2. I made my feelings on the lack of comics publishers known in the last post. There’s no Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, Boom!, IDW…no one. The biggest publishers here are Zenescope and Avatar.

3. There are a LOT of heavy people here. Wow. A bariatric surgeon could make a killing here. (Note- I’m also fat.)

4. Booth babes are back! At least one “artist” in Artist Alley has scantily clad women in an effort to hawk wares (I have no idea what for). And the Suicide Girls are here.

5. Big front-and-center booth? It’s for a phone.

6. LOTS of costumes here. All varied, too. Everyone’s getting into the game.

7. Lots of women here, too. Most varied crowd I’ve seen, and a lot of families, too.

8. Much bigger crowd than yesterday. Long lines for the advance sales, near-empty lines for one-day sales. Lots of anger over the wait for those in the advance lines crowd.

9. Wizard’s business strategy is now readily apparent. “Here’s some B-level sci-fi celebs from TV from 20 years ago. Here’s some wrestlers. Over there is an artist’s alley. We put some tables in the back. Have fun. Walk around. Eat some overpriced pizza. That’s all you’re getting. Now pay up.” But it’s working for them, at least today. You’ll get to see Stormtroopers and Jedi and nubile babes and t-shirts and action figures and wrestlers.

Will you get to see the best of what’s in comics now? No. Not even close. But a big portion of this crowd doesn’t seem to care. They’re happy as is.

Maybe Wizard’s smarter than we thought. We’ll see.

I’d like to tell you I’m looking forward to it. But I’m not sure I’d be lying.

I remember the first Wizard World convention very well. It was a happening, a big comics convention in a region starved by years without big cons. Philly is a big comics town, but after the bust of the comics market in the mid-90s, there were hardly any comics conventions anywhere other than San Diego and Chicago. That first year, Marvel and DC showed up. Marvel didn’t have much of a booth presence, but all the big names from Marvel were there. I met Bill Jemas there, and he was explaining to his staff the intricacies of some Marvel collectible card game. He was so excited over this that I could see why there was so much buzz over what was then known as NuMarvel.

There was a ton of energy at that show. Lots of young, hungry creators going to the Wizard World classes and trying to break out. Artist Alley was packed. There were a lot of dealers and comic publishers. The show was a huge hit, and I believe the success of that show was one of the early indicators of the big comics boom of the last decade. Had that show flopped, maybe we never would have gotten the now-titanic New York Comic Con and all of the other cons that seem to run every week during the summer.

But Wizard World hasn’t continued to have the same type of success over the past decade. Its flagship publication, Wizard, has suffered a big dropoff in circulation (in fact, last month, it fell behind sister publication Toyfare in sales). The convention side of the business has made some dumb moves, trying to buy up as many other conventions as it can while not focusing on the core successes of the existing conventions. In particular, its handling of the Philly con has been nothing short of disastrous.

A few years ago, Wizard World tried to muscle out a competing convention, Charlotte’s Heroes Con, by running Philly on the same weekend. WW figured that most of the comics community would attend the Philly show, but the exact opposite happened. Heroes Con has long maintained an excellent reputation with comics creators and publishers, and most of them chose to stay loyal to Heroes Con while abandoning Philly. Last year, most of the big names chose to appear at Charlotte instead of Philadelphia. It seemed that only talent local to PA, NY, and NJ stayed at Philly, while the rest of the comics universe went to Charlotte.

Even though Philly now runs the weekend after Charlotte, the damage seems to have been done. For the first time in show history, there is no official Marvel or DC presence at Philly. In fact, the biggest comics company exhibiting at Philly might be the comics retailer Mile High Comics. The biggest publisher might be the relatively small Avatar Press (although they publish book by big-name writers Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis). The panel programming reflects this change; instead of big displays by comics publishers, the panels are now largely interviews with B-level sci-fi TV stars. I have nothing against actors like Bruce Campbell and Patrick Stewart, but when they are the biggest stars at a comics show, you have to wonder if the show has lost its aim. There are a few comics-focused panels, with well-known artists such as J. G. Jones and Ethan Van Sciver giving instructional talks, but these were always a smaller part of the comics programming. Now, they make up just about all of the comics programming.

Last year, there were many whispers on the con floor that attendance was down, and that Philly might not even have a show this year. Well, there will be a Philly show, but it really won’t be a comics show, not like it was in years past. It’s a shame, because Philly really is a great comics town. I’m hoping that this is a great show, and that we won’t see a repeat of the comic con drought of the 90s. But if this is the sort of show we’re going to get, I worry that the situation will only get worse.

That is all.

• 100 Words: No way out but death
  Source: scribbles and lies
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  Source: The700Level.com - Philly Sports & Minutiae
  Pretty amazing footage of a fight started by a fan. Check out the hideous jacket. And they started play two minutes later!
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  Source: Gunshow comic feed
  Beautiful tribute to Gary Larson.
• Comic for Friday, April 30, 2010
  Source: Gunshow comic feed
• April 30, 2010
  Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (updated daily)
• The Devil Went Down to Wall Street
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  Oooooh...pretty.
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• Plugin by C. Murray Consulting

From Paste Magazine: Ten May Albums Worth Checking Out (I’m really looking forward to the new Hold Steady and LCD Soundsystem releases!)

