ACE COMIC CON REPORT - Chicago Part 2

We’ll be revisiting some of these con reports over the next few weeks.

After checking in and getting ourselves situated after the short but still tough flight from Boston to Chicago we took a walk around the Convention area. The show is actually in Rosemont, which is a couple of miles outside the city and right next to the airport. I’m familiar with the town because I come here every year for Wizard World— but this was the first time with Veronica.

Now if you’re a regular reader here you’ve heard me go on about GIBSONS Steakhouse. It’s easily my favorite restaurant in the world. The Spaghetti Place in Nagoya Japan is a close second, but there’s just something about GIBSONS. It feels solid. It’s wood and leather and heavy on the guy-ness and they make the best steaks anywhere. The secret is an 1800 degree oven that gives the Medium Rare steak (please don’t ever order a steak any other way) a nice warm center and a crisp outside. You can cut their filet with a fork— it’s that tender.

All right so I go on about Gibsons here on the blog, imagine how I go on about it at home. It’s gotten to the point that Veronica rolls her eyes when I start talking about it— so planning our Anniversary dinner there added a great deal of pressure, it had to live up to my buildup— so I did the only thing any sensible husband could do— I reached out to the manager of the place and told him the stakes.

He did not let us down.

Our dinner was five star and he comped us dessert which was so huge we shared it with the front desk at our hotel. Veronica really liked the place and she could understand why I speak so highly of it.

After dinner we walked over to the King’s Entertainment Complex— it’s a sort of grown up Chuckee Cheese area situated behind the main street— I think you have to know its there to find it and it’s a lot of fun. There is a mexican restaurant, a german restaurant, an Irish Pub and KIng’s which which has a full restaurant with pretty good food. Nearby is Murray Bros— Bill Murray’s restaurant which is equally good (and surprising because it certainly could just get by on the gimmick of being owned by Bill Murray).

We got in a good walk before heading back to the hotel to prep for day one of the show. Here’s the thing about traveling with Veronica. Yes, she’s my wife and she’s gorgeous. She’s also a very sweet person and one of the most genuinely fun and funny people I’ve ever met. I could have fun sitting with her in a car stuck in a garage during a snowstorm (and I have). So traveling with her is always perfect.

The next day the show didn’t start until 4pm so we had some time to kill. The hotel has a full breakfast— and I don’t mean a chintzy pile of cheese danish and stale coffee- it’s a full on breakfast complete with an Omelet bar— always go with the hotel Omelet bar if they have one. We ate breakfast and then got all of our things situated for the show before heading over a couple of hours early for setup.

Our table was right in front— virtually the first artists you see after you’ve come through the experience area. You could get your picture taken with the Batmobile, or with Star Wars props, or as a life size Pop Figure— etc, and then there was us. We were set up next to Dexter Soy who is one of the finest artists working in comics today— I’m a big fan of his work and he’s a wonderful guy— so is his little brother who helps him out.

Dexter Soy

That’s one of the things I like best about doing these shows, meeting people. Not just amazing artists like Dexter, or spending time with equally amazing artists like Art Baltazar, or even the people who are our fans (although they are really cool) but I like meeting the people at the front desk, the people who clean up the convention center, the waiters and the waitresses or even people like Dean who I got to know in the elevator of our hotel and roughly a ¼ mile walk together to a nearby restaurant to pick up dinner for his family.

Dean is from Chicago’s suburbs but he and his wife came into Rosemont to take their two year old daughter to SESAME STREET LIVE— where she was mesmerized by the $20 bubble wand he bought her. We laughed at how kids are. I told him two was a great age for kids but it’s even better when they’re 22.

Anyway, back to Friday— this show promoter is the former head of Wizard Con, so I’ve known him for many years. He was particularly gracious, the show had produced a special SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH Comic with Kiernan Shipka on the cover and our art on the insides, he asked how many Archie had given us and when I told him zero he had someone swing by with BOXES of them and told us to feel free to sell them for the same price the show was ($15/ea). That might seem high for a comic book but since Kiernan was a guest at the show it was a sort of quasi program/memento too. We ended up blowing through ALL of them pretty quickly. Usually Friday’s are dead at conventions—people have to work right? Well this one was straight outl the moment it opened to the moment it closed at 9pm. We walked back to our hotel and I can’t for the life of me remember what we had for dinner. Breakfast couldn’t have possibly held us over. That might have been the day I got a pretty great (and huge) Turkey sandwich from the convention center restaurant.

