C2E2 2015 Photos, Part 4 of 9: Mighty Marvel Costumes

Netflix Daredevil!

Netflix Daredevil makes his Midwest convention cosplay debut.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I went to C2E2 and took photos! Other chapters in the series:

Part 1: Costume Contest Winners
Part 2: The Rest of the Costume Contest
Part 3: Edge of Deadpoolverse
Part 5: More Comics Costumes
Part 6: Mystery Science Costume Theater 3000
Part 7: Last Call for Costumes
Part 8: Stars of Comics and Screens
Part 9: Random Acts of C2E2ing

Today’s feature: the publisher, the studio, the universe…it’s Marvel!

Right this way to Make Mine Marvel! Or Make Yours Marvel! Whatever.

C2E2 2015 Photos, Part 3: Edge of Deadpoolverse

Sheriff Deadpool!

If anyone can clean up your small town, it’s that valiant Sheriff Deadpool.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I went to C2E2 and took photos! Other chapters in the series:

Part 1: Costume Contest Winners
Part 2: The Rest of the Costume Contest
Part 4: Mighty Marvel Costumes
Part 5: More Comics Costumes
Part 6: Mystery Science Costume Theater 3000
Part 7: Last Call for Costumes
Part 8: Stars of Comics and Screens
Part 9: Random Acts of C2E2ing

Today’s feature: Deadpool! Lots of Deadpool! Some popular characters were cosplayed in droves, but no one had as many off-kilter variants as Deadpool. His fans don’t just want to be him: they want to be him being anyone else but himself. We found ten different Deadpools roaming the convention Friday and Saturday, and who knows how many dozens more we missed.

Right this way for Deadpool, Deadpool, Deadpool!

Five Days, Five Big Trailers, Four Sequels and a Reboot

Star Wars: the Force Awakens!

When blockbuster trailers come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions!

It’s been busy, busy times these past five days in the world of watching previews for mega-budget movies that won’t be here for a while, speculating on same, prejudging them all and assigning our Tomatometer ratings in advance so our opinions won’t be skewed later by the movies themselves. If you haven’t see all five of the latest hopeful super-sized moneymakers, now’s your chance to catch up and revisit worlds we haven’t seen in a long time. There’s a world where dinosaurs are reborn and man is the least dangerous game; a world where “hero” is a word they keep using, but I do not think it means what they think it means; and that one rediscovered world with the lightsabers and the Force and whatnot.

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Star Wars Celebration 2002 Memories: What We Did and Who We Met

Weekend with Mori!

Anne and I look very different now than we did in 2002. I was thicker, and her glasses were larger. The gent in the middle was someone we knew online who’s probably forgotten us by now. But I bet he remembers the Celebration.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This coming weekend is Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, where thousands upon thousands of lucky Star Wars fans will rendezvous to share their love and respect for the galaxy George Lucas built, meet other people who made it possible, and hopefully learn lots of news and spoilers about The Force Awakens. California is beyond our reach, but a few of our friends will be there and should provide us with lots of updates and photos or else.

I’ve been digging through our photos and writings from our experiences at the second and third Celebrations, which were each held here in Indianapolis in 2002 and 2005…

Our original write-up of our Celebration II experience clocked in at over 10,000 words, not including the Anthony Daniels prologue. You’ll pardon me if I don’t reprint it here, because the details are exhausting and minute and excessive and chronicled far too many minutes that weren’t worth chronicling. I think I can whittle that down to a good-parts version and add another batch of photos at the end.

Right this way for memories, actor photos, and links to the new trailer for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”!

Star Wars Celebration 2002 Memories: Cosplay ‘n’ Stuff

Diptrooper!

After their humiliating loss against the teddy bears from the space moon, many Stormtroopers were drummed out of Imperial service and forced to rely on the job skills they had before they signed on.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This coming weekend is Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, where thousands upon thousands of lucky Star Wars fans will rendezvous to share their love and respect for the galaxy George Lucas built, meet other people who made it possible, and hopefully learn lots of news and spoilers about The Force Awakens. California is beyond our reach, but a few of our friends will be there and should provide us with lots of updates and photos or else.

I’ve been digging through our photos and writings from our experiences at the second and third Celebrations, which were each held here in Indianapolis in 2002 and 2005…

Some of our Celebration II pics have never been shared online before because (a) I hated my terrible old scanner; (b) posting large photo collections wasn’t fun in the days of 56K modems, when uploading took years and any webpage with more than a few pics could take forever to load if the files were large; and (c) back then I prided myself on entertaining friends with more text than pictures. That line of thought probably lost me a lot of readers — and maybe even friends, for all I know.

