comic con

OFF!'s free midnight show at the Echoplex

As it was for a lot of you out there, this wasn’t the easiest year for me and my family. Following Giant Robot’s print magazine going on hiatus at the tail end of 2010, I was unemployed with no job leads or responses to my queries for the first six months. Then, after I got an awesome job out of nowhere, the company my wife worked for was purchased by a competitor and shut down. Fortunately, we’ve managed to get by through frugal habits, a rock-solid support system of family and friends, and the PMA. And yes, there have been highlights. Here are ten of them–some of which has been written about in the blog, others merely alluded to, and a couple of odds and ends–in no particular order. (more…)

Thanks to Dean Gojobori

(more…)

Anders Nilsen at Comic-Con

The work of Anders Nilsen can be cryptic, daunting. But his comics are as raw and primal as they are poetic, and their philosophical scope and artistic magnitude have never been clearer than in the Big Questions anthology. I have to admit that I was afraid to pick up the brick of a collection. Then I attended the Epic Literary Adventures panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, where the Chicago artist admitted to Drawn and Quarterly’s creative director Tom Devlin that even he had to draw a map so that the sprawling volumes wouldn’t contradict each other. It turns out he’s a regular guy who just happened to write and draw an ambitious, inspiring, and thought-provoking 600-page comic book about birds, snakes, and a plane crash.

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

MW: You’re in the midst of a reading tour to promote the Big Questions anthology. How’s that going? How do you structure your events?

AN: I just finished the first leg, going up the West Coast. I leave again in a week for Toronto and Minneapolis. It’s been great so far. People are coming out and I’m having great conversations. Most of the stops were basically just me signing books for a while, doing a slide show, talking about the book, and doing some readings from it, a bit of Q&A, signing a few more books… and then going out for a beer.

MW: The book is massive. Did you prefer long, epic comic book stories as a kid? The Kree-Skrull War? The introduction of the Inhumans?

AN: Yeah, totally. The X-Men battling the Brood, Elfquest, The Dark Knight–all that stuff.

(more…)

Giant Robot also hosted Bonnie Burton at the Giant Robot table at Comic Con. Bonnie Burton works at Starwars.com and is part of the Lucas family for numerous years. You can find her at her site: grrl.com

Mari Inukai is an artist living in Los Angeles. This is a short message about what she thinks about signings. It was shot during Comic Con 2011.

Brian Ralph at San Diego Comic Con 2011

The comics of Brian Ralph are packed with effortless, raw energy yet arranged in a ridiculously knowledgeable and sophisticated manner, belying both his punk rock roots as a part of the Ft. Thunder scene and product of the Rhode Island School of Design. Building on the primordial, mostly wordless, and much loved caveman-meets-time-machine opuses Cave-In and Climbing Out, Ralph’s latest collection boasts storytelling that is as bold as the brushwork. Following an engaging panel at Comic-Con led by Drawn and Quarterly‘s creative director Tom Devlin regarding the epic literary adventures of Anders Nilsen, Jeff Smith, and Ralph, I had to follow up with the professor of sequential art at the Savannah College of Art and Design for more thoughts on Daybreak and more.

MW: What’s it like for you to revisit finished works and then compile them? Are they time capsules for your personal life and events as well as for your artistic progression? Do you ever get sentimental when reading them?
BR: Normally I don’t get sentimental for old work. Once it’s done, it’s done.  I don’t ever reread the old work either;  I just move on. But with Daybreak, you are right. I do get a little sentimental  I really enjoyed that character of the one-armed guy. In a weird way, we became friends over the course of the comic. I was basically drawing an imaginary friendship and I didn’t want it to end. But I knew I had a responsibility to move on.

MW: Daybreak‘s second-person perspective/first-person shooter style is quite unusual in comics. Were there ever difficult moments in writing when you wished you didn’t do that? Did you ever consider changing the perspectives like Rashoman?
BR: It was a very exciting experiment, but I never regretted it. I really feed off challenges and working my way into difficult storytelling situations. I had established a couple of rules for myself, like, “never show the reader’s character’s hands or body” and  “never let the reader’s character speak or have a word balloon,” which created some interesting problems. But it forced me to find creative solutions. I did entertain the idea of killing off the one-armed man and then allowing the reader to meet someone new, but I just liked the one-armed guy so much I couldn’t bear to leave him behind in the wasteland.

Daybreak art by Brian Ralph

GR: Are you as educated in writing stories as well as you are in drawing them? How did you go about developing your writing technique?

