Yup, yup...I'm flying out next Thursday and will be spending Friday and Saturday at the big Comic-con show. My longtime tag team partner of 25 years, J, is meeting me out there. He's actually riding out on his motor-sickle. Gee, way to upstage me, Captain America!

But ya' wanna' know the REAL reason I'm going? Look no more, as the autograph hall includes THESE marquee appearances:

Million Dollar Man, actor (Monday Nitro, Thursday Thunder)
Thursday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Friday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Saturday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Sunday AA8 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
(like a lot of old 80's marks, I'd piss myself if I got a picture of me n' DiBiase "mowahahahaha'ing" with a wad of one dollar bills)

Virgil, actor (No Holds Barred, Lets Get Ready to Rumble)
Thursday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Friday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Saturday AA8 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Sunday AA8 11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Marc Singer, actor (Beastmaster, The Highlander)
Thursday AA21 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Friday AA25 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Saturday AA16 3:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Dammit! No scheduled appearances for Gil (Buck Rogers) Gerard or Sam (Flash Gordon) Jones!!

I think RVD's supposed to be there, too.

Wow, these superstars sure are committing a lot of time to the event. I guess their calendars aren't booked!

I'm fricking jealous. I was in San Diego a few weeks ago to see the in-laws, who live about an hour away in Oceanside. I saw the "Iron Man" banners and told my wife that the next time we see her family, we have to go to Comic-Con.

So maybe next year I'll go. If you go, E, we can meet up somewhere and pick on the geeks dressed up like Robin.

Unless of course you dress up in costume.

EDIT: And if you do get a picture of you and Dibiase, you have to post it.

<---trashes his Bucky costume

A picture of me with DiBiase would go on my driver's license! If I get one, you'll definitely see it.

Also, inspiration hit me on Saturday. I'm going to print up about 200 postcard-sized promos for Da' Site and pass 'em out. Using a stylized version of that luchador mask and it'll say something like "Da' excitement! Da' moves! Da' glory! Da' WrestlingSite!"

Nice. Any publicity is good publicity right now

That's awesome! Like Swiggy said, any publicity is good at this point.

Fans, we're back!

So my buddy's bike broke down and he got stuck in Vegas. BUT... I had a blast at the 38th Annual Black T-shirt Convention, or as the masses call it: "Comic-Con 2007".

Things of note (it's 2:30am and I just got back from the airport. I'll probably add more tomorrow. Later today. Whatever).

-- DiBiase was a no-show all weekend. Poor Virgil was there pretty much all day, everyday. Everyone felt bad for him and nobobdy was paying for his autograph. A lot of people said "we just think he has nothing else to do". But give ol' Brother Vir-Giile credit: he seemed to be having a good time and would get up to mingle with the fans in line for DiBiase or RVD.

-- Even better than DiBiase, though: the Hasbro/Gi Joe booth had Sgt. Fuckin' Slaughter!!! I have a picture of Sarge slapping the Cobra Clutch on me. It actually hurt. I can die happy now.

--Overall, the autographs in the sails pavilion were strange. Everybody wanted money for their signature. There was some green chick from the new Star Trek series, the original Lt. Boomer from Battlestar Galactica, Tura Satana and other weridos. Actually, they wouldn't sign stuff, they'd only sign certain products or pictures they were selling. Worst was Marc Singer (Beastmaster). He was shilling pictures and I wasn't buying. So I asked him if he could call my buddy, using my phone, and leave a message on his voicemail. He wanted money for that. No thanks, you loin-cloth wearing freak!

--Cool autograph that I didn't mind paying for: the MST3k guys were there shilling their new products. They were selling DVDs for 10 bucks and would happily sign 'em. So I got a "Plan 9 From Outer Space" DVD signed by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Crow II). I give credit to Murphy, as he noticed the hometown on my badge (Centennial, CO) and asked if it was connected to James Michener. Indeed, that's part of it. Not alot of people would know that. You have to be smart or well-read to be as clever as Murphy, so I was impressed that he picked up on that.

