The weekend of chunky guys dressed like Colossus and hot women dressed as Slave Leia has come to an end. I myself had a great time, spent with hermanos from this very site and a whole bunch of guys from Funnybook Babylon. Sadly, Thomas “Wanderer” Wilde deemed himself “too broke” to consider joining us and Hoatzin would have probably involved a gigantic plane ticket paid in rare diamonds, since he’s from Europe. I don’t know. I really have no grasp on how that type of thing works. Besides, Hoatzin seems to have vanished from our planet. What happened to that guy?

This one movie sent the other movie into space.

Day One

Last year I got to New York the day before the con started, which allowed me enough rest and whatnot. This year I had to come in the first day of the event and kill time until David Uzumeri came in from Canada, since he was in charge of dealing with the hotel. I walked straight from the Port Authority bus terminal to the Javits Center, which tired me the hell out.

After getting my swanktastical press pass, I met up with hermanos and Joseph of FBB. They were at a panel starting up that was a screening for a new Will Eisner documentary. Since I was tired from all that walking, I decided to stick around and watch it. I found it interesting in the sense that I honestly didn’t know all that much about Eisner, which is almost a sin if you’re a comic fan. The four of us (David U. showed up towards the end) mostly agreed that while it had some fantastic stuff in there, such as taped conversations between Eisner and guys like Kirby, the sum of it was incredibly dry.

Shortly after, we went to the panel on online journalism, with guys from Newsarama and CBR there. It wasn’t as good as the comic blogging panel from last year and mostly focused on arguing over criticism vs. getting press releases. Once that was done with, I was rested up enough to do some wandering.

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Funnybook Babylon » Blog Archive » Fandom, Readership and Snark

What’s starting to disturb me more is the reaction to this that I see on a lot of the more moderated/respectable blogs – this conscious attempt to cut ties with the tastes of the hoi polloi and instead turn the topic to how cleverly you can savage a certain creator or book. Mike Choi is right – the switch is defaulted to “snark” all across the blogging community and everyone’s tripping over themselves to be the funniest guy to say something’s going to suck.

I’m increasingly beginning to feel that the topic of conversation is turning from comics themselves to the comics community, because everyone’s trying to take sides and generate controversy. Everyone wants to start some shit or get some gossip, everyone wants to know if marvel b0y’s going to set the photocopier on fire and dress up like Dan Buckley to try to fire Joe Quesada. Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to know that, I’m enjoying this little drama as much as everyone (except for when people turn their blogs into dedicated spoiler dumps), but doesn’t everyone remember comics? Does it really take All Star Superman #10 to get comics discussion going these days, even if it’s just “OMG best issue ever”? And no, I’m not counting the latest 40-thread viral controversy about whether (X) or (Y) is racist or misogynist.

Go scope it.

By the way, the best podcast in history went live last week. Go give it a listen, too. You might hear a familiar voice talking about comics.

A few highlights:

Like if you went to his wikipedia page Joe, and you were to read it, your head would explode. It abuses time travel in the worst way.
– Pedro on “Per Degaton”

“The only man trying to be a cross between Doctor Doom and Marlo Stanfield.”
– Joe on “What Pedro wishes to be when he grows up.”

“4th Letter is a subsidiary of David Brother’s ego.”
– Pedro on “our special guest’s website.”

“She’s like an ineffective Amanda Waller.”
– David B. on Val Cooper

“Interestingly enough, genocide was not enough for Metron. He was totally fine about that.”
– Jamaal on “The betrayal of Mister Miracle”

“Honestly, he was like a Scooby Doo villian back then.”
– David B. on Jack Kirby’s Darksied

” I do like that original Norse Myth where Thor’s hammer got taken by a space alien.”
– Joe on “Viking poet Walt Simonson”

“He just got a kid, so he needs his cash.”
– Pedro on Matt Fraction

“I hear Chris is turning into a spicy latina.”
– David on the FBBPodcast relaunch at New York Comic-con and the ensuing continuity changes.

There! Now you don’t have to listen to the podcast!

Matt Silady and I were interviewed at Wondercon for Lene Taylor’s I Read Comics podcast. Come out and listen to me blab about being a blogger and Matt talk about being a comics creator. I think that Matt’s bit is a bit more interesting than mine, but maybe that’s just my long-lost sense of humbleness at work! Anyway, I talk about blogging, black comics stuff, and tokenism and why I post on the internet.

I manage to mention a bunch of internet people I like, too. Pedro and co., Kalinara/Melissa, Ragnell/Lisa, WFA, Writers Old Fashioned, and Cheryl Lynn.

Whoo.

Give it a look and toss I Read Comics into your podcast catcher.

hermanos is off covering that E3 thing for that magazine he does, so that leaves me to hold up the fort. It’s all right because I have quite the treat. Regular readers know that I’ve been talking about the pro wrestling federation CHIKARA to the point of annoyance in the last few months. And with good reason!

Moving to the next step of fandom, I’ve secured an interview with “Lightning” Mike Quackenbush himself. Quackenbush, nicknamed “The Master of a Thousand Holds” (though to be fair, I’m sure he’s probably sorta kinda good at eight or nine more), is a 16-year veteran of the ring and is the man who co-founded CHIKARA back in 2002. He’s a wrestler, a trainer to wrestling hopefuls, occasional commentator, writer, and possibly the next surprise identity of Ronin. He’s also one of the best performers I’ve ever had the honor of watching wrestle.

A rare image of Mike Quackenbush that doesn’t involve him shoving someone’s left knee into their right ear.

Not to mention that he’s a major comic fan. So this is, you know, still on-topic for the site.

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I know what CHIKARA is and you certainly know what CHIKARA is, but let’s play it safe and say that whoever’s reading this doesn’t know. Can you give us a little description of what it’s about and what sets it apart from all the rest?

– CHIKARA is a group of pro-wrestlers/luchadores/ninjas/ would-be-super-heroes that get together and enact the age-old struggle of “good vs. evil” within the context of a wrestling universe that permits elements of science-fiction and fantasy beyond what is currently considered “acceptable” or “mainstream” by wrestling fans at large. I hope, when the final word on CHIKARA is written, that our effect on the wrestling performance genre will be akin to the effect Monty Python had on British comedy, or Jack Kirby had on comics.

Quack as part of Eddie Kingston’s Cibernetico team, based on the first issue of Justice League International

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