Why aren't they in their boxes OMG OXIDATION NOOOOO

He was loud, stocky, swaggered, and wore a shit-eating grin as he tried to overwhelm me with facts about Alan Moore comics that he owned but never read. He reminded me of a lot of other toy collectors I’d dealt with since coming back to the geek scene. He loomed me, trying to both intimidate me and impress me with the size of his toy e-peen. He reminded me of an adult schoolyard bully.

“Hey, I checked online for the lightsaber thing.” He was a toy collector. I met him through a friend, and he promised me he was so connected that he could find whatever it is I needed. “I found one where you can mix and match parts to make the lightsaber you want.”

I rolled my eyes. Discreetly. “Yes, I don’t want that. I want a Luxeon conversion kit for my lightsaber.”

“Wow. Mmm-hmm. What series is the lightsaber?” he asked, hoping to wow me with his knowledge of Master Replicas Force FX lightsabers and distract me from the fact that he had no idea what I was talking about.

“It’s an Anakin AOTC,” I replied. “It’s got the standard row of 64 LEDs, but I want to replace it with a single Luxeon in the hilt. A few of the lights on the end have gone out. A Luxeon would be less fragile and would make the lightsaber lighter.”

I waited for his internal flywheel to spin up. “Wow. Yeah. Hmm. How did that happen? Did it fall of the display case or something?”

“No, I’ve been dueling with it.”

He stared at me blankly. It apparently never occurred to him that I would actually PLAY with my lightsaber.

=====

Back in the 90s I used to collect mainstream comics like Uncanny X-Men and JLA (the Blue & Gold era). I’d started to follow the comic seriously from the Goblin Queen storyline onward, tried to follow the team post-Siege Perilous. Then Image had its big debut and #1 chromium cover die cast holographic wrap around variant covers became prevalent. I discovered that I could no longer follow my favorite storylines because all of the copies had been snatched up by hopeful speculators hoping to make a buck on them in the future. Which is a big reason why I switched to manga. It seemed immune to the speculator market.

Same thing happened to Magic: the Gathering. At first it was an underground hobbyist scene, but then price speculation on the cards meant that you couldn’t get the cards that you wanted because they were locked inside a mylar sleeve somewhere, owned by some guy who matches the description in the first paragraph. M:tG cards, like comics and lightsaber replicas, had become just another commodity, to be traded and profited from.

That’s the problem with tabletop RPGs. They’re hard to commodify, since most of the action occurs in the imagination. Sure you can make a buck selling designer dice and book after book after book of supplements and source material, but after you have one copy of a book you don’t need another. In Magic you need at least four. With comics you need three — one to read, one to lend, and one to keep for investment. And with lightsabers, since they’re numbered limited editions, the one you DO have you keep under glass, untouched.

I don’t understand this. I don’t like it. My limited ed Vertigo Tarot (in the big white pizza box) is 2000-something out of 4000, and they’re well worn and used. My iPod touch is naked — because if Apple wanted to keep it from fingerprints and smudges they would’ve built them that way. My figmas and pinky:sts are actually out of their boxes.

I play with my toys. Why is that so shocking?

I mean I get it. Part of it is profit motive. Money is a mundane but easily understandable motivation. But having gone to an all boys’ school, I know what else is really behind it. It’s the same motive that drives other guys to collect cars or guns or women. It’s the need to have the best toys in the playground — and then dangle them in front of the other kids without playing with them. It’s an extension of comparing penis sizes in the locker room. It’s a not-so-subtle way of compensating for a certain… lack.

Normally I don’t care, since I don’t run into that crowd much anymore. But every time a new toy or comic or game comes out and is immediately sold out because speculators have snatched up two dozen copies each, I curse the profit motive and I mentally kick these overcompensating douchebags in their undersized nuts. Because I play with my toys. I don’t have them just to say I have them, or to feel secure about the size of my stash.

So… does anyone know how to perform a Luxeon conversion on an Anakin AOTC Force FX?

Mangaholix Manga Mania 2009 on November 21-22 at the World Trade Center!

