rycaut
Name: Shannon Clark
Bio: having always known many serious comics collectors but not being one myself I'm getting back into comics - mostly have trades and am trying to catch up from what I missed from the 90's and first part of this decade (Sandman, Lucifer, Fables, 100 bullets etc - I'm really far behind on everything)I am also the co-founder a startup focused on building real physical things from digital assets - we primarily work with game companies but are open to working with other IP owners (such as comics publishers). We make a wide range of physical, collectible objects.
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I’ve loved The Unwritten from the very fist fantastic issue but with Issue #5 I think the series is really…
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A short one-shot (I think) story featuring the 10th Doctor. The writing was good (though the story a bit short)…
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so as someone who hasn't yet been to Comiccon is my only reasonable route to attending to go pro? (lucky for me my current startup may qualify.... though that would mean paying for a booth....)
It sure seems like ComicCon San Diego would be able to fill a much larger venue and/or more days - I understand that they have hit capacity - but it sure seems like there is far more demand than availability at the moment.
my stack is dangerously similar:
some 100+ prose books (mostly SF, some non-fiction, far far too many by friends of mine for personal comfort in a couple of cases entire runs of books by friends which I've yet to get around to reading...)
Parker The Hunter - signed so I don't just toss this in my bag but I need to sit down and read it!
Chew - the whole run up to now, I've read issue 1 digitally but the whole run is sitting there teasing me...
Wednesday Comics - not the vast hardcover (which I've been tempted by) but the original series, I've read a few of them but I really want to sit down some rainy Sunday morning and read the whole collection
Incoruptible - I've read the first few issues but somehow I'm many issues behind
Dr. Who Ongoing - I'm a huge huge huge Dr. Who fan but somehow this has stayed in my stack mostly unread....
and a depressingly large stack of other books - some recent from the past few weeks, so from months and months ago. I make progress occasionally but more great stuff keeps coming out...
hmmm this likely means that by year's end Boom will be nearly half of my pull list all three titles sound really promising and I tend to like everything I've read (or seen in the case of Paul Cornell) from each of the writers. I haven't yet added Paul's DC work to my pull lists, mostly because I haven't gotten much into either of the big 2's continuities... but I admit to being tempted simply because of his involvement.
Great move by Boom! Though I'm a bit puzzled, I thought Paul Cornell was "exclusive" to DC?
downloaded it but it keeps crashing when I try to run it with the oh so useless error message of "UDK.exe has stopped working. A problem casued the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available"
uhmmm sure, but could, perhaps, Windows tell me (and thus allow me to tell the developer) what this problem was that caused the app to stop running?
nope, guess not, useful, sensible error messages are verbotten on Windows...
sigh, looked like it might be fun and I've been wanting to play with something based on the Unreal engine for a while
Shannon
I'm from Chicago but haven't been back in a few years - so here are a few staple suggestions for foodie friends visiting Chicago:
- My #1 favorite restaurant in Chicago is TAC Quick (Sheridan right under the red Line Stop - one stop after Wrigley Field). Mind blowingly good Thai food - especially the daily specials and the Thai menu (avialble in translation to english) with dishes you will have never seen on any other restaurant (or very very very few Thai restaurants in the US)
- Get an authentic, char dog from the Wiener Circle on Clark St. Late at night. No ketchup, all the fixings, crappiest service ever (in a good way - expect that you may be insulted)
- 24 hr Korean Restaurant on Lawrence Ave (far north side of Chicago) and yes, it is open 24hrs. Not the best Korean but very very good - and they are open 24hrs - nothing better after a late night out.
- Intelligentsia Coffee - 3rd Wave coffee roaster (now also in LA) very very good coffee, multiple locations throughout Chicago.
Chicago has a ton of amazing food - generally speaking though I'd suggest avoiding the touristy places, and I may get flack for this but I am not a huge fan of "Chicago style" pizza though I do love another Chicago original dish - the Italian Beef (dipped, hot & sweet peppers).
Chicago's best restaurants rival anything on either coast - and tend to be a bit more affordable and accessible. I'm not a huge fan of the critically acclaimed Moto - if you are seeking a high end, tasting menu I highly recommend Zealous (http://www.zealousrestaurant.com/home/index.html) which is probably my 2nd favorite restaurant in Chicago and one of the few restaurants anywhere I have dropped over $300 on a single meal multiple times - and would go back again gladly. Amazing food, fantastic wine, great service.
Enjoy Chicago! Great meeting most of you briefly at Wondercon - hope you enjoyed San Francisco!
This may be why though I am a version of Hope about a year on (though male) I basically don't with very rare exceptions buy anything from Marvel or DC's main imprints (I did buy the Wednesday Comics run this summer from DC and just last week I picked up the first issue of S.H.I.E.L.D. - which is both steampunk and so far at least fairly disconnected from the rest of Marval)
Instead I have been far more drawn to easier to get into single (or only two) title series from other imprints - titles such as The Unwritten, Joe the Barbarian, Chew, Irredeemable/Incorruptible, The Guild, Captain Swing (Warren Ellis' 4 issue steampunk series), Last Days of American Crime, IDW's Dr. Who ongoing series and special issues and the like. All great (and in many cases Eisner award nominated series) but also outside of the mess of continuity or multiple overlapping tales across different titles.
However I do have a broad issue with a current trend in comics which impacts even a non-DC/Marvel buyer such as myself.
Variant Covers.
Okay, a special cover for a convention or to celebrate a milestone edition (or perhaps a first issue) but every single week? That gets old really fast - and is highly confusing for a new comic book buyer such as myself - I find myself staring at last week's comics and wondering - did I miss an issue? Or did I just pick up a different cover?
In fact imprints such as Avatar seem to be the worst when it comes to variants - at Wondercon I counted one more variant of Captain Swing than even the person from Avatar manning the booth realized they had printed (and brought with them)!
As a fan I'd actually prefer that all the energy that went into making so many variants - however cool - went instead towards making a slightly larger book - or (and I'm looking at Radical Press here especially) just getting books out on time....
Having been a subscriber to all the various forms of iFanboy for about a year now I am occasionally interested in something from DC or Marvel but then as I dig into it further I realize just how hard it would be to jump into any of the series - and just how much of a commitment it would entail. I'd rather support cool artists & writers building their own, selfcontained worlds. (though I am tempted to catch up with Paul Cornell's work - I have some back issues of Captain Britain I picked up in a $.50 bin and they were indeed really fun)
I don't yet have an iPad (waiting for the 3G model) but I've started looking at the comics apps available in the App store which also work on the iPhone - and while I love the capabilities and there are some nice UI elements - I was very disappointed in the selections - which seem pretty random & in most cases are missing stuff I care about in favor of stuff I have next to no interest in - and can't figure out why they picked what they picked (and excluded so much of what they excluded). I'm mostly a fairly eclectic comics collector - lots of smaller presses, some trades, more Vertigo than Marvel/DC - currents include: Joe the Barbarian, The Unwritten, Chew, Irredeemable etc)
But I collect some stuff I'd love to see digitally - the current series of stuff from IDW for Doctor Who for example (which seems to be missing from the IDW app) or the already digital Heroes comics (yes I can read them on the website but a well done app would be really nice)