Anime Midwest, Con Marathon Week 1.

I should have started this recently. Right now I am in the middle of a Convention Marathon and feel that With all the differences between them that I should give my opinion to them as best I can. This is from the personal POV of my experience of what I've attended and who I've interacted with so It's will become a partial review.

First week was Anime Midwest in Lisle, IL. Let's start with the location at the Wyndam Hotel which I gotta say was pretty good. The layout was simple with Main programming right next to the dealers and the two panels next to each other though some were hard to find because of odd design plans everything was well mapped out via the program guide given to us at the con. Now some of the panel rooms were...different. I'm used to just an empty room filled with chairs in a row but they had a very nice Auditorium with a college like setup that included an ether net cord and power outlet at each chair space, that was really nice. The other one had a series of circular tables which felt out of place and the projector setup was awkward against a wall but still a nice space in general. One major issue was the need for Speakers for laptops. In most of the panels I went to a recurring problem occurred where people needed speakers for the audio portion of their presentation some were rectified others were not and I'll explain how in a moment.

A couple of things that are just general fun I should mention are the Battle Arena and the Unlimited Ramen, Rice, and Soda. The battle Arena was a great part that got kinda pushed to the side in a fairly small room they made work. I've seen these guys before I believe at Anime St Louis one year and they brought in quite a crowd but this time not so much probably due to their less than obvious location. Still I would love to see them again. I actually took a fight with the lady in the photo and we were surprisingly equal in speed but she accidentally hit my male parts for a critical hit. We laughed it off and continued after five minutes on the floor. There's a reason they have a waver.

Now the Free food there was a great idea! Ramen and Rice are plentiful and cheap when bought in bulk and easy to make which also made my wallet happy. The only issue was the rice took a while to cook but other wise everything was well attended and kept plentiful.

The Video game room was very small but still nice. They had all the games people wanted to play and implemented the Badge for Controller system for safety. A couple table top games were played including a very patient man teaching Mahjong. Sadly no arcades but I didn't really miss them and I'm doubtful there would have been room for them.

The dealers was surprisingly varied though still small. they put the artist alley in the same room and I don't really like when they do that because of the confusion between the two. Still there was plenty of merchandise and other item to check out.

Now on to may days and events. Friday I saw little but nothing really interested me. My biggest interest was running my panel Anime Jeopardy. Since the panel ran before Greg Ayers I decided to drop in and see what he has to say and I was thoroughly entertained. He actually gave a great incite into 4kids Entertainment saying that they had to make changes but the Japanese studios were the ones that were fully behind the changes. I was excited at the end as I was setting up for my panel I got to ask the last question at his panel and the following happened.
Greg: Yes you!
Me: Wanna Play Jeopardy?
Greg: No!
*Everyone laughs including me*
Greg: I don't have a competitive bone in my body. Like, I never really cared about winning things and that's like reflected in the games I play. Sometimes my friends want me playing a fighting game like Street Fighter and they'll be like 'in your face!''I beat you, loser' and I'll be 'I will punch you in the kidneys man'. But, y'know go ahead what's your Jeopardy question?
Me: Oh no, that's the next panel.
Greg: Oh and your running it?
Me: Yeah.
Greg: Oh I'm sorry man but no I don't think I'll play.
Me: that's cool man I understand.
Greg: Do you have prizes for the winners?
Me: Yup!
Greg: Cool, Guys stick around if you wanna win awesome prizes in Anime Jeopardy!
I liked that he was so friendly about the whole thing. Despite how he didn't participate he was still nice and supportive in my panel. It would've been cool if he played but if you don't have the spirit of competition I understand.

So then Anime Jeopardy Hosted by me! Great times had by all. I tried something Different this year by taking advantage of my Jeopardy programs Audio and jpg function and created categories based around it. Sadly this is where the speakers became a problem. Now it wasn't that the speakers didn't work its that no one knew where to find them. It turns out there is an unmarked box in the middle of the audience full of supplies we were supposed to use but nobody knew. I was lucky to have an audience member find it so I could use it and I put  it back hoping someone else who needed it could use it sadly no one did. Generally the panel went great. I always seem to pack the room when it comes to Jeopardy and it might be because it's a generally fun thing to play as apposed to my other panels.