Tonight’s presentation: the first of two Celebration II photo galleries, this one featuring costumes and other fun objects from the experience. Enjoy!

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Star Wars Celebration 2002 Memories: A Night with C-3PO

Anthony Daniels!

This coming weekend is Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, where thousands upon thousands of lucky Star Wars fans will rendezvous to share their love and respect for the galaxy George Lucas built, meet other people who made it possible, and hopefully learn lots of news and spoilers about The Force Awakens. California is beyond our reach, but a few of our friends will be there and should provide us with lots of updates and photos or else.

I’ve been digging through our photos and writings from our experiences at the second and third Celebrations, which were each held here in Indianapolis in 2002 and 2005. As my own tiny way of marking the occasion and unearthing unshared items from our personal archives, presented above is a previously unreleased photo of me with my best friend Anne, onstage at a special tie-in event held two days before Celebration II. You may be familiar with the thespian in the middle.

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Moving Away from Evergreen Terrace

Simpsons DVDs!

Guess which season saw the introduction of a new box design. And guess which set I hate most for ruining everything.

Obsessive completists who collect physical media and refuse to give up on The Simpsons received heartbreaking news this week when longtime producer Al Jean revealed Season 17 would be the final DVD/Blu-ray set produced. In numerous back-and-forth discussions with fans on Twitter, Jean cited poor sales in a world where streaming media has become the preferred viewing option for a lot of former disc buyers. It’s not hard to argue the diminishing aesthetic returns on later seasons may also have contributed to America’s growing consensus as to exactly how much of the show deserves to be archived in their own homes.

For anyone with the true collector mentality, this cancellation poses a special form of anguish: a no-frills Season 20 set was rush-released in 2010 as an anniversary merchandising tie-in. Anyone who’s bought them religiously since Season 1 will now have a eternal gap between 17 and 20 that can never be filled through legal means, to say nothing of the unreleased 21 through 60. Granted, you could pay to watch those online via Amazon, or indulge in the Simpsons World app if you care to watch the show on certain devices. You could store said device on the DVD shelf between 17 and 20, and argue till your face is Homer-pants-blue that it’s close enough. You’d be wrong.

For my wife and myself, it’s another stumbling block to our once-fervent Simpsons fandom.

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Top 10 Surprises in the Upcoming “Teletubbies” Reboot

Teletubbies Time Warp!

Pictured left to right: William Shatner, Harry Shearer, June Foray, and Seth MacFarlane. Or not.

Sooner or later, every old intellectual property must be revitalized for a new generation that has no interest in it. Revivals are perpetually on the way in every medium –as of this minute, your slate of candidates includes Archie, Logan’s Run, and even gum-wrapper superstar Bazooka Joe. Why waste your time and imagination inventing new characters when you can just stamp your preferences onto someone else’s venerated labor of love?

Also on the way: the return of the Teletubbies! England’s other, other, other Fab Four were psychedelic freeform heroes to a generation of toddlers born at a weird time. Now that formerly captive audience will have the opportunity to recapture their childhood, reunite with their old mentors, and complain about all those years of characterization, continuity, and PBS crossovers that are being tossed out the window and now the seasons they’ve collected on VHS are null and void. Welcome to 21st-century entertainment, youngsters.

Right this way for…another list!

Random Fun Moments in Comic Book Ads

Kung Fu Sandals!

Source: Incredible Hulk #205, cover-dated November 1976.

Hey, kids! If you’re chasing your dream of becoming a world-class martial artist like Bruce Lee or Jim Kelly or Chuck Norris, you’ll need proper footwear. And what better footwear than used sandals once worn by the great Oriental Fighting Masters? Either they outgrew them, saved up to buy better ones, or died fighting in them, and now they can be yours for just three bucks and a crude outline of your own foot on notebook paper, so we can tell which dead masters wore your size. We’re located up in scenic Connecticut, where all the most renowned sensei live. Send us your allowance today!

Right this way for four more clippings from ye olde times!

Post-Convention Sick-Day Blues

Troy + Abed in the Morning!

Today’s lunch: hot tea and meds.

The day after we finished up with Indiana Comic Con 2015, I could already feel “con crud” creeping into my system. I’m no stranger to the notorious cold/flu that strikes at convention attendees after they’ve hung around a few thousand fans too many, but I’d hoped to dodge a bullet this time. Between the cool temps and Friday’s nonstop rains, my good health wasn’t meant to last.

