists we met: animator Tom Bancroft, selling copies of the Kickstarter’d trade collection of his series Opposing Forces.

Cartoonist Guy Gilchrist is the current caretaker of the Nancy and Sluggo comic strip. Our local paper The Indianapolis Star dropped it years ago, but thanks to digital distribution via gocomics.com, its worldwide readership is still in the eight-digit range. In the past he’s also been part of studios who did merchandise work (e.g., coloring books) for properties such as Biker Mice from Mars, the Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa, and his studio’s longest lasting license, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Small world!

Among those making a go at Artists Alley were Geoffrey Wessel, writer/creator of the soccer/serial-killer series Keeper. I remembered seeing his name around Bleeding Cool on occasion, but I don’t like to lead off conversations with weird things like that. Trust me, you get the oddest looks. And I do so hate the oddest looks.

G. Pike was selling printed collections of her 2½-year-old webcomic series Title Unrelated. It’s in my immediate post-convention reading stack that I would’ve gotten to by now if it weren’t for this daily internet writing thing.

It’s my understanding that many retailers and sellers did not have the time of their lives. We saw some interesting displays here and there (behold the power of Castle Grayskull!). We can’t speak for today’s youth, but as for me and my house, we’re exceedingly choosy nowadays about what relics and antiques we’re interested in acquiring (e.g., my comics want-list). We’re not as bowled over by the novelty of forty-year-old toys as we used to be.

Some sellers tried anything to move units. Y’know that Guardians of the Galaxy movie Marvel’s got coming in August? Buy this book first and become one of us superfans who can brag that we knew Rocket Raccoon before the movie made him cool to commoners. Wouldn’t you like to be cool first? BUY THIS BOOK OR FAIL AT COOL.

Indy PopCon didn’t have regulated GenCon-style gaming , only a designated section of tables for gamers to game at their discretion. For aging holdouts who’re still waiting for anyone to teach us how Settlers of Catan works, there was another corral for ye olde video arcade games, all free-play. It’s a good thing someone got to Galaga before I could, or else I’d probably still be there right now.

You want more pop culture? Fine. I give you Lego Hoth from Lego Star Wars.

If Lego Star Wars was too passé for you, how about Lego Walking Dead? If you’re caught up on the show, you’ll recognize this scene from Season 4. If you were waiting for DVD or Netflix, forget you were ever here and go back to staring at Lego Hoth some more.

A small portion of Indianapolis’ food truck armada lined Georgia Street east of the Convention Center for lunch. My wife and I each picked up a sandwich from Johnson’s BBQ Shack. I approve of their sauces, but the sandwich wasn’t a meal in in itself. In the photo is Der Pretzel Wagen, where I went for seconds. Their “Big Helga” — pastrami, Sierra Nevada Spicy Brown Porter Mustard, Swiss cheese, and cole slaw on a pretzel bun — was one of the tastiest sandwiches I’ve had anywhere all year.

Apropos of something, the final image of our eight-part Indy PopCon 2014 writeup is a photo of the first thing that greeted us inside the registration hall: a Pokemon-themed VW Beetle! The “Pika3″ was loaded with too many stuffed Pikachu dolls and just looks keen. This is symbolic of pop culture itself on levels that I’m too tired to contemplate all the way through.

…and that’s a wrap. Beyond my Artists Alley purchases, I also picked up four hardcovers for a combined total of $22, including the quite recent Avengers: Endless Wartime and Marvel’s Once Upon a Time: the Shadow of the Queen. I filled a few more gaps in my ever-extending Incredible Hulk collection. I bought a prose anthology with a contribution by a fellow WordPress blogger. We picked up a few freebies. I found myself a nagging unsolved mystery about why IDW Publishing appeared on the website at one point but nowhere at the con itself. We have new sets of photos and memories. We have our fervent hopes that Indy PopCon 2015 will happen and will reach a wider audience. And I’m stuck with this sudden insatiable craving for another Big Helga right now.

The End. Lord willing, see you next year!

* * * * *

Links to the other installments in this very special Midlife Crisis Crossover event are enclosed below. Thanks for visiting!

* Part One: The Costume Contest Winners
* Part Two: the Big-Budget Blockbuster Costumes
* Part Three: Costumes from Comics
* Part Four: the Costumes of the Doctor
* Part Five: Gaming and Anime Costumes!
* Part Six: Last Call for Costumes
* Part Seven: the Sylvester McCoy Hour

Behold two panels from the cool thing that landed in my mailbox last week: Jamal Igle’s graphic novel Molly Danger. This forty-eight page tale about the responsibilities and hardships of a government-allied teen super-hero is spunky, dynamic, written from the heart, suitable for all ages, and highly recommended for anyone who could use a break from comics about white guys by white guys.

This first volume was made possible through a Kickstarter project that was launched in August 2012. My local comic shop had a copy on the shelf in November 2013. As one of the 1,240 backers whose pledges helped make the project possible, my copy just now arrived, seven months after retailers could sell it and nine months after the original, estimated delivery date of September 2013. Unfortunately for everyone, U.S. Postal Service rates skyrocketed sometime between project launch and project completion, which means shipping/handling costs exceeded what he’d expected. Once the books were printed, Igle mailed out backers’ copies a few at a time whenever he could afford to do so.

It’s a great book and I look forward to seeing future Molly Danger projects, but this aspect of the experience didn’t turn out quite like anyone had hoped.

Igle’s story is ultimately understandable and pretty benign compared to others I’ve faced. Am still facing, in fact.

Hang out at any geek-news site, wait a week or two, and you’re likely to see the latest headline about a Kickstarter fiasco whose broken commitments ended in teeth-gnashing and garment-rending. Here’s a link to a recent one in which things have turned so grim and sour that the Washington State Attorney General’s Office is involved. Since Kickstarter assumes no accountability or liability for its users’ inaction or delinquency, it was only a matter of time before someone began channeling consumer rage into legal threats.

…

Hi. My name is Randy. It’s been eighteen months since I last gave a single dime to a Kickstarter project.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

I loved the idea of artists, writer, musicians, inventors, designers, and other makers of stuff bypassing the corporate processes that normally rule their respective fields and obtaining the necessary funding to self-publish, self-release, or otherwise bring their works to life through the magic of crowdfunding, which in most cases works a lot like pre-ordering an item except you’re also adding a generous tip.

…But other priorities have come a-callin’. My last pledge was in December 2012 (a Bob Mould tribute concert film); I can’t swear it’ll be my final use of the site, but any future contributions will have to be severely limited, judiciously selected, frugally committed, and wildly recompensed with endless freebies.

Six months later came my most recent update:

I’m not backing anything else on their website until and unless I receive the rewards I’m owed from all other projects I’ve previously backed first. And I mean all of them.

That was October 2013, eight months ago. Of the six overdue projects I listed in “Former Kickstarter Junkie II”, I’ve since received backer rewards for two.

Besides Molly Danger, in November 2013 I received my copy of Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore’s Leaving Megalopolis, Vol. 1. Thanks to generous contributions the winning team behind DC’s Secret Six were able to add additional story pages and upgrade to hardcover format, all without passing new costs on to us backers. They kept up a steady communication stream through dozens of updates during the production process — concept art, preview pages, you-are-there status reports, and other behind-the-scenes tidbits. Even after deadline they maintained a professional, generous transparency and made sure we never once thought that they were hiding out from us or wasting our money on designer drugs. I was elated to meet Simone at this year’s C2E2 and ask her to autograph my copy.

As for those other four perpetually pending projects…

Well. Hm.

Kickstarter projects that have yet to deliver:

Project: the spaceflight documentary Fight for Space
Launch date: July 2012
Estimated delivery date: December 2013
Last update to backers: April 20, 2014
Status as far as we’ve been told: We’ve received four updates in eight months from director Paul Hildebrandt, each one revealing a broader, more ambitious scope than the last. The production ended up recording triple the number of planned interviews, attending more relevant conferences than expected, and encountered numerous barriers along the way, from scheduling issues to unreachable key sources to flat-out quasi-conspiratorial stonewalling on several upper-level fronts. In other news (as of April 9, 2014), if anyone out there in all Internetland has the preexisting high-end connections to arrange an on-the-record interview with any single living human of interest at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Hildebrandt would dearly love to hear from you and possibly offer you his firstborn in exchange for a good word in edgewise. For all their highly publicized importance in the current commercial-spaceflight scene, SpaceX had thus far given Hildebrandt’s team the full J.D. Salinger treatment.

If you’d like to know more about this documentary, Fight for Space has an official site where you can view a trailer, a few extras, and, curiously, a PayPal button accepting additional donations. Apparently our Kickstarter funding wasn’t enough.

Project: Dan Harmon and Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion short film Anomalisa
Launch date: July 2012
Estimated delivery date: May 2013
Last update to backers: June 2, 2014
Status as far as we’ve been told: Through five updates in eight months from Community creator Harmon and his trusty sidekick Dino “Starburns” Stamatopoulos, we’ve seen limited glimpses into the production (they’re scrupulously avoiding spoiler images) and been informed that the planned forty-minute project has been officially expanded into an eighty-minute feature, thanks to additional funding they obtained from sources other than the Kickstarter campaign because apparently our funding wasn’t enough. Understandably, this expansion means twice the stop-motion animation and therefore zillions of unplanned extra man-hours and jillions of extra months until our original deal is fulfilled.

Well, I guess that’s Hollywood for you! Hyuk! *slide-whistle* *canned laughter*

Project: The animated short Atomic Robo: Last Stop, based on the excellent all-ages comic series
Launch date: February 2012
Estimated delivery date: January 2013
Last update to backers: May 14, 2014
Status as far as we’ve been told: In September 2013 we were told some items would begin shipping shortly. On May 4, 2014, the animation studio uploaded the complete short was uploaded to YouTube so we backers could look for our names in the end credits. I eventually located mine toward the end after several erroneously duplicated rows. We were also told discs were being pressed “next week”. As of today, six weeks later, none of us has received a single tangible item. The May 14th update was simply a link to corrected credits, no product news.

Other than those end credits, I refuse to watch the short itself until and unless I receive the physical copy we were promised. And to be honest, my irritation with the short is killing my enthusiasm for the comics themselves.

Project: folk-rocker Mary Lou Lord’s next album
Launch date: September 2011
Estimated delivery date: December 2011
Last update to backers: June 14, 2014
Status as far as we’ve been told: Follow the complete comedy of errors, now updated:

* February 2012: we received a digital download of one (1) song.
* June 2012: it was “coming along nicely”.
* September 2012: it was “almost done”.
* February 2013: it was “pretty much finished”, but was being held back to coincide with an album release by some other solo musician, so that they can go on a shared tour and sell records together and it’ll be just like any other new-album release except for the part where promises were kind of made.
* May 7, 2013: The other guy’s album is released.
* June 4, 2013: Album release postponed to coincide with a planned Fall 2013 tour. If this tour ever happened, I never caught wind of it.
* November 25, 2013: Recording delayed due to hospitalization after a nasty ladder accident. Some mastering had been done, leaving “three songs yet to be done.”
* June 14, 2014: We’re told the album will be sixteen tracks in all, and those last three songs will feature guest contributions from some other singer, a new 20-year-old named Matt whom she just met this past year and she’s really excited about working with him and he’s totally gonna be huge someday and the album is gonna be worth it now even though it was “pretty much finished” back in February 2013. Also, did she mention her brother died at some point? Plus she moved? Uh, yeah, so those happened, too. And retroactively undid everything that was “pretty much finished” back in February 2013, I guess?

Now we’re told the album will be “done this week (Godwilling)”. I’m afraid to make any idealistic assumptions about what “done” is supposed to mean anymore. Direct quote as of June 14th, regarding her scant, infrequent updates:

“I also want to you know that I have not been avoiding you guys. I’ve just been totally freaked out thinking you want to throw me in jail or something as a kickstarter avoider b.s artist….Thank you for all you’ve done again, your patience, and for believing in me….”

Patience and belief rode a stagecoach out of town months ago. After the first year had passed, I felt as if my money had been kidnapped. It’s now been TWO-AND-A-HALF YEARS since estimated delivery date, and the project itself will celebrate its third birthday in September. The hostages are now effectively dead, there’s no SWAT team going in to round up the shooter, there’s no media surrounding the house and providing fruitless live updates, and there’s no Nancy Grace to shriek at everyone about grave injustice or to make up inappropriate hashtags like #Lordscam or #LordHathForsakenUs or #MaryLouEvilOverLord.

If and when the CD is willed into existence, the quality of its music will be irrelevant. The CD will be, at best, a souvenir coaster to remind me to think twice before I indulge any more creators on Kickstarter ever again.

To be continued. Hopefully someday with endings.

…

Anyone interested in a bonus appendix? Here’s a list I’ve kept of Kickstarter campaigns I’ve viewed and considered over the past eighteen months but declined specifically and solely because of my moratorium:

* Brian Augustyn’s graphic novel Dead Ringer
* Five Year Mission’s latest album, Year Three (I bought a copy at Indy PopCon. It truly rocks.)
* The Veronica Mars movie (which I rented via Google Play last March)
* The first solo kid’s album from Danny Weinkauf, bassist for the great They Might Be Giants
* Save Fantagraphics Books after the passing of co-founder Kim Thompson
* Fantasy anthology graphic novel Cartozia Tales
* New album Dimetrodon from the Doubleclicks, whose geek-girl anthem “Nothing to Prove” remains one of the best songs of 2013
* Jackie Estrada’s coffee-table book Comic Book People: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s
* Varney the Vampire digital/print comic by Scott Massimo and DC Comics artist Scott Kolins
* Nexus co-creator Steve Rude’s 2014 Sketchbook
* Seqaurt Research’s documentary She Makes Comics
* The indie film Enemy of Man starring Sean Bean, Rupert Grint, Charles Dance, Jason Flemyng, et al. (successfully funded by a narrow margin)
* The sci-fi short film “The Sandstorm“, co-starring incendiary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei
* The Rifftrax guys doing a one-night Fathom Events double-feature mocking both Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla and the Ice Cube/Jennifer Lopez vehicle Anaconda
* Van Jensen and Jose Pimienta’s bizarre graphic novel The Leg
* Levar Burton reboots Reading Rainbow!

…and those are just campaigns I ran across through social media by chance. I haven’t used the Kickstarter “Discover” function to seek out viable donation opportunities for myself in a very, very long while. Sure, nearly all these campaigns did fine without my participation. The mightiest of them all, Reading Rainbow, has nine days to go and nearly four million in pledges, so they’re probably gonna be okay. I wish I could’ve helped.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a brand new comic book shop.

