Neverwinter Nights 2 is out today!

Who knew that the key to a good TV show was reuniting the cast of The Whole Nine Yards.

Drums of War

After that, some final purchases. I picked up the Kabuki Vol. 1 trade from David Mack, after a brief discussion of mixed media arts, collages, and our shared admiration of Rauschenberg (might have been stretching a bit on my part).

We hightailed it over to the Fables Forum, which was quite fun. We got a free copy of Fables #50, signed by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Matt Sturges, Andrew Pepoy and Todd Klein (the teams of Fables and Jack of Fables). I tried to ask a Burning Question to win a sketch from Mark, but I ended up not winning (though I thought I should have). We then popped over to Robot Rumble, which was geekful and hilarious, before catching the train back to Irvine.

I need a vacation.

I skipped the Lost Season 3 panel to go to meet Robert Kirkman at the Image Comics booth. He was yet another super nice comic creator, and signed my copy of The Walking Dead Vol. 1 (and a present for one of my friends that I went dashing through the exhibit hall to find). Next door was David Mack's section, where I bought an issue of Kabuki and he loaded me down with a bunch of freebies.

Then it was racing up to The Simpsons panel, which was not quite as funny as last year, but still good. They showed some very early scenes from the movie, which were pretty funny, and gave me hope for the future. After that, we saw the Bradbury, Harryhausen and Ackerman panel, which was mostly Ray Bradbury telling hilarious anecdotes (he seemed older this year). He also had one great line, which was that being in the flow of writing was like having sex, "So go out and write something."

We then jumped in line extremely early for the Avatar: The Last Airbender panel, forced to sit through some uninspiring new Nickelodeon shows. Unfortunately, the creators of Avatar couldn't make it, so the panel wasn't as good as last year's, but they did show of some cool stuff from the upcoming episodes, as well as a hilarious relationship analysis. And a cute free t-shirt.

We had dinner with some of our coworkers at McCormick and Schmick's before going to a The Batman panel and the world premiere of Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo. The new episode was really terrible. I fell asleep three times and it still felt long. After that we caught the second half of the Masquerade, which really doesn't need much explanation or commentary.

We passed by the DC Comics panel and saw a line forming. We found that all the people assembled there were waiting for Mark Buckingham, illustrator of Vertigo's excellent Fables comic. Sitting behind the table was Bill Willingham, the comic's writer, looking very much like he wanted something to do. I dashed over (and believe me, I was running) to scrounge up a copy of Fables Vol. 1 for him to sign. He was more than happy to sign it for me, and then we decided to wait in line so we could get Mr. Buckingham's signature as well. Turns out that Buckingham is just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet, and he did extraordinary sketches for most of the people in line. I didn't have a sketchbook, and he was running short on time, but he gave me a fantastic sketch he had done of Rose Red. The creative duo also hooked me up with an amusing pair of signatures on my trade.

After that, I jumped over to the other line in the Vertigo area (after running to track down a copy of the first Y The Last Man trade) for Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, who had appeared while I was waiting in the other line. We were the last two in line (lucky!) and I begged Pia for a sketch of Yorick and then, greedily, Ampersand, which she obliged with great quickness. I was amused that Brian inscribed my copy with "your pal, Brian K. Vaughn" and will now claim to be his friend until the end of time.

I went over to the Archaia Press booth and pored over Mark Smylie's gorgeous art from Artesia and other commissions before running over to the Battlestar Galactica panel. Unfortunately, due to incompetent crowd control, I was unable to get in, even though there was space. I was forced to cool my heels in the big Hall H until checking out Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, which looked very cool, despite looking like the first movie to truly be inspired by video games (long, uncut camera takes looking like an FPS).

After that it was the Star Wars Spectacular, which was so unbelievably unspectacular, it made me sad to have gone to it, instead of going to see Bruce Timm (where they apparently teased a Death and Return of Superman cartoon). After that it was motherfucking Snakes on a motherfucking Plane (after suffering through Final Destination 3, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and to a non-suffering extent, Tenatious D and the Pick of Destiny). Samuel L. Jackson appeared to answer questions (which was completely hilarious and priceless). He was definitely in rare form.

I then went back to the Archaia Press booth and haggled with Mark over the price of three pages of original Artesia art, which I purchased and am now glowing with pride over having ownership of them.

We followed that up with a painful thirty minutes at the Klingon Lifestyles Presentation and dinner at Mister Tiki's Mai Tai Lounge. Our sushi chef was completely obsessed with SoaP. We missed "Worst Cartoons Ever," but the loss was cushioned by the fact that most can be found on YouTube. After that, we picked up Stephen's girlfriend and checked out Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, which was pretty much universally horrible (and has been for the last few years).

After that, I hustled over to the StrangeCo booth for the Touma signing. I just missed the first part of the line, and began to fret that I wouldn't get to meet Touma. Luckily, about a half hour later, I finally reached the head of the line and had a shiny black Goon (toy dragon) for Touma to sign. He did an awesome green sketch of the Goon on its belly and drew in its eyes. I watched some more of Touma's customizations for the other fans and was really impressed with how much attention he paid to each toy. (Touma and MAD are my favorite toy designers, hands down.)

Randomly, we passed by the Dark Horse booth and saw them passing out foam Hellfinger hands. After digesting that piece of information, it was then clear that the man passing them out (or at least nearby) was Mike Mignola. We quickly jumped in line and forced Mignola to struggle with signing a piece of oversized foam (I think it's pretty awesome).

After that, I went to say hi to Chris after the "Writing for the Computer Game Industry" panel before checking out the tail end of Geek Monthly's summer movie preview panel. The movies were pretty bad by then, and I would be hard pressed to recall any of them. A few minutes of aimless wandering later, I headed over to the "100 Years of Robert E. Howard" panel. It was pretty disappointing.

