sunday is comic book day

[davemerrill]

Went to the "fan appreciation" comic book show downtown yesterday. We went to the convention center, went up 3 sets of escalators, across the tracks via a pedestrian bridge, down 3 more sets of escalators, and into the south building which I had never been in, and which is huge. And subterreanean. There was actually some neat stuff at this show, we found some good old cheap stuff. Better than the last downtown show by far. I picked up a LOT of Harveys, more than I usually see at these things. Also one dealer had a big box full of original comic book art pages- some superhero stuff, but a big whack of Archie pages and original Stan Goldberg Millie pages. And some Sad Sack pages that got me thinking there might be some Little Dot or Little Lotta pages, but no such luck. I bought one page with two half-page gag strips, one by DeCarlo, one by Joe Edwards. There was an Edwards splash page for $90, I thought pretty hard about that one. The dealer is based out of a store in Hamilton, maybe we'll take a trip down there and buy it one of these days.

Came home and I did another Zero Fighter page. Actually I had one finished for yesterdays' update since before Anime North, but I pushed it back and replaced it with a new one, which I'm much happier with. After that we got some Pizza Gigi and watched some TV. We've been going through the Southern Cross set we picked up at AN and it's a much more entertaining show without that Robotech narrator and without it having to be shoehorned in as a bridge between two shows that didn't need a bridge and in fact are better off without a bridge. Also watching fansubs of the '68 Cyborg 009 series, which is primitive and energetic.

I'll probably be doing a few panels at Con Bravo the first weekend of July in Oakville. No Anime Hell, but I'll be doing an Old School Classroom thing and maybe sitting in on a classic anime panel or two. Will not be buying any LPs at that record store, though.

Comments

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

Southern Cross is indeed quite a bit better by itself.

It's a very grim show. The characters are largely unhappy or worse, the actual actual plot is very forlorn, the mecha designs are sort of ... second rate, and there is no happy ending. Sort of amazing it got made in the first place.

Fun stuff: much of the soundtrack music was borrowed from Police songs. Compare Syncronicity with Southern Cross' "Falcon Fighter" track. Nah. Not borrowed. Lifted wholesale. Not a bad thing overall. The Southern Cross CDs are pretty nice.

What I totally do not get about the Robotech version of Southern Cross is how much energy and time and effort was spent importing all the different military unit logos and armor suit designs and all this stuff (one of the Robotech Art books is clogged with it) that really, ultimately doesn't have anything to do with the story and it's more or less not mentioned in the anime.

You know how roman albums (hey kids! remember books!) used to fill in back pages with pages of prop designs and stuff. Here's a coffee pot from episode 5. And a tank from episode 6 that was only used once. And 10 different views of a gun. OK fine. Good stuff.

But with Southern Cross, they threw away most of the art about the characters and the story and the rest of the roman album and JUST went nuts on the armor suits and logos. WHAT THE HELL!?

Yeah ok, this is a latent Southern Cross rant that I have indeed been sitting on for like 20 years. The 80s are coming back.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

It is fascinating how much time they spent on the military unit crests and the personal armor suits, all that stuff is swell - but the actual mecha people get into to fight with looks like they quit working on the designs two drafts into a eight-draft process. The Zor ships in particular are pretty sloppy. The Southern Cross mecha are weirdly generic.