Merchandise and props are keen to look at, but every convention needs guests, fans, and a functional staff. (Photo: outtake from our C2E2 2014 collection.)

After our mixed experience with the first last month, my wife and I were disappointed to learn today that their next show, Awesome Con Milwaukee, which had been scheduled for the weekend before Thanksgiving, has been canceled. On November 5th Awesome Conventions President Ben Penrod posted a statement on their official Facebook page that read in part:

We initially planned for this event to be a huge celebration of comics and pop culture, but we had a number of challenges, and things just weren’t coming together in a few areas. Providing an unforgettable convention experience is key to Awesome Con’s entire existence, but it was looking more and more like this con wasn’t going to be able to live up to its name or your expectations for what Awesome Con is. Rather than falling short, we have decided to cancel this year’s event.

I’m truly sorry, and I’m sad, and I completely understand that you will be upset with us (and we are upset, as well). I appreciate everyone who signed up for the con, everyone who bought a table or booth, everyone who supported us and all of our partners in Milwaukee. It means a lot to us and we’re very sorry that we are letting you down.

We hadn’t been planning on driving to Milwaukee for the occasion, but we’re sorry to see cons fall apart and the fan disappointment that follows. To their credit, it’s nobler and wiser to pull the plug on a compromised show up front than to follow through and watch it all crumble down around you. We’ve seen cautionary tales recently in which cons didn’t recognize their boundaries, such as the Rhode Island Comic Con (where the showrunners oversold by a broad margin and capacity overload forced a fire marshal lockdown) and Epic Con in Dayton, OH (where multiple guests canceled on short notice for a variety of reasons, largely blaming the promoters). The regrets and rage-filled anecdotes are many, it seems.

The 2014 midwest convention explosion has been a wondrous convenience for fans like us with dim hopes of ever traveling to San Diego. We’ve been spoiled by having many more options in our backyard. For many years Gen Con has been the only large-scale geek gathering to grace Indianapolis with its presence. When a bunch of entertainment promoters unanimously decidedly over the past year-plus that the Circle City needed more spending opportunities, for a while we felt like prom royalty. As we’ve reported here on MCC in checking out some of these cons throughout 2014, we’ve had our ups and downs, our victory laps and our letdowns. At this point it’s hard to predict for certain what the 2015 convention landscape will look like, but we hope it reflects recovery from hard lessons learned.

The end of 2014 is near, but we already have at least four cons penciled on the calendar for the next five months. If the shows go on and everything’s awesome, here’s what our future may hold:

* Starbase Indy 2014 (November 28-30): It’s a smaller-scale gathering than all the other cons under discussion here, but it’s long-running and it’s the one con we’ve attended more times than any other. To be honest, we had considered skipping this year’s for the sake of responsible budget cutting. That decision was made months before a very special name was added to their guest list: Deep Space Nine‘s Nana Visitor. In our household DS9 remains the greatest Star Trek series of all time, but my wife’s Trek autograph collection has several holes in it where their cast’s should be. When Visitor’s name was announced, my wife had our tickets lined up within 24 hours. So that’s where we’ll be when Black Friday ends.

* Wizard World Indianapolis (February 13-15): At last, Wizard World likes us! They really like us! So far they’ve lined up The Shatner, convention mainstays Lou Ferrigno and James Marsters, five folks from The Walking Dead (Sasha, Abraham, Beth, the cannibal Gareth, and Merle Dixon from Guardians of the Galaxy), Ensign Mayweather from the lamentable Enterprise, Carroll Spinney (THE Big Bird!), and actors from shows we don’t watch such as Arrow, Spartacus, and Vampire Diaries. On the comics side, they’re featuring several artists who frequent our usual Chicago cons. That’s a healthy list for an inaugural con, but we’ll see how many Hoosiers will brave the winter weather for it and be willing to consider this their Valentine’s Day plan. We haven’t bought our tickets yet because I guess we’re waiting for the roster to keep growing, or for Wizard World to shut it down and admit it’s all a prank to mess with us.

* Indiana Comic Con (March 13-15): The show that disappointed the largest number of citizens in 2014 has much to live down with its sophomore effort, but they’re doubling down and swearing they can change. Consider the names they’ve allegedly signed so far: Carrie Fisher. Doctor Who‘s Jenna Coleman. John Rhys-Davies. Prim from The Hunger Games. Jason Momoa and Carice van Houten from Game of Thrones. Several voice actors including Billy West and Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Comics legends like Jim Steranko, Mike Zeck, Mike Grell, Barry Kitson, and quite a few more. This could be the greatest Indiana convention of them all if they’ve quintupled their Convention Center space, learned how to communicate, developed training programs for their volunteers, and consulted with other convention companies to figure out how things are supposed to work. I’d buy us three-day passes right now if I had any confidence in them. Current mood: still skittish.

* C2E2 2015 (April 24-26): Just because we have more local options doesn’t mean we’ve turned our backs on Chicago, especially since it’s the only convention within decent driving distance that any of the major comics companies acknowledge and attend. It’s too soon for them to have much of a guest list pinned, but I already bought our tickets.

Naturally all plans are subject to change without notice. Other cons may pop up as time goes on, though as of this writing Indy Pop Con is still struggling to negotiate a date for their second annual gig, and Awesome Con hasn’t shown any optimistic signs of returning. Here’s hoping for a more successful 2015 for any and all showrunners who dream of making it here. You’re all welcome to try. We hope you watched closely in 2014 and took a lot of notes.

Extremely honorable mention: Captain America’s sidekick Bucky, comics old-school style.

As of last weekend my wife and I officially finished our 2014 convention schedule. We attended seven cons this year, our new all-time record. In addition to our annual Chicago trips, Indianapolis itself became the epicenter of a Midwest convention explosion and offered us more opportunities than ever to meet comics creators, greet actors old and young, buy cool stuff, and see lovingly crafted costumes drawn from across several decades and all available media. Some cons fared better than others; some will return in 2015 with lessons learned and bigger plans than ever; and at least one will be a mere footnote in local geek history. At least two more newcomers, Wizard World Indianapolis and Culture Shock, are also inviting themselves to the dance for 2015. Somehow our convention bubble is bursting and expanding at the same time.

We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover would like to thank the crew and guests of all the cons we attended this year, throw a shout-out to those people we met whose names we didn’t catch (and vice versa), and salute the scores of cosplayers we saw, photographed, and appreciated for their presence, their fandom, their inspired creativity, and their fortitude in the face of the physical rigors, the construction costs, the naysayers, the gatekeepers, and the gawkers like us who stop you every three feet because either (a) we don’t get you but we love what you did, or (b) we do get you and your brilliant character choice just made our day.

In particular, this entry goes out to fifteen of the standouts we captured from among that vast, maddeningly talented crowd. Thanks for helping make our 2014 an unprecedented, wondrous, far-out year of geekiness.

And now, on with the countdown!

15. ’90s Aquaman

The grim-‘n’-gritty, harpoon-handed version of the Atlantean ruler may have been deleted from DC’s history books, but some of us appreciated that era when we didn’t have to look at that orange fish-skin shirt for a while.

14. Strawberry Shortcake

Gender-swapping is such a not-new concept in the cosplay arena that I’ve stopped using the term in more recent entries. This one, I think, discovered a new level of bravery. I had to burrow through several layers of denial before I could accept exactly who this was.

13. Toothless

How to Train Your Dragon is my favorite DreamWorks Animated film to date, so I’m pretty tickled whenever someone brings more attention to it.

12. Morpheus, Lord of Dreams

The star of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman walked among us in the waking world, and he even brought the ruby, the helmet, and the pouch of sand. Unique accessories make the man.

11. Barriss Offee

Our local chapter of the 501st Legion ensures that no convention passes through town without Stormtroopers on duty, but Jedi have been a dwindling breed. (We’ll see an impact from The Force Awakens on the future cosplay scene, I’m sure.) The fine robes of Luminara Unduli’s padawan are a rare yet welcome choice for Star Wars representation.

10. Surfing Joker

As seen on the old Batman TV show! Yes, this Joker variant really was from an episode. If you think the Clown Prince of Crime looks odd with a surfboard, you should’ve seen Adam West trying to hang ten.

9. Hatsune Miku

Indy Pop Con had the best possible setup for fans who like taking pics of cosplayers: the long path to the stage wound through the audience like a series of connected runways, giving this fabulously dressed Japanese pop personality the perfect opportunity to strike well-timed poses up close instead of through pixelated zooming.

8. FrankenBerry and a 17-foot dragon

Two of this year’s largest costumes met at C2E2 and practically crowded away their opponents. We also caught FrankenBerry making encore appearances at Indy Pop Con and Starbase Indy, working the convention circuit and putting that slacker Count Chocula to shame.

7. Hawkeye and Nightwing

Not a convention photo! Every year for Free Comic Book Day in May, Indianapolis’ own Downtown Comics North has several cosplayers on hand to dazzle and/or wrangle the crowd while everyone waits their turn for freebies. Hawkeye’s suit here uses Jeremy Renner’s template, but adds those little touches like the hair and the sunglasses that remind me more of the comics than Renner’s just-okay rendition.

6. Rosie the Riveter and General Douglas MacArthur

Meet key figures from two fields woefully underrepresented at cons: history and advertising! My wife the history buff recognized MacArthur before I did, but I recognized Rosie before she did. Funny how that worked out.

5. 8-bit Sephiroth

Rather than populate the entire list with Final Fantasy characters, which was pretty tempting, I limited myself to the one that surprised me the most. It’s like ye olde FFVII emerged from my TV in all its glorious polygonal awkwardness.

4. Purple Bane

Prince meets pulverizer in this super-musical mash-up, whose Gen Con stage presentation naturally included a few reworked lyrics from the song. I still owe him an apology for delaying him several extra seconds while I struggled with clicking the button and laughing myself silly at the same time.

3. Ash and Team Rocket

Jessie! James!
Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light!
Surrender now, or prepare to fight!
And me, ASH! That’s…wait, that’s not right.

…those priceless expressions win the photo.

2. Ms. Marvel

2014 brought us the redoubtable Kamala Khan, Marvel’s newest sensation and star of one of the year’s best series. I didn’t expect to meet her in person this soon, and yet there she was.

1. Dazzler and Disco Deadpool

You probably know Deadpool. You’ve probably seen other Deadpool cosplay variants. You may not know Dazzler, who was Marvel’s attempt at cashing in on the 1970s disco craze. It might’ve worked if her first appearance hadn’t been in 1980, pretty much when disco was dead and in the hands of its pallbearers. Here, Dazzler and Disco Deadpool brought the moves, the swagger, the fascinatin’ rhythm, and their own groovy boom box full of jams, and they got down.

…

For the casually curious or the cosplay aficionado, assembled below are links to all of MCC’s cosplay entries for 2014, comprising seven conventions and one special event. Enjoy!

Indiana Comic Con: [single entry]
C2E2: [Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three]
Free Comic Book Day 2014 : [single entry]
Indy Pop Con: [Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five] [Part Six]
Gen Con: [Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
Wizard World Chicago: [Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
Awesome Con Indianapolis: [Part One] [Part Two]
Starbase Indy: [single entry]

…

…and for those of you who follow current events in the world of comics and/or conventions and are wondering if this entry was at all inspired by the big, lamentable Pat Broderick ruckus…well, yes. Yes, this is an intentional show of support for the side we’ve chosen. My wife and I wrote to excess about all of this previously, the last time this conversation happened, and at the moment we’re out of new things to say. The short version for newcomers: if you’re an artist who’s struggling to turn a profit at comics conventions, targeting sartorially exuberant fans as your scapegoat will not solve your most crippling issues.

When I was 13, DC Comics Presents #85 was one of many issues I bought that crossed over with DC’s epic event Crisis on Infinite Earths, back when buying tie-in issues was a new concept and I was easily persuaded to spend extra money on comics. For longtime MCC followers who don’t know comics, now you know the origin of the phrase “Crisis Crossover”, which was a thing for a long time.

Reprinted below is an edited version of the 1200-word answer I cranked out earlier this evening in half an hour off the top of my head. My response didn’t require much research, soul-searching, or structural fussiness. It’s rare that anyone asks me a question that spurs such an immediate, entry-length response, so I’m archiving it here for future reference the next time someone asks.

(The full-length, more carefully crafted version would be three times as long and take more hours to fine-tune than I have at my disposal tonight. Another time, perhaps)

* * * * *

Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths and two Secret Wars events brought in the big bucks back in the mid-to-late ’80s or so, Marvel and DC have each averaged one major company-wide crossover event per year ever since — sometimes in recent years more than one annually. At first each crossover felt like a must-read event, but after so many years you could tell this was becoming a corporate-mandated thing. Usually it’s not one or more writers telling the editors, “Hey, I have this cool idea for a big crossover. Can we do it?” It’s more like, the editors come to the writers and ask, “Okay, so we need to get this year’s crossover going. Whaddya got?” Or worse, the editors ordering them, “We’ve decided such-and-such is this year’s crossover. Deal with it.”

I’ve read complaints over the years from writers who were working on a given series, had their own plots and subplots set up and ongoing, everything mapped out for months and sometimes years in advance, only to have their plans derailed when an editor told them one or more future issues would now be crossover tie-ins. They either had to rewrite their carefully laid plans to accommodate this intrusion, junk their plans and just do crossover story only, or step aside for one or more issues while some other writer took their paycheck for a few months and wrote the crossover issues instead. And I’ve read more than a few comics where you could tell the crossover issues weren’t exactly a happy, welcome challenge for the regular writer.

It’s something that’s come to bug me ever since, every time I see it happen to a series that was going awesomely, and then it turned terrible for the span of the crossover, and then it tried to go back to being awesome, depending on whether or not the crossover had any lingering effects that messed up the writer’s long-term outline. Some writers have even walked away from series altogether when given the ultimatum of “crossover or get out”.

Here’s a hypothetical analogy of how that same approach would work in another medium. This will make more sense to Buffy fans, but the general idea should be easy to spot.

