Emerald City Comic Con 2012: The Costumes
My apologies for the Mindy overload here, had to jump in a few pictures with these awesome folks.
Slideshow of the great costumes at Emerald City Comic Con 2012:
LINK LOVE: 2/7/2012
There were too many great links this morning to pick only ONE for ye old Facebook. So here they are, collected into a nice happy digest. Enjoy!
1. Superheroines in Comfy Pants + How RPGs Talk To Women
Those links are straight from The Mary Sue, which is a great female centric nerd blog you should already be following on FB, Twitter or through some other social media venue.
Personal favorite:
Bat Woman in Comfy Pants by MichelleSix
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2. Lana Del Rey’s The Hunger Games
The perfect spoof and mash-up of the songstress everyone loves to hate + the increasing hysteria surrounding The Hunger Games.
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3. Neko Case is Recording a Song for The Hunger Games
I predicted this! A Neko Case song kicks off every one of my Hunger Games playlists. She already has so many great songs to choose from, it seems strange that she would need to record another. Ah well, I guess that’s how these soundtrack thangs work. Along with tracks from Arcade Fire and The Secret Sisters, this is absolutely going to be a must buy. Looks like there will be two separate albums – the actual score by T-Bone and James Newton Howard. And then another full of conventional songs inspired by The Hunger Games. It’s going to be released March 20, 2012. Om nom nom.
Funny, we were just remarking about this last night after receiving the San Diego Comic Con catalog where Peter Parker and Mary Jane are posing front and center. I was in the “looks alright to me” camp, and Dan was in the “I like the web-shooters” camp. Our buddy and current house guest Troy who is easily the more Spidey-obsessed seemed a bit “meh” all around and was much more excited about the potential new Star Trek series.
Halloween Hinjinks: The Walking Dead and Music Playlist
Halloween weekend was chock full of hijinks – and the topper of the weekend was The Walking Dead television premier at the Baghdad Theatre in Portland, Oregon. 600+ Zombie fans crammed into the ornate location for a costume contest, raffle and unveiling of the episode. This is the first time I’ve watched television with hundreds of people, so it was actually quite thrilling to listen to the roar of chatter during the commercials. We were warned about talking during the episode, so when the show started – the theater became quiet enough that you could hear the rustling of people in the first few bottom rows from the upper levels of the balcony.
The costumes were pretty fantastic. We missed getting pictures of Chairface (The Tick) but there were dozens of other people who really dressed for the occasion.
Check out the pictures we snapped here, as well as some from our Halloween party:
Another highlight of the weekend was getting to air out the massive playlist of Halloween-y songs I’d been preparing all throughout October. It ended up being about six hours long (three hours of ambient, three hours of dance).
The Top 20 Tracks from each are listed here.
Emerald City Comic Con 2009: A Recap
This image was the front page of the convention program.
Dan and I hit the road around noon yesterday, on our way up to the Seattle Comic Con – otherwise known as Emerald City Comic Con. We had tentatively planned this trip a few months ago, dependent upon funds and time and the aligning of the fates.
Well, at some point last week, on the verge of deciding not to go, I checked their site to see what exciting guests might peak my interest and swing the vote. Turns out – a few, including:
– Jewel Staite (Kaylee from Firefly)
– Tahmoh Penikett (Helo from BSG and Paul Ballard from Dollhouse)
– Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol from BSG)
– Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh from BSG)
and Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher from ST: Next Generation)
Pretty kick ass line up. Then I spotted in the artist/writer’s tables Mike Mignola and Greg Rucka, and was sold even further. So – Dan and I debated up until Friday evening about whether or not we would attend. Saturday morning, we decided yes.
We didn’t arrive in Seattle until around 2:30pm, and felt discouraged about attending the Con with only a few short hours on the docket. Also we were fairly sure we’d missed an opportunity to take pics with Tahmoh (my goal for the event). Instead, we secured some wireless internet – located lodging close by (a stunning Motel 6 in SeaTac) and tucked in for the night.
We hit up the awesome Pyramid Brewery, got tipsy – stopped at the store and grabbed some champagne – got even more tipsy and spent the night watching Starship Troopers until we passed out.
After a fitful night of sleep, we checked out of our motel, hit up a Denny’s and arrived at the con a mere 1.5 hours later than we had intended. Oh – not to mention that whole day we missed too. 🙂 More madness behind the link…
Costumes in Real Life: Heroes and Villains
It seems odd that twice this morning I should be reminded of the impact costumed heroes and villains have on our lives. Not in a metaphorical way, but in real blood and guts instances. Yes, actual people dressing up as comic book characters. But in these cases, some are heroes and some are villians.
The first example is not so cheery: Soldier dressed as the Joker killed in standoff. Apparently this is not the first instance since The Dark Knight was released in theatres last year in which people have sought to portray this character for their own malicious purposes. One was a young girl attacking a teacher while wearing Joker make-up. Another is a young man dressed as the Joker trying to beat up a former girlfriend’s current boyfriend. These were all located for me at this blog, and I’ve been unable to find anymore examples of comic book villians high-jacked for violent real life intentions in my own brief internet searching. But I would be interested to know if this dressing as a villian and committing real world crime is a recent phenomenon due to the increase in popularity of comic book movies, or if this has been happening since the early days of Superman.
On a much lighter and heart-warming note: A firefighter dressed as 
Spiderman rescued a child in Bangkok. And in a whole other part of the world, two years ago – a young boy dressed as Spiderman rescued a one year old girl from a burning building. And a pizza delivery man dressed as Luke Piewalker came to the aid of a mugging victim in 2006.
Is this the result of comic books becoming mainstream? Of the increasingly ravenous popularity of superhero movies? Real people dressing as heroes and villians performing feats of rescue and plots of crime, not just in the United States, but across the globe..
If the result of ordinary folks dressing like superheroes and saving the lives of others, is that we have ordinary folks dressing like villians and killing or hurting others…is that a welcome trade off? Do we cease a successful element of pop culture because it encourages imitation in positive and negative ways? And how intriguing is it that we are asking this question – the same question posed by books like Watchmen and Marvels. Do superheroes create supervillians? Or are heroes a response to villians existing in the first place. Hhhmm.
What would Alan Moore think about these examples? What would Stan Lee have to say?
How about you?
Much Love, Mindy C
Dan
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Tiny Heroes 