IT'S TIME... THE CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2024 IS ON!!!

The time is now, the place is here!  Comic Con 2024 is on the horizon!  We are roughly seven weeks away from the greatest week of the year, but the fun is FAR more encompassing than that!  Much to talk about today, but we'll get to that in just a moment, as there's something important to talk about first.

Comic Con isn't the only show taking the stage this summer, as HeroesCon in Charlotte will also be taking place next weekend, and with it, the Team Cul De Sac Drink 'N' Draw and Art Auction!  Every year, Chris Sparks teams up with the Michael J. Fox Foundation to cohost a charity auction benefitting research for Parkinson's disease.  This year, I will again be taking part, contributing the two pieces below that will be available to bid on:

Fidgety Digits:  Cul De Sac meets Peanuts as Alice, Petey and friends get there groove on while paying homage to Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang!  Pen and ink on Bristol Smooth paper colored with Comic and PrismaColor Markers.

Bubble Fox Level Up!:  Bubble Fox powers up and is ready for any challenge while paying tribute to Akira Toriyama and the world of Dragonball!  Pen and ink on Bristol Vellum paper colored with colored pencils, oil pastels and PrismaColor Markers.

Richard Thompson was the creator of the comic strip, Cul De Sac.  If you visit this blog with any kind of regularity, then you definitely know how highly I regard Thompson and his art.  He was an amazing creator and an amazing person whose career and life were cut far too short by this horrible disease, so if you're going to HeroesCon and wanna own some original CRAZY art or just wanna help, then please consider attending the Auction. MANY pieces will be available to bid on and every little bit helps.  More information on the exact time and location can be found here and here.

And now, it's time to return to the past.  A surprisingly distant past at this point, but still the past none the less.  It's been a long ten months, but the shore is drawing closer!  That's right CRAZIES!!!  We are back!  The cosplay, the booths, the spectacle...  It's all returning!  So strap into your chairs and hold on to your Batman Underoos!  We're heading back to 2013 to kick things off right!  THE CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2024 IS A GO!!!  Enjoy...

The view from the Harbor Drive pedestrian bridge is pretty remarkable.  Especially in more recent years as the various skyscrapers in Downtown San Diego offer the exteriors for ads.  This particular shot is from early in the afternoon on Preview Night.  Call it the calm before the storm!

TONIGHT, HE DINES IN HELL!!!  BUT FOR LUNCH, HE DINED AT SPAGHETTI FACTORY!!!

MWA HA HA HA HA... AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The Nintendo Lounge in better years.  The first six years they did it, it was such a fun offsite.  A leisurely experience where you just came and went as you pleased, looking at stuff and sampling game demos.  But then they just had to start tinkering with things like reservation systems and suddenly, it became a big mess.  They didn't even have the lounge last year.  If they return in 2024, I hope they do away with the silly rules that ruined it in the first place!

The Adult Swim Inflatable Fun Castle at the Petco Park Interactive Zone!  Before they set up their own incredible offsite behind the Convention Center, AS took up some space at Petco!  I never did get to go in this thing as you had to be 18 and my brother's kids weren't old enough to go in with me, but given the lines, it seemed like a worthwhile wait!

*SIGHS* What fun I missed out on... 

Remember that four year period where every con you went to was loaded with Adventure Time cosplay?  2013 fell within that time frame.

I'm seriously beginning to think that Quailman is literally the only thing people remember about Doug at this point.

Mezzanine Level!  Visit it, you must!  Great cosplay photo ops, there are!

Any day is a good day for some Spaceballs cosplay!  The Schwartz is with us!

Cobra recruitment is surprisingly effective when the Baroness is involved!

You never know WHERE this guy might be hiding out at!

Bumblebee is making the rounds outside the lobby of the Convention Center!

You know who ELSE likes ending blog posts by seeing Muscle Man connect with young fans outside?  MY MOM!!!  Wait, what?!?