--Costumes galore. You think there's some obscure movie, video game or comic that only you know about. But you turn the corner and there's someone dressed up like a character from that franchise, or esle wearing a t-shirt for it. Example: I was on the esacalator and the kid behind me had a t-shirt that said "Wolfman's Got Nards!" (from the awesome 1986 flick, "Monster Squad").

-- Like I mentioned, it was the 38th Annual Black t-shirt convention. I'd say about 75% of the attendees wore a black t-shirt of some kind. Weird.

--Best costume I saw: some Mexican dude dressed up like BIG BOY. He even had the burger.

-- Worst costume: any chick dressed like Princess Leia. If you are over 130 pounds and most importantly, are ugly-- it's probably NOT a good idea to dress up like Princess Leia. No matter how hot your boyfriend says it makes him feel.

-- Most adundant costume: Capt. Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp. I get it... the movies suck. Now quit selling pirate crap at every souvenier shop. Then quit dressing up like pirates at a frickin' comic book convention. An Extra Special Cock-Punch to the 4 dolts, dressed lke pirates who went around with shitty guitars and YELLING pirate songs all day. "Yo ho, yo ho, it's a dumbshit's life for me!!"

-- Last time I went to Comic-con was in 1995. It was about 85% comics back then. Now, it's about 25% comics. All the comic dealers are on the north end of the main hall, with all the Hollywood stuff stretching from the middle to the south end. As I was walking through the comic dealer "ghetto", I heard some dork say to his friend: "all the cool stuff is that way (South)". Booooo! Get out of here you non-comic fan!! You wouldn't know Galatcus from Galaxian!

-- Last time, I also picked up about 20 pounds of cheap comics and got a great deal on Uncanny X-men #1. This time, I picked up maybe 8 comics. You couldn't find many pre-1980 comics for under 15 bucks. Several run-of-the-mill Silver Age Avengers books (around numbers 40-90) would have 50 dollar price tags. I blame eBay and the big money that's been pouring into Comic-con. Want a good deal on comics? Stay home.

I've been wondering if they were going to change the name from Comic-Con to "Hollywood pays attention to the nerds here-Con"

I caught a few minutes of G4's coverage while I was on break the other day, and it made me cringe. It really seemed to fit into Swiggy's honorary title for the event.

I caught a glimpse of the footage that they revealed for the new Transformers Cartoon, and the new "Spectacular Spiderman" cartoon, and I have to ask:

Why does every single new cartoon HAVE to be drawn in the "Cartoon Network" style? I can understand that the DC cartoons used a similar style, but it seems that every cartoon now has to be drawn to look like Teen Titans. It's irritating, especially when used on something like Transformers.

That is annoying. I miss the good old days when they would make X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and even Silver Surfer cartoons that were designed to look like the comics which they were based on.

Honestly, the best part for me was just waiting in line and talking to folks. I had about 20 "single serving friends" during my trip.

I wasn't too big on the "world premiere" or "secret unveiling" stuff that went on. I guess it's just the one weekend of the year where comic professionals get to act like rockstars.

For instance, Marvel would hold a "Spider-Man Summit" where they would announce all their new artists in a conference room upstairs.. then imediately following they'd be down in the Marvel booth to sign stuff. Created a big mob scene with long-ass lines. Really, I had better shit to do than wait in line for hour to get some dweeb to autograph a comic. I saw some guys who were hauling entire long boxes of stuff to get signed.

I went to Marvel's "Cup O' Joe" seminar, where Joe Quesadilla announced some "big news". Since I don't wax poetic over creative teams, I was left numb. But I think the "big news" was:

--Phil Jimenez signed exclusive to Marvel. Great, now he can photocopy all of George Perez's old Marvel work, something he hasn't had a chance to do!

-- Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos are doing "Runaways". Check around to verify this, though... I get names confused easily and I'm not a Runaways fanboy.

-- Charlie Knaufer (who? SP?) and his brother are doing an Eternals series.

-- Then Quesadilla took questions from the audience. Buncha' dweebs kept asking him about Dazzler. He gave two interesting answers. First, he mentioned that he'd really like to see Deathlok be given a push. Then, in one of those hypothetical fanboy questions about "which DC character do you wish you could intergrate into Marvel", he quickly answered Batman, saying he would work very easily and has the "Marvel formula".

