Things I’m Geeking Out On – Top Ten Edition

There is so much going on in the geek circles this week that I’m just going to make this entirely a “Things I’m Geeking Out On” list. We’ll do it list style since we just did a list for Topless Robot this week on the new Daredevil series so my mind is in total Top Ten mode. (By the way, when you are done here, you can totally go read that over here – if you don’t mind spoilers, or have already seen it.)

Top Ten Things I’m Geeking Out On This Week

1. The new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer – I didn’t think I was THAT excited about it yesterday when everyone was losing their minds over it, but now that I’ve watched it a couple of times, it really is pretty exciting. I found myself excitedly chatting up to one of my co-workers after she mentioned her dog is named Mara Jade. Apparently none of her friends are cool because she didn’t know the new trailer had dropped, nor did she know Celebrations was happening RIGHT NOW, 20 minutes away from our office! (I live for moments like this, I really do.) Anyways, it does look like it’s going to be hella cool, so you win this round J.J.
2. Batman V Superman – Not in the sense that I’m excited about it, because I’m expecting it to be a hot mess at this point, but more in that I’ve been nerd raging about it since that insulting excuse for a teaser trailer dropped yesterday. Then the news that you had to get tickets to see the trailer in select theaters? After the giant pile of MEH that was Man of Steel, I feel like the Warner Bros marketing team needs to earn my excitement, not act like they are doing the fans a favor. I mean, COME ON, the movie was pushed back A YEAR. That can’t possibly be a good sign. (If this movie isn’t another Suckerpunch, I’ll be amazed.)
3. Mad Max: Fury Road – That new trailer is amazing. I cannot wait for this movie to be out. What a lovely day indeed.
4. Fast and Furious 7 – Two of my favorite categories of movies are car movies (see above) and caper movies – F&F is pretty much the best of both worlds. The only reason we haven’t seen this already is because of Daredevil, but that will be fixed on Saturday! I need my car chase fix!
5. Convergence: JLA – I was pretty skeptical of Convergence because I’m getting pretty tired of the seemingly endless DC comic crossover events, BUT give me the 90s versions of my favorite comic characters from my favorite era of comic collecting and I forgive surprisingly quick. In JLA, they doubled down and gave me not only some characters I’ve been really missing, like the green skinned Jade, Type A Speedster Jesse Quick, and Queen of the Sea Mara (Aquaman’s lady who is a force to be reckoned with herself), but gave us a girl power super group that I instantly fell in love with. If they turned this comic into a regular series I would lose my mind and subscribe in a heartbeat. The issue was pitch perfect – the art was beautiful, the ladies were tough, but also felt like real women, and the part where they taught some grabby dudes a lesson in manners was priceless. Also, a great reminder that DC has some pretty amazing super ladies BESIDES the way overdone Wonder Woman. In this case, we got Supergirl, Jesse Quick, Mara, Jade, and a very gothy take on Zatanna. This would be an amazing TV show – you hear me DC!?
6. Convergence: Superboy – Speaking of characters I really miss, the Convergence version of Superboy was a total throwback to my favorite Superboy; the one with the leather jacket and the 90s haircut and the attitude. Team Cadmus is also back and excellently written (and reminded me more than a little of another certain science team on some show called Flash. Coincidence?). I felt like I was reading a lost issue from the late 90s. It made me miss it. Can we get this version back, please?
7. Harley Quinn – Ok, I’m pretty much always geeking out on the Harley series, but this whole Team Harley storyline is pretty amazing. I love how the creators just single handedly exploded the number of female minority characters (and even added one possibly gay dude?) in the DCU. Also, those uniforms are like a gift to cosplayers everywhere. I want to see some cosplay group take this on. The humorous nods to Mad Max and 50 Shades of Grey via Harley and Ivy’s trip to the movies were also pretty delightful. Harley and Ivy’s BFF/FWB relationship has been pretty fun to watch play out.
8. Daredevil – I liked it. I didn’t LOVE it, like some people seem to. It was very well executed and surprisingly meaty for a superhero show. My takeaway quip was that it was the Breaking Bad of superhero TV Shows. That didn’t make it into the article, but that would be my one sentence summary. If you liked Breaking Bad, you will probably like Daredevil. If you did not (I wasn’t a huge fan), you might find it’s serious approach a little much. Although, in fairness, this is the show Gotham should have been. A hard hitting crime drama with occasional super hero elements. Why didn’t I love it then? I felt like the Kingpin was not handled very well – it seemed like Wesley was in charge of everything most of the show, with the Kingpin seeming more like an idealistic figure head he was indulging, and Wesley seemed way more evil than the Kingpin would ever be capable of. Also, it was just really… dark. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it’s mainly a circumstantial evidence thing. See, we’ve binge watched A LOT of shows at this point. When something is really good, really grabs us – Battlestar Galactica, Lost, the first 5 seasons of the modern Doctor Who – you cannot drag us away from the TV. We will reschedule everything to squeeze in just one more episode. With Daredevil we found excuses to take frequent breaks, rarely able to sit through more than two episodes without suddenly needing to make a coffee run, go to the pool, or deciding to go out to dinner with friends. That’s not a great sign to me that I’m enjoying something. Would I watch a second season? Yes. Would I watch it all in one weekend again? Nope.
9. Witcher III: The Wild Hunt – I was not expecting to geek out on this one, but we watched the trailer last night and this video game looks AMAZING. I’ve been waiting for someone to give me a Skyrim sequel for years now, and while this isn’t exactly that, it looks pretty damn close. Close enough for me to be super excited to play it!
10. Community – I don’t know why it took me this long to watch this show, but I finally started it three weeks ago and… I’m already caught up. You see what I mean about devouring a show if I really like it? I think I literally watched all of Season 5 in one day. (Ok, it’s only 13 episodes at 22 minutes each, but still, I have a day job!) The show is really funny, and has that absurdist, pop culture aware sense of humor that I’ve loved since The Young Ones or The State, and currently love on Archer. If you are fan of either of those shows, or have ever been back to college as an adult (which I have), or just love geeky absurdist comedy that would make Weird Al proud, you should totally catch up on Hulu or Amazon, and then check out the new season happening on Yahoo.

