Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

Off To See the Wizard

June 2-4 Wizard World East, the East Coast's big comics convention of the year, hit Philadelphia. I had a three day pass, though I only went in Friday and Saturday. As I have time this weekend I lacked last time... here's how it went. I'll try not to be Joycean about it.

As with last year (two parts) - and, the year before - my travelling companion was the affable Eric G. As I've noted, I've found it's all but essential that one has at least one person to go through a convention with. I went to a convention solo. Once. Dry as toast. Toast can be good, but not all day.

An early start Friday saw us catch an express on the R5 line (I'll only drive around in any major city if there's no alternative) and get to the convention center roughly at 8am, two hours before the official opening. We knew they'd have to process us earlier than the 10 am official start, and it was just a question of where we were going to be waiting anyway... so why not be closer to the start of the line. I'd brought some still somewhat cold cans of soda in my pack, and in the end the time (especially the last half hour) flew as we talked with other people in line.

First stop on the convention floor was a separate table by the Wizkids booth, to pick up the raffle tickets for a chance to buy the Spectre. That took just a couple minutes, then we started to walk the floor, see where everything was and start to pick up swag.

As with every other year, there was no shortage of vendors and displays of statues and busts, many of them very elaborate. Some of these are excellently done, as can be seen in this array of villains surrounding Spider-man, but these remain one of those slippery financial slopes for me. There are so many that I'd like to have that were I to pick one or two I'd immediately see several others I'd want just as much. As many of these run in the area of $200 a piece... I've continued to pass.

The floor plan was changed strongly from the previous year, with the result that the B-list celebrities were largely kept waaay over on one side of the hall. Despite the room being fairly well filled out we noticed that weapons vendors were virtually non-existent (usually there are a few selling wide arrays of swords, knives and martial arts supplies), with only one or two shops that included a little in that direction.

Completely absent were what had been there in abundance in earlier years: video vendors. Specifically those trafficking in bootlegs. It used to be VHS tapes, but for years it's been DVDs. This was a little disappointing as I was interested in looking for some nicely done fan projects I'd seen clips of the previous year. The rumor was that at another event (perhaps one of the almost monthly mini-conventions that are mostly dealer shows) saw a raid.

Another conspicuous absense was the Upper Deck booth, which in recent years was a highly visible presence as they'd push the latest and upcoming expansions of the VS collectible card game. Given that they had a new Marvel set debut back in February and a DC set in May (neither of which I knew until I did a search) it seemed surprising they weren't there, enticing people to play demo games, handing out free t-shirts (I have ones from 2004 & 2005) and displaying artwork from upcoming sets. They seem to still be very much in business, but... that they're not well into promoting upcoming expansions could be a major indicator. Even a quick look around their site shows things such as their "sneak previews" section, where people can look for events that precede a set;s release... and it's still advertising events that were help back in April. This is showing all the signs of a product line that's all but retired, hoping to sell through its inventory and move onto something else. No huge impact on me, though the cards themselves were often attractive and any time one of these games folds it takes fans with it. Still, I was unlikely to become a collector/player, but I was considering getting in a demo game.

If the vendors in the previous two paragraphs had been there, well, there was certainly still space in the hall for them, but it would have been enough that there would have been some chatter about the show moving to another, larger section of the convention center next year. As it stands they'll be fine in the current space for at least another year.

Back to the day -- Later, while Eric went off to do some early scouting for back issues I played a demo match for Wizkids' upcoming Horrorclix game. Fun, but the demo pieces were rushed into production and had errors (every one had a 4 Range even if that made no sense, and color misprints were common for the powers) and the demo was rushed to be made available for this convention, with the consequence that no one really knew how to play. I dealt with 4 of their envoys during the match and we were all trying to piece it together as we went. I have no doubt that by Saturday they had their act together, but I didn't go back in for a second attempt.

At 1pm the first day's drawing was done, and the winning tickets posted -- both mine and Eric's tickets were winners. I stepped into line and soon had my Spectre, a couple boosters of Armor Wars - I needed something to nudge me up from the Spectre's $85 to past $100 in order to receive the "free" Parallax clix. Also in the mix was the latest Pirates game giveaway and a special Mechwarrior piece. The Pirates piece - which assembled into a multi-masted ship - ended up being a quick project for one of my sons Friday night, and the Mechwarrior will be bound for sale. (As will Eric's Spectre, an extra Parallax, and some other items. It's just a question of when.