You’re running Buffy season 6. You’ve got a lot of plot lines laid out — Buffy’s return from the dead, the Xander/Anya thing blossoming, Willow and Tara as the doomed lovers later on, the Axis of Evil Dorks putting their heads together, Giles planning his exit, and so on. You’ve decided episode 7 is gonna be the one where Buffy admits she was happy in Heaven until her friends resurrected her under the mistaken, unflattering impression that she was suffering in Hell and needed to be rescued. And you’re gonna make it a musical. Songs are written, the cast is rehearsing, at least one of them is rushed through singing lessons, some light choreography is involved. Everyone’s working hard but really hyped for this thing that all leads up to a key confrontation between Buffy and her friends that’s kind of a big deal, and you’re sure the fans will get a kick out of it and be floored by the emotional impact at the same time.

And then the CW executives show up at your office two weeks before the airdate you picked months ago and they tell you that no, we need episodes 7 and 8 to be a crossover with our new hit series Smallville. Clark Kent should come to Sunnydale hot on the trail of some meteor-freak, and he and Buffy need to meet, flirt, fight the freak, punch vampires, and the fans all die happy. P.S.: Screw your musical plans, and if there’s time for that Buffy/Scoobies argument, feel free to cram it into the last thirty seconds of episode 8, or into one of the Smallville episodes involved in the same four-part crossover. Oh, and did we mention it’ll be four parts? You should probably call their producers and hash out some details. Annnnnnd GO.

This, more often than not, is how comics crossovers frequently work according to the numerous anecdotes I’ve read from comics writers over the past 20+ years, and how I came to loathe them when I could see this kind of nonsense in action.

Also: every crossover crams anywhere between ten and literally five hundred characters into a single story, and the odds of the writer(s) getting all those characterizations correct are a million to one, even if Best Editor Ever is playing traffic cop. The odds of more than three characters getting to do anything meaningful for more than one panel are even slimmer. In most cases what you get is armies of good guys versus armies of bad guys, all of which add up to one very large, busy poster cut into the shape of a comic book. If you replaced 90% of the forces on both sides with faceless henchmen, odds are great that it wouldn’t affect the story one bit, except it would contain fewer merchandise faces. I guess if the costumes mean more to you than the characters inside them, they make for pretty pictures even if their words and actions mean nothing within their own context.

Also also: there’s the part where major crossover events can’t be properly understood unless you buy all the chapters involved, which more often than not will include some books you aren’t already collecting. Publishers want you to buy all the chapters because that’s how crossover bucks are made. Some writers will try to create self-contained short stories that read well with or without the broader context. This attitude is not conducive to short-term flash-in-the-pan sales-spike bragging rights and is therefore not usually encouraged at the editorial level.

As for me, I read the series I like, and if I have to buy other books so that the series I like will continue to make any sense, I get downright resentful, especially if it’s another series — or a dozen other series — in which I will have zero interest under all possible circumstances, crossover or not. Some comics fans apparently love being ordered to try new series and/or will buy whatever they’re instructed to buy. I lost that urge for crossover compliance a long time ago.

The effects in other media aren’t normally so shoddily planned or disruptive from an artistic perspective, but they’re privileged to different circumstances. X-Men: Days of Future Past, even after a second viewing the other night, remains one of the most brilliant crossovers I’ve encountered in any medium in years. It was essentially the seventh chapter in a seven-part crossover that meant more if you watched the first six X-Men movies that led up to it, but those were released over a fourteen-year period, so fans have had time to catch them all at their leisure.

Now imagine if DoFP were the culmination of a twenty-movie crossover, and those twenty movies had to be released in theaters over a precise three-month span, March-May 2014, and they didn’t start writing eight of those movies until November 2013, and also they wanted thirty more mutants added in the mix somewhere for merchandising purposes, but they had to meet that deadline anyway, because that’s what Fox wanted, because $$$$$. No matter what shape they were in, Fox insisted all twenty films had to be released during those three months. By any means necessary, even if it meant using 8mm garage-film effects and any actors available on zero-minute notice, down to the Pauly Shore/Tom Arnold/Paris Hilton level if need be. Period.

Now how much do you think you’d like crossovers?

Ransom Riggs’ Hollow City, one of a precious few 2014 books I actually read in 2014.

Presented below is my full list of books, graphic novels, and trade collections that I finished reading in 2014, in order of completion. Three were part of a 3-in-1 Sci-Fi Book Club edition and made sense to read back-to-back, but consequently took up more reading weeks than I expected. A few other items were pure catch-up of books that had been sitting on the unread shelf for far too long and were technically irrelevant by the time I got around to them. As I whittle down the never-ending stack that’s bothered me for decades, my long-term hope before I turn 60 is to get to the point where my reading list is more than, say, 40% new releases every year. That’s a lofty goal, but I can dream

That list, then:

1. Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Kurt Huggins, et al., The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice
2. Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Shawn McManus, et al. Fables, vol. 19: Snow White
3. Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, The Sixth Gun, v. 1: Cold Dead Hands
4. Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, The Sixth Gun, v. 2: Crossroads
5. Nathan Edmondson and Tonci Zonjic, Who is Jake Ellis?
6. Joe Harris and Steve Rolston, Ghost Projekt
7. Alex De Campi, Igor Kordey, et al., Smoke/Ashes
8. Guy DeLisle, A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting
9. Kathryn and Stuart Immonen, Moving Pictures
10. Paul Jenkins, Ramon Bachs, Shawn Martinbrough, et al., World War Hulk: Front Line
11. Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts 1989-1990
12. Ransom Riggs, Hollow City: the Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children
13. Max Collins and Terry Beatty, Return to Perdition
14. Jeremy Dale, Skyward, vol. 1: Into the Woods
15. Greg Pak, Ariel Olivetti, Giuseppe Comuncoli, et al, Incredible Hulk: Son of Banner
16. Greg Pak, Ron Garney, and Jackson Guice, Skaar, Son of Hulk
17. Greg Pak, Brian Reed, Tom Raney, Brian Ching, Barry Kitson, et al, Incredible Hulks: Dark Son
18. Tom Bancroft, Opposite Forces
19. Ken Krekeler, Westward, vol. 1
20. Greg Pak, Jonathan Coulton, Takeshi Miyazawa, Code Monkey Save World
21. Michael May, Jason Copland, Kill All Monsters! vol. 1: Ruins of Paris
22. Bob Mould, See a Little Light: the Trail of Rage and Melody
23. Jim Butcher, Storm Front
24. Jim Butcher, Fool Moon
25. Jim Butcher, Grave Peril
26. Jeremy Dale, Skyward, vol. 2: Strange Creatures
27. Warren Ellis and Mike McKone, Avengers: Endless Wartime
28. Danny Fingeroth, Mike Manley, et al., Darkhawk Classic vol 1
29. Various, Playlist: a Comic Book Anthology
30. Paul Sizer, BPM
31. Jane Irwin with Jeff Berndt, Vögelein: Clockwork Faerie
32. Gilbert Hernandez, Sloth
33. Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel, The Quitter
34. Daniel T. Thomsen, Corinna Bechko, Michael William Kaluta, et al., Once Upon a Time: Shadow of the Queen
35. Charles Soule and Renzo Podesta, 27: First Set
36. Charles Soule and Renzo Podesta, 27: Second Set
37. Richard Price, Clockers
38. Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts 1991-1992
39. Rick Remender and Wes Craig, Deadly Class, vol. 1: Reagan Youth
40. Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin, Princeless, vol. 1: Save Yourself
41. Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Russ Braun, Steve Leialoha, et al., Fables, v. 20: Camelot
42. Bill Willingham, Peter & Max: a Fables Novel
43. Donovan Scherer, Fear & Sunshine

Here’s what they look like shelved together:

By way of comparison, my yearly book count from 2008 to the present has trended like so:

2008: 39
2009: 50
2010: 44
2011: 33
2012: 23
2012: 42

You can sort of tell which year Midlife Crisis Crossover began and took a toll on my free time. That’s one of the consequences when you shift your hobbying gears from input to output.

My three personal favorites in the stack:

* Clockers: The widely acclaimed 1992 novel is basically an A+++++ prototype for The Wire, to which Price would later contribute and probably help inspire. The alternating New Jersey street-level storylines of Strike the drug-corner manager and Rocco the murder po-lice are often as detailed, engrossing, and heartbreaking as The Wire could be, likewise bolstered with a large cast of characters and so many lamentably real-life scenes of squalor from a broken world no one wants to see. This is the kind of masterpiece that makes me want to stop collecting comics and graphic novels forever so I can just read nothing but rich, moving, engrossing works like this for the rest of my life. I’m afraid and curious at the same time to see how Spike Lee’s film adaptation treated it.

* Hollow City: In which present-day Jacob Portman and the time-displaced students continue fleeing from the bad guys while trying to find a solution to Miss Peregrine’s ongoing predicament, meeting a few new peculiars in unusual places and times, and running and running and running. The ambiance carries over effortlessly from the series’ first book (as previously covered on MCC), and I’m annoyed that I didn’t see the final-act climactic twist coming, but I’m intrigued by the implications of the very last twist. The final bit of dialogue is such a blatant, movie-ready kiss-off line that I had to laugh, and now I’m excited for more.

* The Quitter: Harvey Pekar, the late curmudgeon and creator of the autobiographical American Splendor goes back to pre-adulthood for the first time to tell the story of his upbringing in ethnic Cleveland neighborhoods, where he constantly started fights, threw away opportunities, and made a lot of poor choices that led to his lifetime spent as a struggling nervous wreck of a writer. If you like Pekar, it’s mandatory reading as the most candid, self-flagellating book he ever wrote. Haspiel remains one of my favorite among Pekar’s illustrators and he’s in top form here — well capturing the anguish, the anger, and the humility that didn’t overwhelm Pekar until years after the sins of his youth had taken their toll. (Full disclosure: I previously expressed my Pekar appreciation in an experimental fumetti post about our 2013 visit to Cleveland, which included stops at his gravesite and his library statue. So I’m a predisposed fan.)

Three least favorites:

* Darkhawk Classic: Writer/creator Danny Fingeroth was a guest at Wizard World Chicago and I felt obliged to buy something from him because of his long career as a renowned Marvel editor during my childhood, but a nine-issue compendium of a ’90s teen antihero with a standard ’90s compound name was not the best way to go. When you’re laughing at a book that’s not trying to be funny, and imagining yourself inserted into the bottom of every page with two wisecracking robots on either side of you, it’s possible you’re just not into that book.

* Once Upon a Time: A prequel to the TV series about the intertwined lives of Evil Queen Regina and her manservant the Huntsman — i.e., season 1’s Storybrooke sheriff. It’s a flashback team-up of one of the show’s best characters with one of its least delineated. Without Lana Parrilla’s delightful malevolence bringing Regina to life, everything felt flat and…well, like a rusty old fairy tale.

* Assorted Incredible Hulk(s): I’m the kinda-proud-ish owner of over 200 consecutive issues of The Incredible Hulk, but walked away in the ’90s when Marvel increasingly opted for “new” directions that bored me. When I discovered the Greg Pak/Fred Van Lente version a while back (which all started with the well-regarded Planet Hulk), I began tracking down collections of other story arcs I missed during their years in control. Some were written by other folks and just weren’t the same; others are nearly meaningless when read out of original publishing order years after the fact. I stopped collecting them all when I realized I was buying them just to own them, as opposed to buying them for reading joy. That young man’s gotta-catch-‘em-all! impulse has been fading for me more and more in recent times.

* * * * *

Jeremy Dale, creator of Skyward, at Indiana Comic Con 2014. Photo by Anne Golden.

Two of the volumes listed above, from the all-ages fantasy series Skyward, were written and illustrated by a young creator named Jeremy Dale, whom my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting at Indiana Comic Con back in March. I viewed samples of his work online on a recommendation from my local comic shop, liked what I saw, and made a point of seeking out his table.

No thanks to the ludicrous overpopulation situation I described previously, meeting him required us to wind our way around the thickening, increasingly disgruntled crowds and to burrow a hole through George Perez’s autograph line, which was scores of fans long and formed a blockade in front of several Artists Alley tables, including Dale’s own. Fortunately the convention map was one of the few things done right and I was able to locate him despite zero visual contact.

I expressed my appreciation, bought Volume 1 from him on the spot, and a few months later picked up Volume 2 the week of release. I was looking forward to seeing where the story and its assorted characters would go in future volumes.

On November 3rd, Jeremy Dale passed away three weeks before his 35th birthday. Words keep falling flat every time I try to articulate my reaction to any extent beyond how that absolutely, irrevocably sucks.

Thanks, Jeremy — for your books, your talents, and your all-too-microscopic time with us.

Or, “How My Wife and I Spent Valentine’s Day”. With special guest star Karen Gillan!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we attended the first annual Wizard World Indianapolis, the newest version of the geek convention franchise that’s popped up in numerous major cities nationwide. Part One was all our costume pics; Part Two is the rest of our experience, including but not limited to the fun photo op seen above.

Last year’s Indianapolis convention experience were so varied in results that we had no idea whether to expect crowds massive enough to violate the fire code, or a deserted landscape with only the guests and ourselves as the only signs of life. Saturday programing was scheduled to begin at 10. Per our normal procedure for any other con, we arrived downtown a little before 7:30. Some downtown garages and breakfast restaurants hadn’t even opened yet. After grabbing standard fare from a Panera Bread, where I’m pretty sure we were their first customers (we had to wait for the bagel toaster to warm up), we trudged over to the Indiana Convention Center and found volunteers on duty, plus a handful of fellow early-bird attendees scattered and loitering.

Definitely the right place. We’ve met the same decades-old, photo-ruining carpet many times before.

We were the first ones to approach the designated starting point for the official non-VIP entry line. We made ourselves as comfortable as one can on hard gymnasium flooring for the next hour-plus. We chatted, we met other people near us, I took advantage of modern phone technology for as long as my pitiful battery would allow.

Strange but true: our line was ushered into the exhibit hall ten minutes before showtime. This never happens. Regardless, it was on.

By Wizard World standards, this was a really compact show. The exhibitors’ section and Artists Alley took slightly over an hour to peruse to our satisfaction, but I was pleased to find one dealer carrying trades for $5 a pop, and one back-issue dealer who helped me fill a long-standing hole in my collection. As of this weekend, I now have copies of all 125 issues of Power Man & Iron Fist. (Don’t give me look. I don’t mock your goals, do I?)

Hey, kids! Giant comics! Take your pick — Batman in his ’70s Dark Knight Detective prime, or Marvel in their ’70s heroes-punching-heroes prime.

