comics – Midlife Crisis Crossover!

As I type this, the fifth annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″) is wrapping up this year’s three-day run, April 25-27, 2014. Each year C2E2 keeps expanding, attracting more attention, inching ever closer to its goal of becoming the Midwest’s answer to the legendary San Diego Comic Con and its other coastal ilk. My wife and I missed the first year, but have attended every year since 2011 as a team.

Over the next four entries, which I’m hoping to crank out as quickly as possible without forming a symbiotic attachment to our PC, I’ll be sharing memories and photos from our C2E2 experience. The first three entries will be costume pics; the fourth, a sampling of the creators, actors, and curios we encountered. Several attendees may find themselves strolling through backgrounds as living, walking, oblivious Easter Eggs.

Caveats for first-time visitors to Midlife Crisis Crossover:

1. My wife and I are not professional photographers, nor do we believe ourselves worthy of press passes. These were taken as best as possible with the intent to share with fellow fans out of a sincere appreciation for the works inspired by the heroes, hobbies, artistic expressions, and/or intellectual properties that brought us geeks together under one vaulted roof for the weekend. We all do what we can with the tools and circumstances at hand.

2. It’s impossible for any human or organization to capture every costume on hand. What’s presented here will be a fraction of the sum total costume experience. That being said, please note MCC refutes the popular notion that everyone attends in costume. We appreciate those who do, but the general public believes it’s a mandatory masquerade and I’m kind of burnt out on confronting that cute but inaccurate perception.

3. We didn’t attend Sunday. Sincere apologies to anyone we missed as a result.

4. Corrections and comments are always welcome, especially for Parts 2 and 3, where You, the Viewers at Home, will have the opportunity to step up and name some anime and/or fantasy characters we old fogies didn’t recognize. I like learning new things, especially when I’m trying to write about characters and series that are beyond my particular geek foci.

5. Enjoy!

Booster Gold (in his short-lived armor), Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes edition), Batgirl (Barbara Gordon), and Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) represent for the DC Universe. Many DC cosplayers in the house; very, very few from the New 52.

Deathstroke, the Joker, Harley Quinn and Gambit prove inter-company crossovers don’t hurt.

Another Gambit, teamed up with the Green Power Ranger. Gambit just can’t pick a side.

If Warner Brothers had said yes, Christopher Nolan’s fourth Batman film would’ve seen our hero, Catwoman, and Bane rebuilding Gotham City with the help of the Jedi Order.

X-Men united! The later Charles Xavier summons to his side Jean Grey, Cyclops, Jubilee, Magneto, and, uh, the Penguin.

Variant heroes in action: “Wings of Redemption” Spawn vs. the protagonist from Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son. Hiding in the background: Effie Trinket in one of her dozens of outfits.

Wolverine variant #1: “Weapon X” Wolverine and his worst pal Cyclops, with special guest Green Lantern John Stewart.

Wolverine variant #2: Cobra Kai Wolverine vs. Deadpool. On a related note, I’d love to see Deadpool pop up in the next Karate Kid remake.

Wolverine variant #3: Oompa-Loompa Wolverine is the best he is at what he does…and what he does is pure imagination.

Another Deadpool hangs out with a soldier from the Resident Evil Umbrella Corporation, both mercenaries protesting their corporate employers. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, guys.

Cosplayers frequented pretty much every room, nook, cranny, and wide open space in the con, turning every panorama into a “Where’s Waldo?” puzzle. See if you can spot Wonder Woman, a Biker Scout, and Patriot from the Young Avengers!

The mighty Thor wields the power of the Tesseract. Or the Cosmic Cube, if you’re old-school like me.

J’Onn J’Onzz, the Martian Manhunter, in one of his final costumes before the New 52 swept his old life away.

Wonder Woman, that beloved, inspirational Amazon heroine who vexes villains and filmmakers alike.

A Poison Ivy far superior to the one that thought Mr. Freeze would make an awesome teammate.

Green Arrow, the emerald archer in ANY medium.

Green Arrow! Or Arrow. Whichever you kids call him today.

Scarlet Spider, circa Ben Reilly’s early days on the run.

Professor Beast says class is in session.

The Beast, preparing to school someone.

Props to Zatanna for complete old-school accuracy, including those heels.

Color Kid colors your world for JUSTICE!

Yes, an actual hero: Color Kid, from the Legion of Substitute Heroes. One of the two most original choices of the day in my book.

Another Harley Quinn, this one realizing explosives are much more reliable and less volatile than her beloved Mistah J.

Captain America’s sidekick Bucky was originally much younger and consequently made different costume choices than the movie version. It’s cool to see this one brought to life again.

My other favorite of the day, and the only Vertigo character I saw: Morpheus a.k.a. Dream from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, complete with helmet, ruby, and sand pouch.

To be continued! Coming up in our next installments:

Part 2: Costumes on the Show Floor, Not-Comics Division
Part 3: the Costume Contest
Part 4: Creators, Actors, One Panel, and More!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: photos from the fifth annual C2E2 convention in Chicago. In this final installment: what we did at C2E2 when we weren’t applauding cosplayers.

Our first act upon walking onto the show floor: approaching the giant whiteboards (markers were provided) and letting my wife Anne add a Jedi Snoopy to the walls that would collect fan art throughout the day.

Marvel Comics had the largest booth of all the publishers who were gracious enough to attend and validate the existence of us Midwest fans, unlike some publishers of Justice League or The Walking Dead that we could mention.

Dark Horse likewise still loves us and acknowledges our existence.

Dueling TARDIS exits, made possible by Alien Entertainment’s Doctor Who Store booth.

Another pride and joy of theirs: “Ironsides” from season five’s “Victory of the Daleks”.

Not every TARDIS is constructed with an equal budget, but the deep fan appreciation is always there.

Kosart Effects presents Frankenpig and other creations by J. Anthony Kosar, the season-four winner of Syfy’s Face Off.

A collection of cardboard Batman standees allowed attendees to pose with the Dark Knight of their choice, from Greg Capullo’s New 52 version to the Diedrich Bader lighthearted version from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

HAIL HYDRA. Just because.

(Fun, unrelated trivia: anyone who walked up to the Loot Crate booth and said, “HAIL HYDRA!” got freebies. My wife was overjoyed with her Rubik’s Cube keychain.)

Special section #1: Famous personalities we met.

