The all-new Ms. Marvel!

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

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

Onward:

The Penguin! Wak wak waaaaak!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Optimus Prime! Some assembly required.

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

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

Sora! From the great Kingdom Hearts.

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

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

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC series:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Avengers! Classic lineup, different take.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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

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

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

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

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

Deadpool in all his normal regalia.

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

Sir Deadpool, Esq., dedicated follower of fashion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betcha know who Star-Lord is NOW, HUH?

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

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

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

To be continued!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

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

Yowza!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be concluded!

* * * * *

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they aren’t comic fans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which genie do we put back into the bottle first?

…

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gateway to Awesome! Ostensibly.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there was this guy who tried to spook us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your move, St. Elmo’s Steakhouse.

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

How slow? This slow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We made Adam West chuckle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End. See you next year?

* * * * *

Other chapters in this special miniseries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now, on with the countdown!

15. ’90s Aquaman

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

14. Strawberry Shortcake

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

13. Toothless

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

12. Morpheus, Lord of Dreams

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

11. Barriss Offee

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

10. Surfing Joker

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

9. Hatsune Miku

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

8. FrankenBerry and a 17-foot dragon

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

7. Hawkeye and Nightwing

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

6. Rosie the Riveter and General Douglas MacArthur

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

5. 8-bit Sephiroth

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

4. Purple Bane

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

3. Ash and Team Rocket

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

…those priceless expressions win the photo.

2. Ms. Marvel

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

1. Dazzler and Disco Deadpool

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

…

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That list, then:

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

Here’s what they look like shelved together:

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

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

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

My three personal favorites in the stack:

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

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

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

Three least favorites:

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, kids! Spas!

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

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

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

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

Healthy crowd. Among the copious notes my wife took:

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

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

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

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

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

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

…and a good time was had by all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading. See you next year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Favorite comics from 2014, in random order:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

DC/Vertigo: Astro City; Suiciders.

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

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

IDW: Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland.

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

Following in trades: Fables, The Sixth Gun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

Speaking of Star Wars: mandatory Clonetrooper!

And in this corner: Star Trek!

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve got a jazzy feeling about this.

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued!

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

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

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

Onward!

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

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

TITANS TOGETHER!

Zatanna + Loki. DC hero meets Marvel evil.

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

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

Spider-Woman in variant costume.

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

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

Armored guy stands guard over the free con programs.

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

Nicholas D. Wolfwood from Trigun.

One of several Homestuck fans representing.

From the cast of the webseries Spaceship Groggy.

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

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

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

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

Bender, clearly lost without beer and cigars.

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

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

To be concluded!

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

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

Source: Iron Man #113, August 1978.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Incredible Hulk #205, November 1976.

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

…

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

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

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

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

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

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

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

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

Another pic to add to my marquee collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued!

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