San Diego Comic Con 2012 Update!

San Diego Comic Con update from writer: Ken Valesquez

My first day at the SDCC was long, awesome, heartfelt, fun, tiring and very rewarding. While I was not able to meet Geoff Johns and Jim Lee at the DC Entertainment booth, I was able to finally meet one of the coolest fans from this here page, JAMES BERRY.


The guy is without a doubt a dedicated fan of not just Superman but the arts in general. Cultured, knowledgeable, polite and a great person to talk to and socialize with. We stopped at the WB booth, and while they were showing mostly footage from THE HOBBIT on their giant screen, attention was drawn towards a certain item in a 7 foot glass case.


Believe me when I tell you all no picture to this date, no matter how close and enhanced, has done any justice to the MAN OF STEEL outfit. The highly textured material covering it has very intricate engravings on it only visible up close. The gold trim around the waist and "buckle" has very elegant carvings in them as well. Also, the "chain mail" material is black and overlayed the dark blue tights and even over the boots.


Superman's majestic cape looks heavy on the shoulders and back yet thin and suede like towards the bottom. My guess is that in order for it to move freely it has to hang tight on top and loose on the bottom. James and I spent a good ten minutes examining the best super hero suit on film since Batman's in Tim Burton's classic. MY opinion. 

Before that I was standing in line to meet some of the cast members from the original MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS and had them sign my box set of the first three seasons. We walked by the HALO 4, RESIDENT EVIL 6 and ASSASSIN'S CREED booths. 


From there we went to Artist Alley where we spoke to some awesomely gifted artists from the US and the world. A really cool booth was selling DC themed paper figures as well as tins. I got a Wonder Woman tin while James got himself Superman. 


People in the most elaborate costumes are a major highlight of the Con and the young man dressed as DC's ghostly hero, DEADMAN, is the best. Please, do "like" his page on FB, PrologueOfADeadman, and see the fan film he's developing.


Marvel made some dumb announcements while DC was coy yet forthcoming with their slate of projects. James and I went our separate ways and my day ended with an amazing concert by the bay, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SYMPHONY OF THE GODDESSES.

DC The New 52 Just isn't Doing it For Me

Yesterday was Marvel Monday here in The BOOM Page comic book section, we had a brief review of AvX Round 6, talked about some Spider-Man stuff and put up what books were coming out this week. Marvel Monday's are easy and fun for me to do, today I'd thought I'd do a DC day to be fair, but I'm having some problems.


The New 52 in where DC Comics has rebooted their entire comic book universe and started all books with a new number 1 just isn't doing it for me. I was an avid reader of DC comics, I collected JLA, all the Green Lantern Books, Detective Comics, occasionally some Action Comics and a few others. The Justice League was one of my favorite books for the longest time, then DC changed everything.


Now I am not against change or mixing things up a bit, but to take away a story and characters you were reading and making it different, well it just made it hard to stay with them. The only New 52 books I currently get each week are Green Lantern and Detective Comics. Those two seemed to be the ones least effected by the reboot and still contain the primary characters with the similar story to what I was following.


Now I know I should be open to new things, and some of the new artists and writers they've brought in for the new 52 are great. The whole thing was masterminded by Jim Lee, one of my favorite artists whose work on X-Men is legendary. But this new Justice League with Green Lantern being a really big jerk and Batman pretty much letting him just doesn't feel right. 


Marvel comics had the right idea, they rebooted their universe as well and changed everything but they did so in what they call the Ultimate Universe. A series of titles about their characters like Spider-Man, The Avengers, X-Men but they're the Ultimate Avengers or Ultimate Spider-Man.They gave their readers a choice to see if they wanted to switch it up, the didn't just take everything you knew and dump it outside. 


Its only 10 issues in, I'll pick up a book here and there, sometimes I wait to get the digital version of the book and only pay $1.99 per issue rather than the $3.99 normal cost, but for the most part my relationship with DC just isn't there. 


So if there is someone out there who would like to be the official DC Comics correspondant for The BOOM page I happily invite you to send me a message, I'd love to welcome you to the staff.

Marvel Mondays! What's new in Marvel Comics Universe.

Avengers vs. X-Men Round 6 - This $@!* just got real!


Did you read AvX Round 6 that came out last week?! The X-Men have taken control of the Phoenix power, after Hope Summers rejected it when it came to her on the moon, five of the X-Men were given the power instead. Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Magik and Colossus also known now as The Phoenix Five. 


So did they bring mass chaos and destroy the world as Captain America and the rest of The Avengers predicted? No, in fact they are working towards ending world hunger, thirst, and attempting to make world peace. Oddly this doesn't sit well with The Avengers. You would think a group of heroes who are constantly fighting to save the planet would welcome other heroes to step in and help save the world. The Avengers and even the President of The United States feel that the X-Men are a danger and far too powerful to continue on in this manner.