In Artists Alley, I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Salicrup, whose 20-year career at Marvel spanned my entire childhood and saw him rise to the rank of editor during my prime reading years. I fondly remember when he presided over Marvel Age, their in-house comic-sized promotional series that could’ve just been 32 pages of dry advertising if Salicrup and his team hadn’t also made it a tongue-in-cheek delight with material from funnymen like Fred Hembeck, Kyle Baker, and future writer/novelist Peter David. Salicrup is currently an editor at Papercutz, whose line of young-readers’ graphic novels include new Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys volumes that I’ve seen stocked at our local library.

Gary Scott Beatty is an indie writer/illustrator who edits and contributes to Indie Comics Magazine, a black-‘n’-white anthology for creators looking to do done-in-one short stories outside the usual publishers. I bought a couple of issues but haven’t had a chance to read them yet, though I noticed a couple of pieces from Arsenic Lullaby creator Douglas Paszkiewicz.

Both gents were a pleasure to meet, and I made sure to fork over some money to each of them.

The actors’ guest list contained several big names we’ve met in years past (cf. our previous pre-planning entry), but three names on the list stood out to us.

The biggest, most established name on that list: Big Bird from Sesame Street. In real life he’s called Caroll Spinney, but he’s Big Bird to all the good little boys and girls out there. In his busy schedule he’s also the voice of Oscar the Grouch.

He signed his 8×10 photo three times: once as himself, and once on behalf of each character. If you bought a copy of his autobiography at the table, he also sketched a little bird inside. Although Indianapolis temperatures were in the teens and winds were blustery to a painful degree, he and his wife were grateful to have escaped from the east-coast blizzard apocalypse for a few days.

My wife, a longtime Star Trek fan, also wanted to meet Anthony Montgomery from Enterprise, where he played helmsman Travis Mayweather. Montgomery happens to be Hoosier-born and a Ball State grad. Three cheers for hometown artists!

His current focus is on a new project called Miles Away, which so far has come to life as a graphic novel published through the old indie pros at Antarctic Press. He’s hoping to see the characters make the jump to animation and rattled off a list of established actors on board for voices, funding pending. Gotta be honest: based on the several enthusiastic minutes Montgomery spent with us, his four seasons on Enterprise barely reflected a scant fraction of his vibrant personality and energy.

At noon we risked the peril of seeking lunch outside the Convention Center because their food is unappealing and sometimes harmful, and yet hundreds of starving people will line up for it anyway rather than risk separating from the shindig for even one second. Unfortunately, we didn’t know the winter weather outside had become even more harmful. The snow never rose above a mild flurry, but the gusts felt about eighty below zero and were like man-eating bees trying to gnaw at our exposed flesh.

‘Twas true: a block east of the Convention Center, restaurants had no lines and plenty of hot, edible grub, for anyone who chose to brave the bleak ice-world gauntlet.

Upon our return to happy warm geek land, we joined the line to meet the Karen Gillan very briefly, costar of Doctor Who and Guardians of the Galaxy and a sitcom this one time. The line gave me time to think, reflect, and see how other people tweeting at #WizardWorld were spending their day.

(That last one is true: last August on a lark I decided to give their onsite Wi-Fi access a whirl. I signed up and paid for it, and then at some point someone else logged into it using my credentials and kept me locked out for long stretches of the day. I blamed it on my old phone and poor service until I got home, reviewed the billing summary, and noted more than one device had been using it. My phone was the only internet-capable device either of us had on our persons during our entire time on the show floor. The company graciously refunded my fees, but good luck selling that service to me for the rest of my life.)

Gillan’s photo-op experience still proved to have a much shorter line than her autograph table, and, as shown in the lead photo, it gave us another opportunity for a jazz-hands performance, like our previous 5-second encounter with her former costar Matt Smith.

At 2:30 we switched gears for something completely different. WWIndy was using the Convention Center’s Halls I, J, and K, plus the 500 Ballroom and a handful of meeting rooms. Happening next door in Hall H was the Indiana Home & Garden Show, which is exactly what it sounds like. We knew there was a chance of having some time to pass between events, and, wonder of wonders, I was able to obtain free passes through my employer. For us, the H&G Show was on. Because free time and free passes are a winning combination.

Hey, kids! Spas!

…so that killed about fifteen minutes. Also, fun discovery from our whimsical exploration:

Goofy but true: the folks at Pocket Pets had staked out both conventions. I thought they were a bizarre fit when we passed their WWIndy booth, but when we walked past the same materials in Hall H, I had to laugh.

This is the H&G version of the Pocket Pets stand. The WWIndy version had no discernible differences, not even some super-hero sketches or signage written in Comic Sans.

We bailed out of the H&G Show with only a free pen to show for it, and had just enough time to make the 3:00 Q&A with Karen Gillan. The 500 Ballroom seats several hundred (it’s the same room where Gen Con’s Costume Contest is held every year), but we ended up sitting on the floor in the far corner due to popularity and decent convention turnout. This was our view:

Healthy crowd. Among the copious notes my wife took:

* Loves the challenge of doing non-Scottish accents, and even gave us a sample of what an American Amy Pond might sound like. Imagine her Selfie character saying, “Doctor! What’s happening? Rory’s dead again!” and there you go.

* Recently filmed a Western with Ethan Hawke and John Travolta called In A Valley of Violence.

* A fan handed her some kind of epic-length poem to read. She made it through a few lines until the trusty moderator saved the day.

* When she left the show, she took a pair of binoculars from the TARDIS and Amy’s ‘A’ necklace.

* Favorite episode: “The Eleventh Hour”.
* There were lots and lots of “What’s your favorite _____?” questions.
* Had no idea about River Song’s backstory, but Alex Kingston knew the whole time.
* If there were a female Doctor in the cards, her dream-casting would be Helen Mirren or Kate Mulgrew.

* Oculus was fun for her to make as a fan of old horror movies.
* She did indeed read The Infinity Gauntlet as part of her Guardians research.
* She doesn’t drive.
* Unfulfilled dream role: Lady MacBeth.

…and a good time was had by all.

After she left, we got up, nabbed a pair of actual seats, and stayed for the next attraction: the William Shatner.

His Q&A was a different experience altogether. He opened with a twenty-minute soliloquy about his Indiana ties (his wife’s from the town of Lebanon and their wedding was in nearby Brownsburg), horse-related things because that’s a passion of his, and some other things that were probably related but I didn’t write down. In the other twenty-five minutes remaining, he took five (5) questions in all. From an ordinary actor, each question might have merited a fifteen-second response. Most likely this would happen:

FAN: “What do you think of Star Trek Continues?” [a fan-made project]
MOST PEOPLE: “Haven’t seen it.”

Not from Shatner. The minutes-long answer digressed several area codes away from that subject and touched on the mythologies we create to explain phenomena such as UFOs, concepts of quantum superposition, and the Madden video games. When asked his opinion of Chris Pine, his first thought was, “I burn with envy,” and then he went on for several more paragraphs about other things in galaxies far, far away. Still another seemingly superficial inquiry sent Shatner into an existential reverie about the nature of self-definition and what all of our roles really, truly mean in the final analysis. Or something like that.

I’m not sure if Shatner’s simply bored with normal questions and avoided pat answers to keep himself interested, or if this was part of the grand act of Shatner Being Shatner. Outside of one YouTube disaster I watched last year, I’ve never seen him on a panel before. At times his answers sounded like Grandpa Simpson on weed. During the moments spent on Earth, he also discussed his comic series Man o’War, the poor Czech acrobat who had to wear the suffocating Twilight Zone gremlin suit, his contribution to Captain Kirk’s Star Trek: Generations death scene, his regular attendance at certain horse competitions at the Indiana State Fairgrounds every year, and his excitement for Trek’s 50th anniversary in 2016.

We left the Ballroom dazed and slightly baffled. But we had enough energy and sense left to attend one last panel: “Marvel Comics at 76″, a slideshow history lesson hosted by two formerly Marvel editors: the aforementioned Salicrup, and Renee Witterstaetter, whose five-year stay at Marvel included seeing John Byrne’ celebrated Sensational She-Hulk run. She’s a regular at the two Chicago cons we attend, and even appeared in a previous MCC entry.

Their mission was to whiz through a couple hundred slides and 76 years’ worth of Marvel history in 45 minutes. At the forty-minute mark Salicrup was up to the early-’80s Claremont/Byrne Uncanny X-Men years. The remaining three decades were blazed through in a flurry of fast slides and shorter capsule descriptions. A lot of it was stuff I knew as an old reader, but some factoids and old covers were nice to revisit. I did learn two things: I didn’t know Basil Wolverton’s strange classic Powerhouse Pepper (a few reprints of which I read and appreciated as a kid) was published through Marvel before it was Marvel; and in Roy Thomas’ recent 720-page hardcover history tome 75 Years of Marvel Comics: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen, Salicrup’s two decades with the company only earned him two (2) mentions in the entire book.

Sample slide, for the Marvel movie/TV fans out there.

When that panel concluded, my wife and I decided our day had as well. As I mentioned last time, the Costume Contest didn’t work out for us, and by this time we’d done all the exhibit hall shopping we’d wanted, met who we came to meet, and had run ourselves into the ground. And thus we took our leave, satisfied with our experience and our choices, gratified that so many hundreds of other fans had shown up despite the killer weather, hopeful that the attendance results were to Wizard World’s liking, and planning our road to recovery so we can do some of this all over again at the Indiana Comic Con’s sophomore effort in March.

As our Valentine’s Day experiences go, I’d call this one above-average.

Thanks for reading. See you next year?

At the end of this week, Warner Brothers treated the public to our first glimpse of Whiplash‘s Melissa Benoist in her next role as the star of CBS’ proposed Supergirl series. The CW had been handling the honors on DC Comics’ TV universe with Arrow and The Flash, but Superman’s best cousin will be movin’ on up to the larger, more powerful network that hopefully won’t skimp on the effects budget or require her to endure contrived crossovers with CSI: Cyber.

The full suit is pretty modest and consistent with her most well-known costumes of Earths and timelines past. I’ve seen online complaints about the darker colors that seem standard-issue for DC heroes beyond the printed page nowadays, but to me changing blue-and-red to dark-blue-and-dark-red isn’t worth nitpicking. Heck, I’m relieved they didn’t pose her in black leather swimwear. And I like to think the darker colors don’t have to mean DC wants her depressed and grouchy. I refuse to imagine a grim-‘n’-gritty Last Daughter of Krypton who sulks and snarls about the world’s problems, or who agonizes over whether or not to snap a dude’s neck.

If the first photo is any indication, maybe Supergirl will be spared the fate of Serious Heroes and harken back to different times. Because look up there: WB allowed a photo of one of their heroes smiling.

No, really! I think that’s Benoist’s real smile. I’m 98% certain her blatant display of happiness wasn’t Photoshopped by over-50 hackers who hate DC’s New 52. (In a way she reminds me of an extra-bold Ellie Kemper.) Maybe this is a positive sign that Supergirl will be allowed to like being a super-hero. Older readers like me might remember ancient times in comics when super-heroes could be motivated into their roles by reasons other than guilt, shame, vengeance, or merchandising. DC and/or WB all but banned that approach from the movies and shows, possibly because Joel Schumacher’s Bat-films occasionally had smiling characters in them, and their embarrassing failures ruined the concept of smiles by association.

(Granted, yes, Barry Allen smiles sometimes on The Flash, and that’s one of the dozens of great things about that show. As he and Joe have moved closer to solving the mystery of his mom’s murder, Barry’s been understandably grave in recent episodes and his smile has been missing from the daily call sheet. Here’s hoping it returns from hiatus soon.)

How radical would it be to have a major-media super-hero who accentuates the positive, embraces the responsibilities, maybe even endorses the role-modeling aspect that used to be part of the job? Believe it or not, there are normal humans in the world like that today. It’d be awesome if we had a super-hero who grew up to be just like them.

I realize I’m reading an awful lot into a single photo, but that simple expression represents a revolutionary departure from the Serious Heroes party line. Most press releases implied that studio executives knew this happened and were fine with it. That’s surprising and refreshing, and I’d like to hold on to this surge of optimism for a while if I may, before we next see photos of future Supergirl characters wearing grimaces and spikes and the blood of their victims.

I may even have to start paying closer attention to future press releases and think about watching the show. That pic is the first time that possibility’s occurred to me.

One of the neatest comics moments of 2014, from Buffy Season 10. Art by Rebekah Isaacs.

Comics collecting has been my primary geek interest since age 6, but I have a tough time writing about it with any regularity for a long list of reasons. I started a “Best Comics of 2014″ entry at the end of January, saved it and then procrastinated the heck out of it. Since my wife and I will be attending the Indiana Comic Con this weekend, comics are foremost on my mind tonight and I think I’m ready to move forward and express a thought or two. At the very least, a lot of lists are in order.

Favorite comics from 2014, in random order:

* Buffy Season 10: I gave up less than halfway through Buffy Season 9, but stuck with the concurrent Angel and Faith series because the team supreme of Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs captured the voices, faces, tones, and drama of the Buffyverse better than any previous Buffy comics I’d read, more than making up for the sins of Season 8 even as they sniped at it. When they were handed the reins for Season 10, I knew we were in for even better things, and I have yet to be disappointed. I feel like I should be grumpy about the return of Giles on principle, but the truth is the handling and the results won’t stop exceeding expectations.

* Ms. Marvel: Because Kamala Khan is keen and plucky optimist heroes are such a rarity. She may not share my faith, but the same could be argued of 99.99% of all super-heroes ever. The fact that she observes any faith — and not just the lip-service variety — makes her even more of a standout from her bitter, distracted, or no-opinion peers.

* Silver Surfer: Regular MCC readers know my wife and I signed on to Doctor Who fandom a little over a year ago. In a bit of cosmic-powered timing just for me, Dan Slott and Michael Allred picked the right moment to turn one of Marvel’s mopiest heroes into a fun-loving homage to the Doctor, complete with spirited human companion, far-reaching alien adventures, wit in the face of danger, and an intergalactic travel device that’s more like a supporting character than a prop. It’s the perfect gift from them to me!

* Moon Knight: In which Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire reminded me of a halcyon time when creators tried doing something different — not just with super-heroes, but with storytelling devices in general. Few are the artists who put page design and pacing to better use than static comic-strip squares or uniform, repetitive storyboards. Frankly, I’ve grown really tired of storyboard-style comics. It’s great to see chances being taken. Successfully, at that.

