I’m not going to go into details about what has been going on because it deals with Joseph’s personal life. Suffice it to say that the situation isn’t entirely of his own making so I’m trying to be as patient with him as possible, which is why I didn’t start looking for a replacement artist weeks ago.

I’m not sure yet how this is going to change various plans. We’re supposed to be hitting a small convention a fortnight from today, and as far as I know we’re still on for that. TMB t-shirts are likely to be delayed… which probably isn’t a huge loss as even before the hiatus I’m not sure we had enough of a readership to make them profitable. I’m not sure what other conventions we may or may not be doing this year. Money, at least for the immediate future, is likely to be tighter than anticipated, so we’re just going to have to play it by ear.

In addition to more TMB to offend and amuse you I have a few more projects I hope will see the light of day this year. So we hope those of you who enjoy the strip will stick with us until we’re back on our feet, and if not… well we never really fucking liked you anyway.

We’re at the very end of things, picking up around 45 – 46 minutes end, and Joseph and I gab for four or five minutes or so.  We don’t really give away any earth shattering secrets or anything like that, but perhaps you simply want to tickle your ears with the sweet sound of my voice. There are also other interviews available in this particular podcast, should my radiant awesomeness not be enough to fill your being, and you feel the need to listen to other people talk about comics. Though for the record if my radiant awesomeness is not enough to fill your being the problem isn’t me, it’s you, heathens – because my radiant awesomeness is radiant and awesome.

Unfortunately that status has long since slipped by the wayside, and Springfield has become a city of slow decay. For years the infrastructure has slipped a bit more at a time, and the various attempts by the local Chamber of Commerce to halt or even reverse this decline have had little visible impact, at least down on the streets and in the lives of everyday people, which is where it matters.

Unfortunately this trend seems to have hit “geek” business the hardest. While both Hawkeye’s Comics and Wolf’s Lair Games had notable runs within Springfield both eventually disappeared, and it would be years before Howling Wolf Games would attempt its short-lived Springfield expansion.

So when Main Street Comics & Games opened earlier this year, I wasn’t expecting them to last long or to surprise me with much. They were, after all, moving into a city where most people had long since adjusted to traveling to Yellow Springs, Dayton or Columbus for their comic and gaming needs. When they announced a few months ago that they were intending to put on Springfield’s first comic convention in close to two decades my skepticism grew; in this particular case it was colored by memories of the efforts of friends to put on a local gaming convention. This effort did not turn out well (and rumor had it of all the people there I was the only paying attendee – I politely refused the offered refund).

The above point of view led me to evangelize for the Champion City Comic Con less than I should have. While I mentioned it to a few individuals, I made no great effort to spread the word, as I did not want to recommend that people attend something that would prove to be a either a general letdown or an utter debacle.

Which is why I am glad to say that Scott Riley, Bill Gladman and everyone else involved with organizing and putting on the show left me not only pleasantly surprised, but very much impressed. They put on a well organized show, with an adequately sized dealer’s area for both the amount of merchandise and the number of attendees; I can think of only one instance where I had problems moving from point A to point B because of traffic congestion. The dealer’s also had a fairly good selection… provided you weren’t looking for several items I wanted. I’m aware that many of these dealers could only bring a fraction of their stock, but really couldn’t they have dropped me a line to ask what I wanted? Because no one had any of the Black Lantern rings with them, and the only issue of Doktor Sleepless I found was one Joseph stumbled across shoved into a ten cent box.

Not that I had any problems finding things to spend money on. Between the dealer’s room and the memorial auction I spent close to $200… and that’s not counting the $100 gift certificate I won in the auction, and which was immediately turned into yet more comic books. As always the ten cent boxes proved to be my bane, and I probably bought somewhere between 50 – 70 issues scavenged from them (including a stack of old Malibu “Ultraverse” titles).

In addition to the purchased swag I walked away with a ton of free stuff. The convention itself was offering door prizes – I purchased extra tickets and wound up winning twice. While some of the swag was the sort of thing you’d expect, such as ancient packs of trading cards, the bulk of it was hardback comic collections, a t-shirt in one case, individual issues including an ashcan by one of the artists at the show, and sundry bits. I got more value than what it cost to get in just in those door prize bags. I believe the correct phrase in response to this is: Booyah! Of course the winning didn’t stop there. The folks from necessarycool.com were upstairs, and they did a raffle of their own. They were offering several copies of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger: Born HC as well as Gaiman’s Eternals HC. There was also an eleventh package that consisted of both of those, a t-shirt and a couple other bits of swag. My ever annoying sidekick Joseph won one of the copies of The Gunslinger… care to guess just who won the whole enchilida? If you’re a bit slow on the uptake I’ll save you the effort: it was me.