With some panels under my belt, I headed down to the ToyQube signing appearance by... TOUMA! He was selling a new toy which was really very cool, but out of my price range. I picked up a book catalog of all of his toys, and he did a cute sketch of a Knuckle Bear for me. At this point, I felt like I should avoid Touma for the rest of the con, lest he think he had gained a stalker. Passing by the Oni Press booth, I got to snag a copy of Wasteland #1 by Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten. They seemed like a pair of super nice comic book creators, and after chatting with them, they signed my pristine comic.

We then failed to get into the Pinky and the Brain/Animaniacs panel before heading to the Royal Thai for dinner.

Then it was off to the Kung-fu Superhero Extravaganza which was really less enjoyable than most years. We ducked out early to head over to the Star Wars Fan Film Awards. There were some good ones, and some not so good ones (no more Pink Five, please). I was tickled to see that Sith'd (which one of my coworkers worked on) won an award and cheered like a loon.

Let the buying begin!

I started out by tracking down the UnklBrand booth. They didn't have any SDCC exclusives this year, but they were rolling out a new toy, the JunPo. I picked up the green/gray one as well as a cherry red SUG (not repeating my mistake of not purchasing the gunmetal/orange one last year). The creator/artist was extremely nice and signed them both, and hooked me up with some prints and stickers. They had a bunch of original art that I somehow managed to restrain myself from purchasing.

After that, we skipped over to the Penny Arcade booth, where Gabe was busy sketching a creature of unmentionable anatomy. We convinced Gabe and Tycho to sign our new PA beach posters, and Gabe hooked me up with a sketch of a sweet "metrosexual" night elf.

Remembering the crazy mob around the Flight booth the past two cons, I headed over to the Flight area (hard to find for some reason, every year). There weren't as many Flight creators in appearance this year, so I just picked up a Daisy Kutter trade (already have the single issues), and Kazu was nice enough to do a little Daisy sketch for me (so cute).

Wandering around the rest of the preview night floor, it was pretty busy, but so much better than the rest of the weekend would turn out to be. By chance, I passed by a booth with a t-shirt that featured a certain hyperkinetic bunny thingy, and saw a Sam and Max sketchbook called The Age of S&M. The guy gamely sitting behind the table turned out to be the Steve Purcell himself (extremely nice guy!) who asked my permission to draw in my copy of the book. I said yes (duh!) and was rewarded with an energetic drawing of Max.

Feeling quite satisfied with myself, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for the first day's competition in the morning.

- "Major Y", F16 pilot in the IAF

Jerusalem Post, "In the Cockpit"

- Brad Bird

1. Text on jerseys is almost universally terrible.
2. Hockey teams actually have colorful, interesting jerseys (see Atlanta Thrashers).
3. Black and white is unbelievably boring.
4. Gold looks terrible.
5. For some reason, they allowed Teemu Selanne to have input. Stick to the day job, Flash.
6. Seriously, did you look at these jerseys?

Midsummer Fire Festival

Scourge Invasion

Lost Season 2 Episode 20, "Two For the Road"
I was annoyed that Lost once again resorted to the crappy, forty minutes of development/flashbacks and two minutes of insane leadup to a cliffhanger formula, but at least the development and the cliffhanger were both good. The next three episodes to close out the season should be interesting.

The Office Season 2 Episode 21, "Conflict Resolution"
One of the funniest episodes of The Office yet! I think they've really hit their stride and found their identity in this second season. Lots of Michael interacting with the rest of the office, which always works out great. Less enthused about the serious ending.

Mission Impossible III
Spy fiction really let me down this week. Mission Impossible III was enjoyable, but I thought that the plot was really weak. I enjoyed the team parts of the movie (except that the IMF is so capable that they never run into any problems), but the character development was also weak. Giacchino's take on the MI theme was very good.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
But apparently, take the noir and put it in space and the results are great. This is Morgan's first book, so I'm looking forward to his next few. He really hits the bleakness of a world where the human body is just a commodity.

Ouran High School Host Club Episodes 1-4
Bones strikes again! This time with a weird, school life/comedy that is based on a manga (if I remember correctly). Lots of fun, not very deep, but pleasing in the way that most Bones shows are.

Pretty classic Bendis, as I see it. You get a lot of Bendis-standard panel layouts (read: lots of panels) and a lot of Bendis-standard dialogue (read: lots of dialogue bubbles). Sometimes, I feel like Bendis throws in lines just because they're clever or funny (sitcom style), and it's a little too much of Bendis coming forward in the characters. Also, I felt Purple Man's destruction of the suspension of disbelief to be a little much. That said, I still thought it was a very good read. Marvel's Omnibus edition was great, I just can't understand why they had to make it a limited edition.

Age of Bronze Vol. 1, "A Thousand Ships" by Eric Shanower

I'd read a lot of good things about this series on comics review sites, so I thought I'd check it out. Shanower is trying to do an epic retelling of the Trojan War in comic form, using historical, archaeological and anthropological records of the time. Most of this detail is lost on me, I have to admit. Sometimes what must be realism just doesn't come across strongly. The art is pretty good, very detailed (a little busy), and the writing is a little stilted. It's not fair to judge Shanower too harshly though, as my real point of reference is Homer's Illiad. I'll pick up the next volume, and see how it grabs me.

Little Star by Andi Watson

Finally! More Andi Watson. I just received a sketch I purchased from him, so I'm all Watson'd out. This is Watson's take on fatherhood (being a father himself). Not being a father, I feel like I can't truly appreciate what he's doing with the comic. I understood the space motif, but I thought he might have taken it a bit too far. Though it's not my favorite of his work, I still think it's worth reading for the art alone.