* Daredevil: Still Mark Waid and Chris Samnee. Still there, still got it, and ol’ Hornhead’s still unflappable even in darkest times. The story featuring the return of Matt’s mother, in which we learn why she abandoned her husband and son way back when, was one of the year’s best even though it was an Original Sin crossover. Astounding feat.

* Avatar: the Last Airbender Free Comic Book Day 2014: Previously reviewed. Still sticks out to me. months after the fact.

* Wild’s End: Mild-mannered British animal citizens versus deadly invaders in Dan Abnett and I. N. J. Culbard’s adventurous cross between The Wind in the Willows and The War of the Worlds that’s fuzzy and thrilling at the same time.

The resourceful runaway ensemble of Wild’s End. Art by I. N. J. Culbard.

2014 honorable mentions: Alex + Ada; The Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw; Beasts of Burden: Hunters & Gatherers; Lazarus; The Royals: Masters of War; The Wicked + the Divine.

Special awards for books that nailed deadlines and held my interest all year long: The Virginia Romita Traffic Management Award goes to Daredevil for publishing fourteen issues in 2014, plus a reprint of digital material, all of which I bought cheerfully. Special commendations for two other series that had a full twelve issues on sale in 2014: Batman ’66, and Hulk (counting issues of the preceding Indestructible Hulk). With eleven issues each in 2014, honorable mentions go to Astro City, Manifest Destiny, and She-Hulk.

Series that were canceled or ended as planned: The Manhattan Projects (returning soon in a different form, thankfully); She-Hulk; The Unwritten Apocalypse; Young Avengers.

New things I tried but dropped (among others): the Amazing Spider-Man relaunch; Batman ’66 vs. the Green Hornet; Dead Boy Detectives; Gotham Academy; Roche Limit; Rocket Raccoon; Serenity: Leaves on the Wind; Ten Grand; Three; Trees.

Books I was following but dropped in 2014: Atomic Robo (unshakeable resentment over the Last Stop Kickstarter letdown), Deadpool (started taking itself way too seriously); Green Hornet (despite Mark Waid); Iron Man (“Mandarin” is a trigger word for me); Lumberjanes (darling for what it is, but I’m just not the target audience); Magneto (crossover intrusion); Rocket Girl (delays between issues); Shutter (hard to explain why); Suicide Risk (unwelcome plot twist); Swamp Thing (crossover intrusion); United States of Murder, Inc. (delays); and the entire Valiant Comics line, which is now ALL about crossovers.

* * * * *

And that’s kind of an overview of my 2014 comics highlights. Here’s what I’m following as of this writing, broken down by publisher:

Marvel Comics: All-New Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Hawkeye (leaving a light on for that one final issue), Howard the Duck (one issue in and it’s already my fave new series), Hulk, Moon Knight, S.H.I.E.L.D., Silver Surfer, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (this was my fave new series till Howard #1 came out this week, so now it needs to retaliate with triple awesomeness).

DC Comics: Batman ’66, Secret Six. (Nope, still feeling zero New 52 love, though a few of their announced post-Convergence books sound shockingly promising.)

DC/Vertigo: Astro City; Suiciders.

Image Comics: Alex + Ada; The Autumnlands; Copperhead; Danger Club (nearly done); Descender; The Dying & the Dead; Lazarus; Manifest Destiny; Rumble; The Wicked and the Divine; Wayward; Wytches.

Dark Horse Comics: Angel & Faith, Buffy Season 10, Darth Vader, Ei8ht, Star Wars.

IDW: Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland.

Miniseries in progress: Bill and Ted’s Most Triumphant Return; Graveyard Shift; Groo: Friends and Foes; Millennium; Monster Motors: The Curse of Minivan Helsing; Princess Leia; Sandman: Overture (I’m only skimming each issue of this as they’re ready, in hopes that I’ll live long enough to read all eight together in one sitting someday before I die).

Following in trades: Fables, The Sixth Gun.

What I’m not collecting: Nearly all team books; crossovers; team-book crossovers; books that super-prioritize sex, sexing, sexosity, and sexological sexitude; crossovers crossing over with crossovers.

MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE! GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS!

Last year my wife and I attended the inaugural Indiana Comic Con in our hometown of Indianapolis, a decent-sized Midwest city whose Indiana Convention Center went from merely one geek gathering every year (Gen Con, always a fave) to no less than five such shindigs in 2014. ICC was first up to bat that year but had issues, which I covered at length here and here. We figured it would take a lot of nerve for Imaginarium, ICC’s out-of-state showrunners, to return and try again.

We considered shunning ICC forever until they added a pair of irresistible names to this year’s guest list. Even then, our decision to forgive and relive wasn’t made lightly. To improve our chances of deriving some unblemished enjoyment from the experience, we took a different approach: instead of attending only on Saturday (the most crowded day of every con ever), we anted up for full weekend passes and burned through most of our to-do list today, Friday the 13th, in hopes that a Friday would be tough for any convention to screw up.

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (other than much longer lines), but today for me was a winner.

I’ll admit to some early skepticism when we arrived and learned there was no official line where we were supposed to wait for the exhibit hall to open. Whether out of optimism or oversight, ICC let everyone hang out in the main concourse wherever they pleased. At a Wizard World show such anarchy would lead to a chaotic stampede and possibly gang fights between warring geek factions. Fortunately this was just Friday and everyone was cool.

We also overheard a conversation between a high-ranking showrunner type, some volunteers, and at least one manager-of-volunteers that sounded a little more tense than we’re used to seeing out in the open. And then you have more worrisome, literal signs like this…

ATTENDEES MUST REMAIN UPRIGHT AT ALL TIMES. APPLAUSE WILL BE PROSECUTED.

…which made more sense when my wife reminded me ICC is sharing the Convention Center with a cheerleader competition. The sign was meant to oppress their joie de vivre, not ours.

The rest of the day was — as the poet Wilson once put it — fun, fun, fun. Stuff we saw:

Balloonpool and the All-Balloons Squad rule at the Twisty Designs booth.

The cast of The LEGO Movie hanging out at the League of Little Legends Kids Zone at the far end of the exhibit hall.

Hailing from Elkart, IN, reps from the Hall of Heroes Superhero Museum brought along a display-items-only collection of vintage comics representing the classic first appearances of The Flash (Barry Allen version), Iron Man, Spider-Man, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, the Justice League of America, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Fantastic Four, Supergirl (obscured by showcase reflection), the Hulk, and Ant-Man.

My wife Anne standing tall with one of the actual shields used in filming Captain America: the First Avenger (also courtesy of Hall of Heroes), with over a dozen cast autographs on the back. She confirms it’s all metal except for the straps, and very heavy.

HULK STATUE SMASH PUNY WRITER! THEN HULK WRITE OWN CAPTIONS AND WIN INTERNET!

Small children may be frightened by the perfectly preserved head of the Abominable Snowman (or “the Bumble”, as Yukon Cornelius called him), which the Hulk’s crafters brought with them as a trophy.

Mark Waid has been in comics since I was a teenager, from his short beginning stint as an editor on the fanzine Amazing Heroes to his definitive run on The Flash to his current monthly magic on Daredevil and the new S.H.I.E.L.D. series, and plenty of cool stuff in between.

We had time to attend two panels back-to-back in the same room. First was “Social Issues Through Comic Books”, which was largely a great vehicle for special guest Denny O’Neil to talk about the classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow run in which he and artist Neal Adams brought topicality and relevance to the previously wacky ‘n’ whimsical world of DC super-heroes. Addiction was the primary focus, but other topics were brought up throughout the discussion such as racism, mental illness, personal information as 21st-century currency, and, for value-added context, Seduction of the Innocent and the 1950s War on Juvenile Delinquency.

Left to right: geek-news writer Amy Radcliffe, up-‘n’-coming comics writer Amy Chu, writer/professor Christy Blanch, Blanch’s husband Mark, and the Denny O’Neil.

(One disappointment from today, not the con’s fault: missing out on the chance to meet O’Neil at his Artists Alley table. On our first walk-by, we were a few seconds too slow and found ourselves in line behind a guy who’d brought over two dozen items to have signed. We decided to come back later, but over the course of three or four tries, O’Neil wasn’t there. I regret the timing problem.)

The other panel we attended: Gender and Diversity in Star Wars. I thought it might be an interesting topic, and not only for myself. My wife is a longtime, dedicated, encyclopedic fan of the Star Wars Expanded Universe and has been fuming at this week’s international sensationalist headline STAR WARS FINALLY ADDS GAY CHARACTER AND IT’S ABOUT TIME BECAUSE THAT’S TOTALLY NEVER EVER HAPPENED BEFORE when she can rattle off at least four or five names (besides the tired C3PO jokes) from various EU novels that this nation’s corporate media empires are pretending never existed. To weasel out of acknowledging their intentional oversight, the headline is technically footnoted “* IN CANON, WE MEAN”, which is a blasé dismissal of thirty-seven years’ worth of not-movie works that were supported by millions of fans even during Star Wars’ darkest times when no new movies or shows were being filmed or animated for the benefit of Star Wars fans who apparently hate reading.

So, um, attending a panel where the rejection of the Expanded Universe was upheld posed some problems. That wasn’t the only topic at hand — gender issues were at the forefront, all told. We had other thoughts on other things that came up throughout the hour, but those are off-topic essays better suited for other venues. Regardless: ’twas an interesting and engaging and largely peaceful talk, and there was a fine moment when the perfect question gave me an excuse to shout out in public, “ICE CREAM MAKER GUY!” as a reasonable, on-topic response and not just as a non sequitur to frighten or worry other people.

…

If you’re looking for costume photos, yep, we took some, but not a lot yet. We figured we’d concentrate on cosplay pics more on Saturday, Lord willing. But we snapped a few.

Speaking of Star Wars: mandatory Clonetrooper!

And in this corner: Star Trek!

Daredevil, Kidpool, Kid Star-Lord, Kid Flash, and probably not Solid Snake.

This is maybe a, uh, gnome wizard? Is that a thing?

Mandatory Bat-villains Harley Quinn, Joker, Poison Ivy, and Riddler, plus a surprise cameo from Luigi.

Freddy Krueger and Pyramid Head from Silent Hill wish they could rule a holiday like Jason Voorhees does. I think Arbor Day might not be taken. (But seriously, kudos to the guy for doing Pyramid Head on actual stilts.)

My favorite photo of the day: us with Roxy the Rancor, 700 pounds of ferocious Star Wars sculpture making her Indianapolis debut.

We’ve got a jazzy feeling about this.

In the realm of personal victories, our hunts through the dealers’ back-issue boxes yielded the greatest want-list results I’ve had at any con in years . With the assistance of my wife and one unusual dealer, I finally completed my runs of The Liberty Project and Grimjack, and made unbelievable progress in my quest to hoard more issues of Quasar, Steel, Alien Legion, and The Ray. All of these are obscure or unpopular series that dealers almost never bring to conventions because only weirdos like me would be interested. One dealer dared to be different, and for that bold move was rewarded with lots of my money.

We also met famed artist Bob McLeod, who co-created Marvel’s New Mutants but is best known as an inker whose style I recognized back in the day on classic ’80s Marvel stories such as “Kraven’s Last Hunt” and “The Death of Jean De Wolff”. We caught up with one of our friends working at one of the two competing Doctor Who booths. We bought a worthy gourmet lunch from Serendipity, one of several food trucks brave enough to disregard the all-day rains and hang around outside anyway.

That was our Friday. We haven’t meet any actors yet because the names we’re anticipating won’t be in town till Saturday. Much of the vast autograph area looked like this.

No slight intended against The Hound or the voice actors in the house. That’s their part of the autograph area in the distance.

We don’t expect Saturday to look this serene. At all.

To be continued!

Superman’s murderer, Doomsday, still wearing his original “Death of Superman” spacesuit.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended the second annual Indiana Comic Con despite our calamitous experience last year. Part One covered our Friday experience, a smooth and engaging experience. Part Two was our bewildering Carrie Fisher encounter.

This time around: our Saturday costume photo collection. The following subjects are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the characters on who were in the house. Many, many thousands of attendees packed into the Indiana Convention Center, this time without inviting a fire marshal’s wrath, and an impressive number showed up dressed as their favorite heroes, villains, supporting characters, animals, antiheroes, murderers, and licensed merchandise. I’d hoped to bring back three or four times as many pics, but we’ll discuss why that didn’t happen in Part Four.

Onward!

Poison Ivy would like to talk to you about your lifestyle choices.

DC’s original Wildcat and The CW’s Arrow.

TITANS TOGETHER!

Zatanna + Loki. DC hero meets Marvel evil.

Iron Fist, stuck in comics while his longtime buddy Power Man gets his own Netflix series.

Ghost Rider wishes he’d said no to movies and waited for Netflix to call.

Spider-Woman in variant costume.

The Crimson Bolt and Boltie, from James Gunn’s Super.

Katniss Everdeen adapts to a world that still has phone service.

Armored guy stands guard over the free con programs.

Link hangs out with two characters that we old people didn’t recognize. What say you, Viewers at Home?

Nicholas D. Wolfwood from Trigun.

One of several Homestuck fans representing.

From the cast of the webseries Spaceship Groggy.

The Wicked Witch of the West will GET YOU, MY PRETTY.

We had to get at least one Doctor. So we plead the Fifth.

Darth Vader’s master plan to capture Princess Leia involves standing in her photo-op line and biding his time. Little does he realize the Doctor and another Leia are right behind him.

Also in Carrie Fisher’s photo-op line: Ewoks! If Vader makes a move, they’re ready to defend her. They have sticks. It just might work.

Bender, clearly lost without beer and cigars.

Anna from Frozen. She and sister Elsa are popular costume choices at the moment.

Speaking of popular costumes: “Star-Lord and the Deadpools” would be an awesome band name.

To be concluded!

Source: Incredible Hulk #205, cover-dated November 1976.

Hey, kids! If you’re chasing your dream of becoming a world-class martial artist like Bruce Lee or Jim Kelly or Chuck Norris, you’ll need proper footwear. And what better footwear than used sandals once worn by the great Oriental Fighting Masters? Either they outgrew them, saved up to buy better ones, or died fighting in them, and now they can be yours for just three bucks and a crude outline of your own foot on notebook paper, so we can tell which dead masters wore your size. We’re located up in scenic Connecticut, where all the most renowned sensei live. Send us your allowance today!