Best of Show: Saul Rubinek, best known to young folk as the star of Syfy’s Warehouse 13, but he’s one of those great character actors we’ve seen all over the place. My personal favorite would be his stint on Frasier. My wife was excited to have him autograph her copy of his book So Many Miracles, for which he interviewed his parents about how they survived the horrors of WWII Poland.

Natalie Tena has been most recently been recurring as Osha on Game of Thrones, but my wife and I still know her as Tonks from the Harry Potter series. At far right, GoT’s Kristian Nairn, a.k.a. HODOR!

When I heard the Ernie Hudson would be appearing as a guest, I never expected to get within 200 feet of him. For some reason, it was possible and stunningly undercharged compared to other actors’ pricing structures. We went for the photo op for three reasons: photo-op instead of autograph was a mere pittance of an upcharge; the photo-op line was being herded along much more quickly than the autograph line; and because he’s Winston Zedmore. Also, the warden from Oz, but I have yet to venture past season one.

Special section #2: the one panel we attended.

We skipped most panels this year and got caught up in other activities instead, but I cleared our schedule for one: “Geek Geek Revolution”, an informal trivia competition between authors Seth Fishman, Lydia Vang, Kevin Hearne, and Patrick Rothfuss. They were tasked with being the fastest to answer questions on assorted geek topics including but not limited to Star Wars, Back to the Future, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blade Runner, Princess Bride, Diff’rent Strokes, The Dresden Files, Zombieland, comics, the Whedonverse, Westeros, Pern, Isaac Asimov, and more more more. But not Benedict Cumberbatch.

Your moderator: Hugo Award-winning novelist John Scalzi (Redshirts), whose “Whatever” blog I follow daily even though I’ve read none of his books. His stage presence was exactly as I imagined it would be. In a good way, I mean — this was no deathly grim Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? showdown, just five friends finding a unique way to hang out, fly their geek flags with pride, and entertain the heck out out of other geeks for an hour, even if I was a little disappointed that none of them could remember Hari Seldon or Detective Comics #27. Questions from the audience were another source of brow-furrowing, especially the one about Sailor Moon.

Lydia Vang won by a wide margin against the guys. One could argue she was aided by the signaling system that favored those who could raise their hands most quickly, thus putting anyone with stocky arms like mine at a disadvantage. My theory was undercut when thin-limbed Fishman came in dead last. Thus was bestowed upon him the dishonor of wearing a Jar-Jar mask for ten humiliating seconds.

Best comedy bit: Scalzi’s impression of Wallace Shawn. Runner-up: Hearne’s impression of Luke Skywalker, Tosche Station frequent shopper.

Special section #3: comics creators we met.

Gail Simone, whose awesome Secret Six was one of many DC Comics titles that I wish hadn’t been eliminated to make way for the New 52. Right now she’s steering the comic-book fates of Batgirl, Red Sonja, and the upcoming Tomb Raider relaunch. Her autograph line had to be capped at one point, but she was gracious enough to sign my Kickstartered copy of Leaving Megalopolis before she was swept away to her next round of appointments and devotees.

We met Charles Soule last year, but I noticed this time he had copies for sale of both volumes of his creator-owned music-thriller series 27, which we spoke about at last year’s music panel. In the past year he’s become an unstoppable writing machine for Marvel and DC, handling several books at each company, among which I count Swamp Thing and She-Hulk as monthly musts.

My wife currently follows just two kinds of comics each month: most things with Star Wars on them, and DC’s uproarious Batman ’66, written by Jeff Parker. Years ago his work on the “Marvel Adventures” line made an impression on my son, who’d had trouble finding any Marvel comics that were remotely penetrable to new readers. And you, too, can bring literacy to your family through the whimsy and wonder of Jeff Parker comics. Go buy all of them now.

Greg Pak is currently handling Superman as well as Valiant’s Eternal Warrior, but to me he’ll always be one of the guys who helped make Marvel’s Incredible Hercules a fantastic voyage while it lasted. This appearance was a great excuse to pick up his self-published Code Monkey Save World.

Writer/artist Scott McCullar (who’s had work published at DC) offered samples of his current work-in-progress, Thrill Seeker Comics.

I’ve seen the Bryan JL Glass’ name in various Big Two solicitations, but for some reason I hadn’t tried his work before. The co-creator of Mice Templar was also selling the first three issues of his current Dark Horse miniseries Furious, a dark, thought-provoking take on what super-heroics might look like if the average former Hollywood child star had an even harsher upbringing than the norm, a yen to atone for her sins, and super-powers that work best when she’s so mad she can’t see straight. It’s not a shiny-happy all-ages book, but it is a book starring a female super-hero who’s not drawn with deformed, barely covered mega-breasts.

* * * * *

…and that’s the Saturday that was. I’m already looking forward to next year’s, Lord willing.

Before we exited the show floor one last time, we stopped again at the giant whiteboards to see what works had been wrought by the community at large over the previous eight hours. What had been a blank slate had turned through innumerable efforts of collaboration and/or cross-purposes into a thing of unique, temporary awe.

Just like the field of comics itself, it took an amalgam of personalities and talents inbound from all possible directions geographical or demographic to add their ideas, creations, scribbles, improvements, defaming, elaborations, personal plugs, or plain ol’ stream-of-consciousness graffiti to the mix. The markers were free and available to one and all — no preapproval process, no applications, no mandatory training classes, no gatekeepers to judge, no one around to tell anyone “no”.

With so many shouting at once, it’s inevitable that some voices will get buried in the mix. Sometimes victory goes to those who shout the loudest. Sometimes it’s a matter of shouting better. Sometimes it’s a matter of not shouting at all.

Sometimes it just takes a firm vision and a steady voice to stand out among the cacophony, a discovery in waiting for those who know where and why to keep looking.

Okay, so what you want to show the world probably isn’t quite like poor, buried Jedi Snoopy up there.

Show us anyway.

Thanks for reading.

* * * * *

Other installments in this MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Costumes on the Show Floor, Comics Division
Part 2: Costumes on the Show Floor, Not-Comics Division
Part 3: the Costume Contest

We’ll see you at our next convention, then — May 31, 2014, at Indy Pop Con. Cheers!

That magical day is here once again! the thirteenth annual Free Comic Book Day is happening this Saturday, May 3rd, coinciding with the long-awaited U.S. theatrical release of Amazing Spider-Man 2. What better way to maximize your otherworldly weekend experience than to have your favorite media teaming up against the forces of illiteracy and doldrums?

