New Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer

Part of my new, I don't have any time to blog, blogging schedule is going to be posting and commenting on stuff that's already WAY to old. This new Spider-Man trailer came out two days ago which is like 7 years in internet time. Most of the comic book geeks I follow on twitter are pretty hyped. I'm a bit more ambivalent.

I like Spider-Man, and I'm all for the further adventures of him even if they're on their 3rd actor in the last 10 years really I'm just tired of RDJ and Iron Man. Especially this new do as I say not as I do because I've screwed up so many different things, Iron Man. Get bent Tony and let Spider-Man be Spider-Man. He's never created a robot that almost killed the earth.

If you go by the trailer Iron Man is all over this, hopefully that's just trailer magic and he's in the movie for like 3 seconds.

Also, did I imagine it or did this trailer pretty much give the entire movie away. Like I'm pretty sure I know the entire plot now, and if we accept the fact that Spidey is going to beat Vulture we pretty much know everything. That's not good is it? A trailer should make you want to see a movie not outline the entire plot? I don't know, I'll probably wait for reviews. If it gets killed by critics this might not be a must see for me, sort of like Amazing Spider-Man 2 was. If everyone goes LA LA Land for it I might be able to fit a couple hours into my precious schedule.

What do you call.....

Cosplay Melee: The Review

First I'd like to start with a quick programming note. Haven't had much time to blog lately and odds are that's going to get worse before it gets better. At work we're moving to a new inventory/ordering system and I've spent tons of extra time in training and blah blah blah. Things should get better in late April but until then posts are going to be even more sporadic than usual.

Cosplay Melee is a show I watched! It's true, it was on TV and everything. I think this is the 2nd Cosplay show SyFy has tried to get off the ground and I can definitively say it's much better than Heroes of Cosplay. Yes, it uses a tired competitive format that really isn't what Cosplay is about but as far as entertaining TV it works so much better than the artificial drama of Heroes of Cosplay. The format is familiar to anyone that's watched TV in the last 15 years, it's essentially Chopped for Cosplay.

Its not groundbreaking TV by any means, and yes it's all very silly but watching the skill and work the cosplayers put into their outfits and props is really interesting. The first episode included just enough personal history of the contestants to keep it interesting without having to get into any sort of artificial personal drama that Heroes of Cosplay tried to play up.

If you like watching people build stuff, especially foam suits of armor, it's well worth checking out. It's not going to bump Legion off your DVR or anything but it's the perfect show to have on in the background while you're playing Overwatch or something.

Katsucon 2017: A Cosplayers Paradise

That's the name of the video, not my made up description of the video. I just wanted to make that clear. Cosplayers Paradise sounds too much like a low rent Coolio Parody to me.

Katsucon is a big convention over in DC that mostly focuses on Anime, Manga and Video Games. Here in Seattle we have a similar convention called Sakura-Con that I've thought of going to a couple times. I'm not really that into Manga or Anime but it's in Seattle and what else do I have going on? Wait a minute... I just checked out how much it costs. That's a big nope for me. I'll just enjoy these cosplay videos. The Anime, Manga fans really put a lot of effort into these things. Frankly I expect to be pretty busy at work this week so this whole week might just be 5 straight days of cosplay videos.

If you're lucky one day I might include the story of how I lost my wallet on the light rail this weekend.

Southpaw Regional Wrestling - Episode 1

Over the last couple years the WWE has really pushed to deliver more #content to it's subscribers and fans. Some of it has been really good but a whole lot of it has been complete drek. I'm not 100% sure what category Southpaw Regional Wrestling falls into yet. I think this is amazing but I'm not 100% sure. I feel like I could be convinced either way. Whatever it is it's definitely mesmerizing.

American Gods, Official Trailer

Yesterday saw the release of the first "official" trailer for Starz new series American Gods. It's super bloody and sort of crazy looking. I think I like it?

It's been a few years since I read it but I remember liking American Gods, just not loving it. I do remember thinking it would make a really great movie. Frankly there were a lot of ideas in the book that I didn't think were fully realized so I thought a 2 hour adaption to sort of trim the fat would be good for the story. Here we have the exact opposite, I have no idea how they're going to draw everything out to a 10 episode series. I can't imagine there being a season 2 unless they really go off the reservation.

Whatever the end result might be the trailer is good enough to have me check out at least the first episode. I'm already crazy behind on every TV show I watch, what's one more added to the list?

Star Wars Battle Pod: The Review

A couple years ago Bandai/Namco introduced a big fancy new Star Wars game for the arcade market called Battle Pod. I think I did a post about it but don't quote me on that. Well, thanks to a doctor canceling an appointment same day, my son and I spent the afternoon at an arcade and got a chance to check it out.

The arcade that we went to has a lot more classic games than new ones (with the exception of all the fancy new pinball machines) so I was surprised to find it there. It wasn't cheap, $2 a play, so we only played it a couple times. If the levels weren't so short and you didn't have to pay to continue to the next level we might have played it more but it was worth giving it a try. It's a bit hard to tell by my crack photography here but the screen is curved and wraps around you somewhere around 180 degrees. It's not total immersion but it's pretty close. Close enough that when you're making that trench run you definitely feel like you're Red-5 and Darth is on your tail. It might not be the best Star Wars game I've ever played but as far as feeling like you're in a movie I don't think it can be beat. It's a rail shooter so you don't have much control over where you're flying. I feel like if they took the same screen and graphics and just made it a full on space flight sim you'd really have something special. Maybe save the rail shooter stuff for the trench run but also have full space battles where you're actually piloting the x-wing.

