If you ever wanted a desktop wallpaper with lots of pictures of the Wasp, boy, does Marvel have a wallpaper for you!

My leg’s feeling much better, so when Glenn got press passes for the Comic Widows crew, I was definitely in on Saturday. This was my third Wizard World Philly, but it was definitely…different. WW Philly ran the same weekend as Heroes Con in Charlotte, and the show felt smaller as a result.

While Marvel and DC were there and in force, very few other “name” publishers were there. The publisher with the next biggest presence was Aspen, Michael Turner’s company. Image was only represented by the Top Cow division. No Dark Horse, no major book publishers with graphic novel division, no major webcomic artists, and absolutely, positively, no manga whatsoever.  This was the Marvel/DC show; the panels were mostly presentations of what’s coming up with Marvel and DC, with only the Steranko/Infantino panel being a notable standout on Saturday.

This was disappointing, especially compared to my experience at last year’s New York City Comic-Con. New York’s about hip comics- manga, webcomics, graphic novels outside of the superhero genre. The show’s inclusive and sprawling, and while the show last year was legendarily overcrowded, it succeeded because of the wide range of events and exhibitors available. You could come out with art from Colleen Doran, an autograph from Gene Colan, a bumper sticker from the Goats crew, some Previews from the major publisher’s GN branches, and a few manga books. Philly, in contrast, was all about geek genres. If you’re not into superheroes or Star Wars,  you were not going to have a good time at Philly.

The retailers at Philly seemed to offer the same product- overstocked action figures, overstocked comic books, and lots of statues and busts of your favorite superheroes. No retailer offered any significant amount of manga. There were at least two tables of bootleg movies, surprising given the raids that happened at other cons last year. Glenn and I remarked that the whole setup felt like a weekend flea market or yard sale, where everyone gets together and hopes to get rid of their own junk while somehow finding a rare first edition manuscript in someone else’s pile of used romance novels.

Mind you, this wasn’t all bad.  Glenn and I both found cheap toys for our bookshelves, and I did find a vendor selling the Order of the Stick books at a nice price. And if I had more time, I would have taken Rodney Ramos up on his unique offer. He had a prepared art page with Transmetropolitan’s Spider Jerusalem holding a brain jar. Ramos would draw your head onto the page, and Spider would proclaim that your head was being used for cat food. (Rodney, if you’re out there, I tried to get back to your table, but just didn’t make it. If you’re out there, drop me a line- I’d be happy to take you up on your offer!)

There were some fantastic people at the con. I met Marv Wolfman, author of my favorite comic of all time, Fantastic Four #200. (Yes, Glenn, I owe you a column as to why this is my favorite book.) We talked about how terrible it was that Keith Pollard, the penciller on the book, isn’t working in comics anymore. And he shared a neat aspect of the story that I’ll divulge when I get to the FF 200 column, I promise.

More tomorrow.

I was at Wizard World Philly with my buddy Glenn Walker of Comic Widows. A con report will be up shortly. In the meantime, check out Tripod’s “Comic Shop”.

From today’s Bad Signal:

“ Almost ten years to the month that John Cassaday and I had our
first conversation at San Diego about creating a new series: I have
just completed and delivered the full script for PLANETARY #27,
the final issue of the series.

Done.  Never ask me anything about it again.  DONE.”

Apparently, when I upgraded to WordPress 2.2, I did something that made YouTube videos look wonky. I’ve taken them down for now; they’ll reappear soon.

Why, do you ask? I give you three reasons.

1. Dwayne McDuffie really has a handle on what makes the Fantastic Four unique. It’s not just four people with superpowers; it’s a family. And even though that family is going through post-Civil War jitters, and Reed and Sue have been replaced with the Black Panther and Storm, they still work like a family. There’s a little bickering, a few jabs at each other, and a whole lot of let’s-work-together-and-beat-the-bad-guys. And there’s a wonderful scene where Storm overrules BP on a crucial decision, just as any good wife will when her husband’s wrong. (Note to wife if she’s reading this: Love you, sweetie!)