For those just joining us: every year since 2002, the greatest American comic book shops participate in the hobby’s largest outreach effort to alert the world that comic books are a viable force for expression and entertainment, have plenty to offer, aren’t just for kids, aren’t just for lusty young-adult males, and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The overriding message here, especially if you consider the wide assortment up for grabs this year:

Comics Are For Everyone.

To spread the message and the love, participating comic shops hand out free comics to any and all visitors, all specially published for the occasion by all the major companies and a vast army of companies that may be slightly less major, but their myriad voices and talents are just as vital to the field and worthy of your consideration.

The official FCBD site has the complete list of this year’s offerings, which include the likes of Archie, the Simpsons, Batman Beyond (sort of), Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hello Kitty, Adventure Time, Regular Show, Power Rangers, Spongebob Squarepants, GI Joe vs. Transformers, Disney ducks, Judge Dredd, Atomic Robo (the patron saint of FCBD in my book), Buck Rogers, a manga version of Les Miserables (yes, really, apparently), and America’s newest fixation, Marvel’s Rocket Raccoon. And, of course, more more more more MORE.

How it works:

Step 1: Find a comic shop in your area. The online Comic Shop Locator can help you if Google is being stubborn.

Step 2: Clear your Saturday morning schedule. Run your errands later in the day, quit your school sports team, and put away your entertainment gizmos because nothing important happens online on Saturday mornings anyway.

Step 3: Arrive before the shop opens. There will be a line. Try not to panic. We geeks are used to lines. The FCBD line should move briskly compared to a lot of convention horror stories we could tell you.

Step 4: When it’s your turn to enter the store, remain calm. If you have to squeal with giddiness, squeal under your breath.

Step 5: Observe the posted limits. Many shops limit how many free comics each person can take. Keep in mind there’s no rule against bringing extra persons, as long as they can behave in public and are willing to share theirs with you later.

Step 6: Maybe bring money and spend a few dollars on other cool stuff? Or many dollars on lots of other cool stuff?

Here’s the thing: comic shop owners bring these freebies to you entirely at their own expense, paying for all of them out of their own pocket. These free comics weren’t made possible by a federal grant or an off-season visit by Santa Claus. The large corporate publishers are not eating all the costs here. These are small business owners footing the entire bill for the books that their respective stores give away. For some, it ends up a loss. Overseas shops generally opt out of FCBD altogether because the air-freight shipping costs alone on so many zero-profit giveaways would end their business.

If you’re brand new to the medium and would like to go home and read your freebies first before making any firm commitments, I wouldn’t blame you. That’s what they’re there for. Try it, see if you like it. Hopefully you’ll find something that speaks to you, and I hope we’ll see you again soon.

If you’re a longtime collector and Wednesday new-comics-day regular, it’s a great time to grab your want list, or think of a series you’ve been meaning to try, or remember an original graphic novel you put off buying week-of-release, I encourage you to follow my lead and budget for it this very Saturday, as a generous thank-you to some of the folks who make our entire hobby possible. If your self-serving plan is to show up this Saturday, toss armloads of free stuff into a wheelbarrow, and walk out without donating to The Cause, by which I mean without buying anything…then you, my fellow geek, are doing it wrong.

Still on the fence about this whole FCBD thing? Why not take a word of advice from a much smarter man — LeVar Burton, host of TV’s Reading Rainbow? I shouldn’t have to list all his credits here; if you don’t know him, ask your parents who he is and watch their eyes widen with reverence. Then watch this video and rewrite your Saturday plans. See you at FCBD 2014!

Happy Free Comic Book Day! The thirteenth annual celebration of graphic storytelling narratives and/or floppy funnybooks was a rousing success, judging by the sights my wife and I saw at the three Indianapolis stores we visited. This year’s intent rightly wasn’t to reward the adults for sticking with the hobby through thick and thin. As you can tell by the above photo, including and entertaining today’s children was a major priority. Sure, many of them were based on beloved properties from other media, but those who looked carefully could find some original creations seeking their attention as well.

At our first stop, Downtown Comics North, a second table housed the not-necessarily-all-ages comics. Whatever your tastes or sensibilities, both tables had plenty to offer. We kept our wants modest and did not take one copy of everything. I have no justifiable need to hoard sixty new comics in one shopping trip. Many free comics, perhaps, but not five dozen. As you age and your home overflows with stuff and things, you’ll find that at some point “freebies” and “mandatory acquisition” cease to be synonyms.

I passed over items for a variety of reasons. I felt too guilty to take one of the Archaia hardcovers. The Valiant Comics sampler was just excerpts from upcoming comics which I already know whether or not I’ll be collecting. The Archie Digest was a generous serving of more Archie than I’ll ever need all at once. And I dismissed a few free titles that starred breasts, with women attached to them as an afterthought. All told, I picked up less than half the available books, but that still added up to a hefty reading pile.

Exactly as I planned, I purchased something at every store we visited. I picked up a few trades I’d been considering (this year’s focus: Miles Morales), I decided to try a few new series I hadn’t been following (Captain Marvel, Lumberjanes, Amazing Spider-Man), I caught up on the last three months’ worth of Deadpool, and I picked up the new issue of Furious (see previous capsule mention), which I’d missed on Wednesday.

(My one disappointment: three shops and not one of them had a single copy of Evan Dorkin’s Eltingville Club #1, which Dark Horse released April 23rd. My usual shop didn’t order it, didn’t recognize it, and refused to pay attention to me when I spelled the name for them. I’m guessing I’ll have to order a copy online and try not to grouse too bitterly about shipping costs or being ignored.)

The line was sizable by the time the doors opened at 11 a.m. but moved quickly. The folks from Indy Pop Con brought donuts, coffee, and free swag. Reps from the Indiana Toy and Comic Expo were handing out flyers and a few free tickets. Downtown Comics offered merchandise discounts and a Twitter-based prize drawing for which I still have my fingers crossed.

Special guest heroes and villains were on hand to usher fans inside, stand tall, and be awesome. Exhibit A: Hawkguy and Nightwing!

Representing for DC Comics before the New 52: Poison Ivy, Dawnstar from the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Firestorm the Nuclear Man.

Wonder Woman was in charge of determining which fans were worthy of entering and partaking of today’s featured literature.

WW’s teammates, Ms. Marvel and Veronica Lodge.

New arrival as we were leaving: hard-workin’ Harley Quinn.

Stop #2: Comic Carnival, our city’s oldest comics retailer, still plugging away after nearly four decades. We’re not in the vicinity very often, but I do like to check in from time to time. Their store is smaller in comparison but more tightly packed with literal wall-to-wall back issues as well as trades and new stuff.