Some of you may remember Mangaholix from my Komikon 2009 post, especially with that awesome sketch I scored from Kriss Sison.

It turns out Mangaholix has its own con in the works, called Mangaholix Manga Mania Con 2009 (or M3Con09 for… short. Relatively.)

I noted to Maoi that Pol Medina Jr. (of Pugad Baboy fame) is one of the special guests at the Meet and Greet, so she’s definitely coming with me to attend. In my case, aside from the obvious comic book geekery and the chance to meet a lot of movers and shakers, I noticed that Taken By Cars is on their band list, and I’m a big Taken By Cars fan. One of their draws is the nonstop music and the band list is chockful of bands I like.

Oh, and apparently there are 4 cosplay contest too. Just in case you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Here are the details from their Official Poster:

Mangaholix Manga Mania 2009
Nov. 21-22, 2009
10:00am to 8:00pm
World Trade Center’s East Pavillion

Over ten thousand people, hundreds of cosplayers and over P50,000 worth of prizes—the last two Mangaholix MangaMania Conventions (or M3Cons) were undeniably among the largest events of its kind in the country and have quickly become a well known red letter affair among the anime, manga and gaming fans in the Philippines. It has set numerous benchmarks for its unique character and innovative segments, making it both an edifying celebration of cultural exchange and diversity, and a fun, action-packed fete of good music and wild costumes. This year, the folks behind Mangaholix Magazine are doing it again and they’re pushing the envelopes in all directions.

Featuring:
Special Guests
Pol Medina (Pugad Baboy), Elmer Damaso (Cat’s Trail), Carlo Vergara (Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah), Chester “Elpinoy” Ocampo (Freedom Formula), Stephen Segovia (Dark Wolverine) and Vinson “Bleedman” Ngo (Sugar Bits)

Live Performances by 30 Awesome, Rocktastic Bands…
KJWAN > THE OUT OF BODY SPECIAL> FASPITCH
SUBSCAPULAR > TYPECAST > FAIRLIGHT MADISON
TAKEN BY CARS > TECHY ROMANTICS > SALAMIN
ENEMIES OF SATURN > EPHESUS > ASTROJUAN
DJ DUBIOUS >BLUE BOY BITES BACK > THE KAGAWS
URBANDUB > INTOLERANT >THE AMBASSADORS
NYCTINASTY > ANGULO > GASULINA > SEVERO
SWITCH > HILERA > DRIP > DECEMBER AVENUE
TONIGHT WE SLEEP> THE NAMELESS HEROES
DISTRESSED >BUTCHERCONS

CONTESTS:
Art Contests
Global Warning
Art Arena Sketchmatch
Art Arena Ten Strings

4 Cosplay-related Contests
Cosplay Collision Ringside
Cosplay Collision Clan Wars
Cosplay Collision Wild Card
Art Collision Photo Finish

Anime Song Guessing Game
Otaku Open

For more information visit here
or contact us at m3con09@groundbreakers.com.ph

See you guys there!

My ticket to Comicland

Stuck in traffic.

For some reason, the 2009 Komikon, at Megatrade Hall 1 in SM Megamall, was held on the same day as the 3 Day Mega Sale. That meant traffic jams. That meant parking wars.

I stayed upbeat about it, turned up the music, plurked on my phone. It’s tradition to curse in traffic, blame the traffic aids, blame reckless drivers, blame the government, blame the weather, but I guess I’m not much of a traditionalist. Even the empty parking lot next to Podium, my go-to place whenever I suspect that parking is going to be scarce, was full.

I hoped a lot of the people in line with me liked comics.