I held out for as long as I could. I lasted three business days before I surrendered and took a sick day so I retreat into defensive hibernation. After last night proved disastrously unhelpful, today I slept till noon, took more countermeasures, and tried to keep distracted with news and hobbies and such.

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Let Me Know When “Community” Season 6 is on DVD

Community!

Abed and Jeff during the premiere’s Apology Montage. Maybe someday I’ll accept it, but I’m just not ready tonight.

The big television event is here! Except not on television. At last, the fabled meta-sitcom Community returned tonight with the first two all-new episodes of its sixth season, but not on NBC anymore. Instead, in what I hope was a self-aware feat of ironic self-handicapping, the show has relocated to Yahoo! Screen, which spent the past ninety minutes of my life acting like RealPlayer used to in the ’90s, except larger and hopefully with a little less spyware. Yahoo!’s entry into the internet streaming competition didn’t fare well in the test sessions I’d performed prior to tonight, but I wanted to persevere anyway for the sake of the show that’s produced four of the funniest seasons of TV ever.

I took performance notes during the experience for posterity and as an outlet for my disappointment. With the streaming results, I mean, not with the actual show.

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Indiana Comic Con 2015 Photos, Part 4 of 4: Braving the Battle Lines

Jenna Coleman!

My wife and I in the presence of Jenna Coleman, a.k.a. Clara Oswald the Impossible Girl from TV’s Doctor Who. A friend of ours asked, “Can she BE any more adorable?” Well, no. No, she can’t.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended the second annual Indiana Comic Con! Part One covered our Friday experience, a smooth and engaging experience. Part Two was our bewildering Carrie Fisher encounter. Part Three collected every usable costume photo we took on Saturday.

We knew Saturday would be a busier, more hectic, potentially more disappointing day than Friday. Some cons’ Saturdays are more challenging than others. When things go wrong, blame isn’t always easy or comfortable to assign, and it’s not always the con’s fault. But when it is, the flaring tempers can light up the evening sky.

We had four primary Saturday objectives and one secondary objective left over from Friday. We tried to adjust expectations based on the con’s disastrous Saturday 2014 performance and its vastly improved Friday 2015. Ultimately we nailed three out of four, though it required strategy and persistence on our part to navigate the obstacles. If ICC’s showrunners had ever attended other cons — I mean really attended them, immersed themselves in the full experience, not just skipped through exhibit halls and glanced at activities from a distance — I wouldn’t have had to abandon the fourth objective.

Right this way for the Indiana Comic Con 2015 miniseries finale!

Indiana Comic Con 2015 Photos, Part 3 of 4: Random Saturday Costumes

Doomsday!

Superman’s murderer, Doomsday, still wearing his original “Death of Superman” spacesuit.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I attended the second annual Indiana Comic Con despite our calamitous experience last year. Part One covered our Friday experience, a smooth and engaging experience. Part Two was our bewildering Carrie Fisher encounter.

This time around: our Saturday costume photo collection. The following subjects are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the characters on who were in the house. Many, many thousands of attendees packed into the Indiana Convention Center, this time without inviting a fire marshal’s wrath, and an impressive number showed up dressed as their favorite heroes, villains, supporting characters, animals, antiheroes, murderers, and licensed merchandise. I’d hoped to bring back three or four times as many pics, but we’ll discuss why that didn’t happen in Part Four.

Right this way for costumes, costumes, costumes!

The Alderaanian Glitter Bomber Strikes!

Carrie Fisher Glitter!

This is what Carrie Fisher did to me today.

Yes, that Carrie Fisher.

Right this way for Star Wars storytime!

Indiana Comic Con 2015 Photos #1: Our Lucky Friday the 13th

Jason Voorhees!

MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE MIKE! GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS!

Last year my wife and I attended the inaugural Indiana Comic Con in our hometown of Indianapolis, a decent-sized Midwest city whose Indiana Convention Center went from merely one geek gathering every year (Gen Con, always a fave) to no less than five such shindigs in 2014. ICC was first up to bat that year but had issues, which I covered at length here and here. We figured it would take a lot of nerve for Imaginarium, ICC’s out-of-state showrunners, to return and try again.

We considered shunning ICC forever until they added a pair of irresistible names to this year’s guest list. Even then, our decision to forgive and relive wasn’t made lightly. To improve our chances of deriving some unblemished enjoyment from the experience, we took a different approach: instead of attending only on Saturday (the most crowded day of every con ever), we anted up for full weekend passes and burned through most of our to-do list today, Friday the 13th, in hopes that a Friday would be tough for any convention to screw up.

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring (other than much longer lines), but today for me was a winner.