Wondercon 2015 Wrap Up!

Wondercon was both super fun and super draining. I am just now feeling like a human again, so here’s the highlight reel:

Demos

Our demos went really well, but it was pretty clear by midday on Friday we were going to have to put in some extra hours to accommodate all the people that wanted to try out the awesome Steve Jackson Games we had brought with us. Overall we ended up running multiple Munchkin tables at any given time, but there was a good amount of interest in FRAG, Revolution, Castellan, and the various dice games we had available. I ran mostly the non-Munchkin games, but I did run one of the tournament qualifiers on Friday night and officiated a spontaneous game on Sunday. We met some great people, found out about cool things like a tabletop restaurant/bar opening down in the San Diego area soon, and generally had a good time all around. Many pics can be found on my Flickr Wondercon album which can be found here, or using the link over on the left.

Panels

Due to the unexpected demo hours, we missed most of the panels we had originally planned on, but we did manage to send the minion (Becca) to the Flash panel and we did squeeze in the Screen Junkies panel on Sunday afternoon. Becca LOVED the Flash panel and from the sound of things, it was much fun, with a ton of information about upcoming character arcs and episodes.

The Screen Junkies panel was a ton of fun. The guys who run it are a good time, and we got treated to the many voice talents of Jon Bailey AKA the Epic Voice of Honest Trailers. We also got a preview of an upcoming Honest Trailer, which, as it turns out, are even more hilarious when you watch them with a group.

Apparently the HT is up now:

Minor Celebrities

I was pleasantly surprised to run into Marilyn Ghigliotti from Clerks (Dante’s girlfriend Veronica) while we were walking the floor on Friday. I got a signed picture as proof! (I only collect signatures when I have actually met the person or there is a good story behind it.) She was really nice and said she will be in Clerks 3! Which makes me happy because I was disappointed when she wasn’t in Clerks 2. David found Jon Bailey in the food court area before the Screen Junkies panel and we said hi and took a picture, etc. On Sunday, I stopped by Phil Foglio’s booth and picked up a signed copy of the second Girl Genius novel, then totally forgot I was going to complement his excellent job of Masquerade MC. For the most part, I was reminded I’m pretty terrible at meeting my minor celebrity heroes – Community pretty much summed up my usual routine with this bit about Troy meeting Levar Burton:

We attempted to meet Rob Liefield (artist/creator of Deadpool, etc.) and Babs Tarr (current artist for Batgirl) at various points in the con, but quickly discovered that doing so would require some elaborating timing and a commitment to standing in a line for quite some time, so we skipped that. Liefield is local, at least, so we’ll have to save that for another time. (Phat Collectables appears to be doing something with him in regards to a Deadpool funeral? This will require further investigation.)

Cosplay

There was so much amazing cosplay this con! I took a TON of photos, and that was despite missing most of my usual favorites. Wondercon has become huge, not SDCC huge, but still, even if you know a cosplayer you like is going, running into them is not a guarantee by any means. I almost kind of wish the semi-pros would set up some kind of meet and greet time or maybe they should all pitch in together and get one cosplay booth where they could rotate their time and sell photos. I don’t know, just tossing stuff out there. Our demo table happened to be in line of sight of the green screen booth, as well as one of the major snack/rest areas, so we did get to see a whole bunch of awesome cosplay despite being in full MIB mode most of the con.  Anyone else notice a “Male Harley Quinn” trend this year? After all the years of female versions of male characters, it was interesting to see the reverse. I only got one good picture of the variant, but we got glimpses of at least a half dozen or so. I also saw some awesome entries at the Masquerade. It would take up the whole page to put up all the pics here, so check out the Flickr page for my cosplay sightings.

Twitter

If you aren’t following me on Twitter, you missed out on all my live tweeting madness! You should check it out. We’ll be mainlining Netflix’s new Daredevil show this weekend and I will probably do some snarky commentary while we watch.

Our next MIB adventure is returning to San Diego Comic Con for the first time since 2006. I hear it’s grown a bit? Should be insane.