There was a decent selection of area artists on hand, and Joseph and I chatted with a few, though we perhaps should have chatted with a few more. In general the artists on hand seemed like a great bunch of folks. We didn’t slip into any of the panels, mostly because I was too busy with my shopping frenzy and dropping off periodic fliers, but from all reports they went well, and podcasts of the events are being posted over at comicrelated.com

Speaking of Comic Related, kudos to them for letting us sneak in a brief interview. I don’t know if it went well, but that’s why you should keep an eye out for it, and then apply your ears and give it a listen.

Overall it was a hell of a day: bought a lot of things, won some sway, talked to some nifty folks, did a bit of pimping, and I rounded it off by drinking myself into a stupor.

Despite being a hell of a day, there were a few things I didn’t like about the show.

First and foremost The Manson Bunch didn’t have a table. I’m from Springfield born and bred, and it would have been nice for my first “official” convention appearance as The Manson Josh to happen right here in my own home town. I know that space was pretty much booked from the word go, but I sent an e-mail asking if we could be squeezed in… an e-mail that sadly went unanswered. I’m more than willing to allow the benefit of the doubt and presume this particular message simply fell through the cracks; I’ve done that myself often enough, eh? Fixing this for next year’s show would go a long way toward making things hugs and puppies in Mansontown hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Much of the second floor was given over to video games… yeah, me I could live with seeing those cut back to half or less. Space in the venue is somewhat limited, and while I’ll admit that the games seemed to be a big draw less games means more room for comic stuff. I’d think that even if I had been at a table. Less games, more comics.

Flow between the first and second floors also could have been better. I don’t know what exactly could have been done to fix it, but it was observed by various people that it could be improved.

And finally the afterparty. I performed my standard function and drank self into stupor, but would have liked to have seen a few changes. The band that played sounded pretty good, I admittedly didn’t listen to much, but what I did listen to I did not hate. That said I would have preferred to see something a bit more geek-themed/weird like Scattered Planets or Lunarium. I’m also not a big fan of the venue. While it’s decently sized, the drink prices aren’t awful, and it was close to the show venue, it’s far too much of a college bar for my tastes. There was also a three hour gap between show close and party start. While I realize it’s important to give people time to decompress, eat, change etc. before rolling to the party I would have preferred a slightly shorter delay.

Still most of the quibbles are pretty minor ones. Overall it was an excellent show, particularly for being the first year of a show and pulled together on relatively short notice, and I’m looking forward to next year’s offering.

I noticed after the fact that there were instances of the letter U where instances of the word you belong. The past week was both stressful and busy, and unfortunately I did not catch this issue until after Episode Twelve went up. This particular error will not happen again, and I have expressed that sentiment to Joseph quite strongly and with threat of permanent bodily harm that I am both able and willing to carry out in order to correct this issue – I’m barely tolerant of it during informal “txt” speak, and I will not tolerate it in my comic. I won’t claim perfect spelling or grammar, but if I haven’t made it abundantly clear yet this is one place where I draw the fucking line and will draw it in Joseph’s blood if I have to.

For now I shall leave you on that note, heathens. There is more news to come, including my impressions of the Champion City Con which happened yesterday, though for the moment I am in need of rest to clear my thoughts.

Dear fanboys: shut the hell up.

Let’s take a look at what the two most common responses I’ve seen to this announcement have been, shall we?

Disney is going to disrespect/fuck up the Marvel properties.

Clone Saga, anyone? Brand New Day? House of M? Alcoholic Tony Stark is revealed to be Kang’s buttpuppet and is replaced by a teenage version of himself? The psychic imprint of Professor Xavier’s evil twin sister, whom he devoured in the womb, manifests in the world, proves to be nearly unstoppable, and kills a whole bunch of folks? Xorneto?

Are any of these ringing bells yet? Because Marvel, like any comic company, has had more than its fair share of nonsensical, bizarre, out-of-charater, and generally unexplainable moments. Already the fanboy sacred cow is starting to look like Hamburger. Mmmm… hamburger.

Disney is going to “kiddify” Marvel.