And that was Comic Con 2013!  A fun year that saw lots of great cosplay as well as some solid offsites.  After 11years, it's admittedly getting hardwire to remember some of the details of the even, but I know it was a great time had by all.  This is likely the last time I'll post pics as the well's starting to run dry!  Still, I'll always look back fondly on my last SDCC in my 20's while gearing up for my fist one in my 40's!

And that's all for this first week of TEN for the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2024!!!  Plenty more past SDCC fun is coming, so be sure to come back next week as we keep the ball rolling!  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

THE CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2023 IS ON!!!

 

OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW?!?  THEN YO ASS BETTER CALL SOMEBODYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Sorry CRAZIES, just channeling my inner Road Dawg there!  Huge, HUGE news today!  The San Diego County Fair is back!  Wait, no, that's not it!  I mean, it does in fact start today and with any luck I'll be there, but that's not the big news!  The big news is that after a ten month wait, the CRAZY COMIC COUNT COUNTDOWN is back!  And just two months after we counted down WonderCon no less!  But we'll get to that very soon!  There's something else on the horizon that also needs discussing...

For many years now, I've been taking part in the Team Cul De Sac art auction that takes place every year at HeroesCon in Charlotte.  Its goal is to raise money for research in the fight against Parkinson's Disease.  Although much progress has been made in recent years, there's still a lot of fight to go, and I'm strapping on my gloves for a few rounds myself!  This year, I'm donating not one but TWO pieces of original CRAZY art to the auction, hand-colored and ready for framing!  First up:

"Behold, Mighty Alice!"  It wouldn't be a Cul De Sac art auction without art honoring the star of the Cul De Sac strip, ALICE!!!  Done on vellum paper with Alice herself and the blacks colored in PrismaColor markers and the background colors and highlights rendered in oil pastels, this piece features the adorable and zany Alice Otterloop dressed in her best homemade superhero duds and brandishing her treasured plastic knife!  A must for any Otterloop Family enthusiast!

Next up:

"BUBBLLE FOX!!!  FOOOOOOSH!!!"  You've heard of "ULTRAMAN!!!  SHWAAAAA!!!"  Well,  Bubble Fox makes a noise too when he transforms.  Those heliums tanks can be quite loud when releasing gas!  A true tour de force of mixed media, this piece featuring Bubble Fox in buoyant frame was also done on vellum paper with his fur rendered in colored pencils, the blacks, gray tones, eyes and helium tank colored in with PrismaColor markers and the backrounds rendered in oil pastels.  A must have for any fan of insanely obscure webcomic characters!

And there you have it!  For those not in the know, Cul De Sac was a brilliant and hilarious comic strip created by Richard Thompson, without question one of the greatest of all time.  At the height of the strip's popularity, Thompson was struck by Parkinson's Disease.  Though he tried to fight on, he eventually couldn't and had to end the strip in 2012, passing away himself in 2016.  Every year the auction raises money for research against this awful disease and artists from all over the world do their part by donating original art!  If you're a fan heading out to Charlotte in a couple of weeks, won't you please stop by and bid on some pieces?  And if you're an artist who can't attend but would love to donate, checkout the above pic or this link to find out more!  Let's kick Parkinson's ass once and for all!

And now, on to that OTHER big piece of news for this week: COMIC CON is coming!  As is tradition here at the CRAZYVERSE, we'll be spending the next couple of months looking back at the fun of SDCC's past as we countdown to the BIG day itself, with a few extra for good measure.  So let's quit stalling and set the Wayback Machine to July 2013, as we wander the halls of the San Diego Convention Center and the streets of Downtown San Diego to take in the sights and sounds (Even some smells!) of what is the biggest show in pop culture!  Hold on to your Batman underoos kids! The  CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN 2023 is officially a go!  Enjoy...

