Sailing The Sea's of Geeks

So this year was my first venture to Auckland Armageddon, and what a time to go. Totally awesome 3 days. I flew up from Wellington on Friday, and once settled took a walk to the event as a test to see how long it was going to take. 25 minutes as it turned out, with a McDonalds nicely placed in the middle (or so it seemed. Don't go to Greenlane McD's for breakfast, all the incompetant people work at that time and you'll be standing in a 2 person que for 10 minutes...).

SATURDAY
I rolled up to the event at 8am (doors opened 9am), to be faced with an already-massive line. That didn't last long for me though, since it turned out 95% of the people waiting didn't have tickets, so I pretty much got near the front of the ticket-holders line and when the doors did open us smart ones walked straight in. Shortest line-up of ticket holders I've ever seen, I guess it's trendy in Auckland to not plan ahead.

The venue was HUGE. Such a good setup for the event. Plenty of fun stuff to do outside too.

Hey, almost like Disneyland:


Stuff to do inside too:

Everyone probably took a photo of this, and why not since it rules:

First order of business for the day (other than running around looking at all the cool stuff) was the comic guests who arrived at 10:30. Nicola Scott had to cancel last minute, which I was initially bummed about since she was the one I most wanted to see (she was cool at the Wellington event a couple of years ago). Wound up not being an issue, as the 4 guests they had was plenty. I actually hadn't noticed the Matthew Clark (Outsiders/ Doom Patrol) was attending, but he did and I wound up dropping $370 on his art. First up a Firestorm sketch:

That's such a cool drawing, one of the best Firestorm pieces I have. He also had a huge stack of art with him, and I couldn't resist. Picked up 2 pages from Doom Patrol #2:

Amusing side note: I had these layed out in my hotel room, and today when I checked out the lady on reception, who had happened to clean the room, commented that my "art was very beautiful". Ugh, it killed me to admit that it wasn't me that did it ha (I can draw like that in my dreams maybe...)

I got a bunch of comics signed, here's one from each:

(L to R: Sienkiewicz, Clark, Rucka, David)
Peter David was also selling his scripts which damn it, not enough writers do because I love that stuff.

Bill Sienkiewicz's page prices were a bit steep for my budget, but I still forked out $150 for a sketch:

Sweeeeeeeeeeettttt. And with that, my budget of $500 for the weekend was blown already. Still, the comic stuff is what I came for. Having said that, I didn't attend any of the comic panels, opting instead for the Stargate panels. Bill would've been cool to hear, but I don't follow the other 3 creators so wasn't too worried (plus, y'know, Stargate Atlantis)

I suppose this is as good a time to say it as any: I would go gay for Jason Momoa. He was really really cool. Very likeable and funny. My camera sucks, but if you didn't fork out for a gold or silver pass, this is a little of what you missed:
Jason and Joe Flannigan playing off each other was great (as was Paul McGillion, but my shots with him didn't come out). Real chemistry between them all and possibly the best panel I've seen.

If you're ever in a small panel setting with Michael Winslow, DO NOT leave halfway though and then come back a few minutes later like one woman did, because he will make jokes about you the whole time you're gone.

Oh hey, I mentioned the queue earlier, which apparently was 2 hours long for most of the day. I can believe that, since this was taken around midday:

...and that was nowhere near the main entrance. Crazy bloody Aucklanders :p

Sunday & Monday
Queue problems were sorted by opening the gates early. I rolled up at 8am to find noone waiting (which was actually a little disconcerting at first). Was cool though, I sat in the outdoor area and had breakfast.

Yep, ghost town


This year I thought it could be cool to get the actors to sign things other than the standard glossy photo. There's Stargate toys, so I went with those:


I'm not organised enough to try finding Farscape toys (if they exist), so I went with the comic instead, which was a good choice since Gigi Edgley didn't know about it:

aaaand I went with a couple of standard photos to round things off

Make a decision already

Left

Right

Left

Right

Left

Right

Do Black Lanterns get magical reversing costumes, or can DC not make a simple decision?

Fabric paint and too much spare time

Yeah, I pretty much don't need to say anything, do I?

Below is the template I made, incase you also have no life and want to make one. You're on your own when it comes to drawing out the fingers though.

A Firestorm by any other name...

This has been bugging me for a while. The excellent Transformers Animated toy line (and probably the tv show) has come up with these two characters:
Jetfire

and Jetstorm.

I'll say that again incase you didn't quite catch it. jetFIRE and jetSTORM. In and of itself, no big deal. I certainly remember the awesome-looking Jetfire from the G1 days of Transformers in the 80's, and Jetstorm was probably there too. No, what makes this suspect is that their main ability is to merge into a single robot:

Coincidence?

Convention time again

Armageddon has been and gone for another year. Since I'll be busy during the upcoming Wellington event, I travelled from Wellington to Christchurch. Just a brief post this time, I wasn't really in the mood for mass photo-taking or other fan-ish things, so don't have much to say. My hotel room sucked and I got entirely too little sleep :\

The comic guest this year was Darrick Robertson (Transmetropolitan, The Boys). Very cool guy, really chatty and easy to talk to. I hit him up for a sketch, requesting a Firestorm pic as always . Turns out he's a big Firestorm fan too, we had an enjoyable discussion about missed opportunities with Ronnie Raymond. Someone at DC needs to let him loose on this, because he totally said he'd like to do it, and I'd like to see that. So, the pic:

Love it.

Also attending was manga writer/artist Queenie Chan. I asked her for a Firestorm sketch too, ha. She was a bit reluctant, having not drawn any superhero stuff before, but I had come armed with reference material, and said she could do it however she wanted. I went in expecting a head shot, and she came up with this:

Way beyond the call of duty for a free sketch. Making it doubly awesome, when she had finished it (in pencil) Darrick grabbed it and asked me if he could ink it. Like I'm going to say no to that. Really interesting to see the way he embellished it, while following what Queenie had done. I LOVE the head, it has a real character about it.

The comic stalls were better than they've been in Wellington the last couple of years, helped in particular by the local store (Comics Compulsion) bringing in a bunch of their $1 bins. I got to browse them in relative peace for about the first half-hour on Saturday morning, then it was pretty much all go. Lots of young kids pulling out X-men and Spider-man comics (among others), always good to see. I wound up with 66 comics total, costing $140. The buy pile:

I ended up posting this back to myself, as it weighed just under 5kg and there was no way I was getting that all in my carry-on luggage on the flight back.

As with every year, I went in with a budget of $500. Last year I blew that by a fair bit, thanks mostly to Nicola Scott. This year I only spent $150, the only non-comic purchase being a photo print of Beast Boy (Teen Titans) for Greg Cipes to sign. Probably a good result for me though, given the added expense of having to travel.