Monkeys, Dinosaurs & Credit Line Increases

This past Sunday (AKA: Vulture Day) at Wizardworld Chicago was busier than usual with my prowling last-day sales by vendors – among which my most surprising purchase was a 48-pound, 24-inch tall statue from Weta Collectibles of King Kong fighting a T-Rex with little Naomi Watts as the point of contention.

Normally, I’d never get anything so indulgent at a con, especially Kong-related as I’m not a huge fan of the big ape. But the fine detailing of the statue (plus the 75% markdown in price) was too good to pass up.

Here's Kong and Rex brawling on my bookcase over what
evangelical Republicans truly consider to be America's
most precious resource: white women

Otherwise, I met a few talented local artists (Josh Johnson, Bob Renzas, Matt Wendt, Jeremy Bastian, Bobby Chiu, Kay Acedera) at WWC, from whom I picked up wonderful prints of their work before loading up on 50% off trade paperbacks at Graham Crackers (AKA: My FNCS in suburban Chicago), then a few books at Top Shelf.

That’s essentially the jist of the day, which as ever, was a tiring experience.

Yet this was the first year I left without any DVDs, although I did inspect some animated bootlegs of Marvel’s 1966 Super-Heroes TV series – which during local reruns on Channel 44 in the mid-70s, frustrated my kid brother and I for their lack of a certain web-slinger.

(I mean, come on, who gives a lump of seahorse crap about Sub-Mariner? He’s a pompous ass, not to mention looks like he should be on Truman Capote’s arm every Saturday night at Studio 54. And what’s with those winged ankles? Are we seriously expected to believe those tiny things can make Subby fly? As if!

And then there’s Iron Man! During those ’66 shows, his armor was always failing, prompting Shellhead to retreat to his lab after a fight [hiding a humiliated look under his face plate, I suspect] to fix his transistors or what-not. So much for QA, Tony! You suck, and I hate your politics! I hope World War Hulk has his way with you in the tunnels below Madison Square Garden, nice and slow… so your next cutting edge science project at Stark Enterprises will be an adamantium colon.)

Finally, I said it at San Diego, and I’ll say it again: never underestimate the power of free crap to incite the masses.

Case in point: throngs of people at WWC yesterday screaming like traders at the Merc Exchange over bundles of promotional stuff (e.g. mini-busts, posters, toys, etc) being given away by con organizers.

You’d have thought a free Spidey maquette or Ultimate FF poster was the only thing between little Timmy getting that kidney transplant, and his certain death.

Oh well, Comic Con Season 2007 was an interesting ride.

But I’m content to wait 11 months until next summer, when it’s back to SD for one more year.