The X-Men and Me

Its no secret that I'm a fan of comic books, my dream is to one day be a freelance artist for a major company where I can do some stuff here and there, preferably for one of the two major groups. For those outside the comic loop the two big companies are Marvel and DC. Marvel is the home of Spider-Man, X-Men, The Avengers, Captain America and The Hulk to name a few. The DC 'universe' as its called is the home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern, as well as a whole slew of others.

10 Super Cool Dogs

Okay I have to say, my dog Sawyer is pretty cool; he's part wolfhound and part black lab, and he's been accused of also being part hell hound or demon dog. He's the only dog I've had that you can see his breath when he gets excited and pants and its fifty degrees outside! If you go to my You Tube page that you can get to from the side bar, you'll see some pretty cool Sawyer videos. Also, he's named after the character from Lost, not Tom Sawyer.

X-Men Cell Phone wallpaper

Guess who's got a new wallpaper for his cel phone.

Marvel.com has some great hidden art on their site.

http://marvel.com/images/710697./from/content.story.12097

Wolverine's best opponent.

Because every comic fan should have this as your desktop wallpaper at least once.

Wolverine vs. a panda    'nuff said

http://tinyurl.com/y23kbtd

Justice League Earth?

Okay wow, I continue to work on my art, and I worry about using to much reference material because I don't want to be labeled the guy who copies other peoples stuff. I NEVER TRACE, but I use Google all the time for different poses and such.

I've seen stuff on a show and said, ooo that would be cool. But I think its safe to say whoever drew this cover of the Justice League of America recently watched the "Life" special on Discovery channel. Paused his DVR and did a screen shot. I thought the chameleon they showed was cool too, but this guy must really have loved it.

Wizard World 2010 part 2

Last year my plan was to head to Wizard World and be a part of one of the biggest comic book events of the year. Due to complications beyond my control, I didn't make it, I had a whole video series up on You Tube entitled the Road to Wizard World and everything, but it just didn't happen at that time, which is probably a good thing.

Because this road trip turned out to be pretty fantastic, but it did require some research in order for it to get there. There is a formula to every great road trip film and we followed the formula as best as we could making sure we fulfilled key moments that needed to take place in order for the road trip to reach its full potential.

We had the main character on a quest, the best friend, the comic relief, and having two characters have a romance. We had one character left behind at home, a disaster slightly averted, we stopped at the casino to gamble $5 because then we filled that quota. Most of this wouldn't have even been possible if we had gone last year as the participants would have been different and age requirements would not have been met.

So we make it to Wizard World, and in my head I expected this gigantic mecca to comics and pop culture, however it wasn't, but thats fine because that fills the formula of road trip rules - #3 the trip turns out to be something you didn't think it was.

The show was definately geared more towards pop culture and celebrities than it was comics, the comic book portion was a bit small but the celebrities and the ease of getting to them far made up for the lack of books and comic all stars.

We walked in and immediately were in awe of some of the art we got to see and they had on display it was so cool, giant prints framed and just looking fantastic.

Alex Ross prints, Jim Lee, just great, great stuff.

We took not 20 steps and there was Mr. Ernie Hudson, Winston of Ghostbustuers and only about 100 different things from movies, and TV including The A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard, Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, and so much more. I wanted so much to walk up to him and say "Tell him about the Twinkie" but I contained myself. I had hims sign my copy of The Crow and he talked about how it was a very emotional time for him and that he'll never forget that day. He was so nice, so and down to Earth and just not snobby celebrity at all.

The rest of the day just got better, between talking to the legendary Honky Tonk Man for 20 minutes or so about the Twilight movies, his life and his daughter and how she's talking to one of the actors in the twilight movies. Meeting Melody Anderson aka Dale Arden from the 1980 cult classic Flash Gordon, her I gushed over and told her I must have seen her movie about 100 times, and I did the little 'go flash go' and she gave us a little behind the scenes knowledge of the movie, that football scene that took place wasn't originally in the script. We met Hacksaw Jim Duggan, The Iron Shiek, Bushwaker Luke and Virgil all the legends of wrestling that I grew up with so cool, Duggan had hands like a catchers mitt and he couldn't have been nicer.

Another fantastic person we got to meet that day, movie star Doug Jones. He's been in so many huge projects and major motion pictures its just ridiculous. Pan's Labrynth, Hell Boy, Men in Black, Benchwarmers, Legion, heck he was Mac the Night from the old McDonalds commercials! He was just so nice, talked to us, was greatful for us loving his movies, and even gave big hugs! What a guy, truly just a nice person and was having a great time being there.

So while this was a fantastic trip, I'm looking it as the dress rehearsal, we are going to head back up to Canada in August and truly make a great road trip movie. In fact we are thinking of actually making it a You Tube movie, so stay tuned, who knows you may be in it.

Wizard World 2010

Last year you may remember a series of videos up at You Tube called The Road to Wizard World. I had them up at Buffalo.com as well, but due to a series of events we were unable to go to the comic convention.

Well this year we are on our way. As a matter of fact, this morning, as in right now.