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?

Someone went through and scraped off all the Bs from the windows at the local ex-Borders.

Insert obligatory Army of Darkness reference here. I wonder if their “always fresh” guarantee applies to boom sticks… (Found in Torrance, California.)

On a vaguely related note, Incredible Cafe is no more. It’s now Four Brothers Burger Grill. I wonder where they came up with that naming scheme.

What we found was a surprisingly big show, with a wide variety of exhibitors, though I’d hesitate to call it a “Comic-Con.” More of a general geek pop culture show. There were certainly comic book artists and dealers (a few of whom I recognized from last week), but it reminded me a bit of the last Wizard con I went to (Anaheim 2010). There were actors & celebrities, artists, indie publishers, authors, dealers, T-shirt and nerdy craft sellers, costumers, fan groups for everything from G.I. Joe to Firefly, tattoo artists (that’s a new one), a giant card game area, a giant tabletop game area, and a video game demo trailer. All in all, it was somewhere between Wizard and San Diego without the big names.

The facility itself left a bit to be desired: Kentia Hall, below the South Hall, is technically convention space, but it doubles as a parking garage. Everything was concrete, you could see faded lines marking out parking spaces on the floor, and there were enough support pillars to rival Dwarrowdelf (many of them right in the middle of aisles). The high ceilings, dim lighting, exposed air ducts and just the fact that everything was gray gave the place a really dismal feel, and the noise echoed horribly. To make matters worse, all the panels were held in the main hall in curtained-off “rooms” around the edge. Even with microphones, it was hard to hear the panelists over the noise.

I much prefer the other large halls in the Los Angeles Convention Center that I’ve been in (South and West): they both provide for more…cheery venues.

On the plus side, the line to get in moved. When I got there, they even had staff walking up the line with wristbands looking for people who had all their paperwork and just needed to hand it over.

As it is, I didn’t make it to many panels. I kept getting to a room, checking the schedule and finding that the panel I was interested in had started 40 minutes earlier. (It didn’t help that they didn’t provide program booklets, but I’m sure that’s one of the ways they kept the cost down.) I caught a few minutes of a Star Trek cast panel (by which they meant Garret Wang (Harry Kim) and two guest stars from the original series, though a lot more of the actors had appeared for signings earlier in the day), and about 20 minutes of a panel on the “Evolution of the Modern Zombie,” led by the author of The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. I missed the DC New 52 Q&A panel entirely due to a mixup and the fact that I didn’t check my text messages frequently enough.

Some highlights: amazing Jack-o-Lanterns carved by The Pumpkin Geek using a Dremel tool. Optimystical Studios’ Zomb-Alert pendants, so that your loved ones will be able to honor your wishes in the event that you’re bitten by a zombie. The Starbucks buzz. The worst ice cream I’ve ever tasted. (OK, that’s a lowlight.) Walking up to a crowd of people taking pictures of someone I couldn’t see, asking what was going on, and learning that everyone was taking pictures of Stan Lee playing a video game.

And of course all the costumes: The woman who had painted Trill spots on herself. The three Johnny Depp characters who ran into each other. An actual Donna Troy/Wonder Girl. Several Ramona Flowers, one of whom was walking around with Scott Pilgrim. Lots of steampunk outfits.

There was a lot of stuff there, but unfortunately I was only interested in a fraction of it. Long Beach was, I think, a smaller con, but it really felt like a full day of entertainment. I think my Comikaze experience would have been better if if I’d managed to catch a couple of panels on time, or if I hadn’t just been to another con with a lot of the same artists, or if I’d actually found the two artists I was specifically looking for, but as it was, I felt done about two hours before the floor closed for the day.

I might go again next year, but if it’s right next to Long Beach again, or if I have to choose one over the other, it’ll be Long Beach.

» Photos on Flickr.

Of course, Halloween and horror did make their presence known, starting with the signs for zombie parking, and continuing with programming, guests and costumes. (Jump straight to the photos.)

Getting In

I’ve never had a problem getting into Long Beach before, but this year the line to get in stretched all the way to the end of the lobby. Or rather, the line for people who had pre-registered stretched that far. When I arrived, there were only a handful of people in line to buy tickets at the door, and I was kicking myself for the last-minute decision to buy my tickets ahead of time this year. It took 45 minutes to get through the line, but only 20 seconds to hand over my paperwork and pick up my wristband. They were efficient, just understaffed.

Still, it’s nothing compared to the time I went to San Diego without pre-registering — back when you could still do that — and I waited in line from 8:00am until noon.

Around the Con

The floor never got too crowded, but the only place it ever felt empty was way in the back by the fan groups and the wrestling ring. And there was nothing going on in the ring at the time. (The first time I saw wrestling at a comic con I thought it was weird – until I realized it was a bunch of guys in garish costumes fighting each other, often with code names and dual identities.) I think the longest line I saw was for John Carpenter.

Most of the well-known small publishers were there: Aspen has been really involved in the con from the beginning, and I saw BOOM!, IDW and Top Cow. There does seem to have been some drop-off. I can’t remember seeing Dark Horse or Zenescope, for instance, and either would be a shoo-in with the added horror theme. DC’s never had a booth here, but they held panels at the first two Long Beach Comic Cons, and they didn’t seem to have any official presence at all this time around. (They have a panel at Comikaze Expo this weekend instead.)