On hand to welcome us: She-Ra! Yes, the renowned Princess of Power is much more accessible to her fans than that distant, standoffish He-Man, who probably hates reading. Forget that guy and I hope he never gets to be in a movie.

Stop #3: Downtown Comics West for our grand finale. Like their north-side counterpart they had a line before the doors opened, but the party was well inside by the time we arrived. Inside were many bedazzled children, eyes wide and hands grabby. My wife assured a few tiny doubters that yes, everything on the special table really was free; yes, they could take whatever they wanted; and okay, yeah, this strange free Marvel comic called Guardians of the Galaxy is gonna be a movie pretty soon, so eventually they’re gonna be somebody! They trusted her, looked up to her, and assumed she worked there because she’s awesome that way, and probably also because we were wearing the Free Comic Book Day 2014 T-shirts that Diamond Comic Distributors was giving away at their C2E2 booth last weekend.

Our hosts at this soiree: a Dalek of sorts, a different Wonder Woman, and Robin (pre-New 52 Tim Drake version).

Wonder Woman! Robin! Dalek!

Another nice touch: musical guests the Orchard Keepers regaling the crowd. The store’s relocation to the Ben Davis High School area a couple years ago has created more opportunities for community interaction, arts-based encouragement, and conveniently located trading-card tournaments.

In conclusion: literacy, heroism, representation, inclusiveness, adventure, community, and yeah, Someone Thinking of the Children. That was our fantabulous Free Comic Book Day 2014 here in the Circle City.

See you next year! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have way too much reading to do.

Even in the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender. some guys think they gotta dominate everything. Art by Faith Erin Hicks.

As previously recounted, my wife and I had a ball on Free Comic Book Day 2014 this past Saturday. Readers of multiple demographics, especially a heartening number 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.

How did the finished works do? Did they present an enjoyable, self-contained experience? Were they welcoming to new readers? Did they adhere to the old adage that every comic is someone’s first?

Of the nearly five dozen items offered to retailers nationwide, my wife and I carried away twenty-five in all, in addition to numerous other items I purchased using money instead of good will. My favorites from my FCBD 2014 reading pile were the following:

Avatar: the Last Airbender/Itty Bitty Hellboy/Juice Squeezers (Dark Horse) — Most of this year’s FCBD books were samplers of two or more properties, all the better to increase reader exposure to as many potential new worlds as possible. Best of Show in my book was Avatar: the Last Airbender, with a ripped-from-the-headlines tale about exclusionary hobbyists and young girls who aren’t yet ready to face oppression alone. I’ve never seen the cartoon and should probably avoid the movie forever, but its third annual A-plus FCBD contribution makes me wonder if perhaps I should see if it’s on Netflix. Of the other two stories: Art Baltazar and Franco’s “Itty Bitty Hellboy” two-pager is fun Harvey Comics silliness; and David Lapham’s creator-owned “Juice Squeezers” deliver anti-bullying teen science revenge and might make a lively Nickelodeon TV show if they could afford giant CG ants.

Project Black Sky (Dark Horse) — I’ve avoided nearly all of Dark Horse’s recent super-hero revivals with one exception, Fred Van Lente’s Brain Boy, who costars here with the equally rebooted obscure hero known as Captain Midnight. The obnoxious young psychic and the time-displaced super-captain (sounds familiar, I know) are irritated buddy-heroes partnered against hyper-intelligent but non-verbal gorillas for whom letterer Nate Piekos rose to the challenge of finding a way to bring ASL to life in comics. Add in the textured art/colors of Michael Broussard and Dan Jackson, subtract one gratuitous “‘MURICA!” joke (the internet finds those a lot funnier than I do), and this may be the best Dark Horse super-hero comic I’ve ever read. (I was never a fan of their Comics’ Greatest World line, so…yeah.)

Hip Hop Family Tree Two-in-One (Fantagraphics) — This was a random pickup at one shop that I didn’t even realize was this year’s Fantagraphics FCBD contribution until hours later. Excerpts from the nonfiction series’ first volume by indie cartoonist Ed Piskor (American Splendor, Wizzywig) provide educational highlights from the history of rap music, from its early 1970s growing pains in NYC’s outer boroughs to slightly later, nonetheless major personalities like KRS-One and producer Rick Rubin just before the turn of the decade, all served up with an accurate comics/rap compare/contrast prologue, pretend-aged paper decay, and an homage to Marvel’s 1986 25th-anniversary cover motif. As a former white college boy who counted more than a few rap albums in his old cassette collection, a lot of this history is fascinating to me even though it’s been years since I last bought a rap album by someone besides the Beastie Boys. Might’ve been Cypress Hill, can’t remember offhand. Regardless, something like this belongs up on the shelf next to Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe.

Maddy Kettle headlines this year’s Top Shelf Kids Club sampler. Art by Eric Orchard.

Top Shelf Kids Club 2014 (Top Shelf) — Two excerpts this year from upcoming books, neither of them being Owly for a change. The better of the two is Eric Orchard’s Maddy Kettle, about a young girl and her floating toad on a road trip to find the witch that turned her parents into rats. It’s dark and quirky and has goblins and young me would’ve loved to see more. The other half of the book is Rob Harrell’s Monster on the Hill, comedy-fantasy set in an 1867 England where each and every small town likes to be proud of the monster that terrorizes it. I laughed more than once, but whether or not it qualifies as “kids club” material depends on how your family feels about “bloody Hell” as an epithet choice. It would’ve given me pause in my son’s youth, but it’s your call.

Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel) — Soon to be a major motion picture! An easy intro to the five cast members is written not as a set of dry dossiers, but as a welcome-to-the-team convo between Tony Stark and the newest Guardian, Corporal Flash Thompson, current handler of the alien bioweapon known as Venom. Brian Michael Bendis’ thorough but snappy dialogue decorates a perfunctory action demo that’s pretty much all incoming readers need if they want on board before the film’s August release. Also enclosed are several pages from the upcoming original graphic novel Thanos: the Infinity Revelation, in which writer/artist Jim Starlin returns to the character he personally turned into a major threat that you’ll be seeing in distant Avengers films over the next five years.

