I guess IKEA is branching out… O_o

Spotted at the Costa Mesa store a couple of weeks ago.

As explained in the mouseover text, the title refers to the idea that because animals have different senses, each animal effectively inhabits a different reality. This can philosophically be extended to human perceptions.

Keeping that in mind, make sure you read it in a few different web browsers (both desktop and mobile!) for the full effect (JavaScript required). And try resizing the window.

As an art project, it’s the best use of browser-sniffing I’ve ever seen.

I go into more detail — including thoughts on some of the implications for the 10-year and 30-year troughs in the cycle — at Speed Force in Return of the 1990s.

»Skip to the photos if you’re so inclined.

There was a very strong comic book focus to the con, maybe not so much as at Long Beach, but all the major comics publishers were there, plus many of the minor ones. I was surprised to find webcomics wrapped around the large-press area and not hidden off in a corner. The small press and Artist’s Alley areas were huge (especially when compared to Wizard’s Comic Con in the same hall two years ago). And there were comic book dealers all over the place.

The only real complaint I had about the layout was that it seemed a bit haphazard. Marvel, IDW, and DC were front and center, but Studio Foglio and the Winner Twins were stuck in between IDW and DC. Zenescape was off in a corner rather than being clustered with fellow indies Archaia, Aspen and Avatar. And when I say the comic dealers were all over the place, I mean scattered all over the place.

The rest of the convention center was being used by a girls’ volleyball tournament and a cheerleading competition. I was encouraged by the fact that the players were just as interested as the fans in taking photos of and with the people in costumes, from Captain America and Bucky through Optimus Prime.

*They’d like to return to San Francisco after Moscone Center’s renovations are done, but that’s still up in the air.

Around the Con

Friday I went solo. It was lightly attended but still busy, and if anything, I’d call it relaxing. I spent a lot of time in panels, exploring the floor, and looking for bargains and cool stuff. This was probably the most traditionally “comic con” day for me. I parked in the convention center lot before noon and stayed until 9 at night (for Superman vs. the Elite), and still felt energized when I got home. It reminded me of the last time I did a Friday at WonderCon (2009) in San Francisco, or like a day at SDCC back in the 1990s.

Katie and I both went to the con on Saturday, when it was a lot more crowded. We parked in the lot across the street, got drenched on the walk to the convention center, and got hailed on that evening. I went to a couple of more literary panels, but didn’t spend much time on comic events…though I did spend a lot of time hunting down autographs. After Friday’s dismal plastic food (worst. pizza. ever.) in the convention center, we made a point of taking a break for lunch and eating at one of the hotel restaurants. That was definitely worth it.

Sunday was very different, because we brought our son along. Having a toddler with you really changes what you can do, how quickly you can get around, etc. (We also got in later, which meant parking waaay out at Angel Stadium and taking a shuttle in. Fortunately the shuttles were fast and frequent.) Crowd weaving with a stroller is a lot more difficult even than crowd weaving with a giant backpack. We were only there for about four hours, and mostly spent the time exploring. I don’t think he really understood what was going on, but he had a good time people-watching, and playing with demo toys, and I made sure to find him a place out of the way that he could run around.

Signings, Swag and Encounters

After a couple of years on hold, I’ve picked up the Comic Book Tattoo autograph project again. Only Ted McKeever was there out of the artists and writers I still needed, but since I wan’t carrying a computer around, I figured I’d bring it on the first day. Then I picked up a volume of Absolute Sandman for 50% off. (How do half-price trade/hardcover booths make a profit? Is it a loss leader? Clearance?) I was very happy that I’d managed to park in the convention center lot that day.

I talked for a while with Randy Milholland of Something*Positive, and while I wasn’t planning on buying any original art, I figured I’d take a look, and stumbled upon a piece that inspired a running gag here. Then he told me the real story of the childhood event that inspired the storyline. Somewhere in here, the real T-Bob showed up, and he and Randy caught up while I continued looking through the art.

At one point, while walking down the hall, I heard someone saying “I think so, Brain…” in a perfect Pinky voice. I looked over and it was Rob Paulsen. (‘Kay bye.)