Source: Iron Man #113, August 1978.

Before Chris Pratt was a Hollywood superstar, before someone dared Marvel to turn Guardians of the Galaxy into a box office smash, once upon a time Marvel decided there should be super-heroes that look like Star Wars. Presto: Star-Lord! He had a costume and he had space adventures. He had the blue-and-yellow color scheme of the X-Men’s original suits, red goggles that could’ve been ruby quartz like Cyclops’, and superfluous forehead ridges like Wolverine’s first catlike togs. STAR-LORD. He never starred in his own comic! STAR-LORD. The artist used to be the publisher at DC Comics! STAR-LORD. No one cared!

Then times changed, and other creators’ discarded leftovers were turned into solid gold. The forgotten heroes of yesteryear are like ugly thrift-shop goods, and Marvel Studios is like Macklemore with a platinum Visa.

Source: Power Man and Iron Fist #123, May 1986.

Back in the ’80s Marvel created a separate comics line for younger readers. Kids and adults alike could enjoy the Marvel universe together, but Star Comics were only for kids. The first wave saw a few titles like Planet Terry and the Richie Rich ripoff Royal Roy canceled after a handful of issues, but this subscription ad shows the Year Two lineup of merchandise posing as reading matter, from the two Star Wars cartoon spinoffs to the long-running Heathcliff, whose comic-strip fame helped him outlast the rest of the line and persevere through a fifty-six-issue run. The Star line tried a couple more original concepts, the derivative Top Dog and Trina Robbins’ Meet Misty miniseries, but not much caught on. But for a while you could have them delivered directly to your mailbox and personally crumpled by your neighborhood mail carrier.

You’ll note the list includes He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a kids’ comics based on a kiddie cartoon based on a line of kiddie toys. To this day I remain amused at any and all repeated efforts to turn a guy named He-Man into the star of serious graphic literature, which DC Comics is still attempting to this day. Perhaps America will treat him with reverent gravitas once that long-gestating, still-hypothetical John Woo film version gets off the ground and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe becomes the next Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guys. GUYS. You notice he’s called “He-Man”, right? Good luck fabricating a grim-‘n’-gritty justification for that. Don’t forget you’ll need extreme backstories for Battle Cat, Man-E-Faces, and Fisto, too.

Source: The Liberty Project #6, Eclipse Comics, November 1987.

Marvel Comics is two-thirds of the way through reprinting all twenty-four issues of Eclipse Comics’ monumental Miracleman, but I’ve been on standby awaiting new material because I still have my original copies — the first sixteen issues written by co-creator Alan Moore as well as the final eight that were written by a young rookie named Neil Gaiman. Running across this old house ad reminds me how cool I thought the book was when I was a teenager, and how much I miss the pen-and-ink work of artist John Totleben, who drew Moore’s final issues in an era when inking in general and technique in particular were things that mattered and made a difference.

Part of me would like to see Gaiman and his artist/co-conspirator Mark Buckingham (best known today for Fables) finish the stories they’d planned twenty-five years ago as much younger men, but part of me is a little skeptical about trying to go home again.

Source: Incredible Hulk #205, November 1976.

But hey, if bringing back old comics doesn’t pay the bills, if creating your own works is a dead end, why not change career tracks and consider a life in automotive customization? Now you can paint flame streaks and viking battles and dragon warriors on the side of every vehicle you and your buddies drive, and get paid! No college required! No Wikipedia studies necessary! There will always be paint, there’ll always be cars, and there’ll always be guys trying to impress chicks, even during recessions. Only loyal readers of Marvel Comics were privy to this top-secret special offer to unlock their destinies and become the next Boris Vallejo or Michelangelo or Pimp My Ride host.

…

These are some of the reasons why buying back issues at conventions is more fun than reading reprints in trade paperbacks or from digital retailers. Their reprints almost never include the original ads, because of either copyright issues or elitist sensibilities. Look at all this vital history you’re missing that The MAN doesn’t want you to see. I bet The MAN owns twelve pairs of vintage Kung-Fu Sandals and doesn’t want other grabby collectors muscling in on his turf.

To me, this is cooler than any billboard in my hometown.

Day Five’s return trip from the nuclear missile command center back to Fargo was draining and featureless. Our evening plans took us to the complete opposite of that: Fargo’s cozy, artful downtown. Lots of brownstone buildings from times past redone at ground level with contemporary storefronts, hiding the occasional flourish here and there, all largely deserted on a Wednesday evening. The whole place was practically ours.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year from 2003 to 2013 my wife, my son, and your humble writer headed out on a long road trip to anywhere but here. Our 2014 road trip represented a milestone of sorts: our first vacation in over a decade without my son tagging along for the ride. At my wife’s prodding, I examined our vacation options and decided we ought to make this year a milestone in another way — our first sequel vacation. This year’s objective, then: a return to Wisconsin and Minnesota. In my mind, our 2006 road trip was a good start, but in some ways a surface-skimming of what each state has to offer. I wanted a do-over.

With a population well over 100,000, Fargo is hardly a small village. The moderately busy city streets took us past a lot of home improvement, construction, and agricultural businesses, but its downtown reminded me of a lot of town squares we’ve seen back home, except not square and with actual shopping options that catered to my interests.

We arrived the day before an annual street fair would bring carnival food and fun to the citizens all weekend. Sadly, we couldn’t extend our Fargo visit beyond a simple overnighter due to a tricky appointment we were looking forward to on Day Six. The street fair tents, like many of their mom-‘n’-pop shops, were closed when we arrived.

Not that there weren’t things to look at or do.

Another pic to add to my marquee collection.

Artist Paul Ide has contributed more than one brightening mural. Kinda sorry we missed the rest of his work.

North Dakota State University’s athletic teams are called the Bisons. Hence, bisons here and there.

We had modest dinner at Smiling Moose Deli, a semi-nationwide sub shop we’d never seen before. Their website says they have one Indiana location, but Evansville is nowhere near us and a moose motif makes no sense in our state. My Bayou Chicken sub was better than most Subway offerings, and my wife was content with her Greek salad.

I’ve heard rumors that we have indie music stores back home. If so, none of them are within five miles of my house and they’re not very good at luring me. The little shops and slightly less little chains that exposed me to new sounds throughout the late ’80s and early’ 90s all shut down before the end of the millennium. I don’t have much use for the Top-40 selection that dominates Best Buy and every big-box store, which means most of my music shopping today is sadly done through Amazon. My wife waited patiently while I flipped through the bins at Orange Records and came away with Mike Doughty’s The Flip is Another Honey (good luck finding that at Target) and a second CD that escapes me at the moment.

All are welcome. Jack Black’s High Fidelity character doesn’t work here, unless we happened to stop by on his day off.

One thing I regret about most of our road trips: I almost never make time to visit comic shops in other states. That means whenever we’re out of town on a Wednesday, the official New Comics Day every week for us habitual collectors who want the newest installments of our favorite series now now now, I have to contain myself until we return home at the end of the week and I can finally get to my local shop after half the books I collect are probably sold out. This time, a stroke of convenience: there just so happened to be a shop across the corner from Orange Records. Thankfully the young folks at the twenty-year-old Paradox Comics-N-Cards didn’t stare too hard at us middle-age strangers. They didn’t have everything on my list (I distinctly recall them having zero copies of The Wicked and the Divine #2), but I picked up enough to contain myself for the next few days.

After strolling up and down several city blocks, we took our leave, navigated the narrow grid of confusing one-way streets one last time, and made one last stop for the evening at the kind of place we rarely see anymore: a hotel with a distinctive interior. After so many chains with so much corporate-standard lookalike decor, it was refreshing to see a lobby we hadn’t already walked through in ten other states.

To be continued!

[Link enclosed here to handy checklist for previous and future chapters. Thanks for reading!]

The Hunter from Bloodborne is flanked by Liara from WildStar and Zasalamel from Soul Calibur IV.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I went to C2E2 and took photos! Part one was the twelve winners of the Costume Contest. Presented here are the other remarkable contestants whose efforts likewise deserved recognition for their skills, efforts, and imagination.

Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element.

Mr. Freeze will compete wherever he must if only someone will bring back his beloved Nora.

The current comics version of Thor, whose identity should be revealed any day now. My guess: Gwen Stacy.

Izabel the Horror babysitter from Vaughan and Staples’ Saga, ghostly entrails and all.

Ronan the Accuser hanging out with Captain America and wishing for revenge on those accursed Guardians.

Iron Man!

Takuto Tsunashi from the anime Star Driver, sharing the stage with the Valkyrie and the Khorne Marauder from Warhammer 40K. At far right: he is Groot.

Sasha Braus from Attack on Titan and the preening, posturing Thranduil from The Hobbit.

Xibalba. from the recent animated film Book of Life, was gigantic and wouldn’t stop moving.

Nightmare Moon from My Little Pony.

King Sombra, also from MLP.

The Tech-priest concludes our salute to Warhammer 40K.

Minako Arisoto from the PSP game Persona 3 Portable.

The Dragon Rider was the winner of the Eastern Championships of Cosplay at last October’s New York Comic Con 2014. Part of his prize was an invitation to come compete at the Crown Championships of Cosplay at C2E2 2015. That thing I mentioned in Part 1 about the Championships going global? This is a step in that action plan. P.S.: He didn’t win again.

Loki posed for a bit outside the room after the Costume Contest.

We encountered Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy near the show floor hours before, then saw her later in the Contest. You’ll note the costume required her to walk on her knees. Imagine spending a day walking that way everywhere. This is true dedication to playing a part.

For our Star Wars fans: a variant Boba Fett with ten times the personality of the original.

To be continued! Other chapters in the series:

Part 1: Costume Contest Winners
Part 3: Edge of Deadpoolverse
Part 4: Might Marvel Costumes
Part 5: More Comics Costumes
Part 6: Mystery Science Costume Theater 3000
Part 7: Last Call for Costumes
Part 8: Stars of Comics and Screens
Part 9: Random Acts of C2E2ing

[Updated 4/29/2015, with special thanks to my son for recognizing The Hunter.]

My wife and I enjoying ten seconds of proximity with Hayley Atwell, winning star of Marvel’s Agent Carter, Marvel’s Agent Carter: the Winter Soldier, and Marvel’s Agents of C.A.R.T.E.R.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I went to C2E2 and took photos! Other chapters in the series:

Part 1: Costume Contest Winners
Part 2: The Rest of the Costume Contest
Part 3: Edge of Deadpoolverse
Part 4: Might Marvel Costumes
Part 5: More Comics Costumes
Part 6: Mystery Science Costume Theater 3000
Part 7: Last Call for Costumes
Part 9: Random Acts of C2E2ing

Today’s feature: the writers, artists, and renowned actors we encountered on Friday and Saturday. The photo op with Hayley Atwell, a.k.a. Peggy Carter, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., was the weekend’s finale to a long line of nifty creative types in the house.

Before the exhibit hall opened Friday, I knew where stop #1 would be: the autograph table of actor Chad Coleman. Most recently known as Tyreese on AMC’s The Walking Dead, to me he’ll always be Cutty from The Wire.

Our longest autograph wait at this show wasn’t for a TV star. Meet Dan Slott, the Marvel writer in charge of Amazing Spider-Man over the past several years. His inspired version of Silver Surfer, with artist Michael Allred, is a blatant, welcome, delightful homage to Doctor Who, which makes sense since he’s an unabashed Whovian supreme.

I’d been trying to narrow down what I wanted to say when it was my turn, but all that got tossed out the window when he saw my wife’s Doctor Who shirt, lit up, and began showing us phone pics of Who stars he’s met at other recent cons. I had no problem stepping back and enjoying this fun treat, especially since we’re both jealous that he got to meet David Tennant and we haven’t. Yet.

We wandered over half the exhibit hall before making our way to Artists Alley and meeting lots of cool folks making cool books. Among those we met:

Writer, professor, and comic shop owner Christy Blanch! We saw her moderate two panels at this year’s Indiana Comic Con, and on my last birthday we visited a Muncie comic shop she co-owns with husband/writer Mark Waid. I understand the already impressive store has relocated into even larger digs, so now we have to revisit Muncie sometime.

I first saw Gene Ha in person at a DC panel at Wizard World Chicago 1999 (my very first road trip with Anne!), but never met him till now. He’s illustrated many praiseworthy things (tip of the iceberg includes Alan Moore’s Top 10 and a Shade miniseries for DC) and has launched a Kickstarter for his new graphic novel, Mae.

Speaking of WWC 1999: at that show, writer James Robinson signed my copy of Firearm #1, one of the best Malibu Ultraverse titles that everyone but a few of us oldsters has now forgotten. Sixteen years later I brought that same copy for cosigning by artist Cully Hamner, because that’s how highly I thought of it. Non-comics fans may recognize the Bruce Willis/Helen Mirren/Morgan Freeman/John Malkovich action comedy RED, which was very lightly based on a three-issue miniseries he co-created with Warren Ellis, so hopefully the filmmakers sent him some monies.

David A. Rodriguez isn’t a household name yet, but I remembered reading a sample of his book Finding Gossamyr when it was a decent Free Comic Book Day 2012 offering. Three years and some dollars later, I’m looking forward to reading more of that story in spiffy hardcover.

Speaking of things ordinary people might not remember: Matthew Rosenberg was selling copies of his new Black Mask project We Can Never Go Home, but we’d first seen him at a C2E2 2013 panel about music in comics. I’m still really sorry about those pics.

Speaking of not-ordinary people: we first met writer Brian K. Morris (the one in the fez) at Gen Con 2012, where he cosplayed as the world’s finest version of Uncle Dudley, a.k.a. Uncle Marvel of the SHAZAM! Family. Since then he’s written one novel for Amazon Worlds based on Valiant Comics’ Bloodshot, and one starring his own creation called Santastein. By his side is the fezless Sean Dulaney, from whom I bought a copy of his comic F. Stein, Consulting Detective, also available on comiXology. That’s two — TWO Steins for the price of two!

The first I knew of Jason Howard was Super Dinosaur, his Image Comics title with Robert Kirkman. Lately he’s been killing it on Warren Ellis’ Trees.