Afterwords me and my lovely girlfriend proceeded to the Formal Dance lessons where we just sucked. I used to be alright at dancing in highschool but I was never this bad there was just no sense of pattern with me and I know it was me because we switched partners and I still sucked. *sigh*

Then I got dinner and afterwords headed to Nabeshin's panel which was all very hush hush but I tell you it was fun. After word I made some paper claws and gave Nabeshin a thumbs up with them. He took notice and I decided to try something. In the heat of the moment I proclaimed "A-MA-ZON!" and he totally got what I was saying! Of course it was a reference to Kamen Rider Amazon one of my favorite old Tokusatsu series. I was told he was looking for me afterwords but I needed to head back home for work.

Saturday! I didn't get around until the afternoon but despite how late I was I gt into the Little Kuriboh panel. Which was fun to hear all the Q&A and he also showed his unfinished episode which was hard to hear because of the lack of speakers. I should have said something but I was shy and the speakers were hard to get to at the time but over all still fun.

I then stayed to get some work done on my next panels and work out the kinks and found out I was staying for the Nerd Rappers Panel. Now I gotta say that these guys knew their stuff when it came to games and rapping but sadly their panel was small and under appreciated. When I find there info I'll put more here.

So with that I went to check out the panel before mine. The How to DJ panel. Which was entertaining but the guys didn't show up for a while which was understandable since they were con staff. But once they were rolling they were very informative and very short. Which depending on your panel can be good but I felt underwhelmed. It eventually wound up becoming a tutorial class on using a DJing program.

So then my panel came up and immediately I had a problem...NO SPEAKERS! I thought the first panel room was bad but at least you could find the speakers. Lucky the DJ guys let me borrow theirs. I was surprised that the room was packed! everyone wanted to know about the Adaptations Across Countries. But originally I asked for 2 hours and instead they game me 1, funny enough my next panel would get 1 and a half hours when I only asked for one. I modified my panel for just such a thing though and everyone enjoyed it and stayed! YAY for not being boring! Although everyone had questions which I couldn't answer due to time crunch. There were some good questions but one person felt like making it into a little MST3K and made fun of some of the vids I showed off. Mind you I liked that and laughed alot and eventually became friends with that person.

I noticed that Nabeshin's panel was up next and decided to wait and connect again by showing him the live action Spiderman from Japan and he totally knew it. It was great to connect to the guy via classic tokusatsu like that. I stayed for as long as I could but needed to rush out to start my last Panel.

Tokusatsu for Beginners. I love talking about rubber suit monsters and armored heroes! So I created this panel to try and get more people into it. After the Panel I took some Q&A to help people become interested but it turned out most people already knew most of what I had to say. I'm thinking I should make a Tokusatsu for Advanced fans panel to make things interesting. I was glad to receive information that I actually did affect some people into getting into Tokusatsu. After the con I got a message to do all my panels at Maneki Neko con. I was so flattered and happy to hear all this so of course I accepted it.

I wanted to get into the Karaoke room later but my panel over lapped so I wasn't able to make it at all. The only reason for that was the room was too damn small for karaoke. No one else was allowed in because the room was filled to capacity so I wound up just talking with some friends the rest of the night. but I got tired and called it in early and went home. I was tired I didn't even head to the Rave dance and even more tired Sunday where I didn't even show up.

All in all a good time to be had I want to go again since it was so much fun and do my panels again next year.

Jam Rangers Animate!

Anime Sentai Jam Ranger is a project I've been working on with my friends for some time now. This image is that latest piece I worked on and you can see more on the FB fan page HERE.