The Android’s Dungeon has operated as an online store since 2009, but this year its owners saw their long-standing dream of a brick-and-mortar storefront come true. After months of searching and hoping for the right combination of location and timing, they planted stakes, opened their doors to the public in March, and made history as the first official comic shop in the ever-expanding town of Avon, Indiana.

Such a move would seem to defy current quote-unquote “wisdom”. Just as hard-copy books, newspapers, and magazines fight for relevance and survival in our increasingly paperless society, all the internet hubbub nowadays among comics fans is about digital comics as the wave of the future. All the major publishers have made long-term investments in a number of enticing digital initiatives, from online exclusives to discounted back issues. The premier independent digital comics distributor, comiXology, was acquired earlier this year by Amazon, so someone in Jeff Bezos’ chain of command apparently thinks there’s potential in the field.

Meanwhile in the physical shopping world, America’s comic-shop count is a fraction of what we had twenty years ago. Most small towns and a few major cities have nowhere within fifty miles where they can walk inside, browse new titles at random, and spend a few bucks on an impulse purchase for themselves and/or their kids. I’ve been frequenting Indianapolis shops since I was thirteen and have fond memories of many of those locations that would become casualties in our somewhat temperamental hobby. The list of the dead includes but isn’t limited to:

* John’s Comic Closet, the very first shop I ever entered, which was on the other end of town.
* Comics Unlimited, near the low-income neighborhood of Haughville.
* Blue Moon Comics, also owned by John of the Comic Closet, but on our side of town.
* Comic Carnival West, Comic Carnival East, Comic Carnival South, and the original Comic Carnival in Broad Ripple. (A single north-side location remains their last stronghold.)
* Range Line Comics, which began in Carmel but had at least one other location I visited before they vanished.
* A comics/skater shop down the street that had the misfortune of opening a few months before the infamous Heroes World debacle.
* When Indy’s downtown Union Station was rebooted as a shopping mall for a while in the late 1980s, one of its first stores was a short-lived comic shop.
* A couple of tiny, nearby used bookshops that ordered new comics on the side.
* All our long-gone Waldenbooks, B. Dalton Booksellers, Media Play, and Borders Bookstores.

It’s into this historical minefield that the Android’s Dungeon now marches forth, waving their banner high, spreading word of all that’s great about our beloved medium, and determined to avoid the fates of their predecessors. They’re located in a heavily trafficked commercial area with no shortage of consumers, but tucked away in an older strip mall so modest that their section doesn’t have rooftop signage. The strip mall’s collection of aggregated roadside signs out front only has enough room to list their name as “COMIC BOOKS”. Fortunately when my wife and I dropped in to check them out, none of the neighboring businesses had enough customers to create any parking issues.

Inside the store was, in my amateur opinion, a healthy crowd for a Saturday. The owners were friendly, the customers were happy, there were kids enjoying themselves, and even I was pleasantly surprised in the diversity of new-comics offerings. It’s been my experience that smaller stores tend to function basically as narrow-minded Marvel/DC outlets, but the Android’s Dungeon proudly carried series from all the major companies and even some of the indies, even titles such as Lumberjanes or Bee and PuppyCat that aren’t aimed at super-hero-lovin’ macho dudes. They have a discount program in place, they cheerfully add freebies to your bag, they have monthly giveaways, and they’ve even launched a reading club. This is a comics store that’s primed to explode from trying to contain so much love for the medium.

Lord willing, maybe they’ll see more readers lining up at their doors over the days and months ahead. It’s worth noting that, setting aside big-box joints like Target or Walmart, the only other bookstore in Avon is a Half Price Books. The Barnes & Noble closed a few years ago over a lease dispute with their allegedly miserly landlords. Even the lone Christian bookstore in town ended its run last month. Avon fans of the printed page don’t have many places to turn unless they’re up for a drive out to the Barnes & Noble in Plainfield, unless they’re willing to settle for corporate-approved big-box options, or unless they keep ordering online and killing local retail jobs dead. To assist us all with our reading plans, the Indianapolis Star just posted an article about the Android’s Dungeon that will be featured in their June 29th edition, which is probably rolling off the presses as I’m typing this.

Curiously, the Android’s Dungeon isn’t the only new shop to open in central Indiana this year. I’m aware of two other newcomers some forty-odd minutes away from us. At a recent event I heard a sales pitch from one store owner who made sure I knew up front that he doesn’t order shelf copies of smaller titles. I didn’t have the heart to tell them those are about 85% of my monthly reading list. I know little else about the other new shop except that their name bugs me.

I’ll be curious to see if the Android’s Dungeon can compete in this tough climate and carve out a niche for itself in the Avon community. My initial experience was positive across the board, especially the part where I found an issue of The Royals: Masters of War I’d been missing for months that I couldn’t find at four other shops. For that I owe them my gratitude, and they have my fond wishes for their success.

Also, I love that their store’s symbol (at right in the photo) is an homage to a classic Steranko Incredible Hulk cover, a simple image of Our Hero straining against a massive weight that’s threatening to crush him, but obviously won’t because he’s the strongest one there is. Nice touch.

Tom Mison! Nicole Beharie! America’s new favorite buddy cops!

Less than three months until the season premiere of Sleepy Hollow! It’s been six months since the season 1 finale, but news and notices are popping up more and more as our heroes Lieutenant Abbie Mills and Professor Ichabod Crane prepare to return to active duty against the forces of the Headless Horseman, the demon called Moloch, the undead John Cho, and the mastermind behind them all, whose identity I should maybe not spoil for the sake of anyone planning to catch up on the series over the summer.

Today’s major news: Sleepy Hollow is coming to comics in October! Major indie company BOOM! Studios — whose current publishing lineup includes Adventure Time, Regular Show, Bravest Warriors, Robocop, Big Trouble in Little China, and the quirky creator-owned hit Lumberjanes — has secured the license to bring Crane, the Mills sisters, the Irving family, limbo-bound Katrina Crane, and the late Sheriff Corbin’s fatherly flashbacks to my favorite medium. (Sorry, movies. Missed it by that much.) The creative team of Marguerite Bennett and Jorge Coelho will have four issues to tell new stories that take place between various season-1 episodes, maybe filling in some gaps and finding ways to go all-out gonzo in print without having to worry about a strict TV budget.

Sample cover from the upcoming comics. Art by Jorge Coelho.

* Casting news #1: Victor Garber (Alias, Titanic) will appear in at least four episodes as Ichabod’s father. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be the supportive kind of 17th-century dad or the disapproving taskmaster that many special-guest-star TV fathers tend to be.

* Casting news #2: Heather Lind (Turn, Boardwalk Empire) will show up as one of Ichabod’s old ex-girlfriends from way back when. No idea yet if she’ll be a mere mortal, another time traveler, another limbo dweller, another member of the Sisterhood of the Radiant Heart, or The Real Mastermind Behind It All.

* Nicole Beharie is hitting the convention scene! Last October she was at the New York Comic Con, and this August she’ll be at Wizard World Chicago, which was already on our itinerary before her name was added to the guest list. My wife and I may have to stop by her booth that weekend, as long as her line isn’t longer than Norman Reedus’. If you’re nearer to the UK, she’ll also be appearing at MCM Birmingham Comic Con on November 22-23. If you’re outside England or the American Midwest, here’s hoping more con announcements are forthcoming.

* The official Sleepy Hollow Facebook page has been providing behind-the-camera photos from the spooky sets of season 2, which so far appear to be made entirely of forests. Set pics are always nice for tiding fans over while their favorite shows are on vacation.

* Sometime this past spring (I forgot to note the date), the word “acephalous” was the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. Not that they were overtly celebrating the show, but I thought it delightfully apropos for future MCC recap use. If you know what it means, it’s not hard to imagine where it’ll fit into Sleepy Hollow discussions.

* Sleepy Hollow merchandise is now a thing! At the end of May, my wife and I spotted an Ichabod Crane T-shirt in the ladies’ section at a local Hot Topic. Yes, we may be old, but we sometimes stop in and envy their T-shirt selection.

Now available in sizes Small, Medium, Suave, and Extra-Suave.

Mark your calendar if you haven’t already: season 2 of Sleepy Hollow premieres September 22, 2014, on Fox in its same old time slot at 9 p.m. Eastern. At some point it’ll be joined in the 8:00 slot by its new roommate, Gotham. So there’s one long TV night full of wild, action-filled darkness.

Until that evening arrives, you still have time to splurge on the DVDs, watch it streaming through Google Play or Hulu, and/or skim our previous MCC Sleepy Hollow recaps, listed below for handy reference. Enjoy!

9/16/2013: “Pilot“
9/23/2013: “Blood Moon“
9/30/2013: “For the Triumph of Evil“
10/7/2013: “The Lesser Key of Solomon“
10/14/2013: “John Doe“
11/4/2013: “The Sin-Eater“
11/11/2013: “The Midnight Ride“
11/18/2013: “Necromancer“
11/25/2013: “Sanctuary“
12/9/2013: “The Golem“
1/13/2014: “Vessel“
1/20/2014: “The Indispensable Man / Bad Blood“

Art by Joe Giella.

You don’t? Cool. Neither do I. But when America’s Independence Day rolls around, any number of internet hangouts feel much like that every year. I’m not really in the mood for it just now.

I was trying to come up with some balance of “America” and “sincerity” to mark the occasion here on MCC, and the first icon to leap to mind was Captain America, because that’s how my mind rolls. I could’ve spent hours digging through my collection and scanning pages from the greatest Cap stories I’ve ever read. Instead I’ve consciously opted for a mix of quaint simplicity, practical wisdom, and childhood nostalgia that brought a smile to my face when I revisited it for the first time in years.

The clickable image shown above is page 122 from the 1976 self-help classic The Mighty Marvel Comics Strength and Fitness Book, in which some of Marvel’s greatest heroes teach readers a series of exercises to improve their health, tone their physique, get their blood pumping, dispel their couch-potato image, and give them an edge in crime-fighting. The book isn’t exactly one of the classics from the Marvel library, but its advice and demonstrations are useful and encouraging to anyone seeking that sort of thing.

Among the participating big names are Captain America and the Falcon, along with the Falcon’s li’l sidekick Redwing. Modern readers may find this all dated and a wee silly, but consider what’s demonstrated in the space of that single page besides the exercise itself: teamwork; perseverance; trust; inter-demographic cooperation; focused dedication toward a shared goal; and complete disregard for whether or not anyone else thinks they look foolish. So many great features from the factory showroom model of Classic America.

The short version: they’ve got each other’s backs no matter what. It’s wildly off-topic, sure. It’s no one’s idea of an overt “Happy Fourth of July!” greeting card, but it exemplifies much of what I’d love to see in one. Your move, Hallmark.

Happy 4th. Stay safe. Go find something in your country to enjoy. Maybe stow the partisan rhetoric and played-out “‘Murica!” jokes till at least the 5th, what say?

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

Day 1: Saturday, July 22nd (continued)

Fairly rejuvenated, we headed north from Pleasant Prairie along Lake Michigan to our next stop, the Milwaukee Art Museum. This stop was literally a last-minute addition to the itinerary. We’d decided months prior which nights would be spent in which cities. Night one would be in Milwaukee, only four hours away. Since we knew the Jelly Belly tour wouldn’t last all day, and since Milwaukee is less than five hours from Indianapolis in good traffic, we knew we had time to kill. Only problem was, we couldn’t find anything up our alley in Milwaukee for the longest time. Other than the same combination found in every major city of zoo, museum, kids’ museum, art museum, and historic sites involving personalities barely known to outsiders, the only tourist attractions of note seemed to be alcohol-based. None of us are drinkers, socially or otherwise, so their appeal to us was minimal.

On that Thursday, a mere thirty hours before we left Indianapolis, I Googled the name of a local advertising museum to clarify something before I added it to the reject pile. Google led me to the Milwaukee Art Museum’s home page, where I stopped short.

Hey, movie fans! Recognize this?

Their feature presentation was a traveling exhibit called “Masters of American Comics”. If you know my interests, you’ll be unsurprised to know that the Art Museum was added to the itinerary the very next morning. The process would’ve been a tad more instantaneous, but I thought it’d be polite to let my wife wake up and be informed before I imposed my will on her.

The museum was easy enough to locate, separated from Lake Michigan only by a cozy stretch of grass, a foreboding metal wall, and standard admission fees. A note to you non-U.S. citizens who might contemplate dragging your kids here with you for a visit: here in the States, any attraction in which a child could possibly have fun (theme parks, zoos, family museums, etc.) will invariably decide that an “adult” is anyone over the age of eight, and will overcharge you accordingly. Conversely, anything you’ll enjoy watching but will bore or annoy your children will admit said children for free: e.g., poetry readings, the Alamo, heavy machinery demonstrations, Scared Straight boot camps, and — thankfully for our budget — art museums.

If you fear open spaces or can’t live without box-shaped rooms, you’ve come to the wrong museum.

Sure, it’s not the kind of ceiling that lends itself to a mural, but it was nonetheless fine for standing and staring in awe.

Once you got past the crazy modern exterior and the intimidating antiseptic interior, the exhibit itself was a blast. The exhibit was comprised entirely of original comics artwork from nearly every decade in the last century.

OPTIONAL BONUS SECTION FOR COMICS GEEKS: (skip down at your leisure)

The creators and works included:

* Over a dozen original strips each from Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, E. C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre, Schulz’ Peanuts, Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy.
* Assorted Milton Caniff strips, including Steve Canyon as well as Terry and the Pirates.
* Some strips by an ooold artist named Lionel Feininger. His was the only name I didn’t recognize.
* A veritable Will Eisner extravaganza — dozens of Spirit pages among his other works. The highlight of the entire exhibit for me was the presentation of every single page of original art from my all-time favorite Spirit story, “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble” (which I originally read as part of The Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics).
* A random sampling of Jack Kirby pages — some FF, some New Gods, a little Captain America, one or two pre-Marvel pieces, several others. The most awe-inspiring would be the cover and the double-splash page from Kamandi #1. I never read that series, but these pages made me want to. Writ large, they’re just that cool.
* Lots of R. Crumb pages that my son thankfully overlooked.
* Harvey Kurtzman, the only creator honored more for his writing than for his artwork, is honored via several pages from Mad (including pages drawn by other EC artists) as well as some of his “Little Annie Fanny” strips.
* Art Spiegelman donated a huge chunk of his own artwork, including impressive examples from Maus and his most recent project, In the Shadow of No Towers.
* Mostly overlooked underground artist Gary Panter is given an inexplicable berth to showcase several pages from some old graphic novel. If anyone close to me knows Panter for anything beyond his contributions to the set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, I’d be greatly surprised.
* Chris Ware showed off his intricate design work from several issues of his rightly acclaimed Acme Novelty Library.