When Marvel announced they were launching a new Hawkeye series, I thought it was too soon and it shouldn’t be done. Two issues into All-New Hawkeye, the art of Ramon Perez — alternating pen-and-ink present-day Hawkeyes’ derring-do with painted flashbacks of the Barton boys’ runaway childhood — has shown up my worries as 100% misplaced.

(NOT PICTURED ABOVE: animator Stephen Franck, who’s transitioning to comics with the promising-looking Silver; and writer/lawyer Charles Soule, whom I already met at the last two C2E2s, and even saw at that same music/comics panel with Matthew Rosenberg. A third photo seemed beside the point, but I had to stop by his table because every year he keeps thinking up new stuff for me to buy.)

By the end of Friday, my autograph/swag haul looked roughly like so, give or take a book:

Saturday, we had a few modest objectives, but wound up with far more than expected. In addition to the aforementioned Hayley Atwell, we also had the pleasure of meeting Ming Na-Wen, a.k.a. Melinda May, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m old enough to remember when she was in a few early-season episodes of E.R., but now I know her as the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who gets all the best fight scenes and many of the best overall scenes.

(I nearly cropped myself out of the photo. I know I smiled, but it must’ve been during some other, totally uncaptured second.)

In the afternoon we caught one of several Marvel Comics panels about this summer’s Secret Wars crossover event, this one focusing on the various “Battleworld” chapters. Pictured left to right: editor Nick Lowe as our jolly MC; writers James Robinson, Jonathan Hickman, Charles Soule, and Joshua Williamson; and editors Jon Moisan and Jake Thomas.

After Na-Wen’s line, we attended a panel screening of the first episode of the new Yahoo! Screen sci-fi sitcom Other Space, which is like Star Trek Voyager meets The Office. This was my best chance to see any of the series for now, since, as previously discussed, our PC hates hates hates Yahoo! Screen. My overall impression: I was happier and better amused whenever the pilot sounded less like everyday Twitter quotes and more like surprising punchlines that would never occur to me. There was enough of the latter that I thought it was a great start, impishly directed by Academy Award Winner Luke Matheny (the funny-sweet live-action short “God of Love”), and I hope it makes tons of money for all involved so I can someday watch the rest of season 1 on DVD or on a platform that’s Chromecast-compatible.

The Q&A afterward featured four of the show’s stars and its creator. We’ve met one of those folks before: Joel Hodgson, legendary creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who was at last year’s Indy Pop Con. His newest role is an engineering burnout who’s only occasionally connected to reality and every so often isn’t a lackadaisical danger to the rest of the crew. He’s pictured here at the Q&A with costar Milana Vayntrub.

Here’s a much, much better pic of Milana Vayntrub with more lighting and not from fifteen rows away. Americans know her best as the happy AT&T helper from that series of commercials where she plays one of that corporation’s most knowledgeable employees of all time. I understand she’s also appeared in several College Humor videos.

Karan Soni (Safety Not Guaranteed) may or may not be a future superstar thanks to his role in this fall’s Goosebumps movie, but until then he’s Other Space‘s quasi-fearless ship’s captain. His optimism, book-smarts, and problem-solving skills sometimes help compensate for his leadership deficiencies and his crew’s grudges against him.

My number one reason for showing up: he was Dr. Clayton Forrester. He was the voice of Crow T. Robot. He was one of the few main MST3K cast members I hadn’t yet met. And now, at long last, I faced Trace Beaulieu like a man and proudly didn’t squeal like a preteen groupie. On Other Space he’s the voice of Joel Hodgson’s incidental robot A.R.T., who is also cool, but on the other hand DR. CLAYTON FORRESTER. “Big deal” is an understatement.

[happy shrieking deleted]

Seated at his right is a man I had no absolutely idea would be at C2E2. I wish I’d known.

Other Space creator Paul Feig:

He created the cult classic Freaks and Geeks. He wrote and directed many episodes of The Office. He’s responsible for comedies such as Bridesmaids and the upcoming Melissa McCarthy vehicle Spy. He’s the man in charge of the much-discussed Ghostbusters reboot. And now here he was at C2E2, right in front of us, and instead of asking him fifty questions all I could do was shake his hand and thank him while my brain short-circuited and let me down. THANKS, BRAIN.

…

…and those are the people that were. To be concluded!

Even those dastardly Bat-Villains love Free Comic Book Day because it’s the one day of the year they can have nice new things without resorting to theft or deathtraps.

Happy Free Comic Book Day! The fourteenth annual celebration of graphic storytelling narratives and/or floppy funnybooks was a rousing success, far as we could tell from our single stop at Indianapolis’ own Downtown Comics North. In years past I’ve made road trips to visit multiple stores for the occasion, but our schedule was too packed with other obligations and joys. Regardless, ’twas a morning well spent, money well spent for a few items, and an experience fully enjoyed.

The shop opened at 11 a.m. EDT. We arrived at 9:45 to claim our place in the long line outside, where reps from geek-related endeavors hung out with us and added some valuable community spirit, not to mention free posters, prize drawings, and snacks.

See? Wasn’t kidding. One caveat: the donuts were from the Meijer bakery, not from Krispy Kreme. They were great anyway.

The doors opened two minutes early. Poison Ivy minded the front door for crowd management purposes, letting a few of us in at a time so we wouldn’t all stampede inside and crush each other. Reading is fundamental but difficult if you’ve been trampled.

As fans waited their turn on this lovely May morning, cosplayers stood by and provided entertainment, security, and inspirational opportunities for the many kids who showed up and brought their parents as guests. Special thanks are owed to the heroes and villains who brightened everyone’s day:

Spider-Woman and Dr. Strange represent for Marvel’s Avengers while waiting their turn to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Kid Flash lives! Take THAT, DC New 52.

The little kid inside me squealed a little at the sight of Plastic Man.

Cable is ready to headline an X-Men movie any day now, Fox.

Spider-Woman negotiated a cease-fire between Penguin ’66 and the Beast, thus closing the harsh divides between Marvel and DC, the Silver Age and the Modern Age, TV and movies, good and evil, and birds and mammals.

Just as I did last year, I kept my free acquisitions somewhat modest and grabbed copies of less than half the available titles. I was excited in advance about a few of these, but I also picked up a few untested items as random experiments because sometimes I like surprises. (I should have capsule reviews posted within the next day or two.)

Not pictured: the stuff I bought with money as a thank-you to my local comic shop owners, including collected volumes of The Sixth Gun and Kieron Gillen’s Uncanny X-Men run, plus an issue of Monster Motors I was missing.

And that’s the FCBD that was. See you next year! Time to dive into the reading pile.

Valeria Richards addresses her troops in Secret Wars #0. Art by Paul Renaud.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I observed Free Comic Book Day 2015 this past Saturday. Readers of multiple demographics, thankfully including lots of youngsters, flocked to our local stores and had the opportunity to enjoy samplers from all the major comic companies and dozens of indie publishers. As an incentive for the younger recruits, the shop we visited split the all-ages material apart from the rest and put up “KIDS ONLY” signs discouraging greedy adults from hoarding everything and leaving nothing behind in their wake.

I never grab copies of everything, and this year I took even fewer items than usual because I don’t really have the time or inclination to be the guy who thinks he’s obligated to read and respond to everything. I came away with a dozen comics of varying interest levels and finished reading the last of them the next morning. In my mind, each issue ought to be a satisfying experience for any new reader who opens the cover without any foreknowledge. Historically, each publisher’s offerings tend to fall into one of six story levels, ranked here in order from “Best Possible Display of Generosity and Salesmanship” to “Had to Slap SOMETHING Together, So Whatever”:

1. New, complete, done-in-one story
2. Complete story reprinted from existing material
3. A complete chapter of a new story with a proper chapter ending
4. Partial excerpt from an upcoming issue that will also contain all these same pages
5. No story, just random pinups or art samples
6. Disposable ad flyer shaped like a comic

The twelve comics in my FCBD 2015 reading pile came out as follows, from least favorite to definite favorite:

12. Legendary Comics Preview (Legendary Comics) — This new IP-generating publishing offshoot of Legendary Pictures boasts a committed lineup of top talents — Mark Waid, Chris Roberson, Steven Grant, Pete Woods, Fiona Staples, Matt Wagner, Simon Bisley, Judd Winick, et al. — but for now all we’re given are three unlettered pages from a Pacific Rim sequel, three more from another title, one or zero teaser images from several other projects in early development stages, and ads for a couple of previous books now on sale. The company seems promising, but there’s no real reading here except a few marketing blurbs.

11. Captain Canuck #0 (Chapterhouse Comics) — Canada’s most famous Canadian comics hero (as opposed to Wolverine, America’s most famous Canadian comics hero) is receiving his next reboot written and drawn by Kalman Andrasofszky (X-23, NYX), and with retro backups by Ed Brisson and classic Cap artist George Freeman (Elric of Melnibone, Marvel’s long-ago Jack of Hearts). The four-page reboot excerpt is enough to show Cap is a hero who can negotiate a high-altitude drop, and that’s all there is. The six-page backup is a caption-heavy backstory recap for newcomers like me who know zip about him. I’d rather read a Cap story than read about other Cap stories, but I appreciate the attempted introduction. The back half is filled out with light Official Handbook entries for the supporting players, which I would’ve liked more when I was a young fan of Marvel’s OHOTMU and DC’s Who’s Who.

10. Secret Wars #0 (Marvel Comics) — A ten-page prologue to this summer’s major Marvel crossover event stars Franklin and Valeria Richards, Alex from Power Pack, a talking Dragon Man, and several unnamed underage strangers whose big plan for the upcoming catastrophe is to run and hide. Valeria recaps some relevant Illuminati shenanigans, but I disliked being reminded that these same never-named, unexplained strangers are the reason I couldn’t get into Jonathan Hickman’s FF in the first place. Irrelevant extra: an eight-page excerpt from a Marvel Heroes/Attack on Titan crossover previously released only in Japan. At least I assume it’s an excerpt and not the complete saga. Famous Marvel good guys punch oversize monsters that I kinda recognize thanks to cosplayers, and then more Marvel good guys show up and THE END. Yay fight scenes? I guess?

9. Tales of Honor #0 (Top Cow/Image Comics) — A done-in-one follow-up to a previous miniseries I’d never heard of, which in turn was based on a series of David Weber novels I’ve never read. For rookies like me, there’s a page-long intro crawl twice as long as any Star Wars movie infodump, followed by a two-page mini-encyclopedia cataloging the dozens of planets, chronology of major events, their military rank system, and various other in-depth social-studies aspects of this vast universe, all in near-microscopic magnifying-glass font. I sloughed through the scroll, skipped pages two and three, and still got the gist of their space-skirmish tale, which was a few pages of action plus several pages of exposition, about the same content as an average Star Trek: the Next Generation episode. I imagine this is much cooler for Weber fans than it was for me, but at least it had a beginning and an end.

8. The Phantom (Hermes Press) — I’ve never been a fan of the original comic strip, but I’ve dabbled in a few comics starring the Ghost Who Walks, depending on the talents involved. Two short stories are reprinted from comics that came before my time, but one of them features art by a young Jim Aparo, who would later become the definitive Batman artist of my childhood. His style wasn’t yet solidified, but I can see glimpses of the swashbuckling excitement and the distinctive lettering that would follow in The Brave and the Bold and The Outsiders. So this was kind of an unexpected treasure.

Lucifer goes on his next road trip in “The Ride: The Devil Don’t Sing No Blues”. Art by Tomm Coker.

7. I.C.E.: Bayou Blackout (12-Gauge Comics) — Credit where due: a Jason Pearson cover is a surefire way to lure me to your comic. Inside is chapter one of the third arc in a gung-ho action-cop series I’ve never heard of, which has one interesting cop-bonding scene bookended by a pair of shootouts, but writer Doug Wagner (The Ride, assorted Batman comics) knows there’s more to comics than explosions, and knows how to set up a cliffhanger ending, even though it would mean a bit more if this weren’t my first exposure to them. Anyone who likes old Stallone films or Miami Vice could dig this. Even more to my liking is the backup, a not-for-kids tale of “The Ride” by writer/artist Tomm Coker (DC/Vertigo’s Blood & Water) that loosely connects a fast car, the legend of bluesman Robert Johnson, and soul-selling devil-trickery, all rendered in the kind of intricate black-and-white linework rarely seen in today’s computer-coloring dominion.

6. Terrible Lizard #1 (Oni Press) — Imagine a rebooted Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, except Devil is an orange (not red) T-Rex and Moon Boy has been fired and replaced with a lonely teenage girl. A time-travel experiment brings the dinosaur king to the world of today, the two isolated outsiders bond, add some outlandish monsters, and the rest sells itself. Props go to Marvel writer Cullen Bunn and artist Drew Moss for some inspired all-ages Godzillaesque fun.

5. Hip Hop Family Tree Three-in-One (Fantagraphics) — Excerpts from Ed Piskor’s cartoon history of old-school rap seem to start and stop at random points, but if you’re interested in detailed biographies of larger-than-life personalities like Kool Moe Dee, Def Jam founders Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin, NWA’s DJ Yella, the actor formerly rapping as LL Cool J, and tons more where those came from, skip these out-of-context samples and go buy Piskor’s books today. You won’t regret it. Also in this hefty 56-page giveaway is a short story from Dash Shaw’s Cosplayers — neat comics about people who love comics — in which an odd shop owner relays his theory linking various unexplained phenomena to Jack Kirby’s 2001 sequel. It’s as trippy as it sounds, and I think I’d like to see more.

Even warrior-school teachers need a spring break, in the Avatar: the Last Airbender story “Sisters”. Art by Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee.

4. Avatar: the Last Airbender (Dark Horse Comics) — I’ve never seen a single episode of the popular animated series, but my past notes show this as Airbender‘s fourth consecutive thumbs-up FCBD entry, this time teaming Gene Luen Yang with Finder creator Carla Speed McNeil. Ty Lee goes home, reconnects with her sisters, foils circus evil, and learns that individuality and group membership each have their benefits and aren’t always mutually exclusive. Of the two backup stories, Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover’s “Bandette”, about a whimsical young thief, is the more charming of the two; the other, based on the game Plants vs. Zombies, I so didn’t get at all, enough that it knocked the book a couple of spots down the list. I guess you had to be there.