(more…)

Earth to Jaden. Page 5 preview, The Vigilant Issue #1

This is addressed to all of the following, although this is by no means an exhaustive list:

1. Gamers (console, PC, handheld, tabletop, interactive fiction, miniature, CCG, MMOG, LARPers, board);
2. Weeaboo (anime, manga, light novels, niconico, traditional Japanese martial arts otaku, people who only know Japan through samurai films, Zen Buddhists);
3. Genre otaku (fantasy, sci-fi, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, the various D&D campaign settings, superhero, Vertigo, gothic horror, mystery, pulp, fanfic, K-Dramas, reverse harems, musical theater);
4. Head-in-Cloud-Types (poets, artists, dreamers, philosophers, theoretical scientists, sages, mystics, shamans, prophets);
5. People who play with toys (scale models, dolls, figurines, phones with excessive arrays of features we don’t use, pretend guitars and drum kits connected to consoles, lightsabers, limited edition custom-painted Stitch statues)
6. Any subculture or group I have forgotten to mention that prefers to spend time in imaginary worlds.

Hi. Nice to meet you.

We have something in common: We have vivid imaginations and enjoy spending time in imaginary worlds.

These worlds are off the six-lane highway of the shared world of the monoculture, that bland soup of the mainstream. Some are right off the exit ramp, others take convoluted side streets to get to.

Let’s stop being in denial and just accept ourselves: We’re weird.

We do things that ‘normal people’ would never do. We watch ‘cartoons’. We like to pretend we’re Jedi or magicians or two-dimensional characters or elves or vampires or pirates or ninjas. We roll kinds of dice most people have never seen. Our dialects are incomprehensible to outsiders, and there are so many.

We’re weird.

They don’t understand us. That’s what it means when they say “That person is so weird.” It’s the only way they can deal with us. Sometimes it’s a sign of disapproval. Sometimes it’s simply a sign that someone cannot comprehend our motivations or behavior because they have no cultural context. Weird. Doesn’t make sense – at least sense the way the ‘people who see the world for what it really is’ see it,  the self-proclaimed realists.

We’re the imagination subculture. We’re weird. It’s okay.

We need to stop thinking that we need approval for everything we do. Even different imagination subcultures disagree with each other, sometimes vehemently. We need to accept the fact that we aren’t going to please everybody – and that the monoculture isn’t everybody. Even entire scenes have little tribes that skirmish every now and then. Fine.

Let’s stop trying so hard to make everyone accept us, we lose our identities in the process, our cultures. If everyone was like us, acted like us, thought like us, talked and dressed and hung out in the same places as us, then we would be normal.

And we don’t want that now, do we?

Everybody has an opinion. This is mine.

Let me tell you a story.

Several years ago, I was part of a local alliance of gamers, who aimed to evangelize the glories of tabletop role-playing games to as many people as possible. Debates raged about bringing RPGs into the mainstream, what events to hold to reach a wider audience.

I did not agree with any of these initiatives. And I still don’t today. Because tabletop RPGs are a niche hobby, and they always will be.

The current conventions, whether they’re ostensibly comic or cosplay or anime or toy conventions, are all fine for what they really are — platforms for mainstream marketing. That’s right. They aren’t for the otaku, the hardcore fans of whatever genre we specialize in. Cosplay contests are for the non-otakus, who invariably vote for the flashiest costume or the ones they recognize from whatever movie-remake-of-an-80s-cartoon-they-never-actually-watched-religiously just came out. Comic cons focus on superheroes that have Hollywood blockbusters under their belt. Anime conventions focus on whatever is on network TV. And why not? The sponsors all want to market to as many people as possible, and the organizers want to sell as many tickets as they can. Well-known scene celebrities become shills for commercial purposes, and the disgruntled hardcore fans usually do nothing but sputter furiously from the dark moldy corners.

I repeat: Local conventions aren’t for Otaku.

Think about Akiba itself for a moment. Every Sunday, they close off the main street and people who want to show up in costume simply do so. No contests, no shows for the pointing-and-laughing public, just people who like dressing up hanging out with other people who like dressing up.

The indie comic creators were marginalized at the Metro Comic Con 2009 because it wasn’t for them. It was for the general public. They, bless their otaku hearts, are people passionate enough to create something they want to share with other people — and they want to share with people who care about the craft as much as they do. Real fanatics. Real otaku. These people want a Comiket, not a marketing platform for cellphones and bland remakes.