Even the names of the art donors were a Who’s Who unto themselves. In addition to Spiegelman’s and Ware’s respective personal donations, owners of the above-named original artwork included the likes of Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell, Doonesbury‘s own Garry Trudeau, former publisher Denis Kitchen, comics historian Craig Yoe, and onetime Simpsons writer Wally Wolodarsky.

The exhibit concluded with a modest gift shop that combined comics-related merchandise, graphic novels and TPBs of most of the artists in the exhibit, and a rack of random recent comics that must’ve been gathering dust at local shops in Milwaukee. I can’t think of any other way that an issue of New Excalibur would be permitted to approach within a hundred yards of any museum. Anne and my son didn’t want any souvenirs here, but I picked myself up a thick paperback copy of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the World’s Smartest Kid.

According to an ad I saw months later in several DC/Vertigo titles, the exhibit subsequently moved on and was split between two different places on the east coast: one part at the Newark Museum, the other at the Jewish Museum in NYC. They were scheduled to stay put through January 28, 2007. Either half is more than deserving of a visit.

END BONUS SECTION

Oh, hey. Other art besides comics. That’s…that’s nice.

To finish getting our money’s worth, we checked out some suits of armor, one or two sarcophagi, an enormous 500-year-old tapestry, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Crying Girl”, some adventures in German expressionism, lots more abstract art that nobody but me even tried to appreciate, and one or two nudes before we decided we were done.

Some of you may recall seeing this in a movie where Patrick Dempsey owned the place and chewed a lot of scenery…

After relaxing by the lakeside and gawking at numerous nearby upper-class wedding parties (seriously, it was like a matrimonial convention — don’t ask me why the mass appeal among the newlyweds-to-be), we drove back down near the airport to our first day’s hotel, where we had to stand in line at check-in behind several pilots all apparently arriving simultaneously. (I’d’ve loved to see them maneuvering their planes around each other on the field if their arrivals were all that coincidental. I imagine something in the way of an unarmed dogfight, with plenty of plane-fu or copter chop-socky.)

Rather than spend more time cooped up in the car, for dinner we walked to the other end of the block to a teen-run mom-‘n’-pop joint called the Hangar. Combine the decor of Dairy Queen with the menus of five concession stands, add some bizarre posters and one chicken statue on the roof. The food was competent for what it was, but it’s hard to respect a restaurant whose receipts misspell its own name.

Right next to the airport, surely luring in pilots and first-class passengers alike.

[Historical notes:

1. During our 2011 road trip to Manhattan, I had the privilege of a reunion with those same original pages from Eisner's "The Story of Gerhard Shnobble", which at that time were on display at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Funny coincidence, that. Less funny: the MoCCA closed the following year.

2. The Hangar closed at some point. Its former address now belongs to a barbecue restaurant called Puddle Jumpers.

3. In 2011's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the Milwaukee Art Museum played the role of Patrick Dempsey's corporate HQ. It had a much more imposing screen presence than most of the actors.]

To be continued!

Not nearly enough pundits are complaining about Marvel’s all-new White Power Iron Man.

For those just joining the fray: pictured above are the new incarnations of Thor and Captain America that Marvel Comics will be introducing later this year. A recently depowered Steve Rogers will be passing on the Captain America mantle to a black man, most likely his old partner the Falcon. Meanwhile, the Norse god Thor will be transferred into a female identity under as-yet-unrevealed but probably magical circumstances.

The media thought these developments were so vital to our nation’s integrity that I first heard the news from morning-radio DJs while we were on vacation last week in Minneapolis. If commercial radio thinks it’s big news, then clearly it’s Big News whether I agree or not.

In what may or may not be a similarly themed development, the media was alerted today that Hollywood A-lister Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has reached a deal to star in a film based on a DC Comics character to be named later this week. All hints seem to point toward DC’s Captain Marvel, a.k.a. SHAZAM!, whose skin tone doesn’t match his. Preparing their rebuttal days in advance of the official announcement, comics fans nationwide have rushed to brainstorm their list of nonwhite DC characters that the Rock should be allowed to play. How nice of them to be so vigilant in helping the major publishers keep their cross-media adaptations demographically unmodified. And all without being asked first or getting paid for the job.

It’s my understanding that certain loud, obnoxious parties are up in arms on message boards and social media and such, because How Dare They or whatever. Fortunately these overhauls bounced harmlessly off me and my not-so-fragile peace of mind. Five reasons why:

1. This is nothing new.

Over the past four decades, Marvel and DC have introduced us to countless alternate versions of their headliners in hopes of doing something different, reaching a new audience, and/or simply shocking the easily bewildered news media. An off-the-cuff, incomplete list includes among others:

female Captain Marvel
black female Captain Marvel
southern Captain America
black Bucky
half-black/half-Latino Spider-Man
black Iron Man
black Nick Fury
black Green Lantern
redheaded Green Lantern
Muslim Green Lantern
gay Green Lantern
Asian Atom
Hispanic Blue Beetle
black Firestorm
black Mr. Terrific
black female Dr. Mid-Nite
Hispanic female Wildcat
blond Wonder Woman
’70s Women’s Lib Wonder Woman
lesbian Batwoman
Asian Batgirl
future female Robin
present-day female Robin
bratty assassin Robin
quarter-black/quarter-Korean Green Arrow
alien horse-faced Thor
female Loki
Kid Loki
gray Hulk
teen clone Superman
armored black Superman
evil cyborg Superman
evil alien artifact Superman
electric Superman
long-haired Superman

Every time one of these new characters was introduced, the industry died and comics went away forever. The End.

Oh, wait, no, it’s still here. World governments didn’t dissolve into war-torn anarchy, either. Cool.

2. Radical changes are temporary.

Many of these alt-versions are no longer with us because the Powers That Be decreed a reversion to the status quo, either due to low sales or merchandising requirements. Trying to guess whether any radical change in an existing, corporate-owned intellectual property will be temporary or permanent is a silly game. 99 times out of 100 the correct answer is “temporary”. If you guess “permanent” every time you see a comics-related headline in the mainstream press, perhaps you should ask a friend to introduce you to comic books.

3. Someone else needs the role models more than I do.

In those rare cases where alt-versions stuck around long-term, it’s because other readers find them worthy, presumably many other readers. Several from that list are still around and have their hardcore fans. I’m cool with that. Not every comic needs to be about me. Not every hero needs to be for me. Super-heroes were fantastic role models in my childhood, but super-heroes are not my primary source of wisdom or guidance in adulthood.

Maybe I’m weird this way, but I stopped attaching myself to specific characters years ago. Nowadays my collecting tendencies lean toward specific writers, unusual premises, and/or impressive creative displays. I like the occasional Captain America story, but I don’t understand the compulsion to purchase every single Captain America story that will ever be published, whether or not it’s written or drawn well, whether it’s affordable or overpriced, whether its politics are agreeable or offensive. That kind of zealous, undiscerning idolatry is beyond my comprehension.

For a prime example of a target audience that may better appreciate these new versions, here’s a link to a tweeted photo of some potential new readers. I’m pretty sure those kids were blown away by the idea of a relatable hero with a major public profile. I’m 100% cool with that and don’t see a reason to frown upon them and insist they go read tattered old back issues of Black Goliath instead.

Granted, alt-versions of classic heroes rarely have a long shelf life, but the repeated attempts aren’t offending my aesthetic sensibilities. The solution isn’t to surrender and declare comics a whites-only medium; it’s to try, try again.

Sure, sometimes there can be an underlying opportunistic element to such revamps. Frequently there isn’t. And they may not win points for originality, but that’s not really the goal, is it?

4. The white-dude hero market is far from depleted.

There’s no reason for all super-heroes to be lookalike, sound-alike, act-alike young white males. We have plenty of those. We’re in no danger of running low on those. If your kid suffers from Aryan male inadequacy, your local comic shop should have dozens of other titles waiting to cheer him up and teach him that we white boys can grow up to become productive members of society just like anyone else.

5. I’m not reading Cap’s or Thor’s books right now anyway.

Cap’s ongoing series hasn’t caught my eye, so its current events have nothing to do with me. To be honest, this reduces my chances of hopping aboard even when Sam Wilson accepts the shield and cowl. As for Thor, I’ve never been much of a fan and I’ve no interest in paying four bucks an issue. I’m not saying I will never buy their series again, but my disinclination to follow along has zero to do with their new identities. If something happens between now and then to change my mind, cool.

With or without my participation, I’d love to see either hero’s new version find and sustain an audience once the publicity circus folds its tent and leaves town. In the meantime, I’m glad to see publishers of all sizes already giving me fine reasons to diversify my reading stack. As of this writing I’m buying and enjoying the likes of Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Buffy Season 10, The Wicked and the Divine, Lazarus, Lumberjanes, and Shutter, none of which star white guys. There’re plenty more where those came from, if you look closely at the comic shop racks.

My one lingering fear in all of this: so far nearly every version of SHAZAM! since the original Otto Binder/C.C. Beck tales has ranged from mediocre to godforsaken to disdainful self-parody. If the Rock sees his way to embodying a not-awful version of SHAZAM!, it’ll be a miracle, but I’d love to see it happen, regardless of Billy Batson’s skin tone.

Director Zack Snyder just shared the following image online from this weekend’s big San Diego Comic Con: the public’s very first look at Gal Gadot as the very first big-screen Wonder Woman, as appearing in next summer’s Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Frankly, Snyder’s trademark monotones aren’t doing her any favors. I can’t tell if her costume really is all leather-armor brown, or if it’s seven different Day-Glo colors of the rainbow but shot through an unappealing Instagram filter. The sword and warrior’s stance are nothing new to comics readers of the last three decades, but older folks whose Wonder Woman memories begin and end with Lynda Carter might be in for a bit of a shock.

Three more important questions remain to be answered in the months ahead:

(1) How’s her personality?

(2) Is her part an overhyped cameo or an ample supporting role?

(3) Will we ever see WW starring in her own film in my lifetime? Or is she doomed to play second-fiddle for the manly heroes, as if she were just a brawnier Lois Lane?

You’ve heard about that new movie that just opened in theaters this weekend, right? The one where Chris Pratt from Parks & Rec uses those hunky new abs he began sculpting for Zero Dark Thirty and puts them toward attaining leading-man status? And we meet the best CG characters since Caesar and Gollum? And there are about forty other characters you get to meet from the deepest corners of the Marvel universe?

If you believe 25% of my site traffic over the past two days, that movie is called…

Rise of the Guardians!

On a related note, 25% of my site traffic is wrong. Rise was a Dreamworks Animated joint that I reviewed when it was released back in November 2012. It was okay, not great, and certainly not urging the world to learn more about it this weekend. And yet, I’ve had a plethora of visitors convinced otherwise, through no conscious suckering on my own part.

If you can’t tell one astronomy concept from another, you might also have thought this weekend’s #1 movie was…

Guardians of the Universe!

But no, those Guardians are the little blue men in charge of the Green Lantern Corps, which you might remember from that one Ryan Reynolds film –

WAIT! NO! COME BACK! DON’T GO! PLEASE DON’T CLOSE YOUR BROWSER! I promise I’ll stop talking about it now, honest.

Marvel’s newest sensations are also not called…

The Global Guardians!

These folks were imaginative but forgettable third-stringers, occupying the same DC Comics universe as those other Short Guys Who Must Not Be Named. They came from all over the world to unite, network, and fight evil on behalf of their homelands, but they never left Earth and they never had their own series. The #1 movie in America this weekend is a bit broader in scope.

And just to be clear, they’re no relation to…

Guardians of the Globe!

…who are the Image Comics version of pretty much the same concept, but they’ve had their own series and they were co-created by Robert Kirkman, mastermind of The Walking Dead. In that sense and numerous others the Guardians of the Globe trump the Global Guardians, but they’re not completely the same thing. They’re only mostly the same thing.

You’ll also note the movie with the highest August opening in American box office history does not star…

The Guardian of Forever!

…although one has to wonder why this fondly remembered, sentient space-time gateway has yet to pop up in the big-screen Star Trek reboots. Maybe in the third one? If nothing else, somewhere out there should be a fanfic writer who’s pitted the Guardian against the TARDIS for the benefit of a rousing Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover. If it hasn’t happened, hundreds of you should get on that.

And please take heed: if it’s all-CG “guardians” you’re seeking, think twice before flocking toward…

Legends of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’Hoole!

These are OWLS. Do you remember any recent commercials with owls in them? Yes, they’re cool-looking owls, and yeah, this is arguably one of director Zack Snyder’s best films, and for the record my son can tell you one hundred ways Snyder’s team failed at adapting the original “Guardians of Ga’Hoole” book series, but they’re not the obscure, scruffy, wild-mannered, ragtag team you should have in mind.

You’ll know you went thousands of miles off the right path if you visit your local Family Video and come home with…

The Guardian!

Here, I’m cautioning you about more than just confusing your nondescript titles. I’m just saying that Ashton Kutcher dramas in general are a losing proposition.

Speaking of titles that mean next to nothing, here’s some practical advice about …

Defenders of the Earth!

Maybe including this one seems far-fetched to you. True story, though: when I arrived at work Friday morning, even before I clocked in, a coworker ran up to me and asked what I thought of that new film “Defenders of the Universe”. I gave him the blankest of blank looks until my coffee woke up the decoder side of my brain and helped me figure out what he was trying to ask.

I’m sure he’s not alone in accidentally making up his own misnomer. If other well-meaning folks are likewise half-listening to the TV ads and coming away with “Defenders of the Universe”, it’s not much more of a stretch to imagine them instead coming up with Defenders of the Earth, a short-lived ’80s attempt to reboot Flash Gordon, the Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician as a globetrotting, post-comic-strip supergroup. Following that short trail off the pop-culture roadway will lead to a very abrupt and desolate dead end.

No, gentle readers who have no use for sorting adjectives or celestial body types, the new biggest film of the summer is called…

Guardians of the Galaxy!