We got in a good walk and had some fun and then turned in by midnight with the following day’s show starting at 10am.

Continued Next Week.

More great dialogue

Continued from yesterday…

Paul Avery: What do you do for fun?

Robert Graysmith: I love to read.

Paul Avery: Mhmm.

Robert Graysmith: Umm, I enjoy books.

Paul Avery: Those are the same things.

This scene plays out the differences between these two characters— one is an introvert and one an extravert. Calling someone out when they say something dumb during a conversation is something only someone with confidence will do.

Robert Graysmith: I just want to help.

Ken Narlow: What are you, some kind of boy scout?

Robert Graysmith: Eagle Scout, actually... First class.

Narlows question is delivered with sarcasm, Graysmith’s response with sincerity. It both makes each character different but establishes what kind of person Graysmith is. He’s slightly naive.

At a bar, Avery and Graysmith are discussing the case, getting to know each other.

Paul Avery: Right, this can no longer be ignored.

Paul Avery: [points at Graysmith's drink, which is blue. Graysmith looks confused]

Paul Avery: What is that you're drinking?

Robert Graysmith: It's an Aqua Velva. You wouldn't make fun of it if you tried it.

Paul Avery: [tastes it. Time passes and they've both had a few more]

Nice interplay between the characters, Robert Downey Jr as Paul Avery is nothing short of genius in this film.

Melvin Belli: Inspectors, he sent this letter directly to my residence. It is a cry for help intended as a private communique.

Dave Toschi: Which is why you contacted The Chronicle.

Melvin Belli: The people have a right to know.

One of my favorite characters in the movie is the Attorney Melvin Belli— he’s larger than life as he was in the late 60s.

More of this kind of stuff soon.

A Return to Teaching... of sorts

My teaching credentials are mostly on the collegiate level but I got my start at the Worcester Art Museum, teaching 11-13 year olds how to draw. Recently I watched THE MAIDEN HEIST again which was filmed at WAM and its a better movie that it gets credit for— although the ending kind of falls apart.

But it got me thinking that if you want me to be engaged in your movie or book you need to give me two of three things;

1- Great characters

2- Great dialogue

3- An engaging plot that makes sense.

Seems easy, right? It’s not. Look at something like PACIFIC RIM— now to be fair I take a lot of shots at this movie and I never sat through the whole thing— but I was out after the fifth exchange of dialogue that made zero sense and when one character died and another stepped in and it looked like the same guy.

So what are great characters? Characters who either seem like real people, or who evolve, or both. With THE MAIDEN HEIST the characters were slightly one dimensional but the performances by heavyweights Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H Macy made it work.

The dialogue was solid, not great, but solid and the plot fell apart, but my bias towards seeing WAM and liking these actors made it enough to be enjoyable.

How do you create a winning formula? By observing. That’s the biggest component to creativity, observe the world around you. Base characters on people you know, or cast them from actors you know— as for how they talk— sit and listen to people in a coffee shop, listen for the rhythm, listen for the back and forth.

Let’s look at some really good dialogue from 2007’s ZODIAC;

Robert Graysmith: Doesn't it bother you that people call you Shorty?

Shorty: Doesn't it bother you that people call you retard?

Robert Graysmith: Nobody calls me that.

Shorty: Right.

AND LATER….

Robert Graysmith: Does anybody ever call me names?

Paul Avery: What, you mean like retard?

Robert Graysmith: Yeah.

Paul Avery: No.

More tomorrow.

My Favorite Live Action Version of Spider-Man? Toei Studios Japanese Spider-Man

When I was a little guppy I was a huge reader of comic books, in fact comic books taught me how to read. I read DC Comics, Charlton Comics and Dell/Gold Key Comics, but I never even heard of Marvel Comics until the mid 70s when my older sister came into my room and tossed a copy of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and TOMB OF DRACULA onto my bed and said I might like these.

I remember flipping through them, DRACULA looked spooky and had a LOT of words— and Spider-Man? Outright scary in his costume and the particular issue had him grow extra arms! Yikes! As a kid who ran under his bed if someone gave me a Casper comic book this caused my little heart to seize up.

A couple of years later my favorite aunt took me to a comic book shop— it was a tiny place on Park Avenue in Worcester and there I found this Digest sized Batman comic book— which I thought was really cool.

A short while later, probably when I was 11 or 12, I started riding my bike all over the place and I made the twenty mile jaunt to a mall where I would peruse Walden Books and on one particular trip I found some paperback reprints of the early Spider-Man stories and I bought and devoured those. Reading Spider-Man from the beginning and seeing the work of Steve Ditko the character looked a lot less spooky to me.