3. All-New, All-Different Avengers (Marvel Comics) — I have high expectations for anything with Mark Waid’s name on it, and for the most part those standards are upheld in this self-contained sneak preview of the post-Secret Wars Avengers starring Ms. Marvel, young Nova, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, the current versions of Thor and Captain America, same old Iron Man, and Marvel’s newest big-screen sensation, the Vision. It’s funny and thrilling and at some point Mahmud Asrar turned into a top-notch artist when I wasn’t looking, but it bugs me that, in the same universe where the old Avengers were constantly knocking and grounding the Young Avengers for their inexperience, now we have an A-team staffed by three rookies whose front-line positions are a triumph of zeitgeist over historical consistency. And this is coming from a reader who really likes Ms. Marvel’s series and has three Ultimate Comics Spider-Man trades in his reading pile. The book’s other half is an Inhumans done-in-one by Charles Soule and Brandon Peterson that’s professional in every way, and does a much better job than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has of making the Inhumans not-boring. I still rebuke Marvel’s insistence that I have to like them, but at least the story held my attention from start to finish, unlike some S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes.

2. Doctor Who (Titan Comics) — Three new stories starring the three most recent Doctors! Twelve’s is a not-bad science lesson about the chemistry of quartz that could be a decent insert in a kids’ educational magazine. Ten and his comics-only companion Gabby Gonzalez limit themselves to a quiet night in the TARDIS laundry room but still run afoul of an exotic presence, so that’s a silly treat. The winner is Eleven and his own comics-only companions Alice and Jones in the most meta of all FCBD titles, about a fiendish alien invasion spread entirely through free books. It’s a gutsy move to make reading a weapon of the enemy on this special reading holiday, but cowriters Al Ewing and Rob Williams clearly enjoy playing with narrative in more ways than one.

“The Death of Kevin” somehow fails to be a 75-part crossover event with limited-edition gatefold die-cut holofoil hologram IMAX 3-D scented edible variant covers. Art by Faith Erin Hicks and Noreen Rana.

1. Comics Festival 2015 (Beguiling Books/Toronto Comic Arts Festival) — The best comic in the stack is a non-licensed indie anthology of creative coolness from a crowd that includes Kate Beaton, Mariko Tamaki, Gillian Goerz, Svetlana Chmakova, the Cory Doctorow, Jen Wang, and, best-of-show in a tough competition, Faith Erin Hicks taking an overdone superhero trope and its corporate implementers to task in a new Superhero Girl short called “The Death of Kevin” that needs a few awards heaped on it. But really, the entire one-shot is an A-plus grab bag.

And that’s the free reading pile that was, which I’ll admit has given me a few spending ideas. See you next year!

In Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1, our hero prepares to juggle her super-hero life with her big move to college. With the support of friends like Tippy, she’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t sign up for too many credit-hours.

Meet Squirrel Girl. Unless you’ve already met. Either way: Squirrel Girl!

Squirrel Girl was the joint invention of Spider-Man’s co-creator Steve Ditko and author Will Murray, who previously ghost-wrote dozens of Destroyer novels but this one time in the ’90s had an itch to do something different. That plan came together and Squirrel Girl is unquestionably different from Remo Williams. In 2015 someone wise at Marvel Comics promoted her to the front lines and she now stars in her own ongoing series, the optimistically named Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

The premise: Doreen Green is a young lady with the powers of both a squirrel and a girl. This includes squirrel communication, which allows her and no one else to understand her crimefighting ally Tippy-Toe, who’s mostly a normal squirrel except for all the impressive lifesaving stunts she can organize with other squirrels. After traipsing through various corners of the Marvel Universe over the past several years, Doreen is now living on campus at Empire State University (Peter Parker’s alma mater), majoring in Computer Science, living in a dorm with her roommate Nancy, and continuing to punch evil in the face on the side. In five issues she’s fought three different longtime Marvel villains, touched base with other heroes, saved the lives of everyone on Earth without expecting any gratitude, and refused to let any challenges ruin her chipper attitude.

In Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2, Our Hero infiltrates Tony Stark’s armory to save the Earth. At first Tony can’t be bothered to show up in person because he’s afraid she’ll show him up, so he sends his empty pre-programmed Iron Goons instead because some billionaire chumps don’t recognize talent when it’s standing in front of them and trying to steal their stuff.

For a time Squirrel Girl was a member of the Great Lakes Avengers, a branch of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that never receives any respect because they’re all goofy. Squirrel Girl may or may not be goofy, but she’s now one of several Marvel super-heroines — along with Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel — to earn a solo series. Squirrel Girl lacks the marketing advantage of a legacy built on someone else’s super-hero name. She’s put herself out on a limb by wearing a costume made of browns rather than primary colors. To readers who only want Serious Heroes who do Serious Maiming with Serious Grimness to Serious Psychos in their Serious Leotards, she is the enemy of all they hold dear and a threat to the fabric of graphic storytelling itself.

In Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #3 Our Hero and her partner must weigh heavy issues of morality, priorities, and squirrel wartime strategy systems.

I’m pretty cool with that kind of joyful subversion. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl keeps rising to the top of my reading pile every month thanks to writer Ryan North, artist Erica Henderson, colorist Rico Renzi, her modest supporting cast, surprising performances by super-villains we know and hate, and, of course, Squirrel Girl herself.

In Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #4 Our Hero meets her fiercest foe yet: GALACTUS! The most dangerous being in the Marvel Universe is so bold, he announces his intentions on social media and gives us all the time in the world to prepare for his arrival and our collective destruction. Because the big baby thrives on world energy and on attention.

The latest issue, #5, is a variation on a classic Batman: the Animated Series episode called “Legends of the Dark Knight”, in which the story isn’t about the hero so much as it’s about other people’s interpretations of the hero. Through this and the preceding issues, Squirrel Girl’s greatest traits shine through: idealistic verve, unflappable persistence, imaginative resourcefulness, unique powers, the loyalty of squirrels who’ll do anything she asks, and a moral compass as big as her heart. Once she’s a little older and more established and headlining her own Marvel motion picture, she’ll grow to become the kind of upstanding citizen who has no problem being a role model and inspiring a whole new generation of Squirrel Girls to follow in her footsteps, though they’ll hopefully develop their own powers and motifs instead of stealing her intellectual property, because that would be wrong.

Mostly Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #5 is about her roommate Nancy listening to a room full of trapped Squirrel Girl fans describe their skewed memories in the styles of other artists. Meanwhile, this heavyweight team-up is a scene that totally happens.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is an unpredictable 21st-century all-ages joy that deserves to be much, much, much higher in the sales charts. If words like “fun” and “heroism” and “positivity” mean anything to you — I mean, really mean things deep down — then Squirrel Girl’s picture needs to be next to the definitions of those words in the dictionary inside your head. If those words aren’t in your dictionary, then you should fire your mind palace’s curator.

Sample helmets and display collectibles courtesy of the 501st Legion.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

For the last few years, my wife and I have spent our respective birthdays together finding some new place or attraction to visit as a one-day road trip — partly as an excuse to spend time together on this most wondrous day, partly to explore areas of Indiana we’ve never experienced before. My 2015 birthday destination of choice: the city of Fort Wayne, some 100+ miles northeast of here. It’s home to several manufacturing concerns, one major insurance company, a selection of buildings with historical importance to the locals, and a small comic book convention I’d never heard of before this year. We checked out the area, we found ways to enjoy ourselves, we got some much-needed exercise, and we took photos.

Fort Wayne’s fourth annual Appleseed Comic Con happened to fall on the same weekend as my 43rd birthday. With this lucky timing, this unknown con rose quickly to the top of my birthday-weekend brainstorming list and easily won out over clothes shopping, Netflix marathon, and “go someplace my wife wants to see”.

The name “Appleseed” is taken from one of Fort Wayne’s biggest claims to fame, the burial site of the real Johnny Appleseed. His ostensible grave marker is located in Johnny Appleseed Park, where the Johnny Appleseed Festival is a big deal every September. It’s not named after Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed, but it would be an impressive manga-geek victory if it were. Their third annual shindig was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign, but they seemed on solid ground without crowdfunding this time around.

Appleseed is small yet proud of its focus on the comics medium, no actors, celebs, or YouTube users are invited as guests. The biggest names in the program were strictly writers, artists, and creators in the realm of the illustrated printed page. I don’t think I’d been to that kind of comics show since high school. I could feel a tinge of nostalgia in a few moments as we wandered from booth to booth.

Even before we entered the exhibit hall, its location was a sightseeing treat in itself. Convention centers aren’t all that common in our state outside Indianapolis (we saw one in Muncie last year), but Fort Wayne’s Grand Wayne Convention Center is ideally located for northern Indiana companies and our neighbors in Michigan and Ohio. Judging by its appearance, I’m guessing they attract decent business.

Grand Wayne’s north side is the modern face of over 75,000 square feet of exhibit halls, conference rooms, ballrooms, and meeting spaces. It’s surrounded by several convenient restaurants, which is a massive tactical advantage over every Chicago con ever.

We parked in a garage connected by a skybridge to a Hilton conjoined with the Center’s east side. Our walk to the exhibit hall was pretty, spacious, and well lit even though the weather outside was cloudy with a light chance of soaking wet misery.

Random chandelier we passed on our way through the Hilton. Fancy!

Artwork near the Grand Wayne escalators. Yes, I realize this has next to nothing to do with Appleseed, but it was a photo I took while in the Convention Center and therefore of tangential relevance. Don’t give me that look. No, YOU’RE padding a blog entry with photos no one searched to find.

I’m sure we passed several Appleseed banners on our way into town from I-69, but somehow I didn’t notice them till later while we wandered downtown for fun. The con is a big deal to many locals, one of whom told us it’s been getting bigger every year.

Indianapolis hangs similar banners when Gen Con comes to town, but I’ve seen none of these for the comic cons that cropped up in the last two years. Maybe someday one of them will earn this respectable privilege.

Anyway: the con! There were writers, artists, cartoonists, webcomics creators, and enthusiasts in a few different modes. People we met and paid for reading matter included:

* Christopher Mitten, illustrator/co-creator of Image Comics’ Umbral, which I’m looking forward to delving into even though I’m sadly late for the party.

* Writer Ben Avery, who helped adapt George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones prequel novella “The Hedge Knight” into comics for Marvel, teams up frequently with artist/writer Mike S. Miller (Image’s The Imaginaries), and has works available through a few Christian comics publishers. I picked up one, The Book of God, illustrated by ’90s Ghost Rider artist Javier Saltares.

* Brian Bradley of Kingdom Comics, another Christian publisher we’ve seen at Chicago cons.

* Artist Hilary Barta, whom I’ve met twice before at C2E2 (including last year’s), but I’m more than happy to hand him my money whenever I can. My excuse this time was also the overall niftiest thing I picked up at Appleseed: original art from Power Pack #43 — inks by Barta, pencils by Sal Velluto. I have the first fifty-five issues of the team’s original series, but until I set eyes on this page, I’d totally forgotten they had an enemy called the Boogeyman. Oh, the sweet, faded memories.

I love the mutated Chrysler Building at left. Barta reexamined parts of the page, nitpicked a few flaws, and suspects it may have been a weekend rush job. If so, that’s a heck of a turnaround under the circumstances.

Two comics dealers lined the rear of the hall with back issues and discount graphic novels. A handful of others alternated with toy vendors on the right side. I limited my browsing of their wares because I still have a backlog of reading matter from our last few cons, but I couldn’t resist picking up two items of note: a ten-dollar copy of DC’s thirty-dollar compilation of the obscure series Chase, which featured art by a then-unknown JH Williams III who later became a contemporary powerhouse; and a worn copy of X-Men Annual #5 (1981), one of the few vintage Chris Claremont X-stories I’d never read way back when, and never knew existed. I don’t recall ever seeing a reprint of its contents, a double-length team-up with the Fantastic Four against the alien invaders known as the Badoon, illustrated by Astro City‘s Brent Anderson and New Mutants co-creator Bob McLeod. This to me was like finding a lost treasure, despite the odd romantic subplot between Storm and Arkon the Imperion.

Forgotten moment in Marvel history: that time Kitty Pryde, age 13, tried designing her own X-Men costume. And lo, men shall call her…the Bedazzler!

Also in the exhibit hall: this booth! For some reason!

Because some companies just really love conventions.

Best non-food items on display were found at the table of Sweets So Geek, local purveyors of chocolate candies shaped like famous icons and objects of geek culture.

They also do mail order!

The foil wrappers ruin part of the magic, so here’s the Dalek freed from its prison as an example of the handiwork involved.

It’s made of CHOC-O-LATE! CHOC-O-LATE! CHOC-O-LATE! CHOC-O-LATE! CHOC-O-LATE!

(Reviews so far: we had a hard time detecting the bacon in the Bat-Symbol, but it was yummy anyway. My sriracha-tinged Dalek was rich, creamy, and burning. We haven’t gotten to the other two yet.)

Officially the guy at the Sweets So Geek table couldn’t sell food without a vending license or else invite the convention center’s wrath. However, he had an accomplice representing for the company at the pop-up boutique I mentioned in the last entry. She was willing and able to hook us up, and had a few of the guy’s geek cakes on display. They also do super-hero cookies.

A fellow shopper gave a glowing review of the Yoda cake they made for his son’s birthday. Did I mention the mail-order option?

…and that’s pretty much the sum of our ninety-minute Appleseed Comic Con experience. The exhibit hall was three aisles total, plus one room hosting panels all day about toys, Jack Kirby, gender in comics, comics how-to tutorials, and so on. The show’s biggest headliner was Jaime Hernandez, co-creator of the groundbreaking Love and Rockets, some of which I’d read from library copies during high school. Unfortunately, the first time we passed his table, I overlooked him and my wife didn’t mention it till I said something and we were further down the next aisle. The second time, he was AWOL. During his 2:00 Q&A we were several blocks away touring another Fort Wayne establishment. When we returned late in the afternoon for one last pass through the three aisles, he appeared to be packing up for the day, and that’s not something I feel right about interrupting. My loss, I know.

I’d love to share a vast selection of cosplay pics, but this wasn’t that kind of turnout. We saw one Harley Quinn, two Batmen, and four or five Star Wars baddies who were probably all 501st Legion reps. End of cosplayer list. As a token of our remorse for this lack of photographic results, please instead accept this photo of my wife with R2D2 in front of a Death Star backdrop.