Starting things off with a rare look at some behind the scenes work in the exhibit hall.  Taken from Hall C and looking south towards the Hall H end of the building, you can even see the air wall that separates Halls G and H.  Also visible are the signs for the Hasbro and Mattel booths.  Spent many years working for Hasbro, who oddly cut back last year, despite having a loaded slate.  Hasbro's loss was Mattel's gain and now I have set up both toy giants' booths!

A more intimate look at the Hasbro booth and the doomed Kre-O line.  If folks want knockoff Legos, they just buy Mega Bloks!

My nephew Dante hamming it up while on poster tube duty.  He was just a few months shy of his 11th birthday in this pic.  Now he's a few months shy of his 21st!  Where the hell does time go?  And yes, he still mans that poster tube with all his might!

Watch out!  Catwoman's not as enthusiastic about Batman's mixtape as he is! 

El Chapulin Colorado.  He isn't the hero we need, but he's the hero we deserve!

The Ryse: Son Of Rome display at the much missed Xbox Lounge.  After two up-and-down years at the Hard Rock Hotel in the Gaslamp, Microsoft chose to move their gaming lounge to a larger, and better guarded, hotel in the Manchester Grand Hyatt on the same street as the Convention Center.  So much awesome swag was given out at the Xbox Lounge.  Great atmosphere too.  Also one of the few offsites that stayed open past 7pm.

Ariel's found gadgets and gizmos aplenty in the exhibit hall!

Another missed offsite that used to beckon the badge-less: The Shifty Look Freeplay Arcade.  Put on by video game pioneers Namco, it was held in the courtyard of the Hilton Gaslamp and featured nothing but retro arcade games!  Sadly, Namco shut down Shifty Look, and many of the awesome and hilarious comics that came with it, and the World's been sadder since.  But for two glorious years, we had a pretty bitcoin offsite arcade!

When you just can't decide who to cosplay as...

The legendary Tara Strong!  Might be quicker to name characters she HASN'T voiced!

It's a Tim Burton double feature!  And with Disney's purchase of Fox, there's nothing stopping Edward Scissorhands from showing up in Disney canon now!

A Gaslamp Peddle Bar!  Not an uncommon sight around Downtown San Diego, but for some reason, they're much more fun around Comic Con!  Quick story here: My brother and I had just dropped his kids off with his wife and we were walking back to the con.  As we're waiting to cross the street, I start bopping head around because for some reason, I could hear The Humpty Dance.  My brother noticed as I rarely dancing along with stuff, but he too said he could hear it.  We turn around and there's a peddle bar rolling through the street loaded with cosplayers and the Joker is driving it!  And they're bumping Digital Underground as the ride!  It was just an awesome moment, and it wouldn't happen at any other time of year, save for maybe Halloween! 

The fabled Adult Swim Booth!  Cartoon Network has long had a presence at the con and for awhile, Adult Swim did too, before focussing all their energies on their offsite.  And while I will admit, it was a better direction to go in, I do miss their booth.  Last year, they downsized their offsite too.  Hopefully that was just a little hiccup and they'll be back strong this year.  Unfortunately, the Spike TV booth barely visible in the background won't be rising from the dead anytime soon!

We'll wrap things up today with a visit from the Power Rangers!  Though not the force in pop culture they used to be, the teens with attitude still battle giant monsters to this day, thanks in large part to the vast library of Japanese footage that still hasn't been localized!

And that was Comic Con 2013!  One of my all-time favorite shows, I almost didn't make it after falling off a ladder while setting it up the day before!  Though I limped through preview night, I was able to get better by Friday and made it out on both legs!  It was a great year for offsites and a great year for swag!  Lot's of fond memories of the 2013 edition!

Week 1 of 9 is in the books for the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!!  Never fear though folks, because there is a LOT more to go over the next two months!  So be sure to come back next week and see what 2014 has to offer.  Until then, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

THE CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN!!! CRAZY LUCKY NUMBER 2013!!!