Marvel and DC panels during the afternoon revealed a respective weakness and strength for them at the moment. While Marvel was stressing character-driven stories (which is good) there was still too much of a sense that this was more lip service than anything else, and more likely just on its way to being a comforting code phrase for letting each writer do whatever he wants. Moreover, more than half the crowd was sufficiently focused on the Ultimates line as to suggest that was either their main only concern; distressingly (to me, as a fan) many seemed to shift from one to the other as if the distinctions weren't very important. The only comforting item in the mix was hearing Joe Quesada ascribe an "evergreen" quality - that as each story wraps up the main characters are left the same as they were at the start -as essential to the Ultimate line. The comforting aspect is that when Joe first took the big chair at Marvel he tried applying that to their mainstream of characters, finding much fault in particular with Spider-man. This prompted him to initially want to destroy Peter and Mary Jane's marriage one way or another and try to de-age the character. His take was that allowing him to mature was a selfish move made on behalf of a long-term fan base, and that this was the root of what they saw as a wane in his appeal; today's kid, so went his argument, wasn't going to identify with a Spidey who was their father's age. The argument struck me as weak then and as weak now. The creation and maintenance of an Ultimate line allows him to have his teenage Peter Parker/Spider-man and more or less keep him around the same age indefinitely.

Meanwhile, DC's current approach revealed a far more focused editorial overview and an emphasis on a single universe. From my perspective probably the most troubling lines coming from DC were from executive editor Dan DiDio. One was when he emphasized that they'd come back to seeing Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as the heroic basis for DC, that they are the ones everyone else is founded on. How this squares with the way each of these are in any modern timeline relative newcomers -- all the heroes of the Golden Age coming decades earlier -- is yet to be seen. Since Wonder Woman's mother was the WWII-era Wonder Woman there's something there, but Superman and Batman? There was some, vague notion that the memory of the Earth 2 Superman is hanging out there somewhere as part of the heroic legacy, but separate statements make that more intrinsic to Power Girl, as she's now the living legacy of the Silver Age Supergirl... humongous melons notwithstanding.

Related is the statement from DiDio that he hates timelines. The first thing he saw upon coming into DC's offices was a huge timeline across the wall, much of which he considered to already be outdated; the impression is that he considered them to be too ephemeral and perhaps too restrictive. While locking things down to specific years, I agree, is generally silly, but maintaining a sequence of events is, IMHO, critical. To not do it is to declare events and details unimportant... and if one does that then why should anyone care about what's happening now? Yesterday's details have to remain significant or else everything being done is automatically undercut.

Oh, speaking of DC, Friday's panel focused on Infinite Crisis and its immediate aftermath. Among the info that came out during the panel was that, leading into the event, the original intent was that Nightwing/Dick Grayson was not supposed to survive it. Reportedly, this will all make much more sense to people who were following the character heading into it. Me? I was only seeing the character when he popped up in issues of Teen Titans and then in Infinite Crisis itself.

(DC Nation panel on Saturday. The ones I can definitely remember are Rags Morales on the far left, Dan Dideo in the third spot, a Andy and Adam Kubert bookending the four on the right, with Jimmy Palmiotti next to last on the right. Standing at the podium is Bob Wayne (thanks, Tim!) who I believe is one of DC's top marketing guys. Any corrections/additions from comics cogniscenti will be welcome, added and duly credited. Going from left to right I still can't say who nos. 2 and 6 are.)

At the DC Nation panel (the next day) - a focus on the One Year Later developments and the various series that are soon to launch and relaunch, Dan DiDio and and pals (though no Geoff Johns that time) ran another fun panel. The two biggest rounds of applause during the session came when it was confirmed that Barry Allen was not coming back, and when one audience member asked if Frank Miller has forgotten how to write -- the latter being a cue to remember to check out this post.

As a zeitgeist note, references were made at both Marvel and DC panels to the mainstream hubub surrounding the new Batwoman being a lesbian. (Also covered in the main and alternate presses here, here, and perhaps most entertainingly in The Onion (the latter reproduced below.)
Jimmy Palmiotti also started everyone in the room trying to figure out what sort of lesbian superpowers they could come up with...

Following the DC Nation panel I opted to head to the Wizkids gaming room and get into a Battle Royale. (Cheese optional.)

Eight people sit down at two identical maps in teams of two. Each person buys a booster (for $5, btw, which is nice since they retail for $7.99), opens it, chooses one item from it (a clix or a card) and passes the remaining contents to the left. At the end of the process each person has five items of some sort, which he gets to play regardless of the points. As soon as the characters under one player's direct control are KOed, that side loses. All damage taken in that first round remains in place as the two winning teams sit down at the same map and play what remains of their teams against each other.

Me and my partner played against reasonably canny players, one of whom had a veteran Superman, so we had to concentrate on taking him down.

Our teams were both fairly good, as I had an Orion, an Ambush Bug, an experienced Elongated Man and a veteran Vixen. Orion gave me a fairly strong and versatile attacker -- though one who's best kept on his first click as long as possible -- and two Probability Controllers, one of whom (Ambush Bug) alternates from PC to Outwit down his dial. My partner had a rookie and veteran Ice Maiden/Ice, a Jonah Hex... and I can't recall his fourth piece. One unfortunate element of both games for us was that the order of dice rolls in both games made his turn come up before mine. People familiar with the dials will immediately see the problem: He had two characters who could cast Barriers; had my turn come ahead of his then against at least half of the opposing team I could count on having protective barriers thrown up between rounds.