It even comes with a built-in mnemonic device: the first and last words both begin with G. And neither of them contain “globe”. No rising, no defending, no Earth, no owls, no Costner.

GUARDIANS. of the. GALAXY.

Hope that helps. Go forth, buy tickets accordingly, and stop confusing Fandango’s search widget with your creative, desperate, near-miss guesses.

Due to family scheduling priorities, I regret I won’t be seeing GotG till next weekend. When that time arrives, if I walk into the theater and the first scene I see is Ryan Reynolds sputtering nonsense at some defenseless lady trapped in his Oscar Madison bungalow, the projectionist and I are gonna have words.

Spoiler photo of Bradley Cooper from The Expendables 7.

The raccoon! The tree! The wrestler! The funnyman! The female! Together they’re the hottest new super-team in the Marvel universe, and you probably saw their first movie before I did! If so, congratulations on doing your part to turn Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the summer’s biggest success stories with a boffo opening weekend despite an unproven leading man and not one single popular hero on their roster.

If you didn’t see GoTG before I did…well, that’s what entries like this are for.

Short version for the unfamiliar: They came from all over the quadrant to quest for the mysterious Orb of the MacGuffin and earn themselves giant sums of interstellar moolah. Chris Pratt from Parks & Rec is Peter Quill, a.k.a. the self-appointed Star-Lord, abducted from Earth as a small child by space pirates, grown up into Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly minus a crew or a military record, but likewise burdened with losses in his past. Zoe Saldana from Star Trek and Avatar is Gamora, abducted from her home planet as a small child, grown up into an assassin with a conscience she kept buried just to stay alive. The WWE’s Dave Bautista is Drax the Destroyer, a metaphor-impaired muscleman grieving and enraged over the loss of his family and people, searching not for money but for a means to lure their killer into his vengeful clutches.

And those are just the most human-looking members. There’s also Rocket (voiced by Academy Award Nominee Bradley Cooper), an escaped lab experiment with a lust for looting and a knack for weapons tech, who just so happens to resemble an Earth raccoon. Close by his side is Groot (voice of Vin Diesel, the Iron Giant), a walking alien tree with some semblance of moral decency, the proportionate strength and super-powers of Swamp Thing, and complete confidence in his identity as he assures everyone, “I am Groot,” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Our Antiheroes have a five-way meet-cute and join forces to reach the Orb before it’s acquired by another party: the Kree warlord Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace, a.k.a. Ned the Piemaker, a.k.a. the Elf King Thranduil) and his assassin sidekick Nebula (Karen Gillan, a.k.a. Amy Pond), both serving the genocidal space tyrant Thanos (busy Hollywood man Josh Brolin). Can this quirky quintet of antiheroes beat Ronan to the punch, uncover the Orb’s true nature, save billions of lives, and make a fast buck?

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Much of the threats and action are directed toward the planet Xandar, whose space-police force called the Nova Corps are overseen by the Glenn Close and staffed by the likes of John C. Reilly and Peter Serafinowicz (angry roommate Pete from Shaun of the Dead).

Straight out of the Thor: the Dark World end credits, Benicio Del Toro returns as the Collector, a strange old gentleman who likes to hoard creatures and objects. Appearing briefly from The Avengers‘ end credits is Alexis Denisof (Wesley from Buffy/Angel!) returning as Thanos’ mouthpiece. The Walking Dead‘s Michael Rooker is Yondu, Quill’s space-pirate mentor who hails from the southern end of the galaxy and wields a mean arrow but not a bow. The bad guy with the most lines and screen time seems to be Djimon Hounsou, demoted from the rank of Big Bad that he held in How to Train Your Dragon 2 to a mere henchman’s henchman here, which seems wholly unfair.

Special subsection for fellow Bunheads fans: Yondu’s chief henchman is Sean Gunn, whom we once knew as Bash the exasperating coffee-shop guy. And in the opening flashback, young Peter Quill’s well-meaning grandpa is Gregg Henry, who was once Rico the stoner restaurateur.

And yeah, Stan Lee’s up in the mix, not hard to spot as he’s quite the ladies’ man.

Value-added comics Easter egg: older Marvel fans with sharp ears may catch the familiar name of Bereet (an Incredible Hulk early-’80s supporting alien) assigned to a one-scene, one-joke character who has nothing in common with her.

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? The primary Morals of the Story:

1. Billions of lives are more important than billions of bucks. Don’t give me that look. They ARE, TOO. Lives first, bucks later.

2. The family we came from is important in defining who we are, but who we become will define the family where we belong. Just because someone appoints themselves your father doesn’t mean you owe them eternal servitude when they’re not even remotely fatherly.

3. SPACE ACTION RULES! WOOOOOOOOOOO! Intergalactic! Planetary! Planetary! Intergalactic!

4. Never, ever mock a heavily armed space raccoon, especially when he’s drunk.

5. I am Groot!

Nitpicking? Except for a few throwaway lines’ worth of ambiance, everyone in the Milky Way speaks English. If that bothers you in space-action movies, seek the clearly labeled exit signs now.

I’m not a fan of overplayed oldies as soundtrack fodder and usually count off points when I hear it, but I’ll concede that in this case there were solid story reasons why several scenes were filled with “Spirit in the Sky”, “Hooked on a Feeling”, and other songs from my mom’s young-adult years that are instant channel-changers when I’m driving. Thankfully they tossed in a few catchy songs I didn’t recognize from the same era that balanced things nicely.

My biggest complaint: the dastardly duo of Ronan and Nebula were impeccably designed and dressed, menacing in stature, impressive at hand-to-hand combat, and as one-dimensional as your second-tier Star Wars villains. Granted, “Together we shall rule the galaxy and murder all who oppose us!” is a valid motivation for the average space evildoer, but I’m finicky and I expect more from my protagonists if a film aspires to be considered above the level of Great Popcorn Flick. It also disappoints me to see top-tier actors like Pace and Brolin buried under so many layers of makeup and voice filters without a fair chance to show us why they deserved the parts. (See also: Christopher Eccleston in Thor: TDW.) If they had been replaced with extras, could we have noticed a difference?

(That being said: for three scant seconds, whichever department was most responsible for Thanos’ sinister leer, his single scariest attribute, absolutely nailed it. My favorite little moment in the whole movie.)

So did I like it or not? Our Antiheroes are a sharp ensemble with an infectious chemistry even as they struggle to find a balance between roguishness and righteousness, and to build each other up through the film’s numerous near-weepy moments, as very few hearts and souls escape the film completely unscathed. Best of Show nods go to Pratt as the snappy, happy-go-lucky hero with a heart of bucks, to Cooper splendidly revisiting the same motormouth mindset he perfected in his last two Oscar-bait movies, and to Groot’s animators for outstanding achievement in the field of heartstring-plucking.

If you’re patient enough to weather the first half-hour’s onslaught of space proper names and space backstory, and forgiving enough to embrace the space-villain clichés and the same MacGuffin-based plot as half the other Marvel films, you’re in for a riotous, rambunctious, two-hour space roller-coaster ride. Having entered my reservations into the record regarding the ill-equipped villains who deserved more, Guardians of the Galaxy otherwise may be the best space popcorn flick I’ve seen since The Empire Strikes Back.

Or, longer story short: I. Am. Groot.

How about those end credits? Yes, there is indeed a scene after the Guardians of the Galaxy end credits. For those who fled the theater because of a medical emergency and really want to know what they missed without paying to see it twice…

…

…

[space inserted here for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship]

…

…

…the Collector sits among the ruins of his showroom, surrounded by debris and fried wiring and shattered display cases. The canine cosmonaut licks his face and quietly limps away. As he drinks to cope with what just happened, one of his former prisoners sits in the remains of his own cage, likewise shares in a bit of imbibing, and snarks at him.

That grouchy prisoner: Howard the Duck. And, twenty-eight years after the previous travesty, this time they got him right.

Yes, that Howard the Duck. If you don’t know who he is, ask your parents about the disastrous film adaptation that was once foisted upon a disbelieving public by none other than director George Lucas. If you never read the original Howard comics, Howard the Duck was simply bad. If you read the originals, Howard was even worse than the worst of the Superman movies.

Also in those end credits: comics fans will appreciate the gratitude granted to several writers and artists: Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, the writers of the original Marvel crossover Annihilation that spawned this revamped version of the Guardians; writer/artist Jim Starlin, the creator of Gamora, Drax, and Thanos; Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen, the creators of Rocket Raccoon; and, at the very very end, Howard’s creators Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik.

A dozen other comics folks are relegated to a nonspecific “Special Thanks” section, but my eyes didn’t move quickly enough to memorize any except painter Marko Djurdjevic. I’ll have to catch the rest on my next viewing.

Hawkwoman! Or possibly Hawkgirl. I’m going with Hawkwoman.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended Gen Con 2014 and took pictures as usual.

Last time was the Costume Contest Winners. This time: some of the other Costume Contest entrants, whose fine works will comprise Parts Two and Three. I’m splitting them up because I like to keep my photodumps to a fairly consistent size. When I go too far overboard in a single entry, chances are I’ve been at the computer too long and I’m putting myself at risk of falling to pieces if I don’t step away for a while.

Onward:

Arrow! His presentation included recorded narration, presumably quoted from the show. Someday I’ll give it a try.

A version of Loki seen in comics and frequently at cons, but not in the movies. Yet.

Sophronia Temminick from Gail Carriger’s “Finishing School”, a young-adult steampunk novel series.

Imrijka the Inquisitor, from Pathfinder.

Tinker Bell! Without that pesky Peter Pan around to hold her back.

Gwendolyn, Valkyrie princess from the PS2 game Odin Sphere.

Padme Amidala in the yellow Attack of the Clones dress she wore for her big date with Anakin “Sand gets in everywhere!” Skywalker.

Link! One of the few gaming characters I hopefully don’t have to explain to anyone.

And here’s Link’s longtime acquaintance, Zelda. He may be the household name, but it’s her branding that put them both on the map.

Captain Edward Kenway from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.

A Sister of Battle from Warhammer 40K, not the same one who was part of the Best in Show group.

Captain Victoria Haley from Warmachine.

Introduced to us as “Sith Elsa”, possibly from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Snowmen.

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC series:

* Part One: The Costume Contest Winners
* Part Three: Costume Contest, Last Call
* Part Four: Costumes Around the Show Floor (coming soon)
* Part Five: Last Call for Costumes (coming soon)
* Part Six: Things Besides Costumes (coming soon)

The all-new Ms. Marvel!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended Gen Con 2014 and took pictures as usual.

Parts One through Three were folks in the Costume Contest. In Parts Four and Five: convention attendees who opted out of competition but availed themselves of the activities and walking space all over the bustling, crowded exhibit hall. More lighting, more time to concentrate, and no dozens of rows of chairs separating us from the cosplayers. Much better results in general.

Onward:

The Penguin! Wak wak waaaaak!

Green Arrow! Or maybe just Arrow. I’ve lost track of how to tell them apart. It’s definitely not Hawkeye.

If DC insists Aquaman has to make the transition to the big screen, this is how he needs to look. I’d still avoid the fishies-commanding thing, though.

A Lonely Assassin! Our obligatory Doctor Who check-in.

Possibly the niftiest Darth Vader shot either of us has ever taken.

I used to collect Jawas. I still have a box full of ‘em out in the garage. These two have robes made of what looked like carpeting, which to me seems like an odd choice for desert wear. But I imagine they know their alien landscape better than I do, so…

MARA JADE LIVES! Our household will brook none of your nonsense about the Star Wars Expanded Universe being tossed out the window. HUMBUG.

King Leonidas hangs out with his new pals, who hopefully won’t die as quickly as the last 299 did.

Optimus Prime! Some assembly required.

Lara Croft heads into all-out war with minions from the board game Rivet Wars.

Samus Aran in her Zero Suit, sans Metroid armor. (ID credit: my son.)

Sora! From the great Kingdom Hearts.

Variation on a theme that I’ve never seen done as cosplay: Sora’s Final Form. Major thumbs-up.

Longtime MCC readers know I brake for Final Fantasy characters. Hence, three cheers for Lightning and Serah from FFXIII! And, we think, Snow with a Moogle! (Special thanks to helpful commenter Kat for the assist.)

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC series:

* Part One: The Costume Contest Winners
* Part Two: More from the Costume Contest
* Part Three: Costume Contest, Last Call
* Part Five: Last Call for Costumes
* Part Six: Things Besides Costumes (coming soon)

Who North America is a regular staple at our regular cons. They seem to be doing okay, even though they have to pay for four or five times the space.

This past Wednesday I walked into my comic shop and waded into the middle of a conversation about booth space prices. Awesome Con is staging their first Indianapolis show in October, and the guys weren’t too keen on what was being asked, how much extra a corner booth would cost over an endcap, and why the con’s rep promised them a “locals” discount over the phone that appeared nowhere in the marketing materials. Much snickering ensued.

I’ve never looked much into the wheelings ‘n’ dealings of what it takes to negotiate all the players and participants in a given con. Much of the economic side is beyond my realm of experience, but I was fascinated enough that I decided to perform some light research for myself. Now that we’ve had a convention boom this year in the Midwest in general, and in Indianapolis in particular, we have a much wider sampling pool to examine, and plenty of opportunities for local comic shop owners, online dealers, private collection owners, comics creators, writers, artists, game designers, bloggers, podcasters, and other entertainers to gather alongside other like-minded entrepreneurs in the massive community swap meet that is a geek convention.

In the interest of science, finance, dissatisfied curiosity, and future reference, I culled the available pricing info for Artists Alley and Exhibit Hall tables, booths, and/or spaces from the official sites of all the cons my wife and I attend, a few we’ve discussed attending but haven’t yet, and a couple more within reach that aren’t on our radar yet.

So: wanna sell your wares? Here are your options ’round these parts:

Random thoughts:

* These are prices for single spaces only. If you need two or more spaces, prepare to double or triple your bill, maybe more if you’re Mile High Comics or if you’re planning on bringing forty longboxes out of your garage. Have fun hauling those.

* Compare these to the worst-case scenario on a national basis: for San Diego Comic Con 2015, exhibitor booths start at $3,000.00, but with a discount depending on how early you prepay. There’s a $700 upcharge for corner booths and an $1,800.00 upcharge for an “Island Premium Booth”. Artists Alley half-tables are, incredibly, free if you reserve by September 10th, 2014, a full ten months in advance. After that date, $350 for no-frills halfsies.