Anne is fluent in over two different forms of communication!

The important takeaway here: we met new people and bought cool stuff. Primary objectives were largely met, and pleasingly so.

That’s not all we saw while we were in Fort Wayne, though. To be continued!

This month in Star Wars #6: Boba Fett tries to prove he’s not a loser by going after Luke Skywalker. “Go big or go home,” I guess. (Art by John Cassaday and Laura Martin.)

Marvel’s takeover of the Star Wars comics license from Dark Horse is nearly halfway through its first year, having published a combined eighteen issues to date between three ongoing series and one miniseries thus far. In our household I’m the one with the lifelong comics habit, while my wife is the dedicated Star Wars fan. I have dozens of longboxes; she has a six-foot shelf overflowing with hundreds of Expanded Universe novels. Strictly speaking, Star Wars comics are among those few releases that hold potential interest for both of us. Her enjoyment of Dark Horse’s output outlasted mine by a wide margin, but we’re in a new era and a new universe now, with different creators, different priorities, and different results.

Fair warning for context: I’ve seen all six films multiple times (a couple of them way too many times), but Star Wars is not one of my primary geek specialties as it is for her. My perceptions of George Lucas’ favorite galaxy are skewed because I experienced the original film trilogy in the following order:

1. Heard about the original Star Wars from friends while my mom went to see it without me
2. Bought and read the Empire Strikes Back novelization from a school book fair
3. Saw Return of the Jedi twice in theaters, then read the Goodwin/Williamson comics adaptation
4. Years later, saw Star Wars
5. A decade or so after that, possibly after high school, saw ESB

Despite several attempts at reading random issues, I never got into Marvel’s original 114-issue Star Wars series, not even for Jax the giant green bunny. I read a smattering of Dark Horse works and liked a few things here and there, but I mostly bought them for my wife until and unless she told me to drop titles at her discretion. When I heard about Marvel’s acquisition and reboot using several of their top creators, I think I was more excited than she was. Then again, I’m not the one who just had thirty-odd years’ worth of treasured, memorized, extensively researched Expanded Universe history and intricacies tossed into a garbage chute by Lucasfilm Marketing. (Been there, done that, felt that pain. Welcome to my life as a fortysomething comics fan.)

In my skewed opinion as an old guy who likes comics more than Star Wars, Marvel’s current titles rank as follows from least best to definite best.

4. Star Wars

My wife says this one’s her favorite of the lot, and I think I understand why. Writer Jason Aaron has captured the voices of the Big Three characters and found exciting things for them to do that weren’t already done in the original trilogy. Or maybe I’m misinterpreting and I’ll hear all about it when she gets around to reading this. I can understand how a hardcore SW fan might be fine with stories focusing on Luke, Leia, and Han above all others. My problem is, in all my life from childhood onward, I have never ever ever ever cared about Luke. I get that Luke’s Force-fueled deeds and his glowy super-sword make him the obvious hero of the bunch, but since I never saw his initial whiny reluctance evolve into compassionate swashbuckler in chronological order, to me he’s always been the least interesting member of the ensemble.

So far the series has been mixing and matching pieces for varied effects — Han and Leia on a wild AT-AT ride, a Luke/Vader first meeting that predates ESB, C-3PO babysitting the Millennium Falcon, Boba Fett popping in ahead of schedule for his fan club, and so on. The art by John Cassaday has its energetic moments that work best whenever his facial expressions appear freehand and natural and not traced from photos or stills. But since the Big Three are immune to permanent consequence, it feels like they’re shuffling and reshuffling the same old deck without adding any new cards to it. Even the controversial surprise ending to #6 bounced right off me because I know there’ll be either a logical explanation or a swift elimination forthcoming. Such awareness tends to nullify dramatic effect, a common issue with “midquel” stories that are bookended by fixed points in time.

Princess Leia #4 aces the Bechdel Test as Her Majesty continues to role-model for her subjects despite the destruction of their homeworld. (Art Terry & Rachel Dodson and Jordie Bellaire.)

3. Princess Leia

Of all the Mark Waid comics I’ve ever read, this may be the least Mark Waid-iest. Usually the hero has first-person narrative captions and a clever sense of humor, but Waid is staying outside Leia’s head and faithfully portraying her in stately royalty mode as she pulls rank for the sake of rescuing the scattered remnants of Alderaanian civilization from death and obscurity. It’s kind of interesting to see her in an adventure interacting with other women for a change, but without Han to get under her skin, she lacks a sparring partner who’s anywhere near her equal. The action sequences in #3 livened things up thanks to a wild assist from R2-D2, her noble actions in #4 are the best evidence yet of why anyone still looks up to her, and I’m assuming #5’s finale will surprise me as much as any great issue of his Daredevil run.

Until then, I’ve felt like this miniseries ultimately hasn’t been aimed at me, which is fine and understandable. Oddly, though, it’s also my wife’s least favorite of the four. Neither of us is sure what to make of that.

In Darth Vader #6, Our Villain is aggravated because his evil boss is making him share HIS comic with HIS name on it with other evil upstarts. (Art by Salvador Larroca and Edgar Delgado.)

2. Darth Vader

They had me at “Kieron Gillen”. In his quest for revenge upon the anonymous pilot who shot his TIE Fighter out from under him, Vader is regal and menacing and frustrated and conniving all at once. He’s also outnumbered by a supporting cast of malcontents that won’t stop growing. He’s assembled his own covert-ops team that includes an amoral female Indiana Jones and unrepentant evil-twin versions of Artoo and Threepio, nicknamed BT and Triple-Zero, who may be the most disturbing Star Wars characters I’ve ever seen. The last two issues threw yet another batch of players at us, summoned by Emperor Palpatine to bolster the Sith ranks, upend millennia of Sith standards, and probably annoy a lot of fans who are now being told the sacred “Rule of Two” is more of a guideline than a rule.

Gillen usually writes with a long game in mind, so I’m curious to see where this influx of personalities is eventually headed, as I expect it won’t be long before casualties start mounting due to backstabbing. While I appreciate that lots of new faces increase the odds of actual drama and tension occurring, Vader is in danger of becoming a second-stringer in his own title. I trust he won’t let that come to pass.

“…but no one ever taught me how to survive.” Thus the young fugitive in Kanan: the Last Padawan #2 struggles with a new reality in the wake of Order 66. (Art by Pepe Larraz and David Curiel.)

1. Kanan: the Last Padawan

In which Greg Weisman, one of the minds behind Disney’s Gargoyles and a onetime co-writer of DC’s Captain Atom during my teen years, creates an origin story for one of the main characters from the hit animated series that we quit watching after a handful of episodes. On Star Wars Rebels, Kanan is a former Jedi who still has his connection to the Force, a working lightsaber, a strange idea of what “former” means, and glowering postures that marked him as the strong, silent, bitter type. I never read the prequel-to-a-midquel novel A New Dawn that was supposed to make Rebels mean something to me, and so none of it never did, Kanan included.

His comic is the exact opposite. Commencing partway through Revenge of the Sith, Kanan’s tale follows the loyal trainee through the last days of the Jedi Order and watches helplessly as Order 66 immediately and irrevocably turns his entire world upside-down. Friends become enemies, order becomes chaos, and life becomes a nightmare as the lonely young survivor finds himself on the run from Clonetroopers who were secretly, genetically bred to end him and his kind. The first issue established such a strong connection between our hero and his master, Depa Billaba (with some of her previous history retconned away), that the ending of #1 was rather suspenseful even though it technically wasn’t a surprise. #2 sees Kanan on the run, torn between warm memories and imminent threats, navigating military traps and survival ethics alike.

Kanan the frightened teen fugitive is in such a different place from Kanan the older, disenfranchised sourpuss that beyond this point we truly have no idea what’ll happen next. In this seemingly narrow time frame between Revenge of the Sith and ESB, Kanan’s future is wider open than the futures of the Big Three. More to the point, the groundwork laid in #1 gave us a proper emotional underpinning so we have reason to care about his circumstances and fear for his fate. That’s what drama feels like, and for my money that’s why Kanan: the Last Padawan is the best Star Wars series of the moment.

(Opinion subject to change after the first issue of the Charles Soule/Alex Maleev Lando miniseries hits stores in July. Updates as they occur.)

Except where noted, all art in this entry is by Sal Buscema, Dave Simons, and George Roussos.

Behold the big save-the-day rallying moment from What If? (vol. 1) #44, cover-dated April 1984, which left an indelible impression on me when I was eleven. Three decades later you can take this dramatic splash page totally out of context and pretend it’s symbolic of you as the one true arbiter of What America Is Really All About, Spider-Man and alt-universe Sam Wilson’s army are your friends who agree with you on everything as far as you know, and the other Captain America is everyone whose idea of America is the exact opposite of yours, thus making them evil impostors who must be crushed. With all those Zip-a-Tone layers giving it more lighting depth than any other page in the issue, I have no idea why no one ever turned this into a poster.

Painted cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Then the real Cap wakes up. Heroism ensues. Cap and the surviving heroes have to go take back America. Some old What If? stories had pessimistic endings where everyone died and the villains won and the moral of the story was, “Be very grateful the original stories didn’t go like this.” But this wasn’t one of those one-shot nihilist funnybook stories. Big surprise: Cap and his amazing friends save the day, and then it’s up to the guy dressed in flag regalia to deliver the big speech that reverses the damage, because we all know Spidey would mess it up, the cops would probably start shooting at him, and J. Jonah Jameson would write another nasty editorial about it while cackling uncontrollably.

So it’s up to Cap to assure Americans things are swell again and none of this ever happened. That’s what his disillusioned audience is expecting, anyway. Cap veers off-message and goes in a much firmer direction. And when words fail a duly chastised America, the convocation ends the only way it possibly could: with a song.

…and that’s where the story ends.

Cap’s speech is a little harder for me to read today than it was in sixth grade. At the time, to me this was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. I doubt this story will ever be reprinted, and there’s no way it could withstand a 21st-century reboot. I haven’t collected a Cap series in years, so I couldn’t tell you the last time Marvel printed a Cap story whose main message was “America rules!” or “I love America!” or “America is kind of not-terrible! Yay!” For all I know maybe the new Cap’s whole America motif is purely vestigial and the days of a sincerely patriotic Cap are gone. Or maybe the opposite. Couldn’t tell you.

It’s weird revisiting artifacts from a point in history when citizens didn’t spend the entire week of July 4th brainstorming reasons why America sucks — i.e, not too different from how they spend the other 51 weeks, except for July 4th they redouble their lists because it’s all one big competition to see who can become the greatest Independence Day Grinch of them all. Yes, we get it, America’s not perfect, terrible inexcusable things happen all the time that shouldn’t, someone should pass a “No Child Happy to Live Here” law, things would be so much better if Canada conquered us and paid for all our medicine and forced us to watch all their low-budget sci-fi shows.

But there are things America gets right and does well. No, I’m not listing them for you. Today’s a holiday and I’m off the clock. Because freedom to celebrate, freedom to type and post, freedom not to type and post.

Happy July 4th to our American readers, stay safe, enjoy your weekend, and if a guy in a Captain America costume asks you if you’d be okay with some martial law, chances are he’s not Chris Evans and you can legally sock him in the jaw.

It’s that time of year again! Anne and I are at Wizard World Chicago in scenic Rosemont, IL, where we’re so far having a blast even though parts of it resemble hard work and our feet feel battle-damaged after two days of endless walking, standing, lining up, shuffling forward in cattle-call formation, and scurrying toward exciting people and things. This year marks our first time splurging on VIP passes for a con as an experiment, and the first time in ten years that we’re attending three full days. We normally make a point of skipping Sundays, but we had multiple reasons for going overboard this once.

Pictured above: my haul so far from their Artists Alley, always an interesting place to scout out new comics and graphic novels. I’m annoying to a lot of folks in there that I tend to avoid prints, posters, sketches-while-I-wait, prose novels, zombies, erotica, amateur manga, and jewelry, but within my annoyingly rigorous shopping guidelines, I can usually find a few items to catch my eye.

WWC is always held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Spacious accommodations, lousy concessions, pretty landscaping. In a rare move, WWC reserved the entire convention center this year rather than risk sharing it with other incongruous crowds like antique coin collector clubs or dental hygiene seminars or whatever.

Taking photos of projection screens always looks tacky, but that doesn’t always stop me. I’ve attended a few panels so far, including Saturday’s 3 p.m. Firefly Q&A with special guests Summer Glau (who also costarred in the equally criminally truncated Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles), Adam Baldwin (who helped scar my young psyche in Full Metal Jacket), and THE Nathan Fillion, costar of Much Ado About Nothing. They clearly enjoyed each other’s company, the crowd loved them, and over half my Saturday was spent waiting in their respective lines.

I also met someone from The Wire, which in itself means this was an A-plus weekend, and we’re not even done yet.

At dinner Friday our waiter was a comics fan who planned to attend sometime this weekend. After we ordered, we spent a few minutes chatting about Marvel’s Secret Wars, and at the end of our meal he sketched on our receipt, no charge. For the sketch, I mean, not the food. If only.

The perks with my VIP admission included this trading card for which I have zero use. I haven’t collected geek trading cards in about twenty years, it has no sports or gaming stats on it, there’s no original painted art anywhere on it by some top comics artist, and it’s not numbered as part of a special series. If anyone’s interested in owning this rare gem, I’m asking eleventy billion dollars OBO.

Each of our passes also came with two free copies of The Walking Dead #1 with completely different variant covers from the last hundred free copies of The Walking Dead #1 they gave us at previous Wizard World shows. We have no idea what to do with four more copies of the comics equivalent of Malibu Stacy With New Hat, but they’re ours to keep or turn into cool paper airplanes.

Once we’ve finished attending the final day, returned home, recuperated and regenerated any lost limbs, rest assured as always we’ll be sharing the results and photos later this week on MCC — costumes, actors, anecdotes, and more!

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UPDATED 9/3/2015: Follow along with our pics and stories in this special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Team Cosplay
Part 2: Marvel Cosplay
Part 3: DC vs. Star Wars Cosplay
Part 4: Last Call for Cosplay
Part 5: Actors We Met
Part 6: Cars and Other Objects
Part 7: Why We Convention