The American Spider-Man, Nicholas Hammond, or more likely his stunt man.

In 1977 or 1978 CBS unleashed the SPIDER-MAN TV Series and I was officially a Spidey fan. The show was not very good, and I knew that even as a kid, but back then you were glad to have anything comic book related and you took what you could get.

Little did I know that they were doing a show at the same time in Japan featuring Spider-Man! While the American show followed the overall source of the material— i.e.Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man after being bit by a radioactive spider the show ignored Spidey’s rogues gallery and had him face the most boring gangsters and con men— bad guys so boring Starsky and Hutch yawned at them. The Japanese version found their version of Peter Parker, Takuya Yamashiro, gets his powers as an emissary from Hell spider bites him and Spider-Man is born to fight the evil Iron Cross Army, lead by Professor Monster, to stop them from taking over the world.

In this version Spider-Man drives a boss car which is nearly as cool as the Batmobile and gets a giant robot to call his very own when whatever monster he goes up against grows to super size as most monsters in Japan are prone to do.

It’s a show that features the best live action costume of any IMO because don’t forget Spider-Man is supposed to have made his costume himself, I’d love to see how the Toby MacGuire Parker did that.

Speaking of which, I’ve seen the three MacGuire films, the first one was good, the second one was excellent and the third one was forgettable. I saw about ten minutes of one of the Andy Garfield ones and I saw the first one Tom Holland did with the Avengers but I’ve not seen anything else.

I’m just not seven years old any more.

Portfolio Peek: ELECTRIC LUCHADORE

I’ve long had a fascination for Mexican Luchadores and Astronauts and this concept art marries the two. You can find more of my work at the top of the page under PORTFOLIO.

ACE COMIC CON REPORT- Chicago 2019 PART 1

I’ll be running some updated and revised convention reports— I find them fun to revisit and I’m told some of you do too.

Unlike our trip two weeks earlier to Portland Oregon which left Boston at 7am—meaning we had to be up and out of the house at 5am— our flight to Chicago was at 1pm so we thought this would be an easy trip out— never assume my friends.

We’d planned on leaving the house at 10am sharp— and we did, only thing was as we were racing along I-290 heading towards Framingham and the Logan Express I realized I’d left my wallet at home. Now you need all kinds of ID at airports nowadays but I had my passport with me (I find it easier to keep that in my breast pocket than to dig my license out of my wallet) but that would mean I’d be in Chicago with no money and no credit cards— for about three seconds I weighed the option of just going ahead but I jumped off the next exit and headed back. Yes, Veronica had money, she had credit cards, but I like being able to pay for things and this was not only a business trip to Chicago but we’d also be celebrating our Wedding Anniversary while we were there and I had plans for a nice dinner.

After recovering my wallet and being back on the road WAZE had us arriving at Logan Express at 11:04am— that meant we’d be on the 11:30am bus to Logan Airport which meant we’d be pulling up to the United Terminal at 12:15pm at the latest, still 45 minutes before our flight, no need to worry right?

Wrong. We got to Logan Express and there were big red signs up saying “Lot full— come inside for details about parking at the overflow lot”.

Ugh.

As it turned out it was pretty easy to do, you prepay your parking and you park at a lot across the street from the AMC theater and then you wait for the bus to come. It was actually easier to park there than the garage since the garage is always full and you have to park on the roof and then get back down to the lobby, but the overflow lot has no signage at all so you have little idea where to wait for your bus.

It was cold and rainy so we huddled together in the zombie apocalypse like shelter in the middle of the parking lot. A pilot got off a “Dropoff only” bus and was saying goodbye to some of his companions so I decided to ask him if I was waiting in the right place. He was great, he assured me I’d see the bus and it should be only another 10 minutes or so. He even drove over as he was leaving and offered to drive us back to the main station but we opted to just stay and wait out of fear of missing the bus to Logan if he drove us over.

“What time is your flight?” He asked.

“One pm.”

He made that face like- yikes — as he looked at his watch.

“We’re TSA Pre Checked.” I added.

“Oh,” he smiled, “then you should be fine.”

TSA Precheck was our secret weapon. Different line. You don’t have to take off your shoes, you don’t have to take off your belt, no laptops out of your bag, etc— you speed through security. Secret weapon.

The bus arrived and we got on and were soon on our way. We should be fine, TSA Precheck right?