2. There’s a letter inside by Joltin’ Joe Sinnott, only the best slinger of ink the FF has ever seen. I’ve brought up my love for Sinnott before, and it’s nice to see Sinnott is still reading the book he made his mark on.

3. How can you not love this?

Is that the Black Panther on the Silver Surfer’s board? Why yes, that IS the Black Panther on the Silver Surfer’s Board.

If you need more to buy this comic than good writing (and nice art by Paul Pelletier and Rick Magyar), Joe Sinnott, and Wakanda’s best hanging ten in space, I can’t help you.

This is scary-brilliant. However, I suspect Brandy Clark would have talked to Bill Mantlo, not Roy Thomas. Still, brilliant.

Thanks to my friend Ray Lopez.

Your results:
You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor 77% Dr. Doom 75% Green Goblin 73% The Joker 67% Magneto 66% Apocalypse 64% Riddler 59% Kingpin 59% Mr. Freeze 50% Venom 46% Catwoman 45% Juggernaut 41% Dark Phoenix 37% Poison Ivy 37% Two-Face 33% Mystique 25%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Glenn Walker, one of my best friends and the inspiration behind Comic Widows, has decided that the world needs more Glenn Walker. I fully agree with his analysis. Thus, Glenn’s lending his voice to the All Things! Fun podcast, located right around here.

Glenn’s an old-school comics fan. He’d rather read Roger Stern than Bendis. He’s got me addicted to DC Archives. He’s a fascinating guy to argue with. And, like me, he married a woman much better than he deserves. (I still have no idea why CL married me. I must have been cute that day.)

If I had to make a list of exactly why I love comics, Warren Ellis would easily make the top ten. He’s written some of my favorite comics of the past ten years: Transmetropolitan, Planetary, the riotous NextWave, Ocean, Red, Reload, and too many other titles to count. Now, he’s jumping back into the longform comics pool with his new series from Avatar, Doktor Sleepless.

The first page of the script says, "Who’s afraid of a cartoon mad scientist?" John Reinhardt hasn’t slept in over a year. Does he take some Rozerem and star in commercials with Lincoln and beavers? Heck no! He straps on some goggles and takes us for a ride.

The comic is going to be accompanied by its own wiki. As Ellis wrote in a Bad Signal email, "It will have backmatter. Massive backmatter. DOKTOR SLEEPLESS will be shadowed by a wiki at www.doktorsleepless.com and backmatter will move to and from the wiki. Sometimes it’ll be seen in print before it goes on the wiki, sometimes not. Once the book’s live, the wiki will be opened up for readers to add to it. You will see why."

I asked Warren some questions about the project and its artist, Ivan Rodriguez.

You’re encouraging readers to participate in the wiki for this site. What sort of content are you hoping to get from readers?

Connecting up the dots. There’s a lot of information in DOKTOR SLEEPLESS, and it’s all interconnected and tangled together. Sorting out the disparate skeins and seeing how they might plug together will give many different angles on the work. It was people on the Lost wiki who pulled a screenshot from one episode and worked back to the realisation that people from the show’s metamaterial were actually on the island…

How did you determine Ivan Rodriguez was the right artist for this project? What does he bring to this project? You’ve talked about writing to an artist’s strengths; what aspects of this project play to his strengths?

He has a strong commercial, open texture to his work that’ll help make the book — which might otherwise have appeared somewhat odd and esoteric — more accessible to readers. I like the way he stages, I like the elegance of his figures. In his pages, everything seems hyper-real, if you like — too strange and graceful to be completely real. It’s an interesting effect, for a book like this.

What’s driving you to create this book? How would you compare/contrast this to, say, Transmetropolitan?

TRANSMET was about Truth in the modern world. DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is about Lies. TRANSMET was about a different kind of hero. DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is about a different kind of villain.

Doktor Sleepless will be coming out monthly in full color from Avatar in July. Each issue will be $3.99, with three covers available.

Thanks to Warren Ellis for his time.