DC has announced an exclusive SDCC edition of Flashpoint #1, to be sold at the Graphitti Designs booth, faturing this wraparound cover by Andy Kubert, Sandra Hope, and Alex Sinclair.
They’ve also released a guide to all things DC at the convention: events, exclusives, locations and more.
Awesometoyblog.com announced earlier this week that an exclusive Flashpoint Edition Professor Zoom will be available at San Diego Comic Con 2011. Just like the exclusive White Lantern Flash released at C2E2 and Wondercon, this figure will be distributed by popular pop culture T-Shirt company, Graphitti Designs and will be limited to 4000 pieces (fairly big leap from the 1000 available for White Lantern Flash).
After last year’s five-con blowout, I’ve backed off a bit from Comic-Cons this year. In 2010 I attended at least one day at WonderCon, Anaheim Comic Con, Long Beach Comic Con, the general sci-fi/fantasy convention Westercon, and a full week of Comic-Con International in San Diego. (Those links go to my writeups and photos.)
This year I missed WonderCon (we weren’t sure about traveling with a baby), Anaheim (I’d rather catch Long Beach), and the one-day Long Beach Comic Expo (a busy month after moving, the new place desperately needed a no-plans weekend for some unpacking).
The second half of the year looks better.
Comic-Con International (July). I’m only going one day this year — new job, new baby and plans to move all conspired to keep things uncertain back at the time that tickets went on sale. So I’ll be a lot more focused on experiencing the day that I have than trying to report from the floor, but I’ll post my usual photos and writeups afterward.
Long Beach Comic Con (October). I’m still kicking myself for missing their April event, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. During its first two years, Long Beach has been a fun regional con focused on the actual comic part of Comic Con, and while I couldn’t make it to WonderCon this year, I really have no excuse to miss this one.
(Wizard World) Los Angeles Comic Con (September). Just announced a month ago. I sort of figure this is a second chance to catch Anaheim in case I change my mind, since Wizard has been really big on standardizing their shows lately. Also, I suspect they’re trying to crowd Long Beach out of the market, which is a big reason for me not to go.
Comikaze Expo (November). I only just heard about this one today, through the press release on Newsarama. It looks like they’re trying to out-Wizard the Wizard cons, judging by the heavy emphasis on TV/movie celebrities in the guest list, and maybe throw in elements of Anime Expo and GenCon to boot. It bothers me that they’re trying to hype it as the first con of its type in LA, ignoring the history of the Wizard cons and nearby conventions that aren’t within the Los Angeles city limits, but are close enough to be considered LA. I might drop in out of curiosity, assuming I’m not conventioned-out from Long Beach the week before.
So, current plans: San Diego and Long Beach. Maybe one of the two LA cons.
Hey Speed Readers,
A few days ago, Actionfigureinsider.com gave us our first look at the Mattel San Diego Comic-Con 2011 exclusives. Not much for the Flash and other speedsters on the DC Universe Classics front but there will be something a little different for speedster fans.
Mattel has a line of dolls called Monster High based on a concept that tries to appeal to the more macabre little tweeny girls out there by melding Hot Topic with horror. The premise behind them being that the characters are the plastic (literally and figuratively) offspring of famous film and literary monsters. The initial characters were based on the classic Universal Monsters but they have since branched out to include all different types.
Now what does this have to do with speedsters? One of the main characters, a zombie named Ghoulia Yelps is being offered at the ‘Con dressed as her favorite comic book character, Dead Fast, the Zombie Speedster:
(Picture obviously courtesy of Actionfigureinsider.com)
The Monster High product that will be sold at Comicon is a special Ghoulia Yelps collector doll dressed as Dead Fast. The doll comes with special collector packaging, is dressed in her costume, and also comes with a Dead Fast figure, comic book, and doll stand. See below for the talking points:
• Ghoulia Yelps is the zombie girl at Monster High and being that she is the smartest ghoul in school naturally she is a comic book fan. She’s on her way to Nekro Con dressed as her favorite zombie super hero, Dead Fast.
• Once he [Dead Fast] was just a face in the shambling crowd until he was pecked by a radioactive hummingbird giving him the power of super speed! Now he’s the zombie super hero Dead Fast!
• You can’t outrun zombie justice!
• She comes with a miniature Dead Fast action figure and a Dead Fast fan fic book that she wrote and illustrated herself.
I don’t know why but this sounds kind of cool. Little annoying that the “smartest ghoul in the school” is “naturally a comic book fan” but it is still a fun concept. I’m absolutely digging the costume and Silver Age-tinged origin (shades of Stan Lee’s re-imagining of The Flash) and I’m actually thinking about keeping an eye out for this in the secondary market.
Here is another picture I found courtesy of Hellyeahmonsterhigh.tumblr.com:
Anyone else plan on taking a detour off the beaten path and picking up Ghoulia Yelps a.k.a. Dead Fast?
Hotel reservations go on sale in just half an hour for Comic-Con International, and fans across the world are gearing up for a grueling session of reloads and busy signals. I’m sitting it out this year — which actually feels kind of weird, since I’ve dealt with it every year since 2006 (and possibly 2005, but I think that may have been the last year it went smoothly) — but with the baby, we figured it would be better to make it a one-day trip this year.
To those of you planning to wade into the fray, I wish you the best of luck. And if you don’t manage to score a room through the convention block, I hope these tips for staying in San Diego that I wrote last year will help you find an alternative.
I ended up going to four comic book conventions in 2010, mostly in Southern California (plus one in San Francisco). Based on this year’s experience and past experiences, here are my thoughts on each show.
Comic-Con International in San Diego is the ultimate pop culture fan experience. They have everything you could possibly want to see, including comics, movies, video games and more. The downside: they have everything everyone else could possibly want to see, too. So it’s crowded, hectic, and requires planning months ahead in order to make sure you have a ticket and (if you need one) a hotel room. Comics publishers have a major presence, as do movie and video game studios, collectibles manufacturers, etc. and there are so many events on the schedule that you’d need a group of 20 people to see everything. If you can, try to go more than one day. This is the con I’m most familiar with, having attended every year since 1990.
CCI 2010 report.
Comic-Con International’s little sibling, WonderCon in San Francisco, is a nice balance of everything San Diego has to offer, but less crowded and less, well, insane. Comics take up a bigger part of the show, with the major publishers always well-represented, but movies and TV have a presence here as well. I’ve been to the last 3 cons.
Wondercon 2010 report.
Only in its second year, Long Beach Comic Con makes a great impression as a convention that’s actually focused on comics and the people who make them. The artists and writers area is the central feature of the main floor. Programming is light, but the mid-level comics publishers have a strong presence. The emphasis on authors and the light crowds (this was only its second year) make it a good place to meet artists and writers without standing in incredibly long lines.
LBCC 2010 report.
Wizard World’s return to the LA/OC area, despite the name change, is more focused on pop culture than comics. There’s little publisher presence, minimal programming, and a major emphasis on celebrities and dealers. Good for costume spotting. It’s fun, but if I had to pick one or the other, I’d definitely go with Long Beach. Technically this was its first year, but I understand Wizard World is trying to make all of their shows the same type of experience.
Anaheim 2010 report.
There are a lot of smaller cons that I either haven’t been to at all or haven’t been to recently. The roughly-bimonthly Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention at the Shrine comes to mind, for instance, and the California Comic Con in Yorba Linda. And aside from WonderCon and APE, I’m not really familiar with the Northern California scene — or, for that matter, the Inland Empire here in Socal.
Are there any other California-based fans here? What cons do you like to attend?