Someday we’ll be brave enough to have really focused cons, like a Star Trek Con for real Trekkies, or a Firefly Con for real Browncoats, or even a Cosplay Con where people who aren’t in costume aren’t allowed to come in and make fun of the real cosplay otaku. Real conventions where people who aren’t ‘with it’ simply have no place. Someday we won’t pander to the monoculture, hoping that one day drawing comics for a living or dressing up as anime characters or rolling polyhedrons will be as socially acceptable as knowing which celebrity is pregnant with so-and-so baby. You know, stuff that matters to the mainstream, to the people who worry about ‘common sense’ and ‘appealing to a broader audience’. To the NOT US.

But until then, we’ll be like gourmets who have nowhere to eat except fast food joints. We’ll be at conventions that bear the names of our hobbies but have no place for us, that don’t want us there. We’ll be coming to events that are supposed to foster the sense of community with people who share our interests, and wonder why we don’t know anyone there.

So. What are we going to do about it?

Considering the widely divergent opinions about last weekend’s Metro Comic Con 2009, especially in the comments section of my coverage of the event, I’ve been wondering, what exactly do people want out of conventions? I mean, there are the basics — spacious venue, good sound system, good marketing, good layout — but all those things together don’t seem to add up to a convention that everyone would like.

So I put it to my readers: What DO you want out of your conventions, anyway?

Yoo-hoo! I'm over here! Cobra t-shirt and lightsaber, just like I said! My neck's ready for punching nao!

(Again, like the previous Otagonzo, this isn’t a comprehensive two-day report. This is just what it was like for me to attend Metro Comic Con 2009, nothing more.)

I arrived at Megatrade Hall shortly after lunch with the First Mate and Marielle, her niece, who was excited to attend a con with us and her friends. Unlike me, she didn’t have any other agendas — no need to check out the local comic book scene, no need to meet artists, no need to look out for neck-punching assailants.

Unlike me, she had no expectations.

There were two lines for tickets, P100 per person. I stood on the left, and Ian stood on the right. My ticket lady immediately closed her booth. I cut in line in front of Ian on the right line and the left ticket booth reopened shortly after.

“I think someone warned them I was coming,” I said.

We noticed that ahead of us in line, being frisked by the guards, was Pedobear. There was a little girl who wouldn’t leave Pedobear alone, and kept hugging him and tugging at his arm and talking to him.

“Run, little girl, run for your fresh, unspoiled life!” we whispered, wondering if her parents understood the wrongness of the entire scene.

Thank heaven for little girls!

Probably not.

Upon entering the hall, the first thing I noticed was how much space there was to walk around in. None of the insane shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of Ozine, but more people than at the Komikon at UP Bahay ng Alumni. A happy medium, I guess.

The next thing I noticed was the chunky Stormshadow on stage, and how for some reason the hosts were promoting another con, a cosplay con to be held at some point in the near future, which really made no sense at a comic con.

Before leaving the dojo to join Cobra and get a cool code name, Stormshadow was affectionately nicknamed 'Chunkybutt' by his fellow ninjas. This is the true reason for his vendetta against Snake Eyes.

As usual, great big toy displays featured prominently in the hall, as well as a centrally-located G.I. Joe video display. I guess you have to plug your sponsors.

Then I noticed what I WASN’T noticing — where were the comics?!

I wandered the aisles of toys and accessories and doujin t-shirts before I discovered the comic creators, tucked away in a little, poorly-ventilated corner on the other side of the hall from the stage.

"Why are we relegated to a dimly-lit corner at a con that supposed to be for us?"

I was appalled — and a little relieved that I ended up not plugging The Vigilant at this con. Sitting along a cramped table, bleary-eyed, hoping the people who paid to get it would pay for my stuff… not my idea of a fun afternoon.

Especially since for some reason, I began to itch.

My wife, who is far more sensitive to allergens than I am, was scratching a lot and was already starting to feel ill. What was going on? Did someone plant black mold spores into the ventilation system? Whatever it was, the longer I stayed, the less well I felt.