Hatter M, Vol. 1: Far from Wonder #1 (Automatic Pictures) — Like Hip Hop Family Tree Two-in-One it’s a reprint of a first issue I never saw, but it bore the FCBD insignia and it’s new to me. Reimaginings of Alice in Wonderland rarely score points with me (I shed zero tears for the recently canceled Once Upon a time in Wonderland), but for some reason I didn’t mind this one, in which the Mad Hatter is a royal bodyguard assigned to time-travel from Future Wonderland to 1859 Paris to seek his lost Queen Alyss. I snickered at this altered spelling before I dove into the book, a suitable excuse for Ben Templesmith to do stylized, creepy, Templesmithian things, which have grown on me more as I’ve aged. The preface makes sure newcomers are aware it’s Eisner-nominated material, which doesn’t surprise me because I regularly recognize or remember half the nominees in any given year. I can see how that happened here. The nominating, I mean, not the forgetting.

The all-new Transformers vs. G.I. Joe, apparently approved by a much more permissive Hasbro regime. Art by Tom Scioli.

Transformers vs. G.I. Joe (IDW Publishing) — The cover’s pink-and-purple color scheme forewarned me something was abnormal. If you know a fan of either toy line who’s ever discussed them while using the word “canon” in a sentence, this book may make them rend their garments. Godland artist Tom Scioli teams up with co-writer John Barber for a wanton display of madcap irreverence that has less in common with your childhood than it does with Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, Brandon Graham’s Prophet, and your parents’ favorite drugs. If you can’t handle the idea of a blond, chatty Snake-Eyes, you may not be prepared to open this. I’m fine with it, but I have occasional pop-culture iconoclasm issues, so mine might not be the example you’ll want to heed.

Spongebob Freestyle Funnies 2014 (United Plankton Pictures c/o Bongo Comics) — In which experienced funnybook technicians like Jacob Chabot, Gregg Schigiel, Sam Henderson, and Maris Wicks take turns with the world’s greatest sponge and his pal Patrick. Amusement abounds, but I super-liked Schigiel’s “Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy” short, which introduces the long-overdue Mermaid Girl. (Quoth a nervous Barnacle Boy to his mentor: “But I’m still your sidekick, right?”) If you’ve ever liked the cartoon, there’s not much wrong here.

Magic Wind (Epicenter Comics) — American translation of the Italian Magico Vento, a Western horror series that’s been running overseas since 1997. Your Old West hero is ex-military Ned Ellis, now a Sioux shaman who sees visions thanks to shrapnel in his brain. Our man teams up with a sober Edgar Allan Poe and squares off against hollerin’ killer Injuns, kindly Mormons, and what appears to be a colossal, belligerent crude-oil snake. Not for the faint of heart or those who can’t help wondering why we still have books with hollerin’ killer Injuns in them, but Joe R. Lansdale fans should get a kick out of this.

Atomic Robo’s AI systems aren’t so sharp at subtly changing the subject. Art by Scott Wegener.

Atomic Robo/Bodie Troll/Haunted (Red 5 Comics) — To me, Atomic Robo is the patron saint of Free Comic Book Day and an automatic pickup every time for good, whimsical action science adventure. Once again backing him up is trash-craving Bodie Troll, strictly giving kids a well-cartooned, subversive dose of garbage gags. If you find yourself guffawing at the idea of “stinky armpit roots” you’ve come to the right place. Also on hand is Haunted, represented only by a four-page chase scene that offers promising art but otherwise insufficient data to encourage further sampling.

Bongo Comics Free-for-All 2014 (Bongo) — Another year, another year’s-best compilation from the Simpsons Comics people. A tour of Mr. Burns’ underground catacombs, an Itchy & Scratchy send-up of Spy vs. Spy, a tribute to Steve Ditko’s Dr Strange, and a one-page Sergio Aragonés “Where’s Ralph?” puzzle were all funnier than tonight’s overhyped partially-Lego TV episode.

Skyward/Midnight Tiger (Action Lab) — I’ve raved here before about Jeremy Dale’s creator-owned fantasy Skyward and was looking forward to this special. Unfortunately this is a flashback that means more if you’re caught up on the series, and I’ve bought but not yet had a chance to read Volume 2, so my gratification is suspended pending further reading progress. Batting second is Midnight Tiger, a black teen hero strip with occasionally awkward art, some inspired touches (I love the idea of a phone app that helps commuters avoid superhuman fights), a couple of cheesy in-jokes (police code for superhuman fights is a “616″), and an origin-story climax that’s either rushed or missing pages. I do see promise and groundwork being laid for the months ahead, particularly in the opening debate over the average-Joe viewpoint that isn’t impressed by heroes who routinely save Earth as a whole but never take the time to investigate the plight of individual neighborhoods.

To be continued!

Batman Beyond vs. Batwingbot and Squirebot in DC’s apocalyptic Futures End. Art by Patrick Zircher.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

…my wife and I had a ball on Free Comic Book Day 2014 this past Saturday. Readers of multiple demographics, especially a heartening number 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.

How did the finished works do? Did they present an enjoyable, self-contained experience? Were they welcoming to new readers? Did they adhere to the old adage that every comic is someone’s first?

Part One was an overview of my favorites from this year’s haul. Covered here are the rest, from those nearly good enough to those I wish I’d left behind. On with the countdown:

The New 52: Futures End 0 (DC Comics) — DC’s next Major Event begins as many such DC events do: with heroes being murdered and dismembered, hope quashed under a massive steamroller, and Blue Beetle picked off as an early casualty. Batman Beyond makes his New 52 debut as the Kyle Reese/Kathryn Pryde/Marty McFly character from the future who goes back in time to prevent Skynet analog Brother Eye from turning all DC characters into Borg Terminator spiders modeled on John Carpenter’s The Thing. As an unabashed Justice League: Days of Future Past it gets the ball rolling with some of DC’s best writers and artists. It’s barely discernible as a New 52 story except for all those weird Jim Lee collars. But this Major event will be a weekly, 48-issue project. That’s far beyond my comics-event commitment level, no matter how good the art might be.

Rocket Raccoon (Marvel) — Soon to be a major motion picture! Rocket will be receiving his own solo series soon courtesy of writer/artist Skottie Young, who supplies only the cover here. The interior tale is a personable mockup of Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, and other video games from my son’s collection. It’s simple and fitting for kids who want a straightforward action hero and really like animals. As a value-added plus, the issue also reprints a cute, fourth-wall-teasing Spider-Man space story from a few years ago, drawn by personal fave Ty Templeton and costarring the most recent version of the White Tiger. She’s currently appearing in Mighty Avengers and hopefully won’t end up as yet another minority hero that Marvel takes off the shelf and stuffs in their Goodwill bag out in the garage.