Such was not to be, so the best we could arrange was to use his Barriers to help pin down threats during turns where I wouldn't be acting against them.

This ended up leaving us (me in particular, as I had more aggressive pieces) fairly exposed. While we won nicely against our first opposing team we also took some considerable hits. Meanwhile, our future opponents, a flamboyantly gay couple in their early twenties who knew every dial backwards and forwards, were playing a match against two kids who knew next to nothing about how to play.

So, by the time we got to the second half we were facing a virtually fresh and undamaged team controlled by highly competent players who felt we were holding them up by not finishing the first round as quickly as they did. That their team included an experienced OMAC, a rookie Ragman whose Batman TA could be copied, an Owlman and a Dr. Midnight to do some healing (among other pieces) they could sit in stealth with a piece that had both Psychic Blast and Outwit (OMAC) so he didn't even have to waste time outwitting his own target's defense. Meanwhile, my Orion was coming into the battle on one of his late clicks (his 8th), with a Speed of 5, a Defense of 14, a Damage of 2 and Battle Fury to prevent him from even attempting to use his 8 Range... not that he could since his targets were either still too far away or hidden in Stealth. We were doomed and we knew it, but we battled on.

In the end I was selected for the Fellowship prize and randomly pulled an Arthur Light, so it worked out fine for me. I'll probably try to play a Battle Royale each day of the convention next year, though trying to see if there are any sanctioned (ie presided over by Wizkids and prizes handed out) constructed events outside of the big ones should be on my list. In a constructed event we build our own teams from our own resources, so I can play a team that belongs together rather than a random rabble. In a Battle Royale it's almost foolish to not make choices solely on the dials and stats.

Along with this piece, the random pulls in the boosters bought at Wizkids' booth, and a couple buys from vendors my main clix collection increased also by Spectre, Parallax, Len Snart (bringing some Leadership to the Calculator team) and a quartet of SHIELD and AIM generics from Clobberin' Time.

Let's see... mopping up...

I was sad to not find anything new in Artist's Alley to catch my attention. I only ran the gauntlet once, Friday afternoon while it was still early in the convention. The timing makes it easier to imply that I'll be back by later, and it's still early enough in the process that the creators on the other side of the table aren't desperate. I know they spent time creating what they did, and they've paid for the space, but none of it helps if what they've created is in a genre I find too well-trod or simply not of my liking, or if the artwork simply fails to catch my attention. I'm too soft-hearted to deal with those earnest stares and give them an honest, likely disparaging reaction. There was little to nothing that was at all memorable in the lot.

Other attendees will have other highlights. If one was a fan of Michael Turner or Kevin Smith, for instance, there were special events to get excited about. Turner's one of a class/era of artists whose style doesn't interest me -- indeed, from what I've seen I'd consider his addition to a project being a reason to consider skipping it. As for Smith, I've enjoyed several of his movies but I can't think of a single thing he's done in comics that I liked.

All in all, another good two days. That's three years running for attending WWE, and the best spent of the three. A good balance between the convention floor and the panel & gaming rooms. The Reading Terminal Market continued to be an excellent spot to hit for meals. Seeing that barely sub-room temperature 20oz bottles of Coke were selling for $2.50 and soft pretzels for an astounding $4 on the convention floor, buying food and drink inside the convention center would be insane.

I wish I'd paid more attention to my camera's default settings, though, as many a potentially interesting shot had to be trashed due to coming out blurred. Something to watch out for next time.

Wizard World's official attendance figure for the event was 30,000, though it's important to keep in mind that they count three-day passes as three people. Now, I may be overweight but counting me as three is cruel. An attendance of 20,000 is likely far closer to the truth, as a great many do only buy single day passes. While I'd judge it an ongoing success, and by their reckoning it saw a reasonably solid growth over the previous year's 27,000 estimate. It's doing well, but still fails to even compare to the San Diego Comic Convention, which had an estimated attendance above the 100,000 mark last year. Then again, even the most ardent Philly booster couldn't fail to see the appeal of San Diego in terms of weather. Still, with so much of the action in and around a convention happening indoors... there's little reason Philadelphia's convention can't grow aggressively... though I don't know how chilling everything from the union squeeze (tales of people being prevented from doing even simple construction and set-up tasks because they're not in a union have often come out of the convention center) to the aggressive tax collection the city attempts, wanting a cut of every deal has been.

The place was definitely busy, and one measure of that is the fact that despite several of our co-workers being there for most to all of each of the days we were there we didn't run into each other.

Next year the convention's parked in the middle of the month, June 15-17. Just over a year, and so nearly another reality away... though experience shows it'll be here with amazing speed. Not an experience for every stripe of fan, it's still a fairly flexible experience. If the convention floor itself is too crowded for someone he can easily spend most or all of each day in panels or playing games, hitting the convention floor in brief exploratory or targeted strikes. I had a good time, and next year should see me fine-tuning the process.