Why did things turn out this way? The dolls and sculptures, many of which having nothing to do with actual comic books, had a far more prominent display than the comic books themselves. People posed for pictorials with cosplayers and rode a Harry Potter broom I call the Nimbus 1 on account of its shabby, old-looking condition. An agitated-looking middle-aged man wearing a sponsor tag who reminded me of Milton from Office Space kept shooing us away from the tables, even though we, intrepid troopers that we were, had been at the con all afternoon without sitting and should therefore be rewarded for our efforts, instead of the drive-by cosplayers who took over the tables before us without ordering a single thing from the food stalls.

I bought a few black-and-white indie comics, and one the artist thanked me profusely, and eagerly wrote down her Deviantart site. Unfortunately I lent my copies to K after I read them and I’ll add the address later.

Marielle met up with her friends, who as it turns out all cosplayed as countries from Hetalia: Axis Powers. Being ignorant of the series, I didn’t realize that Marielle herself was going as Canada, despite being unable to tell whether Canada is a country or a continent.

"Don't tell them that!"

Suddenly I spotted Mica, the increasingly-famous cosplayer known for her spot-on portrayal of Taiga from Toradora! Inspiration hit and I decided that it would be a very good thing for all otakudom if I somehow got her to pose with my lightsaber instead of her wooden practice sword. I looked at K, who had my Canon 10D, and grinned. She nodded.

You may all thank me now.

Shuu, the artist for Vigilant, arrived with her friends. Unfortunately I now had to hastily head home to prevent the First Mate from keeling over from anaphylactic shock. The rest of the crew, who stayed behind, but were now developing sniffles, had ice cream sundaes with her and eagerly took photos of character designs and unfinished pages of upcoming issues.

Jenner and his bodyguards, Jaden in his broadcast booth from Vigilant: Radio Free Morningstar

Afterward, they all headed over to the Geekdom for drinks, lightsaber duels, and Chowder. Not the soup, the cartoon. Everyone discussed the Comic Con, what they should’ve done differently, what they did better than other cons, and so on. We talked about how the comic creators were marginalized, how cosplay seemed to be taking over even marginally-related cons, and what the hell was in the air that made us all sick.

Marielle, on the other hand, seemed content to quietly play Pirates! on my PSP. I asked her what she thought of the Metro Comic Con this year.

“Awesome,” she replied.

I envy her.

My Comic Book of the Moment: Transmetropolitan

I HATE IT HERE.

That is the title of a newsfeed column, written by Spider Jerusalem, outlaw journalist of the future. And it is a very, very strange future, depicted in a comic book by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson entitled Transmetropolitan. (Warren Ellis also writes my 2nd favorite webcomic, Freakangels, which I’ll write about some other time.) (more…)

Back in UP, a particularly bitter Comparative Literature Professor who learned that I was a Creative Writing major coldly informed me that the writer, the painter, the playwright, and the musician is not the creator of art. He said, a smug smirk on his face, that it was the critic who created art.

I smirked back at him. Then I corrected his grammar.

You should have seen the look on his face.

=====

We are largely a community of consumers of other people’s intellectual productions. We are a particularly brutal society of critics who prefer imported entertainment products to our local fare, which we perceive to be of lesser quality.

This perception is only true to a certain extent. While most of the mainstream fare panders to the lowest common denominator in order to reach as wide an audience as possible, there are local gifted artists who either toil quietly, their work going largely unrecognized by their countrymen until after their deaths, if they’re lucky, or who simply give up entirely and pursue more sensible careers.

Things don’t have to be this way.

=====

Comiket (short for Comic Market), a yearly event in Japan, is the largest physical handmade comic book expo in the world, and is always totally packed, as portrayed to comedic effect in the anime Lucky Star. Here, limited runs of doujinshi (roughly equivalent to ‘fanzines’) are sold by their eager artists, who create the work largely as a labor of love.

Many of these works are the graphic equivalent of fanfiction, offering alternate stories that star their favorite anime or manga characters in blatant (but tolerated) violation of copyright, placing them in various situations ranging from the funny to the heartwarming to the downright obscene. But some of these comics are original works, featuring stories that are more experimental or more edgy or just plain weirder than mainstream commercially-published fare. Some manga-ka got their start at Comiket, like Yoshitoshi ABe, whose anime Haibane Renmei first started out as a quirky one-shot doujin.