-- During the "Spider-Man Summit" they announced the new four writer creative team for "Amazing Spider-Man". Writers are scheduled to be: Dan Slott, Bob Gale, Marc Guggenheim (*ugh*) and some other guy I don't remember. Plus, some artists. How's that for EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS?!??! Gale actually sounded competent and mentioned that he'd be bringing back...gasp... thought balloons and captions!!

--A fan asked if the new "thrice monthly" Spidy schedule would be like the Superman books of the early 90's, with their numbered triangles. Quesadilla answered that it wouldn't be like that, because "Spider-Man is better than Superman".

-- Also found out that Quesadilla really really really doesn't like DC. I guess they (DC) publicly called for his firing a few years back. Fair enough.

--THe "Secret unveiling" stuff worked well for the Iron Man movie teaser. Marvel had a big crate marked "Stark Enterprises" sitting in their booth. After the Marvel Studois presentation, they cracked it open to display the Iron Man armor from the new movie. It's based on the old, clunky metal suit Stark first designed and looked impressive. It's only around for the first part of the movie, as the armor gets streamlined into soemthing more modern.

Some of the seminars that didn't promote anything were great. Best was probably Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw and Some Mike Guy doing an improv drawing session. It was hosted by Mark Evanier who is really a hoot. Evanier would present a question or gag and each of the artists would draw their answer to it, on a big screen. Sort of like "Whose Line is it, Anyway". Funny stuff. Final gag was "smarter than George W. Bush". The other guys drew a dunce and Alfred E. Newman. Sergio drew a simple two-celled amoeba. Anything Evanier hosts is worth checking out. He's very knowledgeable about pop culture and comics and is quite witty.

Oh! As far as my postcard publicity went... I dropped a small stack on the main "freebies" table at the entrance. They may have gotten confiscated, but the stack was so small (about 25) that I think they got distributed.

I gave a few away, personally, to people in line for RVD and Virgil. Most declined, or looked at 'em and tossed 'em. Secret is to call your promo crap "freebies" instead of "promo crap". I'm not a good salesman, so I began to feel like I was being rejected, when my product was being rejected. I'd drop a few, face-up, on the floor of the main exhibit hall.

I stuffed a few inside the in-flight magazines of my flight. Then the phonebooks of the hotels I was in. I also stuffed one inside a bible at a hotel. If there was life-after-death, I'd definitely be going to hell.

What, you don't think I've dropped a line or two to God about our site?

Besides, God is a HUGE wrestling fan. Even mentions it IN the Bible. That's where you should slip it.

Pictures of goofy costumes?! Why, yes! We've got 'em and will abuse bandwidth!!

WARNING: some of the following images may be graphics in their nature.. SNAP!!


Spidey's red outfit is a definite water cooler topic.


Crmson Guardsman Fred XVII needs to skip on the Doritos.


The FAKE Ghostbusters.


This broad's face and wig were doing her NO favors, but her outfit was.


Winner of the 38th Annual ES Comic-Con Costume Award! (He won a free handshake)


You are one ugly mudda' fuckah


I am SO taller than Boba Fett.


A different set of Fetts: Daddy Fett and Baby Fett


Surprisingly, the only partner who has never turned on Sting!


This spot was packed from open to close. Take your picture on the big plaster Jabba. This time through it was the Elvis Trooper, some ugly broad in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit and some other broad in a costume I didn't recognize (was she the "boss" from Street Fighter?)

A few more:


Hrmmm....


Rick Hunter was NOT in his tummy.

And, of course:

ES taps out to the Cobra Clutch

Iron Man Teaser

ES, is this your doing? :P

A lot of great photos, but that one of you with Sarge is freaking CLASSIC!

Thanks for sharing :D .

Ha! SOME of us can read the rules and don't feel the need to film shitty video of a darkened auditorium.

Besides, I was sitting a little more to the left.

But yeah, notice all the cheering and yelping at certain times?