Yeah… probably not, fanboys. Disney is a huge corporation, and while they are best known for their kid-centric branding, they have their fingers in a lot of pies. A wh0le lot of pies, and not everything produced by its various subsidiaries or corporations it owns a controlling interest in are directly related to their iconic branding. So I won’t say their won’t be any changes made, but I find it highly unlikely that there will really be any change to the storytelling/presentation “ethos” of current Marvel comics. As a postscript I would like to remind people of the Gargoyles cartoon. Sure it has its poor moments, but overall there is much geek love for that cartoon. Who made that cartoon? Yeah, it was Disney.

There is also the fact that this could ultimately prove beneficial not only for Marvel, but for comics in general.

Remember the first Spider-Man film? Remember how all of a sudden everyone was all “Holy shit! Comic book movies can actually not suck!” Yeah… that film languished in rights hell for years. While Marvel hasn’t had that problem recently, Disney has been producing films, both live action and animated, for a long time now. Which means not only is a situation like that unlikely to crop up again, but Disney likely has the infrastructure and experience to penetrate the market in ways that Marvel just hasn’t been successful at, including giving Marvel’s recent attempts at animated films a much-needed shot in the arm. True, Disney does have a habit of doing direct-to-video sequels that don’t have the quality or power of the original film. Marvel, on the other hand, has the habit of putting shoddy movies (X-Men, its sequels and spin offs) and bad sequels (Spider-Man 3: Toby Goes Emo) directly on the silver screen; so maybe this means that we’ll be saved from some of the sub par crap going to theatres now. And with Disney owning ABC etc. while I don’t know that the possibility for more Marvel cartoons/TV shows is likely, I think they’re a hell of a lot more likely than they would be if Disney doesn’t acquire Marvel.

Even if Disney does prove me wrong and transforms the Marvel Universe into a kid friendly version, or takes the smart path and gives the kid/all-ages books Marvel has already been trying and gives them a push, this is a good thing for comics. You can only go so far by relying on selling to your existing audience, or relying on movies, video games etc. to try and convert new readers (and a lot of those conversions might not make it to regular reader status, and might well not make it beyond buying a book or two – while this is a boost to short term revenues it doesn’t help you play the long game). Disney has a huge fucking built in audience, and if they can market comics to that audience and convert even a portion of them to long term readers that’s the kind of boost that comics needs. Because at least some of those long term readers are likely to branch out to other comics, meaning that not only does the MarvelMouse profit, but other companies eventually profit as well.

So just like when Warner Brothers bought DC, which ultimately allowed DC to strengthen its position and exploit new opportunities, I really don’t think this is going to be the death of Marvel or of comic books in general. I could be wrong, and obviously I’m not privy to any details (Dear Mouse Overlords, please hire me to write Deadpool) but I don’t think that I’m too far off the mark.

So I shall close in the manner in which I started.

Dear fanboys: shut the hell up.

After finding out about them I sent them a demented e-mail asking if we could hire them to do a theme song for The Manson Bunch. They didn’t respond. This made me sad. I don’t like to be sad, so I burned Joseph with cigarettes until I was happy again.

They’ve also dropped the electronic version of their first CD. Go buy it. Then when the actual CD version comes out buy that too. It will make you laugh… unless you’re a fucking commie heathen.

So, yeah… I honestly don’t see what the big fucking deal is, heathens. I’ve never watched The Guild, and while the video is amusing it didn’t make me want to start. And while I’m sure Felicia Day is talented, and she’s not unattractive, I don’t feel the desire to slavishly hang on her every utterance or devour her body of work. My nights reading Nietzsche, contemplating the universe, and making elaborate plans to raise Kierkegaard as a zombie for the sole purpose of being able to hit him in the face with a shovel (repeatedly) have skewed my geek meter in some previously unexplored direction, or maybe I’m just biased because Deadpool wasn’t in it and I’ve been on a Deadpool kick lately (P.S. Dear Marvel, it would be so awesome if you’d let me write a couple issues of Deadpool, and they would be awesome issues because I am awesome. Signed, Fanboy), but I’m just not seeing what the geek obsession with both The Guild and Felicia Day is. Maybe my geek humor meter just skews toward something a bit darker and more raunchy than what The Guild seems to offer.

Whatever the reason is I seem to be a geek heretic, but at least I’m not a heathen, heathens.

*And Wil Wheaton tried, heathens. He sent his clown sweater for me again, and there was some freaky shit involving a chair with leather straps and some hamsters. I managed to free myself by relying on flatulence so toxic it peeled paint. It was a traumatic experience.

I put my socks back on so I didn’t have to look at them anymore. The moral of the story being quit wearing sandals, heathens.