Just throwing some ideas out there.

If you run across one of these in the wild I heartily recommend you try it out. It's worth the couple dollars just to experience once or twice. Or if you're a millionaire and had $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket this would make a real nice cornerstone of a home arcade.


UPDATE! These things cost $100,000, that's a lot of wampa pelts...

New Wonder Woman Trailer

Hey kids, this last weekend a new Wonder Woman trailer hit the webs and lets just forget about all the rumors that this movie is terrible and WB/DC is seriously stressing out about it.

Ok, to be fair that rumor started on one blog and has snowballed to the point that most people can only point to other blogs that are reporting that other blogs have reported on the rumor. Real through the looking glass kind of stuff. All three of the big trailers look pretty good and not in a Suicide Squad, all we've done is set random footage to a cool song, kind of way. I'm going to continue to be cautiously optimistic about this one. Unless the early review are that it's absolute garbage I'll try and check it out opening weekend.

You know, just like I did with Logan which I still haven't seen yet! I might just call in sick on Friday and go to the movies alone like a chump.

TrumpCare

Woo Woo Woo ECCC 2017

Welp, another year, another Emerald City Comicon in the books. Lots of fun was had and plenty of money was spent. I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to claim it as the best ECCC I've ever been too but I know I had as much fun at this one as I have at any of the other ones I've been to.

I'm one of those weird people that actually go to conventions for comics and and while the nerds on facebook did plenty of handwringing over the celebrity guests this year, you could not argue with the selection of comic book creators they had. This year they moved all the celebrity signings out of the convention center and to a nearby hotel. It opened up a lot of space in the convention center and made it way easier to move around. I heard some grumbling from the people who actually wanted to see the celebs but almost everyone agreed the effect it had on artist alley was super positive. I kinda screwed up a bit and didn't manage my time very well and I missed quite a few artists and didn't pick up as many sketchbooks and prints as I wanted. I still walked away with plenty of stuff and it's hard to complain about not blowing my budget entirely.

One of the things I did do this year is check out more panels. Outlander, Stranger Things, The Image Founders, Sean Gunn and Michael Rooker, Timothy Zahn, 10 minutes of boring ass Jeremy Renner, I saw them all. I can't remember going to an ECCC where I checked out this many panels. It was definitely a nice change of pace from just walking the show floor looking at pikachu shaped pillows or laser printed metal portraits of Jean Luc Picard.

The big highlight of this year was that I won this lottery thing where I got to go to a special signing with the founders of Image Comics (minus one Jim Lee). Yes, I understand that if you're not into comics that doesn't really sound as cool as it was but whatever, it was really cool. All the founders were super nice, I got to talk with each of them for just a couple seconds and I got this pretty awesome poster out of the deal. For a frame of reference the line to get just Todd McFarlane's autograph (he was only signing one day) was about 3-4 hours long. I got his and like 5 other super cool guys.

The whole thing got a little Troy Meets Levar Burton when I got to meet Rob Liefeld. Man when I was 14 I was such a huge Rob Liefeld fan, his art is the thing that made me want to start drawing comics way back when. I got a book signed, the poster thing and a picture with him. Plus a fistbump and a handshake, it was crazy. I'm just glad I wasn't a complete blubbering mess.

Anyhoo, that's about all of it. I'll try and get to a cosplay roundup next week. I took a few pictures but not enough for like a real gallery or anything, I'll probably just post a bunch of links to some good galleries. Next stop Rose City Comicon in September.

The Big Bang Theory but with Ricky Gervais as the whole studio audience.

You know how sometimes you'll be dinking around on YouTube and you'll come across a video where the title doesn't actually match what is going on at all? This is not one of those times.

I'm working on my ECCC recap post but it doesn't look like I'll get to it today. Stupid real work. Hopefully I'll have it up tomorrow and by tomorrow I mean Friday at the latest. Spoiler: I had a fun time.

Hello ECCC

Welp, it's that time of year again. Tomorrow is the start of the 15th annual Emerald City Comicon. As you might have guess I'm looking forward to it greatly. I even took the day off to prepare for it. Sounds silly on its face but I've got stuff to do and it's hard to get stuff done with kids. Big important stuff like change the oil in my car and shave in a fresh mohawk for my Quentin Quire cosplay on Saturday.

This year I'm going to try and catch more panels, some celebrity some comic book industry related. When they expanded the convention to 4 days it really allows you to slow down and take in more scheduled stuff without losing time on the show floor. I've got a pretty big stack of comics I want to get signed so with any luck I'll get a good portion of those done tomorrow when there aren't as many people there.

I thought for a few seconds that this might be the year I finally jump into collecting some original art instead of just prints but man... Most every one I would really want a commission from would mean blowing my entire budget on one picture. We'll see, maybe I can just get a couple head sketches or something. Or you know, I'll just blow all my cash on churros and N64 games. We'll see!