FUBAR: The Ace of Spades (FUBAR Press) — The premise remains the same as their FCBD 2013 entry: self-contained stories about major historical events or locales, but with zombies in them. This year’s two topical tales of terror try staging zombies both inside Saddam Hussein’s stronghold at the time of his capture and up against Seal Team Six inside bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout. Both function well enough as war stories go, particularly the Iraq scenario as written by reliable war-comics pro Chuck Dixon, and this hit a nostalgic nerve as the only black-and-white book in my FCBD pile, but the question remains of just how many more zombie stories Earth really needs at this point.

Another daydreaming millennial pounds a nail into the coffin of the dying carpet repair trade. Rise of the Magi 0. Art by Sumeyye Kesgin.

Rise of the Magi 0 (Top Cow) — A scrawny, big-nosed boy in another land refuses to follow his stubborn father’s career track and sets his mind on more otherworldly pursuits that he might not be ready to handle. While How to Train Your Dragon remains my favorite DreamWorks movie to date, this remarkably not-so-different coming-of-age adventure replaces dragons with magic and Scotland with an Asgardian Agrabah (or something). It’s an imaginative start with art that reminds me of Mark Badger’s work on The Mask and various late-’80s Marvel books, but I’m bitter because it’s only eleven pages long. The remaining pages are padded out with concept art, which can be interesting but always feels like a cheat to me. More disappointing is that this charming book is done the disservice of being hidden beneath a typically edgy Top Cow cover that bears absolutely, positively no resemblance to any art, characters, items, or anything else inside. A fantasy book with this kind of potential deserves better than bait-and-switch marketing.

Giant-Size Adventure/Thrills/Fantasy/Action (Red Giant Entertainment) — Four flipbooks introducing two concepts apiece: I got them from a shop that handed them out as a shrink-wrapped set, but I saw another shop that had opened and stacked them for separate distribution. The eight stories break down like so:

* Shadow Children: Two kids who grew up in a fantasy dimension as a sort of witness protection program to avoid the monstrous adults who ruined their lives now find themselves as teens trying to reenter their homeworld with deadly powers and extra sensitivity to that same kind of adult. Warm, funny, touching, frightening, and potentially triggerish all at once. This could become something big and meaningful if it stays restrained and doesn’t go full-tilt revenge-fantasy.

* Magika: Digitally painted fantasy kids live together in otherdimensional peace, or maybe not; characters possess subtle, realistically mutable motivations; eventual grave danger is neatly foreshadowed from a distance. The most unpredictable of the bunch.

* The First Daughter: A President’s daughter who has a super-science suit and a friend like the Great Gazoo finds out she’s one of many First Children throughout history who’ve been specially prepped and called upon to confront a centuries-in-the-making alien invasion. More young nonwhite female heroes in comics would be superb, but do they have to misuse “literally” and say “hashtag” aloud?

* Pandora’s Blogs: The titular hero is a medical professional’s daughter who has weird misadventures and then writes about them. The intro is a sort of X-Files-meets-Disney Channel quickie that could’ve used a few more pages to set up its bittersweet twist. I was a little put off because I’m not a fan of stories where the hero is an upper-class blogger, but that’s just me.

* Duel Identity: Andromeda is a super-hero by day and an undercover spy by night. Or sometimes she does both in one night, it just really depends. Starstruck co-creator Elaine Lee returns to comics and may or may not have found a viable high concept here, but I couldn’t stop laughing at Andromeda’s solemn investigation into an inventor that she thinks has done something controversial and dangerously revolutionary, but his groundbreaking project is basically Deep Web for iPhone.

* Tesla: The man, the myth, the legend! He’s revamped here as a science hero (not a comics first — cf. Matt Fraction’s The Five Fists of Science), but it’s a shame his new redhead companion is pluckier and more interesting than he is.

* Wayward Sons: In the Wild West, two unrelated teens — one white, one Native American — manifest unexplained wind powers, have dull family talks, and are talented enough to jump and shoot multiple arrows at the same time. The more I see impossible archery moves in movies, the less I give them a break.

* Darchon: What if Dr. Strange were a bigger, more capricious jerk? I wouldn’t buy his comics, that’s what.

Epic #0 Pilot (ComixTribe) — A generous thirty-two page origin about a teen super-hero with a fatal weakness that reminded me of the obscure 1980 movie Super Fuzz, which I saw at the drive-in when I was eight years old. I loved its ludicrousness to pieces, especially how the hero lost his powers every time he saw the color read (pretty much the most debilitating hero weakness since Mon-El’s vulnerability to lead), and that’s resulted in a rare moment of me awarding happy nostalgia points. I doubt that was the intent here, though. Art chores are split between two pencilers and a contributing inker; one renders in much more detail than the other, but seems to struggle more with anatomy issues. It maybe wasn’t the best decision to overload the mandatory action prologue with no less than seven super-villains (plus an evil poodle) when we haven’t even gotten to know the hero yet. But the high school scenes felt accurately like high school, and then there was that Super Fuzz sensation. If there were a second issue, I might flip through it on the shelf.

The Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt characters meet again in All You Need is Kill. Art by Lee Ferguson.

All You Need is Kill/Terra Formars (Haikasoru/Viz) — The lead story is an excerpt from the graphic-novel adaptation of the Japanese prose novel of the same name, which has also been adapted into the upcoming American summer blockbuster Tom Cruise vehicle more generically named Edge of Tomorrow. Said excerpt is a flashback for Emily Blunt’s character and probably resonates more in context. The backup story is a mere nine pages of translated sci-fi manga, barely enough space to introduce the characters with dry text dossiers, show off a nicely toned manga vista, introduce the grotesque villains, and clock us in the face with a nasty plot shock before our time’s up. After forcing myself to slough through the dossiers, the other eight pages zipped by too quickly to form a solid opinion.

V Wars 0 (IDW Publishing) — Bestselling novelist Jonathan Maberry takes a break from his occasional Marvel projects to indulge in a creator-owned horror series that would just as easily been called World War V if it weren’t for possible Roman numeral interference. Simply put: vampire outbreak instead of zombies, caused by an oddly specific virus that activates some dormant metagene in most of Earth’s population. I guess? The quote-unquote “vampires” die like anyone else would in a hail of bullets, exhibit no outward signs of traditional vampirism, and look to me exactly like really angry people with pointy teeth. Frankly, I’m not sure why anyone calls them vampires and not simply cannibals. Earth’s only hope is a sheepish guy who’s an expert in vampire mythology and folklore, which would come in handy if they acted like vampires at all. After twelve pages of that is another thirteen pages of dry dossiers. Long story, short version: collectors my age tend to have a knee-jerk repulsion against text features in comics, brought about by decades of exposure to worthless but compulsory text features in comics.