Right this way for anecdotes and photos and such!

Comics Update: My 2014 Faves and My Current Lineup

Buffy and Giles!

One of the neatest comics moments of 2014, from Buffy Season 10. Art by Rebekah Isaacs.

Comics collecting has been my primary geek interest since age 6, but I have a tough time writing about it with any regularity for a long list of reasons. I started a “Best Comics of 2014” entry at the end of January, saved it and then procrastinated the heck out of it. Since my wife and I will be attending the Indiana Comic Con this weekend, comics are foremost on my mind tonight and I think I’m ready to move forward and express a thought or two. At the very least, a lot of lists are in order.

Right this way for my favorite comics of 2014, and a look at what I’m following and savoring today!

My Super Awesome Cinderella Reboot Pitch

Walt Disney's Cinderella

The young woman whose life was changed forever by a first date and some pretty shoes.

[It’s a hidden gem from the MCC Archives! The following entry was originally posted on November 19, 2012, with zero awareness that Disney would someday do something new-not-new with Cinderella. Fast-forward two years, and their live-action remake is coming to theaters this Friday, March 13th. The prophecy has come to pass!

I have no plans to see their version unless someone mails me a ticket, but it’d be great if they totally followed my outline and proved me a genius out of time. Based on the last trailer I saw, they declined my pitch and theirs will instead be a Gus van Sant shot-for-shot homage with no twists allowed. This entry, then, captures the marketable joy of What Might Have Been.]

* * * * *

This weekend I revisited Walt Disney’s twelfth animated classic Cinderella for the first time since the late 1990s. Of all the numerous Disney films our family has owned in multiple formats, this is one of several that rarely saw repeat viewings even when my son was a toddler who insisted on watching every animated movie over and over again until I hated it.

As with many older Disney films, parts of it have aged better than others. I’ll admit I had trouble staying conscious all the way through. Even if I’m alone in this struggle, the film is now over sixty years old and therefore in need of a gratuitous overhaul on shallow principle. In the spirit of today’s remake-happy medium that thrives on second-hand ideas, the following notes are my suggestions to downconvert this one-time children’s favorite for the modern, unsophisticated audience that Hollywood executives so dearly crave.

Right this way for notes to make the greatest Cinderella of all times!

If You’re “Chappie” and You Know It, Say You’re Sorry

Chappie!

Chappie gotta fight the powers that be. Word to your maker!

He brought you District 9, a South African sci-fi racism allegory in which Sharlto Copley slowly goes nuts before learning a life lesson, and everything ends in EXPLOSIONS. He brought you Elysium, a big Hollywood sci-fi healthcare classism allegory in which Sharlto Copley spends the entire film nuts while learning nothing, and everything ends in EXPLOSIONS. And now, writer/director Neill Blomkamp brings you Chappie, a South African sci-fi determinism allegory in which Sharlto Copley learns life lessons, then goes nuts, then learns more life lessons, and everything ends in EXPLOSIONS. Cinematic progress marches on!

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What’s Right About This Supergirl Photo?

Supergirl Smiles!

At the end of this week, Warner Brothers treated the public to our first glimpse of Whiplash‘s Melissa Benoist in her next role as the star of CBS’ proposed Supergirl series. The CW had been handling the honors on DC Comics’ TV universe with Arrow and The Flash, but Superman’s best cousin will be movin’ on up to the larger, more powerful network that hopefully won’t skimp on the effects budget or require her to endure contrived crossovers with CSI: Cyber.

Right this way for the other photo, and the part I liked best….

Box Office Beyond Borders III: What 2014 Movies Did Other Countries Enjoy More Than We Did?

Expendables 3!

From a certain perspective, the third outing for the Expendables proved the worldwide marketing viability of all-star team-ups, diversity, explosions, and machismo. Probably not in that order.

For the last two years around this time, I asked a question aloud to no one in particular: if we know the highest-grossing movies at the American box office each year, and we know the highest-grossing movies worldwide at all box offices, which movies were the year’s winners if we subtract America’s dollars? What were the rest of Planet Earth’s favorite popcorn flicks?

Box Office Mojo is a fantastic source for fans who can’t get enough number-crunching, being the premiere online source for film revenue tracking. You can check out their 2014 stats for domestic and total worldwide box office as separate lists, but if you want to know only what drove the rest of the world into their respective theaters regardless of American appetites, additional math is required to remove us from the Big Picture.

Lo and behold: I did the math for all of us. Presented below are the forty highest-grossing movies of 2014 outside the U.S. Right this way for the World’s Top 50 Without Us!