I got Naomi Novik to sign the latest Temeraire novel, Crucible of Gold and Ernest Cline to sign the audiobook of Ready Player One. (I’d read the book on the Kindle, and discovered that morning that Wil Wheaton reads the audio version. Apparently they’d been trading recommendations for quite some time, informally, and Wil was quite pleased to get to do the audio version. He didn’t pre-read the book, so he didn’t know he was in it until about the page before, and still managed to read it “like a boss.”) Humberto Ramos signed my copy of Impulse #1 (previously signed by Mark Waid), and I caught up with Fiona Staples for Saga, and Joe Benitez for Lady Mechanika. I talked briefly with Flash co-writer/artist Brian Buccellato, and intended to head back to his Artist’s Alley table later, but somehow never quite made it.

Events

Programming is one of Comic-Con/WonderCon’s strong points, and they always have a wide variety of events. As much as people complain about the Hollywood presence in San Diego, most years you can put together a personal schedule of entirely comic-book events that barely leaves you any time on the floor (or for lunch).

I caught the Superman vs. the Elite screening on Friday. Since it was Friday, I had no trouble getting in, and getting a really nice view of the second row of screens. It moves the premise from Action Comics #775 to a more political stage, and while there are problematic elements, and the animation style takes getting used to, my favorite part of the movie was the interplay between Lois and Clark.

In general, I’ve found that if I have to choose between an announcement and a discussion, I’ll go for the discussion. (The announcements will be online by the end of the hour anyway.) I did check out the Hobbit panel, which turned out to be less preview and more “What we know so far…” from The One Ring.net, and the Friday DC Comics & Vertigo panels. I got some good quotes, but not much information out of the DC panel, while Vertigo has me seriously considering checking out American Vampire.

A couple of audience surveys at the DC panel: Only about 1/5 of the audience raised its hands when asked whether they read comics online. And it was sad that only a handful recognized China Miéville’s name.

Anthony Bourdain’s upcoming graphic novel Get Jiro sounds like one of those amazingly bizarre books that will either be awesome or awful: In a dystopian future Los Angeles, the divide between haves and have-nots has become extremely sharp. All forms of entertainment have died out except for food, and the action-adventure focuses on Jiro, a sushi chef caught between literally-warring gangs of foodies.

More fun were the Saturday panels on Rewriting History and the Science Behind Science-Fiction.

Rewriting History featured Naomi Novik (Temeraire), Ernest Cline (Ready Player One), Rob Reid (co-founder of Rhapsody, with a sci-fi novel coming out called Year Zero) and — when he finally made it through the parking mess — Todd McCaffrey (the more recent Dragonriders of Pern novels).

The Science Behind Science Fiction was a presentation and Q&A by the authors of How To Defeat Your Own Clone, showing examples of common sci-fi tropes and comparing them to real science. For example: We can’t build an Iron Man suit (yet), but we can build an exoskeleton. We can’t engineer a super-human, but there are genes that control muscle growth. We’ve only cloned animals so far, but we can look at identical twins. They used clips from movies to illustrate the tropes, including Avatar, Captain America…and two from Doom. (Now I have to know: is Doom so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s bad?)

One of them told us about the time he was almost bitten by a radioactive spider, and how just for a moment, he actually considered letting it bite him.

Quotes

“Are you clamoring for a Canterbury Cricket series?” “I am.” “Oh, you’re the one…” – DC All Access on Friday

“Is intertwinededness an actual word?” “It is now, I’ve got the podium.” – DC All Access again

“Is that Thorin, or Gowron?” – The One Ring/The Hobbit on Friday

“A hipster will wear a Captain Picard shirt and say, ‘Look how dumb this shirt is.’ If I wear one, it’s because I want some mofo to make it so!” — The Nerdist, Friday

“Why doesn’t Batman talk about his feelings more?” — CAC #7, Female Superheroes and Trauma, Saturday

“Who would do this to their dying friend?” — Ernest Cline, re: taking someone to see Star Wars: Episode I, Saturday

“If you don’t know who Boba Fett is, your opinion is invalid.” — Ernest Cline, Saturday

But Wait! There’s More!

»All my WonderCon 2012 Photos
»WonderCon as a Test Case for Comic-Con in Anaheim

The Anaheim Convention Center definitely has the floor space. WonderCon used about 1/4 of the main floor this weekend (all of Hall D, unlike Wizard in 2010, which only used about half to two-thirds of it), not counting registration downstairs.