At the back of the main floor, the con had set up several event areas: a Laser Tag arena, a wrestling ring, and a stage. I wandered by the stage while Captured Aural Phantasy was performing a staged reading of an 1940s crime comic book: melodramatic, tongue-in-cheek, over the top, and thoroughly fun. I didn’t catch the title of that story, but they followed it up with “Revenge Can Be Fatal (The Mad Hate of Dr. Zart)” – a sordid (if sparse) tale of vicious betrayal and revenge gone wrong.

I didn’t make it to any of the panels this year, though I was glad to see they’d managed to get rooms close to the main hall this time. (Last year the programming was all the way around the other side of the convention center.) I kind of regret skipping out on the masquerade, though.

Artist/Writer Encounters

The first booth I went to was the Aspen Comics booth, and Joe Benitez was there. He signed my copies of Lady Mechanika #1 & #2, and while I didn’t talk with him very long, he said that issue #3 should be out within a few weeks.

I caught Marv Wolfman at the Hero Initiative booth (he was actually behind me in line for lunch, but I didn’t want to bother him while he was trying to eat), told him that his and George Perez’ classic run on The New Teen Titans is what got me into comics in general and DC in particular, and asked him to sign The New Teen Titans: Games, the long-delayed graphic novel that finally hit the shelves last month after nearly 20 years.

He asked me if I’d had a chance to read it.

And I had to admit that no, I hadn’t.

He suggested that I try to read it all at once, which is just as well, since that’s exactly why I haven’t gotten to it yet. He also said that this was the first work of his in a long time where he hasn’t found things he wanted to change after it was published.

I spent at least half an hour talking with Brian Buccellato, co-writer and colorist on the new Flash series. We’d talked on Twitter before, and met at a signing he did at The Comic Bug the week that Flash #1 was released. He was kind enough to give me a sneak peek at Flash #3 — which looks awesome! — and drew me a sketch of Impulse.

Swag

I didn’t buy much this year (lightest backpack ever, even with the stuff I brought for autographs), though I was seriously tempted by Absolute Sandman for 40% off. One of these days, I’ll buy it.

I did discover a new webcomic, Rock Paper Cynic, and picked up the first collection. The strip that convinced me was a reference to Chekhov’s Gun. What can I say? You can take the theater major out of the theater, but you can’t take the theater out of the theater major.

Try saying that three times fast.

I also picked up a two-issue indie book called Prodigal, which looks like an Indiana Jones-type adventure, and the Coffee: It’s What’s For Dinner collection from Sheldon. (This one pushed me over the “must buy” threshold.)

And when I went back to the Hero Initiative booth to link up my Ralphs card for their community charity program, I discovered that they were offering incentives to do so — one of which was the Transmetropolitan art book. I guess it makes sense: they get a lot more in the long run from an ongoing percentage of grocery purchases than they would from a one-time sale. But it still felt like a steal.

Outside the Con

I always try to get outside at least for a walk and a look around. The convention center’s right by the ocean, and while I didn’t explore as much as I did the first year, I did wander out on the deck/bridge past the Hyatt hotel next door. It turned out there was an event going on there as well, though much more sparsely attended: Over the Edge had city council members and other people rappelling down the side of the hotel to raise money for the Special Olympics. There were a few lunch trucks up on the bridge by the info booth, but in the end I decided to just go back to the convention center and grab a panini.

I went out again later on after I grabbed some coffee, and ran into a group of four or five guys who were out celebrating Halloween with what sounded like a costumed pub crawl. One of them wondered what was going on at the convention center, and someone said it was Comic-Con, and he said, “No it’s not! Comic Con is in September!” I told him that it was Long Beach Comic Con — “No way! There’s a Long Beach Comic Con now?” — yes, in its third year. I told him how much it cost, and let him know about Comikaze Expo next week. They moved on, and when I headed back toward the convention center a few minutes later, I saw Jabba the Hutt stopped at a food truck. People were stepping over his tail to get past. Later on I saw the same group in the lobby. I guess they’d decided to check it out.

I wonder if they ended up coming back for Sunday.

»More convention reports
»Take me to the photos!

Some guy asked me, “What’re you dressed up as?” And I said, “…a Muggle?”

Found this photo I took back when Super 8 was in theaters. It’s funny how, when you get used to emoticons, they just kind of insist on being read.

This one’s right up there with Windows XP.

• Quickster? That sounds oddly familiar…
• Webcomic The Oatmeal explains it in terms of the food service industry.
• Woot’s CEO parodies the “apology” letter by announcing Crapster.
• Interesting theory at ZDNet: Splitting off the DVD business sets up Netflix to be bought by Amazon without subjecting Amazon to sales tax requirements in all the new states where they (used to) have shipping centers.
• Netflix and studios compared to grocery stores and dairy farms (Me at Google+)
• I was tempted to leave this funny Netflix comment up, but it was also spam. Good thing I’ve got @lol_spam for that: Netflix Drunk-Dialing