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Sunday, August 31, 2008
Are you affected by Gustav, giving shelter?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hurricane Gustav charged across the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday sending thousands of Gulf Coast residents from Texas to Florida to hotels and evacuation centers north. Are you or a loved one or friend affected by the storm? Are you worried about property potentially in the storm’s path? Have you been in touch with loved ones? What are they saying?
Also, if are you a metro Atlanta resident giving shelter we’d like to talk with you about your story. Send a message to newstips@ajc.com.
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Indie publisher Dark Horse makes most of Dragon*Con
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jason is a proud “Trekkie” and Dragon*Con fan. He started watching “Star Trek” at four. His earliest memories are of Captain Kirk, phasers and green Orion slave girls. And, at seven, he watched “Star Wars” 19 times in one summer. “I was awed by the power and possibilities of the human imagination,” he said. His otherworldly interests include comic books, of which he has more than 4,000 spread over two states.
Marvel and DC sat out Dragon*Con this year, but indie Dark Horse was in the house.
Perplexed and searching for answers, I decided to speak to a representative from the independent publisher. At their booth, I talked to Matt Parkinson, who came all the way from the company’s home in Portland, Oregon to be here. And yet Marvel and DC can’t make the much shorter trip from New York.
Personally, I thought it was some kind of coastal bias. DC and Marvel show up in force to conventions in New York, San Diego and Chicago every year, and even attend conventions smaller than Dragon*Con’s 30,000 attendees in cities like Austin, Texas, Seattle and Philly. So, do they just not want to head into the Deep South?
Parkinson didn’t think so. He didn’t really want to try and second guess Marvel, DC or any other comic book publisher, but he says Dragon*Con has always been great for them. They started coming four years ago, and “It’s like a well kept secret. Each year it keeps getting bigger and bigger. It’s a very positive vibe, a great city”. He and I both thought that maybe it was because Dark Horse doesn’t specialize in traditional, mainstream superhero stories.
Their horror and fantasy comics—“Hellboy”, “Conan”, “Buffy”—seem to gel better with the type of dark, gothic folks who flock to Dragon*Con, and their merchandise and books apparently sell very well, and it’s also a great promotional venue for them. I don’t know. As a side note, Georges Jeanty, the artist on “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” was at the Dark Horse booth when I stopped by there, and I think he goes to the same local comic book shop as I do.
I bumped into some family friends on the way to lunch, and kept crossing paths with them in front of the remote control, life sized mock-ups of R2 D2 and the robot from Lost in Space— complete with flashing lights and authentic sounds (“Danger, Danger Will Robinson”).
Their son loved the robots, and made them come book to the same spot six times. His dad was so impressed with the remote control robots that he took a brochure to build one of his own—only he wants to turn the bottom of it into a lawn mower. And he’s serious.
Are you happy with the comic book programming track as it is at Dragon*Con? Or would you like to see more?