Another week in and the CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN takes us quite literally to the middle of June already!  Where does all the time go?  Probably to the San Diego County Fair!  It's back and all about heroes this year!  Speaking of heroes, there's something very special going on in Charlotte, NC in a couple of weeks that I'd like to talk about for a moment if you'll just scroll down a bit...

For quite some time now, Chris Sparks over at Team Cup De Sac has been putting on an art auction at HeroesCon in Charlotte to help benefit the fight against Parkinson's disease in honor of his friend, the late Richard Thompson, the extraordinary cartoonist behind the brilliant comic strip, Cul de Sac.  Thompson was an incredible artist and writer and his series was hands down one of the all-time greats.  It broke my heart when he had to retire and stop the comic and it hurt even more when he succumbed to the illness several years back.  Since 2016, I've been donating art to the cause, though these last couple of years I couldn't get anything in because the auction and convention couldn't be held due to COVID.  Things are finally looking up now though, and the auction WILL happen on June 24th, so if you're gonna be in Charlotte and plan on attending, here's your chance to own a piece of original, CRAZY art!  All proceeds benefit Parkinson's research, so not only will you get a chance to take some CRAZY home with you, you will also get the satisfaction of saying that you helped deliver the final boot to the ass of Parkinson's disease once and for all!  Foe more info, click the link at the top of the paragraph!

And now, we hop from one coast to another as we prepare to head back to 2013 and visit a Comic Con from the not-too-distant past!  Yank the strap of your underoos off of your forehead and brace yourself!  The CRAZY COMIC CON COUNTDOWN is a go!  Enjoy... 

The Ice King saw all in this massive booth that Cartoon Network had set up in the exhibit hall with a photo op inside!  I went in and got my picture taken, but they never sent it to me.  Cheap bastards!

Was honored to be invited to take part in the Hero Initiative's Drink-N-Draw event that saw dozens of cartoonists add their characters to a giant wall.  And look who decided to hangout right next to Mike & Mindy: RAPHAEL!!!  When I went back later to see how the wall was coming, I got the surprise of a lifetime when I saw none other than Kevin Eastman himself had drawn his famed turtle next to my tiny tykes!  Was a very humbling moment for sure!

GO GO POWER RANGERS!!!  This year, some one needs to broaden things and do some VR Troopers cosplay!

The legendary and much missed Xbox Lounge.  This would be its last year at the Hard Rock before moving to the much larger, and more professional Manchester Grand Hyatt.  Although it wouldn't last, the move was definitely a huge upgrade.

The Ender's Game offsite!  I actually did get to take part in this one and it was pretty cool.  Have still never seen the movie and have no idea what it's about, but the offsite was fun at least!

Ad space is at a premium at SDCC, even the sidewalks can be bought and marketed!

Tin Fish Square is the site of two SDCC traditions: The NBC takeover and those jolly, fun-loving souls from a certain church reminding us about how immoral SDCC is while acting immoral themselves.

Es el Doctor Quien!

This is a pretty badass Loki cosplay!  Totally looks like him!

Some sweet family cosplay at the hotel tram stop!

Mega Books was always there for those who couldn't afford Legos!

See?  Darth Vader did do SOME honorable things after turning to the dark side.  Not many, but some!

These guys know where the Star Wars fan tables are!

We'll end this week with a bitchin' ride: A custom Wolverine street bike!  In addition to cosplay and swag, the streets of Downtown San Diego are also awesome spots to see some really slick vehicles during Comic Con!

And that was Comic Con 2013!  A fun year that once again ran the table for me as I set it up, went to it and took it down!  Lot's of cool things went down that year.  Hard to believe how long it's been already.  It was also among the first years I had both my brother's kids with me most of the time.  Not always easy to wrangle up two kids hawked up on sugar and toy lust, but I managed!  They'd only get wilder with age!

That's a wrap for this week but fear not!  We got a LOT of past SDCC fun surfacing in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!  Until next time, take care, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!