Episode #28 features:
Dust Jacket: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Popcorn Junkie: The Amazing Spider-Man
OzComicCon – after the event
Hi Guys
As you all know, I was pretty damn excited for Oz Comic-Con Melbourne. The chance to meet Stan Lee and Patrick Stewart was unbelievably exciting. Especially Mr Stan Lee, a true living legend. And I did get to meet them! Mr Stewart clearly wanted to be somewhere else so that meeting didn’t go exactly as I thought it would, but Mr Lee was a delight. I was limited to only one signature (which I had done in my Amazing Spider-Man Omnibus #1), but I took a moment to show him a cheesy item I got from a visit to Dreamworld when I was in my early 20’s – a photo of my head, on a drawing of Spider-Man’s body, with a background made to look like a cover of a comic. Like I said, friggin cheesy as hell, but it’s a treasured item of mine and the look on Stan’s face when he saw it made all the years I have kept it worthwhile. He held it in his hands, looked up at me with a smile and said, ‘Gee, that’s great.’
I can now die happy. 🙂
There were other great moments. I got to meet Francis Manapul, who I interviewed the Thursday night before, and he was as friendly in real life as he was on the phone. I also visited honorary Crew Member Jason Frank’s table to say hi and met some interesting people while in lines and taking photos. And a huge thanks to everyone who came up and said hi!
But despite these cool things there were aspects of the event that I am forced to describe as disgraceful.
First, let me say that Blue Planet PR, the company behind promoting the event, did an amazing job. Their campaign to get the word out there and their handling of the online community was outstanding. On a personal note, they didn’t break any promises and gave me the opportunity to interview 3 terrific people. Unfortunately the same praise can’t be given to Hub Productions, the actual organisers of the show.
Much has already been said online about the situation at the show so I wont go into too many details here, but I do want to raise a few points.
Obviously I have never organised an event of this size, but I have been to quite a few Cons in my time and what I experienced at Oz Comic-Con almost forced me to re-evaluate whether I would be attending any Cons in the future. Hub Productions have since issued a weak apology in which they state that they were unprepared for the number of attendees but that simply is not true. I know that based on ticket pre-sales they were in fact expecting around 30,000 attendees. That’s only 10,000 less than the 40,000 they claim actually attended the event. They had 2 bays of the Melbourne Exhibition Centre for the general area (where the booths were) and what looked like another 1-2 bays for the stage areas. According to the Exhibition Centre website, 2 bays holds a maximum of 10,000 people. Only the hardcore fans come both days, so a fair estimate of a daily attendance based on their own figures would be around 15,000. So, if you KNOW you are going to have more than the amount of people allowed in the venue then surely you make the decision to hire out another bay and make a couple of slight adjustments to the layout. I understand that the maps would have already been printed out by then, but surely a slight modification to the floorplan would have been preferable to the deluge of negativity the event received? And then they wouldn’t have had to stop people from entering because of health and safety laws. And an extra bay would have opened this up a bit and given people somewhere to relax and/or eat before diving back into the chaos.
In any case the floorplan is my next point. At some bottlenecks I was unable to move due to the amount of people. My uncle and cousin drove for 2 hours to get there, was there for an hour and left because he couldn’t stand the crowd. there is no other word for it, it was bedlam. People have complained about the queuing system of lining up for tokens to then line up for an autograph or photo, but this is normal Con setup and I have no problem with it. But what I did have issue with was the layout of the queues. I’ll use Stan Lee as an example. Firstly, Mr Lee was in a booth. Not with the other guests in their special area, a friggin’ corner booth on the other side of the room. This man is 90 years old. He probably wont be back to Australia so this is a once in a lifetime chance for true comic fans to meet him. He was advertised as the headline drawcard but was relegated to a little booth. It was a disgrace. Not only that, but the area he was in left no room for the obviously huge lines he was going to have. To be fair an area was left clear for apparent use of a line but no one was organizing this space and it basically became a jumbled mess. Not to mention the fact that 3 other lines then formed down the corridors leading to his booth and soon enough it was chaos. I waited 2 and a half hours to meet him and I stupidly consider that a good result, because some people waited longer than that and didnt get to meet him at all. I was in line for Patrick Stewart for 90 mins, and Francis Manapul an hour. Because of this, I was unable to meet Armin Shimerman, Jason Momoa, and Sharon Taylor because I didnt want to miss out on Stan Lee, and that simply is not good enough. My only choice was to return the next day, but there was no way in hell I was going to face that mess again. All of the lines problems (and there were many more that I haven’t mentioned, like the terrible Platinum/VIP/General system that simply didn’t work) could have been avoided with a better floorplan.