Only looking at our boarding passes I noticed that it didn’t say TSA Precheck on it. You see when you order your tickets you have to put in your TT info number which then creates a little Check Mark Logo on the top of your boarding pass. In this case, the show booked our tickets and we couldn’t remember if they’ asked for the number.

No worries, we opened our smart phones and were able to add our TT Pre Check numbers into our flight info— now all we’d need to do is print out a new boarding pass at the airport— we’d need to stop anyway because we’d have to check our luggage.

We got through TSA and to our gate and the flight was boarding early— the flight left early and we arrived early— all was good in the world. We set down in Chicago O’Hare and then headed to one of four thousand baggage kiosks to find our luggage. Chicago’s airport is massive, much bigger than Boston’s Logan. From there we walked a good mile to the hotel shuttle area and pretty soon we were dropped at the Embassy Suites directly across the street from the Donald Stephens Convention Center and next door to Gibson’s Steakhouse— my hands down favorite restaurant in the world where we’d be having our anniversary dinner that evening. We checked in and cleaned up before heading out to explore the area.

More next week.

BOND....The New James Bond...

Daniel Craig wrapped up his Bond duties with NO TIME TO DIE, — SPOILER ALERT coming up, if you don’t want to know certain plot points of that film skeep on down to the next picture and avoid the next few lines of typing that are about to come out of my fingers, okay? You was warned.

Daniel Craig took over for Pierce Brosnan who was someone I thought would make a good Bond but his scripts were lousy and he was doing an imitation of Roger Moore. Here’s the thing with Bond, if you take the role make it yours. Pay no attention to the folks who have come before you. Brosnan took over for Timothy Dalton who was really good in his first Bond film and then had an awful script for his second and last Bond film. Dalton took over for Roger Moore who aged out at 59 when he left the role. Moore was a good SAINT in the British TV Series and that’s essentially how he played James Bond, because he ignored Connery who had come before him and established the role of the super spy. In between Connery came George Lazenby who was only 28 at the time he played bond in 1969 but he came across a lot older so it worked, and he really was pretty good. He unfortunately got an ego and angered the producers so he was out after one go round and Connery was back for one last hurrah.

Sean Connery was the first big screen James Bond starting with 1962’s DOCTOR NO and for the most part he was perfect. He started to get a little doughy, and his toupee was looking the worse for wear by 1971’s DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER but if you stick with GOLDFINGER and THUNDERBALL he was in top form.

But back to Craig, he wrapped up his last Bond film — and for the record Craig’s first film CASINO ROYALE and his follow up QUANTUM OF SOLACE were Connery Level, they each got slightly weaker as his series went on . Taking us to his last film where he died at the end of it. Not died in a way that maybe he could come back, he was blown up with nuclear missiles, so yeah, he’s not coming back, but James Bond is, so that presents an interesting question right? How?

Well there are theories out there that James Bond is a code name, the same way his boss M is a code name and we’ve had multiple actors playing M over the course of 25 films. They could also just ignore the fact that he died and bring in the new James Bond, to which we get to the point of this post— finally!

Idris Elba in a still from 'Luther' (Photo| IMDb)

There is a lot of talk about who the next Bond is going to be, and rumor is they’re going to announce it possibly before this blog see’s print— but as I write this a choice has yet to be made. For my money the ONLY choice is Idris Elba. He’s got the looks, he’s got the gravitas, he looks like he can handle himself and I honestly can’t see anyone else stepping in after Craig.

There is talk about a woman playing Bond, that works for me if we go with the idea of it being a code name, but then why not just make a new character and put them in a series, like UNDERWORLD right? It’s got a female lead and she’s great.

There is also a rumor Aaron Taylor Johnson— I might have that name wrong— is up for the new film— that’ll end my tenure as a Bond fan and I will never have to pay to see it in theaters again.

The negative flack towards Elba is that he’s too old at 51. I disagree. Roger Moore started as Bond at 46 and he carried it very well. Times have changed, Elba looks great for his age and as long as he stays in shape it’ll work. I also think Bond has to be someone who has been around, he has a lot of experience, he’s been through the worst of it and come out in fine form which is how he earned his 00 rank. Put a little boy like Pattison in it and you’re making the role laughable.

I also think Bond works best as a character set in the 1960s, Cold War, Russian Spies, the fashion of the time, I’d love to see Bond as a period piece. Batman and Superman work better as 1940s characters than they do as contemporary. Sherlock Holmes should be tail end of the 19th Century. It just makes sense.

I’m all in on Elba. Fingers crossed.