* Some of these are apples and oranges. Artists Alley structure, placement, traffic access, and other factors differ from con to con. Shopping around on that basis would be key to your planning, too.

* Many cons charge extra for amenities such as convenient electrical access, internet access, temp fixtures, extra badges above your allotment, etc. Assuming they offer any of those amenities in the first place. Not everyone does.

* Retailers who love Wizard World should note that their biggest bargains are Louisville and the premier Indianapolis show. I can’t speak for Louisville’s, but Indy’s has at least two competitive hurdles: it’s in the middle of February, typically our snowiest month of the year; and it’s on Valentine’s Weekend. Some couples (present company included) will consider that a romantic advantage, but not all of them.

* Based on their site language, the Indiana Comic Con apparently believes all its booths are corner booths. Nice perk if it’s true, assuming they have space for everything and everyone this time and still have enough square footage left to allow extra walkways. I wish them well in achieving this high-minded aspiration.

* A few months ago I saw a comment from a local webcomics artist who quoted a much higher asking price for an Artists Alley table at Awesome Con. I’m guessing she wasn’t alone and they later slashed prices with good reason.

* Yeah, the established Chicago market is more costly than the burgeoning Indy scene. No surprise there. I wish I’d had this idea before Gen Con pulled down their prices after selling out for 2014, because I’d love to know how they stack up against all of these.

* Indy Pop Con has not yet reached an agreement with the Indiana Convention Center for a 2015 date commitment, so their prices may be site leftovers from their inaugural 2014 show.

* HorrorHound and Starbase Indy have no artists’ area separate from their dealers’ rooms. (In fact, they’re held at the exact same hotel, two months apart.) Same price whether you’re selling used books or new sketches, then.

* For those who know what DashCon is: yes, they are planning to try again June 19-21, 2015, and they’re moving to Indy. I’m not presently using Tumblr (so many pros and cons to this question), so I have no stakes in that gold rush, just some casual bewilderment at the first gathering’s incident reports.

* Some of these cons are so surprisingly affordable, I could afford space if MCC had any physical wares to showcase. I think it would be educational and possibly interesting to have a table at a con, but I can’t see my wife and myself spending three days at a blank table with just a laptop, a legal pad for signups, a hand-drawn cardboard sign, and nothing to sell. I suppose I could give away old comics I don’t want (anyone like DC’s New 52? Buffy Season 8?), or maybe sell bottled water and canned drinks for a buck apiece. I like to think we’d represent a valuable community service, especially considering convention concession prices. But we’d probably have to apply for a vending license or weather some other bureaucratic shenanigans. BAH.

That’s the state of the market as of today. Prices, availability, and con viability are all subject to change without notice, maybe even happening as late as Day Two. Now go reserve your spot, establish your HQ, and try selling me some really nifty comics and stuff.

See this crowd? All their money could be yours. Just grab a table and bring them something spectacular to buy. It’s that easy!

The Avengers! Classic lineup, different take.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.

Part three, then: representatives from the Marvel Universe, along with a few folks from other comic-book companies. Enjoy!

Venom and Moon Knight welcome you! And they’re watching you.

The early-80s Storm that we have yet to see Halle Berry attempt, and Wolverine between costume changes.

The Scarlet Witch and Ms. Marvel, more Avengers assembling.

Deadpool in all his normal regalia.

Kid Deadpool and Chef Deadpool. Thus is the Crisis on Infinite Deadpools at hand!

Sir Deadpool, Esq., dedicated follower of fashion.

X-23 hangs out with Wolverpool. Or Deadverine. Whichever.

A different X-23 hangs out with her new friends Rogue and Li’l Beast.

The Winter Soldier and the most complex set of Falcon wings we saw on the show floor.

Dani Moonstar from the New Mutants in Valkyrie form, alongside Colonel Stars & Stripes.

Dark Phoenix and Spider-Woman, confirming they’re perfectly content to choose their own comfortable poses.

Tony Stark, with working arc-reactor and repulsor lights connected to a belt-buckle control mechanism. Radioactive fuel sold separately.

This pic of Stan Lee, the White Queen, RoboCap, Iron Man, War Machine, and Bronze Iron Man was 10,000 times cooler before we found out the guy was probably a Stan cosplayer. The dozens of fans swarming him were pretty convinced. There was even a handler somewhere in this mess telling people to stand back and give him space…

Betcha know who Star-Lord is NOW, HUH?

Comics not from Marvel, part 1 of 3: Darth Talon from Star Wars: Legacy, and Darth Revan from Knights of the Old Republic (the comics and the game). Also, special cameo by Finn from Adventure Time.

Comics not from Marvel, part 2 of 3: Hellboy! Plus a luchador.

Comics not from Marvel, part 3 of 3: my wife meets Herbie the Fat Fury! Yes, he’s a real character. Yes, I’ve heard of him. No, he’s not a YouTube star. You’d be surprised what happened in comics back in the ’50s and ’60s. It took me a while to explain Herbie to her, though.

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

* Part One: Costumes! (Movies, Games, Doctor Who)
* Part Two: DC Comics Costumes!
* Part Four: Animation Costumes!
* Part Five: Last Call for Costumes
* Part Six: People We Met
* Part Seven: the Geek Stuff (coming soon)
* Our Least Favorite Wizard World Chicago 2014 Souvenirs

Yowza!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries…

…and so on. Part Six, then: the actors we met, along with a few folks from the wonderful world of comics.

We saved up for months to bankroll this outing. The guest list blew our minds. Some of them were the the highest-ranking names on my wife’s long-standing autograph want list. A few were people you’d never expect to fly out to the Midwest for pretty much any reason. So we made it work. Costs were cut in other areas of life. Discounts were researched and implemented. We ate cheaply for a while, and we’ll likely continue doing so while we’re catching up after the fact.

Honestly: unless you live in New York, L.A., London, or San Diego, how often in your lifetime will a genuine Doctor of recent vintage appear anywhere within 200 miles of your hometown? So yeah, we took the plunge and met former Doctor Who star Matt Smith for a jolly, five-second photo op. To be honest, the photo-op price was a better deal than his autograph prices.

Smith was punctual and hyper, and the other fans in line were lively conversationalists, too. It was also secretly fun to hear other fans of all ages squeak and squeal as they entered the photo-op room and realized they were right there with HIM. With the Eleventh Doctor. Fun times.

Also in the house: Karl Urban! Whether he’s playing the second coming of DeForest Kelley, head Rider of Rohan, the car-chase opponent in the second Bourne film, or the cocky future cop in the late Almost Human, Urban keeps delivering solid performances whenever I watch him at work. Also: really tall.

My wife’s primary targets: the cast of Star Trek: the Next Generation. She’s attended many local Trek cons over the past two decades and met a lot of Trek people, but for years she’s been missing three main Next Generation cast members from her collection. Until now. WWC 2014 staged a very special reunion of all the seven main cast members. If we’d stayed in town through Sunday night and paid for extra extravagant tickets, we could’ve seen then performing a special offsite Q&A hosted by William Shatner. We passed. But she finally met those last three actors.

First up: Michael Dorn, a.k.a. Worf. He’s especially cool on our scorecards because he’s also one of the few cast members we’ve met from Deep Space Nine (my favorite Trek series of all).

(Further down in that photo, you can also see Marina Sirtis, a.k.a. Counselor Deanna Troi.)

On hand later in the day: Commander Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes, who’s more of a director than actor nowadays. A recent episode of Falling Skies had his name on it, in fact.

Met but not pictured: Gates McFadden, formerly known as Dr. Beverly Crusher. In years past WWC staffers have been adamant and vigilant about prohibiting fans from snapping photos of the autograph guests at their tables. This year, we encountered virtually no one enforcing that rule. Some actors didn’t even mind. McFadden’s handler was a polite, professional exception. My wife likes to ask first. He said no and explained why. She understood and put her camera away for the moment. He was suitably impressed. He should be, because my wife is awesome and unique.

Regardless: no Beverly pics. Instead we chatted about health insurance in France. It…just kind of happened.

Number one on my own want list at this show: Gunn from TV’s Angel! Sure, you might know him as J. August Richards, now appearing as Deathlok in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Extremely friendly.

(I wish I didn’t dwarf him so in this pic. The forced perspective was wholly unintentional.)

The greatest Dark Knight of my generation: Kevin Conroy, longtime star of Batman: the Animated Series. His definitive performance lived on in Justice League, Batman Beyond, a few of the direct-to-DVD animated movies, and even the Arkham Asylum game and its first sequel, my two favorite super-hero video games ever. DC can keep financing live-action Bat-films if they want, but for my money, Conroy is Batman.

We met Aaron Ashmore (Smallville‘s Jimmy Olsen) at a previous WWC, so it would’ve been rude to snub his brother Shawn, a.k.a. Iceman, who deserved many more minutes of screen time.

Another pleasure to meet: Anthony Mackie, costar of Best Picture Oscar winner The Hurt Locker, in which he played a diligent American soldier in Iraq who gets to punch Hawkeye in the face. Mackie was later rewarded for his commendable efforts with the plum part of the Falcon in Captain America: the Winter Soldier. Mackie and Winter Soldier proceeded to win 2014 at the movies.

Also from The Winter Soldier: the Winter Soldier! Remember that recent entry where I mentioned a 100-minute autograph wait on Saturday? Meet Sebastian Stan. His isn’t the longest line we’ve ever weathered. Not by a long shot. Oh, the horror stories we could tell. Our grand champion Worst Line Ever wasn’t even at a Wizard World show.

While we were there, I also had the chance to wander Artists Alley and meet a few recognizable names. Chief among them was Mike Zeck, a Marvel Comics heavy hitter in my childhood. Zeck drew the very first Punisher miniseries, my favorite Captain America run, the definitive Kraven the Hunter story, the original Secret Wars, and more, more, more. On a more relatable point for the average super-hero fan, he designed Spider-Man’s famous black costume.

Pictured with us is his limited-edition art book Raw Fury, filled with his cover artwork from back in the day — not only the published versions that were often painted over by another artist, but shots of Zeck’s original pencils for several of those pieces. They’re fabulous and I honestly think they’re better than the published versions, which buried so many intricate details. The book is a strongly recommended must-have for any of my generation’s Zeck fans.

Another favorite of mine: Hilary Barta, contributor to numerous humor titles from previous decades, including DC’s Plastic Man, Marvel’s What The–?!, “Munden’s Bar” over at First Comics, Image’s long-forgotten Stupid, and more, more, more. Nowadays he’s a frequent contributor to SpongeBob Comics, and he’ll have a story in Bongo Comics’ 2014 Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror Special. He told us the premise, and it sounds like a hoot.

I’d met Barta at a previous C2E2, but this time we caught him appearing for charity at the Hero Initiative booth. This was late Saturday, by which time we were all worn out. We hung out for far too long, watched him pencil and ink a sketch from start to finish, learned details I never knew about that great Plastic Man miniseries, argued over old Twilight Zone episodes, and gave money to that worthy cause.

I’d also like to use this space to thank the following Artists Alley creators who let me give them my money this year. Kudos!

* Danny Fingeroth, a former Marvel editor from whom I somehow felt compelled to buy a copy of Darkhawk Classics, almost as if I were daring myself to do it.
* Dan Mishkin, co-creator of DC’s super-fun Blue Devil. Strictly speaking, Mishkin’s upcoming book, a graphic novel about the Warren Commission Reports, isn’t on sale yet, but be brought promotional materials along to tide us over.
* Metal Hand and Jessica Flores. Flores sold large charcoal and painted prints, while Hand brought his self-published comic Agenda: the Story of Gy.
* Jane Irwin, creator of the Vögelein series and the successfully Kickstarter’d Clockwork Game.
* Paul Sizer, whose graphic novel B.P.M. caught my eye because I’m a sucker for comics about music. Full disclosure: he and Irwin are married, and their booths were adjacent.
* Sarah Benkin, a.k.a. Peppermint Monster, one of several contributors to the Kickstarter’d Playlist: a Comic Book Anthology.
* Novelist/illustrator Donovan Scherer, whose Fear and Sunshine books looked curious and fun.

One last actor pic, just for the longtime MCC readers out there: the fabulous Nicole Beharie! Lieutenant Abbie Mills is a lot more peppy and personable when she’s not chasing acephalous murderers from beyond the grave, or explaining modern gizmos to 250-year-old men.

Remember, folks: Sleepy Hollow returns for its second season on September 22nd, only three short weeks after Labor Day. If you’re not addicted to CBS’ sad sitcom lineup, be there.

To be concluded!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

* Part One: Costumes! (Movies, Games, Doctor Who)
* Part Two: DC Comics Costumes!
* Part Three: Marvel and Dark Horse Costumes!
* Part Four: Animation Costumes!
* Part Five: Last Call for Costumes
* Part Seven: the Geek Stuff (coming soon)
* Our Least Favorite Wizard World Chicago 2014 Souvenirs

Sorry, I’d love to spend more at your Artists Alley booth, but I’m too busy being mesmerized by Sharknado.

Food for thought making the rounds in my online circles this week was an essay titled “Denise Dorman Asks — Is Cosplay Killing Comic Con?” The author is the wife of Dave Dorman, a renowned painter with a career spanning over two decades. Their table is a common sight for us at C2E2 and Wizard World Chicago, and doubtlessly a staple at comics and entertainment conventions in other cities. His covers grace several late-’80s comics in my collection and a few items in my wife’s Star Wars library. We’re not talking about an art-school sophomore with iffy talent and no business acumen. He’s a pro.

In the essay, the Dormans reveal the total intake from their first day-‘n’-a-half at Wizard World Chicago 2014 was a whopping $60.00. Their results from this year’s San Diego Comic Con, ostensibly the convention to end all conventions, were technically worse once you factor in the thousands of dollars spent on the experience.

The Dormans’ experience isn’t a singular oddity. The ensuing site discussion, in which Denise herself has participated and clarified some points, has touched on a number of factors that may be contributing to the decline of convention civilization. However, what prompted the most outraged responses — and why I saw a few friends linking to it while rolling their eyes — was the essay’s focus on one theory in particular:

I have slowly come realize that in this selfie-obsessed, Instagram Era, cosplay is the new focus of these conventions — seeing and being seen, like some giant masquerade party. Conventions are no longer shows about commerce, product launches, and celebrating the people who created this genre in the first place. I’ve seen it first-hand — the uber-famous artist who traveled all of the way from Japan, sitting at Comic-Con, drawing as no one even paid attention to him, while the cosplayers held up floor traffic and fans surround the cosplayers — rather than the famed industry household name — to pose for selfies.