And that brings me to my next point. The amount of time waiting in lines was the main problem but some of the other layout choices were completely baffling. I’ve already mentioned my disgust at the placement of Stan Lee, but I also have to mention the other comic talent and the Stage areas. If you are going to call your event Oz Comic-Con then surely your focus is going to be on comics. So why then place the comic talent in a booth facing a wall (that no-one is allowed to congregate around by the way) about 3 metres away from them? It is not only unbelievably rude but it also means that their fans cant even line up to meet them! People crowded around in front of the guest they wanted to meet and had to devise their own numbering system in order to keep things organised while the event staff sat on their arses and ate Pringles. If it wasn’t for the kindness of the fans there allowing me to jump ahead (because I didnt want to wait for a sketch and was only going to get an autograph), I would have probably given up on meeting Francis. Also, how about not putting the Info Booth directly in front of the only entrance. You want it to be close by sure, but not right in front. People are going to congregate in this area as they ask for maps, or check in their coat, or sign up for the cosplay competition. Congratulations you have just bottlenecked the entrance. Finally, almost as bad as those 2 examples was the Stage areas. I spent a bit of time walking around (when moving from queue to queue) and poked my head into any of the Q&A sessions that I could, and I never saw one more than half full. So essentially this huge area was going to waste, while people on the other side of these removable walls were crammed in like sardines. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the people attending these sessions didn’t give a crap who was talking and just wanted a chance to sit down.
There are many more examples, like the poor volunteers who had almost no training and had to put up with being abused by angry customers without complaint & total mismanagement of the premium tickets system, but I’ve already gone on too long. Just to re-iterate, this is all my opinion. I’ve never organised an event like this myself, and I’m sure if I did I would make mistakes. But I’m not a professional event organiser like Hub Productions claim to be and unfortunately there was no evidence of that at the first Melbourne Oz Comic-Con.
I’ll just finish up by saying this – as incredibly frustrating an experience last Saturday was, at least I got to meet the living legend Mr Stan Lee. Hub Productions made that happen and for that at least, they have my thanks.
Welcome to Part 2 of my Prometheus rant.
Please be warned that this will be spoiler heavy.
Click More for article.
When we reviewed Prometheus for the podcast we had limited time to express our thoughts in order to keep it concise. But a film like this one deserves more discussion, and that is exactly what is happening online. The interwebs are afire with people discussing the pros and cons of Ridley Scott‘s latest, and I thought I’d take an opportunity to add some of my own opinions to the mix.
However, being the massive nerd that I am, my thoughts ran to about 10 pages. So I decided to post them in two separate posts. The second post will be up very soon. I hope you enjoy and I would very much appreciate any feedback you guys have. Agree or Disagree? What are your thoughts on Prometheus?
Please be warned that this will be spoiler heavy so click More for article.
That’s right Fight Fans – DC have announced a series of prequel comics focusing on the Watchmen, Alan Moore’s seminal classic from the 80’s, and the interwebs have exploded.
In the blue corner we have DC Comics. the owners of the Watchmen and the creative team behind the new stories:
Rorschach by writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo, Comedian by Azzarello and artist J.G. Jones, Minutemen by writer/artist Darwyn Cooke, Silk Spectre by Cooke and artist Amanda Conner, Nite Owl by writer J. Michael Straczynski and artists Joe and Andy Kubert, Dr. Manhattan by Straczynski and artist Adam Hughes, and Ozymandias by writer and original Watchmen editor Len Wein with art by Jae Lee.
They also have the blessing of Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons.
In the red corner we have the many people who believe that the Watchmen is the greatest comic story of all time and that it is a) almost blasphemous for anyone other than Alan Moore to continue the story in any way, or b) it is perfect the way it is and shouldn’t be continued at all.
This group also have the unofficial backing of Watchmen creator Alan Moore with his statement describing the prequels as “completely shameless.” “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”
Lets get ready to rumble!
Blue Corner – It is common knowledge in the comic community that DC screwed over Alan Moore with the rights to the Watchmen, and they have been screwing with him for many years after. But, although I am totally on Mr Moore’s side regarding this, the simple fact is that DC would be insane not to consider a project like this. They are a business and a project like this is almost a license to print money. Even the people that are nerdraging over this are going to buy it, if only to have the ammo to continue their assault. And the creative teams are interesting – Darwyn Cooke is a legend and I’m always welcome to some Joe & Andy Kubert, J.G Jones and Adam Hughes art, but Straczynski is average at best (Rising Stars was a cool idea that went nowhere, Superman: Grounded was one of the worst Superman stories ever), and I don’t think Jae Lee is a good choice for Ozymandias. I trust Darwyn Cooke to show this project the respect it deserves.
Red Corner – I agree that it isn’t necessary to have Watchmen spin offs. It is a complete story and doesn’t need to be expanded on. But I don’t see a problem with doing so. Alan Moore himself had plans for spin offs and only stopped due to his falling out with DC. Watchmen is brilliant, but it isn’t sacrosanct. The story is so rich and detailed that ideas for spin offs would almost write themselves.
I’m not afraid to say that I’m looking forward to this project. I love Watchmen, I read it every year, and I’m excited to be able to read more adventures in that world. Would I prefer Alan Moore to be writing it? Of course, but not because of any sense of ‘blasphemy’. I would prefer he be working on it because he is my favourite comic writer of all time, and having him back on his greatest achievement would be too exciting to describe. But, as I said earlier, I trust Darwyn Cooke, he hasn’t let me down yet. And besides, even if they are crap, that doesn’t affect my love for the original story. They are separate entities and can be enjoyed or dismissed as such. This series is one of the most obvious money grabbing exercises I have ever seen (second only to the Star Wars prequels), but so what. The Comic Industry is in trouble and just like Avengers vs X-Men this event is bringing attention to the industry,
And that’s good for comics.