BR: That was something that came up when Anders Nilsen and I talked. That we just thought of a bunch of cool things that we wanted to happen in a comic, and then figured out the story around it.  It strikes me as a pretty irresponsible way to tell a story, but I have been guilty of it in the past. And I have heard of the style described as “video game storytelling.” Is that bad? People say, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.” Is that bad, too?  I don’t know.

I never studied writing, no. But when I sit down to draw a comic, I’m not just allowing it to happen. I do have a plan for what I want and I don’t want it to be some contrived, formulaic package, either. I want it to be unexpected.

(more…)

This one is fun, the video shows the last elapsing minutes of Comic Con all the way to the packing up and putting the camera away. The person who grabbed the camera had no idea it was still shooting. So although Oscar and Eric set it up, it was then collaborated by another person?

The Hundreds brand continues to do new and fun things. Now it’s video! That’s me at Comic Con during Harry Kim’s signing for his Dirty Hands DVD.

Kid Koala signed his new book, Space Cadet!

David Horvath did his usual, and entertained little kid drawings. A sort of portfolio review.

(more…)

Toys at Comic Con. Photos by Oscar Rios!

More photos below!

(more…)

Again, it’s more Cosplay. Comic Con is filled with them. This set is by Oscar Rios exclusively.

More Photos below!

(more…)

Day 3 cosplay!

(more…)

Norin Radd at Comic-Con 2011

Yesterday I attended San Diego’s annual nerd mecca as as a regular guest–and not a vendor–for the first time since 1995. In many ways, it wasn’t as cool. Namely, I was forced to struggle with the famously difficult online sales just like everyone else. In fact, passes sold out after my 90-minute long wait despite entering [return] the moment they went on sale. I was lucky that another friend did get through that morning, and placed orders for my brother and me so that we wouldn’t miss our first Comic-Con since 1987 and second since 1979. (Thanks, Brian!) Greg and I gladly stood in line for 90 minutes to pick up extremely coveted one-day badges and proceeded to enjoy.

(more…)

Cosplay Photos at Comic Con. Enjoy. This was a fun day and it’s not even the big Cosplay day. Photos by myself and Oscar Rios.

More photos below!

(more…)

San Diego Comic Con Day 2 brought a few more photos. The Conan art show? I guess it’s called: COCO-MoCA Presents: The Fine Art of The Flaming C Fan-Art Exhibit. It’s fan art, but don’t believe it since if wasn’t fan art, there wouldn’t be tons of security guards. The coolest thing is the LEGO statue! More Coco art below in the photo set.

C.S. Lee, signed was on a panel and more for Dexter. He snuck up with a mask on. Yes, he’s popular at Comic Con. I’ve told people, that the folks wearing masks are often stars who are just checking stuff out. His t shirt is a cryptic message. Read it in Korean. Michael Choo.

See more Conan art, friends, artists like James Kochalka, Skinner, Aaron Horkey, Dave Stolte, Miso, Jeffrey Brown, Gene Luen Yang, Carlos Ramos and more below:

(more…)

The Comic Con has started and I’d like to think it’s a great way to open when Marvel Comics King, Stan Lee is right near your booth with just a tiny mob. He’s talking to Neal Adams in this shot. I can’t tell you who the photo bombers are. On fans, Neal Adams said, “at least they’re nice to us” and Stan Lee said, “they’re not to me”. It wasn’t too long ago when Stan Lee was relatively forgotten by the world, and now with the good remakes of the films (not the weird Fantastic Four, Spiderman TV show, Ang Lee’s Hulk, Punisher, etc) which are now worth billions, he’s back to being known by the masses as Stan the Man – a serious god.

The GR booth features the red lanterns. It’s a beacon. I love hearing, “I’m at the Giant Robot booth.” Yes of course! Look up at the signage, you can’t miss us. I think this is my 18th year in a row attending this convention. The first was in 1993, I’m pretty sure. It’s changed of course especially in size and in scope. The actual comic book dealers seem more and more scarce, and the Hollywood quotient is larger than ever. But this year, what’s the hot promotion? Last year, it seemed like Scott Pilgrim was everywhere, but this year? I’m not quite sure. Maybe it’s just an amalgam of a lot of features and television. We’ll see. Keep updated. We have a lot coming up. This was only preview night.

There’s plenty more photos below!

(more…)

Comic Con Signing Line Up.

We’ll most definitely be adding specials, deals, and more. I’d keep up with GR news via Twitter 

@giant_robot   Yes, there’s an underscore

@giantroboteric (that is me)

@invictus (That’s Michelle B)

Harry Kim who’ll be signing the DVD release of Dirty Hands. Friday Booth 1729 – 12-1:30pm

Will that other special guest be there? We’ll find out soon. Keep posted.