Scam: Crosswords (ComixTribe) — Scam was some sort of miniseries about which I know nothing. One of its characters, a masked killer named Crosswords, is like the Punisher or Garth Ennis’ Hitman, the latter of whom felt like the template here for a black-humored, creatively over-the-top assault against a billionaire bad-guy family. Much like Ennis’ Avatar Press work, except with fewer discernible organs. The equally dark backup story stars an antihero who has powers only when he’s really drunk. Hee?

The overly optimistic kids from The Intrinsic: Singularity Zero. Art by Thu Thai.

The Intrinsic: Singularity Zero (Arcana) — Two pages of dry text dossiers (UGH) lead into lots of DeviantArt CG material where teen heroes squabble, say wooden things like “Let’s flee!”, and are drawn in stiff poses with more shading than detail. This all feels like someone’s art-class project, but somehow the company coaxed superstar Alex Ross to paint a cover for their upcoming debut. Neat trick.

Sherwood, Texas/Boondock Saints (12-Gauge Comics) — Story #1: Robin Hood and his Merry Men rebooted as a Sons of Anarchy pastiche. Mostly it’s angry guys fighting, and the word “feisty” is misspelled twice. Story #2: a Boondock Saints vignette that bounced off me because I’ve seen neither film. Daryl Dixon and two other guys kill smugglers, blow up drugs, have half their dialogue censored, and make sad, dated Rick James jokes. This is cowritten by original writer/director Troy Duffy, so I have to assume something in here is exactly what Saints fans want. I seriously wouldn’t know.

Über FCBD 2014 (Avatar Press) — Several drawings of WWII superhuman ultra-violence aren’t nearly enough to disguise the fact that this is a comic entirely made of dry text dossiers. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.

…

…and here endeth the pile. In all, a few joyous discoveries and several works that bear further scrutiny in the months ahead, assuming my local comic shop orders all or any of them. See you next year!

I thought I was getting funnier looks than usual today when I returned to work from my routine Wednesday lunchtime walk. It took me a few minutes to figure out why.

I have a special pattern on Wednesdays. I arrive earlier at work than usual; I spend my lunch break walking to my local comic shop to pick up the week’s new releases; I hurry back to my desk so I can finish out my early day and enjoy an extended evening. Pretty much like clockwork. My coworkers know me just enough to think nothing of it.

I paid for my hobby fix and got lost in thought while the clerk placed them inside the usual translucent bag. I remained pretty much on autopilot during the brisk walk back, through the heart of downtown, into the lobby, and up the elevator, passing a few distractingly odd expressions along the way.

When I sat down at my desk and began shuffling things around, that’s when I focused and really looked at what I’d been carrying.

You can click on the picture to enlarge, which I’m providing here for the sake of context, but I wouldn’t recommend it, especially not at work.

Oh, dear.

What you’re seeing through the bag is an ad for a comic I guarantee I’ll never buy. This ad is on the back cover of Doctor Spektor #1, a new reboot of a ’60s super-hero who means nothing to me in and of himself. I picked it up because it’s written by the great and powerful Mark Waid, 90% of whose works tend to rise to the top of my weekly reading pile. The front cover is comparatively benign — maybe a tad on the spooky side, nothing wilder than what you’d find on the cover of an old paperback ghost story.

Paranoia set in. Maybe I wasn’t imagining those expressions. Here we are in a professional environment with a reputation and a dress code and neckties and a workforce in which women outnumber men by a wide margin, and I’m cluelessly walking around with what probably looks to the undiscerning eye like a big, showy bag full of embarrassing little Maxim pamphlets. For new readers, let it be stated for the record my preferred reading matter normally doesn’t include glossy, modern burlesque. If this had been the front cover, I would’ve left it on the store shelf, Waid or no Waid.

I paused to think it through. Maybe no one had seen it and I was fretting for nothing. Maybe I had the other side of the bag facing outward while I was walking, no harm was done, and those alleged faces had been made because my antiperspirant expired ahead of schedule. Maybe I was worrying for nothing.

So I flipped the bag over.

Ahh, nuts.

You can also click and enlarge this one if you must. I’ll just be over here blushing and rolling my eyes at the same time.

This wasn’t even something I bought or requested. This was the cover of the new Comic Shop News, a free weekly newspaper that many retailers give away to regular customers. They toss it in your bag without showing it to you or asking, and when you get home you have a little extra reading material. Or in this case, ogling material. This week the fans at Comic Shop News decided to spotlight a new project starring Vampirella, a well-known, painstakingly curved character whose costume is made from three strands of Christmas ribbon. She’s practically a comics tradition, for those who like or think they need this sort of thing.

Not all comics readers, guys.

This isn’t the first time I’ve wound up with baggage from the comic shop that could easily invite the glaring wrath of the mothers and grandmothers who outnumber me at work. Last year the shop was using bags provided by Fox promoting their new TV series The Following. I can’t find a photo of this bag online and perhaps that’s for the best, but the image on both sides was the show’s logo next to a photo of a nude woman with a knife, her R-rated parts nestled behind her other parts. That one was impossible to overlook. When presented with one of those, I took the comics out of the bag, turned the bag inside-out, placed the comics inside the now-opaque reverse-bag, went on my merry way, and never watched the show. Problem solved.

But I’m not in the habit of inspecting the outside of my bag every week. Call me entitled, but I feel like I shouldn’t have to. I avoid comics that go out of their way to look anything like this for a reason, especially if they’re super-heroes. Zero interest here. I’m happily married, not looking to supplement or supplant that lovely woman, and really not keen on having things around the house that would need to be hidden from visitors. And it’s not as though all comics are like this. Within these simple, prudish guidelines, I still find plenty of quality books to read on a weekly basis.

But now I’m in the position having to inspect all sides of my purchases before I leave the shop, just to ensure my peace of mind and continual paychecks. I’d rather not have to resort to bringing my own bags to the shop, but I’d also rather not have friends and family fearing for my thought life or my marriage. Or thinking I’m the kind of guy who thinks strip clubs are cool and who marks the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue release date on his calendar every year.