MangaVerse volume 1

For all its mistakes and strokes of genius I like Marvel comics. Sure I have my complaints about Spiderman's clone saga and poor choices made by Queseda and company but on a whole it's still enjoyable. One thing I've always liked is that Marvel doesn't have a strong Multiverse like DC does after Infinite Crisis but that's another rant altogether. What Marvel does have is a series of off shoots of their primary universe such as Marvel Zombies, Marvel Apes, Marvel 1604, and what I've come to talk about today the Mangaverse.

It should be stated that I love Manga and I hold no standing on whether western comics or eastern manga are better than the other, this is a debate for another day. This is simply my understanding of how this first volume stands up over all.

The Mangaverse was authored by many people from the American comic book industry so right there we have a problem. Manga is used in English colloquialism to describe comics from Japan so when you have no Japanese artists working on the story or art it already loses its meaning. However that isn't to say the artists are bad as Ben Dunn (Ninja High School) whose work I enjoyed, authored two of the issues we'll look at today.

The whole of the TPB is split into two different sections, The "New Dawn" storyline is a crossover event which brings many of the Marvel heroes together against a common foe while the rest of the chapters are a pseudo origins and tie-in to the "New Dawn" story line. This is where the book has the most problem is where the focus is and the continuity established in other chapters.

Let's start with "New Dawn" where our focus is brought to a very young looking Dr. Banner who is on an island owned by Stark Industries. As he wanders around he runs into many of the other Avengers members including Wasp, Antman, Ironman, and Captain America. Ironman, Captain America, and Nick Fury hold a meeting which gives us our exposition to a whole other story that happened before issue 1. Now, why would they do that? Ben Dunn wrote this whole story and is now establishing that something happened before we even started reading the first page? I look back on the wise words of Stan Lee "Every comic is someone's first" especially when it's Issue 1 which should be an origin story or at least have a story summed up as to the origins of these characters. The story continues with an evil plan by Hydra to capture Dr. Banner whose plan goes awry as Dr. Banner discovers his new power to become the incredible Hulk.

So what did this first chapter do right/wrong? Well, I like the idea of the Hulk being a large Godzilla like monster it seems to fit hand in hand as the beast of rage sort of speak wreaks havoc on the city of New York. the story seems like such a good start and if you know your marvel characters it may not take much for you to connect the dots for what happened in flash backs. However that's just as much the problem, there are so many characters to follow that it becomes difficult to keep track of the story's progress. It establishes a world already in progress so it feels like as if you are a new reader to the Marvel continuity all over again which may give Marvel fans an idea what it's like on the other side of the fandom. To illustrate the story starts it's focus on Dr. Banner then shifts to Tony Stark, then Baron Strucker, Mordo, Dr. Strange, then intersecting into a mish mash of confusion.

The next chapter is the Avengers by the U-Don Crew who's work I like for their Street Fighter comics. The Avengers are brought together in order to decide how to defeat the Hulk and come up with the assembly of the Ultimate Ironman (not to be confused with the Ironman of the Ultimate universe) a giant robot the likes of which has never been seen. Apocalypse wants that power for himself so now the Avengers must defeat Apocalypse before they move on to the Hulk.

First thing, why are the Avengers fighting the X-men villains? I know the name Apocalypse could be a general villain name that can be passed down easily but there are some things you don't change about story continuity when taking it into your own hands. The Art here is nice and to be expected from U-Don's great workforce but I think one thing that could have been improved on is the Avenger's costumes. They aren't as iconic as the villains and they missed the potential for giving them uniforms similar to the Power Ranger/ Super Sentai.The story is very basic with no real personality displayed but a fun to read story none the less.

Fantastic Four by Adam Warren is probably the most original interpretation of the FF since it's conception. The Fantastic Four are recruits for a science experiment and are given super suits to channel their psychic energy in order to defeat the monster Annihilus.