What am I into at 5:16 AM?

1. Facebook games. I’ve never been infected by the Farmville virus (you’re welcome), but I have a few of those mindless click-and-collect games that I like. I purposely limit them to five so I don’t go overboard- Backstage’s Slots, Scratch And Win, Bingo Explosion, and Pull Tabs, along with another game called Egg Breakers.

2. The BS Report. If there’s a better podcast out there…well, let me know in the comments. ESPN’s Bill Simmons is running a salon for writers, sports figures, and comedians. Don’t get distracted by the constant Boston sports teams cheerleading; listen for the deep interviews with Patton Oswalt, Chuck Closterman, football writer Mike Lombardi (who’s always fascinating), and his friends Jacko and Cousin Sal. This podcast is the reason I’m working with my Comic Widows friend Glenn Walker on a podcast of our own, GAR!.

3. Wrestling DVDs. My brain isn’t really up to a movie at this time of the morning, but wrestling’s perfect. Amazon had a huge sale on wrestling DVDs last month, so I have a shelf full of WWF(E?) DVDs for the perusing. You can literally hear your heart break as you watch Eddie Guerrero set the world on fire and beat his inner demons, only to end up dead in a hotel room at 38. And you can learn a lot about avoiding your own hubris by listening to a “shoot” DVD with Vincent Russo, the former writer of the WWF’s Attitude era who ended up courtside at the destruction of the last major competition to the WWF, WCW.

4. Books. I’ve got a stack to read here. Rudy Rucker, John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, a bunch of graphic novels, Michael Lewis’s latest…the stack is higher than my lamp.

5. The Beatles’ White Album. I can’t get Cry Baby Cry out of my head. Note- I will NOT listen to Revolution No. 9 in the middle of the night.

6. My cats, Koko and Dewey. When I come out from the bedroom, Koko’s usually in my chair. He’s not a lapcat (though he’s very friendly in his own way), so he’ll eventually scatter, but he’ll accept some petting before he goes. Sometimes, Dewey, who’s blind but very friendly, will either be in the recliner next to my desk, or over on the couch next to that. He makes the sweetest purrs.

7. My Nintendo DS. I don’t like to power up the TV and PS2 at this time of the morning, but my old Nintendo DS (it’s a first-generation system, pre-DS Lite) is perfect. Quick to boot, quiet…I’m playing a lot of Retro Game Challenge and Space Invaders Extreme lately.

8. Work. There’s no better time to work than in the few hours before work actually starts. If I clear the decks of routine reports before the day begins, I’m better equipped to handle the minor crises that will pop up during the day.

Isn't he cute?

This is Dewey, my blind but wonderful cat. He’s actually snoring.

For me, this is a weird post. I’m not typing this on my PC, but rather on my new Samsung Moment Android phone. My wife’s phone died, so we upgraded both our phones to this model. She’s (rightfully) suspicious of having her data wedded to the Google monstrosity. But I’m in love with the features on this little gadget.

I’d take a photo of our snowshoe Siamese cat, Koko, but I doubt he’ll let me…

*FOLLOWUP*: I was able to type the post completely on the phone, and I took the photo on the phone. I was able to upload the post to my blog, but the photo wouldn’t go. As it turned out, the path for my uploads directory wasn’t properly defined. All is well now. Time for bed.

The local anchors were interrupted by a medical doctor, who pointed out that if there wasn’t some compartment for oxygen in this balloon,the boy was probably dead from asphyxiation. One of the talking heads stopped and said, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” That’s when I realized that no one had asked the family what was inside the balloon. Was that small compartment at the bottom of the balloon supposed to hold a child? Were we fooled by the helicopter camera into thinking that the bottom compartment would have even fit a child?

And go further. Would a weather balloon, even built with a compartment for a human to ride along, fly as high and as far as it did with a passenger? It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in a physics classroom, but I would think that a balloon capable of carrying, say, a 40-50 pound boy would have to be bigger than the apparent size of the balloon. Go a step further- since no family would build a balloon to only carry a child (except for, say, the Addams family), the design would have to consider at least one adult passenger. Think of the size of a hot air balloon, which can hold a few people. Wouldn’t a weather balloon designed for human flight have to compare in size to a hot air balloon?

I wish I had thought of this while the drama played out. But I didn’t;  like you, I was swept away with the amazing visual of this balloon flying in the sky with a little boy inside.

No one asked questions, and we all got surprised when the boy wasn’t in the balloon, but rather in the attic. So heart-warming. What a happy ending.

But we got suckered. And no one asked the right questions.

The next time you wonder how we ended up in the Iraq war, or how New Jersey has the highest tax rate in the land and a corrupted state government, just remember the time you spent staring at the Bubble Boy that wasn’t, and ask yourself, “Why didn’t we ask questions?”

——

Side note: I’m still working on my Baltimore Comic-Con wrap-up. In the meantime, my friend Glenn Walker posted his take on the day.