I read a few similar complaints in the days following Indy Pop Con back in May (and talked to one of the vendors recently), a new convention where attendance didn’t meet projections and vendors of all sizes were dissatisfied with the results, but the cosplayer turnout was quite strong. At least one artist guest later took to social media the following week and disparaged the cosplay community for the sins of that weekend, as if thousands of Indianapolis residents had walked up to the Convention Center, saw three Harley Quinns walk by in a row, freaked out, burned their Pop Con tickets, and left to go shopping instead.

Cosplay has its ups and downs. So do all the other popular con activities do. Everything at a con is a distraction to someone. Anyone who’s read this site for any length of time knows my wife and I are cosplay fans. Don’t look to us for impartiality. But we wouldn’t be cosplay fans in the first place if we thought they were a menace to fandom and ruined everyplace they walked.

Honest confession, though: I’m personally not spending as much at conventions as I used to. And it’s not because cosplayers mugged me, or tackled me whenever I whipped out my wallet, or bedazzled me so deeply that I totally forgot to buy stuff. From a commerce standpoint, I suppose I’m part of the problem.

Why are some exhibitors reporting poor convention performance? Why have some local cons felt emptier than they should’ve been? Why can’t we all just get along and exchange money for goods and services? Here are some of the ways in which I’m being unhelpful:

* Staggering expenses. Just arriving and entering the doors can consume 60-80% of your budget. Some smaller comics shows will go as low as $25-$30 per one-day ticket, but a single day at one of the grander entertainment expos can land you near the three-figure price zone. Count on that price level for a full weekend pass (especially if ticket-vendor fees are extra) or a ritzy “VIP” pass that offers as many as two useful perks and a dozen disposable features. If you don’t live near the con, then you also have to figure in travel, parking, and overnight accommodations. Don’t forget food and drinks, because you are human, and they’ll be overpriced everywhere nearby. And then you can approach the fun things and see what they cost.

* We’ve already met many of the guests. Part of my fun is meeting creators whose work I really like and buying something from them in person. Now that we’ve attended C2E2 and WWC several years in a row, the same names are popping up on the guest lists again and again, and we’re not seeing a lot of new and different pros joining our Midwest rosters. There’s one artist in particular I’ve met quite a few times and bought a different comic from his assortment each time, but sooner or later he’ll run out of backstock to sell me, and then what can I do for him? Just leave a tip? I’d think it would be tough for artists who attend the same cons repeatedly to discover new customers that way.

* I can’t give all the artists my money. Among the hundreds of Artists Alley dwellers, someone’s not getting my money. I’d love to help everyone and see a lot of winners, but I can only stretch so far. So I have criteria for winner/loser triage. The following are least likely to spur me into spending:

* Any rack where the prevailing themes are zombies, breasts, or zombie breasts.
* Any table where I can’t figure out who you are or what you do because your “display” is papers shuffled around a table.
* Ditto anyone whose “display” is a laptop turned at me. Period.
* Any vendor who’s paying more attention to their phone than to potential customers.
* The same few hucksters whose books I bought at previous cons and regretted ever after.
* Art that’s an obvious, jokeless carbon-copy of a famous work by someone else.
* Novels. (WWC had several in Artists Alley. Interesting idea, but a really hard sell for me given my never-ending reading backlog.)
* Artists who, um, aren’t ready for prime-time. Including but not limited to any local kid with a credit card who bought space on a lark (because some cons really can be that affordable) and is just selling doodles on printer paper.

Basically I’m looking to buy the awesome comics and graphic novels that you wrote or drew, the kind that provide a reading experience, and the kind I can leave lying around the house without having to hide them when we have family visiting. I don’t think that sounds like a narrow target, but when I amble down entire aisles without pausing once to browse, I have to wonder.

“Attention, citizens! Please put away your cash and cards, step away from the tables, and come gawk at us right now. THAT’S AN ORDER!”

* No interest in higher-end items. We middle-class collectors are finicky in our art patronage. Our house currently has very little wall space to display prints or large paintings, and I don’t see the value in accumulating a permanently unseen portfolio. I rarely buy sketches because (a) price, (b) I dislike standing and staring at an artist drawing for minutes on end like a creepy stalker, and (c) if I wanted to be added to a weeks-long waiting list for a commissioned piece, ordering one online would’ve been much more efficient, and could’ve been done without attending. I don’t do that either, though. Hobby spending limits.

(My least favorite story from this year’s WWC: my wife and I saw one couple whose table was in a corner — correction: facing a narrow, dusty, abandoned corner — segregated from everyone else like a schoolkid in a dunce cap. They were easy to miss unless you were vigilant in walking down every single possible aisles, even the wall spaces that looked from a distance like unpopulated storage space. We crept through a narrow passage and there they were, tucked away from all humanity, driven into hermitage by unkind convention planners. I felt sorry for them…but all they had for sale were large paintings.)

* That darn online convenience. This won’t affect my Artists Alley behavior, because I’ll cheerfully buy cover-price items directly from the writers and artists who made them (remember, it’s why I’m there), but if you’re a comic shop owner who’s brought graphic novels to sell at a con for cover price or higher, good luck with that. I already have comic shops near my house, and Amazon robot minions practically perched on my windowsill, buzzing and waiting at all hours for me to click “Add Cart”. I need a reason to buy it from you and not Amazon. “Because Amazon is large and therefore evil” is not a persuasive salesman’s tactic. I realize your job is hard and you have the bills and the booth costs and the mouths-feeding and whatnot, but again: my powers of donation are limited, too. Blame capitalism.

* My interest in your back issues is waning. While I’m thinking about dealers: my long-standing back-issue want-list is comprised largely of two kinds of comics: issues that were part of storylines from previous decades that mean nothing or make no sense if read today; and the really obscure stuff you’ll never, ever bring to sell at a con because no average customers would want them. To this very day my run of Alan Weiss’ six-issue Marvel/Epic miniseries Steelgrip Starkey and the All-Purpose Power Tool is one issue short. I would pay double cover price to buy the last several issues of Steve Moncuse’s Fish Police in person instead of online, and finally find out whatever happened to Inspector Gill. But when I’m surrounded by bulk supplies of Spider-Man and X-Men and Avengers and DC’s New 52 and dozens of Marvel Ultimate trades going for a dollar a pound, I know better than to waste my time searching.

Related note: I also haven’t bought an action figure or an old piece of licensed merchandise in years. At a con or otherwise. I’m at that un-magical age and state of mind where I find myself surrounded by accumulations of cool-looking crap that’s become unwieldy and overwhelming and 90% packed away and tucked out of sight. I’ve drawn a line on how many boxes I’m allowing to pile up in the garage. I’m no longer in the market for collectible leftovers, and that’s what takes up three-fourths of any dealers’ area these days.

* The local Midwest convention glut is threatening to kill us all. My wife and I have attended five cons so far in 2014 and have two more to go. Earlier this year we’d discussed the possibility of trying one of the other cons within driving distance and broadening our jurisdiction in a sense. Five cons later, the money and desire to diversify our portfolio are long gone. We can handle a few shows a year and keep our finances on track, but new cons have been sprouting up around here like dandelions. For years our only annual geek experience was a tiny, fan-run Trek con. Today, we’re now in the midst of a genuine market. We have options, and those options have competition. That temptation to indulge in that strange new sensation has drawn us up to the edge of convention burnout. Something’s had to give. For WWC 2014, it meant spending less on the show floor and coming home with a much smaller reading pile than usual. Past a certain point, I just could not bring myself to browse anymore. And it didn’t help that Gen Con was the previous weekend.

See that kid there in the tiny anime kimono? He’s ruining conventions. LET’S GET HIM!

Those are just my reasons for comics convention spending cuts. Maybe I’m eccentric and these are limited to me and only me in America. Some of them aren’t. As for why other attendees aren’t spending more, here’s a couple more factors that shouldn’t be overlooked:

All those expensive celebrities, and the invading armies of the general public dying to see them.

The conventions want to draw more and more attendees, but that means bringing in people that will attract large crowds. For better or worse, millions of people may flock to Marvel movies, but a fraction of them are buying the books. With mainstream audiences fascinated by press coverage of San Diego and the overall circus atmosphere of costumed fans on the streets, the conventions are bringing in celebrity guests to attract those mundane fans.

And they aren’t comic fans.

Yeah, they know who Superman is, but not who draws him. And especially not who drew him five, fifteen, or thirty years ago. While you can buy merchandise or take a free photo with, say, painter Dave Dorman, few people beyond us hobbyists know who he is. It’s not a personal slight. The mainstream audiences just have no idea or interest in any comic creator/artist/writer outside of Stan Lee. Sure, Dave Dorman painted some Star Wars covers, and people like Star Wars. That doesn’t mean a mundane attendee will be willing to drop $50 or more on a copy of one of his works, as opposed to paying the same amount for Billy Dee Williams’ autograph.

And economics are a determining factor here, arguably even more for mainstream attendees than for those of us who’ve been in The Game for a while. They’re still wrapping their minds around the basic concept of celebrities charging for autographs. The sticker shock of admission, gas, parking, food on top of that will severely limit budgets. My wife and I do a decent job of mixing celebrity encounters with talent purchases, but that’s our compromise. Some people don’t.

To the extent that people wear costumes in order to be noticed is a no-brainer, but they’re part of that mainstream draw now. After dropping that $50 on Lando Calrissian, after paying for getting there, eating and the privilege of walking through the door, non-fan attendees are looking for something free. Taking photos of cosplayers is free. We know the benefits of taking those photos, too. It’s something to show to people who weren’t there. Sometimes it’s a fun, free service for cosplayers who attend alone and have no one to take a photo of them on the floor. And, okay, fine there’s a certain appeal for that ecstatic fan who showed up to meet Matt Smith to be able to also have their photo taken with a hot Loki.

Any of us who don’t run a convention would probably agree that convention planners ought to ease up on treating the creators as just another, higher level of customer to fleece. Certainly some things cost money to provide to hundreds of people — electricity, tables and chairs, internet, etc. — but gouging the talent so that they’re losing money before even showing up seems a lousy answer.

How many of these souls would you trade for the chance to buy copies of Super Stabby Bikini Lady Comix in peace?

What would be a useful answer, then? What should the factory showroom model of the 21st-century comics convention look like?

Should convention companies settle for smaller display fees, give creators a fighting chance to break even, thereby cutting into their own profits and eliminating their interest in the business? Should we hold our breath waiting for a philanthropic showrunning saint to implement that magical paradigm?

Should the burden be left on the creators to steer their own fates, and leave them to abandon the convention scene if they can’t make such trips financially feasible? Are we prepared for a future in which the guest lists continue dwindling until all we have left to meet are celebrities, actors, and a tiny Artists Alcove that’s just three college kids drawing zombie breasts?

Should we settle for smaller shows? Do we revoke the celebrity invitations, make it All About The Comics, return to the field’s insular beginnings, and turn gatekeeper until the general audience retreats and takes their dollars with them? Can we afford to lose their bankrolling?

Which genie do we put back into the bottle first?

…

We haven’t made any firm commitments to our 2015 convention schedule, but I’ll be shocked if we attend the same number of shows. We still have our 2014 schedule to finish. Next up is the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis, October 3-5, 2014. Any creators game enough to buy in and show up are more than welcome to try prying my dollars from my warm, lively hands.

Trust me: if anything holds you or me back, it won’t be the cosplayers.

* * * * *

[Special thanks to my wife Anne for cowriting portions of this entry. Her company and invaluable input are my favorite part of any convention experience.]

Sorry to join the party so late! Everyone else already watched the premiere of Gotham days ago on Fox and blogged, tweeted, Tumblr’d, or tin-can-on-a-stringed about it to all their circles, right? If everyone else is already over it, that means I can write whatever I want without fear of anyone reading it, right? Okay, cool. The way my week has gone, I’m considering using this space to update our grocery list and gauge its effect on site traffic.

For those who spent this week focusing on other things, or who don’t care about shows based on comics: Gotham tells the story of a young, stringy, ineffective toady named Oswald Cobblepot who spends his life groveling for a notorious crime lord and wishing people would stop bullying him. The ending has already been spoiled because fans of comics or old TV know Cobblepot will someday outgrow his ineptitude and mature into the formidable businessman known as the Penguin. Gotham, then, is his origin story, plus a half-dozen irrelevant subplots about far less interesting people.

Cobblepot’s childhood remains a mystery for now, as the pilot picks up in media res with a young-adult Penguin-to-be playing lickspittle for local crime lord Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who treats him like an abusive fairytale stepmother to further her long-term goals of moneymaking through Mob-bossing. Cobblepot sees an opportunity to exploit some weaknesses in her organization for his own benefit when she apparently arranges the murder of a nicely dressed pair of socialites for Mobbing reasons. A bit of happenstance leaves her vulnerable to investigation by Gotham po-lice, for whom Cobblepot turns informant to knock her off her pedestal and broaden his future possibilities. As played by Robin Lord Taylor, Cobblepot switches between whiny groveling for Mooney and stiff-upper-lip swagger toward the cops, as fascinating in his petty triumphs as he is in his inevitable beat-downs. If the series would keep him at the center, Gotham could be a winner.

Alas, such overcrowding. Other characters vie for screen time, most of them cops. The new guy on the homicide squad, Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), is the most idealistic and most likely to Do the Right Thing, but whenever the actor has to act too forthright, he gets the strained expression of a polite father who’s opening the worst Christmas presents ever and trying to pretend he really needed those six new Sham-Wows in different colors. His crooked partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) is a crooked cop who does six crooked things every morning before his crooked beer breakfast, then spends his crooked day on a crooked to-do list and then visits his crooked friends who work for Mooney over at CrookedCo. After forty-odd minutes of crookedy crookeditude, Gordon begins to suspect something’s not right about Detective Crooked, which might explain his six-month reign as the GCPD’s Crooked Employee of the Month, for which he receives a crooked plaque and a gift card for the buffet at Crooked Pizza Hut.

Because there were empty spaces in some scenes, the producers filled those with more cops from the comics — names like Renee Montoya, Sarah Essen, and even the M.E., Edward Nygma, will be familiar to collectors. Maurice Levy from The Wire shows up for a few lines as a beat cop, no longer on retainer for Marlo Stanfield. I’m reading online that even Crispus Allen from the great Gotham Central will be up in here if he can find an opening in between all the other cops who fill up backgrounds but never really catch any criminals. For some reason we also visit Gordon at home, where his S.O. Barbara has secrets and appears to be named after Batgirl. Gotta love those obscure Easter eggs, right?