This is an event that is centered around a creator’s market. Talent, like cream, rises to the top in this environment.

I’ve never been to Comiket. I have, however, been to the local Komikon. The emcees on stage kept drawing attention away from what should have been the focus of the event — the local independent artists and writers hawking their wares, some slickly produced, some little more than photocopied pages stapled together by hand.

Most of these were amateur works, but the trouble with our society is that we perceive rough, unpolished works as somehow undeserving of our attention. We prefer the slickly-presented products by large corporations to the lovingly hand-crafted work of the lowly artisan. The trouble is that most of the large corporations in our country aren’t from our country.

The emcees repeated the list of corporate sponsors of the event while a group of local artists sat at their table, bleary-eyed, watching people pass by, hoping to get the quality of their work noticed. It might have been a losing battle.

Things don’t have to be this way.

=====

We are a society of consumers. We are the passive targets of aggressive marketing campaigns intended to take advantage of our unwillingness to step outside our comfort zones. We have been conditioned to believe that local isn’t as good as ‘PX’, that nothing we could ever do on our own can ever measure up to the products of the big players in our now-globalized market.

I’m not saying big, corporate-backed productions can’t create works of legitimate art. I’m saying, however, that this is the exception rather than the rule, and in the homogenous world of corporate culture being too different is a liability. It’s difficult to compete with big business because the overheads are too high. We’re used to having products passed through lengthy retail chains, and small producers who can’t meet the overhead of buying shelf space and tv time and full-page ads get lost in the shuffle.

This is what I’m saying: Things don’t have to be this way.

=====

The Internet is the great equalizer. Even convenient class distinctions like A, B, C, D, and E (wonderful dehumanizing boxes that say nothing of the contents) are bypassed by the flat nature of the Net. As this very blog is virtual proof of, any moron with an opinion can, with a little effort, express an opinion that will be heard by a wide audience.

Unfortunately so far we’ve used this new-found power of expression, used in other countries to support charities, win elections or, perhaps, overthrow totalitarian regimes, to complain. We bitch and moan about our peers in an effort to place ourselves on top of very small hills. As River Tam accused Badger in Firefly, we all want to be the sad little kings of our sad little hills, and we do it by tearing down everyone else around us.

This is what I’m saying: Things don’t have to be this way.

=====

If you’re reading this, then you already have access to the largest Comiket in the world. The Internet has eliminated most barriers to access — both for readers who are tired of the same old crap from the major players, to artists who want to make their works known. Scott McCloud already foresaw this in his seminal (and controversial) work Reinventing Comics. So what if you’re some unknown artist in a third-world country? Discard that outdated notion that your work is somehow less valid than something produced in a G8 nation.

Osamu Tezuka began drawing comics when Japan was the backwater casualty of World War II, and he began by copying the Disney style. But then he eventually developed his own idiosyncratic art style that evolved into the sparkly-eyed anime of today. We all have to start somewhere. We all have to start by imitating something. Let’s face it, Mars Ravelo’s work is largely derivative of Golden Age US comics. So what? He paved the way for the rest of us to follow.

It’s a new age. The world today is vastly different from the world of Mars Ravelo. We have a voice now, and a grand stage upon which to be heard. Your work doesn’t have to languish in a dark corner, unread and unnoticed.

I’m not saying that everyone should up and become producers instead of consumers. What I am saying is that that anyone who’s ever had a dream now can.

This is what I’m saying: Things don’t have to be this way.

=====

At Komikon I found the work of the artist who is eventually going to help me make my own comic into a reality. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is. I’m going to be a Producer instead of a consumer. That’s what Project Otaking is — an attempt to put up or shut up, to contribute something instead of complaining about the way it is.

This is what I’m saying: Things don’t have to be this way. We can do something about it. All we have to do is produce. All we have to do is create.

We are the New Producers.