Why do I say this is the most original? Well none of the characters are at all like the classic dysfunctional family we know and love today they have completely different personalities and quite an amazing author to show it off. Though the color seems bland as sometimes the blue tone of the fights and shadows makes the overall blend together and hard to differentiate figures. The writing is great thanks to Adam Warren's method of dialogue, where this could have been a general origin or introduction chapter is put together because of the great moments the characters the characters speak their mind.

Ghost Rider by Chuck Austen...Jonny Blaze fights demons as Ghost rider.

Obviously from my unenthusiastic description I really don't like this and no one should. The writing's alright and makes me chuckle here and there but over all a bad initial story. This is lazy illustration and writing at it's worst. Most of the panels are the same shot with a slight change in facial expressions and the colors just run together alot of the time. More to the point is that that Jonny Blaze is PLAGIARIZED from Ryoji Kaji from Evangelion. I think a better Title for this would be Ghost Rider by artist Copy Paste. Everything I could say from this point on would just be a rant so let's move on.

The Punisher by Peter David and Lea Hernandez. This one was...awkward. The Punisher is known for being violent and dark and this is like a pathetic parody. The Punisher is a geisha in black and white who's taking down the yakuza but keeps a secret identity as a prep school principal...and hold a secret cursed sword to fight demons...and a nosy sister...ugh.

This is pretty different and is a pretty difficult one to call. It doesn't remind me of the quality I expect of Marvel and reminds me too much of a web comic. The characters are flat, the backgrounds are either too loud or non existent and whats worse I feel like this could have been better based on the people working on this story. The story it's self is an alright start but the inclusion of the Punisher's sister just takes away the attention where it needs to be which is on the main character.

Spiderman by Kaare Andrews. I've wanted to review this one for a while especial Linkara's review on Atop the Fouth Wall. So Peter Parker is a ninja and is trained by his uncle/sensei Ben who is killed by his nemesis/cousin Venom. Thus begins a story of revenge and action as Spiderman protects the city and seeks payback.

This was actually a pretty good one, sure there is alot of bad dialogue and some grammatical errors but in the end I wanted to see this story fleshed out. Now Linkara has a gripe with the art but I like the art it's a style similar to Shaman King author Hiroyuki Takei and urban graffiti which is a matter of style over realism. Also it  should be noted that instead of a theme of responsibility it should have gone for a theme of revenge which is a theme more common to Japanese literature. The author continues to express the idea of responsibility which feels misguided in order to keep Spiderman on track to being Spiderman. The art is never dull with some very nice composition that almost feels like each panel could have been it's own poster.

X-Men by C.B. Cebulski and Jeff Matsuda. Umm...so Rogue is possessed by Magneto's ghost and needs a new body. So, the X-Men try to save her and  defeat Magneto's ghost? This one threw me for a loop. The story feels like a good test run but in the end I feel like they to convey too much continuity into one story. This should have been our introduction into who or what the X-Men are to their world but for the life of me I don't understand if they are still mutants, witches, or what?

The art is good maybe decent but the colors are all over the place. I feel like each page spread you can find every color of the rainbow and then some. Also there is a constant continuity problem regarding Wolverine's right hand where sometimes it's a robot hand and others it's just a regular hand which needs a bit of explaining.

Now, the final story Eternity Twilight by Ben Dunn. I don't know how to tell this. This is the conclusion to the "New Dawn" storyline and that's all I can say. It fits way too much continuity into this little story. So I'll try and explain the villains just to give you an idea. At first they wanted Bruce Banner to unlock a power source to rule the world but that turns out just to be a plan for the Atlantians to rule the world but then it turns out to be a plot by Hydra to take over Atlantis but then it turns out to be a plot to summon Dormamu to take over the world...see what I mean? Add to that all the previously mentioned superheroes to save the day plus more and mess up their already previously established continuity and got an official CLUSTER FUCK.

Too much was just too much and this was one of the reasons this series of comics was not very well reputed. In addition the continuity was never consistent and as far as telling a long lasting story none were given a strong chance...except there's five volumes released in TPB. (and yes I'm going to review them all)