Meanwhile in the shadows, there’s a thief labeled in the PR materials as Catwoman, played as a silent, modern Harriet the Spy who likes to crawl on fixtures and stare at people. There’s another, littler girl named Ivy Pepper who waters plants while watching her mom and dad do all the talking. No one thinks to ask why a girl in this day and age suspiciously cares about houseplants, or why her name sounds like an obscure Chopped ingredient. Also, Richard Kind from Spin City is now the Mayor of Gotham, so that’s like a Pyrrhic promotion.

On the darker side of the cavernous divide between good and evil is Gotham’s other leading Mob boss, Carmine Falcone, as played by John Doman, a.k.a. Lt. Rawls from The Wire. If we could add eight more alumni from The Wire, this could be my new favorite show. I would pay money to watch a sweeps-month episode announcing “special guest-villain Omar!” Doman as Falcone is an atypical Mob boss, though — he wants the Gotham police doing their job right at least some of the time. Crime may be his business, but he still has to go home at the end of the night, and he’d rather not live in a city gripped by fear. Well, by too much fear, I mean. In his playbook, a city ought to be gripped by a little fear so a Mob can get some things done, but excessive fear ruins the ambiance, scares away the tourist dollars, and discourages top chefs from opening any five-star restaurants. And a Mob boss needs his five-star restaurants.

The showrunners sneak in one last subplot, spotlighting the son of the meaningless couple that Mooney had killed, though Lord knows why the gunman stopped short of killing poor li’l Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz, the Touch kid). The screams of the orphaned billionaire as he watches his parents fade away are some of the most frightening sounds I’ve heard on TV this year, but by the end of the episode he’s calmed down to the point of disturbing iciness. When Gordon visits Stately Li’l Bruce Manor to deliver some awkwardly bad news, Bruce forgoes the denial or hysteria you’d expect from someone whose family was senselessly murdered. His British guardian Alfred (Sean Pertwee) tries to take charge, but Bruce firmly overrules him with an intensity that belies his youth. If the show proves popular enough to merit a spinoff, I’d suggest Bruce is a prime candidate for his own series, maybe even as an adult. He could be a billionaire detective like the couple from Hart to Hart, or a philanthropic billionaire problem-solver like The Millionaire but with a thousand times the cash, or a serial-killer super-villain like Hannibal Lecter. The mind reels at Bruce Wayne’s future story possibilities. Too bad they don’t just make the show about him.

Penguin: the Origin may not be the easiest sell in the long run. Its central character is riveting at times, but he doesn’t even have his own comic series. (I think. I walked away from DC’s New 52 months ago, so who knows if that’s changed.) Subtract Cobblepot and you’re left with a dreary police show where the police never win, which is not the way to attract large Nielsen familes who love police shows. But it’s on the same night and network as Sleepy Hollow, making it convenient for me to keep up with our man Cobblepot and the young man who shares his show but has no direct connection with him…for now. My early prediction: over the course of ten seasons we see them grow closely together until they become partners in their very own detective agency. “Penguin and Wayne”, they’ll call themselves, and no criminal will escape their steely gazes and their noses for clues. Not even special guest-villain Omar.

[For more information on the MCC 2014 Pilot Binge project, please visit the initial entry for the rationale, the official checklist of pilots, and links to completed entries as we go. Thanks for reading!]

Gateway to Awesome! Ostensibly.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend my wife and I attended the inaugural Awesome Con Indianapolis, the latest attempt to bring the geek convention life to our fair-sized city. [yadda yadda yadda] The important thing for now is, there were costumes! And photos of same!

Our Awesome Con experience wasn’t entirely about cosplay photos. Our day had its successes and disappointments.

We arrived at the Indiana Convention Center at 8:30 and were surprised to learn the registration area (including pre-registration pickup) didn’t open till 9 a.m. There was no line waiting to enter, so we helped start it. For the sake of comparison: we always arrive at cons at least 90-120 minutes early to ensure expedient entry. At C2E2 or Wizard World Chicago we can usually count on waiting behind a few dozen even earlier birds. At the underattended Indy PopCon, we were seventh and eighth in line. Here at Awesome Con, we were second and third. We had a suspicion where things would be going from there.

One of several dealers’ booths we could stare at while waiting for the con to begin.

Registration opened a few minutes early. We picked up our disposable one-day wristbands (lanyards were for 3-day attendees only), walked over to the separate photo-op booth to buy one item, noted and appreciated the numerous “Cosplay is Not Consent” signs posted all around, and were among the first ten to join the official exhibit hall entrance line. Half an hour later, I counted all of forty people in line, including VIP ticketholders on the other side of the gate. Compared to the hundreds and hundreds that usually can’t wait to enter the major cons, this to me was an early indicator that the local media’s initial estimates of 30,000+ attendance were optimistic and off-base.

VIP ticketholders were allowed to enter the show floor at 9:30, a full half-hour ahead of the rest of us, to enjoy the privilege of visiting those few dealers and artists who showed up early for work. From our vantage point in the registration hall, I saw a lot of closed booths, tables with tarps draped over them, and in the distance a few autograph area booths unmanned. But those six or seven VIP ticketholders got to see all those closed booths first and up close. When the rest of us average Joes were ushered inside promptly at 10, I think our crowd finally numbered over a hundred or so.

We made a beeline for the autograph area on the far side of the show floor. First stop: Phil LaMarr.

You may remember Phil LaMarr from his roles in hundreds of cartoons and video games, or maybe as poor Marvin in the back seat in Pulp Fiction…

If you know Hermes from Futurama, Green Lantern John Stewart from the animated Justice League, the titular hero of the appalingly undervalued Static Shock, or the early seasons of MADtv, you’ve heard Phil LaMarr at work. We were first at his booth and, with no one queuing up behind us, we three ended up chatting for 25 minutes. My wife and I didn’t aim to co-opt his time obliviously — he talked as much as we did, really. We discussed the rarity of animated series that address hot-button political issues, the perks of tossing out decades-old comics continuity in order to tell a worthwhile new story, and our mutual bet that the eventual Justice League live-action film will just have to include grim-‘n’-gritty extreme giant talking sea horses.

Then we wandered the Artists Alley and dealers’ aisles. This didn’t take long. There weren’t much of either. Awesome Con reserved roughly twice the square footage as Indiana Comic Con had in March (maybe a little less than Indy PopCon had in May), but recruited the same number of participants, maybe even fewer. Having plenty of elbow room and breathing space was nice, but it also meant walking farther to meet even fewer objectives.

But the comics people were a pleasant lot. Exhibit A: frequent Marvel/DC artist Jim Calafiore, whose work with Gail Simone on Secret Six was my favorite DC title before the New 52 relaunch necessitated its demise. I liked their teamwork so well that I even backed their Leaving Megalopolis Kickstarter project, back in the days before my current KS moratorium.

The following creators who attended in person also successfully parted me from some of my money:

* Comics/TV writer Jay Faerber, whose new creator-owned Image series, the sci-fi Western Copperhead, just launched last month with a great start.
* Jeremy Whitley, whose Action Labs Comics series Princeless is a rousing all-ages tale about a black fairy-tale princess who gets fed up with waiting around to be saved and decides to take rescuing into her own hands. If you’re all about diversity in comics, Princeless is a great opportunity for you to prove it with money.
* Steve Conley
* J. M. Dragunas
* Patrick “Doodles” Hanlon
* Jonathan D. Wilson of Cloudy Sky Comics
* Ricky Henry and Chad Schoettle, creators of MMSBC

I bought a few back issues, but wasn’t in the mood to overdo it. That’s just as well — I counted maybe four or five comics retailers, tops. As I mentioned in a previous entry, my local comic shop opted out of Awesome Con, and they apparently weren’t alone.

Then there was this guy who tried to spook us.

“MEESA NOW A BOMBAD BOOTH BABE! YOUSA BUYEN MEESA MERCHANDISEN!”

By 11:00 other autograph guests had begun to show up. We met Firefly‘s Jewel Staite, but we dutifully obeyed her prominent “NO PHOTOS” signs (not even a $20 booth selfie like the other actors were offering). Hence, no pic here. I noticed on her handler’s checklist that I was Jewel Staite autograph #21 for the day.

One last-minute addition to the roster was, to my wife’s delight, an official Star Wars guest: former child star Jake Lloyd, forever condemned by fandom for things that a world-famous, non-great director made him do when he was nine years old. I’m grateful every day that no one judges my life for my fourth-grade accomplishments. I’ll admit Jingle All the Way is my least favorite Christmas movie of all time, but his contributions as a seven-year-old weren’t among my reasons why.

Back in the old days of conventions, you knew you were at a small entertainment convention when there was only one Star Wars guest.

We were first in his line. This pic was taken by the other Star Wars fan in line behind us. Lloyd seemed under the weather and rather apologetic for it. He confirmed he once lived in Indiana for several years, but not anymore. My wife’s a huge Star Wars fan and appreciated the opportunity and his persistence in the face of adversity.

Also appearing was Mark Sheppard, whom I’ve seen and liked in Firefly (yay Badger!) and Doctor Who two-parter, and probably more more more, though I understand he’s a pretty big deal to Supernatural fans. He was quite the consummate professional, offering us a bit of advice from an autograph-collecting perspective, and then he had to give photography tips to his handler, who seemed uncomfortable using a digital camera.

I’ll admit I’ve never seen an actor cheerfully providing such practical advice. Once we uploaded our pics later at home, I can see why he felt the need. His handler gave it two tries, and the paid results came out as follows:

Protip #1: In modern cameras, you hold down the button halfway and wait for the auto-focus to kick in. Then you take the shot.

Protip #2: Before you pull the trigger, make sure everyone is ready. Especially the star.

We left the Convention Center at lunchtime because we’re not a fan of their overpriced concessions. We walked east on Maryland Street to Dick’s Last Resort, where sarcasm is literally part of the service, as are giant paper hats with hand-lettered insults written on them by the occasionally helpful waitstaff.

Your move, St. Elmo’s Steakhouse.

Our food earned an A and our waitress was suitably entertaining. Business was slow even though downtown Indianapolis was also hosting the Circle City Classic parade and high-profile college football game this same weekend.

How slow? This slow.

Normally you only see daylight table dancing in your finer direct-to-DVD flicks.

After lunch we returned to the convention and tried to find ways to kill time until our last mandatory event at 4:15. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for that, we would’ve been ready to head home after lunch. The afternoon panels were largely optional to us at best. Any actor I would’ve wanted to see speak onstage wasn’t doing so till Sunday. This wasn’t the kind of con that attracted a single large or even mid-size comics publisher. My past experience with fan panels has been a mixed bag. I’m thoroughly terrible at networking, so I didn’t have that as a fallback. Sitting against a blank wall for hours and watching for cosplayers isn’t as inspiring a pastime as you’d think. Sure, we like to see their works and capture their images for the ages, but when that’s all that’s left to do, that usually means something’s gone wrong.

We walked the show floor at least two more times, giving everybody second and third chances to lure me into shopping. The encores were fruitless and only served to sap more health points from us than cash.

As an unplanned rest break, we attended the Q&A for special guests Adam West and Burt Ward, who were as amusing as ever. Hundreds of listeners filled over half the seats in the Wabash Ballroom. Between them and the increasing population roaming the halls, the attendance figures may have crept into the four-figure rang at some point when we weren’t looking.

We even got really creative and tried something we’ve never done before: we went to the official gaming room and checked out a tabletop game. Our first choice was Settlers of Catan, because we’ve never played and we wanted to see why all the fuss and worldwide acclaim. We sat down, opened the box, sifted through the cards and hexagons and gewgaws and whatnot, only to realize the instructions were missing. Enclosed was a comprehensive Catan merchandise flyer inviting us to go Catan-crazy at home, but not a single document teaching newcomers how to play the blasted thing. Way to go, whoever borrowed this before us and didn’t put the rulebook back.

(I’m assuming Catan isn’t one of those elitist things that assumes everyone just magically knows how to play and therefore stopped printing rulebooks years ago, like Super Mario or Euchre. If it is, then I shall dedicate the rest of my life to insulting it as often as possible.)

So I tossed Catan back on the pile and picked up D-Day Dice instead.

Fun coincidence: yet another project made possible by Kickstarter, according to the rulebook’s fine print.

My wife’s a history buff with an emphasis on WWII, so a Normandy invasion simulator sounded right up her alley. By this time we had half an hour to kill before we had to get in line for that 4:15 appointment. Ten of those minutes were wasted on not playing Catan. We spent the other twenty inventorying the contents of the D-Day Dice box, reading the first four or five pages of the thirty-page rulebook, practicing my narrator voice, punching out the remaining cardboard tokens that were still in their original packaging frame, and some light clowning around. We felt we were on our way to some interesting gameplay, but then our time ran out and we had to return it. Here’s hoping we get another chance some other day.

So then there was our 4:15 appointment: a photo-op with Adam West and Burt Ward.

Meet the all-new, all-different Fantastic Four!

That’s another item crossed off my wife’s modest bucket list. Adam West chuckled when he realized we were doing jazz hands.

We made Adam West chuckle.

This accomplishment, in our humble minds, helped redeem some of those hours of (figurative and literal) pacing back-‘n’-forth. Best of all, Awesome Con’s crack team of photo-printing specialists had our hard-copy results ready and in our hands in about three minutes flat. For us, a new convention world record. We also enjoyed the wait before the op, as other fans in line took turns recounting their memories of the Dynamic Duo’s previous visits to Indianapolis. My wife and I first met Burt Ward at least fifteen years when he did a signing at Half Price Books as a guest of the local golden-oldies radio station (now defunct). We’d never seen Adam West in Indy, but she’d met him in a previous year for ten seconds at Wizard World Chicago. Other fans had similar stories and relevant Bat-costumes confirming their reasons for being here.

Shortly after 4:30…that was it for us. The costume contest was at 6:15, but we’d used up our remaining energy killing time till the photo op. General convention enthusiasm and adrenalin had carried us for a while, but when we ran out of reasons to be enthusiastic, our energy bars dropped to zero and we called it a day.