Vehement online debates about chauvinist behaviors and exclusionary attitudes in the comics field have already been giving me cause for concern, shame, outrage, and sadness in recent months, each reaction taking turns prevailing from day to day. This kind of thing isn’t helping my mood. Yes, I realize it’s not certified nudity or hardcore porn. That doesn’t make it okay in my house, and it definitely doesn’t make it okay to leave lying around my cubicle.

If anything bad happens because of my little accidental parade, Comics and I are gonna have to have a very long talk.

It’s convention time again! And for the second time this century, someone besides GenCon has decided Indianapolis is a worthy host. This weekend the inaugural Indy PopCon will paint our fair downtown red with a healthy mix of comics, gaming, actors, LARPing, and various other manifestations of pop and geek culture in general. My wife and I will be attending Saturday only, partly as a budgetary measure (by which I mean, the longer I’m there, the less money we’ll have for vacation in July, or for utilities) and partly because we’re still feeling a bit burnt after last March’s the inaugural Indiana Comic Con went, um, not according to plan.

Thankfully I’ve seen numerous signs that the Indy PopCon showrunners were taking copious notes from that experience and have stepped up their game accordingly. They’ve reserved three times the space at the Indiana Convention Center; invited more media guests; kept up an active, lively presence in that “social media” racket that’s all the rage these days; added a “Cosplay is not consent” sidebar to their program; actually made an official program in the first place; and have an actual big-name comics publisher in the house! Three cheers for IDW Publishing for believing that Indianapolis doesn’t suck. They can expect to be rewarded with some of my dollars.

Time is getting away from me, though. So far my to-do list for Saturday looks like so:

* Meet The Joel Hodgson, creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Try not to gush or hyperventilate in front of him.

* Meet Ron Glass from TV’s Firefly. Think of something not-stupid to say.

* See Sylvester McCoy, the Seventh Doctor, do something cool even if we don’t get to meet him.

* Attend at least one panel or Q&A. Two or more would be outstanding.

* See if anyone has a copy of Evan Dorkin’s Eltingville Club #1, which all our local comic shops apparently failed to order.

* Find new comic book creators; give them money.

* Costume contest! Watching, I mean, not participating. Ha. If only. Anyone wanna see my uncanny impression of Aaron from Revolution? Basically I stand in a far corner of the stage, watch the other contestants get all the glory, and trip over my own feet when I get restless.

* Enjoy the presence and products of Indiana’s food truck armada.

* Bask in the glow of a real copy of Action Comics #1, the centerpiece of their “Geek Museum” room. Ask security if it’s okay to pick it up and hug it.

* Try on my new T-shirt, which arrived in our mailbox earlier this week.

* Test my new shoulder bag by seeing how much new awesomeness it can hold before the bottom collapses or back pains are triggered.

* Have a better, longer, happier day than we did at the Indiana Comic Con.

* Decide whether or not to attend Indy PopCon 2015, already reserved for the last weekend in May. If yes, then decide if a three-day pass would be worth it.

* Prepare to share photos, happy moments, and/or war stories with MCC readers as usual.

* Have a minimum of one (1) hour of pure, uncompromised, undiluted Fun.

(To-do list is subject to change without notice. To-do list not valid in all states. Keeper of the to-do list is open to suggestions, negotiations, additions, and modifications of existing bullet points. Keeper of the to-do list reserves the right to pout like a frustrated kindergartener if less than half the list is accomplished.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End. Lord willing, see you next year!

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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

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

Six months later came my most recent update:

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

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

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

As for those other four perpetually pending projects…

Well. Hm.

Kickstarter projects that have yet to deliver:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued. Hopefully someday with endings.

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New comics aren’t the only Sleepy Hollow news we’ve heard during the long, long, long gap between seasons. You may or may not have run across the following headlines in recent months:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art by Joe Giella.

Y’know that one irritating relative who shows up for all your birthday parties whether he’s invited or not, never enjoys hanging out with you, loves sniping about your flaws to everyone, scoffs when anyone compliments you, goes above and beyond in ruining the party for anyone who cares about you, but eats twice his weight in cake and finger foods while he’s in your house?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 1: Saturday, July 22nd (continued)

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

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

Hey, movie fans! Recognize this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The creators and works included:

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

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

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

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

END BONUS SECTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Historical notes:

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

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

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

To be continued!

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

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

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

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

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

1. This is nothing new.

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

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

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

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

2. Radical changes are temporary.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) How’s her personality?

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

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

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

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

Rise of the Guardians!

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

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

Guardians of the Universe!

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

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

Marvel’s newest sensations are also not called…

The Global Guardians!

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

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

Guardians of the Globe!

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

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

The Guardian of Forever!

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

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

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

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

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

The Guardian!

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

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

Defenders of the Earth!

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

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

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

Guardians of the Galaxy!

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

GUARDIANS. of the. GALAXY.

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

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

Spoiler photo of Bradley Cooper from The Expendables 7.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? The primary Morals of the Story:

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

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

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

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

5. I am Groot!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onward:

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

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

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

Imrijka the Inquisitor, from Pathfinder.

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

Gwendolyn, Valkyrie princess from the PS2 game Odin Sphere.

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Victoria Haley from Warmachine.

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

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC series:

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

The MCC C2E2 Archive, 2011-2013

C2E2 2014 Photos, Part 1 of 4: Costumes on the Show Floor, Comics Division

C2E2 2014 Photos, Part 4 of 4: Creators, Actors, One Panel, and More!

Free Comic Book Day 2014 is Nigh!

Indianapolis Wins at Free Comic Book Day 2014

Free Comic Book Day Results, Part 1 of 2: the Better Half of the Stack

Free Comic Book Day 2014 Results, Part 2 of 2: the Other Half of the Stack

Comics Better Not Get Me Fired. (Maybe NSFW.)

Countdown to Indy PopCon 2014: Working on My To-Do List

Indy PopCon 2014 Photos, Part 8 of 8: What We Did and Who We Met

Former Kickstarter Junkie III: the Former and the Furious

Comic Shops Can Still Happen If You Want Them

“Sleepy Hollow” Hiatus News Roundup and Season 1 Recap Guide

Unironic Wishes for a Happy July 4th

Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 3: Milwaukee for Art’s Sake

My Heroes Don’t Always Need to Be White Guys

First Pic: Gal Gadot IS Wonder Woman IN “Batman vs. Superman”!

These Aren’t the Guardians You’re Looking For

Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Guardians of the Galaxy” End Credits

Gen Con 2014 Photos, Part 2 of 6: More from the Costume Contest