Rooms for programming might be a problem. As near as I can tell, WonderCon used all the meeting rooms on level 2, and the large ballroom that takes up most of level 3. The Arena might be a good replacement for San Diego’s Hall H, but for the smaller panels they’d have to spill over into the nearby hotels. Fortunately, those hotels are next to the convention center, not at opposite ends or across a railroad like in San Diego.

Parking was the major breakdown this year, and Comic-Con will need even more. (I’d guess a lot of the people at the volleyball and cheer competitions were staying in hotels from out of town, or bused in from closer schools.) I suspect if they can use the stadium lot all four days and direct people to it clearly (including signs between the freeway and convention center letting people know that the convention lot is full, and accurate directional signs all the way to the stadium lot), it will probably be all right.

Food could be a problem, but it’s easily solved by bringing in food trucks or encouraging people to walk a few minutes. You know…like we do in San Diego. (Though hotel restaurants and a half-empty mall have nothing on the Gaslamp District.)

Hotels, to me, are the biggest open question. Most of the pro-Comic-Con-in-Anaheim articles I’ve seen sort of gloss over the fact that Disneyland is right across the street, or use it to bolster the claim that there are lots of hotels.

But you know, Disneyland visitors are going to be using those hotels, too. Especially during the height of summer.

If you’re trying to get a message out, or provide a service, analytics are great. They tell you what’s working and what’s not, so you can focus on what does work. Unfortunately, when it comes to email, a lot of organizations use a third-party click-tracking service, which registers which mailing the user clicked on, then redirects them to the real website.

Why do I say unfortunately?

Because it’s what phishing does: Sets up a link that looks like it goes one place, but sends you somewhere else instead. In the case of a legitimate email with a click tracker, you end up at the real site eventually. In the case of a phishing message, you end up at a fake login page that wants to capture your username & password, or a site with drive-by malware downloads. Using this technique in legit mail trains people to ignore warning signs, making them more vulnerable to the bad guys. And it makes it harder for security software to detect phishing automatically.

Now add another reason: You don’t control that click-tracking service, so it had better be reliable.

That’s what happened with Comic-Con registration today.

Getting tickets to San Diego Comic-Con used to be a breeze, but last year the system broke down repeatedly. It took them three tries, with multiple handlers, to open a registration system that didn’t melt in the first few minutes.

A few days ago, Comic-Con International sent out a message with the date and time registration would open, and a link to where the page would be when it went live. They went to a lot of trouble to make sure their servers could handle the load, as did the company handling registration. They built a “waiting room” to make sure that people trying to buy tickets would get feedback, and get into a queue, when they arrived, but could still be filtered into the registration system slowly enough not to overwhelm it.

The weak link: The click tracker.

That click tracking service was swamped, and thousands of people clicked on that link and got a blank browser window with the “loading” icon.

To make matters worse, Comic-Con had not only insisted that you should use the link from the email, but they had make a big point about how you shouldn’t refresh your browser, or try reloading the page in another browser or tab, or you’d get sent to the back of the line. After last year’s fiasco, and the last few years of “Hoteloween” with the same sort of problems dogging hotel reservations, people were used to pages loading slowly, and CCI had trained them to let that blank page sit there, loading.

After 15-20 minutes, SDCC realized that the tracker was broken and sent out bulletins on Facebook and Twitter suggesting that people copy and paste the URL, or type it in manually. But by then, the damage had been done, and a lot of users who would have gotten in line at 8:00 got in line at 8:15 or 8:20 instead, and ended up so far back in line that the convention sold out before they made it to the front.

This all could have been avoided if the bulletin had linked directly to the target website instead of to that redirector.

So, email campaigners: remember this cautionary tale and do your own click-tracking.

(For the record: I was able to get through and got the days I wanted. But only because I copied and pasted that URL instead of clicking on it, and started at position #3948 about 30 seconds after registration opened. To be honest, I probably benefited from the fact that so many people who would have been in competition with me those first 30 seconds ended up getting in line after me, but it was still a bad move on SDCC’s part.)

In case you need more goo for your home…

(I wonder if they have another store for Office Goo.)

★TREK11

I’ve seen dangerous-looking Christmas decorations at the mall before, but at least those looked like…well, Christmas decorations. This spiked ball looks like something you’d find at the end of a mace, or maybe on the end of a chain for some knight to swing around.

Maybe the order called for a “morning star” and someone got confused?