We had no complaints with how the convention was run in general. Everything seemed organized. Prices were more affordable than their Wizard World Chicago equivalents. Lines ran smoothly during those brief occasions when there were lines for anything. The ticket booths were well staffed. Five announced guests canceled, but the showrunners kept us duly informed. They maintained a consistent, engaging presence on Twitter and Facebook. They pelted us locals with primetime TV commercials, morning-show interviews, and newspaper articles. I didn’t see much to nitpick from that perspective.

So where were the fans? I have only this brainstorming list of unfounded guesses:

* None of the guests were major, of-the-moment, popular-now shows or movies — no one from Game of Thrones or Marvel movies.
* The simultaneous Circle City Classic, a major established event in its own right, discouraged the local general population from coming downtown.
* Pumpkin season kept everyone busy.
* The scars carved in the city’s hearts by the mistakes of the Indiana Comic Con still haven’t healed.
* The Midwest convention burnout that I’d previously suspected.

As of this writing I’ve not yet read any reports as to whether Awesome Con Indianapolis 2014 was officially a success or a flop. Like Indy PopCon, they’ve not yet announced any 2015 dates. It felt too lightly attended to us, but I’d be curious to know what others thought, especially the dealers or creators. We enjoyed what we could and remain grateful for what we got out of it. Here’s hoping things went better than we think.

The End. See you next year?

* * * * *

Other chapters in this special miniseries:

* Part 1: Marvel and DC Costumes
* Part 2: More Costumes!

Of all twenty-six pilots in this series, I had more mixed emotions about The Flash in advance than I did any of the rest. When I began collecting comics at age six, Barry Allen was one of the first heroes to teach me about truth, justice, and sequential numbering in long-running comics. I still have issues #270-350, along with the first 200+ issues of Wally West’s subsequent series (including the weirdly numbered Zero Hour and DC One Million crossovers). The first time he came to TV in 1990, I’d taped nearly every episode on VHS years before DVD was a thing, and when it became a thing and the show was eventually granted its release, finally getting to see the legendarily preempted Captain Cold episode was, pardon the expression, pretty cool. Until several years ago, I was a longtime fan of the Flash legacy.

I entered with trepidation into his new vehicle produced by The CW, purveyors of the frequently aggravating Smallville, which left me with so many negative emotions that to this day I still haven’t convinced myself to try a single episode of Arrow because I assumed the results would be similar or worse. (I haven’t forgotten Birds of Prey, either. Yikes.) Knowing that The Flash was a direct spinoff from a show I’m not watching didn’t encourage me, nor did the announcement that both shows are already planning their first crossover (ugh). Insert obligatory reference here to other problems with translating DC heroes to other media, especially movies.

But it’s on the list. So I gave it a try. And I was happy to be surprised. (Fair warning to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet: one paragraph in this entry covers the specific subject of Easter eggs. If you’re a fan of those and plan to savor them as a surprise someday, consider this your courtesy spoiler warning.)

For newcomers to this little corner of the DC Universe: Barry Allen was an awkward crime-lab scientist (decades before the term “CSI” entered the pop-culture lexicon) who suffered an accident involving lightning and chemicals that gave him the gift of super-speed. Good-natured Barry was inspired by others to use his powers for the good of Central City and became…The Flash, The Fastest Man Alive! In recent times, his past was altered retroactively by the tragic event his mother’s murder under paranormal circumstances, adding a touch of pathos to his story but leaving him nonetheless an upright citizen doing the right thing, battling any number of metahuman ne’er-do-wells, and juggling both his work schedule and his free time spent with a girl he liked named Iris. Also, sometimes there was a treadmill that could handle super-speed users.

All of the above is material from the comics that made it into the show. I hadn’t expected such reverence to the source material. Compared to Clark Kent’s ten-year Smallville journey from mopey mophead to Guy Who Agrees to Wear a Costume, and especially compared to seeing 75 years of Batman stories scrambled and reshaped into Gotham‘s disjointed patchwork monster, The Flash practically treats the books as sacred text. Barry’s a good five or ten years younger, and two established characters aren’t white anymore, but nothing’s harmed in the least. If anything, Grant Gustin’s youthful, hopeful version of Barry’s aw-shucks charm accentuates a much-welcome optimistic outlook lacking in other live-action heroes.

Gustin is surrounded with a supporting cast that click well with him, if not necessarily with each other at times. Jesse L. Martin from Law & Order is once again a detective as Joe West, the overprotective father figure who raised young Barry after his mom’s death. He’s also the natural father to Iris West (The Game‘s Candice Patton), who in the comics would later become Barry’s wife, but in the series grew up as his sort-of sister. (Barry’s tight relationship with the Wests from youth onward is the most affecting deviation from the comics.) Joe’s partner is the clean-cut Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett from The Vampire Diaries), a recent transfer from neighboring Keystone City and a name rather recognizable to comics readers. After Barry goes through the paces of his origin story, he befriends and becomes the ongoing project of a science team at S.T.A.R. Labs (a name quite recognizable to Smallville fans), whose very few employees include a pair of young-adult scientists for comic relief and science exposition, overseen by the wheelchair-bound Harrison Wells (NBC’s Ed‘s Tom Cavanaugh) who encourages Barry in all he does but has secrets of his own. Meanwhile in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, there’s Barry’s real dad as played by John Wesley Shipp, a name and face instantly recognizable by fans of the previous TV show.

Unlike most other shows in this project, I’ve now seen two episodes before writing all this down. That might seem unfair, but it’s my project and my rules to warp. The origin story nicely lays out a lot of moving parts and snaps all the characters into their proper playsets, while introducing as our first super-villain the Weather Wizard, a name faintly recognizable to older fans of The Super-Friends. Fans may also note throwaway references to a policeman named Chyre, TV reporter Linda Park, a broken cage with a nameplate reading “Grodd” (another gimme for the Super-Friends crowd), and the prison known as Iron Heights. Episode two brings us the villain called Multiplex (from the Rogues’ Gallery of Firestorm the Nuclear Man); TV’s William Sadler as ignoble rich guy Simon Stagg (who, along with his bodyguard Java, come from the supporting cast of Metamorpho the Element Man); and a casual mention of Iris’ late boyfriend Ronnie, who may or may not be dead and may or may not be related to a certain Nuclear Man. I should also mention the pilot had one scene with very special guest star Stephen Amell from TV’s Arrow.

So far, that’s the only reservation I have about the show: there’s so much material from the comics and cartoons that it’s hard to treat the viewing experience as an hour’s worth of plot and themes and Acting, when the whole thing is designed like a virtual arcade shooting gallery where every name, location, or object I recognize is worth geek points, and maybe after I spot hundreds of them I can trade in for stuffed animals or free pizza. The Flash is so full of Easter eggs that his costume should be made of plastic grass and equipped with a built-in Paas coloring kit. We get it! The showrunners have comics cred! And I know sooner or later we’ll learn that Central City, like every other DC TV/movie city ever, will have hundreds of streets and businesses named after famous writers, artists, and editors. It’ll mean nothing to casual viewers, but I’ll be rolling my eyes when we get to the episode where the Flash has to run down a villain at the old Infantino warehouse at the corner of Broome Street and Fox Lane, which used to be owned by Schwartz Consolidated until they were sold to Bates & Baron Ltd., whose office was on the top floor of Messner-Loebs Plaza over on Guice Avenue, but now the building is rented out to the law firm of Waid LaRocque Wieringo Jimenez Johns Kolins & Manapul. That episode should earn me enough points to win myself a PS3, I think.

Proper nouns notwithstanding, and despite a few one-note supporters that will hopefully have their chances to blossom in the weeks ahead, The Flash is great fun with a likable hero whose chats with his father and his father figure lend the show some proper gravity while he’s learning about great power, great responsibility, knowing your limits before they’re tested, proper police work, and the joys of comic book science.

(Obligatory thing I nearly forgot: the special effects were fine by me. I tend to grade CG visuals in TV shows on a generous curve, wherein anything better than Once Upon a Time gets an easy stamp of approval. I’m willing to grant artistic leeway if it means I can devote more head-space to dwelling on other, more interesting criteria. I daresay, though, in this area The Flash already has a better batting average on my scorecard than Doctor Who.)

(For more information on the MCC 2014 Pilot Binge project, please visit the initial entry for the rationale, the official checklist of pilots, and links to completed entries as we go. Thanks for reading!)

“The power of comics compels you to watch! The power of comics compels you to watch! Um, uh, accio remote!“

It’s time for more comic book TV! Longtime readers know John Constantine from his first appearance as an obnoxious Swamp Thing ally and/or as the star of his own mature-readers DC/Vertigo series that ran for 25 years before it was canceled and replaced by a more mainstream version ready-made for super-hero crossovers. Too many movie viewers first knew him as the focus of just another failed Keanu Reeves vehicle, whose high point was Tilda Swinton as a creepy angel. The new John in NBC’s Constantine is basically Dr. Strange on zero hours’ sleep wearing Harvey Bullock’s clothes. Regardless, the cunning yet selfish antihero has been handled by so many great writers over the decades, shown in so many states of mind operating in so many peculiar ways, that this pilot had no chance of pleasing all the people all of the time.

The basics of the pilot: Matt Ryan plays John Constantine, a sort-of specialized paranormal investigator who carries business cards proclaiming himself “Master of the Dark Arts”. He shows us a few fancy tricks, but his chief marketable skill seems to be curing demonic possession. The pilot has John using his talents like metahuman powers to face off various otherworldly agents who might as well be costumed, all but begging for John to choose himself a super-hero name. And lo, men shall call him…Exorcism Man! Or Super-Exorcist! The Outcaster! Demonstalker! Commander Chalk Circle! The Rune Ranger! The Trafalgar Trenchcoat! The Ritualizer!

The prologue sees John rejecting psychotherapy (you’re not crazy if the mind-blowing evil things you’re seeing are real) and getting nothing out of voluntary shock treatment (doesn’t even muss his hair), then showing us a sample exorcism that goes above and beyond to avoid easy comparison to the Linda Blair prototype, plus throwing in thousands of icky bugs for ambiance. The side effects of the encounter lead him to a young lady named Liv (Lucy Griffiths from True Blood), who’s being menaced by evil demons because she’s a young lady. Along for the ride are a couple of John’s mates from the comics: taxi driver Chas (Charles Halford), of whom those three words are his only aspects to have been translated accurately to TV; and jittery professor Ritchie (Saving Private Ryan‘s Jeremy Davies, arguably the MVP here), who ties in to the infamous Newcastle incident that plays a crucial role in defining John’s character and sentencing him to perdition when he dies, if not sooner.

Meanwhile in a subplot, Lost‘s Harold Perrineau takes over the creepy-angel role as “Manny”, one of those initially useless characters whose sole thankless chore is to tell the hero, “BAD THINGS GONNA HAPPEN SOON.” In case we were expecting singalongs and knot-tying lessons. He does deliver the episode’s most intriguing visual effects in the form of a time-frozen storm that surrounds the scene with motionless water till John wipes it aside like floating tears. Manny isn’t yet a fully evil angel like the ones that Supernatural are probably used to (wouldn’t know, never seen an episode), but “Manny” better not be a terrible pun short for “I am Legion, for we are Manny” or else I’m not even gonna hate-watch future episodes.

All that’s skimming the surface of so much cluttered busyness. Director Neil Marshall (The Descent) wants to introduce too much of John’s world too quickly, in such a hurry to get to the good parts that none of it has time to sink in with any real weight. Here’s a bit from John hitting bottom at Ravenscar! Here’s another new manifestation every ten minutes! Here’s a car crash! Here’re some flashbacks about Newcastle, instead of saving it for a good while like the comics did! Here’s another car crash! Here’s him in action using wand-free magic! Here’s the Helmet of Nabu as a DC Comics Easter egg, the first of thousands of such eggs to come! Here’s Dark John, because we just couldn’t wait to do that trope!

Obviously my comics collection skews my perceptions here. The original Hellblazer had its shocking moments and grotesque concepts, but it also had its subtleties and its quiet horrors. Its baddies also didn’t all feel alike. Judging by the pilot, Constantine could too easily fall into a formulaic exorcism-of-the-week rut unless they plan for demons to find other means of surfacing, or maybe pick on other evils besides just demons. Some nice ghosts or wights or incubi or soccer hooligans or whatever. (I kid less than you think. There was once a Hellblazer story with berserk soccer hooligans. Adapting it for American football fans wouldn’t take much of a rewrite.)

It’s hard for me to judge Matt Ryan’s performance as pass/fail because I imagine he’s working with what’s handed to him. He handles the snarky parts just fine (as in the interview with his psychiatrist), but they’re outnumbered by ultra-serious confrontations of grim stoicism. I wouldn’t mind if Constantine were a blank slate, but to me he’s not. As conceived by writer Alan Moore, John was a cocky, insufferable know-it-all. He was a master manipulator who made sure he was in the right place at the right time, who knew what resources he needed, who usually delegated all the paranormal tasks to others, and had no problem conning everyone into doing the necessary things, even if it meant they’d hate him after the day was saved. If he was rattled, it meant something. Ryan’s version so far hasn’t been asked to capture the confident verve or negotiate the amoral sacrifices that set John apart from his comics contemporaries. Perhaps that’s yet to come, but it’s disappointing that John’s original traits were less important to the TV people than all the other bullet points they made time for cramming into the pilot.

John’s initial charm was also partly lent by the fact that we didn’t know if he was a magician or not. Blatant magical acts were a later addition to his repertoire when future writers grew bored with the coyness. With this version, there’s no question that he’s memorized incantations and can lay down a power-circle setup without doing any Rupert Giles library research or skimming Wizard Wikipedia first.

Constantine may be one of those series that needs a few episodes for all involved to find a suitable working rhythm, especially since we already know the character of Liv was written out after the pilot and will be replaced with someone else next week. Maybe the altered chemistry will bring other edits and discoveries along with it. At first glance, though, the show looks to be headed to the same TV-adaptation discard pile as other Alan Moore comics co-creations such as Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell. (V for Vendetta arguably didn’t stray quite as far from concept to cinema.) I suspect DC Comics and Warner Brothers are uninterested in spine-chilling tales of the unexpected and keen to introduce ten more magical DC heroes so we’ll have the entire Justice League Dark ready to launch for the season finale. As if John Constantine’s series were just another super-hero IP. I guess it is now, innit?

[MCC 2014 Pilot Binge stats: Minutes passed before I wanted the show to go away: 24. For more information on the MCC 2014 Pilot Binge project, please visit the initial entry for the rationale, the official checklist of pilots, and links to completed entries as we go. Thanks for reading!]