schmevil

Holy good god, the lines. THE LINES. This was a poorly run con. On Friday afternoon I waited for two and a half hours to get in. This after I'd prepurchased my ticket, and in disgusting Toronto summer heat. There were lines for the escalators. Lines for impromptu photo ops. Lines to look at artists portfolios. Everywhere lines. The con was twice closed to new attendees on Saturday, because they'd gone over capacity. Apparently they broke attendance records this year, and lord, I have NO DOUBT. Still, a good time was had by most (if not all).

I got to attend a handful of kickass talks this year:

Writing For Comics with Brian Azzarello: Can I marry this man's brain? Or at least have a good long conversation with him about the craft of writing, and writing for comics. Unf. He talked about Joker, 100 Bullets and his other work, but more importantly he talked technique, research and work ethic.

Page Construction and Composition with Darwyn Cooke: He basically took us through the first chapter of The Hunter, explaining the whys of his panels, page layouts, camera angles. Really smart talk that touched on the art of adaptations.

Watercolour Masterclass with Jill Thompson: I had to leave early but Jill sort of explained her process, expounded on her favourite tools and took questions, while painting an illustration of Dream and Death.

Breaking Into Comics: DC, with Dan Didio: This was a really good talk, you guys! And not just because he shot down some doofus who thought it was appropriate to derail a professional-oriented panel, to rant about the evils of DC. Didio laid out very clearly what it takes to break into comics, and what it means to work for DC. I could have happily sat down and talked to him about the business for hours.

I went to two Q&As, Stan Lee and William Shatner. Both of them were ridiculously, absurdly entertaining, but only The Man seems to be in on the joke. Shatner is such a hilarious mess. These were for pure geeky, entertainment value, so I've nothing else to say about them. Just - fun.

I also went to a screening of horror shorts, and... wow. One of the films was Nintas, a Brazilian cop/ghost story that's absolutely brutal, both visually and spiritually. If you get a chance to see it, do, but be prepared to cringe your way through it. The other standout for me was the animated short Lady Paranormal, about a strange girl who can hear ghosts. Creepily adorable!

And finally, swag. I managed to restrain myself to two books that were already on the To Buy list: The Fate of the Artist, by Eddie Campbell, and Haunt of Horror, by Richard Corben. Haven't had a chance to look through them yet, but hopefully I'll get up some mini-reviews when I do. I've previously read parts of Corben's Haunt of Horror, and even posted a story from it on Ye Olde Scans Daily. Campbell's book just looks like smarty-arty funtimes.

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We're doing 30 Days of Scans over at scans_daily. I've managed to cobble something together for favourite writer. Ed Brubaker, self? Shocking! My favourite Bru books are undoubtedly Criminal and Incognito, (which I've reviewed somewhere in this journal), but I couldn't bring myself to crack the spines and scan my trades. I settled instead for scans from Captain America and Catwoman, both of them excellent books.

Brubaker is at least one of my favourite comics writers. The list keeps changing, but he consistently hangs onto a spot. He's my favourite right now because Incognito is fresh in my mind, and Sleeper is winging its way toward me as I type this. But of course I have other ~favourite writers - I'm seriously considering a Marjane Satrapi post, frex. We'll see.

Children of the Corn: Absolute garbage. Watchable only for the lolarity.
The Grudge: Still awesome. Haters to the left.
The Howling: Director was obviously in love with the special effects sequences, because they were never-ending.
Perfect Creature: Surprisingly ok. Slow and kind of meditative take on vampirism.
The Thing: Pretty Kurt Russell is pretty. And the movie is A++.
Day of the Dead: Slow and meditative take on zombieism. One of my favourites, actually.
Night of the Living Dead: Still hilarious.
Friday the 13th (remake): Best F13 you could possibly get. Done.
Splinter: Solid B+/A- creature feature. Classic horror done right.
Rabid: Armpit vampire is still amazing.

Not the 30 Nights of Horror that I originally wanted to do, but a solid effort. Also saw Paranormal Activity and a review is in the offing.