Tag: comics

Evil Archie Andrews

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Archie comics are going the route of Spider-Man and announcing they’re killing off their titular character, but really they’re doing it in a less-successful spin-off series and not mentioning that part concisely as not to compromise the impulsive demand from would-be buyers.

Killing a titular character is such a cop-out.  It’s basically saying “we’re out of ideas for this character, and don’t want to bother putting any further effort with them.”  I can’t say that I’ve ever really been a fan of Archie comics, but I’m not going to pretend like I’ve never read them before either.  Granted, my exposure to them was literally when I was in the first or second grade, and I took piano lessons from a lady who had all sorts of Archie comics on her coffee table for the kids who showed up early like me would be able to read to kill time with.  A lot of the stuff was over my head back then, and it took me a while to realize that “Ronnie” was a nickname for “Veronica.”

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Ozymandias, you’re our only hope

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

You won’t find a lot of political speak on my brog, primarily because I simply do not care about politics.  Typically, this ambivalence remains in place until it actually begins to directly affect my bottom line.  I’m not going to pretend like I know the facts behind it, but after tomorrow, it actually will be doing such, and that’s all I really know.  Due to whatever Obamacare or what name it has/will have, it appears that I’ll have to re-configure my health insurance coverage to be kosher with the guidelines in place with Obamacare, lest I be fined.

It’s funny, because I put a great deal of work into trying to keep myself physically well-conditioned and exercise on a regular basis, so that I don’t have to rely on the need for excessive medical coverage.  And it seems like that’s kind of becoming irrelevant, due to the fact that it’s becoming mandatory that all people are supposed to be covered, or else they’re monetarily penalized.

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SDCC: Preview Night and Thursday

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Since I have over 250 pictures that I have to go through, sort, process, edit and upload, I figured it might not be a bad idea to break them up. In a perfect world, I just split the RAW files down the middle, and call it two even batches, but that wouldn’t be very cohesive and I’m anal retentive like that. So the first 80 or so images contain pictures from Wednesday the preview night, and Thursday of Comic-Con, which means the next batch is going to be massive, and will likely take an extra day or two, as I try to settle back into a daily routine again.

If you’re looking for pictures a lot of costumers, I’m afraid I have to say that there really aren’t that many in this post. Contrary to my expectations, and/or maybe I just wasn’t ever in the right places at the right time, but costuming in general doesn’t seem to be as prevalent at SDCC as I suppose I’m used to with like Dragon*Con, so by virtue of there not being as much on top of my fairly picky choices of what to photograph, there aren’t a lot of costumer photos, although there are a few here and there. There will definitely be more in the next batch.

These pictures mainly focus on beautiful San Diego itself, examples of some of the horrendous lines and crowds that I quickly learned despite expecting them, were the most absurd things on the planet, my obsession with Richard Walker’s Pancake House, and a few pictures from the Facebook party and other night gatherings.

The highlight of these two days, and possibly the entire convention for me, was getting to meet Chuck Palahniuk, my favorite author (Fight Club, Choke, Haunted), and not only getting to simply meet the man again, but to also be one of a hundred people to actually receive an advance copy of his next book, Doomed.

Photos after the jump!

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The SDCC hiatus

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I’ll be disappointing my seven readers, but there won’t be any updates for the next few days, as I’ll be in San Diego for Comic-Con. Despite my insensitive nonchalance about the fact that I’m going, I actually am excited about this trip. This is the first convention I’ve gone to on the west coast since like, Anime Expo back in 1998, and this is still going to be vastly new territory, since as it’s so very well known, Comic-Con is gigantic as heck, and is going to have like a million people attending.

Ultimately, I have two primary objectives while in San Diego, which will be acquiring a number of convention exclusive items, and going to Richard Walker’s Pancake House, which is within walking distance from the hotel and convention center. Otherwise, my itinerary is pretty wide open with the exception of whatever help I need to give the girls when it comes to media stuff, so ultimately, I’m hoping for a fun weekend of seeing and photographic costumes and friends, hopefully seeing some stars that I admire, and just taking in the chaos and insanity that is Comic-Con.

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Do we really need another Wolverine movie?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seriously, this makes what, five?  It’s not like the three X-Men films didn’t revolve around Wolverine, and it’s not like Wolverine didn’t already have his own movie in X-Men Origins: Wolverine* already, so I guess The Wolverine makes five films about Wolverine until 20th Century Fox decides that another Wolverine film is needed for another layup paycheck, and so they drop the “the” and just release Wolverine in like 2016.

*I think it’s hilarious that they prefaced this with “X-Men Origins:” as if it were implied that 20th Century Fox could make a series of origins films of any other X-Men characters whose origin stories could actually be encapsulated into 90-minute films.  It’s almost as pathetic as the lucrative Street Fighter name and logo being attached to The Legend of Chun-Li, with slight implication that they could actually make movies about any other Street Fighter character.

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When did Deadpool become so popular?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back in like 1992 or 1993 is when I got into comic books. Naturally, like most kids of that era, it was X-Men that proved to be the gateway into comic-nerd-dom forevermore, and it wasn’t really long before I would blow loads and loads of my parents’ money on comic book related shit, in hopes of getting X-Men related crap.

I bought the entire set of X-Men Series One trading cards (minus the oddly-rare Iceman card) from a classmate for $15, which was a gargantuan amount in the fifth grade. I remember being all thrilled to seeing all the cards of the characters I recognized like Gambit and Wolverine, as well as the lusty excitement to see how disproportionately sexy Jim Lee drew women like Rogue and the White Queen, but all in all, of the 208 card set, there were a fuck ton of characters that I had never seen in my life, because the set encapsulated all sorts of villains that weren’t Magneto, and all of the B-characters that were a part of X-Force, X-Factor, and Excalibur. Regardless, being the inquisitive wannabe comic nerd poser, that didn’t stop me from reading all the cards’ bios and examining each and every one of them at some point.

It was during this time that I discovered the existence of Deadpool. From what his bio revealed, he was a guy mired in the X-Force storylines, entwined with whatever Cable was doing. The mention of Weapon X meant nothing to me at this point of my comic noob-ness, since I was that new to comic books at that time, and was unaware that Weapon X meant Wolverine, which meant something that ultimately the entire company revolved around. But for the most part, he was a negligible character that seemed to look too close to Spider-Man to my earlier comic days.

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I’m not sure what DC Comics is thinking

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first read about this story, my kneejerk reaction was that I sure hope that this wasn’t going to be part of a canon storyline.  Fortunately for all parties involved, this is more of a one-off storyline that coincides with the release of a DC Comics related video game of some sort, but the point remains about how dumb this concept is, and that this is not the first time that DC Comics has failed to grasp a concept that they created.

Despite the fact that it’s not canon story, I’ll still exercise the consideration to refrain from discussing it without the fair warning that there are some spoilers ahead; after all, like in Inception, once an idea is put in place, it can never be removed, like a festering disease, and if you don’t have to think about it, it’s best to never be exposed to it in the first place.

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